Our web hosting techs spent hours last night scrambling to fix a network problem that kept this blog offline for quite a while. They never told me what the problem was, but I’m glad we’re back online, anyway. I apologize for the downtime.

Even after it came back online it wasn’t quite right; none of the links worked except for the home page. I reset one of the settings, and I think that’s fixed now. If you find anything else strange happening here (I’m not talking about opinions you disagree with!) please leave a comment about it or notify me by using the contact form (above) or by email at tom AT thinkingchristian DOT net. Thanks.

A few weeks ago we had a poll on whether threaded comments were a good idea or not. Those who comment at least somewhat regularly here have had more experience with it now, and I want to ask the question again. So please mark your opinion over on the sidebar. Thanks.

Daniel Dennett, one of the four most prominent “New Atheists,” is no proponent of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The hallucination theory to explain Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances is no longer held by many scholars. Nevertheless there are exceptions to this, including Gerd Lüdemann (detailed further here). In Consciousness Explained, however, Dennett says on page 7,

Another conclusion it seems we can draw from this is that strong hallucinations are simply impossible! By a strong hallucination I mean a hallucination of an apparently concrete and persisting three-dimensional object in the real world—as contrasted to flashes, geometric distortions, auras, afterimages, fleeting phantom-limb experiences, and other anomalous sensations. A strong hallucination would be, say, a ghost that talked back, that permitted you to touch it, that resisted with a sense of solidity, that cast a shadow, that was visible from any angle so that you might walk around it and see what its back looked like.

(See the full argument here; go to page one if it doesn’t open directly there) Based on Dennett’s analysis, then, hallucinations cannot explain the events in Matthew 28:9-10, Luke 24:13-48, John 20:24-28, or John 21:4-19.

See Gary Habermas for more on hallucination theories.

From the comic strip Partially Clips, via Language Log.

“[The scientist] knew that he could say yes or no, and the reporter would print whatever answer he gave. But he also should be grateful for any kind of media interest in his field, even if treating scientists like oracles of knowledge this way is probably why some people confuse science with religion.”

Compare: Servants of a Twisted God

Book Review
Readers of this blog may be familiar with Dr. William Lane Craig’s work; we’ve discussed him more than once. A prolific author, Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and a frequent debater on the truth of Christianity. His recent revision of Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Third Edition) represents a state-of-the-art presentation of evidences and arguments in support of Christian belief.

It includes some potential surprises for some readers. Did you know…

• That “all of the various traditional arguments for God’s existence find prominent, intelligent proponents, who defend these arguments in books published by the finest academic presses, in articles in professional journals, and in papers presented at meetings of professional philosophical societies;” in contrast to, say, the mid-1960s when TIME magazine asked, “Is God Dead?”
• That science and philosophy both strongly indicate that the universe had a beginning—for which science can provide no explanation?
• That the progress of skeptical thought has a history of its own—it has been contingent on various currents of thought, and is not (as some have supposed) the necessary result of scientific thinking?
• That apologetical thinking and research has a history, too—it didn’t time-warp from Thomas Aquinas to Josh McDowell?
• That Jesus Christ understood himself to be Messiah and to be Divine—and that this can be demonstrated from even that tiny portion of the New Testament that skeptical scholars acknowledge as genuine?
• That the tide of New Testament scholarship has turned in the past few decades, and now the majority of scholars, believers and skeptics alike, acknowledge that the New Testament can be trusted in its accounts of several basic facts regarding Christ’s life, death, and even his post-death (resurrection) appearances?
• That (related to that) a strong case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ can be made just on the basis of information that even skeptical scholars consider to be trustworthy?
• That Christians may reasonably and rationally be assured that the faith is true, even apart from extra-biblical apologetical evidences?

For some readers these things may be a surprise, and for others they may be provocative. I can’t (and won’t try to) explain and defend them all here. Craig covers them carefully over the course of 400+ pages of material. Before considering evidences for the Resurrection, for example, he devotes entire chapters to philosophical questions surrounding miracles and historical knowledge. (Are miracles possible? Could reports of miracles ever be credible? Can we genuinely know any of what really happened in history?). The book is intended for seminary-level study, and includes extensive documentation through footnotes (not endnotes, thankfully) and chapter-by-chapter bibliographies.

