Book Reviews
Why I Rejected Christianity – John Loftus
Loftus’ Past Experience
A woman falsely accused Loftus of raping her. Many of his closest Christians did not believe him. This must have been a sore point to Loftus, since this is his opening argument against Christianity.
Later on Loftus argued that we Christians should look at Christianity the way an outside would look at our religion. But were not those Christian friends who did not believe Loftus applying the outsider method that he was advocating? I agree that they should have believed him, if there were true friends. But that is because love goes beyond the outsider and gives you the benefit of a doubt. If an outsider were to hear that a woman accused a man of raping her, that outsider would most likely say that the woman was telling the truth. After all, as the feminists would argue, a woman would not go through the embarrassment of crying rape unless it was true. And as the saying goes, where there is smoke there is fire. Most people who were accused of a crime probably did it. Even if the outsider were to give him some benefit of a doubt, he would at most remain neutral. Maybe he is guilty, maybe he is not. It is a matter of “he said she said”. So his friends applied the outsider method on him. But that offended him, because we expect more from our friends. We expect our friends to believe us in spite of any circumstantial evidence.
And this is the problem with his outsider argument. He says that we Christians should look from the outside at our Christian faith, and place the burden of proof on the Christian faith itself. But Loftus has forgotten that we Christians absolutely love Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is my best friend. Being my best friend He does not have to prove Himself to me. This does not mean I that there is no evidence which would make me reject him – but that evidence must be very, very strong. In other words, the burden of proof is always on the accuser who is trying to separate me from my friend. It is unfortunate that I was not in Loftus’s circle of friends. I would have stuck by him and believed in him, not because of the evidence, but because he was my friend. So unless the evidence was very strong, unless John actually confessed me that he did rape that woman, I would still have believed in John. Even if he was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned, I would have believed him. That is what it means to be a friend. In the same way, I love Jesus Christ. I will believe in Him just like I would believe in my other friends. I will stand by Him even in the face of any evidence that may be against Him. If John Loftus felt betrayed that his friends did not believe in him, just based on circumstantial evidence, then would it not also be wrong for us Christians to leave our Friend based on evidence that do not absolutely proves its case against Him?
What about All he Other Religions in the World?
I know that Loftus would argue that this can be said about other religions as well. Why then should a Muslim give up his faith? But this argument only works on an Evangelical Fundamentalist, which I am not. I am Catholic. As a Catholic, I believe a Muslim could have a relationship with Christ, although he calls him Allah. I am not saying he definitely has this relationship with Christ. I am not God; I cannot look into his heart. And neither can I look into God’s heart. I do not know how far His mercy extends. His mercy may even extend to some atheists, but that is a tougher call. I only know that the closer we are to living the truth the more we can be certain of our salvation. And since I believe that the Catholic Church has the fullness of the truth, I believe that the closer one is to believing and doing the teachings of the Catholic Church, the better off he is. Jesus commanded us not to judge. I try to not judge anyone, not because I am trying to be nice to everyone, but because I realize I am not God.
Loftus tries to argue that since there are so many religions, it is best to stand outside them all and be an atheist. But the problem is that this is not only true in religion, but in almost anything. There are different beliefs in just about anything. Standing outside them all is just not a valid option.
There are many different economic systems in the world. There is feudalism, Keynesian economics, supply-side economics, capitalism, socialism, etc. Proponent of each system would say that they are right and the others are wrong. Is remaining outside a valid option?
There are many different views of psycho-therapy. There is Freudian, which believes that everything can be linked to our sexual desires. There is B.F. Skinner, who says everything is linked to environment and our conditioning. Then there is Albert Ellis with his Rational-Emotive therapy. Each one says he is right and the others are wrong. Again, how do we choose? Do we choose nothing?
There are many different diets out there. There is the Atkins, South beach, Grapefruit, Big Breakfast diets. Each proponent says his diet is better than the others. Which one is right? Since there are so many choices, should we just not choose any of them?
Next time you vote, check out how many parties are involved. There is the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Communist Party, etc. Each one says it is right and the others will ruin our country. So what should we do? Should we be skeptical of all and remain on the outside of all. Should we stay home and not vote? But is that really a valid option?
This is the triumph and tragedy of our human condition. In so many areas, we have many options – whose proponents are saying that they are right and the others are wrong. Loftus used the analogy of different bomb shelters, each saying that they will save us. Loftus seems to then be saying that since there are so many, that is better not to decide. But that makes no sense at all! If you stay outside and the big bomb comes, you know you will die. Choosing at least any shelter gives you at least some chance to survive. Yes, some are so weak that you will die anyway. Others are just weak enough that you will be injured, but at least you will survive. And some will be strong enough to survive completely. But at least some shelter is better than stay outside! Now, it is slightly possible that you can survive outside. The bomb may be a dud! But the odds are against that happening. It is by far wiser to make a choice. Yes, it is possible that God could have mercy on the atheist. But the odds are much better to make some sort of effort toward God and at least choose some shelter that you honestly believe reflects the truth.
Problems in the Bible
P 109 – Modern scholars see that the Genesis story was written by several writers. No other religion has applied the Outsider argument to itself as much as Christianity has. The scholars who were heavily critical of the Bible stories are themselves Christians. There is no other religion that is as self-critical. Has a Muslim scholar ever been as critical on the Q’uran? Imagine what would happen if a Muslim scholar would say that the Q’uran was not written by Muhammad, but by different writers at different times and places! I would not be surprised that a fatwa would be issued against his life. And this goes for the other religions as well. I have never read that Hindus or Buddhists have been as critical on their religion as the Christian scholars have been critical on theirs. Not only that, but, except for Thomas Nagel, I have never seen atheists as critical on themselves as Christians have been on themselves. So Loftus has actually confirmed my faith by quoting so many Christian scholars to prove his point. It proves that Christianity has been willing to apply the outsider argument on itself. There is no religion, not even atheism, which loves truth so much that it is willing to look critically at it own flaws as Christianity is willing to do.
Loftus says that history is not an exact science. History is open to interpretation. But Loftus applies this selectively. He applies this toward the historical resurrection of Christ. But later on, he refers to the atrocities of the Crusades and the Inquisition, as if these are facts no one can question. And yet there are scholars today who do in fact question this. Scholars are realizing that the Crusades were intended as a defensive posture. A Jewish scholar, Henry Kamen, wrote a book called The Inquisition, where he argued that the atrocities done out of the Inquisition has been greatly exaggerated. Anyway, my point is not to defend these Crusades or the Inquisition, but to point out the inconsistency here. If Loftus can use history to attack the Christian faith, then we Christians can trust history enough to defend the Christian faith.
Loftus says that the difference between the Christian and the atheist is only ONE religion. The Christian is an atheist
when it comes to all other religions. That is the only difference. But that one is a big one! To say that the difference between a Christian and an atheist is only one religion is like saying that the difference between a homeowner and a homeless person is only one house, or the difference between a married man and a celibate monk is only one woman. So what! That one is a big one!
Not only that, but Catholicism does not see everything black and white. We Catholics are not atheists to other religions. We believe other religions do have some truth in them. We are not saying that we are right and everyone else wrong. We are saying that we have the fullness of the truth. We are more right than others, but this does not mean that the others are totally wrong. Most other religions believe in a God. Most of them pray to this God. Most of them believe in some sort of moral code. In these areas we agree. So we are not atheistic to other religions. We simply believe they do not have the fullness of the truth.
It is also an oversimplification to say that all religions judge other religions going to hell. Most other religions do not even believe in hell! The only religions that say that there is a hell are your theistic religions – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. I never met a Jew who said I was going to Hell. And except for your militant Muslims, most Muslims see Jews and Christians as People of the Book. Even most Christians would not see non-Christians as going to hell. Liberal Protestants do not think so. And neither do Catholics – even orthodox Catholics would say that God could have mercy on a Muslim or a Jew who sincerely believes that his religions is true and love God and others the best he can. So only a very small segment of Christianity would see non-Christians as all going to hell. And this small segment, Protestant Evangelical Fundamentalism, that believes everyone else is going to hell, is the segment of Christianity that Loftus came out of. Again, Loftus has not shown how all of Christianity is unpalatable, but only Fundamentalist Christianity.
Science is the Only Truth?
