Biola University Center for Christian thought- what is Christian thought?

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Biola University was just given 3 million dollars to set up a "Center for Christian thought". Jeff Lowder asks why; I ask what. What exactly is this "Christian thought"? I recall Alvin Plantinga mentioning something about there being no conflict between Religion and Science and, if anything, there being a serious conflict between Naturalism and Science! So, if that's true, than good secular science should give use biblically friendly results, right? Well, I guess according to the Templeton foundation we need even more Theologians to analyse the findings of science.

I always thought that the Templeton foundation upheld a sort of "Non Overlapping Magesteria", like I and many Atheists do. I mean, in all honesty, can one really prove that the Universe wasn't "created" ex nihlo, or that it doesn't have a "purpose"? Of course, one does not need to do so in order to be an Atheist- but I understand that, in order for science and Religion to be in conflict, Religion has to make claims that can be tested and proven false. And Religion, for better or worse, likes to discredit the claims proven false and relish in the claims that are unproveable. So, with that said, I don't see why the Templeton foundation decided to throw three million dollars at this non-problem. And just so you know, that's a three with six zero's!

I'm not completely heartless. I can understand Christian universities hosting Theology programs which, more or less, reconcile science with faith. Fair enough. These organisations also study the nature of the soul, the trinity, etc, so it's not like it's the only thing they do. Plus, being the biggest Religion in the world, I'm sure many wealthy Christians care about whether their faith can be intellectually justified or not. But six million dollars for one aspect of Theology which isn't even considered an issue anymore? In my old Catholic high school, they liked to remind us about how a few cents could feed an entire family in africa. Why does the John Templeton foundation feel the need to set up this program, because I haven't a clue.

Miracle apologists

I don't have a clue at what the hell this guy is talking about. The only people who take miracle claims seriously are Parapsychologists- and it as a discipline has been on the decline since the 80's. Plus, even if we were to include their findings as evidence for the supernatural, we'd have to deal with contradictory claims that seem to be incompatible, such as Reincarnation and NDE's. Plus, many Paranormal enthusiasts cite angel encounters as evidence for new age beliefs, and don't even believe in exorcisms.

Anyways, out of curiosity, I visited the website they were affiliated with to check out some of their miracles claims. I'll admit, they have some interesting claims. I found this one in particular somewhat impressive, but that's about it. As usual, they put heavy emphasis on healing miracles and miracles from third world countries. In the end, I felt like I wasted my time. But then I had a valuable revelation. If these Religious miracles are so great, why hasn't anyone bothered to carefully document them. For christsake, the recipients of the supposed "miracles" would pretty much write it down for you themselves (or orate it if they're illiterate). Christians love miracle stories- especially in Charismatic denominations. All the missionaries would have to do is store the documents they receive in a sort of encyclopedia.

After that, we could subject these claims to all sorts of scientific tests. We could tell, for instance, whether the rate of miracle cures matches the rate of spontaneous remissions. We could tell whether or not most angelic encounters occur when the recipient is in a hypnogenic state. Hell, if we increase our efforts we can at least get some insight on the psychological profiles of these miracle recipients. All these miracle apologists have to do is organise their resources a little better. Just some paper and tape recorders should suffice. A few digital cameras wouldn't hurt either. They could really give a skeptic like me a run for his money- if, that is, these miracles really are going on everywhere.

Suddenly, I had another thought- what if the miracle claims just aren't that impressive. Maybe eyewitness testimony is more rare than apologists lead on. Maybe healing don't happen at an abnormal rate. Maybe a part of them knows that, if they try to organise, they will be wasting time and money. Or perhaps not- after all, Craig keener recently released a book documenting modern day miracles. I have heard of some rather impressive miracle claims myself just by using the Internet. For example, here are two cases in which a person not only claimed to have had witnessed a deceased person, but also were given a service by them.

