Posted by Hemant Mehta in Pastor Mike Clawson responds to your questions.
Part 1 is also available here.
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The Unbrainwashed asked me a rather blunt question that I rather liked:
Do you actually believe that a dead Jew came back to life 2000 years ago to save us?
Yes. Next question. 
Actually, let me be more specific. I don’t just believe a Jew named Jesus came back to life. I believe that God himself became one of us - wrote himself into the story as it were - so that he could show all of us what it means to be truly and wonderfully human. And he came as an impoverished member of a despised and oppressed people to show us how to pursue a way of love and justice in a world of violence and oppression. He died as a demonstration that non-retaliation and self-sacrifical love is the only way that hatred and injustice will ever ultimately be overcome. And he was raised to life as a vindication of this message - to prove that he was not just a naive idealist who got himself killed, but that the God of the universe is actually Lord and victor over the forces oppression and violence, and over death itself (the ultimate tool of the oppressor). The dead Jew, Yeshua Mashiach (Jesus the King), came back to life to show that that power can only be overcome through weakness, violence through peace, and oppression through a willingness to suffer for the sake of others, even for your oppressor.
But there was another similar question by S.G.E.W. that was more to the point that I think Unbrainwashed was really getting at:
Do you believe in the literal, physiological ressurection of Yeshua ben Joseph? Specifically, did he lose all bodily functions (no heartbeat, no neurological activity, etc.) for several days and then regain full functionality?
If so: how can this be rationally explained in any way?
If not: what’s the effective difference between you and an agnostic?
Yes, I do believe in the literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus. How can this be rationally explained? Well, let’s suppose you believe in the existence of an all-powerful God who created this universe and all the natural laws by which it operates. If that is the case, then what is so irrational about believing that this God has the power to sometimes change the normal way that these laws function? Do I know exactly how he did this? No. I suppose if there had been a 21st century scientist with the proper equipment present in the tomb, she might be able to tell us what exactly happened from a physiological standpoint at the moment of resurrection - that is to say, I don’t think it was a completely un-natural event. It could have been observed and studied if we had had the capability back then. But it is a super-natural event in that it is an example of how God is at work to restore and renew his creation. Jesus’s resurrection is simply the first example of what will one day be true for all of us. In that sense you could say that this is a neo-natural event, in that it is the beginning of God creating a new nature out of the old.
At any rate, I see nothing contradictory or irrational about believing that an all-powerful God could do such a thing. Just because something almost never happens doesn’t mean it could never happen. And, just speaking personally, I don’t feel the need to know exactly, scientifically, how it happened in order to believe that it did.
[tags]atheist, atheism, Pastor, Mike Clawson, The Unbrainwashed, Jew, Jesus, God, agnostic[/tags]
With the greatest of respect….thanks for explaining your views…but what on Earth was this huge omnipotent god figure doing for the first 30 years of its life inside jesus’ body…sight seeing? Chilling out? Taking a sabbatical!!!
How does this differ from making the assumption that if you believe in the existence of Thor, then it would be rational to believe that lightning is caused by him throwing it from mount olympus? Can science explain this? No, but that’s ok, because we have faith that it is so…
… so that makes it rational. um.. yeah…
Thor didn’t live on Olympus….
Anyway, my follow up would be why did god do it so often back then (Lazarus, the saints in the city etc.) but then hasn’t repeated the act since?
Oops, don’t know how I missed that.. but Hey, MY Thor lives on Olympus!
Why not!? I take it on FAITH!
In referring to the literal physical resurrection of Jesus, Pastor Clawson responds:
The problem I have with his argument is that it is almost if not identical to rationalizing a questionable fairy tale to force it to fit into our natural world.
If one posits a God who created the Laws of Nature, and initiated the matter & energy of the Universe to a explain why there is something rather than nothing, why does it necessarily follow that that particular God is the God of Christianity? One need not concede theism to believe in this God, this one is of a Deist, one could even concede a Deist who designed the Universe to eventually create Intelligent Sentient life forms (example: Humans) who admire the wonders of the Natural world.
Pastor Clawson’s explanation is not rational. It requires Faith in a God who can alter the laws of Nature, when he pleases. It is Irrational because if it weren’t everything we have learned through science, as when as the entire scientific process would be invalid. His hypothetical 21st century scientist would get completely unreliable readings.
What would be the point for example of learning the physics involved in Air Travel - calculations to give you take off speed, runway length for landing, and take-off, airspeed necessary to maintain altitude, if at a whim God can alter the constants involved.
One of the first songs I learned was about The Titanic, which as most of you may know sank on its maiden voyage. One line from the song was “The Lord’s almighty hand said the ship would never land.’ Really is that why? Is it because in 1912 women weren’t allowed the vote, and Women Suferagists (people for the women’s right to vote) were on board? Did it sink because God didn’t want women to vote, or because it sailed to close to Icebergs, and hit one in a way it wasn’t designed for? Did the Challenger or Columbia Shuttle investigations reveal an angry God as the cause of the accidents?
Sorry Pastor Mike, but I prefer Bishop Spong’s idea of a “spiritual” resurrection. It makes a little more sense than a bodily one. The idea of a bodily one seems like a mythological dream, IMHO. No insult intended. Now a spiritual one, I can see possibilities, esp the way Jack explains in so many of his books, articles, and letters.
According to Jack, Paul wrote that Jesus’s resurrection was a spiritual one, not a physical one. I’m going to have to hunt down the verses in Paul and alike that Jack referred to as he wrote about the idea of a spiritual resurrection.
Whatever the case, I can not believe it was physical. It is not logical, IMHO.
Just because something almost never happens doesn’t mean it could never happen. And, just speaking personally, I don’t feel the need to know exactly, scientifically, how it happened in order to believe that it did.