Loftus says that all we should believe in is science. But science is not an “exact science”. Science is actually what individual scientists have said currently. And these scientists are humans capable of making mistakes. Loftus talks about there being different religions out there. But the same can be said of science. Some scientists say that there is a threat to global warming. Then there are other scientists who say there is no threat. Others say that global warming is a threat but we did not cause it and we really cannot do anything about it. Loftus may say that he is talking about mainstream science, not what scientists on the fringe may say. But this is relative! Galileo was in his day a fringe scientist. Many scientists during his day resisted him. Only two hundred years ago, mainstream doctors used to believe that bleeding a patient could take away a fever. We now know this was absurd. Who is to say that we will not discover something 200 years in the future the does not debunk something that mainstream scientists now believe? Also, the difference between mainstream scientists and fringe scientists can have more than anything to do with politics. The mainstream scientists are the ones who have the money and the government to support them. For instance, I remember once watching a news segment of a scientist who was breaking new ground on finding a cure for cancer. But he was an independent, so government scientists felt threatened by him. It did not look good that this independent scientist would find the cure when the government scientists could not in spite all the money poured into the war on cancer. So the other scientists used government pressure to force this scientist to shut down. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Science has become a powerful, trillion dollar industry. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had the power, and admittedly it did experience corruption among its individuals in the hierarchy. But the new priests and magisterium in this modern age are the doctors and the scientists. Do not get me wrong here. I am not anti-science. I go to the doctor when necessary. But neither do I believe that we should blindly trust whatever doctors and scientists say. If my doctor tells me I need an operation, it would be wise for me to get a second opinion. I work in a pharmaceutical company. I see how the game is played. The pharmaceutical industry is heavily monitored by the FDA. So if the government does not trust the science industry, why should we?
Here is another example – mainstream scientists have created and doctors have administered vaccinations to our children. Well, what do you know! It is now coming out that there can be a direct link between these vaccinations and autism. See http://www.westonaprice.org/children/autism.html. Even mainstream scientists can make mistakes. If we cannot blindly trust these scientists with our children then why should we trust these scientists with our eternal souls? It is absurd to reject God on the basis of what some “mainstream” scientists have said. These scientists have been wrong in the past and they will be wrong in the future. Just as the rest of us, these scientists put on their pants one leg at a time.
I myself am a computer programmer – so my expertise is computer science. I have been doing this for twenty years. I have worked with all kinds of computers. I have created hundreds of different applications. I have used hundred of applications. And there is one thing I found – there is no such thing as a 100% perfect, totally bug-free computer or application. Any application has incremental releases that are supposed to fixed bugs from a previous release. But then the current release introduces new bugs. I once worked at a software company. No matter how much we tested and retested an application, after we released the application to our customers, they would discover bugs in the application. This is so common in the software industry, that all software companies have help desks just to take these calls about bugs.
If this is the way it is with computer science, then it seems to me to be the same with other sciences as well. The first program I worked on in the pharmaceutical industry was a program to record complaints from customer and deviations in the products. But if science was an exact science then there would never be any complaints or deviations. For each drug that is on the market, there are unwanted side effects from that drug that will affect a handful of people. This is why we should not take any drugs unnecessarily. Many people have died by taking drugs unnecessarily – from Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson. If science was an exact science, then our drugs would do exactly what they were intended to do – no more and no less.
This is what happened with those vaccinations to the children. They were intended to protect these children from certain diseases. Oops, we found a bug! These vaccinations can cause autism! I would not be surprised that the scientists go back to the drawing board and come out with vaccinations that fix this bug. So then we start giving these new shots to the children. Oops, we found a new bug! These vaccinations now cause polio!
Our dependence on Science as our new God has given us a generation of people thinking that science will cure all our problems. If you are depressed take a pill to make you feel happy. But then this pill causes you not to sleep. That’s OK. Take this pill to make you sleepy. But then you are drowsy the next day. That’s OK. Take this other to wake you up. Are you starting to have wrinkles in your face? That OK! Science now knows how to give a face-lift! But now your eyes and mouth seem to stretch halfway across your face, and you are depressed about it. That’s OK! Take this pill for your depression…
So since science is not an exact science, why should I reject God because of any findings that science currently makes? How do I know for sure that science will not in 100 years from now change it findings that supposedly disproves my faith now?
But it is not just that science could be wrong. There is something else can be wrong. Maybe what is wrong is our interpretation of scriptures. Again, Loftus assumes that Protestantism is the only correct segment of Christianity. But Protestants are in a minority. Catholics and Orthodox make up about 70% of Christianity. So if he plans to reject Christianity as a whole, he should at least deal with the view of most Christians. Most Christians, Catholic and Orthodox, do not believe that the Bible is an easy book to understand. Catholic scholars argued with Martin Luther that sola scriptura is untenable. We will always bring into our own presuppositions based on our own traditions into our interpretation of the Bible. This is why we need an infallible magisterium to guide us to the correct interpretation. When Jesus promised to give us the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, He did not mean to each and every Christian, but to only to his apostles who in turn gave this to their disciples, who were called bishops. This is what we call apostolic succession. And when these bishops declare something in unison with the bishop who succeeded Peter, this is what we call the magisterium.
How the Bible Interprets Itself
If the Bible is a mystical book, then it is logical to believe that the Bible should not be treated as any other book. Other books have only human origin, but we Christians believe that Bible has two authors – a human author and the divine author. The Catholic says that since the Bible has two authors, a passage can have two meanings, one from the human author and one from the divine author. The human author may not even be aware of what the author intended. So when the NT authors quote the OT in a way that does not seem to be the obvious intention of the divine author, this is not a problem to the Catholic. The Bible has multiple meanings; some can be even hidden to the human author. Protestants feel uneasy about this, because of their view of sola scriptura. If there are hidden meanings in the Bible, would that not open the door to any crackpot cult that reads its views into the hidden meaning of scripture? Yes, it does, unless you have the living, infallible magisterium of the Catholic Church.
And this view of the hidden meaning of scripture should not be illogical even to the skeptic. After all, this is how most skeptics treat the Constitution. For instance, the Constitution says this about religion:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Atheists and secularists use this verse for the idea of separation of Church and State. But that is not what it says. It says CONGRESS shall not establish or prohibit a religion. It says nothing about the local governments. It is only talking about the federal government. Before, during, and after the writing of the Constitution, each colony had its own church that it supported. If the writers intended that the colonies could no longer to establish a church, then why did not the federal government stop the colonies from supporting churches? These secularists are reading their ideas into the Constitution. They argue that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document”. OK, let’s go with that. If a totally human document can be a “living, breathing document” then why cannot the Bible, especially since we Christians believe it is a mystical and supernatural book, be considered a “living, breathing document”? If secularists and atheists can loosely interpret the Constitution, then how can they say it is wrong for Jesus and the other NT writers to loosely interpret the Old Testament?
And again, Loftus seems to contradict himself. Loftus seems to understand that the Bible is not an easy book to understand, that is why we have so many different Protestant denominations that base their teaching on the Bible. And then he gives us yet one more interpretation of scripture! But if all these Protestant churches cannot be right in their conflicting views of scripture, then why should we believe that Loftus’s interpretation is correct? And if his interpretation of scripture is not necessarily correct, then his finding of an error or other problem in the Bible has no foundation. His own interpretation of what really happened at the tomb is just one of many other interpretations, which has a good chance of being wrong.
Another thing that Loftus does not seem to appreciate is that God accommodated His truth to what our small minds could comprehend at that time. Loftus questions why did not God reveal things that we now know in science to be true. This, of course, assumes our scientific understanding does not change a few hundred years from now. But let’s really think about it. Suppose God had revealed to the first-century Christians that the earth revolves around the sun. This would have gone against everything that people at that time believed! This would have been severely challenged by the Roman and Greek cultures that believed that everything revolved around the earth. And debating would be centered on this, instead of the person and work of Christ. The message of the gospel would be side-tracked. Up until Copernicus, everyone would have rejected the Bible because it had made this absurd declaration that the earth revolved around the sun! From God’s perspective, He is concerned about us properly responding to His Son. If He gave men science lessons back then, men would have rejected the gospel long ago. If He gave us accurate scientific facts 2,000 years ago when man was not yet accustomed to these facts, then it would have seemed totally implausible to them back then, although it would be plausible to us now. This is how we treat the education of our children. We take into account our children’s mental and emotional level when we teach them. Some parents may tell their 4-year old child that the stork is bringing him a sister. They are accommodating to his understanding. In the same way, God may accommodate His truth to a level so that it can be best understood to the people at that time. When the Bible says that God stopped the sun when the Israelites were fighting, God could have explained exactly that the sun did not actually stop. But this would have detracted from the main point in the story. As a parent, I realize that sometimes it is just easier to say that the stork came.