I owe it to you to develop at least one point further here: that Christians may reasonably and rationally be assured the faith is true, apart from extra-biblical evidences. Craig makes the important distinction between knowing it is true, and showing it is true. Following Alvin Plantinga in Warranted Christian Belief, Craig says that the proposition “God exists,” can be properly basic. A belief B is properly basic if some person S can reasonably and with good assurance take B to be true, apart from an evidential foundation of other assured beliefs that imply B.

Properly basic beliefs include those that are

self evident or incorrigible…. For example, the proposition, “The sum of the squares of the two sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse” is self-evidently true [well, to some people]. Similarly, the proposition “I feel pain” is incorrigibly true, since even if I am only imagining my injury, it is still true that I feel pain.

Craig suggests (following Plantinga still) that belief in God may be properly basic:

Man has an innate, natural capacity to apprehend God’s existence even as he has a natural capacity to accept truths of perception (like “I see a tree”). Given the appropriate circumstances—such as moments of guilt, gratitude, or a sense of God’s handiwork in nature—man naturally apprehends God’s existence…. Neither the tree’s existence nor God’s existence is inferred from one’s experience of the circumstances. But being in the appropriate circumstances is what renders one’s belief properly basic; the belief would be irrational were it to be held under inappropriate circumstances. Thus, the basic belief that God exists is not arbitrary, since it is properly held only by a person placed in appropriate circumstances.

He goes on to speak of two ways of knowing Christianity to be true: through the work of the Holy Spirit, and through argument and evidence. Concerning the first:

I mean that the experience of the Holy Spirit is veridical and unmistakable … for him who has it; that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God; … that such an experience provides one not only with a subjective assurance of Christianity’s truth, but with objective knowledge of that truth….

This may appear to run the risks of being circular or a potential source of self-deception on the part of the believer. Understood properly, it is most assuredly not circular. It is not, after all, an argument; it is much more akin to a perception. Can my perception that there is pain in my toe be circular? Hardly. Could I be deceived about that pain? I could be fooled, yes, regarding the source of the pain. Amputees can feel pain in limbs they no longer even have; it’s called phantom pain, and it’s quite common. If, however, I have an unmistakable personal experience of God, and if (a) my interpretation of that experience is not defeated by other knowledge and (b) other knowledge such as may be available to me supports that conclusion, then I am rational to take it to be an unmistakable experience of God. (A defeater is some argument or information that, if true, tends to refute a belief or to reduce confidence in it.) The amputee’s knowledge that he has no right foot is a defeater for the belief that his right big toe is actually hurting.

Craig acknowledges there are potential defeaters for the conclusion that an experience of God actually comes from God. Someday, he says, he may write a book to show that they do not in fact successfully undermine the Christian faith. This is not that book; rather it is his extensive compilation of positive information (evidence and argument) that supports the conclusion that God exists, that Jesus Christ claimed to be his Son, and that he validated that claim by his resurrection from death.

The point of all this is to put apologetics, belief, and rationality in proper perspective. Millions throughout history have believed in Christ without studying apologetics, and they have not made irrational decisions. God does not necessarily work through evidence and argument, although in the right context, evidence and argument may rationally and profitably be employed. One or their purposes is to address possible defeaters to the conclusion that one is experiencing God. Another purpose is on the second side of the know/show coin. I do not expect my experience of the Holy Spirit to persuade you, the unbeliever, that God exists and that Jesus Christ is his Son (Craig does not expect that either). I cannot show you, in a way that you will be able to take in as your own knowledge, how it is that I know God through my experience. I can, however, use evidence and arguments to show you that the existence of God is plausible, even more plausible than his non-existence.

That last clause counts for a great deal, by the way. Even as committed a Christian apologist as Craig will not claim he has a proof for God’s existence. He presents multiple overlapping and complementary lines of argument for God’s existence and for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Each of them individually makes Christianity more plausible (in my opinion) than competing worldviews. They do not constitute proof, though taken together, they make a very strong case for Christ indeed.