So what keeps you from believing every looney who claims they are on a mission from God or are the reincarnation of Jesus himself? Seriously, just because it has only happened once before “doesn’t mean it could never happen”. How do you draw the line between things you want to believe without any scientific evidence and things you don’t want to believe because it doesn’t jive with your faith? And why should anyone give any credence to anything you profess to believe when you admit that you don’t even need to understand your own beliefs?
I hope you can at least see how hard it is for some of us to take you seriously when it appears you don’t take your own beliefs seriously, or at least you don’t want to look into them seriously.
Hemant has a post here called “18 Unconvincing Arguments for God”. If were ever going to write an article called “18 Unconvincing Arguments for Atheism” (which I’m not) this whole Thor/Zeus argument that I’ve heard a dozen times would definitely be on the list. I don’t mean to sound condescending, but it’s really a simple category mistake. Use of this argument just reveals an unfamiliarity with (or misunderstanding of) basic philosophical concepts.
In the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics there are several different possibilities for what we can believe about gods and more fundamentally, about the basis of all existence (what philosophers call the Real). There is theism, pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, naturalism, etc. Each category has its own distinct principles and arguments for one are not the same as arguments for the other. Likewise, arguments against one do not necessarily work as an argument against another.
So in the case of polytheism (Thor) vs. theism (God), there is a big philosophical difference between belief in an all-powerful Creator who exists “outside” of the observable universe and belief in a powerful but limited and created being who exists within the observable universe. These two beliefs are not even in the same category and the arguments for or against their reality or unreality are totally different.
So go on believing in Thor if you like, but it really has nothing to do with my belief in a Creator God.
I understand that point of view Mriana, but the reason I’ve not accepted that belief for myself is that I don’t really subscribe to the dualistic dichotomy between the physical and spiritual that this theory is based on. That’s seems to be a more Greek/gnostic influenced view (very neo-Platonic actually), not a Hebraic/Jewish one. (That’s not to say the Greeks might not be right after all, but personally I prefer a more “earthy” religion.
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The reference you’re thinking of is in 1 Corinthians 15, and yes Paul says that we are raised to a “spiritual” body. But in a Hebraic/Jewish context “spiritual” is not at all the opposite of “physical”. “Spiritual”, in a Jewish worldview, means being in harmony with God’s Spirit, so the opposite of this is not physical but “worldly” or “out of harmony with God’s Spirit”.
Except that they’re the same in every way. Thor never had as much power attributed to him as YHWH, but both of them are equally believable if you’re willing to take their existence on faith.
Sheesh. Theism vs. polytheism… where do you get this stuff?
I take it you are familial with Spong’s work? Yes, Jack is into the Gnostic Gospels too. I don’t believe in dualism either, but I find it more comprehnsible than a bodily resurrection. I do think he gets a little more complicated in it than what appears on the surface and IF it were a spiritual resurrection, then the Trinity makes more sense. How else are you going to get a spiritual being such as the Holy Spirit? You can have a spirit with physical form. Thus, it much easier to explain the 3 in 1.
Given that, how would you explain the Trinity, if you believe in a physical resurrection? A body is not spirit, but rather the physical reincarnation of the spirit. Yes, I realize he appeared in the physical form to Thomas and the other disciples, thus feeling the holes in his hands would not be possible in the story.
Plus, not to poke fun at your resurrection idea, the physical form would take eons to reach the idea of a tri-level universe (The idea comes from Norse Mythology). Although IMHO, we do not live in a tri-level universe.
Mike C, I’m not going to spend 50 posts arguing about this. But when you say things like:
You highlight exactly why the faith-based viewpoint must (and will inevitably) be ridiculed and eliminated from serious public discourse. Because it relies ultimately on a personal, internal, subjective wish-fulfillment fantasy (belief). It therefore must remain an internal and private matter which cannot be argued or discussed meaningfully except as archetypal mythological or cultural interpretation. The resurrection is no different than the Phoenix myth or any other myth of death and renewal.
By saying you nevertheless think it happened, but you don’t care how, you have conceded the argument on the facts, and replaced it with a deliberate denial of the value of facts.
This is an intellectually and I daresay morally bankrupt position. (If you consider the pursuit of truth, as something congruent with human reality, to be a moral objective).
Your above statement is the classic “special pleading,” or “appeal to other ways of knowing.”
Again, from looking at your site, and reading a little more of your writings, you seem to be a very nice and fair-minded person. But none of those things mean squat when you are dealing in the realm of philosophy, metaphysics and truth-claims.
Seriously, you’re going to claim it is a category mistake simply because Christians place THEIR particular God-concept into a territory that, say, Zeus doesn’t fall into and that somehow justifies the same sort of claims that are made for Zeus?
I see Christians claim that God exists “outside” the universe, but I have yet to hear one explain what they mean by that. It’s an ad-hoc rationalization to justify the extreme lack of evidence for said God.
The arguements for the reality of Polytheistic gods (at the time they were believed in) and the Monotheistic God are NOT different, they’re both appeals to the unexplained and an attempt to explain it by virtue of something “greater”. Just as Thor and Zeus become responsible for the creation of lightning, God becomes responsible for the creation of the universe.
You can’t grab the same concept, put it in a bigger box, and then claim it’s substansively different.. at least not with any intellectual honesty.
You’re right Jonas. Belief in Jesus doesn’t necessarily follow from belief in God. But of course I was only trying to answer the question of why I don’t think belief in the resurrection is irrational, not how I make the connection between belief in God and belief in Jesus. That would be a topic for a different thread.
I don’t think I understand your use of the word “rational” here. You seem to be conflating “scientific” with “rational”. Science is one type of rationality (actually one type of rational methodology) but it is not the sum total of rationality.