Why Believe those Superstitious People Back Then?
Just because the people 2,000 years ago were more superstitious, it does not mean that they were more credulous. Superstition worked just as much against Christianity as for it. Whenever some natural disaster hit a town, it was blamed on Christians. An earthquake happens – the Christians to the lions! Also Christians were accused of cannibalism, incest, and even atheism. The percentage of Christians now in our society is far more than the percentage back then. Christians were a very small minority that were persecuted by the non-Christian majority. If people were more gullible back then, why it that society not accept Christianity for the first three centuries?
The Jews saw Jesus doing miracles, but they attributed it to the Devil. They were more open that Jesus did wonders, but they still did not see them as being from God. For the most part, both Jews and Roman rejected the gospel message. They did not become Christians. And for the first three hundred years, Christians were persecuted. In fact, whereas the majority people in our country consider themselves Christians, the majority of the people hated Christianity and would rather see Christians fed to the lions than go to their churches. So the Romans were a hard audience. And since they were so superstitious and so hostile to Christianity, does that not mean that they saw Christianity as an enemy to pagan superstition?
Loftus argues that the Bible is not historical by showing events in the Old Testament where the Israelites abandoned God and followed false idols. He argued that if God had saved them historically, how can they abandon Him? This logic escapes me. First of all, he used historical events in the Bible (the Jews abandoning God to idols) in order to discredit historical events (God saved the Jews out of
In college, I remember going over this study in class. A teacher would draw two lines on the blackboard:
A. ------------------------------
B. --------------------------------
Obviously, line B is longer than line A. But he told the class to say that A was longer than B. Then a student came into class. The teacher asked the students to raise their hand if they thought that A was longer than B. They all raised their hands, INCLUDING THE STUDENT WHO JUST CAME INTO CLASS! This was to show how powerful peer pressure can be. So I am not surprised that
Loftus argues that back then people were superstitious and in this modern age we are not. Actually, I do not think that our modern age is as naturalistic as Loftus make out to be. The more scholars try to say that there is nothing but what we can see, the more people strive for more than that. I think that this explains the popularity today with vampire movies and books. And it is not for just entertainment value. You also have the New Age movement and the use of crystals today. I am not advocating the use of these things. The Church tells me to stay away from these things. I am just showing that superstition is alive and well even today. The first thing many people turn to is the astrology section.
Even in our modern age we at times show that there things that go beyond science.
I remember once watching on ABC a news segment of a relic from Blessed Frederic saving a woman’s unborn child. See http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/Health/story?id=691529&page=1. Then you have stories of ghosts, like Resurrection Mary. I am not sure they are all true, or any of them are true. But they could be true. There are just a lot of things that go on that cannot be scientifically explained. Atheists want us to trust only in science. But as I pointed out, science has let us down at times. Look at all the autistic children we have today because we trusted science.
Loftus goes to list all the incredulous events (according to him) in the Bible. There is one thought I had as I read these. Wasn’t Loftus a minister and a Christian apologist? Then did he not study these passages already? I do not understand this. I also went to TEDS. And many of these passages were dealt with when I was student. So he must have encountered them back in his seminary days. If they were so convincing, why did he not abandon the faith long time ago? For instance, he finds the whole story of Jonah to be incredulous. But he was a Christian for many years; surely he heard the story beforehand. Why did he not pack his bags and leave the first time he had heard the story?
This I simply do not understand. Since he was an apologist, he must have been aware of these arguments. I know he wrote that he never really looked at these arguments honestly, he only looked at them to refute them. But I just have a hard time buying that. I cannot imagine him being a good apologist unless he thoroughly analyzed the arguments of his opponents. So why did these same old arguments all of a sudden make sense to him? On page 25, he said that if he was treated poorly by Christians, he might still be a believer today. Those are his words exactly. That is not exactly a very rational reason to reject the faith. Loftus seems to understand that we all fall short. That is why forgiveness is so important. Yes, it was wrong for the people not forgive John in his lapse into adultery. But in the same way, he needed to forgive others for their sin toward him, their sin of judging him and not standing by him when he was falsely accused. He is right that we should not judge others, but we should not judge others even when their sin is judging us. He called this Lynda a con artist. Maybe she is, but if John wants not to be judged by others, then he should not judge her.
Who Is Morally Superior?
He says that Christians act as being intellectually superior and morally superior. I disagree. Atheists act far more intellectually superior. Atheists have said that anyone who believes in God is an idiot. Just because we Christians say we have the truth, that does not mean that we feel we are intellectually superior. A good lawyer can get a good man off. A great lawyer can get a guilty man off. It takes a very smart man to make an unpalatable position to be palatable. My job is a lot easier than the atheist. I am seeking to prove the truthfulness of truth. In takes a cunning genius to prove the truthfulness of a lie. So I do not feel that I am smarter than everyone else.
Loftus then argues that the atheist is morally superior because he does not need God to be good. I remember in college studying what makes good people good and bad people bad. In a nutshell, we experience positive strokes and negative strokes in life. If we have more positive strokes then negative, then we turn out good. If we have more negative strokes, then we would turn out bad. If a person grows up with one or more parents that either abuse him, then there is a very good chance he will turn out bad. If a person faces a catastrophe in his life, and did not receive enough positive strokes in his life before that, then he could turn out bad. Recently, a man went into a women’s health club and killed three women because he never had a girlfriend – too many negative strokes in his life. So, yes, an atheist can be a good person – if he has had more positive strokes than negative. But what about a person who had many negative strokes in his life? What hope does he have? That is where God comes in. God is the great equalizer of too many negative strokes. I include myself in this. I was born with a disability. Most of my fellow students made fun of me all through high school. I had only one friend in my childhood, and that only lasted for two years. Then he dumped me for cooler friends. I never had a girlfriend until my last year in college. Was I a loser? Yeah, probably so. But there are many losers in this world. Something just eventually snaps in them, and you then you read about him in the newspaper. But something happened to me on my road to ruin. I found Jesus Christ. And of all the things He did for me, He saved me from myself. He saved me from what I could have been. If I fell away from God now would I do something evil? Probably not. I have had a lot of positive strokes stored since I came to Christ. I am married to a wonderful woman, have two great kids, and great friends. But I do not believe I would have gotten to this point in my life if I had never turned to Christ.
I have never, ever heard that atheism has saved people who were in my predicament. I never heard of losers in life becoming winners through atheism. What does atheism have to offer? To a person who feels that he is a loser, atheism tells him that it is the survival of the fittest, and if he is a loser he should get out of the way for the winners. To a person who has no one, atheism tells him that there is no one out there who loves him. Everything is by chance. Life is absurd. An alcoholic does not escape alcoholism by turning to atheism. In fact, Alcoholics Anonymous teaches that one must believe in God in order to overcome alcoholism. The same can be said about drug addiction. Why is it that only those in the prison system who find God are the only ones who turn their lives around and become model prisoners?
Plausibility versus Logic
The strength of Loftus’ argument is to me the implausibility argument. But the strength of the Christian argument is logic. The Christian would agree that the gospel is implausible. In fact
Christianity may seem to be incomprehensible but it is not illogical. For instance, Loftus argues against the Trinity because it is implausible. But the Trinity is not a contradiction. God cannot do or be is something that is contradictory. For instance, God cannot make a square circle. But the doctrine of the Trinity is saying that God is one essence but three persons. This is not contradictory. To say that God is one essence and yet three essences would be illogical. Or to say that God is one person and yet is three persons would be logical. The law of non-contradiction says that A cannot be non-A. Loftus argues that is hard to comprehend that an essence is separate from a person so that you can have three persons in one essence. That may be true. But so what? By definition, God would be an incomprehensible. He uses human analogies to compare God to man, especially in dealing with the problem of evil. Atheist Thomas Nagel once wrote an article called “What It Is Like To Be A Bat”. A bat “sees” with his ears, using sonar. And try as we may, we just cannot comprehend what it like to see the way a bat sees. We comprehend things by relating them to our past experiences. But if we lack the experience then we cannot comprehend it. A man born blind cannot comprehend the color
But atheism is illogical. It is flatly contradicting itself. It violates the principle that A is not non-A. For instance, Loftus argues that we cannot rely on our own judgment of historical events because our view of the historical event is colored by each person’s perspective. But he then goes ahead to explain how superstitious people were 2,000 years ago. He argues that the Pentateuch was written by unknown people 1,000 year after the events, Isaiah was written by two authors, and 2 Peter was written by someone other than Peter. But this is a contradiction. If we cannot look at history objectively, then how can he look at history objectively to tell us who wrote what in the Bible? If we cannot look at history objectively, then how can he be objective enough to argue that Jesus did not rise from the dead? Again, he said that we should only believe what can be proven with scientific evidence. But then he tells us that there could be an “xniverse” that exists along with the universe that does not follow the scientific laws. He says that there is an infinite Void that extends beyond the universe. And most of all, he says that there could be an infinite number of parallel “multi-verses”. But in each of these cases, there is not one shred of scientific evidence that any of these an xniverse, an infinite void, or multi-verses exist. So he violates his own rule. He says that things should not be believed that are not scientifically verified. But then Loftus himself just takes it by faith that the things he articulated exist. But even more to the point – the very belief that we should only believe what can be verified by scientific evidence cannot itself be verified by scientific evidence. So Loftus would have to make an exception for that belief. But if he can make an exception for his belief, then why cannot there be an exception for mine?
