A Rebuttal to "Is Jesus a Myth" from gotquestions.org

This article was sent to me and I will respond to it as I have other articles.  The original will be in plain type, and my comments will be in red.

The original article can be found at: 

http://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-myth.html#.VIZYf0d_zGg.facebook

I last accessed it on 12 December 2014

Question: "Is Jesus a myth? Is Jesus just a copy of the pagan gods of other ancient religions?"

Answer: There are a number of people claiming that the accounts of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament are simply myths borrowed from pagan folklore, such as the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, and Mithras. The claim is that these myths are essentially the same story as the New Testament’s narrative of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. As Dan Brown claims in The Da Vinci Code, “Nothing in Christianity is original.”

To discover the truth about the claim that the Gospel writers borrowed from mythology, it is important to (1) unearth the history behind the assertions, (2) examine the actual portrayals of the false gods being compared to Christ, (3) expose any logical fallacies being made, and (4) look at why the New Testament Gospels are trustworthy depictions of the true and historical Jesus Christ.

The claim that Jesus was a myth or an exaggeration originated in the writings of liberal German theologians in the nineteenth century. To be fair, this ONLY applies to Christians.  Congregants of other religions already held Jesus to be a myth or at least claims of his divinity as such. They essentially said that Jesus was nothing more than a copy of popular dying-and-rising fertility gods in various places—Tammuz in Mesopotamia, Adonis in Syria, Attis in Asia Minor, and Horus in Egypt. Of note is the fact that none of the books containing these theories were taken seriously by the academics of the day. The assertion that Jesus was a recycled Tammuz, for example, was investigated by contemporary scholars and determined to be completely baseless. It has only been recently that these assertions have been resurrected, primarily due to the rise of the Internet and the mass distribution of information from unaccountable sources.

This leads us to the next area of investigation—do the mythological gods of antiquity really mirror the person of Jesus Christ? As an example, the Zeitgeist movie makes these claims about the Egyptian god Horus:

• He was born on December 25 of a virgin: Isis Mary
• A star in the East proclaimed his arrival
• Three kings came to adore the newborn “savior”
• He became a child prodigy teacher at age 12
• At age 30 he was “baptized” and began a “ministry”
• Horus had twelve “disciples”
• Horus was betrayed
• He was crucified
• He was buried for three days
• He was resurrected after three days

However, when the actual writings about Horus are competently examined, this is what we find:

• Horus was born to Isis; there is no mention in history of her being called “Mary.” Moreover, “Mary” is our Anglicized form of her real name, Miryam or Miriam. “Mary” was not even used in the original texts of Scripture.
• Isis was not a virgin; she was the widow of Osiris and conceived Horus with Osiris.
• Horus was born during month of Khoiak (Oct/Nov), not December 25. Further, there is no mention in the Bible as to Christ’s actual birth date.
• There is no record of three kings visiting Horus at his birth. The Bible never states the actual number of magi that came to see Christ.
• Horus is not a “savior” in any way; he did not die for anyone.
• There are no accounts of Horus being a teacher at the age of 12.
• Horus was not “baptized.” The only account of Horus that involves water is one story where Horus is torn to pieces, with Isis requesting the crocodile god to fish him out of the water.
• Horus did not have a “ministry.”
• Horus did not have 12 disciples. According to the Horus accounts, Horus had four demigods that followed him, and there are some indications of 16 human followers and an unknown number of blacksmiths that went into battle with him.
• There is no account of Horus being betrayed by a friend.
• Horus did not die by crucifixion. There are various accounts of Horus’ death, but none of them involve crucifixion.
• There is no account of Horus being buried for three days.
• Horus was not resurrected. There is no account of Horus coming out of the grave with the body he went in with. Some accounts have Horus/Osiris being brought back to life by Isis and then becoming the lord of the underworld.

When compared side by side, Jesus and Horus bear little, if any, resemblance to one another.

Jesus is also compared to Mithras by those claiming that Jesus Christ is a myth. All the above descriptions of Horus are applied to Mithras (e.g., born of a virgin, being crucified, rising in three days, etc.). But what does the Mithras myth actually say?

• He was born out of a solid rock, not from any woman.
• He battled first with the sun and then with a primeval bull, thought to be the first act of creation. Mithras killed the bull, which then became the ground of life for the human race.
• Mithras’s birth was celebrated on December 25, along with winter solstice.
• There is no mention of his being a great teacher.
• There is no mention of Mithras having 12 disciples. The idea that Mithras had 12 disciples may have come from a mural in which Mithras is surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac.
• Mithras had no bodily resurrection. Rather, when Mithras completed his earthly mission, he was taken to paradise in a chariot, alive and well. The early Christian writer Tertullian did write about Mithraic cultists re-enacting resurrection scenes, but this occurred well after New Testament times, so if any copycatting was done, it was Mithraism copying Christianity.

More examples can be given of Krishna, Attis, Dionysus, and other mythological gods, but the result is the same. In the end, the historical Jesus portrayed in the Bible is unique. The alleged similarities of Jesus’ story to pagan myths are greatly exaggerated. Further, while tales of Horus, Mithras, and others pre-date Christianity, there is very little historical record of the pre-Christian beliefs of those religions. The vast majority of the earliest writings of these religions date from the third and fourth centuries A.D. To assume that the pre-Christian beliefs of these religions (of which there is no record) were identical to their post-Christian beliefs is naive. It is more logical to attribute any similarities between these religions and Christianity to the religions’ copying Christian teaching about Jesus.

While the Jesus myth is not exactly like any other tradition, they often share similarities in certain aspects.  The above shows that this essay is written for an audience of believers and not for skeptics.  A skeptic will read this and ask, "what is more likely, that there is this Demigod named Jesus who share some similarities to various other deity-figures as a matter of coincidence, or is it that the tradition of the Jesus myth is a conglomeration of other myths mixed into some original ideas?" 

This leads us to the next area to examine: the logical fallacies committed by those claiming that Christianity borrowed from pagan mystery religions. We’ll consider two fallacies in particular: the fallacy of the false cause and the terminological fallacy.

If one thing precedes another, some conclude that the first thing must have caused the second. This is the fallacy of the false cause. A rooster may crow before the sunrise every morning, but that does not mean the rooster causes the sun to rise. Even if pre-Christian accounts of mythological gods closely resembled Christ (and they do not), it does not mean they caused the Gospel writers to invent a false Jesus. Making such a claim is akin to saying the TV series Star Trek caused the NASA Space Shuttle program.

