This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sure, I'll try my hand.
Let's start with the existence of God. What's seemed the strongest argument to me is just the question, why is there something rather than nothing?
Why does anything exist? What caused the big bang? The only answer that doesn't lead to an infinite regress, so far as I can tell, is that something must necessarily exist. The main candidates for this that I've heard of are a God of some form, or a Tegmark IV multiverse—the extreme of mathematical platonism, where everything possible exists.
(What about just things happening utterly randomly and causelessly? I'd be really worried about that breaking induction—why doesn't that happen again. To be clear, I'm not talking about the constrained randomness of quantum mechanics. What about a loop or an infinite regress? I'd think we can just collect all the terms and ask if that has a cause.)
The first hypothesis seems more likely than the second, because it seems to better explain why I'd find myself in an orderly world. There are many more ways to disorder something than to order them—e.g. there's only one world where the laws of physics continue as usual, but a much greater number where they broke down 3 seconds ago. I'd also be worried about whether things like Boltzmann brains could end up being common enough to harm our epistemology—not in itself a measure of likelihood, but one hurting pretty severely the ability to do epistemology, since again, the law of induction becomes pretty broken. I'm also unsure whether consciousness harms the ability encapsulate everything mathematically, which the Tegmark hypothesis would seem to require.
Let's say there's some a pretty good chance there's some necessarily existent thing out there. What sort of thing might it be? One perfect in every way seems like one of the relatively more likely possibilities, though it might be hard to say what's a perfection. Not sure how to do anything more exact here, but a pretty decent a priori probability is enough to matter, I'd think.
Okay, that's all towards some form of theism. What about Christianity in particular? The largest obstacle, I think, to most people is that miracles seem really unlikely. This is mitigated to a pretty substantial extent if you think that a god exists. Once there's a mechanism to account for miracles existing, that seems to raise the probability a good bit. If you will, it's no longer something beyond some unbreakable laws of physics, since it's something allowed under the true laws of physics that aren't usually in play. (If you still find it hard to believe that this sort of thing can happen, do you also treat the simulation hypothesis as absurd—at least, if it thinks that there could be intervention once in a while.) But in any case, some documentary evidence and some accompanying historical evidence seem rather sparse to believe in a resurrection from the dead. I think the accompanying teachings of the christian scriptures significantly raise the reasonableness of thinking that it took place, since it places it in a context where this is at least something not improbably, where this is the way to accomplish some aims. This is especially the case since descriptions of what took place were written hundreds of years beforehand—see Isaiah 52:13 through to the end of Isaiah 53. The gospels and epistles are also better than average for ancient historical texts in some other respects—they're written not too long after the death of Jesus, within the lifetime of those who knew him when he was alive. Paul, at one point, refers to 500 people who witnessed Christ after his death.
Let's say that all that argumentation fails. There still seem to be reasons that it might be a sensible thing to adhere to, even if you think it's relatively unlikely. Pascal's wager is formidable, for one. Ethics or purpose seem a good bit easier to come by, which, by no means necessary, do mean that those worlds might be ones that you should concern yourself with more.
I've been talking about Christianity in the past few days a lot more than I have in a while but I saw your comment and it activated my old debate-bro instincts and I couldn't resist.
The actual philosophical question of whether God exists never really interested me that much. I actually don't particularly care whether God exists, unless he inspired a religion with books and prophets that dictates how I should live. Then I care. So for discussions like this, I'm usually happy to grant the existence of God for the sake of argument and move on to discussing Christianity in particular.
Leaving aside the long debate over whether the 'suffering servant' is in fact a single messianic figure, a corporate representative, or something else Isaiah 53 is something of a double-edged sword for apologists. On the one hand, a very popular apologetic, popularized especially by NT Wright in recent years (and which I think is bad for other reasons, but I digress), goes like this: "first century Jews had no concept of a dying and rising messiah. So the story of the resurrection is not something the disciples would make up or come to believe in a million years unless they actually experienced it. Therefore, the best explanation for the disciples' belief in the resurrection is that it really took place." On the other hand, Christians want to claim that Isaiah clearly prophesied the death and resurrection of Jesus centuries earlier. But if the scriptures contained a clear and unambiguous prediction of a messiah that would die and be resurrected, then one need not posit a genuine resurrection to account for the belief of the earliest Christians that their teacher, after his brutal execution by the state, was raised from the dead. It's right there in the prophets. If Isaiah says the messiah will die and be raised, and Jesus is the messiah, then Jesus was raised from the dead. QED.
