Not all Control Freaks live in China . . .

"You have to break a lot of eggs to
make an omelette."

This morning, Carson Weitnauer, a Christian who works with students on East Coast campuses, pointed out an article in the New York Times about the cruelty and now uselessness of China's one-child policy.  It described how millions of women were forced to have abortions, even at eight months, and treated with extreme savagery.  (As, of course, were the babies.)  It told of intrusive government checkups (a mild way to put it), and how women flee to remote, unsanitary barges to give birth away from the government's prying eye.  The article also referred to infanticide, which is often also carried out, skewing the sex ratio and (though they didn't point this out) leaving tens of millions of men without the chance to marry.  (China's future warriors, one might guess.) 

And yet all this has now apparently become unnecessary. The birth rate in China, as in most of East Asia and the world, has fallen dramatically, and is now well below replacement level. 

The callousness and fanaticism (also sheer stupidity) of some of the comments New York Times readers, liberal and no doubt mostly secular Americans and Canadians, concerned over "the Environment" (a god to which we must sacrifice our children, now) were almost as disheartening as the article itself.

Seven of the first 13 comments took that tone.  I've copied them here, with a slightly lengthened version of my reply, following. 

RTC: While I don't doubt the brutality of the Chinese regime, the awful fact is there are too many human beings on this planet. We have decimated the oceans and the land. We are destroying the very ecosystem that gives us life. The Chinese regime may be brutal but the disaster that looms on the horizon will be far worse. All the problems we face from climate change to energy to famine are problems of population. The population of Africa continues to increase even as more and more land turns to desert. I'm not sure what the answer is but shutting our eyes to the problem will lead to unimaginable suffering. Allowing the population of the planet to expand to 10 billion is inconceivably irresponsible. When I was born the human population was 1/3 what it is now. We have tripled in one lifetime. When I think about it it doesn't seem possible. The harsh reality is that we are no long a species sharing this world; we are a plague upon it.

LSB: Over population is the cause of most of the world's problems. China may have a barbaric answer to this problem, but is it any worse then the U.S. policy of attempting to deny birth control of any type. A policy that encourages women to have as many children as possible, most of whom will become throw away citizens, or cheap labor for the false god of never ending growth.

Rob: How many billion more people should china have? Should we have 500-600 million immigrate here to take off the pressure?

Steve: What effect has the Chinese policy had on world population? It seems likely that without the one child policy would we have an even steeper rise in world population.

The current population of seven billion seems to be straining the carrying capacity of the planet.
Based on this article, the policy has spawned abuses and unintended consequences.

Nevertheless, perhaps on balance it is a praise worthy effort to stem ecological disaster?
 BRNT: Some of the methods may have been cruel but I believe their one-child policy is good for China and good for the world. This world cannot support the rapid population growth we have.

Rob Sig: China is the only country in the world to act seriously to deal with population growth. Overpopulation is the single greatest problem on the planet, inextricably tied to all the other crises, such as climate change, water shortages, the decimation of wildlife. Gorillas, Orangutangs, chimpanzees, tigers, elephants, frogs, and hundreds of other species may all be extinct within our lifetime. Too many people! Not enough jobs? Too many people! Rising food prices? Too many people! Dwindling fossil fuels? Too many people! Atmospheric pollution, water pollution? Too many people! Immigration crises? Too many people! Perpetual traffic jams? Too many people! Destruction of our forests? etc.
It is way past time to make this the issue of our generation. Nations, wake up! And all you selfish people who want three or four children, think about the consequences of your actions for the planet. Soon the water wars will begin. And wait until a fracking accident ruins a water supply or two. With too many mouths to feed all of our problems will become unsolvable in a very near future.

SK: Yes we all have freedom to have children.

But we are now running over this earth. We are driving out other species.

Our activities are altering earth in incredible ways and may be calling earth's very survival as a livable place in question.
Having too many children is number one reason for poverty in the world..if we all had just one child - humans will still survive and thrive, earth will survive too.  Perhaps there should be a global one child policy...

Notable Skeptic: What is your recommendation for population control? Forced sterilization? People want to procreate. There are not enough resources for everyone to do so. Is it crueler to force an abortion or let a child starve?

Reply: Are the apocalyptic environmentalists not reading the article? The birth rate has fallen to well below replacement levels in China, now, as it has in every other neo-Confucian country. (And in much of the rest of the world.) Nor is "starvation" the alternative to forced abortions: China has a good chunk of our money, and is no longer a poor country.  The standard of living in China is rising rapidly, and would in no way be impeded if families were allowed the freedom to choose how many children to have -- as they were during the American industrial revolution, and as they were in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, during the same phases of development.  Letting people live their own lives, sometimes works out, folks! 

