The intellect has listened to the question monkey. The intellect will now speak.

…

The intellect seems to be stuck for words. How long is it since it promised an answer? I suppose I’ll have to engage my body and soul too. They aren’t too good at arguing mind you but my intellect lacks motivation. Not much of an intellect some say, but I say it’s got character, special character above that of the ordinary man. If only circumstances had allowed it, if only I had been taught to take advantage of my intellect I would have done something extraordinary by now. Yes, I deal in loftier ideas. Not for me the mental difficulties of the man on the street.

Digression: One night going to a party my driver, who doubles as a wife, went down the wrong road in the estate. I looked up and saw the house, brightly lit and full of our friends (including zoomtard and others) before realising that no, this was the wrong place, Curly Dee was turning back and the house was merely full of outstanding, bright young individuals who just happened to be exactly like my own unique group of friends. I suppose there was even a less handsome version of myself in there, beside some gorgeous girl (why do they go out with ugly men?). Perhaps he too tended to make a mountain out of a molehill when it came to getting an answer together on the internet, and subsequently never quite got around to finishing it. Well here is the start of mine and hopefully you will get to the finish (in case you get lost somewhere, I’ve placed the finish is at the end to make things easier). I’m sure there must be a molehill someone else has prepared that you could tackle instead but here goes:

One question raised was what parts of the bible I believe are reliable reportage. Certainly I think the bible is useful as a historical document, but then so is the Iliad, the Vedas, the Koran or any other religious account. It really depends on what you are relying on to tell you. Much of that question’s scope is irrelevant to me so I have chosen to concern myself only with what I personally rely on the Bible to report (a definition of human morality); not what others may rely on it for. Of course the argument may be made that my reasoning is circular: I believe it is reliable since it fits in with my views while these are already based on the Bible, but I hope to show how such ideas are not dependent on the Bible while at the same time defending the evidence for their most unambiguous source -- the teachings and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

With regard to the resurrection QMonkey has made the statement, “When it comes to the resurrection, will you acknowledge that the more significant or unlikely the event, the more evidence we need to believe it”.

The more unlikely the event, the more evidence we require to believe it -- I’ll grant you that half of the statement. The more significant the event, well that is a question of character as well as magnitude -- the significance of a man flying up to his office might appeal to some yet repel others, and for some of us its magnitude depends largely on its relevance to ourselves rather than solely its bearing on absolute truth. Either way, the more significant something is, the more interested we are in whether or not it is true and the way in which it is significant to us alters how we look at the evidence. Here is an interesting statement to explore: By definition, the significance of an event is never less significant than the likelihood of that event.

Let us assume for example that we are Jesus’ contemporaries and do have a lot of evidence that Jesus is sent from God, (you don’t have to believe this assumption is correct, bear with me). Then at least one element of the significance of this is high, the element of likelihood -- it is likely that Jesus is sent from God. We have seen him drive out demons and questioned those who have been healed. Those questioned believe that Jesus is sent from God whereas we wonder why he does not drive evil out in God’s name as a prophet would when instead he drives them out by his own command. He claims that he is in the Father and the Father is in him. Who besides God would have the power to heal the blind, cure the lame and drive out demons? There is one other possibility but we have no evidence for it -- we might say he has authority over demons because he belongs to the Satan, the lord of demons. Yet he doesn’t drive them out in Satan’s name either and it makes little sense for Satan to undo his own work, as Jesus himself points out. Ah but “satan” means “deceiver”. Yet what Jesus teaches and does is solely about loving God and loving others. Is he deceiving people into obeying God? Not so. Perhaps in our view he is deceiving people into disobeying God because he is overturning societies’ structure by his acts and words of love, and we believe that this is a society already based on God’s word. Or is it? Are we really obeying God’s word? Should we listen to what Jesus says? No. He must be from Satan.

At best, this was the reaction of a number of Jesus’ contemporary religious leaders according to scripture, but why would they react to him this way? We can easily speculate this way and that until the cows come home or the messiah comes back. For us however, the circumstances of Jesus’ life and resurrection and the lives and deaths of his followers provide compelling evidence that it is actually happened. If we are to choose between the testimony of those who genuinely face death for their witness (not their belief, their witness) and the testimony of those who don’t, surely we must favour the martyrs from the outset purely on that basis? But after accepting it to be likely on this basis we must continue on and question whether there are other arguments regarding it being unlikely on which we should base our opinions, and these arguments cannot be purely speculative if they are to be taken seriously.