But at any rate, I also don’t understand your argument about how a resurrection would produce unreliable results. Science is an observational method, thus if something like a resurrection happened, then theoretically we could observe it, see what was happening, and reform our current scientific theories based on what we observe. I’m not sure what is unscientific about that or why the results would be “unreliable”.
Sorry, not done yet.
Secondly how do you rectify the 3 different versions of the tomb story of the authors of Mark, Mattew, Luke, and John. I put them in that order because Mark was written first after Paul’s writings.
Third, how do you explain the countless of times the virign birth to the resurrection has been rewritten in almost every religion from Zoreaster, to Romulus (no not the planet in Trek lol ) and Remus (again not Trek) Then there is Buddha and Osiris. Not to mention Mithra. This is something even Spong talks about in his book “Resurrection: Myth or Reality?” Robert Price has even spoke of the myths that were rewritten to write the Christ story. Not to mention Acharya S and something I had long recognized long before I ever read any of their books or asked Spong and Price about it. To me, a rewriting of stories long since past makes sense to fit the thinking of the masses in the Second Centruy (even though Paul wrote some 50 years after JC’s death and the others followed). The way of thinking has never changed much within some groups of Christianity.
Forth (which actually refers back to my second question), Paul did not seem to know anything about the tradition of an empty tomb visited by women. He said nothing about it. Each version in the Gospels is different as to how many women, where the man sat or not, and what he said, if anything. All are very much different.
Not to mention the virgin birth stories themselves being imbellished starting from the mistranslation of almah (young woman) in Isaiah 7:14 from Hebrew to Greek (virgin). Isaiah was actually talking about his son and wife, not predicting a coming messiah. Matthew either had no knowledge of the mistranlation or when he wrote his story he had to deal with the illegitemacy of Jesus in some way. He obviously knew about the other virgin myth stories, to write his version. Mark and John never talk about a virgin birth even. Matthew, had three women of ill-repute in his description of Jesus’s geneology: Tamar, who had a relationship with her father-in-law, which was considered incest to the Jews, Ruth who seduced Moab, Rahab a prostitute, and Bathsheba who had an affair with King David, had her husband Uriah murdered, then married King David.
That geneology is apaulling to the Jews so they shouted, “We were not born under fornification!” and “Nothing good can come out of Nazareth.”
Then in the Book of John, John denies a virgin birth not once but twice and refers to Jesus as the son of Joseph.
None of the stories are alike. Which leads me to believe one writer took one account and built on the previous making it more amazing than the first. Let’s see if I can write something from Paul. Let’s see if I can out do the author of Mark and so on.
Then of course, the Gospels written according to the Hebrew Litergical Calendar, which adds to the stories. I could list the various holidays celebrated throughout each in order as they appear in each Gospel, but you get the idea. It all spins out into lovely stories, much like the ones in the OT do, but more creative.
I do hope what I’m saying makes sense to you, because it would be interesting to read your response to all I’ve learned from my mentors. No, Archarya isn’t one, but Price and Spong are. Good Epsicopalians I might add, even if I don’t attend anymore. I do occassionally touch base with those two though.
Let me just give one general response to those who took the last sentence of my post as some kind of appeal to faith or an unwillingness to seriously examine my own beliefs.
I said:
I was NOT saying that I just accept the resurrection on blind faith. What I WAS saying is that the physical mechanics of the resurrection, the “how”, is mostly unimportant to “whether” or not it happened. My post did not at all address my reasons for believing that it did happen - and you would be wrong to assume that I had never considered such reasons for or against. The only point my post was making is that if it happened, there is no reason to think that such an occurrence is rationally impossible or unscientific. The question of whether it actually did happen or not is an entirely different question, and not one that I’m terribly interested in getting into here.
I hope that clarifies. Sorry for the confusion.
Mike, if we could do all of that, then Jesus rising from the grave wouldn’t be “supernatural” anymore.
It’s the same way that we, as humans, use to believe that “virgin births” were somehow miraculous and supernatural. But now that we’ve studied them and see that they happen quite frequently in nature, they have lost their “mystical” status.
It is my understanding that originally in the OT the Jews worshipped more than one god. El (a god of war, if I remember right) and Eloheim (excuse the spelling) and immanual (both eloheim and immanual mean “God with us”), as well as Baal (the golden calf), and many other names were worshipped by the Jews and when their religion “evolved” they had male and female. They dropped the male when they “merged” the other gods into one, so that they could be montheistic. I’m paraphrasing what I’ve learned from memory, because I don’t have my notes in front of me on that, but it goes something like that.
Of course, I don’t want to insult Pastor Mike. I know he probably has a different take on this.
Hey Mriana,
Good questions regarding the reliability of the gospels. I address them broadly (not specifically) in an upcoming post about how I interpret scripture. Rather than discuss each example you’ve listed directly, let me just say that I think it’s a mistake to read the gospels as if they have to conform to Modernistic standards of history and biography (i.e. that they all have to agree in every detail) and that if they don’t they must therefore all be deliberate fiction or myths. I think there is a “third way”. I have no problem with saying that the gospel authors edited and arranged the basic facts of Jesus’ life to fit the particular theological message they were trying to convey. The gospels are like portraits, not photographs of Jesus’ life. Thus if each author paints the picture a little differently that doesn’t mean I should just assume the whole thing is a myth.
And regarding your question about the similarity to other ancient myths, I’m struck by C.S. Lewis’ conversion story (another good Anglican!). It was precisely his realization that Christianity was so similar to all the other ancient myths that eventually persuaded him to believe in the truth of Christianity. He reasoned that if the Christian story actually was true, then we should expect that God would have been preparing people from lots of different cultures to understand and accept this story by “telling” them about it ahead of time through their own myths (this seems to be essentially Paul’s argument to the Greek philosophers at the Aeropagus in Acts 17:24-28). As Lewis puts it, in Jesus we have the True Myth, or “myth-become-fact”.