There is little danger of "famine" in China, now: there is a greater danger that the United States will go bankrupt, trying to service our debt. 

The one-child policy is no longer needed, if it ever was. It's cruelty and murder, for the sake of cruelty and murder: "a boot stamping on the face of (wo)man." As in other East Asian countries, as living standards improve, the environment is (belatedly) becoming a priority, and China is gaining the means to improve it.  If some Chinese parents want to have ten children, that is no skin off your backs, folks.

Nor are fossil fuels "dwindling:" in fact known stockpiles are now much larger than they were forty years ago, when Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb forecast the doom these posters still seem to be feverishly anticipating.  (And growing rapidly.)  Hasn't the Newspaper of Record told its readers about the oil booms in North Dakota, Colorado, West Texas, and Pennsylvania?  Citizens of the hippy communes never die: they just subscribe to the New York Times.  (Or write for it, as Karl Marx himself did.)

One poster does mention fracking, as if it were a terrible thing, rather than liberating us from debt and dependence on the whims of Middle Eastern tyrants who really do not seem to care about the environment. 

Water and air pollution are also much less severe than they were 40 years ago in the United States, and in much of the rest of the world.  Forests have come back.  There is no reason this shouldn't happen in China, too, as it has in other parts of Asia as life has improved. 

LSB (D?) seems to be imagining things.  Which US policy of "denying birth control of any time" is he or she talking about?  Some Americans do get upset when a "doctor" actively snuffs out the lives of newborn babies.  But near as I recall, it is still legal to sell condoms in American stores.  The battle now is over whether 30 year old college "kids" have the right to free birth control from their Catholic educational institutions. 

But most troubling of all, a few "liberal" posters seem to actually approve of the communists' policy of mass murder to control the "population."  (Meaning, people who are not me!) 

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. These were the people who cheered on Marxist tyrannies from the sidelines, using some of the same "end justifies the means, you have to break a lot of eggs to make an omelette" logic.  Feminists almost to a man (and certainly woman), they make excuses for Islam, and praise Mohammed, even while women are essentially imprisoned for life throughout much of the Muslim world.  Of course they come out for (imaginary) trees and frogs over (real) human beings!  Gotta keep them hoi polloi masses trampled underfoot.

Science vs. Religion?

From an Amazon conversation, rebutting the "Christianity has 30,000 sects" shibboleth, which pretends to be an argument:

DM: In the absence of a monopoly, ideological organizations will fragment and develop independently. That's true of secular humanist organizations (Elevator-gate, etc), Christian organizations, Buddhist organizations, etc. "

A Schuler:  It is indeed true for virtually all organizations and communities, including those of Humanists / Atheists / Freethinkers etc. It is not true however for the worldwide scientific community. Doesn´t it bother you a little that science has an objective way to settle disagreements while religion does not? If there is a God, who actually cared about humans and wants us to believe in him, don´t you think he would have provided a method for settling religious disputes?

DM: "Religion" and "science" are apples and oranges. One is (among other things) a conclusion people come to -- about God, the soul, who Jesus is, how one should act -- a whole bundle of beliefs and attitudes. The other is a particular way of finding particular kinds of things out. Therefore, science should be compared to math, law, history, gossip, Wikipedia, and other ways of finding things out. Worldviews -- yours and mine -- should be compared to one another.

Theist Argument from Cultural Transcendence (TACT): Does it Work?

In my last post, I described what I call TACT, the Theistic Argument from Cultural Transcendence:

(a) If an understanding of God transcends a particular culture, it is much more likely to be true than if it does not.

(b) The idea of God does, in fact, transcend the Abrahamic tradition from which monotheism is often said to have arisen. It can, in fact, be found in many highly scattered and diverse cultures, where it must have arisen independently.

 (c) Therefore God is much more likely to be real than religious ideas that are limitted to one particular culture, or flow out from one localized source.

I have made this argument before, beginning in 2000 in Jesus and the Religions of Man, and most recently this February in a debate with Richard Carrier.  In my last post, I analyzed Dr. Hector Avalos' long critique of the argument, and various negative comments he made (again) against my scholarship and against Christian missions, and found them almost entirely without foundation.  In fact, I argued that many of the points he brought up actually help strengthen the argument. 

Which is promising, but does not of course mean that TACT really works. 

So does it?

Towards the end of his post, Avalos made objections that I have not considered yet.  Let's look at those objections, then others that come to mind, or have been offered by other TACT-less critics.  And then let's consider what might or might not lend TACT weight, and how much weight it should be lent, if any. 

From Avalos:

(1) Multiple cultures, or even all cultures, having similar concepts of God does not demonstrate the perception of some transcendent reality. Even if all cultures in the world had a concept of a Supreme Being, that would not constitute proof of the existence of God or the reasonableness of Christianitity.