The terminological fallacy occurs when words are redefined to prove a point. There is no such thing as a terminological fallacy.  The only references to it are found in other christian blogs.  The proper fallacy is the definitional fallacy and that fallacy covers any misuse of definition, including tailoring a definition to fit a particular stance. The author does just this when he begins talking about ministries.   For example, the Zeitgeist movie says that Horus “began his ministry,” but the word ministry is being redefined. Horus had no actual “ministry”—nothing like that of Christ’s ministry. Those claiming a link between Mithras and Jesus talk about the “baptism” that initiated prospects into the Mithras cult, but what was it actually? Mithraic priests would place initiates into a pit, suspend a bull over the pit, and slit the bull’s stomach, covering the initiates in blood and gore. Such a practice bears no resemblance whatsoever to Christian baptism—a person going under water (symbolizing the death of Christ) and then coming back out of the water (symbolizing Christ’s resurrection). But advocates of a mythological Jesus deceptively use the same term, “baptism,” to describe both rites in hopes of linking the two.  And the author commits his own "terminological fallacy" by defining baptism to mean a very specific (and Christian) meaning.  Baptism is the Christian name for a sacred washing of the body, which is a religious rite that is shared by other religions.  They just have different names for it. In the English language, baptism can mean more than just a Christian rite.

This brings us to the subject of the truthfulness of the New Testament. No other work of antiquity has more evidence to its historical veracity than the New Testament. This is also not true.  The lost city of Troy was found by Heinrich Schielmann when he followed the clues in the Illiad.  Also, the writings of Heroditus, while biased, are mostly based in fact. The writings of Plato, more specifically the trial of Socrates, has been covered by other authors contemporary to Socrates, thus giving credence to his existence. These are just two instances that I could recall off of the top of my head.  A google search, or better yet, a google:scholar search will turn up many more historical writings that predate the bible, and even more that predate the new testament.    The New Testament has more writers (nine), better writers, and earlier writers than any other document from that era.  I think students of philosophy, and literature would disagree with this statement.  Some of the most influential Roman philosophers were from this period.  Lucretius, Seneca the Younger, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius are still studied in philosophy classes today.  In literature, there is Julius Caesar, Seneca the Elder, Philo, Pliny, Tacitus, Ptolemy, and Pliny the Younger. No serious literati would regard the works in the bible more elegant than the literary authors listed above.  No philosopher would consider biblical works of a greater philosophical value than the philosophers listed above. Further, history testifies that these writers went to their deaths claiming that Jesus had risen from the dead. While some may die for a lie they think is true, no person dies for a lie he knows to be false. Think about it—if someone was about to crucify you upside down, as happened to the apostle Peter, and all you had to do to save your life was renounce a lie you had knowingly told, what would you do? This presupposes that those in question knew it was a lie.  The terrorists of the Twin Towers knew that Alah would reward them.  The followers of Jim Jones knew they would die with the kool aid.  So, yes, people die and kill each other because of belief all the time.  This is the reason that militant atheists are against religion in general: If you can convince people that they are inherently evil and only your invisible friend has the cure for that, you can convince them of almost anything.  Islam, Christianity, even Buddhism does this.  The main difference between the three is that Islam and Christianity are founded on the belief in an omnibenevolent god that has the temperament of a spoiled, bloodthirsty sociopath, and in Buddhism there is no god save for a cosmic Karma that metes out rewards and punishment through reincarnation.

In addition, history has shown that it takes at least two generations to pass before myth can enter a historical account. That’s because, as long as there are eyewitnesses to an event, errors can be refuted and mythical embellishments can be exposed. All the Gospels of the New Testament were written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, with some of Paul’s Epistles being written as early as A.D. 50. Paul directly appeals to contemporary eyewitnesses to verify his testimony (1 Corinthians 15:6).

Eyewitnesses to what?  All of the books in the New Testament were written well after the supposed death of Jesus.  What the author ignores is that for one, eyewitness accounts are very unreliable immediately after an event, let alone years after the fact. Also, the author is pulling a little dishonest trickery here.  The bible verse he quotes is indeed from Paul, but it is Paul quoting from some earlier "scriptures" that Jesus appeared before 500 people. The truth is that there are several differing accounts as to whom and how many Jesus exposed himself to after his three-day nap.

The New Testament attests to the fact that, in the first century, Jesus was not mistaken for any other god. When Paul preached in Athens, the elite thinkers of that city said, “‘He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,’—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean’” (Acts 17:18–20, NASB). Clearly, if Paul were simply rehashing stories of other gods, the Athenians would not have referred to his doctrine as a “new” and “strange” teaching. If dying-and-rising gods were plentiful in the first century, why, when the apostle Paul preached Jesus rising from the dead, did the Epicureans and Stoics not remark, “Ah, just like Horus and Mithras”?

In conclusion, the claim that Jesus is a copy of mythological gods originated with authors whose works have been discounted by academia, contain logical fallacies, and cannot compare to the New Testament Gospels, which have withstood nearly 2,000 years of intense scrutiny. The alleged parallels between Jesus and other gods disappear when the original myths are examined. The Jesus-is-a-myth theory relies on selective descriptions, redefined words, and false assumptions.

Jesus Christ is unique in history, with His voice rising above all false gods’ as He asks the question that ultimately determines a person’s eternal destiny: “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15).

There are scholarly works that counter many of the claims throughout this paper, and scholarly works that agree with the claims throughout this essay.  But, that is theology, which presupposes that there is a deity, or deities, of some kind    In order for theology to have any meaning, the supernatural, anything supernatural, must first be demonstrated. 

To argue that the new testament is true because it isn't exactly like other mythologies is a mistake in reasoning.  By showing that the new testament is different than other mythologies shows only that the new testament is different from those myths.  One cannot point to the new testament, or any bible, or religious work and say "see it is true because it says it is true!"  This is the very definition of circular reasoning.

This whole essay is written for a theistic argument, by the fact that a godhead is presupposed.  In  the philosophy of religion such a presupposition is laughable as it is unsupportable since it is based in a fallacy.  If this essay was written with the skeptic in mind, a more logical approach would have been taken. 

To me, the whole issue of the bible being close to other mythologies or not is an intellectual curiosity at best, and a waste of time at worst.  In a debate on the existence of a godhead, the mythological argument is a red herring.  It adds no evidence to the possibility of a god or not.

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A rebuttal to "Dawkins Debunked" by Dr. Norman J Lund PhD.

Below is an article by Dr. Norman J Lund of Oxford.  Lund purports to "debunk" Dawkins' God Delusion by exposing certain logical fallacies contained within the God Delusion.  I will dissect Lund's complaints as not all of them fit.  The original text is in italics, and my responses will be in normal text.

                                                    Dawkins Debunked:                                     

A Dozen Logical Fallacies in The God Delusion  Norman J. Lund, Ph. D.

                                                     http://www.oxfordtutorials.com/

           NOTE: Richard Dawkins is a famous scientist from Oxford U. and a leading atheist.  He argues that there no more evidence for belief in God than for Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.  He says that “faith-heads” who believe in God are “ignorant, stupid, or insane.”  In this book, The God Delusion (Mariner ed., 2008), he claims to prove that religion is a “vice” based upon “indoctrination.”  Belief in God, according to Dawkins, is a “delusion”: “a persistent false belief held in the face of strong, contradictory evidence” (Preface, p. 28).  However, when his arguments are examined objectively, they prove to be riddled with fallacies.  A fallacy is an argument which appears plausible on the surface, but which is found to rest upon false or invalid assumptions.  As a single illness may involve many overlapping symptoms, the logical weaknesses in this book also involve many overlapping fallacies.  Rather than prove his point Mr. Dawkins instead provides an excellent teaching tool to demonstrate logical fallacies.

