pilgrim.not.wanderer

Here’s the second accusation the Battleground God quiz made of me:

“Earlier you said that it is justifiable to base one’s beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction. But now you do not accept that the rapist Peter Sutcliffe was justified in doing just that. The example of the rapist has exposed that you do not in fact agree that any belief is justified just because one is convinced of its truth. So you need to revise your opinion here. The intellectual sniper has scored a bull’s-eye!”

First, allow me to make a qualification which the quiz wasn’t built to handle.  If I were to formulate my actual position, in my own words, I would omit the “regardless of the external evidence” part.  But I would not omit the “lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction” part.

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(I’m talking about morality itself, not the possibility of moral behavior from those who don’t admit God.)

Consider America’s invasion of Iraq.  Here are some of its properties:

Combat began in March of 2003.

The chief architect of the battle plan was General so-and-so.

Such-and-such number of troops were involved.

Such-and-such number of civilians were killed.

It was (or wasn’t) launched under false pretenses by Bush administration.

It was (or wasn’t) officially sanctioned by the UN Security council according to resolution such-and-such.

We could continue to list very very many properties of this invasion.  Each of these would constitute a fact.  For a thing having a property constitutes a fact.  And so there are facts about the invasion.

But are there moral properties?  Moral facts?

If the invasion was wrong, that would be a moral fact.

If the invasion was right, that would be a moral fact.

So long as you believe in either of these, or in something in-between perhaps, then you believe in at least one moral fact–this one.

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I just played an online quiz called Battleground God.  It is basically a test to see if you can answer true or false style questions about God without contradicting yourself.  At the end it gives you a score and points out the mistakes you made.  Here’s one of the contradictions it accuses me of making:

“You claimed earlier that there is no basis for morality if God does not exist. But now you say that if God does exist, she cannot make what is sinful good and vice-versa. But if this is true, it means that God cannot be the basis of morality. If God were the basis of morality, then she could decide what is good and what is bad. The fact that you think that God cannot do this shows that things must be right or wrong independently of what God decides. In other words, God chooses what is right because it is right; things are not right just because God chooses them.”

Here’s my response:

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Here’s a short excerpt from Richard John Neuhaus’ comments on Stanley Fish’s commentary on Richard Dawkins & Co.

“Writings against God and religion have been around as long as God and religion have been around,” writes Fish. (Of course God and religion have been around ever so much longer than writing.) The objections that the current band of atheists “make against religious thinking are themselves part of religious thinking,” Fish writes. Their objections are “the very motor of that [religious] discourse, impelling the conflicted questioning of theologians and poets (not to mention Jesus, who cried, ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ and every verse of the Book of Job).” In other words, Hitchens et al. are posing the age-old questions of theodicy, except that, unlike poets, theologians, and other more reflective thinkers, they believe that posing the questions excuses them from wrestling with possible answers. Indeed, they believe that posing the questions is the answer: There is no God and anyone who thinks there is is dangerously deluded.

These atheists launch an all-out assault on faith, pitting faith against reason and evidence. Yet, as Fish notes, in their claim that “science” will eventually explain reality by their reductionist mode of reason, they typically employ the same vocabulary as believers—“hope,” “belief,” “undoubtedly,” “there will come a time.” In fact, they are believers who, says Fish, “exemplify the definition of faith found in Hebrews 11, ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’” (The best examination of how science necessarily entails faith is, for my money, Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge.)

I found this in a posting in a forum at Richard Dawkins’ website:

Open statement to all theists!: Unless you can prove otherwise, I hereby assert that I am the Lord almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. All words spoken by me are divine and unless you can prove that to be false, you are in no place to argue with me.

It is quoted at the end of each of a particular guy’s postings.

Wow. I must believe all assertions that I can’t prove false? Why? Give me one reason why!

What he really means (or ought to have meant) is that, unless he is in fact NOT divine, we are in no place to argue with him. Put another way, if he IS divine, we are in no place to argue with him. Broadly speaking, I’ll accept that. But his being divine seems wildly implausible to me. Then again, maybe he happens to find Jesus’ divinity wildly implausible. OK. Is that the end of the story?

Here’s how reasoning works in the real world: I can talk to you about some of the reasons why Christians have taken Jesus to be divine. And I suppose that if this guy wanted to he could talk about some of the reasons he takes himself to be divine. (Though my strong suspicion is that he doesn’t really take himself to be divine at all.) Then maybe we can talk about which kinds of reasons should count as good reasons. The point is that there is a really interesting discussion to be had. And that is what reasoning is all about.

I suppose that this guy thinks that Christians take the bible to be God’s Word simply because the bible says it is. In this way, he is attempting to do a “right back at ya” move.

But if this fellow sat down with a half decent theologian he’d find out that Christians receive the bible as from God for reasons that are much more interesting than this, and in ways that are fairly nuanced. (For example, the bible is NOT taken to be a magic book which fell from the sky directly from God. It is from humans too, not just from God.)