Cultures are human products, and so all it would show is that human beings generate similar responses to the needs that they share. A Supreme Being, for example, could be expected in almost any culture that has a hierarchical or patriarchal organization where rank is recognized. Ranking is a human activity and proves nothing about a supernatural origin.

The first paragraph is mere assertion.

The second misses the force of the argument. Avalos assumes a relationship between type of culture and theism that in fact, TACT discredits.  As shown by the examples given in Jesus and the Religions of Man, or elsewhere, a strong and fairly consistent concept of God seems to be present in the following kinds of cultures:

* Many of the most libertarian hunter-gatherer cultures, in much of Africa, large swaths of Australia, parts of the Americas, and among many tribes inhabiting the jungled mountains of Southeast Asia.

* In the Pacific islands. 

* Among many herding societies, as the anthropologist Marvin Harris, an extreme opponent of Christianity and of Wilhelm Schmidt, admitted.

* In settled agrarian civilizations, like Korea and China.

* Among philosophers of the Greek city-states.

* The concept has also settled well in modern Western society, including highly egalitarian and democratic societies like the United States, from Constantine to the present.

So Avalos' explanation is no explanation at all. Instead, it increases the mystery, from a skeptical point of view. Why does God transcend not just different cultures, but different kinds of culture?  (As I put it in the debate with Dr. Carrier.) 

Avalos' final shot on this subject runs as follows:

(2) In addition, Stephen T. Asma argues that polytheism and animism have the longest and most widespread presence in human cultures. So, perhaps Marshall may need to admit that polytheists and animists are perceiving some transcendental reality the best.

Sure. They're perceiving the reality of the spirit world. Spirits really do exist. People do seem to have souls. 

But again, there is an important empirical difference between God (a specific person) and the gods (a vague general category). As Durkheim pointed out, if the character of specific entities varies according to culture, that gives us little reason to believe in those entities. It is the fact that the particular person God is "invented" or "discovered" hundreds of times across the world, and that each time a long list of similar characteristics acrues to him, that makes this argument succeed.

Here are six levels on which it seems to work:

(1) First, there is the simple level of the analysis by Durkheim, Dawkins, Dennett, and Carrier.  (Sounds like a law firm!)  If God does not transcend particular cultures, he is less likely to be real.  This demonstrates the converse: if God does transcend particular cultures, he is more likely to be real. 

Someone objected to this argument on the grounds that it commits the genetic fallacy, falsely assuming that the origin of an idea determines its validity. 

Well, this issue is complex, but sometimes the origin of an idea is highly relevant to its plausibility.

Suppose you are in radio communication with different tribes on a planet too far away to tell if the planet has any natural satellites. You find out that the people dwell separately on 100 islands, separated by waters so rough they cannot cross them, speak different languages, and cannot communicate.  (They just obtained radios by a US government "Welfare for Aliens" grant, from a passing space ship.)  Suppose each tribe reported something different about the planet's satellites -- it has no moon, it has 50 moons, the moon is round, the moon is shaped like a donut, it's green, it's red, it's almost invisible, it fills half the sky. You might conclude that you know nothing sure about the planet's moons -- whether because of clouds, or the inhabitants are blind, or they are all inveterate liars.

Suppose, however, than half the tribes give very similiar but not exactly equal reports. The planet has two moons: one big, round, yellow, and smooth, the other small, reddish, elongated with large craters on the surface.  (Though a few reports say one, and different precise hues are named.)

The other tribes give mixed and inconsistent reports, as in the first scenario. 

In both cases, you're relying entirely on reports from people you don't know. But I think it's reasonable to believe what the second set of reports agree upon, even if you only find the first set confusing.  You might suppose that those tribes which fail to report on the planet's two moons, live in areas subject to heavy cloud cover, or are run by paranoid North Korea type regimes and think you are planning an invasion from their planet's moon.  (Or perhaps they were also given copies of Avatar by the passing space ship dubbed in local languages.)  So they don't want you to know what their moons are like, and are shining you shamelessly.

(2) Second, there is Avalos' own implicit argument.  If God does not transcend particular KINDS of cultures, "patriarchal" and all that, Avalos seems to imply that He is less likely to be real.  From which it follows, since God DOES transcend particular kinds of culture, He is more likely to be real.

The point here is that religion is supposed, as above, to be the product of social evolution.  From which it follows (and this is a very old idea) religions will reflect the character of the tribes in which they arise.  The Chinese Heaven will be bureaucratic.  (As indeed it is, say in Journey to the West.)  The Greek Olympus will be crowded with quarreling, skirt-chasing gods (as in the Iliad).  Amazon tribes will worship a jaguar, and North American tribes, a coyote. 

