The Lack of Reason for God, Chapter 7
Oct. 29th, 2014 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blimixThis is part of a series examining the the logic of Timothy Keller's book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.
Standard disclaimer: This, despite being a public post, is not an invitation for a religion debate with strangers. Been there, done that, still jaded.
Last week: In Chapter 6, we examined the conflict between science and Christianity.
Chapter 7
In which Keller argues in favor of taking the Bible literally, by which he mostly means taking the story of Jesus literally or taking the gospels literally.
(Page numbers are from the hardcover version of the book.)
p. 100. "It is widely believed that the Bible is a historically unreliable collection of legends. A highly publicized forum of scholars, 'the Jesus Seminar,' has stated that no more than 20 percent of Jesus's saying and actions in the Bible can be historically validated."
I have no beef with the statement itself, but citing the Jesus Seminar for any purpose is just bad scholarship. See this Gallup poll for a more rigorous measurement of the extent of American belief in the Bible.
p. 100 footnote 4, and p. 113. "Speaking personally, I take the whole Bible to be reliable not because I can somehow "prove" it all to be factual. I accept it because I believe in Jesus and that was his view of the Bible." "If Jesus is the Son of God, then we have to take his teaching seriously, including his confidence in the authority of the whole Bible."
The New Testament was written long after Jesus' supposed crucifixion. How could he ever have expressed confidence in "the whole Bible"? Keller is clearly getting a start on believing six impossible things before breakfast. (Maybe a Time Lord brought him a copy: "Here, someone wrote a book about you. What do you think?" "Not bad, but I've never met this Saul of Tarsus guy. Why's he preaching in my name? And... Holy crap, Judas?!?")
Also, my book club friend points out that Jesus specifically warned the Pharisees against taking the scriptures too seriously. That was one of his big things. Did Keller miss those bits?
p. 100. Keller describes several weak reasons to dispute the accuracy of Biblical stories (dwelling on The Da Vinci Code repeatedly throughout the chapter).
He fails to mention good reasons, such as Biblical accounts' lack of corroboration (Did nobody notice the Sermon on the Mount, or Herod's slaughter of all the young children of Bethlehem?), contradiction of the real world (Where's the geological and archaeological evidence of the Great Flood, and why wasn't most of humanity wiped out as the story claims? When and how did the Exodus happen?), extensive self-contradiction, and sheer implausibility.
p. 101. "Paul refers to a body of five hundred eyewitnesses who saw the risen Christ at once. You can't write that in a document designed for public reading unless there really were surviving witnesses whose testimony agreed and who could confirm what the author said."
You can't publish blatantly false things? Then explain Fox News.
p. 102. Regarding Jesus' death, Keller writes: "For a highly altered, fictionalized account of an event to take hold in the public imagination it is necessary that the eyewitnesses (and their children and grandchildren) all be long dead. They must be off the scene so they cannot contradict or debunk the embellishments and falsehoods of the story. The gospels were written far too soon for this to occur."
First, this assumes that the event happened at all. If there were no crucifixion, there would be no witnesses to contradict any details of its story. Second, falsified stories often "take hold in the public imagination" despite eyewitness reports and even more compelling evidence. (Again, see the debunked reports that still take hold in Fox News viewers.) Third, before the Information Age, people didn't have to be dead to be "off the scene". Without social media, how would witnesses from Jerusalem know that some self-proclaimed apostle was sending letters from Ephesus to Corinth? Even if someone happened to hear contradicting reports, they couldn't just check Snopes.
pp. 104-105. Keller argues that the church could not have made up the gospel stories, because some of the stories lack clear reasons for the church to make them up. "The only plausible reason that all of these incidents would be included in these accounts is that they actually happened."
Keller doesn't take into account that these stories may have been made up for reasons that he cannot think of, or for reasons that he would find perplexing even if he did know them. (What did anyone stand to gain by authoring the GoodTimes virus hoax? I can't imagine. But someone did.)
p. 105. "Also, why constantly depict the apostles -- the eventual leaders of the early Church -- as petty and jealous, almost impossibly slow-witted, and in the end as cowards who either actively or passively failed their master?"