He misapplies logic to human behavior. For instance, saying that it is illogical for someone wanting to stay in hell. But one thing we know about human behavior is that people do behave illogically. It is not logical for a woman to stay with a husband who beats her. It is not logical for an abused child to grow up and abuse his own children. Psychology and psychiatry has shown that people can be engaged in self-destructive behavior, which is totally illogical. So a soul in hell are faced with two conflicting desires – on one hand he is miserable in hell and on the other hand he hates God and would be miserable being with God forever. Also, throughout his book, Loftus argued that if the Christian God exists, then He would be a monster. If that is so, and it turn turns out that the Christian God does exist, would he not rather be in hell than be in heaven to worship what he considers a monster? So would not for him hell be locked from the inside?
Are we to suppose that Loftus, if he were to find himself in hell, would want to be in heaven instead? In the condition that his soul is in now, I think not, unless he has been dishonest with us. If it turns out that the Christian God does send him to hell, he would then no doubt admit that that Christian God exists. But nothing else would change about what he believes about God. He would still believe that this God would still be a monster worse than Adolph Hitler – that this God had allowed all kinds of evil and suffering into the world, that this God punishes men for all eternity, and that this God had some sick desire for some satisfaction to punish His Son for our sins. If Loftus had any ounce of integrity in him, he would admit that he would gladly spend eternity in hell than go to heaven to worship this God that he hates. Again, nothing would have changed in what he believes about God, except he would believe that God exists. He would still believe that God is unlovable.
The Catholic tradition has always taught that the only thing that man ultimately needs is God.
My portrayal of heaven and hell is partly based on the teachings of the Catholic Church and partly based on my active imagination. That is OK, from my Catholic perspective. The Catholic Church does not tell us Catholics what to think, as much as it tells us what not to think. As Chesterton once wrote, Catholicism is a large playground we are free to romp and play, secure in fact that as long as we do not venture outside the boundaries set by the Church that we are safe. So as a Catholic I am free to think and use my imagination, as long as I stay within the boundaries of orthodoxy. Protestant Evangelical Fundamentalists have no magisterium to set the boundaries, so they tend to huddle together and not use their imagination for fear of straying too far from the playground. Liberal Protestants are not afraid to romp and roam, but since there are no boundaries they roam too far. So it matters not that much of what I write about hell is not explicitly in the Bible. God has given us our creative imaginations and the Church tells to have fun with them, go ahead and romp and play, as long as we stay within the boundaries established by the Church. This is why the most highly creative Christian writers have been Catholic – such as G.K. Chesterton and J.R. Tolkien (even C.S. Lewis was Anglo-Catholic).
Another criticism I have is that Loftus, even as an atheist, still thinks as a Protestant, and sometimes even an Evangelical Fundamentalist. This is especially true in his view of the Bible. In the section “How the New Testament Writers Used Predictive Prophesy”, Loftus correctly showed that the NT writers did not interpret the O.T. literally, but used Midrash or pesher hermeneutics. On page 227, he writes that leaves us with three options:
- The N.T. writers were simply wrong in their interpretation.
- The N.T. writers were right in their method of interpretation, and gave us the model of how we should interpret the Bible.
- The N.T. writers used a method that was only right for that time, but we should use the historical-grammatical method now.
Loftus correctly rejects option 3. But he rules out the second option without providing any argument. He simply writes “the second option is simply not a live option to me”. But, as a Catholic, that option is the only live option to me. This is the option that the Catholic Church teaches. It teaches that the Bible is a holy, mystical book. As a mystical book, it has two authors – a human author and a divine author. And since it has two authors, a text can have two meanings. It can have a meaning from the human author and it can also have a meaning from the divine author. This is totally logical. If the Bible is a mystical book then this is the way it should be treated. This is how all other religions treat their holy books. I know of know other religion that uses the historical-grammatical method on their mystical books. And within Christianity, the Orthodox Christians probably look at the Bible even more mystically than us Catholics. The only segment of Christianity that insist on interpreting the Bible with only one meaning that is bound to the intention of the author within history is Protestantism. And that is not done because of logical reasons, but pragmatic reasons. When the reformers broke off from the Catholic Church and said that we do not need the Church to interpret the Bible for them, they knew that they had to come up with a simple hermeneutic to reading the Bible that would not cause complete chaos (they did not succeed, we still have over 25,000 Protestant denominations). So the reformers rejected the multiple senses of scripture that Christians for 1500 years believed for one plain sense of scripture intended by the human author. This was the only way they could hold on to sola scriptura.
Another way that Loftus still thinks like a Protestant, is when he argued that if God was there why did He not ever tell us that slavery was wrong? Loftus is correct when he writes that the Bible does not condemn slavery, but that does not mean that God has not condemned slavery. God has revealed to us through the Catholic Church as early as the 15th century that forced slavery is a grave sin. When Catholics were voyaging to the Canary Islands, they were enslaving the natives. The pope issued this bull:
"They have deprived the natives of their property or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery (subdiderunt perpetuae servituti), sold them to other persons and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them.... Therefore We ... exhort, through the sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ shed for their sins, one and all, temporal princes, lords, captains, armed men, barons, soldiers, nobles, communities and all others of every kind among the Christian faithful of whatever state, grade or condition, that they themselves desist from the aforementioned deeds, cause those subject to them to desist from them, and restrain them rigorously. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their pristine liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands ... who have been made subject to slavery (servituti subicere). These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money."
Eugene IV: Sicut Dudum, 1435
Then later this was issued:
"Therefore, We, . . . noting that the Indians themselves indeed are true men and are not only capable of the Christian faith, but, as has been made known to us, promptly hasten to the faith' and wishing to provide suitable remedies for them, by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples-even though they are outside the faith-who shall hereafter come to the knowledge of Christians have not been deprived or should not be deprived of their liberty or of their possessions. Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery, and that whatever happens to the contrary is to be considered null and void. These same Indians and other peoples are to be invited to the said faith in Christ by preaching and the example of a good life."
Paul III: Sublimis Deus, 1537
See http://cfpeople.org/Apologetics/page51a003.html
This is ex-cathedra stuff here! No Catholic could keep a slave without endangering his soul! This does not mean that all Catholics obeyed. But it cannot be said that God did not warn them of this grave sin way before slavery in the New World ever started. At the time of slavery, the
The Catholics in
Loftus also criticized Christianity for Nazi Germany. He rightly sees that Hitler may not have been a true believer and only used religion for his own advancement. But he condemned Lutherans in
“Moved by Christian charity, the Holy See is obligated to protect the Jewish people against unjust vexations and, just as it reprobates all rancor and conflicts between peoples, it particularly condemns unreservedly hatred against the people once chosen by God; the hatred that goes by the name of anti-Semitism.”
Pope Pius XI, 1928
Back in 1939, a ship of about 900 Jews was allowed to leave
In contrast Pope Pius XII ordered the churches and monasteries to hide the Jews. The Church issued phony baptism certificates to Jews. It is estimated that Pope Pius XI was able to save 800,000 Jews from the Nazi death camps.
This reminds me what Chesterton said – not only is the Catholic Church always right, it is right where everyone else is wrong. When the whole world was imposing slavery on others, it was only the Church that stood up against it. When the whole world was anti-Semitic, it was only the Church that stood up against anti-Semitism. When the whole world refused to save the Jews from the death camps, it was the Catholic Church that was willing to speak out against the atrocity and to hide the Jews from the Nazis. I challenge Loftus to find a Deist or an Atheist back in the 15th century who also stood against slavery. I challenge him to find an atheist who spoke out against anti-Semitism back in the 1920’s.
