Contradiction #6 - Did Jesus Baptise?

The next contradiction is a small conundrum from the Gospel attributed to John. Full context here. All Bible verses are taken, of course, from the one and only perfectly preserved English translation of the Bible.

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John 3:22-23
After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.

John 4:1-3
When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, (Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples,) He left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee.

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Prior to reading chapter 4, a straightforward reading of 3:22 would lead most people to conclude that Jesus had both tarried and baptized with his disciples. When we get to 4:2, however, we find that Jesus should not be considered to have been personally engaged in acts of baptism. There are several possible hermeneutical workarounds for this problem.

One solution, suggested by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor (Professor of New Testament at the École Biblique in Jerusalem) is that these two verses were authored by two different people, the later of whom was attempting to put a midrashic gloss upon the earlier account. In an article published in New Testament Studies he posits the possibility of "a Johannine editor, whose specific contribution is to be found in the interpolation at John 4:2." This does not eliminate the contradiction inherent in a plain reading of these two passages, but it does explain how such contradictory passages could end up effectively side by side, evidently situated within the same gospel pericope.

Another solution has been suggested by Calvinist blogger Alan Maricle who claims that Jesus "didn't physically immerse people with His own hands" but rather deputized his disciples to do the baptizing for him. To accept this view, one must take John 3:22 to mean "he tarried with them and [they] baptized" while Jesus merely supervised. The problem with such an attempted reinterpretation is that the verb form of baptise doesn't allow for it. Here, βαπτίζω is used in the imperfect active indicative third person singular form. To quote Dr. Peter Moses, "In this verse we have the imperfect active indicative of baptizo in the third person singular. The imperfect tense shows continual action whilst the third person singular indicates that at this stage Jesus Himself kept on baptizing people."

There are other solutions, to be sure, such as the hypothesis that these two verses represent two distinct phases in Jesus' ministry. According to this model, Jesus personally baptized some of his early followers, and later deputized his inner circle to do the baptizing on his behalf or in his name. It borders on special pleading, however, to attempt to read this transformation of Jesus' ministry into a single pericope spanning John 3:22 through 4:3, describing a single missionary trip from Galilee into Judea.

Of all the possible solutions, I personally find Murphy-O'Connor's hypothesis most plausible, because it explains both the parathetical and paradoxical nature of 4:2, which reads on its face like an editor's note correcting an error in the original text. Of course, such a solution is not available to those who consider 4:2 to be inherent to an innerrant autograph, but it must be noted that (alas!) we simply do not have the original manuscripts.

Liveblogging Dinesh D'Souza

Q&A time starts around 21:07 or so. Woo hoo!

21:05 - Back to Romans 1:18-25. Given the preponderance of Sunday School teachers and students here, this argument seems a bit unoriginal and superfluous. Evidently I'm not taking advantage of the real joy of religious unbelief, which is unfettered debauchery. Damn!

21:01 - He does a better Bertrand Russell than Sam Harris impression.

21:00 - Now we've moved on (slightly) to atheism = communism. My brain is bleeding.

20:55 - Back to the argument that (1) Western culture rules :. (2) Xn doctrine is true.

20:50 - Now we're on to fine-tuning of the universe. Nothing new or surprising here.

20:45 - Arguing that the Big Bang in particular supports Augustinian cosmogony. He makes an incredible (some might last inordinate) amount of hay over this, then makes a poop joke at Hawking's expense.

20:42 - Evidently modern science overwhelmingly supports theism. Don't tell the NAS!

20:40 - Now he is getting into the argument that methodological naturalism has slowly displaced faith-based thinking.

20:35 - Turns out Christianity hated slavery all along. Who knew?

20:33 - Dinesh does his Sam Harris impression. Evidently Sam has a significantly deeper and manlier voice than Dinesh. :)

20:30 - Starting in on the argument from his bestselling apologetic book that Xn culture is compassionate and good, thererfore Xn doctrine is true. Is is true that Eastern cultures don't believe in compassion and the dignity of life? Don't tell the Jain!

20:25 - He has covered the "accident of birth" argument for one's faith, and the problem of childhood indoctrination. So far so good.

20:20 - Claims he is going to answer the "best arguments " of the Gnu Atheists, appealing solely to evidence and reason.