So an idea of God that arises in many different kinds of culture, with all the variety of human political systems, is more likely to be true than theologies that can be explained by peculiar social systems. 

(3) Third, there is the simple predictive element.  St. Paul predicts that God will transcend cultures.  David Hume strongly denies it.  Paul is right, Hume (despite the advantage of 1700 years) is wrong. 

This is startling, especially when you consider Hume's brilliance, as well as his knowledge of a wider spectrum of human cultures. 

(4) Fourth, there is the complex predictive element.  St. Paul predicts that while God will be widely known, he will also be widely denied, and idolatry and worship of "the creature" will be practiced.  Paul saw that all around him, but he had no way of knowing it would also be true in South America and Mongolia. 

Let's return to our Island Planet analogy.  Suppose your astronomer friends predict, given the planet's aquatic habitat, that the sky will only be clearly visible from about half the planet, with clouds almost permanently obscuring the heavens the rest of the time.  Suppose they also tell you that if the planet has a moon, it will be in tidal lock with the planet.  So even when the moon is visible, through obscuring vapors, from some angles it might appear through a sunset glow, which is deep crimson on that planet, and will be elongated by atmospheric refraction.  (That being the only time of year that the vapors clear.)  Furthermore, the moon will be invisible from much of the planet, but an asteroid belt might be visible for creatures with eagle eyes.  And not having seen a "moon," people speaking their language naturally use the word for "asteroid" that you mistake as meaning "moon." 

Paul's anthropology similarly seems to predict, not just "God" simply, but a common but obscured and often twisted concept of God, along with lesser beings that may be mistaken for him.  This greater detail in prediction thus renders the Christian model of religions not weaker, but far stronger, evidence for the truth of Christian anthropology. 

(5) Fifth, there is the fact that God is seen as transcending particular cultures, even by those within those transcended cultures.  Durkheim admits that Australian tribes recognized "God" as belonging to more than just their own tribes.  Readers of the Chinese Classics and oracle bones find evidence for this in ancient China as well.  (I will not stop to give quotes right now.) 

(6) Sixth (and here things get really scary for skeptics), there is Don Richardson's observation that the "God" of pagan cultures often seems to prepare his believers to welcome the Good News of Jesus Christ. (He relates the story in Eternity in Their Hearts.)  

I have also given examples, including in True Son of Heaven and in Jesus and the Religions of Man -- examining one closely in my doctoral thesis. 


Further objections

A. But really, your argument would seem to cover any eventuality.  "God" is present in many cultures -- but often not quite the same as Yahweh.  And then often he is not present in other cultures, and you explain that, too.  The argument seems slippery and unfalsifiable.

Answer: Well, actually, the characteristics of "God" as John Mbiti, Lamin Sanneh and others describe him in Africa, Paul Radin describes him in North America, Lang, Durkheim and others in Australia, and as He appears in the Chinese Classics, are strikingly similiar.  And it is clear that both Christianity and Islam spread rapidly around the world, because people in diverse cultures found theism credible, often because they already had such a concept, in other cases because it struck them as intuitively credible. 

It is possible a priori that awareness of God would have been found nowhere else, as David Hume and many others believed was the case.  It is possible that thousands of tribes would prove to have no religious beliefs whatsoever.  Or that they would worship just ghosts, or totems, or ancestors, or physical objects, as various theories have posited. 

It is remarkable that Paul got so much right, that modern anthropologists so often got wrong. 


B. But what if the human brain is hardwired by evolution to believe in God? (As some have recently argued, for instance Freud, Pascal Boyer, Daniel Dennett, etc.) Wouldn't that explain the data, without recourse to belief in an ontological real Spaghetti Monster?

Answer: That might explain 1 and 2. It does not explain 3-6. Why did Paul figure human nature out so early, and the New Atheists so late? (Especially given the fact that Richard Dawkins says that no book written before 1859 has anything of value to tell us about human nature!) Why does God so often seem to work within "pagan" cultures to prepare them for the Good News of Jesus?

I don't really think it explains 1 or 2, either. See, for instance, my Amazon reviews of books on the origin of religion by these theorists.


C. What about Radin's theory that intellectuals in many tribes reason to God? 

That, too, would seem to cover some instances -- the Greek philosophers as well as Radin's Native Americans, for instance.  But of course, the fact that people independently reason to the same fact, does nothing to make that fact less credible.  We may assume that because we know science better than the ancients, we can look down our noses now at their arguments.  But Plantinga shows, I think, that intuitive reasoning should in this case be respected, even if evolution happens to be true. 

Plus, one still has to deal with 3, 4, and possibly 6. 

The simplest explanation is that St. Paul was onto something about human nature, the nature of reality, and probably the transcendent and imminent reality of God. 

