Tag Archives: Unbelievable podcast

Skeptics, Top Ten Posts of 2012

Is There Ever Enough Evidence for the Hyper-Skeptic? #7 Post of 2012

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Recently I was listening to the Unbelievable podcast and heard something telling from atheist James Croft.  As he was discussing the historical, eyewitness evidence of Jesus’s resurrection with Christian Chris Sinkinson, he said the following (this is a paraphrase of what he said):

The amount of eyewitness testimony of the death and resurrection of Jesus can never be enough to convince me, and it shouldn’t be enough to convince any reasonable person.  I would never accept any amount of testimony as evidence of the resurrection.  The only way I would accept the death and resurrection of anyone is if there were detailed medical records, and there were medical professionals there to verify the death, and I could stand beside the corpse myself, watching what happened.

Croft, therefore, would never accept any testimony of any resurrection from the dead unless he saw it for himself and there were medical professionals there to certify all the facts.  But, of course, this means that he has conveniently set the bar so high that no resurrection claim from history could ever be believed.

By setting this impossibly high standard, Croft has to do no work, no investigation, no research, no thinking, no considering of the central claim of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus.  For him, this would all be a colossal waste of time, because he has decided, based on his atheistic presuppositions, that resurrections don’t happen.

Croft is a classic example of the hyper-skeptic.  Anybody who would say that no amount of eyewitness testimony from the past should ever convince anyone that a person came back from the dead is arguing not from a position of neutrality, but from an extreme philosophical skepticism in the tradition of David Hume.

Of course, the typical hyper-skeptic has no problem believing highly fantastical things such as the assembly of the first self-replicating organism by pure chance 4 billion years ago, even though the hyper-skeptic wasn’t there to see it, there were no scientific experts standing around watching it, and there are no written records from that time that we can examine.

Intelligent Design proponent Bill Dembski once asked hyper-skeptic Michael Shermer if Shermer would allow Dembski to write skeptical articles about Darwinian evolution in Shermer’s Skeptic magazine.  Shermer declined.  It seems that Skeptic magazine isn’t skeptical about everything.

The critical point to take home is this: hyper-skeptics are usually only skeptical about a small number of select topics, and are thus hopelessly inconsistent in their skepticism.  Their skepticism is, in most cases, just a philosophical cover for being anti-whatever-they-don’t-like.

Abortion

Why Should Abortion Be Legal?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

According to Dr. Wendy Savage of Doctors For A Woman’s Choice On Abortion, on a recent edition of Unbelievable?, the reason that abortion should be legal is:

  1. Women, throughout recorded history, have always wanted to be able to have abortions.
  2. Women will procure abortions whether they are legal or not.
  3. Illegal abortions tend to be unsafe and sometimes cause the death of the woman.
  4. Therefore, in order to save women’s lives, we must legalize abortions to make them safe.

Madeleine Flannagan, her opponent on the show, asked her the rather obvious question:  “How does the taking of the innocent lives of millions of babies justify the prevention of the deaths of thousands of women?”

Savage’s response: “They are not babies.  Before birth, they are fetuses, which are only potential human beings, not actual human beings.”

Flannagan: “What is your argument to show that they are only potential human beings instead of actual human beings before birth?”

Savage: “The fetus relies on the mother to survive.”

Flannagan: “So does a newborn baby.”

Savage: “Nobody really knows when the fetus becomes a real human being, so we just have to trust mothers’ choices and feelings in the matter.”

Surpisingly, after making a weak attempt to argue why fetuses aren’t actual human beings, Savage punted on the whole issue and said that we just have to trust women’s feelings and instincts about this issue!  Savage’s argument is that women’s feelings in this decision trump all other considerations.  Women are going to have abortions, so we might as well make them legal so the abortions are done properly.

I was stunned that Savage seemed to believe that the question of the rights of the fetus was almost completely irrelevant.  She repeatedly said that she was a pragmatist on abortion and that she had not developed any real position on when a fetus becomes a human being with a right to life.  For her, it just doesn’t matter.  She said several times on the show that she just trusts women to make the right decision.

It is incredible to me that a leader in the pro-abortion movement has such a weak argument for their case.  If we should just legalize whatever many people are going to do anyway, then why not legalize drugs, prostitution, possession of any kind of firearm, defaulting on contracts, polluting the environment, stealing in general, insider trading, and dog fighting (I’m sure I could come up with more given more time).

Of course, none of these are nearly as serious an ethical issue as abortion, so I assume that Ms. Savage would have no problem with legalizing any of them.  Absurd?  Of course.  But Savage’s reason for allowing abortion is absurd.