Please excuse my standing on my Catholic soapbox, but I find it frustrating that Loftus writes a book on how he rejected Christianity, and yet he completely ignores the segment of Christianity that is the largest and has been around the longest. Even if his arguments are valid, they have only refuted Protestant Evangelicalism, not all of Christianity. My experiences are very similar to Loftus. I, too, was an Evangelical minister. I, too, felt betrayed and abandoned by other Christians. I, too, was kicked out of the ministry. But unlike John, I realized that my experience did not invalidate all of Christianity. The most that can be said is that it invalidated my narrow experience of Christianity. From my experience, I could no longer hold to the Evangelical view of Christianity. But there were still other views – there was the liberal Protestant view, there was the Orthodox view, and there was the Catholic view.
This is my problem with Fundamentalists who become atheists. They still have a fundamentalist attitude. They have an either-or attitude. If Fundamentalism is wrong, then atheism must be right. To them, Evangelical Fundamentalism is the only movie show at the theater. Nothing else is worthy of investigation. If Evangelical Fundamentalism is refuted then all of Christianity is refuted. You can take the atheist out of Fundamentalism, but you can’t take the Fundamentalism out of the atheist.
Healthy Skepticism
This also relates to Loftus view skepticism, saying that healthy skepticism is good for a person. Loftus is right to criticize the Protestant inner witness of the Spirit argument, and how Craig KNOWS that Christianity is true in spite of any possible evidence. This can be linked back to the traditional Protestant view that we are saved only by faith. If the Protestant believes he is saved only by his faith, then the Protestant cannot accept any doubts. Any lack of certainty could indicate that he was never a true believer to begin with, and that would mean he is condemned to hell. But a Catholic does not have to worry about that, for he realizes that he not just judge by his faith, but also the way he lives. The Catholic realizes that there is what is called “the dark night of the soul”. The Catholic realizes that he can experience doubt, just as Jesus experience doubt when He cried on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Many saints have experienced doubts and other forms of spiritual aridity. Mother Teresa expressed this in her life. But here atheists contradict themselves. They say “Look, we told you so! Even Mother Teresa does not believe”. And yet when Bill Craig expresses total, unwavering faith then Loftus criticizes him for not looking at his faith objectively.
My problem is not that Loftus is skeptical, but that he is not skeptical enough. He applies his skepticism selectively. He is skeptical about doing objective history, but he is not skeptical about science. He said his faith in science is justified because science has produced results. But that is a mixed bag. Yes, science has given us many wonderful things that we can be grateful for (BTW, when an atheist says he is grateful, exactly to whom is he grateful?). But science has also brought us the nuclear bomb, which may lead to our destruction. Science has possibly brought us to global warming. Two hundred years ago, science said that leeches could cure a man from fever, and this bit of scientific knowledge caused the death of George Washington. Loftus may argue that it is not science that caused this, but the abuse of science. But the same can be said of religion. It is not religion that caused the suicide bombing, but the abuse of religion.
He is also only skeptical on doing objective history when the investigation is done by others who do not agree with his own supposedly objective history. And this is where he is especially not enough skeptical. He is not skeptical on his own skepticism. He is not skeptical on himself. Socrates said that for a man to attain knowledge he must realize how much he does not know. A man who thinks he is wise is actually a fool. Only a person who sees himself as a fool is willing to seek wisdom. But one thing I think I can see in John Loftus, he does not see himself as a fool. If he saw himself as a fool, he not would feel the need to tell us how many degrees he has. I am not trying to condemn or praise him for this. I am just saying that finding truth is not a matter of how many degrees a person has. If that guaranteed truth, then everyone with PhD’s would agree. But this is not the case.
To me, in order to find the truth takes humility- lots and lots of humility. Humility is being aware of yourself with all your faults. It is not being aware of other people’s biases that hinder objectivity, but being aware of your own. And that is not an easy thing to do. It takes much self-examination. To this a faithful Catholic has an advantage. One of the disciplines that a Catholic has is an examination of conscience. He is used to taking his spiritual and emotional thermometer. He is constantly thinking of ways that he can be less selfish so that he practice self-denial. And the more he denies himself, the more he is disinterested of his own interests. And the more disinterested he is, the more objective he is. That to me is how one achieves objectivity – by humility, self-examination, reflection, meditation, and striving to put aside his own interests. An atheist can argue that he can do all these things without God. Maybe he can, but my personal experience is that it cannot be done without Him. But if he does, then he would be just as hard on his own views as he is with the views of Christians. I am not sure I see this in Loftus. If Loftus viewed his skepticism as an outsider, as he challenged us to view our faith as an outsider, I think he would have caught these contradictions.
There is actually no one more skeptical than a Catholic saint. This is why Blessed Teresa had doubts. She was doing what Loftus challenged us to do. She looked at her faith as an outsider. This does not mean she was ever in danger of losing her faith. She had one thing on the side that tipped the scales for her faith – she loved God with her whole being. When you love someone, you trust that someone even if there is evidence against that trust. This is why Loftus felt betrayed by his Christian friends. They believed the evidence as they saw it instead of trusting him because they loved him. It seems to me that Loftus reduced God to a philosophical argument long before he officially turned away from God. It is easy to turn your back on a philosophical argument. It is next to impossible to turn your back on your best Friend. Not only that, but a Catholic saint applies his skepticism to everything – to history, to science, to other people’s faiths, to one’s own faith, to others, to one’s self. Once a person reaches that point, there is no place and no one else to look to but up. He looks to God - not because he trusts in his own ability to find God, but because there is no one else to turn to. As Peter, the saintly skeptic says, ‘Lord, to who should we then go? Only you have the words of eternal life”. The only other option is to stay is in his total despair or not believing in anything. The only person I know who even tried to do that was Frederic Nietzsche. He was skeptical on everything – since there is no God, how then do we know that love is greater than hate, or even that life is better than death? He finally went crazy. These are the options set before us in our skepticism – either we come back to God or we fall into the despair of nihilism and hedonism.
Atheistic Fairy Tales
On page 77, Loftus writes that there is an infinite VOID that extends infinitely beyond the universe. Loftus writes of the infinite VOID of which “we do not know its properties”. Well, if we do not its properties, then how do we know that this infinite Void does not have a consciousness? In fact, maybe this VOID has not just one consciousness, but three of them. In other words, since Loftus admit that he does not know the properties of this VOID, then he cannot with confidence declare that this infinite VOID is not what we Christians call God. Now, Loftus may object to this because he would say that this VOID is pure nothing, and God is not “nothing”. Well, God is pure Spirit, so in a sense one can say that God is in a sense pure nothingness since He does not have a body to inhabit space. But anyway, even here Loftus contradicts himself. He may also object that we cannot know the properties of this Void, so I cannot associate God to this VOID. But Loftus is already assigning properties to this VOID – he writes that this VOID has the properties of nothingness and infinitude. If “we do not know its properties”, then how does he know that this VOID has these properties he assigned to it.
He also talks about the possibility of the existence of an “xniverse”, which influenced the existence of this universe to come into existence. He writes that this “xniverse” behaves in a manner totally different to the scientific laws of our universe. Hmmm… So this xniverse does not behave according to our scientific laws? Well then, could it be possible that there are inhabitants in this “xniverse”? And since this xniverse does not abide by our scientific laws, then could it be that this world and its inhabitants are purely spiritual? But would that not be what we Christians call heaven?
Loftus acknowledges that there is a problem that the whole universe is set up in a certain way to allow for the possibility of life. The odds of this happening by chance is extremely high. Loftus, like most other scientists, get around this by speculating that there can be an infinite number of multiverses that exist. And we are just the lucky ones who are in the universe that is conducive to life. Putting aside that this has to be accepted by faith alone, let us look at this. Considering that that there are an infinite number of universes, anything is plausible. But if anything is plausible, does that not mean that the existence of an infinite, personal Creator who created everything else in that universe would also then be plausible? Given the presupposition that we have these infinite number of multiverses, is it not then likely that at least one has a Creator described in the Bible? Could we not then be just the lucky ones that are in a universe where an infinite being came down from the “xniverse” and died on the cross for our sins, so that we can then live with Him in that xniverse? Now Loftus may object to this because this would make God not the Supreme Being above all, just the Supreme Being in our universe. After all, then there is the possibility that that could be other gods in other universes, and the Bible says there is only one God. But the Bible is only dealing with our universe, not others. The same is with the Catholic Church. The Church has never ruled on this since the idea of multiverses is just a speculation. Now do not misunderstand me. I do not believe this at all. There is no scientific evidence for existence of these multiverses, so I will not believe they exist until proven otherwise. I am just showing that from Loftus’s perspective, it would still be plausible for God to exist.
