All posts by Bill Pratt

Atheism, Religion

Is Atheism Transmitted from One Generation to the Next?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell quotes the famed philosopher John Stuart Mill writing about his father’s road to atheism.  The quote is instructive for Christians as it gives a small glimpse into the world of a famed atheist.

My father [says John Stuart Mill], educated in the creed of Scotch Presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been early led to reject not only the belief in Revelation but the foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion.  My father’s rejection of all that is called religious belief was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. . . .

It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father’s ideas of duty to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed on me from the first that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known.

There is a lesson here about transmission of beliefs.  It is often claimed by atheists that religious views are merely transmitted from parent to child: we are simply born into our religion.  Atheists, on the other hand, come to their beliefs for mostly intellectual reasons, and are not born into their views.

In the case of James Mill, it appears he did buck the family religion and become an atheist against the teachings of his family.  However, if we read on we see that his son, John Stuart Mill, received his father’s atheism.  The younger Mill was clearly taught to be an atheist by his father.

What we can conclude is that in this case, one generation rejected its religious heritage, but the next did not reject its anti-religious heritage.  Mill’s experience is a great example of an atheist parent making sure that his child embraces his particular worldview.  

I’m sure some of you are wondering what the big deal is.  Of course atheist parents inculcate their beliefs into their children.  The reason I offer this quotation is because of the persistent claim that atheism is all about free thinkers bucking their family’s beliefs.  Perhaps this is true of some first-generation atheists raised in a religious family, but that first generation may choose, as James Mill did, to make sure no more free thinking happens with his children.

My guess is that atheist parents pass along their beliefs just like religious parents.  It is time to admit that Christian and atheist parents are pretty much in the same boat – we all want our children to embrace what we believe. 

If the term free thinker is to refer to people who reject their family’s heritage, then there are free thinkers from every religous and anti-religious persuasion (every group gains converts from outside their current community).  Atheists cannot lay sole claim to this moniker. 

There are more lessons to be learned from Mill’s quotation, and I will tackle those in the next post.

General Apologetics, Miracles, Resurrection, Skeptics

Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence? Part 4

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In this fourth post of the series, we will examine a final reason why the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence fails as a paradigm for determining  burden of proof.  Mike Licona argues that even if we accept this maxim at face value, it still has intractable problems.

Let us suppose that I am mistaken on the above and that the maxim remains that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  We are challenged to define when the evidence may be said to be “extraordinary.”  This, of course, is a subjective endeavor, since what is extraordinary for one may not be enough for another.

Given the subjective nature of determining what constitutes extraordinary evidence, is there any way to make it more objective for historical hypotheses?  Licona thinks so: 

I would like to suggest that, given the paucity of data that often plagues many historical hypotheses, when a hypothesis fulfills all five criteria for the best explanation and outdistances competing hypotheses by a significant margin, that hypothesis may be said to have extraordinary evidence supporting it.

I would also like to call attention to the fact that the requirement for extraordinary evidence cuts both ways.  If a historian proposes a natural theory such as group hallucinations in order to account for the reports of the postresurrection appearances of Jesus to groups, he will be required to present a case for the possibility of group hallucinations.  Since modern psychology generally regards group hallucinations as highly improbable if not impossible, the assertion that group hallucinations account for the postresurrection appearances is an extraordinary claim and thus requires extraordinary evidence.

Anti-supernaturalist skeptics cannot wield the “extraordinary evidence” maxim as a weapon only against miracle claims, because to do so means abandoning historical methodology and instead, doing metaphysics.

Nontheist historians are not licensed to claim that a hypothesis that is terribly ad hoc or that strains the data beyond what it can bear should be preferred over a hypothesis with a supernatural element that meets every claim to historicity.  And those who feel compelled to do so indirectly admit the strength of the data in favor of a miracle.

The nontheist historian may reply that miracles are more unlikely than very rare natural occurrences and thus require a greater burden of proof than an unlikely hypothesis that accounts for the same data.  Accordingly any hypothesis involving an explanation, no matter how improbable or poorly evidenced, should be preferred over a hypothesis involving a miracle. . . . But how does the nontheist historian  know this?  Testimonies of God’s intervention in history occur with every claim to answered prayer.  Although many claims of God’s intervention could in reality be coincidence, many claims of coincidence could in reality be God’s intervention.  This is not to suggest that historians should assign a supernatural explanation when a natural one is available that is at least equally plausible.  I am instead challenging the notion that the historian’s default position is that we live in a world where God does not intervene.