A. Fallacies of Irrelevance (Distraction)

    1. Ad baculum (veiled threat):  Mr. Dawkins threatens his opponents.  He implies that scientists who disagree with him can expect to pay a penalty from other atheists like him (e.g. to be scorned and shunned).  For example, he argues that no one who agrees with Mother Teresa about the sanctity of life should “be taken seriously on any topic, let alone be thought seriously worthy of a Nobel Prize” (p. 330).  This passage was taken out of context. Dawkin's remark on Mother Teresa was after explaining how she used the suffering of others to enrich her own spirituality and did little to actually ease the suffering of the sick in her hospitals.  Granted, Dawkin's remark walks a rhetorical line and if taken out of context it could be seen as a threat, but what he was getting at is that if someone was so blind to the suffering Teresea CAUSED, then one may not have the moral fortitude to earn a Nobel Prize.  The Prize in this case is the Peace Prize. This implied threat has been exposed as a real threat by Ben Stein in the documentary: Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (http://www.expelledthemovie.com).  Stein interviews numerous scientists who have lost funding and even their jobs just for questioning Darwinism. Such threats and intimidation have no place in logical argument or legitimate science.  The scientists interviewed in Ben Stein's movie make a small minority of scientists who do not share the parsimonious view of their peers.  At first this may seem like an ideal under dog story, but science is not a democracy.  Facts are facts, it is not up for interpretation based on personal bias. E=MC²  no matter what any one person thinks. It is that data that is important, and if an educator wants to teach something that has no scientific consensus, then they are not teaching science.  To better illustrate the point, there are scientists that hold that the Earth is the center of the solar system. Why not teach that in schools? Because it does not fit the facts. Evolution and Global Climate Chance are just the latest iterations of the God of the Gaps. Just as geocentrists are scientific kooks, so are IDers and climate change deniers.

   2. Ad hominem (personal attack):  Personal ridicule is also out of order.  Nevertheless Dawkins shamelessly stigmatizes both individuals and organizations for their personal and religious convictions. Improper application of Ad Hominem.  Lund nearly defines an Ad Hominem in the first sentence, but immediately misapplies it. The definition of an Ad Hominem is not name calling, but attacking the arguer and not their argument.  Arguing against "convictions" (their conclusions) is what you are supposed to do in a philosophical debate. The point of someone's argument is what the debate is about!  Several eminent scientists who have been open about their traditional Christian beliefs are ridiculed as “a subject of amused bafflement to their peers in the academic community” (p. 125).Now this is a case of an Ad Hominem, for those who ridicule the PERSON in order to attack their views. But we must ask if the reason Dawkins put that in his book is to poke fun of the Christians, or to illustrate how their peers view them? In the name of fair sport, I'll let Lund keep this Ad Hominem, but please read up on it for yourself.  In the same vein, Moody Bible Institute is mocked as the “rock bottom” in the “hierarchy of American universities;” Wheaton College is “a little bit higher on the scale, but still the Alma Mater of Billy Graham” (p. 121). The fallacy is Ad Hominem, not Ad Organization.  It is a personal attack.  What Dawkins offered was a critique of the universities themselves, not an argument. Was he calling them names? Yes, he was, but calling someone a name is not the same as an Ad Hominem.  The person you're making fun of has to put forth an argument. What Dawkins is offering is his value judgement of the universities, not a counter to their point of view (which they do not offer). James Dobson is accused of “indoctrination” as the “founder of today’s infamous ‘Focus on the Family’ movement” (p. 206).  From a logical perspective, the expression of such personal biases is completely inappropriate.  Bigotry does not constitute logical argument or scientific evidence.  Behind these personal attacks and bigotry lies Dawkins’ repeated accusation that Christianity is a malignant and “corrosive force” which is fatal to the scientific enterprise (Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference: Feb., 2002; Posted: TED Archive: April, 2007).

In an essay entitled “Viruses of the Mind” (Free Inquiry, 1993), Dawkins argued that religion is an “accident of birth” and a mental “virus.”  Religious beliefs are “mind-parasites” which breed upon “mystery.”  According to Dawkins, the religious virus is adverse to reason and evidence.  In the God Delusion Dawkins applies this theme to children.  Dawkins declares that religion is the greatest danger facing children.  “Christianity,” he asserts, “just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioning faith is a virtue.  “You don’t have to make the case for what you believe,” he says (p. 346; cf. pp. 323, 347, 379).  Apart from isolated personal attacks like those mentioned above, Dawkins presents no serious evidence or justification for that accusation. This is not a personal attack at all.  This is actually the very heart of the matter in the argument between reason (be it philosophical or scientific) and religion.  Religion requires faith.  And what is faith?  it is belief without evidence.  This is not a virtue, but a catastrophe. To save space, I won't rehash what I've already written on the subject of faith.  You can read about it, or watch it HERE.  What  Lund ignored is an accusation made by Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens as well: the idea of original sin is child abuse.  Imagine this: If you overheard a parent tell their child that if the child doesn't do as the parent says, then the parent will throw the child into a pit of fire. Would you think them abusive?  Of course you would!  You're a moral person.  But Christian parents tell this to their kids every time they bring up getting saved: You have an evil that only Jesus can get rid of, and if you don't follow certain rules (they vary by denomination) then you will go to hell.  How is the threat of fire different when the doer is shifted to a godhead?  It is not.  It is abuse.   His accusation is categorically false.  His own university was established as a Christian institution for the sake of pursuing the truth.  The motto of Oxford is Dominus illuminatio mea: “The Lord is my light.”  The Natural History Museum, where Dawkins has debated, and most of the oldest colleges and universities in the world were established by Christians.  Harvard, the oldest and most revered of American schools, bears the motto: “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” (“Truth for Christ and the Church”) on the official seal.  Students today may be surprised to learn that Harvard was originally established to train Christian ministers and that one of the founding “precepts” in 1646 was the belief that Jesus Christ is “the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.”  Typical of other American universities is Duke in Durham, North Carolina.  Founded in 1924, there is a plaque in the center of the campus which states: “The aims of Duke University are to assert a faith in the eternal union of knowledge and religion set forth in the teachings and character of Jesus Christ, the son of God.”  It’s not surprising.  Scripture exhorts Christians: “Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15).  Dawkins’ ad hominems even extend to an astonishing assault upon the character of God as (among other things): “a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak” (p. 51).  From a logical perspective, even if Dawkins’ outrageous comments were somehow true, it still wouldn’t address the issue of God’s existence. The above is basically one large red herring.  That universities founded in the 1600s or even the 1920s were founded by Christians is not relevant.  It would be like asserting that algebra was inspired by and proves the validity of Allah because it was invented by Muslims.  But perhaps Lund is getting paid by the word.

