Antony Flew’s New Book

Antony Flew, famous English philosopher, has released a book entitled “There is a God” that charts his journey from atheism to theism. It reads quite a bit like a biography rather than a work of philosophy, but I was pleasantly surprised at the exposition of his former atheism (and, for that matter, the innovative atheistic arguments he created). He appears to be his best critic, and the reader is given a whirlwind tour of the history of his arguments and why he does not think they cut it. For the C.S. Lewis aficionado, he has some interesting anecdotes of his time in the Socratic Club- he appears to have taken the Socratic maxim of following the evidence where it leads to heart, and may have gleaned that from his time with Lewis.

While his story is certainly interesting, perhaps the best part of the book was not written by Flew. Roy Abraham Varghese wrote the first appendix, and in the space of a few pages offers a very compelling critique of the so-called New Atheists. Without commenting too much, it is interesting to see someone calling Dawkins out as a non-scientist charlatan.

The second appendix is a Question/Answer with the always fantastic N.T. Wright. As it is a condensed version of his usual resurrection stuff, we are treated to a summarization of his book Resurrection of the Son of God (to those familiar, a massive tome). It is interesting to me that Flew would include a section on the resurrection, especially while he remains committed to Aristotelean theism (read: non-Christianity).

All in all, this is a read for everyone. It is non-technical, so nearly anyone interested in religious themes could pick this one up and have a meaningful dive into one of our centuries brilliant minds.

Doctor Logic on the Argument from Reason

Check it out here.

Paul Nelson and Michael Ruse “Undebate” Intelligent Design

Nelson and Ruse will debate the issue of Intelligent Design. Well, kind of. Here is Nelson’s description of the upcoming event:

Next month, on Thursday, October 4, Michael Ruse and I are going to have a sort of un-debate. Each of us will be asked to spell out what would change our minds about the other’s position. More to the point, what would persuade us to adopt the opposing stance on evolution or ID?

What evidence, what arguments, what whatever, would change Michael Ruse’s view of intelligent design? Conversely, what would turn me into a card-carrying Darwinian?

The event will take place in Sutherland Auditorium, at Biola University, from 7:30 to 9:30 PM. It will cost you $20 if you want to see this. You can buy tickets here or call 888.332.4652.

Cosmic Fantasies by Numbers

Posted by Beast Rabban

Max Tegmark is in the British science magazine New Scientist this week (the week of the 15^th of September), once again arguing for a multiverse. In the article ‘Reality by Numbers’ he argues that the universe is a mathematical object, like the dodecahedron of the Pythagoreans. An exploration of this possibility will not only give us an ultimate Theory of Everything, but also include parallel worlds and allow us to know this one in far greater depth than was previously conceivable. Basically, it’s another attempt at supporting atheist pantheism, arguing that the universe must also be eternal, impersonal, and, although he doesn’t mention this, without a creator.

The argument runs thus: Scientists and philosophers from Pythagoras to Eugene Wigner have noticed the uncanny ability of mathematics to describe and predict the universe. If reality is independent of humans, then it must also be defined by entities that lack human concepts. However, mathematics describes the universe abstractly without human conceptual notions like ‘stars’, ‘protons’ and so on. So, he concludes, ‘if you believe in an external reality independent of humans, then you must also believe in what I call the mathematical universe hypothesis: that our physical reality is a mathematical structure’. 1

The article then proceeds to investigate what this would mean, using the analogy of the world perceived by a frog fixed on the ground and bird flying above it. The physicist is the bird studying the universe’s mathematical structure from above, while the frog is the observer within the structure. A mathematical structure is abstract, outside of space and time, and immutable, so the bird would see a tangled spaghetti of world-lines according to relativistic perceptions of the world, while the frog sees the uncomplicated view of Newtonian physics. However, the observer would also be a tangled sphaghetti itself: ‘the frog must consist of a thick bundle of pasta whose structure corresponds to particles that store and process information in a way that gives rise to the familiar sensation of the universe’. 2