A skeptic could say that these two cases were strange coincidences coupled with theistic expectations and invented memories as the experiencers retold their story. In the first case, the pastor may have just assumed the taxi driver was the father due to his emotional investment- for all we know, he could've been a family friend, or a bystander who had heard of the story and wanted to do a kind deed. Even more humorously, the cab driver could've given the preacher the wrong room number, causing him to enter another childs room instead. Perhaps in the second case, the mother merely told the doctors the name of the wrong hospital. After all, how well could she have known it if she wasn't aware that it closed? Or, again, it could've simply been a matter of getting dates wrong. What if the hospital closed down and the nurse died only a few days after the child used it, and a few days before the kid went to the hospital? I mean, most stiches are removed ten days after they are added- more than the "couple days" the man claimed. It seems a little far out to claim that 2 years may have been 2 days, and several months may have have been several days, but I'm just saying it's a possibility. Besides, this account came from when the man was 8 years old- hardly a reliable source.

Any of these alternate theories is certainly possible. It's just a shame that the recepeints never give us strong enough evidence. They never mention how long they spent looking for the Taxi driver after he "vanished", or whether the mother returned to the clinic and discovered it was, in fact, closed. Miracle apologists just never inculde important details like these- they just assume they re correct. And this really irritated me. So, in conclusion, I think it would be very interesting to see more apologists do what Craig Keener did and document these phenomenal events. I seriously doubt they will- but I hope they at least try,

Pitting incompatible Supernatural beliefs against each other, Part 2

Religions, other than Christianity, have made miracle claims. This fact is unavoidable. Even Christians acknowledge that miracle claims are often made from members of other Religions. Some examples of miracle claims in the names of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism can be found here, here and here. New agers have a substantial amount of miracle claims, so I wont bother linking to any. So, how do Christians deal with this diversity? Well- some of them just throw their arms in the air and claim agnosticism. During a discussion on miracles at Victor Repperts blog, one commenter claimed that miracles done in the name of other Religions can actually be proof for Christianity, since, apparently, God had no quips about deceiving people into the wrong faith. And of course, many Christians will just outright deny the validity of other Religions' miracle claims, and happily affirm their own.

Now, I am not a trained theologian, so I can't really conclusively comment on the success of any of these strategies. However, that doesn't mean I can't hold a inconclusive opinion. For one thing- how can we determine which Religion is correct if they all make similar claims? If every miracle ever documented were done for and by Christians, than that would be good evidence that Christianity is the true faith. However, what we see instead are many miracles being claimed by many religions. The only possible scenarios I see are that, either God allows miracles to happen that inevitably draw people away from Christianity, or that these things all have natural causes. Well... I guess one can argue that there exists an all loving, Universalist God that does miracles for everyone. But even this scenario doesn't seem to fit in with the Christian concept of hell and atonement, does it? In the end, it just seems intuitive that all these miracle stories are false.

Also, even if we granted that miracles occur in Christianity alone- one would have to ask why they even exist in the first place? What is the criteria in which someone is allowed to witness a miracle, and someone is denied that opportunity? Because it seems to me that the person who witnessed a miracle will have a better chance of being/remaining a Christian than the person who does not- giving them an unfair advantage. A Theist could claim that God works in mysterious ways, or that he rewards people who would've believed anyways, using his Omniscience. Answers like these are clearly sound- but that doesn't mean they are good. For one thing- they are both unfalsifiable, and cannot ever be tested or proven false.

Just to conclude, I wanted to mention NDE's again- since they are generally considered the best evidence for an afterlife. I have argued before that, since NDE's occur to members of other faiths, they are probably of naturalistic origin. Ed Babinski argues this at length during the conversation about miracles he had on Victor Repperts blog.

"Same with Near Death Experiences, the majority of which are positive, even for people who do not become orthodox Christians. In fact Mormons have a journal devoted to recording and studying the Near Death Experiences of Mormons (some of them saw Lincoln in the afterlife, and guess what, Lincoln converted and became a Mormon after he died), which sometimes are quite detailed and involve a trip to a very Mormon-looking heaven. Betty Eade wrote several books about her Mormon NDE that were on the bestseller lists about ten years or so ago. "

Surprisingly, many commenters agreed with him that Miracles can't be used as evidence for the existence of God! I chalk that up as a victory for Atheism.

