A few thoughts for Lee Strobel
I have just finished The Case for Christ and I have to say that I enjoyed it. Lee Strobel claims to have been an atheist on a journey to find the truth about Jesus after his wife is born again. And in this book he interviews thirteen experts on the New Testament in an attempt to find out the truth about Christ (this book is very focused on Christ alone and tends to ignore the rest of the Bible). This book certainly could never have been named The Case of Christ because of the thirteen people that he interviews not one of them is a skeptic.
One of the interviewees brings up some “calculations” made by Peter Stoner.
“Someone did the math and figured out that the probability of just eight prophecies being fulfilled is one chance in one hundred million billion.”
Now this really annoys me because he never says anything about how this number is arrived at. On it’s face it sounds very convincing, but how exactly does one calculate the odds that Jesus will enter the city on a donkey. I mean do we have good data on how many people entered the city of Jerusalem on foot versus donkey, or wagon, or horse? From here Strobel goes on to give the odds for “fulfilling forty-eight prophecies”. I am not even sure how the number forty-eight is arrived at. There are a lot of prophecies in the gospels that are claimed to be fulfilled and a lot of these are either not about Jesus or not fulfilled. And I am sure that this calculation does not take into account that someone might intentionally try to fulfill prophecies or an even more likely scenario is that someone might rewrite the story a little bit to make it fit. For a much better analysis of the prophecies you can read an essay by Jim Lippard. Perhaps Thomas Paine was right when he said.
I have examined all the passages in the New-Testament, quoted from the Old, and called prophecies concerning Jesus Christ, and I find no such thing as a prophecy of any such person, and I deny there are any.
Later in the book, he brings to my attention a very interesting quote.
In his book, The Case Against Christianity, for example, Michael Martin says:
In Matthew, when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary arrived toward dawn at the tomb there is a rock in front of it…In Mark, the women arrive at the tomb at sunrise and the stone had been rolled back…In Matthew, an angel is sitting on the rock outside the tomb…in Mark a youth is inside the tomb…In Luke, two men are inside…In Matthew, the women present at the tomb are Mary Magdalene and the other Mary…In Mark, the women present at the tomb are the two Marys and Salome…In Luke, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women are present…According to John, only Mary Magdalene came to the tomb when it was still dark, thus contradicting the three other Gospels.”
One of Strobel’s main points in this book is that the New Testament is an accurate historical texts. The above quote is explained away by the logic, if we treat it as a historical text then we can conclude that the core of the resurrection stories are all the same.
Even if you accept his thesis there are still some problems. For example if you show me a picture of a horse and tell me you have one in the backyard I will probably believe you. But if you show me a picture of a unicorn and say the same then I will think you just learned photoshop ( I think that this example is from James Randi ). The more amazing the claim the more evidence you will need to produce to convince people.
The second problem I see here is that the New Testament does not purport to be a historical text.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16 NIV)
This is commonly interpreted to mean that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. If it is inerrant then the trivial fact that one gospel (Mark 16:4) says that the stone was rolled away and the other gospel (Matthew 28:2) says that the rock was in front of the tomb is enough to make us distrustful of the resurrection story and by extension the rest of the Bible.
Dawkins and Weinberg
This is a very interesting discussion between evolutionist Richard Dawkins and physicist Steven Weinberg. Their discussion ranges from the multiverse to many worlds quantum mechanics to evolution in schools and much more.
A new kind of politician
From The Edge of the American West
Well it’s happened Obama has reversed his position on fisa. He has also come out in support of an expanded version of Bush’s faith based funding program. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since the primaries are over and now it is time to pander to someone else. All good things must come to an end.
The State we live in
Christopher Hitchens, one of my personal heroes, has written a piece on waterboarding ( a technique that goes back to the Spanish Inquisition ). He did this from first hand experience ( yes he actually agreed to be tortured ). He concludes (surprise surprise) that it is in fact torture.
While watching the video of his torture, I find myself asking where the hell am I? Is this America, the land “with Liberty and Justice for all?” This administration’s complete and blatant lack of all morals is astonishing. It is never acceptable to torture and it is never acceptable to lock someone up without a trial. Not only are these things dangerous, but they are immoral in any sense of the word. They are dangerous because in the long term they will end our democracy.
I do not think that I am overstating this in the slightest.
Pride 08
Last weekend I had the chance to go the LGBT Pride Parade. This was a massive event with an estimated 1.2 million people in attendance.
An odd feeling swept over me as I watched the parade. I began to feel deeply patriotic that I am able to live in a country where people are allowed to be free. I went to the parade just looking to have a good time, but I left feeling encouraged by my country and the direction it is heading. This year the parade had a bit of special meaning because the Supreme Court of California recently legalized the marriage of same sex couples.
Congratulations to all the new married couples out there.
See some more of my Pride 08 photos on flickr.
Criticisms of Lewis
I have just finished Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. This was the first book I have agreed to read about Christianity. I have to say this book was pretty entertaining.
He spends quite a bit of time in the beginning of the book attempting to show that there is an absolute morality. He introduces a concept call The Law of Human Nature. He attempts to put this new law on the same footing as the Laws of Nature, but these cannot be compared because what we call the Laws of Nature are always followed. If we see an instance where one of the Laws of Nature is broken (i.e. a stone falls up instead of down) then it means that we had the law wrong and now we need to either modify it to include this odd event or failing that, throw the whole thing out and start over. Now Lewis does admit the the two laws are of a different sort. This whole idea of a “Law of Human Nature” really annoys me because it is trying to ride on the coat tails of science (by this I really mean Physics:), but in fact it has nothing to do with science. But I digress.
He argues that since we all share this idea of right behavior (Law of Human Nature) then it must be:
A. “be a real thing”
B. “Not made up by ourselves”
C. “something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real-a real law, which we find pressing on us”
Even if we throw aside the facts about how different moral (1,2) systems have been over the course of human history I am still not sure how any of these things follow. He seems to say that if it is real then it cannot be made up. But this is clearly not the case. We have a legal system ( it is a very real thing ), but this system is made up by law makers.
And again even if both A and B are true if does not have to be “beyond ordinary facts”. It could be a product of our genes. It could be that we evolved in small groups of hunter-gathers and most of the people in these groups would be related. This would mean that any time you helped a member of that group you would be helping our own genes to survive ( Dawkins goes into this in better detail in the The God Delusion ). You would also be helping yourself survive because a if you are in a strong group you would have a better chance of surviving. This would mean that these “good” people would be more likely to survive and thereby likely to have more offspring. I do not know that this is the case, but it is simply an example of how it could have happened.
From here he basically goes on to say that an outside agent (read God) is directing man to do right. Now if the arguments for the Law of Human Nature and A, B and C were convincing then maybe I would give this book a little more thought.
Most of the rest of the book is mainly about what christians believe which doesn’t really concern me very much. Anyway, I am sure that my criticisms were not unique and have probably been made a hundred times.