True. But the synoptics also all plagiarize each other, so they aren't independent sources. Mark and Luke were not eyewitnesses, by tradition. The Gospel of Matthew draws heavily from the gospel of Mark, so genuine Matthean authorship can be discounted, since it makes no sense that a man who walked with Jesus and personally saw him raised from the dead would plagiarize the account of someone who did not (even the call of Matthew itself in gMatthew is cribbed from Mark!). John was also an eyewitness by tradition, but even if he doesn't know the synoptics (and some think he does), then you have at best two independent sources for the most incredible event in all of human history, and both of them from authors who would have every reason to believe this incredible claim, and who clearly have a vested interest in getting you to believe it, and only one of them even potentially from an eyewitness. It's not like there's any hostile testimony to the resurrection.
I've never understood this apologetic. The appearance to the 500 appears exactly once in the New Testament: right here, in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. There's no elaboration, we're not told who these 500 were, the circumstances of the supposed appearance, or anything at all, either here or anywhere else. It's a single throwaway reference. For all I know Paul made this up. Or the person he got it from did.
I think Pascal's Wager is defanged by the internal diversity of Christianity. While the old joke about there being tens of thousands of Christian denominations each damning all the others to Hell is an exaggeration, it's directionally correct. Getting a Catholic to admit it nowadays is like pulling teeth, but it remains dogma that there is no salvation outside the church, and while there are carveouts in some cases for invincible ignorance and things like that, few of those caveats would apply to the vast majority of modern protestants, so the teaching of the RCC remains that the great majority of modern protestants are gonna burn. Conversely, a number of Protestant confessions clearly anathematize the RCC, and a number even expressly identify the Papacy as the Antichrist. And there are plenty of low-church baptist types who think catholics are demon-worshipping idolaters. And then there are plenty of protestants that think plenty of other protestants are going to hell. And then there are protestants who don't think anybody is going to hell (either universalist or annihilationist). You could say being a Christian of some kind is still better than being a non-believer, but since there are Christians who don't think non-believers necessarily go to hell, I'm not sure it really increases your chances all that much. Then there's Islam...
My reasons for rejecting the truth of Christianity were not that I think miracles are prima facie impossible, or even necessarily impossible, but boil down mostly to three main points:
I can elaborate on any of these, because I do enjoy talking about this stuff, but I won't make this comment any longer.
The obvious rejoinders are that something clearly happened at the temple in Jerusalem in the opening years of the 1st century that went on to have major social and political ramifications throughout the empire. We know this because the fact that we have any near contemporary documentation or archeological corroboration of the Gospel narrative at all is in itself remarkable.
There was an effort post on this subject from 4 - 5 years ago now that I'd like to link but am currently able to find because reddit's search function sucks and they'd disabled 3rd party APIs but the long and the short of it is that we have more contemporary evidence of there being encounter between Pontus Pilate as Deputy Governor of Syria and a Jewish Carpenter turned Rabbi than we do the existence of Hannibal Barca, Atilla the Hun, and a good number of Roman Emperors. Accordingly, complaints about how the main body of the Gospel account seem to have been written 50 - 100 years after the fact (IE precisely when the original events described would have been passing from living memory into legend) come across as something like an isolated demand for rigor.
Likewise claims that "The Hebrew/Christian scriptures teach empirically false things about the world." or that "The scriptures are internally inconsistent" tend to be grossly overstated and rely on selective quoting so without specific examples such claims really are worth engaging with.
Okay. But so what?