In summary, Licona argues that even if we do require extraordinary evidence for a historical event, we should adhere to a historical methodology which follows the evidence to the best explanation.  Ruling out miracle accounts a priori is not part of historical methodology; it is just a failure to leave one’s metaphysical biases aside and conduct a truly objective investigation of the evidence.

General Apologetics, Skeptics

Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 2 of this series, we started discussing Mike Licona’s analysis of Sagan’s Saw, as he calls it.  Licona offered two examples of his wife coming home from the grocery store and telling him about people she met there.  We saw that even if she told him about the extraordinary event of meeting the president of the United States, he would not require extraordinary evidence to believe her.

But how would he react if his wife told him about meeting a person that he doubts even exists?

Now let us suppose that my wife returns from the grocery store and tells me she saw and spoke with an alien.  In this instance, I have a serious tension between the evidence, which may be good, and my understanding of reality.  Should I reject the evidence or adjust my understanding of reality?

Let us also suppose that my neighbor then telephones and provides a report similar to my wife’s.  I then turn on the television and observe a number of reports of alien sightings presently taking place around the world.  If I am satisfied that the sources are credible and I am secure in my understanding of authorial intent, I may still pause, since I presently regard the existence of aliens as dubious.  But I should then reexamine my reasons for believing in the nonexistence of aliens in light of the evidence before me that they do. Perhaps I would be less hasty to reject all of the reports of alien sightings.  I should not require extraordinary evidence but additional evidence that addresses my present understanding of reality or my horizon, which may be handicapped and in need of revision.

Licona’s worldview is such that he doubts that aliens exist, but he must look more critically at that worldview given the evidence that aliens do exist.  Perhaps his worldview is wrong and it needs to be revised.  Licona argues that

The worldview of one historian does not place a greater burden on the shoulders of others.  It is the responsibility of the historian to consider what the evidence would look like if she were not wearing her metaphysical bias like a pair of sunglasses that shade the world.  It is not the responsibility of the evidence to shine so brightly that they render such glasses ineffectual.

With regard to miracle accounts,

If the evidence for the occurrence of a particular miracle is strong—that is, the historian can establish that the authorial intent of the sources is to report what was perceived as a miracle, the event occurred in a context that was charged with religious significance, the report possesses traits that favor the historicity of the event and no plausible naturalistic theories exist—then a requirement for extraordinary evidence is unwarranted.

Some historians may require additional evidence supporting supernaturalism before believing since the event is foreign to their present [worldview], but no greater burden of proof is required for a miracle-claim.  There is a difference between demonstrating the historical superiority of a hypothesis and convincing a particular historian to give up a deeply held view.

Licona summarizes:

[Sagan’s saw] fails since only additional evidence is required and that by certain historians for whom the conclusion challenges their horizon.  We observed that the evidence is not responsible for satisfying the biases of the historian; rather, the historian is responsible for setting aside his biases and considering the evidence.

In an extended footnote, Licona also looks at why Sagan’s Saw would fail even if we accepted its truth.  We will cover that material in part 4 of the series.

General Apologetics, Skeptics

Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this series, we looked at William Lane Craig’s response to the skeptical maxim, “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.”  Now we will review Mike Licona’s response from his book The Resurrection of Jesus. 

Licona reminds us that this was a statement that atheist astronomer Carl Sagan used to frequently utter.  He calls it Sagan’s Saw.  How does Sagan’s Saw stand up as a paradigm for determining the burden of proof?  Licona first looks at landing on the moon.

Landing on the moon in July 1969 was an extraordinary event.  It was extremely difficult and had never occurred previously.  Yet most people believed the reports when they watched astronauts walking on the moon on their televisions, a medium that often distorts truths and presents untruths, legends and fictions.

The moon events were extraordinary.  The reports were believed because they were thought to be credible and the authorial intent to communicate the event as it occurred was known.  In neither case was extraordinary evidence required.

Licona continues by hypothesizing his wife coming home and telling him about people she met at the grocery store.  Should Licona believe his wife?

Let us suppose that my wife returns from the grocery store and tells me that she saw and spoke with our next-door neighbor while there.  Although it is possible she is mistaken, because I know her to be an intelligent and credible witness I have every reason to believe her report without hesitation. 