    3. Ad ignorantium (appeal to ignorance): This fallacy assumes that because something is unknown or seems unlikely, that fact can be used as evidence against its existence.  One form of this fallacy is called the argument from personal incredulity.  It looks like this: “If I can’t (or refuse) to believe this, then it can’t be true.”  Dawkins commits this fallacy throughout the book.  In the opening chapter he asserts his “commitment to naturalism.”  This means that he “believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe” (p. 35).  In other words, he announces an unwillingness to believe evidence which might not support his view.  This is not logical argument or scientific evidence.  It’s a philosophical presupposition and statement of personal bias.  No.  Lund is wrapping the problem of burden of proof within a misapplication of a fallacy.  In a court of law, the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.  In science and philosophy the same principle is applied.  A proposition (the defendant) is considered false (innocent) until it is proven (given strong evidence for) true (guilty).  We can observe the material universe. The supernatural cannot be observed.  Thus it is a no-brainer to recognize the existence of what can be sensed, but not recognize what cannot must be demonstrated.

    4. Ad populum (popularity appeal):  The popularity of a belief isn’t relevant in science or logic.  Truth isn’t democratic.  It doesn’t depend on a majority vote.  Nevertheless, Dawkins implies that atheistic evolution Ugh!  I am so sick of seeing the term "atheistic evolution". Evolution is evolution, atheism is Atheism. the two have absolutely nothing to do with the other. must be true because of what he calls “the overwhelming preponderance of atheists” among Nobel Prize winners, and in the membership of prestigious groups like the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and Mensa (a group of people with high IQs) (p.126-130).  Even if Dawkins was right about intellectuals favoring atheism, it wouldn’t prove its truth.  One of Dawkins’ heroes, Bertrand Russell, confessed his own disillusionment with intellectuals: “I had supposed that intellectuals loved truth, but I found here again that not 10 per cent of them prefer truth to popularity” (Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: London, 1962; vol. 2, p.17; cited in Paul Johnson, Intellectuals: Harper, 1988, p. 202).  However, Dawkins’ statistics are questionable.  In 2003 the Pulitzer-prize winning sociologist, Rodney Stark, presented evidence that “levels of religiousness [among science professors] are relatively high” (p. 194).  After reviewing the current survey data, Stark concluded: ”But perhaps the most striking finding is that… faculty in the ‘hard’ sciences turn out to be far more likely to be religious than are their counterparts in the ‘softer’ social sciences: they attend church more regularly, are more likely to describe themselves as ‘deeply’ or ‘moderately’ religious [55-60 %] and to say they are ‘religiously conservative’” [34-40%], and are far more likely to claim religious affiliation” (For the Glory of God, Princeton U. Press: 2003, p. 195).  Dawkins doesn’t seem to have looked very far.  He omits many obvious names of eminent scientists who have been open about their religious convictions, including Henry Schaeffer III.  Dr. Schaeffer (Ph.D. Stanford) is one of the most distinguished chemists in the world (U.C. Berkeley, 1969-1987), a Fellow of the Royal Society (London, 2005), a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize, and an out-spoken Christian (Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence, The Apollos Trust, 2003).  He is one of over five hundred doctoral-level scientists who have signed “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” which states: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life” (http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/100ScientistsAd.pdf).
Lund appropriately named this category.  The ad populum here, is Lund's though. He is appealing to the number of scientists who identify as theist as to imply that there is something to it.  But, truth is not democratic. How many people believe in it is irrelevant.
But the study Lund mentions above is suspect.  Another study by Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster covered 137 countries and found that 7% of the American National Academy of Sciences believed in God, and only 3.3% of the fellows at the Royal Society believed in God (source).  But did you notice that the 7% figure is for those who believe in God, while Lund's figures give a claim of religious affiliation. Cannot one identify with a religion and not believe in God?  Many in the clergy are atheists, but that is neither here nor there.  How many people believe in something has nothing to do with the reality of it.

    5. Ad annis (chronological snobbery):  This fallacy assumes that the age of a belief determines its truth or falsity.  It can be argued in one of two ways: either that the antiquity of a belief (Appeal to Tradition) verifies its truth (since people have believed it for such a long time); or that the modernity of a belief (Appeal to Novelty) verifies its truth (since people today are so much more enlightened).  Dawkins employs the second version, the “appeal to novelty,” repeatedly.  For example, he dismisses the fact that Newton and most of the founders of science were “religious” as irrelevant because of the age in which they lived. Which is correct.  Theists can do science.  Doing science by itself does not necessarily clash with religion. At the time of Newton, evolution was not a theory. Germ theory did not exist, Plate Tectonics was unknown. There was no scientific alternative to a creator of the universe.  To a creator of humans.  “There was,” he implies, “[more] social and judicial pressure … to profess religion” back then (p. 124).  Similarly, Dawkins asserts: “Great scientists who profess religion become harder to find through the twentieth century… they [now] stand out for their rarity” (p. 125).   In a more shameful example, Dawkins dismisses the religious conversion of Anthony Flew (a renowned  philosopher and famous atheist until 2004) as something which happened “in his old age” (Footnote, p. 106).  See: Anthony Flew’sThere is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: HarperOne, 2007). 

   6. Ipse dixit (false authority):  This fallacy consists in claiming authority without justification or evidence.  For example, Dawkins consistently presents the views of like-minded atheists as serious, credible authorities, and belittles those of Christians as trivial, with no other reason than their religious affiliation (or lack of it).  For example, he subtly disparages Francis Collins, the former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute simply because he is a Christian.  He understates his role and accomplishment in leading the successful multidisciplinary effort to map and sequence all human DNA and contrasts him with the “brilliant (and non-religious) ‘buccaneer’ of science, Craig Venter” (p. 125). In all fairness, Venter was the first to sequence the Human Genome through his shotgun method, and he insisted that the sequence be released as public domain.  That is why he's widely admired.   In the same fashion Dawkins routinely hurls assertions of momentous import, without serious evidence or argument, as when he asserts that: “blasphemy, as the witty bumper sticker puts it, is a victimless crime” (p. 16; Preface to the Paperback Ed., 2008).  “Witty bumper stickers” do not constitute a serious argument.
This passage is more evidence that Lund is getting paid by the word.  What do bumper stickers and blasphemy have to do with anything?    

  7. Straw man (misrepresentation):  This fallacy misrepresents an opponent’s actual position through exaggeration or distortion.  A good precaution is to ask an opponent whether or not you have stated his viewpoint clearly and accurately.  Very few if any Christians will recognize themselves in Dawkins’ caricatures.   He repeatedly accuses religion of demanding credulity (mindless belief) and of discouraging science (rational inquiry).  For example, according to Dawkins, the great majority of Christians teach their children that: “unquestioning faith is a virtue” This again. (p. 323) and that “truth comes from scripture rather than from evidence” (p. 379).  Thus, he concludes: “Religious faith is an especially potent silencer of rational calculation… because it discourages questioning, by its very nature” (p. 346).   Thus, he concludes: “Religious faith is an especially potent silencer of rational calculation… because it discourages questioning, by its very nature” (p. 346).  Dawkins blandly assumes that all religions are basically the same in this regard.  While his characterization may apply to some cults and false religions, What is a "false religion"?  One that Lund doesn't believe in? it is categorically false when applied to historic Christianity.   (For a more complete discussion see: False Dilemma) Oh I can't wait.  I'll hold off until then.  Though the bit I said above about faith still holds.