It is the opposite. Historians rely on biographers of Alexander for information about his career, while rejecting the claims of those same biographers that he was a son of Zeus or that his armies were led through the deserts by snakes. The claims of Caesar’s biographers that he crossed the Rubicon are accepted, but not the claims that they were encouraged by the apparition of a goddess. It is apologists who insist that, unlike every other historical document, the gospels must be taken as all or nothing. If we accept that Jesus lived and was crucified, we must also accept his miracles and resurrection.
The New Testament implicitly and explicitly relies on falsified Aristotelian cosmology, to give one example. I can elaborate if you want.
So it shifts the burden of proof.
The new Aeithist line of argument as popularized by guys like Harris and Dawkins typically goes that Jesus didn't exist and if he did he was a nobody who was executed without fanfare. The events described in the Gospel were a story made up by Paul and the rise of the cult of Christianity can be attributed entirely to him. To be fair I can kind of see how they might come to that conclusion (Paul really does come across as a social climbing mary-stue) but if that is the case than some alternate explanation for the rukus at the temple, and ensuing social and political upheaval must be offered.
No it's not. Historians rely on biographers right until it becomes convenient to argue the absence of literal firsthand sources represents evidence of absence. It's not all or nothing, it's something for something. That is unless you'd like to acknowledge that Alexander's alleged parentage is evidence that he never existed either. If christ was crucified and his followers were willing to face execution themselves over the claim that he'd been resurrected just how much more do you need?
First off define "falsified", proving a heliocentric model of solar system from first principles is not as easy as so-called skeptics like to pretend it is and even if it was can you point to a specific line within The New Testament that would be falsified by the earth revolving around the sun rather than vice versa?
I would never argue Jesus didn't exist. He did. But he was a nobody executed without fanfare. That's not new atheism, that's the gospels. That's the whole point of the gospels. The meek preacher squashed unceremoniously by the pagan tyrants is actually the conquering king of Heaven.
I don't know whose position this is, but it's not mine, and it's not that of any halfway well-informed skeptic I'm familiar with. The story told by the gospels is probably broadly true. Jesus really was a 1st century apocalyptic prophet and faith healer who roamed the Judean countryside building up a following. He really did preach the coming judgment of God and the need for repentance and right-living. He really did butt heads with rival sects and local religious leaders. He really did carry out faith healings. He really did go up with his disciples to Jerusalem for passover (probably expecting the imminent inauguration of the kingdom). He really did cause a disturbance at the temple, which resulted in his arrest. He really was executed by Pontius Pilate. Some of his disciples really did have experiences that convinced them Jesus had been raised from the dead and exalted to Heaven. Where I differ is that I don't think the best explanation for these facts is that Jesus actually did rise from the dead.
Something that isn't one or two members of Jesus' religious movement with every incentive to believe and propagate this saying, "trust me bro."
The argument from martyrdom is weak. There's little evidence that anyone was particularly interested in hunting down Christians in the early years. Frankly it hardly matters to me, since I don't think the disciples were lying, I think they genuinely believed Jesus had been raised.
A good demonstration of the cosmology of the NT is the story of the ascension. Jesus rises from the dead, and then he spends forty days with his disciples, before returning to Heaven. When the time comes for him to leave, he floats into the sky until a cloud takes him out of sight.
Most modern Christians, at least those who have given the matter any thought, will tell you that Heaven is not a place within the 3-D universe. It's maybe a parallel universe, or not a spatio-temporal location at all, but rather a kind of experience, or state of being. I believe the Catholic position is that Heaven is simply the experience of the human soul contemplating the presence of God.
On this model, there's no immediate reason why Jesus should float into the sky to get to Heaven. You can come up with reasons why he would return to Heaven that way, but it's not obvious why going into the sky should get one closer to a parallel universe, or the beatific vision, or whatever you like. If you step into the shoes of an educated first-century writer like Luke, then the reason Jesus floats into the sky is obvious. That's how you get to Heaven. It's past the air (the first Heaven) and past the stars and moon (second Heaven). The throne room of God is in the "third Heaven", a concept directly from Ptolemaic cosmology (Paul references it by name in 2 Corinthians 12:2 - 4). It's distant and glorious, but also a place with a definite spatio-temporal location, so Jesus can go there in his physical, flesh and blood body.