However, my conclusion is relative, not absolute or specified in terms of probability. I claim that theism is therefore "much more likely" to be true than particular religious beliefs that do not meet these criteria. How likely that is, I cannot say. Certainly, this argument is best used in combination with other arguments for Christianity.  Used in that way, I think it should be helpful for those who are sincerely seeking God. 

Avalos attacks TACT (and me, and, yes, Christianity)

Beginning in 2000, in Jesus and the Religions of Man, I have offered an argument for God that we might call the Theistic Argument from Cultural Transcendence (TACT). 


The Altar of Heaven in Beijing, where the emperor came to
worship "Huang Tian Shangdi," a strong theistic term used
in the Classics. (My photo, 1984.)

The gist of the argument is that (a) if an understanding of God transcends a particular culture, it is much more likely to be true than if it does not.  (b) The idea of God does, in fact, transcend the Abrahamic tradition from which monotheism is often said to have arisen.  It can, in fact, be found in many highly scattered and diverse cultures, where it must have arisen independently.  (c) Therefore God is much more likely to be real than religious ideas that are limitted to one particular culture, or flow out from one localized source. 

One of my arguments was that even some well-known atheists admit the first premise of this argument -- when they think it will hurt Christianity.  I cited Emile Durkheim in paricular, who admits that a concept of God closely resembling the Christian concept can be widely found in Australia, even though on another page, he uses the first premise of TACT to argue against religion.   Several years later, in The Truth Behind the New Atheism, I cited Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who also argued against religion based on the first premise of TACT. 

This February, William Lane Craig having monopolized so many other good arguments for theism, I thought I'd take this one out for a spin in public debate with Richard Carrier. 

In the heat of the moment, Richard Carrier didn't offer much of a response to TACT, which was the second argument in my opening statement.  Now Iowa State Religious Studies professor Hector Avalos has posted an article rebutting my argument.  Avalos, who has studied anthropology and finds mine grossly defective, if not dishonest, is prepared to show where TACT falls flat, and where I fail miserably as a scholar. 

Perspectives: Dragon Mountain Temple

On a pillar outside Dragon Mountain Temple.  The words in red read, "Stability to the nation and peace
to the people."  Since at least the Tang Dynasty, all new faiths that come to China, from Buddhism
to Nestorian Christianity to Marxism, have appealed to these sentiments, justifiably or not.

One of the dragons at Dragon Mountain Temple, in the Wan Hua district of Taipei, Taiwan.  This is the heart of the district, with a subway stop across the road, now.  The temple, in which the chief deity is as a recall the bodhisattva Guan Yin, is older than the United States.  You smell loftus flowers and incense, hear chanting and epic dramas played live, and watch the crowds come to sacrifice to the chief deities -- it's a strange combination of noise and peace.  The neighborhood is also called "Snake Alley," for another kind of serpent one can find a block over.  Snake blood was considered an aphrodesiac, mixed with alcohol, and drunk before visiting the many prostitutes that used to work in the neighborhood -- and still do, though they look older than they used to.  Here's a scene I described in True Son of Heaven, many years ago -- some things have changed.

"It was a raid.  The police swooped down with lightening speed on Taipei's most infamous criminal district, Snake Alley.

The police came on a mission of mercy.  They came to free young victims of a vicious trade in flesh, who had been treated without a trace of human decency. 

The snakes, that is.  Some were endangered species. 

Brothel owners had little to worry about, even with a police station just a block away.  For one thing, many of them were retired police.  The rest, as one later told me, sent little red envelopes each month to friends in the station.

Nor did fear of the gods restrain them.  The gods, too seemed on the side of the oppressing classes.  Mafia gangs in Taiwan form around Taoist temples.

Dragon Mountain temple, the Buddhist place of worship on the same block as the police station, also got a cut.  Guan Yin (the goddess of mercy) has been worshipped there for a hundred years without disturbing business. She reached a thousand arms out to the brothels, one for each girl in that district, and drew back . . . cash."

Atheists damn The Truth Behind the New Atheism!

OK, so we did the outliers -- or should we call them, the out-truthers, those few and proud atheists who have read The Truth Behind the New Atheism and have been willing to admit that yes, it is a pretty decent read.

But being something of an out-truther myself, I have to report, and I know this will shock you, that a majority of on-line reviews from writers who really dislike Christianity have given the book a decided "thumbs down."

And some of those skeptics don't like me, either.  I have been wished into the belly of a long, water-dwelling South American serpent.  I have been wished to hell.  Often enough, along with my fellow "apologists," (not a word that much resonates with me -- I prefer titles like "cross-country skiier," "grower of succulent grapes," "John and James' Dad," even "history buff," if you will -- and in my heart of hearts, "lover of truth") -- I often hear myself called a "liar." 