This shows the quandary for this atheist. The more he explains how the universe could have existed without God, the more it sounds like it is leaving the door open for the existence God. Loftus writes how implausible that a Christian God would exist, but then he argues that if we have an infinite number of multiverses then anything is plausible. He argues that an infinite being such as the Christian God could exist, but then he says that there is an infinite being that does exist which he calls a VOID, of which his properties are unknown. He argues against heaven, and then he argues for the existence of an “xniverse” that goes beyond our scientific laws. From his own book, Loftus inadvertently proves that the existence of God is plausible.
God And Science
Loftus Fundamentalist outlook is also seen in his view of God’s providence versus chance. He sees things as being back and white. Either God causes every single detailed natural event or the world is all by chance. But there is a third option – which again is the option held by Catholic tradition. The third option is that both are true. God is involved with his creation and He also allows this to happen by chance. This is why the Catholic Church never really had that much of a problem with evolution. Sometimes God is directly involved in His creation, but many times He finds it more interesting to let the dice roll. So a cockroach does not necessarily have to be specifically designed by God. I think God enjoys watching how nature plays things out.
There is a tradition that goes right back to Augustine that holds that creation is a single act and that the created effect is stratified into different levels. Within these levels, natural causality is free to exercise itself in whatever way possible. Thus, two of the most influential philosopher-theologians within the Christian tradition advocate a metaphysics which is itself quite compatible with Darwinian thought. The desire of the intelligent design theorists seems to be geared towards a literal reading of Genesis, but such a reading was not the default(sic) position of historical christianity, and only represented one particular interpretation of the Genesis account.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/5138
Catholic tradition, even before
This comes to the “Achilles heel of Christianity” – science. But has science ever disproved the existence of God? Well, eh, no. It is all based on his Fundamentalist upbringing that if you are for God you are against science. And why does Loftus believe in science? Well, eh, it works, it produced results. But this justification for science is circular. If people started science in the first place just because it produced results, then science would never have started in the first place. For centuries people observed and came up with scientific theories before there was ever any positive benefit for all that. Centuries before Copernicus, Galileo, and
It is not just that priests and monks had the inclination to study science, but because of their belief in God they had presupposition necessary to do science. They presupposed that there was law and order in the universe, and this was based on God. God is a God of order, not chaos. So they believed that because of this we can trust the belief that there is order in the universe. Without this presupposition, it would be impossible to come up with scientific laws. Now, I know that Loftus would argue that he believes in scientific laws, not because of God, but because science produces results. The proof is in the pudding. But the people who first started studying science did not have this knowledge that science produces results, so unless they believed in law and order in the universe, then science would never have gotten off the ground. The agnostic sociologist Rodney Stark, in his book The Victory of Reason, showed why science started in the Western Christian culture and not in any other culture. Paganism believed that each event in natures is caused arbitrarily by an individual god. The Eastern religions taught that the physical universe is just an illusion. The Muslims (and also Calvinists) believed that God directly causes each event to happen, and could at any time change His will. And atheism believes that the world is absurd, so then there is no point is doing science in order to make sense of the world (think how absurd it is to hear an atheist talk about scientific laws if there is no law giver). Now, Stark admits today that these non-Christian religions and atheism do study science. But he points out that this is because science has been around long enough to prove its case that it works. So the non-Christian scientist suspends his own belief in the world so that he can do science. Stark’s point is that without the Christian culture we would never have reached the point to see the benefits of science in order to keep on doing science. So of all the different religions in the world, there is only one religion that brought us science, it was Christianity.
But with all the benefits of science, science cannot replace God. Science is still done by scientists. And scientists are human – they can make mistakes. Loftus says he believes in science because it works. But what happens if in the future science produces more failures than successes? What if scientists are proven wrong too many times, just as scientists 200 years ago were proven wrong that leeches do not cure the fever? As far as I am concerned, I will always believe that there are scientific laws in the universe because I believe in the Law Giver. Since Loftus only believes in science for pragmatic reasons, how does he know that that science may not have many failures (let’s say – a nuclear war that destroys most of the world, or pollution, or global warming). Let’s take light, for example. There are experiments that show light is a ray. Then there are experiments that show that light are a set of participles. So then science is saying that light is both light and particles – it is both. But how can this be? It must be one of the other, right? Not according to science. It is a mystery, a paradox. So if light can be both light and particles, then why cannot Jesus be both God and man? Both are mysteries, which we cannot comprehend. There is a whole field of study that deals with the mysterious world not fitting exactly the way we expect it. It is called Quantum Physics. See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4237751840526284618. This url points to experiments of light going through slits. What astounded scientists was that the light behaved differently when it was being observed. But how can this be? It is almost as if light knows that it is being watched! This totally baffles scientists! Personally, I think that God enjoys having a little fun with us at times; that we are reminded that we just do not have all the answers. So science has helped us to understand the world around. But science has also opened more baffling question. Most atheists say that they are confident will eventually answer these questions. But how can they be sure of that? It is possible that we may destroy ourselves with nuclear war or global warming before that ever happens. Science may destroy us all before it get the chance to answer all our questions.
Loftus argues against immaterial world having any influence on the material world. He says that God without a body could not influence a material world. He says this has not been refuted by Christians except to argue for consciousness. But he does not go into the argument from consciousness, which is to me the Achilles heel to atheism. We have a consciousness, and ego, a Mind that goes beyond just our physical brain. It is true that our brain affects our mind to some extent. If I have a brain injury, it does affect the way I think. But it is undeniable that that our mind effects our brain. Ask yourself this: Do the impulses in your brain cause you to have a thought or does your thought cause the impulses in your brain? If it is the former, then what causes the impulses? It was either caused by some intelligent being (this would lead to Calvinism, which both Loftus and I disagree) or it was caused by random chance, which would be held by the materialist. The materialist would argue that the clicking away of these brain impulses would be by chance. But think about that. If we are to believe that all our thinking is only the result of the random clicking away of these brain cells, why do we then bother to argue about things? That makes as much sense as turning two computers toward each other so that they can argue about the meaning of life. If the random impulses in our brain cause us to think, then that means that each one of us are programmed by random chance. And that would mean that I am programmed by Chance to believe in God, and Loftus is programmed to be an atheist – not programmed by God, as in Calvinism, but by Chance. So if that is the case, why then should Loftus write his book to convince us that God does not exist? We are all programmed. In fact, why write any book, or ever have any debate on anything? Why should I even bother to say “Please pass the salt” to you, since you are programmed by random brain impulses to either pass the salt or not to pass the salt. So it is irrefutable that we each possess something that is immaterial, that is beyond just the physical brain. This is called the Mind, Consciousness, Free Thought, Ego, or Free Will. This is not something that you can dissect out of the brain of a cadaver and hold in your hand. You cannot hold it in your hand and say “This is consciousness!” You cannot say that consciousness, or thought, has a certain size, or a certain odor, or a certain color. So it is definitely there, but it is immaterial. And yet this immaterial can influence the material. I can have a thought to pick up a glass of water to drink it. And my immaterial thought causes physical impulses from my brain to move down my hand to pick up the glass of water. So the immaterial does influence the immaterial.
But there is more. Evolution says that we are all evolved from a single-cell organism. I think it is safe to say the no one believes that that this single-cell organism had a consciousness. So somewhere in this evolutionary chain consciousness started to exist. So were did it come from? We cannot say that it came from nothing, because something cannot come out of nothing. Once we accept the possibility that something came out of nothing, that would be the death of science. Science assumes that everything came from something; else why try to assume there is a particular cause for virus? So if consciousness came from something, then what? If it came from something else that lacked consciousness, how can that thing give to something else what that thing lacked? The only rational option is that only we can only receive a consciousness from another conscious being. But where did this conscious being receive its consciousness? Unlike us, this being always had his consciousness.