Maybe because Paul bitterly disagreed with the apostles. Even his main man Barnabas took their side. What better revenge than to paint them as fools when his version of the religion beat out theirs?
pp. 106-107. Keller asserts that "the gospel accounts are not fiction" because they contain needless details, which is a hallmark of either nonfiction or modern fiction and is not found in ancient fiction such as Beowulf and The Iliad. He supports this by mentioning three needless details that appear in the gospels. "The only explanation for why an ancient writer would mention the cushion, the 153 fish, and the doodling in the dust is because the details had been retained in the eyewitnesses' memory."
This argument falls apart if you actually try reading the gospels. They do not read like eyewitness accounts, full of realistic details that stuck in the narrator's memory. Keller merely cited a few isolated exceptions. If you were to search The Iliad for details that similarly are not "relevant to the plot or character development at all," you could do the same thing. For example (found in just a few minutes), this feast following prayers to Apollo reads like a cookbook:
pp. 110-111. Keller addresses objections to the socially regressive messages in the Bible. For example, the objection to the Bible's support of slavery, he says, overlooks the fact that first century Roman slavery was not bad at all, and we're just thinking of the horrors of American slavery.
Keller is at least correct in that imperial Roman slavery was preferable to American slavery. The first century C.E. was part of a time of transition from horrifyingly brutal slavery to merely unconscionably brutal slavery, and it was early in that transition. To make excuses for the Bible, Keller downplays this brutality to the point of misrepresentation. (For example, "... there was not a great difference between slaves and the average free person." Aside from getting beaten, raped, and killed by their masters, that is.)
p. 111. "To reject the Bible as regressive is to assume that you have now arrived at the ultimate historic moment, from which all that is regressive and progressive can be discerned. That belief is surely as narrow and exclusive as the views in the Bible you regard as offensive."
There is of course no such assumption. One merely has to understand what progress is, to be able to discern what is progressive and (much more easily) what is regressive. Perfection is not required. "Narrow and exclusive" is an incorrect and irrelevant accusation to bring here, and in any case does not mean "wrong". The objection here is based on the evils of promoting the mistreatment of people, which we as a society are trying to move past, despite the Bible holding us back, rather than based on exclusivity (which was the objection from chapter 1).
p. 112-113. Keller exhorts people who reject the Bible as culturally regressive to just stop thinking about it and accept the Bible. "If you say, 'I can't accept what the Bible says about gender roles,' you must keep in mind that Christians themselves differ over what some texts mean, as they do about many, many other things. However, they all confess in the words of the Apostle's Creed that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. Don't worry about gender roles until you figure out what you think about the central teachings of the faith."
Wow. He doesn't even bother to sidestep the issue this time; he just asks you to stop with your questions already. His advice can't address anyone's concerns: Not the unbelievers who care about Biblical misogyny (Are they going to shut up and believe just because he told them to?), and not even the hypothetical believer who has blindly accepted the Bible and (according to Keller's advice) is only now puzzling over the issue.
p. 113. "It is therefore important to consider the Bible's core claims about who Jesus is and whether he rose from the dead before you reject it for its less central and more controversial teachings."
So it's okay if the Bible's "less central and more controversial teachings" are wrong, because we can ignore that and just believe the bits about Jesus? This is horrible logic: Ignoring the problem of an unreliable Bible doesn't make the Bible reliable. Also, his argument completely dismisses his own assertion that the entire New Testament should be taken as literally correct -- the assertion that was the point of this whole chapter.
In response to this chapter, my book club friend points out that some Christians believe that the Bible has historical inaccuracies. They're still Christian. Also, the belief that the Bible was inspired by god does not require the belief that the Bible was written by god (and thus necessarily flawless).
Next week: Where we've gone, where we're going, and bad epistemolgy.
The whole series.
Standard disclaimer: This, despite being a public post, is not an invitation for a religion debate with strangers. Been there, done that, still jaded.
Last week: In Chapter 6, we examined the conflict between science and Christianity.