Yes, it is tedious.  When someone starts calling you that (unless you really happen to be a liar, then one must make do), it's probably time to pull up tent stakes and find new grazing ground.  That's what I did a few weeks ago when John Loftus, after years of relative civility, dropped the "l" word on me.  His running dogs over at Deconstructing Christianity strain at a tattered leash, and when the big L drops the little l, it has much the same effect as Montgomery Burns saying "Loose the hounds!"  You know they won't listen to reason anymore, if they ever did. 

"Liar" is, for many New Atheists, a defense against genuine thinking, as is most ad hominem.  If you demean a person, you don't need to really consider her arguments.  A word can be a lazy man's border security system. 

A couple days ago, I discovered a month-and-a-half old thread on Amazon entitled, "David Marshall and Lying for Jesus."  The thread had more than 200 posts. 

Atheists praise The Truth Behind New Atheism!

The Amazon site for my book, The Truth Behind the New Atheism, has been dominated by atheists almost from Day One.  While a number of very thoughtful (and positive, though that's not the only thing that makes them thoughtful!) reviews have been posted there by intelligent and well-read Christians, hoards of crusading "skeptics" have voted those excellent reviews down.  In the Amazon system, that means people won't see them. (See especially the reviews by William Muehlenberg, Clifford Martin, Sol Lobbes, Rick Thiessen, and Benjamin Devan.  Bruce Bain, a dedicated Amazon contributor, gets in some good points in his quirky way, too.  Please vote up the ones you like, even if it's a bit late, now!)

About a third of the reviews are negative.  These are all by people who are ideologically opposed to Christianity, and (in a few cases) have a personal grudge against the author.  (Two or three of the one-star reviews are actually by the same person, a lawyer from San Diego who uses various "sock puppets" to attack me -- a dozen or so of his reviews have already been removed by Amazon.)  I'm glad to say, no one who wasn't ideologically opposed, has yet claimed the book is a bad read.  There was a Young Earth creationist from Northern Ireland who gave the book three stars, but he removed his review.  Other than my mistaken notion that the universe is old, he seemed pretty cool with the book, anyway. 

But here I'd like to focus on those few reviewers on either side who "cross the picket line," so to speak, and review Truth Behind the New Atheism against their ideological interests. 

Old School Lies: Religion and Environment

Here's a propaganda flick I showed in a high school class earlier this school year, as part of the assigned classwork in a science or history class -- I forget which -- in which I was subbing.  This is interesting for a few reasons.  First, I was surprised this film would still be shown in public schools -- if anything, it shows how dramatically the environmentalist line has changed over the past 20 years.  Second, I was shocked to hear Paul Ehrlich seriously quoted as an authority on population -- whom I read as apocalyptic literature, as a young man, and took seriously -- and whose prophesies failed miserably, to put it mildly.  Third, the shoddiness and shamelessly one-sided character of this propaganda flick -- from CNN, which is supposed to be "down the middle" -- still takes my breath away. 

 

Lap it up, 16 year olds!  Memorize yesteryear's liberal propaganda.  If the details have changed a bit -- if we're at war with Eastasia and not Eurasia this year -- well, no need to rewrite history, when you're "learning" it for the first time! 

Howard Zinn, the Boston Bombers, and school propaganda.

I remember subbing in a local middle school, and noticing student papers on the wall of a classroom
 entitled, "The Life of Mohammed."  Looking the reports over, I found them universally flattering of the prophet, and not terribly accurate historically.  Why, I wondered, were students in a state school being asked to write hagiographies of the founder of Islam?  Is parroting sectarian propaganda -- and foreign propaganda, at that -- how we are supposed to learn history?

A couple years later, reading the history text used both in middle and high school in our school district, I discovered the probable source of this propaganda.  The text book, which I plan to analyze in some detail in a later post, included several chapters lauding Islam, and making excuses for the crimes of Mohammed -- or rather ignoring them.  The man sounded like a model citizen, a liberal gentleman.  No mention was made of his murder of 700 Jewish men in Medina, attacks on neighboring tribes, enslavement of those he conquered, assassinations or torture of enemies, or the fact that he consumated marriage (at over 50) to a nine year old girl. 

In short, our children were being systematically lied to about history. 

Jason Pratt's Interview I: The Gnostics

Jason Pratt recently reminded me of this old interview we did six years ago, the first part being about The Truth About Jesus and the “Lost Gospels”.  Since the books we're talking about -- the gospels and their alleged Gnostic competitors -- are thousands of years older even than the interview, and since the issues they raise remain with us, I asked Jason if I could reproduce our conversation here.  He kindly agreed.  Here is the first half.  The second part of the interview is about The New Atheism.-- David

JP: Not all the alternative gospels which we know about are Gnostic, though many of them are. But your work in this book seems to focus on the Gnostic Gospels. Is that because the people you're responding to tend to focus on the Gnostic Gospels? If so, is there some indication, from what they themselves talk about, as to why they focus there and not with other alt-gospels?