HT to Russ, Ed Babinski and the many other anonymous commenters

Licona loses his job?!

Here is the story (and Here is Jeff Lowder's thoughts on it). Licona lost his teaching position since he denied the historicity of Matthew 27. I have to admit- I feel really bad for Licona. Sure, I make fun of him alot for his inconsistent denial of group hallucinations- but really, does anyone deserve to lose their job over a ludicrous passage like Matthew 27. A passage in which a bunch of dead people came back to life and terrorized Jerusalem- only to disappear from the archaeological record completely. A passage in which an earthquake occurred, yet was unrecorded by other ancient historians. A passage that has all the obvious signs of fabrication, yet is still taken seriously by some extremely superstitious, credulous Zeleots; Zealots that found the need to immediately oust him without even a trial- without even considering the evidence that they may, in fact, be wrong. Licona owes it to himself to apply to a real University- one that doesn't require him to affirm to Biblical Literalism in the guise of Inerrancy. That is not honest scholarship- that is denying the truth when it is right in front of your nose.

Wait a second... there's evidence for Reincarnation?!

Are there intelligent people that believe in Reincarnation? Well, according to this very interesting blog post, yes. And not only that- but they do research into it, too. And I would read that research too- except that, as I have said before, Reincarnation really isn't a problem for Atheism. Christians are the ones with specific beliefs regarding the afterlife, not Atheists. Of course, that doesn't mean a belief in Reincarnation can't be reconciled with Christianity- it just means that it isn't my problem. In addition to the book mentioned in the above post, this webiste also has valuable information in support of Reincarnation.

Apparitions of the dead: Can they disprove Christianity?

I was thinking about Apparitions of the dead. They are an interesting phenomena that can very adequately explain away Jesus' resurrection in natural terms. However, they are also a double sided sword. For if they can be proven to be veridical- than that not only becomes evidence in support of the Resurrection, but against Naturalism itself! So, I think that before we cling to apparitions data for support, we better first try to prove, at least to ourselves, that the apparition data fits a naturalistic worldview. Sadly, most atheists scientists just ignore apparitional data; hell, according to Dale Allison, Theologians do too!

"Now I share Gary's fascination for NDEs, and I am nonplussed that theologians by and large seem content to ignore them"

However, these scientists may have good reason to ignore them. Here is a great article on this sort of phenomena here. As Gary Habermas admits in his essay here, may of these events do not have very good evidential merit.

"In my own study of apparition cases, in spite of my very positive mindset, I hardly ever saw a case for which there were not several potential alternative theses. In fact, when even the best cases are studied, something regularly seems to be lacking."

So it seems to me that, by Gary's own admission, the burden of proof lies on the Theist to explain why they think that these apparitions constitute as proof of an afterlife, and not of vivid Hallucinations. However, I think that, even if one where to concede that apparitions are strong evidence in support of an afterlife, that they could still turn around and mount a powerful attack against traditional Christianity. To do this, one has to show that the apparition data is inconsistent with the Bibles teachings and thus, Christianity. The doctrine that stands out most quickly to me is the doctrine of hell. Traditional Christianity has always taught that not all will enjoy salvation. However, if within the vast amounts of apparitional data we find at least one case of a non-Christian enjoying his/her stay in the afterlife, than that should constitute as damning evidence against the doctrine of hell and, by extension, traditional Christianity as we know it.

Now, I'm not sure what Theologians would make of this sort of argument- perhaps they would find it convincing. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is why they are so hesitant to embrace the data in the first place! Personally, I see apparitional data as being, if anything, quite relieving to the atheist, since it offers some hope of an afterlife, even if we don't believe it.