Now let us suppose that when she returns from the grocery store, she tells me instead that she saw and spoke with the president of the United  States.  I may think this far out of the ordinary.   However, if after questioning her further I can have confidence that she is not joking, or put another way, if I am confident that I understand her authorial intent as being truthful, I would accept her report—and drive to the grocery store with the hopes of having a similar experience, provided that I like the incumbent president.

Her claim that she spoke with the president of the United States in the grocery story is extraordinary in a sense, whereas her claim that she spoke with our next-door neighbor is not.  The former may give me pause.  Yet I am satisfied because of my confidence that the source is credible and that its authorial intent is to describe an actual event accurately.  I would not require extraordinary evidence or even evidence in addition to her report before believing that she spoke with the president of the United States in the grocery store.  Instead, I am interested in the credibility of the report and the authorial intent.

Even though Licona’s wife meeting the president at the grocery store is extraordinary, he does not require extraordinary evidence.  He simply believes his wife’s testimony because he understands her intention to describe the event accurately. 

Stories about the next-door neighbor and the president are one thing, but what would happen if Licona’s wife told him about speaking to a person that he doubts even exists, a meeting that, in his mind, is even more extraordinary than the president?  We’ll continue to analyze Licona’s reasoning in the next part of the series.

General Apologetics, Skeptics

Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”  I cannot count how many times skeptics of Christianity have trotted out this statement when conversing with me, usually in the context of Jesus’s miracles and resurrection.

There are many possible responses to this statement, but in this four-part series of posts, I want to present responses from William Lane Craig and Mike Licona.  First, William Lane Craig.

This sounds so commonsensical, doesn’t it?  But in fact it is demonstrably false.  Probability theorists studying what sort of evidence it would take to establish a highly improbable event came to realize that if you just weigh the improbability of the event against the reliability of the testimony, we’d have to be sceptical of many commonly accepted claims.

Rather what’s crucial is the probability that we should have the evidence we do if the extraordinary event had not occurred.  This can easily offset any improbability of the event itself.  In the case of the resurrection of Jesus, for example, this means that we must also ask, “What is the probability of the facts of the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection, if the resurrection had not occurred?”  It is highly, highly, highly, improbable that we should have that evidence if the resurrection had not occurred.

Let me restate Craig’s claim here.  He is basically saying that if we actually employed this criteria across the board, we would have to rule out all kinds of claims that we all believe are true.  Extraordinary and improbable events happen all the time, and we usually do not have extraordinary evidence for these events.

A simple example is Alexander the Great’s extraordinary conquests.  Everyone agrees it happened, but we have no documentation of it until centuries after it occurred.  Is documentation hundreds of years afterward enough to know what happened?  Most people seem to think so.  Is this level of documentation extraordinary?  It doesn’t seem particularly extraordinary.  So should we say Alexander’s conquests never happened?  Obviously not, so that means this criteria is far too restrictive, and is, therefore, not useful.

The better question to ask is this: “Given the evidence for an extraordinary event, what is the probability we would have that evidence if the event had not occurred?”

We will next look at Mike Licona’s detailed analysis of this skeptical maxim.  Stay here!

Love

How Do You Love Your Neighbor?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

For each of us there is one person who we always forgive every time they do something wrong.

There is one person who we always give the benefit of the doubt.

There is one person who we always judge with their intentions in mind rather than just their actions.

There is one person who we continue loving, even when they sin.  We hate this person’s sin, yet we keep loving them.

There is one person who we always wish to be happy.

There is one person who we always wish the good for.

Who is this person?  Who else but ourselves.  Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Of course the word neighbor includes both our friends and our enemies, as was illustrated in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  So how do you love your neighbor?  Just insert them as the “one person” described in all the sentences above.

It is absolutely possible to hate the sin and love the sinner.  We do it every single day, with ourselves.  We just need to extend that to all those around us.

Religion

Are All Religions the Same?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I have previously written a post on why all religions cannot be true, but I wanted to revisit this topic and add another perspective.

Religions are commonly composed of three parts: code, cult, and creed.

Code is the moral code that a religion teaches.  For Christianity, it would include “love your neighbor” and “do not murder” and other such moral commands.

Cult includes the rituals, ceremonies, and observances of a religion.  Singing hymns, baptizing, celebrating the Lord’s Supper – these would all be examples of the cult of Christianity.

Creed involves the doctrines or teachings of a religion.  Christians believe that Jesus is God, that he died for our sins, that God is a Trinity.  These are all examples of the creed of Christianity.