Historical Christ, Resurrection

What Can Historians Tell Us About Jesus’ Resurrection?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona locked horns once again over the resurrection of Jesus on the Unbelievable? podcast last April.  The two scholars discussed various elements of the New Testament that historians could use to reconstruct the life of Jesus for much of the radio show.  In the final segment of the debate, however, Ehrman once again charged that historians cannot tell us whether Jesus was resurrected – the conclusion that Jesus was resurrected is simply not one that the methods of historical analysis will allow.

Ehrman has made this charge before.  I witnessed him say the same thing at a debate between him and Licona two years ago.  This time, though, some nuances of his position appeared.  When Ehrman argues that historians cannot conclude that the resurrection of Jesus occurred, we have to ask what he means by resurrection.  Ehrman seems to mean the following: Jesus died and then a few days later was supernaturally re-animated by the Christian God in a miraculous act.

Why does Ehman say that historians cannot draw this conclusion?  As far as I could tell, it is because of the words supernaturally, Christian God, and miraculous.  Ehrman seems to be saying that these are theological words, not historical words.  They are words used by people of faith, not by professional historians.

So how did Licona respond?  He agreed to define the resurrection of Jesus as follows: Jesus died and then a few days later came back to life.  Notice that Licona completely dropped the theological words that seemed to give Ehrman so much heartburn.  Now the two scholars could move on and talk about the historical evidence supporting the non-theological resurrection.  Unfortunately, and much to my disappointment, the show ran out of time and the new discussion was never pursued.

What’s the point in recounting their conversation?  First, it cleared up what Ehrman’s real beef was.  Second, it gives me an occasion to call for Ehrman and his admirers to drop this approach, as the point has been made.  I, like Licona, am glad to use the non-theological definition of the resurrection in order to advance the historical debate.  Let’s get on with it.

Atheism, Free Will, Philosophy

Is the Human Mind Like Computer Software?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

The question of the origin of human rationality plagues the atheistic naturalist worldview – the worldview that says that all that exists ultimately is matter governed by the laws of physics.  If every event that has ever occurred and ever will occur is determined by physical laws, then how are humans able to make decisions that are free from that determinism?

Rationality is mere illusion under naturalism, as everything we say and think is the result of antecedent physical conditions and physical laws.  We can’t help what we say and think, because all our thoughts and words are the result of physical processes that we have no control over.  Judging a person’s beliefs would be like blaming a leaf for falling to the ground.

On a recent Unbelievable? podcast, atheist Norman Bacrac posited the following solution to the problem.  He claimed that the human brain represents the hardware that obeys the physical laws of nature.  But running on this hardware is the software of the rational mind, software which evolved out of the hardware of human anatomy.  According to Bacrac, even though the hardware is determined by natural laws, the software is not.  Software represents the thoughts and arguments made by humans when they are reasoning.

Does this software proposal really help?  I don’t think so.  Consider what hardware and software mean in the computer world.  Hardware consists in physical electronic circuits.  Software performs the function of the program it implements by directly providing instructions to the computer hardware.  Software is non-physical information.  It can be instantiated into a physical medium, but the medium is not the software – it merely contains the software.

If we are using the analogy of computer hardware and software to explain the difference between the human brain and human rationality, then we need to explain where the non-physical software came from.  Bacrac claimed that the hardware of the brain evolved through standard Darwinian processes, but what about the software?  Ultimately, for the naturalist, the software must come from physical matter.  So, we have physical hardware producing non-physical software, but this is certainly not the case in the world of computers.  Microprocessors don’t produce spreadsheet applications; human minds produce spreadsheet applications.

In order for Bacrac’s analogy to work, he needs to explain the incredible leap from the determined, physical hardware of the brain to the undetermined, non-physical software of human rationality.  On naturalism, I fail to see how this leap can occur, and thus the solution that Bacrac posits does not seem to work.

Morality

Should We Legislate Christian Moral Values if Christianity Is False?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I recently heard another excellent podcast of Unbelievable? where apologist Os Guinness debated “atheist” Mary Warnock.  I put “atheist” in quotation marks because of Warnock’s beliefs, which you will see are central to her positions on morality and public policy.

Warnock insisted that she is a Christian because she regularly attends her Anglican church and participates in Christian fellowship and ritual.  But, when she was asked if she actually believed in the historical truth of the biblical accounts, she replied that she did not.  She believes that the stories are man-made.

The issue of their historical truthfulness, however, did not seem to bother her at all.  She repeatedly stated that the biblical stories are some of the greatest imaginative literature ever produced by man, that the morality taught in the Bible is right on target and exactly what the British people should base their laws upon.  In fact, she agreed with Guinness several times that the modern democratic west is built on the teachings of Christianity.