B.  Fallacies of Ambiguity (Confusion)

     1. Composition (misapplication):  This fallacy assumes that what is true of the parts of something must also be true of the whole.  Dawkins commits this fallacy by treating evolution as a monolithic process, and refusing to distinguish between micro- and macro-evolution. The micro/macro thing is a creationist distinction.  All evolution is micro (excepting mutation) meaning that all changes are minute. But after millions if not billions of minute changes that often build on each other, the end result is drastically different than the beginning.  The idea of micro/macro evolution is a case of creationists wanting to have their cake and eat it too.  What they call micro evolution happens in a lab.  Viruses and bacteria change rapidly leading to multiple strains of the flu, and drug resistant bacteria. The micro/macro distinction allows creationists to be able to accept germ theory but allow humans to still be God's unique little pet.  No one denies micro-evolution.  The evidence for adaptation and change within species is overwhelming.  However, there is no such evidence for change between species (transmutation), nor for the appearance of life from non-life by natural processes (abiogenesis).  

     2. Equivocation (obscurantism):  To equivocate is to mislead someone by confusing them.  When a debater equivocates the proper response is to call out: “Distinguo!” (“I distinguish!”).  Dawkins is guilty of equivocation on a grand scale.  He refuses to distinguish between religions as radically different as Christianity and Islam.  He insists on treating all religions as equally irrational, superstitious and unscientific. Right.  Because there are some religions that are fare more sane than Christianity and Islam.  Baha'i is one, Buddhism is another.  They are still built upon somewhat irrational grounds, but those two religions, and there's others too, do not practice ritual cannibalism, or believe that their prophet rode a flying horse.  This broad generalization is grossly unfair and misleading.  An equally unjustified tactic would be to treat alchemy and astrology as the equivalents of chemistry and astronomy.  The motivation and freedom for scientific inquiry did not happen by accident.  It came from a Biblical worldview towards which the Koran is suspicious and unfavorable.  As Islamic scholar Salman Rushdie has pointed out: “Islam has failed to create a free society anywhere on earth” (Columbia U.; Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991).  Freedom and encouragement for scientific study is unique to a Biblical worldview  (See: Straw Man). This is addressed below. But no, Christianity and Islam both claim to be "truth" and is why at times both religions have suppressed science, but European and Arabic cultures, at different times, promoted science when the culture was more secular than sectarian.

C. Fallacies of Presumption (Faulty Form)

    1. False Dilemma (Either/Or):  Dawkins presents a false option between two extremes.  On the one hand he portrays science as the heroic, rational pursuit of facts.  On the other hand he portrays religion as the hypocritical, irrational pursuit of faith. Where is the dilemma?  Not all either/or choices are a dilemma.  And the middle ground is not always the best option.  Here, Lund assumes that is the case, otherwise there would be no dilemma.  This is the fallacy of the Appeal to Moderation. Some of his criticisms may apply to certain cults and false religions, but not to historic Christianity.  Faith and facts are not opposites. Neither are deer and Gorillas. But then again, maybe they are.  Faith: Belief without evidence.  Fact: The record of an observed and measured event. No, they are not opposites, but Faith is to believe something to be true with out any facts to back it up. Delusion is to believe something is true when the known facts are counter to that belief. This is the delusion, Dawkins was talking about in the God Delusion. There’s no necessary contradiction between the two.  In fact, the Pulitzer-prize winning historian, Rodney Stark, has argued: ”not only that there is no inherent conflict between religion and science, but that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science" (For the Glory of God, Princeton & Oxford, 2003: p. 123). If this is true, then why was it the Muslims who were the Wests leaders in Science during the Dark Ages? Why were the Chinese more advanced than the West until the Renaissance?  In both cases it was when secular ideals of skepticism and curiosity were in favor, and pious obedience to ideas was waning. Dawkins argument is clearly distorted and false.  For almost a millennium fides quaerens intellectum (“faith in search of understanding”) has been a Christian motto expressing the Christian motivation to seek the truth.  It was Anselm’s dictum, echoing Augustine, about the positive relationship between faith and reason.  All Biblically literate Christians know that they have been exhorted to use their minds to the best of their ability (Phil. 4:8); to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16); and to “always be prepared to make a defense to any one calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15).  The oldest universities in the world, including Oxford, were founded by Christians who shared that conviction.   Granted that Dawkins’ criticism may apply to some individuals or groups in the history of Christianity, but they have been the exception, not the rule. The above is a common thread in Abrahamic apologetics.  Faith is belief without evidence.  At least, that is how Dawkins uses the word.  If there is evidence for something, then it is a fact.  The real argument here goes back to Descartes and his theory of doubt: begin with a null hypothesis.  In other words, do not believe until it is proven.  Religion requires a certain amount of faith (believing first) to exist.  Never have there been evidence of miracles, supernatural phenomenon, or deities.  Yes people believe in them, claim to "feel" them, but these are not evidence. They are not verifiable. If you have evidence for something, you have a reason to believe in it, and it your belief stops being based in faith.

Eminent historians and philosophers of science have acknowledged the unique formative role of Christianity in the origin of modern science.  French-born American historian, teacher and cultural critic (Columbia U.: 1927-67) Jacques Barzun wrote that the ‘so-called warfare between science and religion [could] be seen as the warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths, [a] dispute between the believers in consciousness and the believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance’” (Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage; U. Chicago Press, 1941).  Dinesh D’Souza points out in his recent study, What’s So Great About Christianity, modern science relies upon an “unsupported belief” both in the rationality of the universe and of our own minds.  In a lecture at Harvard University in 1925 the eminent British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, asserted that “faith in the possibility of science… is an unconscious derivative of medieval theology” (Science and the Modern World: Free Press, p. 53). No. Science requires no faith.  Why?  It works! Observe nature. Question what you see. Guess at the answer (hypothesis) [NOTE: this is where the faithful stop]. Experiment to eliminate your hypotheses. Observe and record results. Submit the whole shebang to other experts to see if they can duplicate your findings. This is science, this and nothing more. It is this process that took us to the moon, eradicated small pox, and tamed the electron. 

Herbert Schneidau, in his widely acclaimed study of mythical cultures, Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1977), concluded that the Biblical worldview led to the rise of science and technology.  By “desacralizing” nature, the Bible sanctioned critical, objective investigation of the world and a linear concept of time. Um, no.  The middle ages are proof that science was not born from Christian ideas.  Science often ran counter to Christian doctrine to the misfortune of the scientists, like Copernicus and Galileo.  Science did not blossom in Europe until the Muslims reintroduced science to Europe, as they had no problem with science at that time.  Also, ancient Greek and Roman writings, knowledge lost in Europe for nearly 1,000 years were reintroduced thanks to the preservation efforts of the Muslims.  Loren Eiseley, the late distinguished professor of Anthropology and the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania went so far as to suggest that science was an “invention” of Christianity: “it is the Christian world which finally gave birth in a clear, articulate fashion to the experimental method of science itself” (Darwin’s Century: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961; cited in Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton, The Soul of Science, 1994; pp. 17-18).  John Lennox, a Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Oxford, has pointed out to Dawkins (in formal debates) that the Natural History Museum (where they have debated) was originally “dedicated to God and the investigation of divine design” http://www.dawkinslennoxdebate.com/  This is an irrelevant point.