I must leave my other provocative bullet points hanging without further discussion, at least on this post. I expect I will come back to some of them in a future post, or that commenters will lead us to pick up one or more of them here. I strongly encourage you to read Reasonable Faith. Christians, you will gain considerably in your knowledge of God and his work in the world. Your faith will increase as you see more clearly how well founded it is. Questioners or skeptics, you will be able to interact with Craig’s arguments, and see for yourself whether, in light of the most current scholarship, Christianity is indeed a Reasonable Faith.

Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics by William Lane Craig. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008. 415 pages including index.Amazon Price US $17.16.

I was a trombone major as an undergrad, with an emphasis on classical music. We trombonists owe a lot to Beethoven: he was the first major composer to include trombones in “secular” music. You see, when Martin Luther translated the “last trumpet” (the signal for Christ’s return) in his German Bible, he called it instead the “last trombone” (die letzte Posaune). For many years composers considered the trombone too noble to use in non-sacred music. (There’s a marvelous letze Posaune trombone solo in Mozart’s Requiem.) Beethoven broke free of that beginning in his famous Fifth Symphony.

There’s a great lesson for us here on not drawing too sharp a distinction between the sacred and the secular, but I have other thoughts on my mind today. Not only do I appreciate what Beethoven did for my instrument, I have always really loved his music. He deserves his reputation for greatness: there’s a masculine vitality in his compositions, coupled with an intense spiritual richness, such as few have ever matched. Still, being a brass player, most of the music I’ve listened to in my life has been of the full-orchestra, let-er-rip-with-the-trumpets-and-trombones sort. (Or of the let-er-rip-with-guitars sort, but that’s another story.)

They told me in college I would really enjoy Beethoven’s string quartets. “It’s pure music,” they said. “You should listen to them. It would be good for you.” But I thought, “how many trombones are there in a string quartet?” and I passed them by. The other day at the library, though, I picked up a CD of Beethoven’s first Razumovski quartet. It took only a moment for me to realize “they” were right. It’s pure music, and though it has no brass, it’s just as full of that same vitality and richness I’ve always appreciated in Beethoven’s larger works. It’s great music.

Sometimes when they tell you “it’s good for you,” they’re right.

I’m not saying you have to enjoy Beethoven. It’s a learned taste. But what I am saying is something not too distant from that. Here’s another example to help make my point. The first Dickens novel I ever tried to read was Oliver Twist. I couldn’t get past the second chapter: the language was just too strange for me. Years later, though, something led me to read A Tale of Two Cities. I think it was just because everybody said Dickens was good, and I thought I’d give him a second chance. “I should read it; it’ll be good for me,” was in the back of my mind. It took me all of a couple pages to forget I was reading a “classic.” It’s just a great, great story, very well told.

The string quartet and A Tale of Two Cities both proved to be good for me in very unexpected ways: I liked them. There’s a reason they’re classics. It’s because they’re good. There’s a reason they’re considered good: it’s because people through the years have consistently liked them. Sure, there are great moral and literary lessons to be learned from Dickens, Shakespeare, Milton, and so on., but their first virtue is that they’re enjoyable to read. (That doesn’t mean I’m going to try Oliver Twist again, though. Well, maybe someday.)

Sometimes when they tell you “it’s good for you,” they’re right.

A year or so ago I started swimming laps two to three times a week. I felt great the first time I made 400 yards, half of it elementary backstroke, which is swimmer language for “taking a nap on your back while moving slowly through the water.” Now I’m up to 1000 to 1200 yards per session, three days a week when I’m not traveling, and loving it. My speed is just slightly better than that of Olympic distance swimmers… divided by 4, that is. I’m not quick, but I’m a lot stronger than I was. The doc says it’s good for me, and it turns out he was right.

What God says in the Bible is “good for you” turns out to be right, too. Take sexual morality, for example. My wife and I both saved ourselves for marriage in that respect, and the payoff in terms of mutual trust has been huge. When I travel out of town, and we tell each other, “you can trust me,” we know it’s true, because we were tested in it for a long time before we got married.

I’m trying to learn the same lesson in other aspects of my life. I know “it’s good for me” to resist donuts and chocolate cake, and as long as I can’t see them, smell them, think about them, or stop in at the store to pick some up, I’m fairly immune to both. Otherwise I have trouble. I know it’s good for me not to mess around unproductively with tweaking this blog’s features, or looking at blog statistics, but I still waste far too much time on these things. There are plenty of other changes, too personal to write here, that would also be good for me. I’m still learning.