Now, when a person says that all religions are the same, they are almost always talking about code.  It is true that the basic moral commands of most religions are the same, or at least very similar.  Everyone agrees that love of our fellow man is good, that we shouldn’t kill the innocent, that we should help each other.  There is little disagreement on the basic moral commands, although there may be disagreement on how those moral principles are practically applied in each society.

But code is only one part of what constitutes a religion.  The cult and creed of different religions may radically differ.  We cannot sweep these differences under the rug, as they are crucial to the understanding of any religion.

As a Christian, would you be willing to stop baptizing so that other religions that don’t baptize could have more in common with you?  What about the Lord’s Supper?  Is this just an empty ritual with no meaning that we might give up for the sake of religious unity?

How about our beliefs about God?  Does it matter that Jesus is the Son of God?  Does it matter that God even exists?  What about the afterlife?  Christianity teaches that we will all be given resurrected bodies.  Should we set aside this belief for the sake of religious unity?

Most of the readers of this blog would never agree to these kinds of concessions.  But why?  If religion is really just about moral codes, then we should be able to cast aside creed and cult and not lose very much.  Obviously that is not the case.  Creed and cult are fundamental to Christianity and to most other religions, and that is why we cannot say that all religions are the same.

Books of the Bible, Church History, Textual Criticism

Who Wrote the Fourth Gospel? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this series, we looked at a blog post written by Timothy McGrew where he presents external and internal evidence for the authorship of the fourth Gospel.  Part 1 summarized the external evidence, and part 2 will summarize the internal evidence.

McGrew starts off the presentation of the internal evidence with the following:

Here, we can close in on the question with a series of concentric arguments, starting further out (with facts that limit the authorship somewhat, but not too specifically) and then tightening the description until only John is left.  This method of solving the problem was made famous by B. F. Westcott, and I will make use both of his outline and of many of his examples as we zero in on John the son of Zebedee.

McGrew’s outline consists of 5 steps (he provides a lot of evidence to back each of these up in the blog post):

  1. The author was a Jew.  He is intimately familiar with Jewish opinions and customs.
  2. He was a native of Palestine.  He give us an unerring portrait of the distinct role that the hierarchical class (the Sadducees, whom he never calls by their name) played in the religious life and legal deliberations of Judaism. He also shows effortless precision in his knowledge of places and topography.
  3. He was an eyewitness of many episodes that he records.
  4. He was one of the “inner circle” among Jesus’ disciples.
  5. He was John, the son of Zebedee.

Here are some of the details McGrew presents in support of outline item 5:

Throughout the Gospel, we read of one disciple who goes unnamed (e.g. 1:35, 37, 40) but is later described simply as “the beloved disciple.”  At the very end (21:24), we are told outright that he was the author.  And going back over the places where he is recorded as being present, we find that they are the particular places where the scenes are recorded with particular vividness and detail—the conversation at the last supper, for example, or the scene by the fire at night in the hall at Caiaphas’s house.  There is no reason to doubt that this identification of the beloved disciple with the author of the fourth Gospel is correct.  But who was the beloved disciple?

From the lists of those present in some of the scenes (1:35 ff; 21:2), including cross references with the Synoptic Gospels, he must have been either Andrew, Peter, James, or John.  He cannot be Andrew, since Andrew appears with him in the opening chapter.  He cannot be Peter, since he appears with Peter in the closing chapter.  James was martyred too early to have written the Gospel (Acts 12:1).  By process of elimination, we arrive at the conclusion that he was John.

Again, remember that all of the internal evidence is gathered from the text of the fourth Gospel.  We are looking for clues from the text that would indicate who the author is, and McGrew has done a nice job compiling some of the highlights.  He ends the blog post by reiterating,

The evidence, internal and external, is really quite overwhelming. To use a phrase of Paul’s from the book of Acts, “God has not left Himself without witness”—he has provided plenty of evidence!

And with him, I wholeheartedly agree.

Books of the Bible, Church History, Textual Criticism

Who Wrote the Fourth Gospel? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

There is much hay made in skeptical circles of the fact that none of the four Gospels were signed by an author, that if we reconstruct the original texts from the copies we have, there are no sentences in the texts that explicitly say something like, “This Gospel was written by John, son of Zebedee.” 

Yet church tradition does claim that the four authors were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – all of them apostles or companions of apostles of Jesus.  I have written previously on the authorship of the first Gospel, but today I want to quote from an outstanding blog post written by Timothy McGrew which makes a compelling case that the author of the fourth Gospel is indeed the disciple John.