I guess it comes down to whether you think that the gospel writers were just copying these older myths and there is no deeper truth to them, or whether you think these older myths were foreshadowing some deep truth about God and the world which was ultimately realized in real life story of Jesus.
BTW, let me introduce you to one more good Anglican - Bishop Tom Wright. He is a New Testament scholar of the first order and is friends with some of your guys like Borg and Crossan even though he disagrees with them about things like the reliability of the gospels or the reality of the resurrection. Start with some of the articles on the page I linked to. You might also find this book interesting, The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan And N.T. Wright in Dialogue. And if you want to get really deep into it, try Wright’s 740 volume: The Resurrection of the Son of God. I think you’ll find he directly addresses precisely the questions you are raising (cf. the book description on the Amazon page).
That should read “740 page volume”
Mike, this is pretty unpersuasive, but I guess being persuasive wasn’t your goal.
When I see stuff like this, the only way I can at all sympathize with your view is by looking at it all as a big metaphor. Even metaphorically interpreted, it’s pretty unappealing to me, since I’m not even convinced that Jesus, as described by the Gospels, represents the ideal person.
I’ll just argue one point for now. You said,
You are missing the point of the Thor/God argument. The point is that god-beliefs are socially constrained, while the objective truth is not. It doesn’t matter that Thor is the particular example used. I’m sure we could come up with many examples of all-powerful creators who would also suffice. The many versions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to start. Add to that the limitless other possibilities within imagination. Some of them have some ridiculous claims, and their justification is basically the same as yours.
I can’t argue that depiction.
I was not convinced by his essay “Myth Became Fact”. We had to read it in the C.S. Lewis class I took not too long ago and well, I questioned him (if it were possible) in various places ofhis essay. As I said, I was unconvinced that it was not rewritten myth and I have yet to find Zeus holding up the world. Humm… Com to think of it, IF he just held up the world, the rest of the universe would collaspe. Oh never mind. The image of things collapsing around him is funny in my head.
I must make clear though, that I do believe in, to make it simple and not go into details all over again, a “Ground of All Being”, “Divine Spark”, or what have you- a non-theistic god, sort of like Spong. I was highly influenced by Anthony Freeman’s “God In Us: A Case for Christian Humanism”, but eventually went to Spiritual Humanism. At one point, I had totally disregarded the Bible, even after reading Spong, but Robert Price somehow managed to bring me back to it. Like Price, though, I can’t say I believe in the Bible. I certainly don’t love it like he and Spong do. So, as you may have guessed, you aren’t exactly talking to an atheist when you address me, just not a theist.
I’ve heard of Borg (on my wish list at Amazon). Spong speaks highly of Borg, so if Wright is a friend of Borg, and Borg a friend of Spong, I guess he can’t be too bad. I haven’t read anything by Borg yet, but I’ll give Wright a listen. I can’t say no to a real Biblical scholar, esp if he is an Episcopalian. I just can’t resist listening to Episcopal priests and bishops, even though I’ve quit attending church. I know the intellectualism won’t be going out the door when I open the cover of Wright’s book and begin reading.
When intellect walks out the door concerning any religious text, I get nauseated and irritable.
I don’t know. I’m with Robert Price on this one- IF there ever was a historical Jesus, he is so buried in myth that we will never find him, esp after all of this time. Although, Spong tries hard to unbury JC. Besides, I’m a writer. I know all the crazy stuff writers do, if they think they can get away with it. I did this with Peter David’s “Imzadi”- I wrote a more satisfying version of it, which is on my website. Oh but it’s one of my earlier works and needs polishing.
Mike, this is pretty unpersuasive, but I guess being persuasive wasn’t your goal.
When I see stuff like this, the only way I can at all sympathize with your view is by looking at it all as a big metaphor. Even metaphorically interpreted, it’s pretty unappealing to me, since I’m not even convinced that Jesus, as described by the Gospels, represents the ideal person.
I’ll just argue one point for now. You said,
You are missing the point of the Thor/God argument. The point is that god-beliefs are socially constrained, while the objective truth is not. It doesn’t matter that Thor is the particular example used. I’m sure we could come up with many examples of all-powerful creators who would also suffice. The many versions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to start. Add to that the limitless other possibilities within imagination. Some of them have some ridiculous claims whose justification is basically the same as yours, so forgive me if I think your claims are ridiculous too.
Question: Is there a part 3?
I hate it when my first post doesn’t seem to go through, then I make a few modifications, post it, and my two different drafts appear. It’s embarrassing.
Miller, that’s basically what it is, IMO, but as a writer, I can deal as long as all intellect doesn’t go out the window. However, let’s not go into that, I almost got a bit grumpy once already with some of Pastor Mike’s replies. It’s not worth a grump fest, as to what is intellectual or not. How to handle metaphor or not. Pastor Mike is being nice, so it’s fair to return the favour and not go into that territory.
I challenged him once with the knowledge I have and he gave a pretty good unbiased response, as well as mentioned at least one Biblical scholar I can give some respect to. Most Anglican priests and bishops, unless they are afraid of something, won’t feed you a lot of BS. Freeman was the only one I know of who was excommunicated for his ideas. Spong stood up to others and avoided that whole mess and then others, like Borg, followed almost closely behind Spong.
However, I will warn you, if you read Spong and alike, you can become disillusioned about the Bible or it will reinforce what you already believe. I saw it as myth to begin with, so that idea was reinforced. I’ve never put much stock into myth, because for me, it’s just more story writing.
Let me absolutely clear about that. “Persuading” has never been my goal. I’m not doing this Q&A thing so I can convince any of you to become Christians. I’m doing this to help clarify my own beliefs and those of people like me. I want to help you understand, not necessarily “accept”.