It then goes on to state that this view of reality is validated by the progress of science in discovering mathematical regularities in nature, such as the Standard Model of particle physics. The amount of information required to describe our particular frog’s eye view of the universe would is extremely large 10 to the power of 100 bits. 3 Most physicists hope for a Theory of Everything that will be far simpler. If so, the argument runs, then it would describe a multiverse, as if it lacks enough information to describe our reality, then it must be a general description of all possible realities. These universes are compulsory: they aren’t created, they just exist, as ‘the point is not that a mathematical structure describes the universe, but that it is a universe’. 4 Tegmark feels that this would answer John Wheeler’s question of why the particular equations that describe the universe do so, and not others. The answer is that there are other equations governing other universes.

Recognising that for this to be a scientific theory, rather than metaphysical speculation, it has to make predictions, the article argues that it could be falsified if it is found that the mathematical distribution predicted of parallel universes means we don’t exist in a typical universe.

It then goes on to argue that we should believe in the universe as a mathematical construct as it is counterintuitive. According to Darwin, human minds did not evolve to discover the truth, only to give the cognitive advantages necessary for survival. Quantum physics is true, but is counterintuitive and disturbing, therefore there is a warrant for believing that the universe is a mathematical structure, as this is similarly counterintuitive and disturbing.

A Challenge to Theists?

Posted by Heraplem

Christopher Hitchens has issued what he thinks is a serious challenge to theists: name a single moral action that theists can perform but that atheists can’t.

But what, precisely, is the point behind this challenge? Are there really swarms of theistic philosophers out there meticulously tallying up all the possible kinds of moral actions and declaring that atheists are limited to performing a fewer number of them than theists? I tend to doubt that. (One might well challenge Hitchens, in turn, to name a single such philosopher.) What Hitchens’ challenge reveals, if anything, is that he hasn’t understood the problematic metaethical implications that many philosophers believe a strict atheistic and materialistic ontology (such as his own) would generate. The problem has nothing to do with how many moral actions atheists can perform in comparison with theists. Hitchens’ challenge — if it can be called a challenge at all — is quite literally off-topic.

What the problem does have to do with is accounting for the existence and objectivity of the normative force — the ought-to-be-ness — of certain states of affairs, as well as the truth of various moral statements. Hitchens needs to explain how it is that moral properties exist, independently of human minds, in a universe that he would like us to believe sprang into existence from thoroughly amoral, non-rational, mindless nothingness. What is it in virtue of which objective morality nevertheless exists in such a universe, according to Hitchens? Pointing out that atheists can perform as many moral actions as theists is not a relevant answer.

Hitchens would not want to respond by rejecting the assumption that moral facts or properties exist; that is, he would not wish to deny moral realism. Otherwise, it would be difficult to make serious sense of his moral complaints against religion. Despite his “challenge”, then, Hitchens still has quite a bit of explaining to do.

Secular Columnist in Historical Jesus Shock!

Posted by Beast Rabban

Shock! Horror! Sensation! The British newstand magazine of the weird, The Fortean Times has published a piece supporting the historicity of Christ. In the October 2007 issue, the Fortean Times’ resident classicist, Barry Baldwin attacks the latest attempt by Tom Harpur to disprove Christ’s existence as ‘as futile as his many predecessors’ and reviews the extrabiblical classical authors who mention Christ – Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry and even the vehemently antichristian Roman emperor, Julian the Apostate, who wrote the official imperial attack on Christianity Against the Galileans. Examining their accounts of Christ, Baldwin concludes that ‘The overall point is, had any of these hostile sources thought there was the slightest chance of denying the fact of Jesus’ earthly existence, it is inconceivable that they would not have taken it. This conclusion is enhanced by the Neo-Platonist Porphyry’s remark (quoted by Augustine, City of God, bk19 ch23, from his Philosophy from Oracles – lost, as is his Against the Christians) that opponents preferred to attack Christianity rather than Christ himself’, Baldwin, Barry, ‘Classical Corner 91. For Christ’s Sake!’, Fortean Times 228, October 2007, p. 23.