20:15 - Now he is telling us about the New Atheists and Hitch's hairdo. He claims that atheists want to convince people that atheism is correct. How very un-Xn of them! It is not as if Christians are evangelical about their worldview.

20:10 - He looks even goofier in person. Starts off with a joke and an anecdote about Churchill.

I've never had the chance to see Zaltzman in person, so it may be said that D'Souza is the most consummate bullshit artist that I may ever get the chance to see live. Probably I should not be this excited about it, but here we go!

Apophatic Blending Characterizes Deistic Entity, Forwarding God Hypothesis

After watching my favorite YouTube video about the origins of theology for a fourth or fifth time through, I began to wonder whether most monotheistic theology was constructed upon a series of simple negations of our own unfortunate limitations as somewhat-evolved mildly-sapient earthbound primates.  One can readily imagine a conversation that went something like this:

Adam: “I quite dislike being always rooted to one spot, having tediously to walk or ride to the next place.”

Steve: “How great it would be to not be so limited as that, to be anywhere at any time, or everywhere all at once.”

Adam: “How wonderful would that be!  I so dislike of getting worn-out and footsore from work and travel.”

Steve: “How great it would be to not be so limited as that, to not have need of hands nor feet nor body.”

Adam: “How wonderful would that be!  I also cannot stand that my strength is so feeble that I cannot even lift heavy stones.”

Steve: “How great it would be to not be so limited, to have the power to move anything at all.”

Adam: “How wonderful would that be!  I also weary of my limited powers of workmanship.  I can only make arrows and bows.”

Steve: “How great it would be to not be so limited, to have the power to make anything at all.”

Adam: “How wonderful would that be!  I also am saddened by my character flaws and lack of virtue.”

Steve: “How great it would be to not be so limited, to be perfect in all virtues.”

Adam: “How wonderful would that be!  I also am often stymied by my limited knowledge of the world.”

Steve: “How great it would be to not be so limited, to know all that may be known.”

Adam: “Wow!  Just imagine it: Being everywhere at once, an all-knowing, all-powerful mind without need of a body, perfect in every conceivable way.”

Steve: “How wonderful that would be!  I would create whole peoples, set them one against another, compel bloody sacrifices, and revel in the smell of burning goat-flesh.”

Adam: “Um, okay -- whatever does it for you.”

 

The Gospels as Parables

Which of these three premises is false?

1) Jesus taught his disciples to emulate his own practices in their future ministry (e.g. Matt 10)

"It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher..."

2) Jesus made his public teachings known primarily (if not exclusively) via parables (e.g. Matt 13:34-35)

3) Matthew, as a faithful disciple, endeavored to emulate Jesus' own parabolic approach when authoring the first book of the Christian Scriptures.

It seems to me that modern Christians must reject at least one of these premises, in order to maintain that the Gospel According to Matthew may be firmly classed in the genre of biography rather than allegorical fiction or myth.  Most likely, the third one, although it is difficult to see good reasons to do so apart from the obvious fact that the literalist approach generally prevailed over the symbolic and gnostic approach some eighteen centuries ago.

Certainly it would seem difficult to maintain that Matthew never incorporated parabolic pericopes into his gospel, given such passages as the apocalyptic saintly zombie bonanza and his wholesale midrashic borrowings from the books of Moses.  Indeed, these passages never made any sense to me until I granted myself the leeway to read them as parables, at which point their meanings became quite plain.

Morality - Objective or Subjective?

Moral duties must inevitably be grounded in the subjective desires and preferences of at least one moral agent, since there can be no values without minds.  Theists generally prefer to ground moral values in a mind which has the virtue of being inhuman, immaterial, atemporal, eternal, etc. because such a mind presumably holds values and virtues which are immutable and incorruptible.  Does this imply that such values are necessarily (or even probably) preferable to our own? 

One may easily conceive of something like an hypothetical hyper-powerful evil demon, who creates whole worlds simply for the sake of giving its inhabitants desires and hopes and then inflicting suffering upon them.  Would we consider this sadistic demon’s moral values preferable to our own merely because they are independent of humanity, space, and time?  If not, why not? On theistic ethics, it is only the objectivity of moral values matters, without any regard to human desires and values. 