DM: As I argue, the Gnostics are used to undermine Christianity in two ways. First, some people actually take them seriously for what they say about Jesus -- people like Dan Brown, or at least a few of his fans, or people who have been watching The Matrix too long. The ultimate act of rebellion may be to buy into basic Gnostic myth -- God as an evil creator, the material world as essentially deceptive and second-rate, Jesus as an enlightened spirit-being who didn't die on the cross. It's a kind of neo-Promethianism for a post-Marxist culture.

But more common is the Elaine Pagels / Bart Ehrman / Jesus Seminar school of deconstructionism.

These folks don't think the Gnostics are telling the truth about history, but use them as an ally to undermine Christianity. They say, "orthodox" early Christians, or "proto-orthodox" Christians, were just one school out of many, and no more legitimate than all the rest. This feeds into the modern democratic feeling, the idea of relativism and equality and the post-modern love of "plural narratives." Hard-nosed Christians were to blame for trying to force one version of Christianity down everyone's throat.

I call this story line "neo-Gnosticism," and it's a primary goal of my book to describe and disprove it.

Other, non-Gnostic "alternative gospels" may be less useful for this form of attack. Too innocuous, I guess, or too orthodox.

JP: Of the known non-canonical works connected to Christianity (both orthodox and otherwise), only a minority (though a sizeable minority) are called gospels at all. Do the scholars you're responding to, even when they focus on Gnostic work, try to make use of any alternative not-gospels? (Alternative Acts, Epistles, Apocalypses, etc.)

DM: The term "gospel" here is problematic. I argue that no real gospels, in any real sense of the term, aside from the four that begin the New Testament, have ever been found. [JPNote: David spends much of Why the Jesus Seminar Can't Find Jesus... analyzing the four canonical texts and a wide selection of other ancient texts, using an innovative genre classification method.] Thomas is not a "gospel." It is a collection of 114 metaphysical sayings, less than half of which were borrowed loosely from the New Testament.

Most of the Nag Hammadi library consists of Gnostic works that aren't even called gospels. So in that sense, the answer would be "yes." But Pagels and her fellows also try to read Gnostic views into the other parts of the New Testament. I've seen it attempted with Paul. And of course lots of people see shadows or echoes of the Gnostics in John, and he wrote more than a gospel. There's lots about "light" and "darkness" in his letters and in The Revelation, which also resonates in these circles.

JP: Readers of press-releases, articles and books from these alternate-gospel proponents, frequently receive the impression that by appealing to these texts we're more likely to find a human Jesus whom we can better relate to, instead of the highly mythologized divine-man of the canonical four. (Not even counting things like the canonical RevJohn!) How much substance is there to this appeal?

DM: There is such a thing as a negative infinite, isn't there? Sorry if that sounds like childish hyperbole, but this popular caricature is the exact opposite of the truth. What's grossly obvious about the Gnostic texts -- and I assume that's what you're referring to -- is that they not only didn't care about the "historical Jesus," the humanity of Jesus, but that they despised the whole concept of flesh and blood -- even for us humans, let alone for anyone divine. This is why, in the "Gospel" of Judas, Jesus laughs at the "stunt double" who dies on the cross in his place. Mortal existence is "dead creation," the "bond of flesh," the "lowest region of all matter."

By sharp contrast (and contrasts don't get much sharper), the Jesus of the real gospels -- and that's the only word for them -- is indeed "flesh and blood." The divine puts on humanity in a way that makes it only that much more human. Jesus is frustrated, tired, angry, delighted, amazed, sad. He hurts when you kick him. He bleeds when you cut him. He eats fish, even after he's risen from the dead. Jesus is infinitely more human than the phony action figures, pompous windbags, and vague legends that scholars sometimes compare to Jesus, in a desperate attempt to plug gaps in the universe.

Jesus is presented as divine in the gospels, for sure. But his divinity shines through his humanity, somehow. Reading skeptics' attempts to find parallels, only makes me feel the extraordinary uniqueness of this accomplishment more intensely. There is no one like Jesus in world literature.

JP: So, the Jesus of the Gnostic Gospels actually tends to be more 'divine' than 'human'.

DM: Yes, absolutely.

JP: 'Divine' in what way?

DM: Certainly not in the sense of "sweet" (as with "divinity," the candy). I point out that the Jesus of the Gnostics seemed to have a positive aversion to niceness, like a muddy boy to hot showers. So there is nothing in this "Jesus" that reminds one of the character of God -- nothing "divine" in that sense.

Spooky, ephemeral, ghostly -- those might be better adjectives.