What of his general popularity? He rode into Jerusalem on a donkey with acclaim on Sunday, but he was condemned to death in place of a murderer by the same voice on Friday: that of the people. Is it really logical to say that the general population were open minded about his resurrection? Since the private conspiracy to orchestrate his death become a public affair that a riot-prone people did not object to, surely the description, “clear minded” (concerning post-resurrection opinion) is a little charitable towards those who had already decided that Jesus was not the messiah, despite having followed him passionately a few days earlier? We might say their reaction changed when they saw him held captive; maybe they weren’t so sure now. That makes sense if you assume that they were normal people who like Germans under Nazi rule (to take a far more extreme example), like Christians, like atheists, perhaps even like me or you and in other words like everyone, were quite capable of being lead by forces other than rationality and a good heart. You have to ask how such a “clear minded” person came to believe Jesus was the messiah in the first place. Even some of Jesus closest followers were rebuked for believing that he was to overthrow the Romans. The evidence that we do have shows this was not a culture primarily looking for spiritual redemption, despite their laws. It was cultural and political redemption they fought for. You imagine there were a lot of messiahs around that time, but weren’t they political messiahs? Seeing the messiah in chains made no sense from such a perspective and nor would spiritual salvation (the message of those who reported his resurrection) in the face of physical occupation. I would not base my decision to reject the Gospel on someone else’s regardless of how popular their opinion is. There is no record of anyone having a good reason against it; only for it. At the same time we shouldn’t ignore QMonkey’s parable of the Jews who did not believe based on their intellectual reasoning. It is a good parable but it refutes a gospel that has had a bit of extra implication added to it by our own religious bias rather than the gospel as it has been laid out explicitly. Does the Bible really say that those unbelievers will go to hell? Hear me out till the end and then let me know what you think.

A separate speculation, about ulterior motives in preaching to the gentiles makes no sense at all in the context. Wasn’t Christianity originally viewed as a Jewish sect, sparked by a leader who preached love for enemies never mind gentile allies, and isn’t there an equal focus on Jewish Christians in the new testament? The fall-out between Jews and Christians is reported to be a political one based on the Christians who fled Jerusalem before the siege by the Romans. The only reason to look for ulterior motives would have been if they had not been preaching to the gentiles. It is an inevitable conclusion of the heart of Jesus’ message in every chapter, even if we didn’t have specific reports of him reaching out to gentiles himself, which we do.

It has also been suggested that the Christians had some reason to die for a lie, that Jesus didn’t really come back to life but that they thought there was some more important truth that needed to be passed on. If it was important and concrete enough for them to die for it, why would they not tell us what it was? If they felt it was important enough to die for, surely they felt it was important enough for at least their fellow Jews to die for if they knew it too? If it was a lie, since they stressed the importance of truthfulness wouldn’t the likes of James the brother of Jesus, a devout, strict Jew (who seems to have disbelieved prior to Easter) have eventually confessed? Wouldn’t at least a few of the many eyewitnesses have testified against it, causing a mass rejection of the message? It doesn’t take much to shatter a reputation so a few eyewitness denials would surely do the trick. And we can see that they certainly claimed that Jesus literally rose when we read the earliest accounts, and they must have known whether or not it was true since it happened to various members on multiple occasions, to traumatised believers and avid disbelievers alike. Or wait, maybe they made the whole resurrection thing up because the real truth that they died for was too hard to take, too difficult to believe, too far outside everyday experience? The real truth in my opinion is they showed that they weren’t afraid of death anymore because they knew it had been conquered, but I’m willing to listen to an expansion of this argument if there is one -- perhaps I’ve simply been too unimaginative to think of such a compelling truth.

Loads of people have seen Mary (or Elvis or aliens or whatever) appear to them but is this really comparable? Loads of people are insane but we don’t use that as a general argument against a specific eyewitness in a court case. There are large differences between such cases and the one I’m defending but there is no point in exploring this unless we are shown a good comparison between the evidence for each to begin with. A claim must stand or fall on its own merit and not on comparing it to another claim when the two have only one particle in common.