Divorcing ethics from human needs and values, however, inevitably muddles up the whole enterprise.  Some crimes cannot even be defined and evaluated without an evaluation of human desires and intentions.  What looks to an outside observer like torture and rape may actually be sadomasochistic role playing, understanding the intentions and desires of the participants is absolutely necessary to evaluate the morality of such actions.  Similarly, what looks like murder may turn out to be assisted suicide, once we discover the intentions and voluntary cooperation of the deceased.  In such cases, the criminality of the acts may turn entirely on the subjective values and intentions of the alleged victim.

By way of contrast, such crimes may be wholly justified on theism, without any regard for the human victims involved.  On the theistic view of ethics, if the gods command you to slaughter the natives and keep the virgins for yourselves, you must cast aside your own subjective distaste for murder and rape in order to put faith and fealty first and foremost.  This strikes me as an incredibly immoral approach to morality, but hey, at least it is objective rather than rooting itself in such pathetic human impulses such as love, mercy and empathy.

It seems clear enough to me that the whole point in having moral intuitions and creating moral norms is to make life better for the humans who must get along together.  On metaphysical naturalism, this is more or less the only plausible account of morality.  Many devout believers claim that it is impossible for them to conceive of any reason to work for a good life if there is no transcendent being offering moral norms carved in stone and the promise of eternal rewards.  This is, I believe, almost inevitably an illusion.  There may be some for whom apostasy implies an immediate descent into sociopathic amorality, but I am quite happy to say that I’ve not met any of them yet, despite having known many scores of freethinkers. 

Contra Craig #2 - Universal fine-tuning

I’m going to try to be as charitable as possible on this argument, but it this is how it seems to go:

1. The universe is such that it allows for the gradual evolution of intelligent life under certain circumstances
   
   
2. It could have turned out any number of other ways, almost all of which would not have allowed for such life
   
   
3. The best explanation for this particular universe is that an intelligent transcendent creator finely-tuned it for life
   
   
4. Therefore, an intelligent transcendent creator of the cosmos exists. QED.
   

I will admit that such an argument has a certain intuitive appeal, but only the first of its three premises are well-established. The second premise has been cast into serious doubt by professional cosmologists such as Victor Stenger, but it should not take a Ph.D. in physics to see that the third premise is quite problematic in and of itself. To illustrate why, consider an argument about the conditions that prevail on our own planet:

1.  Earth is such that it allowed for the gradual evolution of intelligent life under certain circumstances

2.  It could have turned out any number of other ways, almost all of which would not have allowed for such life

3.  The best explanation for this particular planet is that an intelligent transcendent creator finely-tuned it for life

4.  Therefore, an intelligent transcendent creator of the Earth exists. QED.

When you get to premise three, you should wonder whether other planets exist which might be similarly situated to our own. In the age of Sagan, Asimov and Rodenberry this is not a particularly great stretch of the imagination. Only a few hundred years ago, though, this second argument would have seemed perfectly plausible to W.L. Craig’s philosophical and theological forebears, who forbade the possibility of multiple worlds (sometimes on pain of death) and generally preferred the view that the Earth was uniquely created for humankind.

Suppose we consider only two rival hypotheses (a) metaphysical naturalism and (b) classical theism, excluding other possibilities for the sake of convenience. Given that living being exist (who are just intelligent enough to have thoughtful debates about metaphysics) the crucial question here is which of these hypotheses best explains the fact that the universe allows for the natural evolution and sustainment of intelligent life.

It should be clear that if intelligent minds exist and metaphysical naturalism is true, it is absolutely necessary that the laws of nature are such as to allow for the natural evolution and sustainment of intelligent life. By contrast, if classical theism is true, then minds can exist as souls apart from bodies, and there is therefore no need to posit a natural world which allows for life to emerge and flourish naturally over vast stretches of time and space. If God wants intelligent beings, He may readily create as many angels and demons as he pleases, endow them with free will.  He need never give a thought to the idea of mucking about with matter, much less minds made of meat. There simply is no need for such onerous fine-tuning, if theism is assumed to be true.

Contra Craig #4 - Argument from Easter

William Lane Craig makes the same four or five arguments in almost every debate, and yet continually his opponents are usually addled, befuddled, confused, disoriented & exasperated. For the sake of argument, I propose that each one of Craig’s arguments may be easily met with a brief response, a single question which strikes at the root of the fallacy being propounded:

1. Cosmological argument – “What can the word ‘cause’ be understood to mean when taken out of its usual context within time and space?”
   