Loftus also argued for the universe being a brute fact. As a brute fact, he does not have argue why it is there. But then my brute fact is God. I do not have to argue why God is there. Does that mean that our arguments are equal? Not quite! I will go back to Loftus’ xniverse theory. This xniverse, according to Loftus, does not hold to our scientific laws. The xniverse is what I call Heaven. And I agree that Heaven is not bound by the scientific laws of our universe. Now, according to Christian thought, God is the major inhabitant of Heaven, the “xniverse”. Since heaven is not bound by scientific laws then there needs to be no scientific laws to explain God. God can be a brute fact, without any scientific explanation. So the idea of a God with no beginning or no end may be mind-boggling, but even Loftus admits that this xniverse goes beyond our understanding. But the same should not be said about our universe. In our universe, brute fact as an explanation goes against science. Science does not accept brute facts. Science demands an answer. So to say that our universe is just a brute fact without any explanation is just plain unscientific. If the universe is a brute fact, then why could we not be content with the things in the universe being just brute fact? This would eventually lead to the death of science. But not so with saying God is a brute fact, since God by definition is without a physical body and is in the realm of the xniverse, which Loftus admitted is not bound by science.
There is another reason that it is absurd to think that science is the Achilles heel of Christianity. It was best said by my favorite author, G.K. Chesterton, who talked of people who considered themselves to be modern free-thinkers (BTW, how can there be free-thinkers without a free will?):
“The Ball and the Cross”
Modern “Free thought” does a lot of splashing around. But it does not build on what was thought beforehand. No wonder, since, except for themselves, free-thinkers are skeptical what others have said before them, even what other free-thinkers had said. But science and Catholicism are both different. They build on what others have said before them. They both do not start from scratch. They both have a deep sense of tradition. A true scientist would think it odd for Loftus to say that we cannot trust history. If we cannot trust history, we cannot be able to do science. Scientists assume that the findings done in the past are accurate, and they build on that. Imagine if scientists were skeptical about
In the same way, only the Catholic Church builds from the past. The Protestant Fundamentalist wants to dwell in the past. The modernist only wants to dwell in present. But the modernist wants to always tear down the past for the present. And fifty years from now, the new modernist will destroy what the current modernist is building to replace it for the new modern view. Only science and the Catholic Church are truly progressing. They both look to the past in order to build on it for the future. If anyone is being unscientific, it is Loftus, because his denial of the past means that man cannot build upon the past, man would never progress. But science and the Catholic Church can progress.
Miracles That Validate Christianity
Loftus also argues against the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ, as well as other miracles in the Bible. Loftus makes a good point in saying that these miracles happened a very long time and he also wonders why there have been no miracles since then. He brings up some very good points, but then he contradicts himself. I agree that the resurrection happened a very long time. But since it happened a very, very long time, it is not only difficult to prove it; it is also very difficult to disprove it. And yet Loftus spends a whole chapter on what REALLY happened two thousand years ago.
Loftus is also looking at this as a former Fundamentalist. Protestant Fundamentalism teaches that miracles have ceased after the Bible was completed (the Fundamentalist is also guilty of a contradiction here. If we are only to believe what is taught in the Bible, then the Fundamentalist cannot believe that miracles have ceased after the Bible was completed unless the Bible itself teaches that, and there is no verse in the Bible that supports this belief). This is not the view of the Catholic. For the Catholic, God has been active in history even to the present. There are the Eucharistic miracles. There are documented cases of the Eucharist turning into a piece of human tissue, the Eucharist bleeding, and other miracles. And some of these miracles scientists have been called in to verify. Then there are scores of bodies of saints that have never decayed. You can go to
I know what Loftus is going to say. Other religions have stories of miracles. But how many religions have attested miracles that have happened recent, in the 20th century? How many religions have opened their miracles to scientific investigation, as the Catholic Church has? How many other religions have over 70,000 witnesses? Frankly, I cannot think of any other that has anything comparable to these Catholic miracles. But even if there was, so what? As a Catholic, I believe that there is some truth in almost all religions. Whenever a religion agrees with the Catholic Church, that religion has some of the truth. So when most religions agree with the Church that there is a God, and we should pray to him, and that we should live moral lives, then they have some of the truth. I am not saying they are going to heaven; that is up to God’s mercy. I do not have absolute certainty that I will make it to heaven. So since there is some truth in all religions, I have no problem in God doing a miracle within another religion. That does not invalidate what he has done in the Catholic Church. But how can God do a miracle in two conflicting religions? Because it is very rare that two religions conflict in everything. Even though only one religion can be right all the time, that does not mean the other religions are wrong all the time. According to how often another non-Christian religion or a non-Catholic church is right will probably determine how much God is merciful.
Life Without God
In the beginning Loftus talks about the freedom from guilt he now experience. He is not just talking about freedom to drink wine now and then or going to movies. But he also writes how he now is free to experience “lusting, hating, coveting, etc.”; the things Jesus preached against (page 29). Well, this was an eye-opener to me! And then his chapter “What is Life without God”, he writes how wonderful this world would be without religion. So let’s see if I get this. We will have this utopian society with people who are free to lust, hate, and covet as much as they desire. I may be wrong here, but I think that these are the very things that cause the violence in society. When someone is mugged, is it not because the mugger covets what the victim has? When a woman is raped, is it not likely that the rapist lusted after the victim? Even during the Crusades, is it likely that the warring parties hated each other? So I fail to see how society will be better when people feel free to hate, lust, and covet? Suppose you had a teenage daughter, and your neighbor told you that he has been having lustful thoughts about her, would that not give you the creeps? And in the area of hating, Loftus puts religion is a catch-22 situation. Religion is damned if it does and damned if it does not. When religious people strive to repress their hatred, then that is oppressive. But when religious people do not strive to repress the hatred and start wars, then religion is blamed for that as well! How can the Christian religion be guilty for racism when the Christian religion tells us that we should not hate?
Loftus says the highest virtue is tolerance. Well, my experience is that the most intolerant people are those who pride themselves in their tolerance. Loftus claims that religion is one of the greatest evils in the world. Now think about that. If one were to say that the Jewish religion is evil, we would say that is anti-Semitic and intolerant. So why should not a person who says that of all religions? Loftus seems to be ignorant here of what causes stereotypes, which leads to bigotry and prejudice. If you have a negative experience from someone in another race or group, and then you also hear anecdotally that other had a similar experience, and then you may start thinking that ALL PEOPLE in that race or group have that fault. That is how we start thinking a whole group of people is lazy, or greedy, or violent. We think that everyone in that group has these vices, and we think that everyone has these vices just for being part of his group. That is what Loftus does with religious people. He gives anecdotal evidence of individuals in a religion doing this atrocity here and another atrocity there. But by this he concludes that the whole religion is guilty and all religions are guilty. He stereotypes the whole Christianity for what a few Crusaders have done. All of religion is to blame for the 9/11 bombing. Loftus stereotypes all religion and all religious people just for what some had done. He does this on anecdotal evidence instead of scientific evidence. Looking at it scientifically, one should look at statistics instead. And the only one who looked at the statistic that I have read was Vox Day in the Irrational Atheist. To download his book for free, go to http://irrationalatheist.com/freedl.html.
In his book Vox Day compared the number of deaths governments has caused to its own people. He compared the Inquisition the atheistic regimes. These are the number of deaths by atheistic regimes since 1917:
|
|
1948–1968 |
65,000 |
|
|
1974–1991 |
1,343,610 |
|
|
1793–1794 |
40,000 |
|
|
1946–1949 |
20,000 |
|
|
1948–1989 |
27,000 |
|
Kampuchea/Cambodia |
1973–1991 |
2,627,000 |
|
|
1975–2007 |
93,000 |
|
|
1926–2007 |
100,000 |
|
|
1975–1990 |
118,000 |
|
|
1948–2007 |
3,163,000 |
|
|
1945–1948 |
1,607,000 |
|
|
1948–1987 |
438,000 |
|
|
1936–1939 |
102,000 |
|
U.S.S.R. |
1917–1987 |
61,911,000 |
|
|
1945–2007 |
1,670,000 |
|
|
1944–1980 |
1,072,000 |
Vox Day writes
The total body count for the ninety years between 1917 and 2007 is approximately 148 million dead at the bloody hands of fifty-two atheists, three times more than all the human beings killed by war, civil war, and individual crime in the entire twentieth century combined.17 The historical record of collective atheism is thus 182,716 times worse on an annual basis than Christianity’s worst and most infamous misdeed, the Spanish Inquisition. It is not only Stalin and Mao who were so murderously inclined; they were merely the worst of the whole Hell-bound lot. For every Pol Pot whose infamous name is still spoken with horror today, there was a Mengistu, a Bierut, and a Choibalsan, godless men whose names are now forgotten everywhere but in the lands they once ruled with a red hand.