JP: So, if the Jesus of these Gnostic gospels is actually more 'divine' than 'human' in some way, is there any indication among the proponents of those texts for why they'd even want to be focusing on them?! One might have supposed that such radical sceptics would be staying even further clear of such texts than of the canonical texts!

DM: I think part of the answer is that the texts are considered less positively useful in themselves, than useful in trying to undermine 'orthodox' Christian faith! Of course, I'm not saying there are no admirable or praise-worthy qualities in the Gnostic Jesus. He gets in some good lines. There are a few Zen-like aphorisms that titillate certain Starbucks-related regions of the brain... The best for that might be Gospel of Thomas, Thunder, Perfect Mind and (off the top of my head) Mary.

JP: Now that I think of it, would you consider giving a comparison of the Gnostic gospels to RevJohn? The style of the two sets is often much closer to one another than the style of the Gnostic documents to any of the canonical gospels. If we decide to compare Jesuses even then, though, what similarities/differences will we find?

DM: That's more of a project than I should take on right now -- but an interesting question. Pagels wrote a book comparing the Gospel of John to Thomas, and while her idea that Thomas came first is absurd, there are some stylistic or rhetorical similarities. And the Gnostics were fond of apocalypse and psychedelic imagery.

Were the Gnostics inspired by John? Was John inspired by some neo-Gnostic writer that he got hold of? Did the editor who put John together -- his disciple, apparently -- want to send a message to an unorthodox alternative school? The Gnostics did seem to like John a lot -- I don't know if that's a fault on his part or not. He's quoted and parodied extensively, and not just by the Gnostics, of course.

But there is no trace of the Jesus we find in the narrative parts of the Gospel of John in any of the Nag Hammadi literature. Here is a Savior of flesh and blood: he shows emotion, eats, sweats, bleeds. In some ways, the Jesus of John is even further removed from Gnostic thinking than the Jesus of the other gospels. And Revelations seems to me a continuation of that. Very earthy, within his mysticism. That's the remarkable combination.

JP: When these scholars are trying to make a case for these alternate gospels (and similar texts) being appealed to instead of the canon, do they proceed by arguing about how much more reliable these other texts are than the canon?

DM: No, never. Almost always when the subject is forced on them, they admit that the Gnostic texts are NOT reliable. I give several examples. The trick -- and it is a trick, a shell game -- is to make their readers transfer this skepticism to the real gospels. So in a book of 200 pages, someone like Karen King will admit once, in one phrase, that the Gospel of Mary is not historical. But you'll find dark insinuations about the real gospels all over the place.

The worst in this regard may be Marvin Meyer, whose books on the Gnostics fill secular book stores. He will be quite naïve and welcoming to the ridiculous idea that the Islamic "Jesus sayings" contain useful new historical material from Jesus himself -- these are texts most of a millennia after the time of Christ -- then turn around and try to undermine the historicity of the gospels themselves.

Real scholars, apart from a few very nutty ones -- and I think even Meyer may be faking it -- all know the Gnostics have little or probably nothing to tell us about the historical Jesus. The game is to trick our eyes off that question. Prod one text up, push the other one down, throw up a bunch of rhetoric about "narratives" and "oppressive authority structures" out into the gabosphere, and hope people will forget about such silly little questions as historical truth and moral value. That's how I see it when I'm feeling cynical, anyway.

Grayling on the Grill II: an overall critique.

I just posted the following critical review of philosopher A. C. Grayling's new book, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, on Amazon.  Judging by blowback to date for critical comments of Grayling there, despite Grayling's talk about listening carefully and living with magnanimity, I don't expect too much love from this admittedly harsh (but detailed) review.  We'll see if anyone addresses my arguments. 

I will probably also focus on specific claims Grayling makes (or assumes) in later posts.  (See here for my initial impressions, which turned out to be precient.  Although Grayling does define "religion," his definition does indeed turn out tendendious.)

If you like or dislike the review, feel free to express your thoughts here, or on Amazon, where voting gives other readers a chance to see a useful review, or you can consign one soundly to the rubbish bin of history.   

(For a more sympathetic critical review, read what Keith Ward makes of this "bad argument.")

Grayling on the Grill: Inauspicious Beginnings

A. C. Grayling

Since The Truth Behind the New Atheism came  out in 2007, I have sometimes noted that practically the only skeptics who seem able to argue well for the Gnu position all seem to have philosophical training.  Philosophers come in all shapes and sizes, also in temperament and worldview, but generally know how to think critically, make distinctions, follow a logical argument (and recognize when an argument is not logical), and even occasionally separate argument from ego, and admit to errors. 

For this reason, I had some hope for A. C. Grayling's The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism. 

Now I've read the first 200 words or so, and am feeling my first qualms.