But I’m starting to catch on. Not always, but at least fairly often, there’s a reason people say “it’s good for you.” It’s because it’s good.

Not long ago I heard J.P. Moreland in a lecture discussing the importance of knowing that Christianity is true. Moreland is an apologist and the author of what I consider to be one of the most important books written by a Christian in recent years, Kingdom Triangle. I don’t have his exact words, but it went something like this:

“There seems to be among average churchgoers a nagging suspicion, a fear, that the scholars—those who are really in the know—have proved the faith is all wrong. In the universities, the laboratories, and even the  seminaries they’ve found out the Bible is mostly false and the message of Christ is a big hoax; but the rest of the world just hasn’t quite caught on yet.”

Moreland was actually drawing from Dallas Willard, in another on that short list of most important books, The Divine Conspiracy. Willard is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, and stands in a good position to comment on this topic. On page 92 he wrote,

The powerful though vague and unsubstantiated presumption is that something has been found out that renders a spiritual understanding of reality in the manner of Jesus simply foolish to those who are “in the know.”

This presumption, though “vague and unsubstantiated,” is nevertheless “powerful,” he says. What kind of effect might it have? Does it really make a difference? It must. A believer, after all, is someone who believes; and if that belief is colored by concerned that the really smart people, the ones who understand, have found out it’s all foolish, that belief may be little more than a confused mind game: “I guess it’s all wrong, or at least I think it is, but I’m going to believe it anyway.” This is irrational. It makes us double minded, even unstable, to use James’s words (James 1:6-8).

I wrote in a pending post that quite often, it really is good to do what others say is good for us; but too many churchgoers “believe” not because they think it’s true, but because they think it’s good for them to believe. That kind of belief isn’t good for you, though; it’s just confused.

This presumption that it’s foolish to believe is wrong, at any rate. Willard goes on:

But when it comes to say exactly what it is that has been found out, nothing of substance is forthcoming.

Thus Rudolf Bultmann, long regarded as one of the great leaders of twentieth-century thought, had this to say: “It is impossible to use electric light and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.”

To anyone who has worked through the relevant arguments, this statement is simply laughable. It only shows that great people are capable of great silliness. Yet this kind of “thinking” dominates much of our intellectual and professional life at present, and in particular has governed by far the greater part of the field of biblical studies for more than a century.

But the baseless presumption in question must be seen for the empty prejudice it is if we are to enroll with serious intent in Jesus’ school of life. Though this is not the place to discuss it, you can be very sure that nothing fundamental has changed in our knowledge of ultimate reality and the human self since the time of Jesus.

Here on this blog entry is not the place to discuss it either, for it would go far too long. I will leave you with questions and some advice instead, directed especially toward followers of Christ. Do you really believe what you “believe?” Does believe, for you, mean to consider the Gospel to be true and reliable information, or does it mean something less than that? Do you sense that nagging suspicion that it might be all wrong after all? Are you believing because you’re confident it’s true, or because you think it’s probably good for you?

If you identify any of those haunting doubts in you, here’s what not to do: Don’t try to squash or squelch it, don’t feel condemned about it, and don’t feel shame over it. It’s a signal, a good and helpful one for you to pay attention to. It may be a sign that what you “believe,” you don’t really believe, and that you’re trying to manage some kind of impossible schizophrenic doublethink. Bring that vague unsettledness out into the open. Turn it into genuine questions. Then you can look for genuine answers, in Scripture, at your church, and among good books and blogs (of which I hope this is one).

“The Quotable Edition,” at Parables of a Prodigal World.

It’s amazing to see this [Link: World On the Web » World New Media Archive » Ideas have nothing to do with reality] …

Teachers cannot - except serendipitously - fashion moral character or produce citizens of a certain temper.

… showing up on the web so soon after the article I discussed in my last post, “Ideas Have Consequences;” in which researchers were quite able (at least in the short term) to fashion moral character, with hardly any effort at all.

The quote here is from Professor Stanley Fish, who on this topic is all wet.