    2. Begging the Question (circular reasoning):  Dawkins constantly assumes that which he purports to prove, namely, that a godless process of evolution is the cause of everything, including “apparent design.”   No.  For example, he asserts that: “Creative intelligences, being evolved, necessarily arrive late in the universe, and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it” (p. 52). This is why scientists are a little behind when it comes to purely logical arguments.  Dawkins is trying to apply evolution to the creation of life. See my next comment. Although Dawkins claims that he will “show” the reader evidence for this belief, he fails to deliver. He does, actually.  It's called the whole book.  Sometimes, and we all do it, we are so in dissecting the organelle, we become oblivious to the organism.   When the issue comes up again later, he simply repeats the assertion: “Entities that are complex enough to be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process” (p. 98).  Dawkins announces his “commitment to naturalism” in Chapter 1.  He explains that: “An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe” (p. 35; italics added).  He seems unaware that he is making the same kind of unsupported faith commitment which he otherwise finds so inimical.  In other words, Dawkins’ foundation is not facts or evidence, but a reductionistic faith in materialism. And we are back to pious belief, and not supported evidence. Naturalism, the way Lund uses it, assumes nothing; only when facts are present then do they come to be regarded as truth.   Naturalism assumes that nothing exists besides matter and energy. That is not an assumption, that is an observation. There is even a foundation to discover supernatural phenomenon, complete with a one million dollar reward!  But so far, no supernatural phenomenon has ever been demonstrated. The end result of naturalism is self-contradiction.  If our thoughts are nothing more than a random, bio-chemical process (p. 34), then we have no basis to believe that our thoughts are true. That is because they are not random. A die is random. The lottery is random. What impulses and cranial regions that elicit thought and emotion are not random.  Here, Lund is trying to build up a straw man fallacy. They are equivalent to the secretions of our kidneys and other physical organs.  In Darwin’s (and Dawkins’) world, our thoughts need not be “true,” only “useful” (p. 413). This is oddly true. For instance, think of Newton's laws of Gravitation.  It describes a universe where objects are mutually attracted (in love?) with a force equal to the sum of their mass divided by the square of the distance between them.  This is a simple formula that reliably describes the motion of the planets, the trajectory of a bullet, and why a five pound bowling ball and a 20 pound bowling ball hit the ground at the same time. However, this is an inaccurate description of the universe.  Gravity isn't a force, like magnetism, but rather a curvature in the space/time continuum (think of a bowling ball on a mattress; the curvature of the mattress is the "gravity" made by the bowling ball). The math behind it is highly complex as well.  Yet, Newton's laws and formulas make an adequate rule of thumb for all but the most exotic of uses. Think of it this way: The number Pi is a wholly irrational number without end -- it goes on forever.  Yet skyscrapers and moon rockets get built by only going to the third or fourth decimal place of Pi.  3.1415 is good enough.   But there’s no way to know which ideas are most useful at any given time. There is: Critical thinking!  That is what critical thinking is all about: Finding what idea is most useful at that time, in that situation. Only later will it be revealed which ideas “survive.”   People are reduced to random metabolic units which receive and emit random sensory input.  Although others might find this view dismal and dehumanizing, Dawkins claims to find it “liberating” and “emancipating” (p. 419-420). And there's the fruition of Lund's Straw man.  By saying that evolution reduces people to "random metabolic units" and "random sensory input" (Lund keeps using the word random, but I don't think he knows what it means) he implies that only religion can make "metabolic units" into people -- a moral agent, if you will. Naturally, it would highly weaken Lund's position to admit that one can be good without god, or have dignity without faith in religion.

When Dawkins is so transparent about his dislike for God, he opens himself to the charge of ‘theophobia,’ that is, a fear of (or revulsion against) God.  C. S. Lewis identified this phenomenon and applied it to Sigmund Freud.  As a result, Dr. Armand Nicholi, a professor at Harvard University has taught a course comparing the ideas of Freud and Lewis.  In 2002 he published his findings in a book entitled: The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex and the Meaning of Life (New York: The Free Press).  Lewis agreed with Freud on one basic thing, that human beings have a tendency to "suppress" unpleasant truths."  However, Lewis disagreed with Freud regarding which truths we find most unpleasant, and which truths we try hardest to suppress.  Like Dawkins, Freud asserted that we are most afraid of "being alone" (i.e. without God) and of "being unloved" (i.e. without God's love).  Lewis disagreed.  Lewis said that when he became a Christian he reaIized that for many years his greatest fear had been "not being alone" (i.e. not being free to do whatever he wanted) and afraid of "being judged" (i.e. accountable to God).  Similarly, whereas Freud argued that we "project" our "wishes" for moral order and life after death by "creating" (an imaginary) heaven, Lewis argued that we "project" our "wishes" for personal freedom and supremacy by "creating" (an imaginary) kingdom of our own.  (See Armand M. Nicholi, Jr.: The Question of God: The Free Press, 2002).  I admit to not having anything clever to say here.  Partly because I am not that familiar with Lewis' work, nor am I familiar with the work of Nicholi. Perhaps a helpful reader will contribute to this little passage. However, from what is presented here is only partial philosophies.  Just enough for Lund to cherry pick to make his, albeit weak, point. That point being that Dawkins hates god.  Absurd.  What dawkins hates is abusive religions that tell people they are inherently evil (original sin) or insist on accepting ideas that have no bearing in reality (creationism).

    3. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (false cause):  This fallacy makes the unjustified assumption that when one thing precedes another, the first must cause the second.  Dawkins adds a peculiar twist to this fallacy by arguing that the ‘simple’ must always precede the ‘complex.’ This is quite true.  Complexity is a melding of multiple simplicities. Thus there must be at least two simple things added together before there can be a complex thing. This isn't a "chicken and the egg" problem, but rather, which came first: the egg, the peppers, and the cheese, or the omelette? He insists that in the history of the universe simple processes must always have preceded (and produced) more complex systems. This is coherent with observation. On the one hand, as mentioned earlier, Dawkins asserts the creative power of (simple) naturalistic evolution: “Entities that are complex enough to be intelligent are products of an evolutionary process“ (p. 98).  On the other hand, Dawkins denies the admissibility of (complex) divine creative agency: “Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a … universe would have to be even more improbable than [a universe]” (p. 146). Lund seems to start making sense here.  On the surface it sounds good.  After all what is the improbability of a universe, and are the improbability of the creator and the created linked? No. Improbable does not mean impossible.  We are the proof that we are here.  Yet there is still no proof of a creator.