No, I got the point. But if we’re talking about another “all-powerful creator” just by a different name, then in philosophical terms we’re really talking about the same thing. I don’t care if you call it God, Yahweh, Allah, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster - if it shares the same characteristics as the theistic conception (e.g. an omnipotent, transcendent Creator) then at least on that philosophical level the arguments for or against are the same. (Once you’ve decided that theism in general might be correct then you can worry about which version of theism you believe in - but that’s a lower order question. First things first.)
At any rate, if you think that the arguments for one version of the theistic God are ridiculous, that’s fine, and of course you would legitmately think that all similar arguments are ridiculous as well. My point though is that arguments for a theistic are not the same as the arguments for a polytheistic god, and thus to say that the arguments for belief in Thor are ridiculous doesn’t necessarily mean that the arguments for Yahweh are ridiculous, because they are not the same arguments. You have to deal with each worldview on its own terms.
If this was his message, why did he claim to come to bring war, not peace?
(On an unrelated topic, you also skipped the “to save us” part of the first question in your response.)
Hey Michael,
I think we’ve already covered this ground quite a bit in the “Miracle” posts at my blog and in the long discussion at Dan Harlow’s blog, but to restate it briefly again: just as I don’t make a dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual, I likewise don’t make a sharp distinction between the natural and the supernatural. Just because something has a natural explanation doesn’t mean that it is not also a supernatural event. “Supernatural”, in my theology, doesn’t have to do with the causation of an event so much as it’s purpose or telos. The Resurrection is a supernatural event because it is a way that God is working out his purposes in the world, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility of describing the event in natural terms as well. The two, IMHO, are not opposites.
It’s not a simple category mistake until you explain how the categories are meaningfully different. Both polytheism and monotheism are subcategories of theism, so unless you can come up with a reason why the argument works for polytheism but not theism, the fact that subcategories can be created is pointless.
In any case, what about believers that choose to reject all of the Norse gods except Thor, thus forming a monotheistic Thor-religion? It’s not that far-fetched, seeing as the book of Genesis is full of references to belief in other gods that have since been rejected by the Jews and Christians, making Judaism a monotheistic religion only in its modern form, and Christianity as well with the added caveat that you have to believe that three and one are the same thing.
Sometimes I, an atheist, forget all the implications of my atheism - and I definitely think many theists don’t recognize the implications.
To most atheists, the following have equal truth value:
theism == polytheism == deism == panentheism == pantheism == christian god == muslim god == jewish god == mike c’s god == 9/11 hijackers god == Inquisitor’s god == popeye the sailor man == flying spaghetti monster == ra == thor == boogyman in my closet == astrology == creationism == ghosts == afterlife == e.s.p. == homeopathy == reincarnation == “My Cocoa Puffs Cereal told me to comb my hair”.
Essentially, any argument in favor of theism is an argument in favor of Cocoa Puffism.
If I’m honest to myself, and to theists/Cocoa Puffists, about the full implications of my atheism, then I don’t beat around the bush: I think they are, at their Sunday best, deluded. This is an important card to lay on the table in my relationships.
Michael,
I’d like to ask this: if your child had cancer, would you take him to an oncologist, or would you pray?
If you would do both, why?
Demonstrate the difference in the arguments. Then, wait for the scorn that follows. This is an argument of smoke. There is no formal difference among the arguments that you might make. Differences in the trappings of the many gods that we have invented alters not a wit their status as fantasies. One fantasy is as good as another. Almost every one of the responses is spot on. I especially liked BlackSun’s and Anthony’s.
Great question! Perhaps it’s because the way of peace and justice is actually very divisive. It challenges the powers that be. And when the oppressed stand up for justice, it often brings violent retribution. (Just look at the way our own government acts so suspiciously towards pacifist groups, or how governments and corporations around the world often put down peaceful demonstrations with violence, or how we treated Martin Luther King Jr. and other peaceful civil rights marchers back in the 1960’s.)
Actually I didn’t - my whole first paragraph on the significance of the Resurrection describes exactly what I think it means for Jesus to save us.
Mike, if one takes the view that all conceptions of an all-powerful creator are different versions of the same thing, then I would concede that the Thor argument is useless. But I wouldn’t call it useless in all cases. That’s all I really took issue with.
Of course, I took issue with some of the “18 unconvincing arguments for God” too, since most had at least some degree of value.
Things within this universe can (in theory) be observed and explained through science, yes? And things outside or before this universe cannot, yes? So, for instance, everything that has resulted from the Big Bang can in theory be observed scientifically, while, as any Nobel Prize winning physicist will tell you (see chapter 1, page 1), we have no scientific data at all for anything that came before the Big Bang.
Polytheism, as it is classically defined, is belief in super-powerful beings within this universe - they exist within our cosmos and are a part of the created order. Thus, in theory, if the polytheistic deities exist then science ought to be an acceptable tool to use to prove their existence. We should be able to go to Mount Olympus and find them there. The argument against polytheistic deities then is that we don’t actually find them in the natural world. There is no observable data to suggest any such beings exist within the created order.
Christian theism, on the other hand, posits the existence of an eternal God outside of the created order, outside of the very universe. Science therefore is an inadequate tool to prove the existence of such a God. And using the same argument that we use against polytheistic deities - i.e. that we don’t find evidence of God in the natural world - really kind of begs the question, since, if he does exist, the entirety of the natural world is evidence of him at work. Thus the arguments for or against the existence of a theistic deity will have to be less empirical than those for the existence of polytheistic deities.
But as for what those reasons are, well, we’ve already been over that ground quite thoroughly over here, and I see no reason to go on rehashing old arguments.
