On the surface my exchanges with John Loftus might look like abortive attempts at dialogue. But actually if you take the time to pull the pieces together a revealing exchange comes to the surface. I have compiled the back and forth of our conversation on one particular issue here which focused on my attempt to help John articulate the source of his skepticism about the historical development of Christian belief. We join the conversation in progress with me responding to John’s statement that ” I have lived long enough to see that Christian theology changes with the times….” I replied:
“This is news to you? Seriously? I mean, could you state a more blushingly obvious truism? Paul interpreted Christianity in dialogue with the Stoics. Origen interpreted it in dialogue with the middle Platonists, Augustine with the neoplatonists, Aquinas with the Aristotelians, Schleiermacher with the Romanticists, Barth with the existentialists, Maquarrie with the Heideggarians. And that’s simply to note one avenue of philosophical engagement to say nothing of modern scientific and broader cultural engagement.
“Of course any worldview is only sustained because it is in dialogue with various knowledge discourses in its midst. The same is true of atheistic naturalism which has been morphing over the centuries from its early flickerings in Democritus and Lucretius to its modern and contemporary defenders like W.V. Quine, Wilfred Sellars and David Papineau.
“Does the fact that atheistic naturalism have a history trouble you?”
So here is the issue: John rejects Christianity as a worldview in part because it has developed and changed over time. But atheistic naturalism as a worldview has also developed and changed over time. So wouldn’t that present a defeater for atheistic naturalism as well?
John replied:
“No, not at all, because I do not claim there is a divine mind behind this evolutionary trajectory.” (emphasis added)
Ahh, so John’s claim is that the historical development of the Christian worldview is a special problem because Christianity purports to have a set of truth claims that came from a “divine mind”.
Unfortunately that hardly yielded much clarity so I responded:
“You seem to be assuming that if there is a God he would not reveal himself in such a way that his followers would bring that revelation into meaningful dialogue with the evolving Wissenschaft and Zeitgeist. Why would you think such a thing?”
Rather than answer the question John opted instead to start waving his arms and spouting off:
“Round and round here we go. Where it stops nobody knows.
“Randal, from your studies perhaps you can describe “meaningful dialogue.” Does it mean the denial of what the earliest Christians believed? Do you really think we can ascertain what they believed? Do you think that you now believe what they did? Do you think that if you have deviated from what they believed that this would be okay with them? Do you think your God could have communicated more clearly or not, and if not why not? Is your God good? Is he omniscient, is he all-powerful? Then why so much confusion, the very thing the apostle Paul said he isn’t the author of?”
This is a particularly lowbrow debating tactic called “changing the topic.” It is really important in moments like this to keep your interlocutor on topic and so I replied:
“Please don’t ignore my question. Let me restate it for you: You seem to be assuming that if there is a God he would not reveal himself in such a way that his followers would bring that revelation into meaningful dialogue with the evolving Wissenschaft and Zeitgeist. Why would you think such a thing?”
Finally John offered a direct response:
“Randal, and you assume that a theology that is indistinguishable from human evolving thoughts is a divine revelation despite the facts.”
At long last, it appears that we are closing in on the reason that John thinks the historical development of the Christian worldview constitutes a problem (or a defeater) for the truth of Christianity whereas the historical development of the atheistic naturalistic worldview does not constitute a problem (or a defeater) for atheistic naturalism. I reply:
“Wait a minute. Are you attempting to provide a defeater? Care to formalize it so it can be analyzed critically?
John then offered an ad hominem attack and with it his formal argument. (Please note that I added numbers to the three propositions in his argument for the sake of clarity and reference):
All you care about is playing games Randal. You look for loopholes and there will always be loopholes for faith. Your faith is based on them. But here goes:
(1) A revealed faith in an omniscient foreknowing omnibenelovent God that is indistinguishable from the evolution of human thought that does not take into consideration how that revelation would be misunderstood such that the results would be devastating for millions of people, is probably not true.
(2) Christianity is a revealed faith in an omniscient foreknowing omnibenelovent God that is indistinguishable from the evolution of human thought that does not take into consideration how that revelation would be misunderstood such that the results would be devastating for millions of people.
(3) Therefore, Christianity is probably not true.
Whoa, boy, take a look at (1)! My English teacher would have bloodied my knuckles with a ruler if I ever tried to write something as turgid and opaque as that. Tortured sentences like this are, not surprisingly, typically very hard to understand. And this one is no exception to that rule.
Initially I thought about venturing to interpret what it might mean. But then I decided the safer response would be to ask John what he means by it. So I replied:
“Okay I’ve read your argument several times and I am unable to make much sense of your first premiss. Here’s what you write:
“A revealed faith in an omniscient foreknowing omnibenelovent God that is indistinguishable from the evolution of human thought that does not take into consideration how that revelation would be misunderstood such that the results would be devastating for millions of people, is probably not true.”
“It seems to me that you’re conflating a couple distinct ideas here, but I don’t want to attempt to interpret what you’re saying, lest I incur the wrath of Loftus, so would you mind rephrasing the first premiss and by doing so bringing out more clearly the intuition(s) on which it rests?”
Much to my disappointment, John refused to explain what he meant here. Instead, he said this:
“Randal, try this time. Try. Go ahead, try. I’m very interested to see if you will even try.”
Did you catch that? I asked for an argument. John responds with obtuse gobbledygook. I ask him what he means. He replies by challenging me to try and figure it out.
Let’s use this unfortunate situation as an opportunity to mull over the elements of a good argument.
John was apparently aiming in his formulation for the virtue of validity. That is, he was concerned to ensure that the conclusion followed from the premises. That’s a great goal. However, that seems to be about his only concern. He forgot the second and third desiderata: arguments should have premises that are clear and concise (at least with as much clarity and concision as is possible). If the premises of an argument are opaque it hardly matters that the form is valid!
There is a fourth desideratum as well: the argument must have plausibly true premises. Needless to say if an argument has opaque premises, as John’s does, you can’t even begin to evaluate the plausiblity of the premises.
So John’s argument lacks two essential desiderata (clarity and plausiblity) and a third desirable one (concision).
Let’s see if we can deal with that opacity that John asked us to address. We’ll start by restating the first premise:
(1) A revealed faith in an omniscient foreknowing omnibenelovent God that is indistinguishable from the evolution of human thought that does not take into consideration how that revelation would be misunderstood such that the results would be devastating for millions of people, is probably not true.
As I said above, I think there are a couple thoughts here. I’m going to venture that they are as follows:
Thought 1: for a person to be justified in believing that a purported revelation is in fact of divine origin, there must be some evidence that the revelation cannot be plausibly explained simply with respect to human causes.
Thought 2: if a purported revelation is widely misunderstood or misinterpreted in such a way that it has very negative consequences for many people, then this constitutes a defeater to the claim that the purported revelation is in fact of divine origin.
Thought 1 would thus serve to provide an undercutting defeater while thought 2 would constitute a rebutting defeater.
That’s my initial thought anyway. Unfortunately I don’t think either of these thoughts are very plausible. In fact, I’m still not entirely clear on what either actually means. Assuming John does mean something like this, I’d also like to know what the underlying general principles are on which these particular thoughts rest.
And that’s where we end.
This, I must say, is a rather deflationary end to a long day’s work. After appealing to Loftus all afternoon to explicate his explicit reasons for being skeptical of Christianity, but not atheistic naturalism, despite the fact that both have historical development, I’m left with an opaque argument from which I’ve tentatively unpacked two premises sorely in need of clarification and defense.
Whether or not the emperor has no clothes I’m not entirely sure, but one thing is clear: he certainly is not appropriately attired to make any public appearances.