The renowned philosopher, Anthony Flew, has called Dawkins’ argument “bizarre.”  Dawkins offers no evidence in support of these assertions other than his admitted preference for any viewpoint which precludes divine activity.  The logic of Dawkins’ argument (‘simple-always-precedes-complex’) is disproved by all human artistry and engineering as well as all forms of biological reproduction. Not at all.  The argument is that the complex is always preceded by the simple.  What Lund is trying to argue against is that the complex can never produce the simple, which is not Dawkin's argument. Lund has tried to pull a logical bait and switch; or create a straw man fallacy. The artist always precedes the work of art; the chicken always comes before the egg. And that art is a simple part of a complex myriad of art that motivates culture, and inspires other artists.  The simple egg matures into a chicken as equally complex as its parents.  If Dawkins’ logic was valid, then any human agency capable of designing something as improbable as a watch, a cathedral, or a spaceship would have to be considered “improbable.” It is improbable!  Out of all of the species on Earth that have ever lived, only humans have evolved the mental capacity to leave Earth.  That's a strong argument for the impossibility of higher intelligence, but it is possible.  After all, it did happen. There’s obviously something wrong with that.  It is an accepted practice in logic to “infer to the most sufficient explanation.”  In the debate about human origins, a strong argument can be made that only divine agency can account for human life and reason. And this argument is?  Evolution provides a sufficient explanation for complex life on Earth adding a creator, be it Yahweh, Brahma, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster add another layer of complexity that must be justified in itself. By refusing to consider the possibility of divine creativity and causation, Dawkins ends up by threatening human creativity and causation as well.  These two sentences do not link.  By adding the divine to human creativity, an additional layer of complexity is added that must be justified.  Lund fails to provide this.  


I am sad to see such an educated mind fall prey to such bad arguments.  I can understand the personal need to believe that it doesn't all end six feet under.  The need to believe that we will see our loved ones again in a world without pain and suffering.  If a person were to believe just that, then only the biggest of asses would argue.  But it is all of the other stuff that comes with religion.  The hell concept, the sin concept, the misogyny, the cognitive dissonance religion requires is the source of conflict between religion and the secular world.  

Lund may never see this, and for that I am sad.  But for those who do, the world is a beautiful place and will only be more so.

Piety and R.R. Reno’s assault on Critical Thinking

I have just spent the past hour listening to R.R. Reno’s lecture at First Things, which you can view here.  The thesis of his lecture, and his book the lecture is based on is that critical thinking as the prime virtue in education produces a vacuous world view as it cannot determine truth and the way to fix that is by pious pedagogy.  Reno clarifies that a “Pedagogy of Piety is pious but not necessarily religious.”  This leaves the audience to conclude that he means the non-religious definition of piety which I will expound upon below.  Since this is a 2500+ word post click here for the "TL;DR" end.

Reno begins with an analogy of a train passenger.  The train passenger who is careless and doesn’t look at the train schedule is likely to jump on to the wrong train and miss the right one.  The overly careful passenger worries so much about the schedule that he is frozen in fear of being wrong and misses the train.  He likens the fearful passenger as the critical thinker.

In the first few minutes of the lecture, Reno is already missing the mark.  For one, the analogy is a false one.  The fearful passenger is just as lacking in critical thinking as the careless one.  Reno states that criticism has become one-sided and in order to avoid being paralyzed with critical thinking, one must form convictions.  What he misses is that one purpose of critical thinking is to find the best possible course of action.  Critical thinking is about finding answers, not just deconstructing assertions.  I am getting ahead of myself.

Reno goes on to create a juxtaposition between the humanities and science.  Science is fact based, while the humanities desire a more subtle interpretation of cultural meaning.  Then he implies that these are two different, competing, bodies of knowledge.  That is where he is off the mark again.  His use of humanities refers mostly to literature, meaning that the discussion of literature is a type of knowledge.  This is a bone of contention between the hard sciences and the humanities across most campuses.  The reason is that knowledge is used in two very different ways.  In science knowledge is something that is falsifiable, can be demonstrated, and is independent of the observer. In literature, knowledge can also mean understanding or interpretation of literature.  But literature is art, the exploration of it is an exploration of the author’s mind, the author’s culture, and the reader’s mind and culture.  In other words, it is not completely falsifiable nor completely independent of the observer and therefore not knowledge in the scientific sense.  However, a reader must be able to demonstrate their interpretation using critical thinking.

Reno leaves this line of thinking to explore the relationship between the ivy league and ROTC.  He asserts that most ivy league schools rejected ROTC programs because of the institutionalized homosexual discrimination in the military.  Here Reno shows two things: he is either ignorant of the effect the Vietnam war had on higher education and ROTC, or he, speaking to a Christian audience, is making a dig on the “liberal” (read secular) culture of the ivy league.

Now that gays are accepted into the military, the ivy league has opened their campuses to ROTC except for Columbia University.  He then reads an open letter from Columbia as to why.  In summation it is because higher education promotes critical thinking, questioning everything, including authority, where the military requires a blind obedience to authority.  Reno quips that the authors of that letter do not know what military training is.  Here Reno is right.  ROTC is for officer training and critical thinking and evaluation is paramount to a successful mission.  Is obedience important in the military?  Naturally.  A soldier’s job is to inflict the will of the state on whomever the state wishes.  Success in this requires obedience… to a point.  If an officer orders his platoon to gang rape a prisoner, those soldiers are required to say no.  That would be a war crime, and the men and women serving in are military are required to be able to know the difference between a lawful order and an unlawful one.  This means that even a private must possess critical thinking.

Reno then attacks the concept of critical distance.  A critical distance is removing oneself from the problem to look at it objectively.  Reno refers to it as cold and dispassionate.  However, Reno is missing the point.  The term dispassionate in this sense is the old Hellenistic use of the word.  It doesn’t mean without any emotion, but rather without letting emotion purely be the guide.  For instance, I was in Joplin on May 11, 2011 when an EF-5 tornado devastated the town.  My wife had been in the path of the tornado at her work while I was outside the destruction zone at mine.  After I finally reached her, alive with a few minor injuries, we headed off to find our kids.  The path of destruction barely missed my in-law’s house where the kids were staying, when we went in they told us that a tree had fallen on the back of the house, but they hid in the bathroom.  I quickly counted the kids, saw that the baby was missing and inquired where he was.  They said they left him in his crib.  I ran in to make sure he was OK, and he was, but I raged at them for leaving him in his crib during the tornado!  They didn’t of course, they had him with them in the bathroom.  But my passions had taken over.  I was not thinking clearly, and thus not acting clearly.  Once I calmed down, once I cooled, I was able to see they did the right thing and apologize.  It is against this that critical thinking requires a dispassionate distance.

Reno then brings Rene Descartes into the mix.  More specifically, Descartes’ theory of doubt: all ideas are suspect until proven otherwise.  Or “guilty until proven innocent” as Reno puts it.  This is a true cornerstone of critical thinking.  Medieval thought, to which Descartes was arguing against, would revise modify a particular stance on something to fit new knowledge.  Descartes wanted to tear the whole framework down, and to proceed surely and slowly.

The graph below illustrates Descartes’ call to move slowly and surely:

If you count the hash marks after the year 1000, you’ll see how Descartes was both a product of his time and how he influenced human thought.  Around 1400 CE, Europe started to become more secular, that is less pious, in their outlook.  Descartes was rejecting the kind of thinking that spanned from 400 CE to 1400 CE: the flat part.  Descartes work directly contributed (along with Newton, Leibniz, Galileo, Hume and Kant among others) to the sort of scientific skepticism that by moving “slowly and surely” has advanced science by leaps and bounds.