Peace,
-Mike
Not really Mriana. In general I agree with you (though I might quibble perhaps on a few of the details). As I’ll explain in an upcoming post, I think the Bible describes a progressive revelation of God to his people. The ancient Jews most certainly did not have the same conception of God that we do. It was something that evolved and was shaped over time as God revealed more of himself to Israel and further refined their views. Abraham was almost certainly a polytheist and thought of El as simply his particular tribal deity. Moses probably thought of YHWH as the greatest or most powerful of the pantheon of gods. But by the time of Isaiah and Daniel (and some of the Psalms) you start to get a more robust monotheism.
The difference between myself and the “process theology” folks though, is that I think it is our conceptions of God that are always changing, not God himself.
BTW, Mriana, I have to apologize, but I really didn’t understand any of what you said here. I’m not following your argument about the Trinity, and I have absolutely no clue what you mean by a “tri-level universe”.
Sorry, I’m sure I’m just too dense or distracted at the moment. Sick two-year olds will do that to you.
I can’t disagree with that.
Tri-level universe in Norse mythology Asgard was the realm of the gods, the highest level. In Christian mythology it’s heaven and generally depicted as above the clouds.
pantheon.org/articles/a/asgard.html
While there are nine levels in Norse Mythology there are three in some Christians thoughts. heaven-earth-hell.
Mike:
I really appreciate you taking the time to answer everyones questions and I also appreciate your patience. Hopefully my following two questions won’t make things more difficult
This brings up a paradox, for myself at least.
The universe is typically described as a closed system (I believe the first law of thermodynamics explains this), yet on occasion a God supposedly interacts with this closed system.
Now, to build upon that logic, it is believed by theists that each person has a “soul”, a spiritual entity or manifestation which reveals its true self to a God upon death for judgment/salvation/damnation. It is also believed that this soul “lives” “inside” each of us and we are responsible to it.
Yet, how can a closed system, such as our universe, also contain elements that can freely move between the physical and “supernatural” realms?
I find this to be an interesting point as well because how exactly does one tell the difference?
There have been numerous people down through the ages who have claimed to prophets. The church of Mormon is founded on the belief in later day saints, Islam believe Muhammed to be te one true prophet, and to a lesser degree, there have been many people who believe they are doing Gods work.
In fact, even people who terrorize abortion clinics believe what they are doing is inspired from the word of God as have some serial killers who think God told them to kill.
Now, it’s pretty easy to dismiss a serial killer, but what about the abortion bombers? Or what about some guy in, say, Kansas who starts his own religion and, though on the surface it appears to be a cult, is otherwise peaceful.
In short, how can one tell if God is speaking to someone? What criteria is used to dismiss or include that person within a belief in a Christian God?
Mike:
One more thing.
You have been very gracious to answer all of our questions, yet, has there ever been a time in your atheist conversations (either now or previously) where it caused you to question your own faith?
Maybe a better way to put that is, has there ever been a time where an atheist posed a question or situation that stumped you? If so, did that cause you concern for your own beliefs, or was it just a matter of you needing more time to think about what was presented before you could reply?
I ask because I am interested in the thought process one goes through to confirm their beliefs in the face of difficult situations.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pester you with questions, especially since so many other people have very good questions as well, but I can’t help myself
When Mike C. makes the “within the created order/outside of the created order” distinction he is cheating. I’ve already pointed this out at Dan Harlow’s site: http://danharlow.com/?p=613 You can have a theistic god that is “outside of the created order,” but you can’t have a God of the Bible that is such. Mike can hardly argue as a Theist one moment and then as a Christian the next when the gods are not the same. The God of the Bible–especially in its incarnate version–acted and acts in the physical universe. If that is the case, Mike’s argument is meaningless. I never did get an answer from Mike on the very point that pulls back the curtain on this subterfuge. Maybe he’ll address it here.
You can have a theistic god that is “outside of the created order,” but you can’t have a God of the Bible that is such.
I’d like to know what you base that on. You can create a cake and not end up in it. You can avoid it being in you too. Who knows? Maybe God didn’t tell them all the clues.
Arguing the exitence or non-existence of a non-physical entity is entirely meaningless since there is no frame of reference and no data. It would be entirely impossible to know if any logic, math or science we have would be applicable. None of which means you have to believe or disbelieve. I think that, the never without a saying, Carl Sagan pointed out that absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence. But it goes farther than that, you are free to believe or disbelieve where there isn’t any evidence. I’m beginning to think more that there really isn’t a difference between belief and knowledge except for the amount of data that can be analyzed and the reliabilty that can be assumed. I don’t believe that the two actions are different, just the degree. A lot of what we “know” is a socio-politcal matter, it depends on what other people are willing to agree with us on. But the individual is free to not believe or to believe. And they should be able to say which one it is or if they abstain from the question.
Things don’t always have to be a bitch, it’s just that people make them so.
By the way, miracles, if they exist, are also entirely outside of what can be analyzed. The incarnation especially since it’s held to have happened exactly once in human history (no possible comparison) and in the remote past with no medical examiniation or physical evidence. That doesn’t mean you have to believe it, just that you can’t know it to have happened or not to have happened.
This site is a breath of fresh air after looking at the whiny, crybaby, sites all week. I commend you for putting a postitive face on your community instead of a sneer, a sharl, and a snivel.
Thanks for clarifying Mriana. I agree that the “tri-level universe” idea is a pagan one that entered Christian theology from the outside. I don’t find much evidence for it in the Bible and it is certainly not how I view the universe.
(Actually I find that most Christians don’t actually view the world this way either. Even growing up in a conservative Christian background it wasn’t too long before the grow-ups explained to us kids that heaven wasn’t really up in the sky somewhere and hell wasn’t actually underneath the earth. Most people realize that if such places actually exist they’d have to be on some other plane or dimension.)