Then there is the statement that someone would never come back to life under the circumstances reported. QMonkey, this statement is born out of everyday observations and so I make the point that we are not trying to convince anyone of an everyday event. You make the point that we have learned that our universe must follow certain laws which would be broken by this event, and I argue that the universe was not brought into being by these laws since the rules themselves exist only within the universe/multiverse/whatever; so the everyday laws do not determine the entire universe and every event within it; something else does. You object that at this point we have both gone beyond our intellectual capability and such questions would be better left to the likes of Gödel, so I agree with you and rephrase what I am saying: just because something happens a certain way according to human experience doesn’t mean it must always happen that way, especially if we have evidence of an exception. It merely means it almost always happens that way. Your statement that it hasn’t happened might be equivalent to Einstein saying that God does not play dice after Bohr outlined the exception to his everyday scientific experience. Maybe there is a deeper law that lead to the exception of Jesus’ resurrection, and maybe this law leads to our everyday reality just as quantum mechanics leads to the macrophysical reality where God does indeed refrain from lowly gambling. And dare we consider the possibility that the deeper law of the resurrection might open our eyes just as the deeper law of blackbody radiation has done for scientists? Perhaps it is a pity we couldn’t possibly prove God’s existence by scientific experiment, but in the absence of this ideal we can at least follow the reasoning that underpins science. Let’s neither accept nor deny the resurrection based on intuition.

So you have already decided there is no God and I have already decided there is one, and naturally we will both then be guilty of circular reasoning, but if you decide that there is no God and find it difficult to (logically) explain away the resurrection by using any other objection, try deciding that there is a God and see if this fits the picture a little better. Where an argument seems perfectly balanced between two self contained yet contradictory world views, I suggest that if one of these views turns out to be even slightly more probably contradictory to its world than the other, the logical outcome is that we believe the alternative. It is quite reasonable to explain events only by what we know, but it is unreasonable to continue in that vein when an event cannot be explained within our set of knowledge. Since reason has served humanity so well, let’s not just throw it away simply because of personal preference, whether that preference is one of many poorly based beliefs or whether it is a belief that what now appears to be reasonable is untrue. So by all means keep trying to find a reasonable explanation for the resurrection from within an atheistic framework if you like. I realise that there are many more unsaid questions that unfortunately I will not have time to respond to, admittedly not even to my own satisfaction.

So much for our discussion on unlikely the core claim of Christianity is, but its compound significance has yet to be addressed. We made the point at the beginning that significance varies from person to person, so in order to narrow the field we will look at what specific characteristic Jesus Christ intended to target. I’ve lifted just a few verses from BibleGateway.com to avoid corrupting the message by my own interpretation, but this theme is repeated again and again by Jesus to the extent that it must be considered central.

Mathew 5:3

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Mathew 21:

28“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

29” ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

30“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.

31“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered.

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

Mark 2:17

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Luke 18:9

9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

13“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

14“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Imagine a humble atheist who regards himself as something far less than a heartbeat in the life of the universe; just one expression of glorious nature. Yet this atheist has a sense of good and evil, perhaps not gained in his eyes through the consumption of fruit at the bequest of a snake, but if it was caused instead by some scientifically posited factor in the origin of his species, the end result remains the same. Imagine he lives his life in perfect accordance with his morals. Well then the gospel has no significance for him, but if cultural and biological evolution has seen fit to give him a body that often disagrees with his mind, putting him in the same category as me, he will find it impossible to follow his moral code. So what? Well morality is at this point useful for the propagation of his genes, which is tantamount in his opinion to his life’s purpose. We can see that his failure to live up to his moral standard must be a matter of concern for him, so he should stop “sinning” in order to achieve his deepest desire to fulfil his purpose. Even if he just falls down on just one point of morality he is a lawbreaker because he has broken one law. And the converse must now follow from that statement if he lives in a logical universe, that he is now a lawbreaker so he is a person who breaks this law. And from this follows a number of crushing implications.

1. The whole of his moral system must now lose its authority, since has been shown to be fallible.
2. He will keep breaking the law again and again, because he is (by self-definition) a lawbreaker, and a lawbreaker is one who breaks the law.

Of course, psychologically he may not understand things in such a clear, structured way, but his psychology will ultimately obey these logical implications so that any solution to his problem would be quite significant. The inadequacy of his own self-made authority and the impossibility of acting the way he wants will manifest itself adversely, and whether he sees the problem as stress, existential angst, a desire for security or routine, a search for meaning or any of endless other neural journeys, the underlying logic we have induced forces him to keep committing the same unsavoury act or thought again and again. When there is no solution within a closed self-defined system, the only alternative is to open the system; to add another dimension, if you will.