Reno goes on a bit about Pascal and math, then he comes to his first bit of woo woo.  He says that science cannot answer the “important” questions in life.  It cannot comfort the dying, cannot know about the after life, who should marry who, etc.  Comfort the dying? The after life?  Who should marry who?  What is moral?  Reno is employing two rhetorical devices here.  One is the use of weasel words, in this case, listing “important” questions as the non-scientific one.

Can science comfort the dying?  Not all the time.  But neither can a “there, there”.  But science can comfort the dying in one respect:  It can find cures for terminal diseases.  Which is more than prayer and other forms of authority-based wishful thinking has ever done.  What about the afterlife?  How would one test for it?  The afterlife is more of a philosophical problem.  Who should marry who?  eHarmony claims to be able to with science.  Maybe they can, maybe they cannot.  the problem with match making is there are thousands of variables to account for.  So I will say science could find a perfect match for someone, but the time and cost would be prohibitive.  But that is irrelevant.  What matters is the continuance of the species, and we are here because our ancestors liked to make babies; which is precisely why our children are here.  Morality?  Actually, in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins contains a science-based moral theory.  I would say it is still a philosophical question, but an interesting take on the matter.

Reno is subtle here.  Remember, he is a Catholic, and he is silently advocating an ultimate earthly authority in the Pope. Meaning that all the “important” questions can be solved through pious education.  By obeying the Pope.

Next, Reno brings in John Henry Newman.  Newman asserts that critical thinking is only destructive, and not creative.  He says that critical thinking may kill the weeds, but it doesn’t fertilize the flowers.  To fertilize the flowers you need to believe first (a direct opposite of what Descartes said). To keep with the analogy, Newman, and Reno, miss something.  Believing in everything first, may in fact fertilize the flowers, but it also fertilizes the weeds too.  Whereas critical thinking does away with the weeds allowing the flowers to flourish on their own.

The above makes more sense with a little philosophical history.  In the 1700s, David Hume put science on its ear by demonstrating that all of science is illogical.  Let’s look at this:

If gravity exists then when I drop a ball, it will fall to the ground.

I dropped the ball and it fell

Therefore, gravity exists.

Sounds great tight?  Let’s look at is in another way:

If I live in London, then I live in England.

I live in England

Therefore, I live in London.

Do you see how the argument doesn’t work now?  In formal logic it is called Affirming the Consequent.

Sounds like Reno has a case?  Meet Karl Popper, a 20th century philosopher. Karl Popper said that Hume was correct in his logic, but incorrect as to what scientists do. Popper said that affirming the consequent is not what they do.  What they do is experiment against their hypotheses to see if it is wrong.  Thus (to re-use the London argument):

If I live in London, then I live in England.

I do not live in England

Therefore, I do not live in London.

That makes sense.  It is called Denying the Consequent, and is logically valid.

By using a subtraction force, Popper preserved scientific integrity.  The reason is that for any given phenomenon, there are a near infinite number of explanations.  No one has time to sift through all of them, and not all of them can be acted upon.  Thus we have to take the bad ideas away from the good.  This is what science, both hard and social, does.

Reno then goes back to his critique of emotional distance (which he refers to with the weasel word “distance cruelty”).  he does this to begin his assault on skepticism, the bane of all flim-flam.  He states that a skeptic believes that every argument has an equal and opposite counter argument.  This is a flat-out lie.  At first, I thought maybe Reno was just uneducated as to what a skeptic is, but in fact he is a highly educated man.  I am left with the conclusion that he lied.  A skeptic is simply one who approaches all of life through the lens of critical thinking.  Does every argument have an equal and opposite counter-argument?  Not at all.  Separating out the bad ideas from the good is the life’s work of the skeptic.

Reno then goes into what he called the paradox of being yourself.  He claims as soon as you makes yourself a project for improvement, then  you are by default serving a higher power.  This is a flat-out non sequitur.  What doesn’t follow is that to be oneself is thus bigger than oneself.  To be a flower is to be a garden.  That sounds like the random ramblings of Deepak Chopra, than the well-reasoned insights of a learned man.  But I digress, and I ad hominem.  Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Reno then returns to Newman’s idea of believing in everything first then to doubt.  That it is better to get on the wrong train than no train at all.

It is better to get on the wrong train, go to the wrong destination, than to not get on any train at all.

This is, of course, a ridiculous statement when viewed in the right light.  Sometimes it IS best to miss the train!

Reno then includes his second bit of woo woo by assuming that the human soul is about knowing, while critical thinking is about pushing away, subtracting, destroying.  He finishes by saying that only a pious mind is a truth filled mind.  To shorten this already long post, Reno goes on to a little about how math is to encourage success in finding truth, and that modern education has instilled in students pride in not being deceived.  With concluding that belief risks error which is what makes truth possible.  Reno does go into why the Virgin Mary is the patron saint of philosophers, but that really isn’t relevant as it just illustrates his failed reasoning.

Reno’s failed reasoning.  To understand his argument for piety we must first understand what piety is.  It is the act of being religious, but remember that Reno said that it doesn’t have to be a religious thing.  Then what does he mean by piety? Piety is defined as “a belief or point of view that is accepted with unthinking conventional reverence.”  That means that Reno is advocating knowledge by authority.  In other words, believe what your “superiors” tell you.  One of the reasons why critical thinking is essential in a democratic society, is that it evens the playing field of knowledge and policy.  If the masses can think critically, aristocracy won’t arise, fascism won’t gain hold, theocracy will fail to start.  What Reno is arguing for is to turn the fallacy of argument from authority into a cornerstone for knowledge.  This in turn opens the door to theocratic states like the Islamic State and Iran, or to cults of personality like Pol Pot, Stalin and Kim Jong Un.

What is further disturbing is Reno’s use of the word truth.  Truth can be considered the complete body of evidence for something, but that would imply critical thinking at work.  I think Reno is using the word truth as a weasel word to mean “that which those in authority dictate”.  Being Catholic, that authority, at least on the “important” questions, is the Pope.

TL;DR

Reno argues that critical thinking is only a subtractive endeavor that is unable to create.  Instead, we should embrace a pious pedagogy which revises the body on knowledge and doesn’t destroy it.

That is is better to believe first and question only if it is not one of the “important” questions of life, like morality and spiritual matters.  To those we must be pious: unquestioning belief based on authority.

As you can see, this outlook is self defeating.  Which authority do we trust?  In a democracy, critical thinking keeps the Hitlers, Pol Pots, Ayatollahs, and Popes at bay.  If their rhetoric is challenged, they cannot empassion the masses to do ill.

Critical thinking has done more for the advancement of human knowledge than any appeal to authority has ever done. Critical thinking led to the end of slavery, as well as going to the moon.

Reno calls for a return to the medieval, autocratic thinking, i.e. the dark ages, from which the Enlightenment (and scientific skepticism, AKA critical thinking) illuminated humanity.