In which Keller argues in favor of taking the Bible literally, by which he mostly means taking the story of Jesus literally or taking the gospels literally.
(Page numbers are from the hardcover version of the book.)
p. 100. "It is widely believed that the Bible is a historically unreliable collection of legends. A highly publicized forum of scholars, 'the Jesus Seminar,' has stated that no more than 20 percent of Jesus's saying and actions in the Bible can be historically validated."
I have no beef with the statement itself, but citing the Jesus Seminar for any purpose is just bad scholarship. See this Gallup poll for a more rigorous measurement of the extent of American belief in the Bible.
p. 100 footnote 4, and p. 113. "Speaking personally, I take the whole Bible to be reliable not because I can somehow "prove" it all to be factual. I accept it because I believe in Jesus and that was his view of the Bible." "If Jesus is the Son of God, then we have to take his teaching seriously, including his confidence in the authority of the whole Bible."
The New Testament was written long after Jesus' supposed crucifixion. How could he ever have expressed confidence in "the whole Bible"? Keller is clearly getting a start on believing six impossible things before breakfast. (Maybe a Time Lord brought him a copy: "Here, someone wrote a book about you. What do you think?" "Not bad, but I've never met this Saul of Tarsus guy. Why's he preaching in my name? And... Holy crap, Judas?!?")
Also, my book club friend points out that Jesus specifically warned the Pharisees against taking the scriptures too seriously. That was one of his big things. Did Keller miss those bits?
p. 100. Keller describes several weak reasons to dispute the accuracy of Biblical stories (dwelling on The Da Vinci Code repeatedly throughout the chapter).
He fails to mention good reasons, such as Biblical accounts' lack of corroboration (Did nobody notice the Sermon on the Mount, or Herod's slaughter of all the young children of Bethlehem?), contradiction of the real world (Where's the geological and archaeological evidence of the Great Flood, and why wasn't most of humanity wiped out as the story claims? When and how did the Exodus happen?), extensive self-contradiction, and sheer implausibility.
p. 101. "Paul refers to a body of five hundred eyewitnesses who saw the risen Christ at once. You can't write that in a document designed for public reading unless there really were surviving witnesses whose testimony agreed and who could confirm what the author said."
You can't publish blatantly false things? Then explain Fox News.
p. 102. Regarding Jesus' death, Keller writes: "For a highly altered, fictionalized account of an event to take hold in the public imagination it is necessary that the eyewitnesses (and their children and grandchildren) all be long dead. They must be off the scene so they cannot contradict or debunk the embellishments and falsehoods of the story. The gospels were written far too soon for this to occur."
First, this assumes that the event happened at all. If there were no crucifixion, there would be no witnesses to contradict any details of its story. Second, falsified stories often "take hold in the public imagination" despite eyewitness reports and even more compelling evidence. (Again, see the debunked reports that still take hold in Fox News viewers.) Third, before the Information Age, people didn't have to be dead to be "off the scene". Without social media, how would witnesses from Jerusalem know that some self-proclaimed apostle was sending letters from Ephesus to Corinth? Even if someone happened to hear contradicting reports, they couldn't just check Snopes.
pp. 104-105. Keller argues that the church could not have made up the gospel stories, because some of the stories lack clear reasons for the church to make them up. "The only plausible reason that all of these incidents would be included in these accounts is that they actually happened."
Keller doesn't take into account that these stories may have been made up for reasons that he cannot think of, or for reasons that he would find perplexing even if he did know them. (What did anyone stand to gain by authoring the GoodTimes virus hoax? I can't imagine. But someone did.)
p. 105. "Also, why constantly depict the apostles -- the eventual leaders of the early Church -- as petty and jealous, almost impossibly slow-witted, and in the end as cowards who either actively or passively failed their master?"
Maybe because Paul bitterly disagreed with the apostles. Even his main man Barnabas took their side. What better revenge than to paint them as fools when his version of the religion beat out theirs?
pp. 106-107. Keller asserts that "the gospel accounts are not fiction" because they contain needless details, which is a hallmark of either nonfiction or modern fiction and is not found in ancient fiction such as Beowulf and The Iliad. He supports this by mentioning three needless details that appear in the gospels. "The only explanation for why an ancient writer would mention the cushion, the 153 fish, and the doodling in the dust is because the details had been retained in the eyewitnesses' memory."