It’s a surprise to me, as the magazine is by no means a Christian publication and has published in the past an awful lot of material critical of Christian claims, including positive reviews of previous books supporting the ‘Christ myth’ hypothesis from fringe writers like Harpur. One could take issue with Baldwin’s description of the Gospels as ‘irrelevant to the argument’ with the ancient non-Christian evidence being the only material that counts. In fact scholarship, contra Harpur et al, supports the view that the Gospels do indeed count as biographical evidence and were based on eyewitness accounts of Christ’s life and mission. However, simply seeing a secular scholar in a magazine that has published material supporting the Christ myth in its pages is a welcome surprise in itself.

My guess is that it won’t be long before furious antichristians write in criticising Baldwin’s endorsement of Christ’s historicity, despite him stating, as ‘pre-emptive retaliation’ that he is ‘non-sectarian’. I suspect that one reason why the Fortean Times published this at all is because the flood of Christ myth material has got out of hand and has now gained the status of a new orthodoxy, despite the fact that the majority of historians, classicists and Biblical scholars, Christian and secular, completely reject it.

Vic Reppert Reformulates the AFR

Here.

Very interesting. I wonder, though, if one is able to reply that propositions supervene naturally on a certain state or set of relations (specifically in the brain). Hopefully we see more on this.

David Hart Hunts the Dennett

Greetings fellow RPers and distinguished passersby. This is my first post here at Rational Perspectives, and I thought I would begin by doing something really easy and unoriginal–viz., posting a link to a really good paper. Here therefore is Orthodox philosopher and theologian, David Bentley Hart’s impressively vocabularied (dictionary.com awaits your humble approach), perhaps a mite over-scathing (expect nearly involuntary mutterings of “oh man” and “ouch”), but ultimately devastating critique of Breaking the Spell, Dan Dennett’s most recent book-length assault on all things (which turn out to be no-things) supernatural. The essay is from First Things and is called “Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark.”

Geivett and Tabash to Debate the Existence of God

The debate takes place on September 19, @2:00 p.m.
Eddie Tabash vs. Douglas Geivett: “Does God Exist?”
Cypress College, Complex 216, Cypress, CA

Douglas Geivett is an analytic philosopher and theologian;  Eddie Tabash, a lawyer.

Remains of the Second Temple Found

Posted by Beast Rabban

It appears that construction work fitting a pipeline to the al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount has uncovered the remains of part of the Second Temple. This is obviously a find of immense importance to Jews and Christians. Gaby Barkai, a senior Israeli archaeologist, has called for the construction work to halt for the remains to be properly investigated. See here.

There has been considerable conflict between archaeologists and the Muslim authorities administering the al-Aqsa mosque in recent years. A few years ago the waqf – Islamic charitable organisation administering the mosque commenced construction work as part of a maintenance and restoration programme. However, in doing so they burrowed into Temple Mount itself and uncovered archaeologically valuable material from the pre-Islamic periods, including Jewish artifacts and remains. Scandalously, this material was simply dumped along with the other construction rubbish. The archaeology appeared to have been deliberately mixed with construction debris as part of a programme to erase the pre-Islamic archaeology there. Unfortunately, there have been assertions in part of the Islamic world that the Temple Mount was never a Jewish site. If the remains are indeed part of Herod’s Temple, then this will be a sound disproof of such historical revisionism.

For a scholarly and detailed critique of the way the construction work has threatened the precious archaeology and historic buildings on the Mount, see this piece from Biblical Archaeology Review.

Proper archaeological investigation of remains from the Mount offers to add much to our understanding of the milieu in which Christ lived and ministered, and it’s been the case that the descriptions of Jerusalem in St. John’s Gospel are so detailed that they support the idea that it may have been written by an eyewitness and the trustworthy nature of the Gospel’s witness to our Lord’s ministry. Hopefully, a way can be found to prevent further destruction of the Mount’s archaeology without exacerbating the religious tensions in this politically and religiously sensitive area further.