Personally though, I don’t necessarily think heaven and hell are separate places at all. Orthodox Christian theology has always said that our ultimate hope is in the renewal and resurrection of this creation, this same mono-level universe, not in being whisked away to some other place in the afterlife (despite what more recent “Left Behind” heresies teach).
Hey Dan,
I’m constantly questioning my own faith - that’s part of the process of growth. And there have been many times in conversation with you guys that I’ve considered whether you all might be right after all. It’s a very real possibility for me.
However, those times of doubt really weren’t because any of you posed a question that was too hard. I’ve considered nearly every argument atheists can come up with many times, both recently and the first time I seriously considered atheism about a decade ago, and there really aren’t any that I find absolutely earth-shattering or totally convincing. (Though there have been plenty that I’ve had to think about more closely.) As I’ve said here many times before, I think there are no absolute arguments either way for atheism or theism. Both, in my mind, are good, valid, rational ways of looking at the world. Both are very real possibilities. So for me it has always been about a choice between two equally valid options rather than trying to find the perfect argument that would clinch one or the other for me.
I’ll tell you what does work to make me lean one way or the other: a positive vision, an explanation of the world from either the atheist or theist perspective that makes good sense, as opposed to a purely negative critique of the other side. I’m not interested in atheist arguments about why theism is stupid or irrational, nor vice versa. As far as I can tell, both sides already have adequate responses for any critique you can throw their way. What I’m interested in is knowing how your own view provides me with a elegant, positive description of why things are the way they are.
I actually compare it to political talk radio - it doesn’t matter whether you’re listening to Air America or to Rush Limbaugh, all they ever do is complain about the other side. But frankly, I don’t want to hear you bitch and moan about what the Dems or the Republicans are doing wrong. I want to hear about what positive solutions your side has to offer instead. The side that can offer me the best positive solutions is the one that will win me over.
So far for me, that side has been theism, and specifically Christianity. It helps me make the most sense of the world, of the whole of my experiences, not just the parts that can be measured by the physical sciences (though those are included too under the Christian worldview). I guess you could say that atheism just feels to narrow and constricting for me. Theism seems like a bigger tent. In theism I can have science and spirituality. In atheism I’m only allowed the former.
(I don’t want to speak for her, but I’m guessing that’s also probably partly why Mriana describes herself as a non-theist but not an atheist. For many of us spirituality is too much a part of our experience to just say that there is nothing there.)
Anyhow, I guess I’d echo what C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
I hope that answers your question Dan. Thanks for asking.
-Mike
olvlzl, no ism, no ist
Your objections are answered at the link I mentioned.
Your view makes me wonder just what you mean by “good, valid, rational ways of looking at the world.” It cannot be what I mean by these concepts. To think that atheism and theism are both “very real possibilities” strains at the very notion of the possible.
But, that is not my primary criticism of your argument. You continually retreat to this apparent dialectic between atheism and theism for the purposes of argument, but it is a subterfuge. What you ought to be contrasting is atheism and the God of the Bible. That is the god you say you believe exists. Go back and plug this god into your statement and see if it has the ring of truth to you:
I would agree that there are no “absolute” arguments for either, but only because I do not believe in absolutes. But, I cannot possibly put the arguments for an atheist perspective on the universe on an equal footing with those for the God of the Bible.
Theism: a positive vision? Theism is only the sparsest of visions. There is certainly nothing “positive” about it. If a god exists; it exists—what’s inherently positive about that? This is the same kind of bait and switch argument. You argue a sterile theism to prop open the door, and once inside you insert Christianity. Isn’t it Christianity that has provided you with your “positive vision?”
There it is. Theism is just a vehicle of argument. There are no ethics in theism; there is no Golden Rule; there is no spirituality. Where is the unconditional love in the cosmological argument? Where is the self-sacrifice of the Prime Mover? At some point Christianity must be put forward. It seems to me that you have fallen in love with the good parts of Christianity. You love its poetry. Your dilemma, as I see it, is that you have to take the bad with the good—it’s a package deal. You have to embrace quite a few, but not all, of the absurdities of Christianity. If I am correct, and all that is good about your faith comes from the human imagination, then I neither require your faith, nor any other, in order to have a positive vision of life.
Mike C said:
I’d say the same exact thing from the opposite side. Not so much regarding any particular religion such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam–since I find most of their tenets so odious that I’d rather go to their version of hell than worship their version of god even if they were true–but the general idea of the existence of a god. This is almost certainly a good thing, since I’d rather ask the right questions than get the right answers if it were a binary choice between the two.
I think that the argument definitely hinges on the epistemological value of faith: if I had faith, I would believe in god; but if I don’t believe in god, why would I want to have faith?
Back before my atheism moved from implicit to explicit, I’d never really even considered the possibility that a god could exist. While that pretty much follows by definition of the word “implicit,” it’s still an interesting observation. Would you say that your own questioning was also enhanced by entering into the atheist-theist dialogue? How do you deal with that questioning as a pastor?
Darryl said:
That all depends on what you mean by the word “god.” If you say that “god is energy” and so exists in a lump of coal, then the statement “god exists” is not positive in addition to not meaningful. On the other hand, if you say that “god is love,” then the statement “god exists” is positive although still not meaningful.
In any case, theism or atheism can have positive value beyond the truth of their propositions. Strong atheism’s statement that “a god does not exist” is no more inherently positive than the converse: value comes solely from what we make of it.
For example, the German Christian pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is famous not so much for opposing the Nazis as he is for being the only German Christian pastor to do so (publically, at least), while most other Christians were apparantly swayed by the fact that Hitler was a Catholic and justified his Holocaust using explicit religious language. As an atheist, I believe I would have been more likely to oppose the Nazi regime as well since I would be using critical thinking skills not hampered by faith in Hitler’s authority. How do I know I’m not deluding myself? Well, I rejected Bush’s arguments for war with Iraq when 90% of the US population was for it on the grounds that he had absolutely no evidence for it beyond “god told me to.” Distilled to a general rule, this becomes “Believing things just because other people do is not a good idea.” All of a sudden, being an atheist is a tremendously positive force in my life and decision making processes that goes far beyond the issues relating to the actual existence of a god.