   
2. Teleological argument – “Given that life exists, wouldn’t fine-tuning be necessary in order for metaphysical naturalism to be true?”
   
   
3. Moral argument – “Why should we believe that human moral intuitions indicate the existence of anything beyond human beings?”
   
   
4. Historical Jesus argument – “Given the historicity of an empty tomb, would not a natural process of myth-making (incorporating messianic expectation, eschatology, mysticism and syncretism) easily account for all subsequent doctrinal developments?”
   
   
5. Subjective experience argument – “Supposing subjective religious experience is indeed a trustworthy and valid means of theological insight, why has it lead to incredibly divergent sets of mutually exclusive religious doctrine, even among those who lay claim to the spiritual heritage of Abraham?
   

Every one of these Socratic interrogatives requires a bit of fleshing out and following up, but only the fourth requires any particular expertise with the subject matter. That counterargument requires a more than a bit of study and also suffers from ceding more ground than strictly necessary from the perspective of methodological history, since the empty tomb may well be naught but a Markan literary device. I should note here that Craig himself has conceded the possibility of Matthew inventing quite a few empty graves as a parabolic and eschatological literary device in his narrative (during the recent Hitchens debacle) and it is no huge leap from there to considering the possibility that Mark did something similar in his gospel narrative.

That said, assuming that there really was a tomb which was found empty, there is little reason to suppose that it was the right one. Assuming the gospels are correct on these matters, Jesus was not interred by his own disciples, but rather by a member of the Jewish Council, the whole of which "were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death." Implausible as this might sound on its face, it nonetheless raises the question of how Jesus' female followers could have known the location of the tomb. Presumably, they covertly followed Joseph of Arimathea until he interred the body of their beloved rabbi, as they watched from a distance with tear-filled eyes, their minds clouded by shock and grief. Under such extenuating circumstances, they could have easily failed to find the correct tomb two days later, on Sunday morning.

Suppose, hypothetically and for the sake of argument, that the original episode in the tombs actually went something like this:

And when the Sabbath was past, Mary and Salome brought sweet spices to anoint the body. Very early in the morning, they came among the sepulchers at the rising of the sun. They said to themselves, “Who shall roll away the stone from the sepulchre?” They came to a sepulchre by which a great stone had been laid, stooped and looked into the tomb, but found it empty within. The women came across a young gardener walking amongst the graves and said to him, “They have taken away our rabbi, and we do not know where they have laid him.” The young man said unto them, “He is not in this tomb, behold, the place where the body would be laid.”

Just as in the oldest gospel, in this scenario the women were so absentmindedly grief-stricken as to forget to recruit a few strong men to move the stone, without which their journey would be in vain. Might also have forgotten the proper path to get to the right part of the tombs? It seems perfectly plausible, given their emotional and mental state at the time.

Hypothetically, the women end up at a sepulchre which only resembles the one which they had glimpsed earlier and from afar. While in the area, they have a brief exchange with a strange young man, and then begin the long trek back, exhausted, puzzled, and woebegone. Along the way, they start to reflect upon the significance of the empty tomb, and one of them comes up with the idea of a bodily resurrection as vindication of Jesus' righteousness and his teachings. From there on in, the process of mythical accretion begins in earnest and we end up with the gospel accounts as we have come to know them.

Is this scenario implausible or unlikely? Perhaps it is, at least somewhat, but bear in mind that it is to be compared against the probability of a disembodied mind taking on flesh for the express purpose of undergoing a violent death and thus appeasing its own wrath/bloodlust, facilitating a sacrificial atonement, and thereby fulfilling humanity's dearest wishes of eternal paradise.

Abraham of Ur, Deanna of TX

Illustration by Barry Moser

If you came upon Abraham of Ur just about to slay his son, would you talk him out of it?

If you intruded upon Deanna Laney just before she murdered her sons by stoning, what would you do?

From a Judeo-Xn-Muslim perspective, how can one claim that only one of these people acted rightly? For that matter, how can an unbeliever morally differentiate between them, if at all?

If we can all agree that the free excercise clause does not extend to murderous acts of filicide, what should we do with people like Abraham and Deanna?

Darwin, Provine, Mirll

A workmate of mine who writes (better than I do) largely upon topics of mutual interest has recently taken apart Will Provine's list of inconvenient truths which are alleged to follow from Darwin's theories:

1. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature.