Of course at this stage you know where the thread of my monologue is heading (where I want it to, and you can’t anything about it because you can’t edit this website. Ha. Ha. Ha!): He wants something to override his self-definition, something that he cannot control and therefore can’t predict, but something that is not chaotic (chaos cannot create moral justice) and therefore something that must have a nature of its own to determine his own. Yet why not turn to the universe for rescue? We already know that this gets him nowhere, since his philosophy is already materialistic and the trouble is that he knows already how this philosophy has defined him to be a law-breaker (remember that this is a general philosophy -- any philosophy of materialism that attempts to be moral should offer this dilemma to its adherent..) Perhaps his philosophy is correct but does not enable him to change. What he needs is another nature to define him, and since he knows he is defined by the universe, the authoritative character must clearly have defined the universe already. The idea of such a character being in some ways human seems preposterous, but remember that theologians who study the characteristics of God (eg J.J. Packer in knowing God) deduce from his infinite nature that these characteristics are simply known to us because of our relationship with him and that there is far more to him than we could ever know. An ultimate creator must by definition be far more than human (a thought that discourages exclusivity and promotes cultural diversity) but humans are only capable of knowing God as such.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Evolution is a very complex system and there are other useful attributes for genetic propagation besides a sense of morality. Some of these may even conflict with the “God” solution to the moral problem. I can think of one: the desire to take control of one’s environment is useful because those who take control will be more likely to do well (a theory evidenced by the history of civilisation’s successful conquest on society), but this desire cannot be satisfied until one has gained the illusion of being able to identify and understand empirically everything in one’s world. Unfortunately if this is what forms part of one’s motivation for reliance on science alone, it will be difficult to reconcile it with the idea of relinquishing one’s authority to a higher being. This difficulty may be conquered by a rational person who isn’t prone to obsession and willing to find a distinction between his own control and the authority of a greater being, but it may be difficult to find such a subtle distinction while developing it from within the sometimes stormy environment of a human body, amongst one’s peers.

It is interesting to keep this in mind as we read the Bible. I’m reading “A brief history of the human race” at the moment (a refreshingly materialistic account by Michael Cook) and once or twice the historian relies on the bible to build an account of the past. The author, who does not seem to hold pro-Christian sentiments, looks for a reason behind the development of a monotheist creed from the first record we have of it in the Jewish faith. Whilst admitting the lack of evidence from which to build a concrete theory, he points out that a monotheist God is inherently exclusive to those who beg to differ. I don’t know if I’m hitting the thrust of his idea on the head or not as he didn’t spend long on the subject, but while such exclusivity may not benefit today’s global society, it might have strengthened the integrity of a King’s authority in mustering the solidarity of his people to the throne, a factor which would have also helped the prevention of amalgamation of Jewish culture with that of other peoples. In tracing the origins of monotheism he notes that there are many references to other gods in the bible, for example the commandment not to have other gods before Yahweh, while cases of disobedience to this command proliferate. He deduces that the Israelites were not a people of one God despite the efforts of the prophets and moreover, when Isaiah says later that there is no God but Yahweh this marks a change from exclusive worship of one God in an acknowledged pantheon to denial of the existence of any other besides this God.

It seems to me that according to a historian with no apparent calling toward monotheism the Bible may be said to be a biased history, but a history from which we can garner facts nonetheless. I believe I share the bias of the Bible’s writers, who could not always be said to represent their peers (the truth can be quite the opposite). However my own religious bias could hardly be said to begin with the later prophets. The very first account, Genesis describes the world being created by one God, so despite the fact that other gods are acknowledged early on, it seems to assert from the outset the existence of a God who created everything else, which surely infers an ultimate authority upon one God as the creator. It would be natural to assume that if it did make sense to some prophets for other god’s to exist then those entities in turn would be supposed to hold their creator, the creator as God above them as well as their own faithful, so the theology of an ultimate authority has existed from the start despite the fact that its proponents (strangely or naturally?) differed in their understanding of how the world otherwise worked (there was also conceivably a certain pragmatism in relating this belief to their respective cultures). When a prophet wanted to reform his society he would have needed to justify his case by invoking a higher authority to back his cause, even more so at times when the government of his country was against him. In Israel’s history the authority invoked was always the highest (an example also springs to mind from outside Israel: After the French Revolution reason was held to be the highest authority, and this was invoked by the prophets of that time too). We also find out from the Bible that its writers’ opponents also at times invoked the name of Yahweh in order to justify their own claims. We see in its history that monotheism can be exploited by anyone who wishes to justify their cause. Michael Cook is right in saying that monotheism allows for exclusivity, but then it allows for any cause, both good and evil.