Of course, you can reconcile this with the modern understanding that celestial spheres don't exist. William Lane Craig for example, says that Jesus was "accommodating" the disciples. In other words, being God, he knew that Greek cosmology was false, and you don't have to float into the sky to get to Heaven, but because his disciples had the standard contemporary view of the cosmos, floating into the sky was the best way for him to get across to them that he was going back to Heaven. But this is just adding epicycles (a particularly appropriate term here), when a far simpler and more parsimonious explanation is available: this isn't something that actually happened, and the reason it fits so neatly into the Ptolemaic universe and so awkwardly into ours is because Luke, who wrote this story down, wrongly believed in celestial spheres.
Your hypothesis is that they all hallucinated the same thing, non-miraculously? Seems implausible to me.
To add on to @To_Mandalay's excellent points, no, most of us nonbelievers don't believe a bunch of Jesus' followers had a shared hallucination. This whole discussion is basically the "Lord, Lunatic, or Liar?" argument - the trilemma orginally formulated by C.S. Lewis that either Jesus was the Son of God, or else he was either a con-man or insane. (And Lewis and other Christian apologists then go on to write very convincingly about how unlikely it is that he was a liar or crazy, ergo, he must have actually been the Son of God.)
All of this assumes that eyewitness accounts from the 1st century should all be taken at face value. Hence you get the other popular argument, like @HlynkaCG's, pointing out that we have more documentary evidence of Jesus than of Hannibal Barca, etc. Okay, all true. But eyewitness accounts of supernatural events by large numbers of more or less credible people are very common throughout history. Either lots of miracles have happened (yet somehow never on camera since the advent of photography), many of which are not congruent with a Christian cosmology, or yes, a few people can convince themselves they really, really super-for-real experienced something, and many other people can then be convinced that really happened (and if they didn't experience it themselves at the time, they can convince themselves they did afterwards).
This doesn't make Jesus' followers stupid, liars, or crazy either. It just makes them like any other people throughout history who can convince themselves of almost anything through strong emotions and motivated reasoning. Do you literally believe anyone who claims they saw an angel or a demon? Do you think every person who claims to see an angel or demon either (a) saw an angel or demon; (b) is making it up; (c) is schizophrenic? Because I think there is an option D: people with strong enough religious beliefs, who are otherwise intelligent and rational, can convince themselves they have experienced something that didn't actually happen. I will compare, for example, Christian testimonials about personally experiencing God in various ways - ranging from the rather abstract "felt God speak to them" in their hearts to literal visions of going to heaven and talking to Jesus. I don't think these people are all lying or crazy. But if you talk to many other religions believers (particularly Muslims), you will hear very similar testimonials. So, either all religions really are one and God speaks equally to Christians and Muslims? (Despite the fact that neither Christians nor Muslims believe that's possible.) Or, the other explanation I typically get from both sides: our visions are real, theirs are Satan deceiving them.
This is why I don't think I need to "disprove" that Jesus' followers actually saw him rising to heaven, or walking around alive after he was crucified.
"Lunatic, liar, lord" also leaves out the option of "legend" - that the texts are not accurate retellings of history surrounding the historic figure of Jesus of Nazareth.
It's something you run into particularly with accounts of the lives of kings and hagiographies - a later writer might make up most of the biography of an earlier saint, but doing so would not necessarily be seen by the author or the contemporary audience as dishonest or fictional, particularly if it helped convey what they saw as the intended message or moral of their story. Illustrating the mercy of Saint x of y and how it should be emulated via a contributing a story of how he forgave an enemy was more important than whether that narrative accurately matches real life events, whether their details were available or not. History in the sense of attempting to research and reconstruct the past with as much accuracy to real life events as possible was not how writing about past figures and events was always understood, nor the objective of many authors.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link