If you want the full treatment, go to McGrew’s post.  What I will do is summarize some key points from his post below.  McGrew starts with the following:

I am persuaded that the fourth Gospel was written by John, the brother of James and son of Zebedee. There are quite a number of reasons for thinking this, and that means that this is going to be a rather long note.

So here’s the short answer:

1. Every scrap of evidence we have from the writings of the early church indicates that the fourth Gospel had always been known to be written by John. And we have lots.

2. A careful examination of the Gospel itself shows that it must have been written by a Jew who was a native of Palestine and an eyewitness of numerous events, including many where only Jesus and the disciples were present. From internal clues, we can pretty safely narrow it down to John.

The first group of evidence is called the external evidence, as it consists of evidence external to the Gospel text itself.  McGrew lists several early, ancient authors and documents that mention John as the author of the fourth Gospel and/or quote passages only found in the fourth Gospel (this second line of evidence is important because it establishes that the fourth Gospel was considered apostolic very early, and thus more likely to be written by an apostle such as John).  In his post, McGrew provides background information on each of these sources, but I will only list the sources themselves.

  1. Eusebius (~AD 325)
  2. Origen (~AD 220)
  3. Tertullian (~AD 200)
  4. The Muratorian fragment (~AD 180)
  5. Irenaeus (~AD 180)
  6. Tatian (~AD 160)
  7. Justin Martyr (~AD 145)
  8. Anti-Marcionite Prologue quoting from a work of Papias (~AD 125)
  9. The Apology of Aristides (AD 117 – 138)
  10. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, book 7, quoting early second century heretic Basilides
  11. Ignatius (~AD 107)

McGrew finishes up this section of external evidence with the following summary:

These are the primary pieces of early external testimony to the authorship of John, though I could easily double the size of the list by pulling out more obscure quotations from the so-called Second Epistle of Clement, Hermas, Hegisippus, Athenagoras, Polycrates, etc.  But they make the point sufficiently clear.

There is no other tradition of authorship for the fourth gospel.  There is no record of any uncertainty about it at any time; we have one brief mention of some gnostics (not even named) who claimed it was written by Cerinthus, the founder of their heretical sect—but they are mentioned only to be dismissed.  It does not appear that any Christian group ever had the slightest doubt about this work.

 In part 2 of this series, we will look at the internal evidence that McGrew presents.

Philosophy, Religion

How Should We Analyze a Worldview?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

There are many worldviews out there to choose from:  Christianity, Islam, secular humanism, New Age spiritualism, and so on.  Since choosing a worldview is perhaps one of the most important things a person must do, it is highly important that we have a trustworthy method to evaluate the options.  Our worldview colors the way we see almost everything around us, so we must choose wisely.

Apologist Ravi Zacharias offers what he calls the 3-4-5 method of analyzing worldviews.  I would like to share it with you because it will provide you a method with which to judge worldview options.

First, there are three tests that a worldview must pass.  It must be:

  1. logically consistent – Its teachings cannot be self-contradictory.
  2. empirically adequate – Its teachings must match what we see in reality.
  3. existentially relevant – Its teachings must speak directly to how we actually live our lives.
 Second, each worldview must address the following four ultimate questions:
  1. origin – Where do the universe and human beings come from?
  2. meaning – What is the meaning or purpose of life?
  3. morality – How do we know what is right and what is wrong?
  4. destiny – What happens to us after we die?
 Third, there are five academic disciplines that must be employed to study a worldview:
  1. theology – the study of God
  2. metaphysics – the study of what is ultimately real
  3. epistemology – the study of how we can know things
  4. ethics – the study of moral right and wrong
  5. anthropology – the study of what and who humans are

Why do I believe that the worldview of biblical Christianity is the best choice?  Its teachings are logically consistent, they accurately describe reality as it is, and they speak directly to the human condition.

In addition, Christianity provides compelling and powerful answers to the questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny.

Finally, the theology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and anthropology of the Christian worldview are expansively rich and deeply profound – unsurpassed by any other worldview. 

If you are a Christian and you haven’t analyzed Christianity using the 3-4-5 method, you are truly missing out.  Read, and read some more.  Dig into your faith, as it provides comprehensive answers to life’s most important questions.

If you are not a Christian, I plead with you to open your heart and mind, and study the Christian worldview.  Apply the 3-4-5 method described above, but never forget that Christian doctrine always revolves around a person, Jesus Christ.  He is the embodiment of our faith, and it is to him that we look.