This argument falls apart if you actually try reading the gospels. They do not read like eyewitness accounts, full of realistic details that stuck in the narrator's memory. Keller merely cited a few isolated exceptions. If you were to search The Iliad for details that similarly are not "relevant to the plot or character development at all," you could do the same thing. For example (found in just a few minutes), this feast following prayers to Apollo reads like a cookbook:
When they had done praying and sprinkling the barley-meal, they drew back the heads of the victims and killed and flayed them. They cut out the thigh-bones, wrapped them round in two layers of fat, set some pieces of raw meat on the top of them, and then Chryses laid them on the wood fire and poured wine over them, while the young men stood near him with five-pronged spits in their hands. When the thigh-bones were burned and they had tasted the inward meats, they cut the rest up small, put the pieces upon the spits, roasted them till they were done, and drew them off: then, when they had finished their work and the feast was ready, they ate it, and every man had his full share, so that all were satisfied.
pp. 110-111. Keller addresses objections to the socially regressive messages in the Bible. For example, the objection to the Bible's support of slavery, he says, overlooks the fact that first century Roman slavery was not bad at all, and we're just thinking of the horrors of American slavery.
Keller is at least correct in that imperial Roman slavery was preferable to American slavery. The first century C.E. was part of a time of transition from horrifyingly brutal slavery to merely unconscionably brutal slavery, and it was early in that transition. To make excuses for the Bible, Keller downplays this brutality to the point of misrepresentation. (For example, "... there was not a great difference between slaves and the average free person." Aside from getting beaten, raped, and killed by their masters, that is.)
p. 111. "To reject the Bible as regressive is to assume that you have now arrived at the ultimate historic moment, from which all that is regressive and progressive can be discerned. That belief is surely as narrow and exclusive as the views in the Bible you regard as offensive."
There is of course no such assumption. One merely has to understand what progress is, to be able to discern what is progressive and (much more easily) what is regressive. Perfection is not required. "Narrow and exclusive" is an incorrect and irrelevant accusation to bring here, and in any case does not mean "wrong". The objection here is based on the evils of promoting the mistreatment of people, which we as a society are trying to move past, despite the Bible holding us back, rather than based on exclusivity (which was the objection from chapter 1).
p. 112-113. Keller exhorts people who reject the Bible as culturally regressive to just stop thinking about it and accept the Bible. "If you say, 'I can't accept what the Bible says about gender roles,' you must keep in mind that Christians themselves differ over what some texts mean, as they do about many, many other things. However, they all confess in the words of the Apostle's Creed that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. Don't worry about gender roles until you figure out what you think about the central teachings of the faith."
Wow. He doesn't even bother to sidestep the issue this time; he just asks you to stop with your questions already. His advice can't address anyone's concerns: Not the unbelievers who care about Biblical misogyny (Are they going to shut up and believe just because he told them to?), and not even the hypothetical believer who has blindly accepted the Bible and (according to Keller's advice) is only now puzzling over the issue.
p. 113. "It is therefore important to consider the Bible's core claims about who Jesus is and whether he rose from the dead before you reject it for its less central and more controversial teachings."
So it's okay if the Bible's "less central and more controversial teachings" are wrong, because we can ignore that and just believe the bits about Jesus? This is horrible logic: Ignoring the problem of an unreliable Bible doesn't make the Bible reliable. Also, his argument completely dismisses his own assertion that the entire New Testament should be taken as literally correct -- the assertion that was the point of this whole chapter.
In response to this chapter, my book club friend points out that some Christians believe that the Bible has historical inaccuracies. They're still Christian. Also, the belief that the Bible was inspired by god does not require the belief that the Bible was written by god (and thus necessarily flawless).
Next week: Where we've gone, where we're going, and bad epistemolgy.
The whole series.