2. There are no inherent moral or ethical laws, and thus no absolute guiding principles of human society.


3. Human beings are complex machines, which become ethical persons by means of two primary mechanisms: heredity and environmental influence.
   


4. When we die, we die, and that’s it.
   


5. There is no such thing as free will.

I would argue that each and every one of these propositions, meaningfully and sensibly construed, must be false (or at least questionably ill-defined) if Darwin was right about how life on Earth came to be, and if the metaphysical materialists are right about the nature of Nature.

1. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature.

We can all agree that purpose and intention are subjective phenomena which can only exist in the mind of a conscious being, one capable of ruminating upon as yet unfulfilled desires. If Darwin was right, then purposive principles are adaptations which exist in any creature with enough of a neural network to process sense data and act thereupon. For example, my dog intends to catch the bunny in my neighbor's yard, and he takes actions so as to fulfill his purposes.

If Darwin was wrong, and the theologians correct, animals are no less purposive and nature per se is no more so. Supernatural minds are another matter entirely, perhaps best addressed by philosophers and theologians than naturalists and biologists. That said, perhaps supernatural minds have their own purposes for nature, but even natural minds do that.

2. There are no inherent moral or ethical laws, and thus no absolute guiding principles of human society.

This assumes that we might reasonably state (a) what constitutes a moral law, and (b) a sense in which such laws might inhere in someone. If moral laws are construed in a utilitarian fashion, then a moral rule is that which (given the current state of society) generally leads to greater human happiness within a given society. Some rules are clearly better than others, judged by this standard. For example, "thou shalt not murder, except those who commit adultery, blasphemy, or calumnious derogation of elders" obviously leads to worse outcomes than a more general prohibition upon murder.

If Darwin was right, moral rules are created by humans, for humans, and solely for those of us humans living amongst other humans. Robinson Crusoe has no need of ethical precepts, only pragmatism. If secular ethicists in the tradition of Bentham and Mill are right, those moral rules which best maximize tangible benefits to humans are objectively superior to other moral rules. Such rules are inherent in the nature of things and persons, and cannot be changed as the result of human or divine whim.

Our theist friends may object that this isn't quite so satisfying as moral laws which are inherent to the cosmos as a whole, or to its creator, but they are inevitably impaled upon the horns of Euthyphro's dilemma. Either the gods decree the moral laws because they are objectively good and true apart from the gods subjective preferences, or the gods moral commands are subjective after all. The subjective preferences of very powerful immaterial magical minds are no less subjective, for all that.

3. Human beings are complex machines, which become ethical persons by means of two primary mechanisms: heredity and environmental influence.

Just a bit of a quibble here - heredity and environment are not separate mechanisms other than in our minds. Heredity without environment is naught but useless strands of lifeless data, and environment without heredity proves equally lifeless and uninteresting. These mechanisms are complementary and inextricably interrelated, and can only be separated from each other conceptually and even then only somewhat arbitrarily.

It might well be asked, though, what other mechanisms might possibly engender ethical thinking and still be worthy of the “mechanism” moniker?

4. When we die, we die, and that’s it.

Not at all. If we have lived well, we will leave behind a plethora of lives we have touched for the better. If we have lived poorly, our selfishness and misanthropism will live on in those we have harmed. Jenner and Salk save lives to this day, while Mohammed and Qutb have left another (qualitatively different) legacy to humankind.

Moreover, assuming Darwin was right, many of us will leave genetic legacies for future generations to build upon. Granted, though, even the apes, bonobos, and chimps can make this boast (if boast they may).

5. There is no such thing as free will.

How does this possibly follow from Darwinism, either broadly or strictly construed? Can primates not make uncoerced choices?

Apart from (im)moral creatures living within constrained natural environs, how can the problem of coercion arise in the first place? Put another way, will there be any coercion in heaven? If not, the idea of free and unfree choices makes perfect sense down here in the material world, but not necessarily in the spiritual realm. How then must one invoke gods and spirits in order to make sense of the idea of freedom?

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In sum, one can accept common descent, random mutation, and natural selection without believing that any of William Provine's assertions. Far from being "the core beliefs of the faith, made by a member of the faithful" they are merely speculations made by one with far more expertise in science than ethics and metaphysics. If charitably interpreted, they are trivially true. However, if these five assertions are seriously considered, they are too fraught with ill-begotten metaphysical baggage to hold water of any significant depth.