Having pointed to the impact of Christianity on the UK, and having agreed that she wishes for that impact to continue, she then went on to say that the historical truthfulness of Christianity has nothing to do with public policy, and should, in fact, be strictly kept out of any public policy discussion.  Why?  Because the basis for Christian moral beliefs (the historical truthfulness of the events in the Bible) is completely irrelevant to the issue of which moral code is legislated.  The UK should largely adopt the moral teachings of Christianity and leave aside the question of Christianity’s truthfulness – just like Warnock does in her personal life.

Guinness, as you would expect, raised several issues with this approach.  First, why should the Muslim or Hindu go along with this approach?  Why shouldn’t their imaginative literature, their holy writings, be made the basis of British law?  Why should the secularist who finds Christian morality to be too restrictive go along with Warnock?  Surely the secularist also has his imaginative literature.  How can the Christian or anyone else argue over morality without eventually bringing in the basis for their moral beliefs?  If Christianity is false, shouldn’t that have some bearing on whether we adhere to its moral teachings?

Warnock seems to be saying something like the following.  Christianity has the best set of stories of any worldview, the best set of stories to promote the values that Warnock prefers.  Other worldviews have inferior stories that do not promote the kind of values that Warnock prefers.  Having the best stories is enough to establish Christian morality as the basis for public policy.

Perhaps I’ve misunderstood Mary Warnock, but this is what I heard during the discussion.  It seems to me that the truthfulness of Christianity has everything to do with whether we should adopt its teachings.  Eventually, the topic of worldview must come into the public policy discussion.  After all, Christians base many of their moral standards on the idea that every human is made in the image and likeness of God.  If there is no God, then the Christian foundation for human dignity completely crumbles.  Warnock does not seem to see this point.

I don’t understand how we can avoid these worldview discussions in the realm of public policy.  Rather than pretending our worldviews don’t matter, let’s follow Guinness’ lead and cultivate a climate of civility where we can learn to how to interact with each other without coming to violence.

Evolution, Intelligent Design

Is Darwinian Evolution Falsifiable?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I have long suspected that it is not.  I was listening to another Unbelievable? podcast the other day which featured a debate between ID proponent Michael Behe and ID opponent Keith Fox – both are biochemists.  During the discussion Behe talked about the longest running lab experiment to test the effects of Darwinian evolution on E. coli.  Professor Richard Lenski has been growing trillions of E. coli over more than a decade and he has produced tens of thousands of generations.

According to Behe, the net effect of natural selection and random mutation on the E. coli has been mostly to break biological systems that were already in place.  No new complex systems have been formed by Darwinian evolution in the experiment.

Keith Fox agreed with Behe’s assessment of the experiment, but claimed that it did not prove anything about the limits of Darwinian evolution to produce complex new biological systems (which is a central claim of Darwinists).  Behe asked Fox, “If this experiment doesn’t prove anything about Darwinian evolution, then what kind of lab experiment could falsify Darwinian evolution?”  Fox’s answer: none.

According to Fox, lab experiments can never replicate the natural selection pressures that E. coli or any other organism face in the natural world.  These pressures can not be simulated in a lab.  It seems that the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection must be assumed – they cannot be falsified by experimental biology.

What we have here is an unfalsifiable theory.  No matter what experiments are run to test Darwinian evolution, the results can never, according to Fox, disprove its ability to generate new biological systems.  Aren’t scientific theories supposed to be falsifiable?  Am I missing something?

Atheism, Philosophy

Atheist Physicist Roger Penrose on Reality

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this morning, Unbelievable?, where the two guests were atheist physicist Roger Penrose and Christian theologian Alister McGrath.  In a fascinating exchange, the host, Justin Brierley, asked Penrose if reality could be reduced to matter.

I expected Penrose to say “yes” and was shocked when he said “no.”  In fact, Penrose said that he tends to divide reality up into three realms: consciousness, the material world, and mathematics.  Penrose, if I understood him correctly, said that these three slices of reality are all intertwined but also distinct from each other.  Penrose seemed to be saying that a reduction of all reality to matter was mistaken.

In fact, Penrose went on to explain that as a physicist, the more he discovers about matter, the more it looks like mathematics!

What is so interesting about Penrose’s comments is that he recognizes that consciousness and mathematics are not explained by the material world, which runs very much counter to the standard atheist dogma.  Mathematics, according to Penrose, seems to exist as an objective reality outside the material world.  He didn’t venture to offer a theory as to where mathematics has come from, but he is clearly disdainful of the materialist reduction program.   How refreshing.