I’m sure that Mike C could similarly give examples of how theism benefits his thought processes on issues far beyond whether a god actually exists, although I wouldn’t presume to guess what they might be. And perhaps these benefits hold even if that god isn’t the god of Christianity.
So I’ve been thinking more about this one today and am struck by some similarities to a story the Buddha told about his penultimate incarnation: while he was sitting in meditation in a forest glade one day, the wives of a local monarch happened across him and asked him for spiritual teaching, which he proceeded to offer. When the monarch came by later, he was enraged (presumably because he wanted to keep his wives ignorant and tractable) and dealt the pre-Buddha a fatal wound. One of the monarch’s attendants then pleaded that the pre-Buddha not use his dying breath to put a curse on them; instead, the pre-Buddha used it to offer a prayer of benediction to his killer and his kingdom.
Similar to your interpretation of the Christian version, the Buddhist version as I understand it teaches non-retaliation and unconditional love. However it differs in that it teaches these as values in and of themselves as a means of personal purification, and not as an overarching means of ending hatred and injustice.
I wonder if this is really a very good way to go about ending hatred and injustice. (And since they’re still around about 2,000 years later…) Gandhi’s attempt at it ended up with the British leaving, followed immediately by an even worse conflict springing up between the Hindus and the Muslims. While retaliation is certainly a way to not end hatred and injustice (Ireland comes to mind), I doubt that non-retaliation is enough.
Are we perhaps focusing on the physical manifestations of hatred when we should be looking at the internal thoughts of individuals? For example, have Christians who say that one of the greatest joys in heaven shall be watching the damned writhe in agony in hell completely missed the point? What do you say to them?
Pastor Mike Clawson’s belief that God can do anything, so he can resurrect people underlines the falsity of the Bible.
The disciples were allegedly given the secret of the Kingdom of God (Mark 4), were personally given the power to raise the dead (Matthew 10).
They had spent 3 years with Jesus , seeing people being raised from the dead.
They had seen Moses return from the dead to walk the earth.
They had heard Jesus prophesy his resurrection many times.
And they still deserted Jesus, and initially regarded claims of Jesus rising from the dead as nonsense, and Thomas had to ask to touch the wounds.
These people , hand-picked by Jesus, to spread the word, had less faith than Pastor Mike.
Pastor Mike’s faith is living proof that the Biblical stories are false.
Let us not forget that many early converts to Jesus-worship in Corinth scoffed at the idea of God choosing to raise a corpse.
Paul assures them that the resurrected Jesus became a spirit, which he had not been before the resurrection.
Even in Thessalonika, many converts to Jesus-worship were getting worried that some of their fellow Christians had died and were now corpses.
Pastor Mike’s faith is proof that these early Christians did not share his faith in the resurrection of corpses.
Isn’t that a disproof of the idea that they were converted by tales of a corpse rising from the grave?
Mike C, recommends Wright’s book on the resurrection.
Wright spends over 700 pages, yet never once finds space to quote hin full , Paul saying ‘the last Adam became a life-giving spirit’.
Why? Because the typology Paul uses obviously implies that all Christians will become spirits when they are resurrected. Wright cannot allow his readers to think that, so he never quotes the verse in full so his readers can see the whole context.
As for Mike C.’s clam that ’spiritual’ means ;living in harmony with God’….
Paul says Jesus had a spiritual body at the resurrection.
Jesus was supposed to be God made flesh. How much more ’spiritual’ can a body be than one that is God made flesh?
In Mike’s sense of the word ’spiritual’, God-made-flesh has a spiritual body from the Incarnation on.
Paul uses spiritual to mean ‘made of spirit’.
The Christians in Corinth knew that corpses dissolved into dust.
Paul explains to them how stupid it is to imagine that a resurrected being will be made from the dust of the ground that corpses dissolve into.
1 Corinthians 15 ‘The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.’
In Paul’s view, Christians are presently in Adam’s body. They have the nature of the first Adam and have bodies formed from the dust of the earth.
Those bodies will return to dust, but the resurrected body of Jesus was not made from the dust of the earth. It was made from Heavenly material.
Paul has already told the Corinthians that heavenly materials are made out of different materials to earthly bodies, just as a fish is made out of different materials to the Moon.
1 Corinthians 15 again ‘Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.’
Corpses and resurrected beings are totally different things in Paul’s view. Nobody expects a fish to turn into the Moon. And Paul regarded the Corinthians as idiots for thinking that their resurrection would have had to involve a corpse turning into a resurrected being (which both he and the Corinthians knew was impossible)
Paul does not think a corpse turns into a resurrected being, for the same reason Paul did not think a fish turned into the Moon. They are different things.
Paul hammers this home to the Corinthians ‘You do not plant the body that will be’ . ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ , ‘If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.’ and so on.
Clearly Paul is not teaching that the Corinthians will die and then get their corpse back and live in that.
How could he be teaching that? Paul was the person who asked ‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?’ (Romans 7:24)
Paul knew he was in a body of death, and he wanted OUT.
Paul did not think the body and spirit would both be saved. He wanted to be rescued from his body of death.
All of this makes no sense whatever on the view that Paul’s world was turned upside down by the news that the body was going to be saved.
Other Christian letters also betray the notion that flesh was doomed. ‘All flesh is grass’, writes the author of 1 Peter 1:24. He did not think the flesh and bones would be saved. He knew flesh would be destroyed.