Earlier, in discussing the evidence that what Jesus says is true we assumed the authority of reason first and I believe reason should comply with its creator if one truly exists, so this assumption seems natural whether or not I wish to place Yahweh above reason itself. So if what Jesus says is true, does it really offer our humble atheist a reasonable solution? Firstly there is evidence for it. Secondly there is the escape from self-condemnation towards redefinition by a higher Judge, who thirdly need not be limited to a cultural icon but rather is an aspect of the logical necessity for an existence recursively greater than any system, including the universe. Jesus teaches of worshiping God, not using him for your cause; seeking to follow a purely good being, not thinking that you are the one who is good; to be on the side of love, joy and peace, not to think that its authority is on your side. He makes the point very strongly: Those who seek to save their life will lose it, but those seek to lose their life will save it. The atheist must put his own life aside, but in favour of whom or what? One thing is certain, if one puts one’s own life aside in favour of something else, one is acting as though that something is greater than ourselves. We cannot do this with people too easily; the best of people let us down. In fact, nothing in nature can really provide us with enough security to put our desire for control at ease. No religion suffices either because we know that trying to follow a set of rules will set us at odds with what is good when the circumstances from whence the rules were derived changes. And as we have already outlined, no other sense of morality will work forever. What we need is to give ourselves up to someone safe (in the way we need them to be), to relinquish our self-definition to someone who can redefine us. The gospel offers us such a process -- it is called grace.

In order to avoid arrogance in our objectively derived subjectivity, let us assume the atheist can find a sense of grace from elsewhere – in fact if it really is a necessary concept for a humble, moral atheist, the fact that they remain functional and atheistic means they must have some other mechanism for dealing with their “fallen nature” (maybe a combination of outside influences like music, other people, nature etc? I think the poet, Kavanagh wrote about being rejuvenated by nature). The mechanism may or may not come so naturally that they do not put a name on it, but I think it must be there. At one point Jesus points out that people will not reach a state where they cannot be forgiven by simply rejecting him, rather they must reject the Spirit who sent him. He still claims that he is the way, the truth and the life and that none may come to the Father except through him, but he says nowhere that he will only allow people who are nominally Christian through him. In fact he actually states that being nominally Christian is insufficient. On the other hand the people who will inherit the earth are quoted as being the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the meek. And it seems it cannot be any other way, because Jesus demonstrated by his own sacrifice that the Kingdom of Heaven is a place where we put ourselves last. Putting ourselves last before humans is dangerous but putting ourselves last before a God who sacrifices himself to save us is another thing. You cannot approach God without putting yourself aside (this is called repentance) and speaking personally, when I do there is such utter joy in leaving behind my bitterness, my worry, my self-consciousness and selfishness, that it overcomes my old beliefs and leaves me with one alone -- worship that carries with it the kingdom of heaven itself. It is something that heals me and I want to do it more to the extent where I would even pass on its infectious life, but certain other aspects of evolution and society can make this difficult for me -- the closest description of exactly what this resistance feels like is pride, a sense of my own richness, and it can be difficult to combat without putting time aside to do so. Anyway, I think the gospel to be very significant whatever the beliefs are of whoever follows it, subconsciously or otherwise. I prefer to follow Jesus too rather than just the Spirit who sent Him, because it anchors the process of grace to someone real. I can’t imagine receiving the same degree of joy if I were not a Christian. I may be wrong.

Taken alone, the likelihood of an event is meaningless -- we will never care unless the event holds significance. The evidence for the gospel is there to be argued about, but at the end of the day it is there. To prove something empirically is to demonstrate something that fits into a closed system, so the only evidence we can have of something outside the universe must either be historical or experienced directly. I have successfully defended the historical evidence for the gospel in my own eyes though I have by no means removed the chance that some potentiality successful attempt to discredit exists (and am in some ways glad that QMonkey is not a qualified historian because I imagine a lot more time would then be required for my defence). The significance of the gospel has also been demonstrated, I think successfully and whether or not there are options that hold the same significance it seems to me that the gospel has more evidence for it than any other solution. To my mind, the option of grace for an atheist must be a vague, instinctive concept that for me lacks the full power of the gospel in my life. But perhaps it works well for him. Or maybe the atheist is actually a girl and it works well for her, not him. I simply don’t know. All I really know is that I’ve finally had the chance to sit down and write what I originally planned to write nine or ten months ago, thanks finally to a relaxing weekend spent in Northern Ireland with my Granny and Granda. Good times, good times.

Thanks for reading.