Is a 58 percent chance that an atheist leader will murder a noticeable percentage of the population over which he rules sufficient evidence that atheism does, in fact, provide a systematic influence to do bad things? If that is not deemed to be conclusive, how about the fact that the average atheist crime against humanity is 18.3 million percent worse than the very worst depredation committed by Christians, even though atheists have had less than one-twentieth the number of opportunities with which to commit them. If one considers the statistically significant size of the historical atheist set and contrasts it with the fact that not one in a thousand religious leaders have committed similarly large-scale atrocities, it is impossible to conclude otherwise, even if we do not yet understand exactly why this should be the case. Once might be an accident, even twice could be coincidence, but fifty-two incidents in ninety years reeks of causation!
Atheists try to argue that all these atheist countries that murdered its citizens did not do this in the name of religion. That is not a very scientific way of looking at it. We cannot determine what someone’s motive was; we can only look at the objective evidence. Others try to argue that these atrocities were done because they were Communist. But what of the atrocities done in
So all these atrocities done by religious people pale in comparison to the atrocities done recently by atheists. Maybe it is not a good thing to encourage people that since there is no God that they are free to do all the lusting, hating and coveting they want!
On page 274, Loftus then writes how tragic it is that a Catholic priest or monk will never know the embrace of a woman. This statement shows how intolerant Loftus actually is. Would he say he say how tragic it is that a gay man would never know the embrace of a woman? Whatever happened to different strokes to different folks? He assumes that this priest or monk is miserable. Loftus is imposing his own idea of happiness on them. That priest or monk is far more tolerant than he. After all, Loftus will never know the joy of giving Mass, or hearing Confession. But would the priest judge him for that? No. Each has his own calling.
Then Loftus writes how tragic it is that a Fundamentalist preacher would never know what it is like getting drunk. I myself will take a drink now and then. But getting drunk??? I have been drunk sometimes in my college days. It was no big deal. If Loftus’ main purpose for drinking is to get drunk, then I would recommend him to stay away from drinking. It is better to go through life as a tee-totaler than an alcoholic.
Then Loftus judges the Christian who spends the evening talking to someone about the gospel instead of spending time with his family and friends. But this is like the pot calling the kettle black! I wished that Christians talked about God as much as atheists do! I never met people who wanted to talk as much about God as much as atheists do! They are obsessed about God. Why did Loftus write a whole nook on a negative, on something he does not believe exists? Why does Loftus have a web site about debunking Christianity? Why does Dan Barker have a magazine that list situations when a crime that committed by a believer? I am sure Loftus has spent evenings trying to prove to someone that there is no God. Why does he not spend his time instead being with his family and friends? My father was either an atheist or an agnostic for most of his life. But I never ever saw him reading a book on the joys of atheism or the evils of religion. His attitude was that if someone wanted to believe in God, let him. Since he believed that there was no God, life was too short to waste trying to convince others that there was no God. If the belief in God made others happy, he was happy for them. He had no vendetta to make the world atheistic. I respected my father, because he was a truly tolerant man. He was not out to convince others that he was right and they were wrong. From his perspective, life was short and he did not want to waste his time trying to convince others that they are wrong.
Let us also remember hat Loftus admits cheating on wife. He justifies this by citing a book that it is perfectly normal to commit adultery. But why is it so tragic that a Christian would spend the evening trying to share his faith with another person instead of being with his wife but it was not tragic for Loftus to spend an evening with another woman instead of being with his wife? This seems to me to be a bit hypocritical.
Then he judges the Christian who spends his time reading the Bible instead of reading a good novel. Again, this is like the pot calling the kettle black. He expects people to read his book, and go on his web site; to read all these things that they do not believe in, when instead they can read a good novel. Anyway, I see a society where more and more we a moving away from reading to television, video games, ipods, and text messaging. It is not because of the Bible that people are reading good novels. For many people, the most thought-provoking literature is the National Inquirer. So if a person is reading the Bible, at least he is reading something that can stimulate his thinking. Even from a totally humanist perspective, there is nothing wrong with that.
So What If Am Wrong?
Loftus ends his book by asking what if he is wrong. Basically, he says that he is sure that he would still get to heaven, because he is sure that God would not deprive him of heaven just for not believing in an historical event. This is absurd logic! In his book, he argues that a God who allowed all this suffering in this world would not be a loving God. OK, let’s go with that. So if it turned out that this “unloving” God does exist, why is Loftus so confident that this God would be so understanding toward him and still allow him in heaven?
Also, to say that it wrong that God should send him to hell just for not believing in an historical event is a caricature of what Christianity teaches. I am not even sure that the average Protestant Evangelical would agree with that caricature, he would see being a Christian is more than just believing an historical event, but I will just present here what Catholicism teaches. We are not saved by just believing in an historical event. We are saved by loving God and loving others. Belief in a historical event is prerequisite for that love. We love because we believe that God first loved us and sent his Son to die for our sins. Our love covers a multitude of sins. And if we really love God, we will keep His commands. And if we love Him, we will trust Him with our lives daily. So faith is a prerequisite to love. And love is inseparable from obedience and faith.
So if salvation is more than just a belief in an historical event, then how does it look for Loftus? Loftus just spent the entire book showing that the Christian God is a monster. Even the Cross, which to most of us Christians show us how much God loves us, only show to Loftus how terrible God is. So if all these things turn out to be true, why would God want such a person in heaven? Would you invite someone to your wedding who calls you a monster?
Conclusion
I find Loftus contradicting himself many times. He says that we should not believe in something that has no scientific evidence. But he presents no scientific evidence to support his belief that we should only believe what is supported by scientific evidence. Also, he then states the existence of an infinite number of multiverses, an xniverse, and an infinite VOID. But there is no scientific evidence that these things exist. It is not enough to quote someone else on his speculative theory. No one has ever observed the existence of these things, and no one has reproduced multiverses, an xniverse, or an infinite VOID in a laboratory setting. I am not saying that none of these things exist. I believe this xniverse is what theologians call heaven and that infinite VOID is God outside of space and time. But I cannot prove this scientifically; any more than Loftus can prove these things exist scientifically. He argues that atheists are as moral, even more so, then Christian, but then questions the moral teaching of Christianity. How can he compare atheists to Christians on moral grounds if he does not agree what those moral grounds are? He thinks it is a good thing to being as hateful, and lustful, and as covetous as he wants. So he is saying that atheists are more moral than Christian, except for all those hating, lusting, and coveting that atheists are free to do. He writes that we should be tolerant and that we should not judge others. But then he judged his former mistress as a con artist and blames his adultery on his passionless marriage, without taking any responsibility for the adultery and the lack of passion in his marriage. He blamed others from judging him about his one lapse in fidelity, but he is judging the whole Christian religion based on the lapses that some Christians have made. He wrote that we cannot trust history but only science, and yet science itself looks on the history of past scientific findings in order to build on it. He wrote that one can never be objective about history, and then assumes his own objectivity in trying to tell us how superstitious people were, how the resurrection of Christ did not happen, and all the atrocities done by Christians. He mocks the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation as being absurd, but he then admits that his own belief that the universe came out of nothing is absurd.
Also, I find that most of the arguments against Christianity only had merit against Protestant Fundamentalism. He did not deal with liberal Protestantism, Orthodoxy, or Catholicism. In an interview later, he said that he did feel he had to deal with Catholicism because traditional Protestantism had successfully refuted Catholicism. Oh really? There are still more Catholics in this world then any other denomination. Orthodoxy and Catholicism accounts for 70% of all Christianity, so if Loftus wants to write how he rejected Christianity, he should take it into account what most Christian believe. His book is guilty of false advertising. To be honest, he should have called his book Why I Rejected Protestant Fundamentalism.
Anyway, I cannot see how one can say Protestantism has refuted Catholicism when many of his arguments against Christianity were originally expounded by Catholics. Just as Loftus argued that total objectivity and accuracy in studying history is impossible, so did Catholics argue the same thing to Protestants ever since the Reformation. Catholics argued that it was impossible to read a book written thousands of years ago without reading into it your own prejudices. Protestants accused Catholics placing tradition over the Bible. The Catholics responded by pointing out that it was impossible for any person to not read his own tradition into the Bible. The issue is which tradition is valid. The Protestants believe in the Bible because it was written by the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles who were called by God. The Catholics believe in the Bible because it was canonized by the Catholic Church which was called by God. Catholics also told the Reformers that if each person was left to his own interpretation of the Bible, we would have thousands of different denominations each with its own interpretation of the Bible. Protestants have based their whole faith on a single event that happened 2,000 years ago. Catholics believe in a living God – a God of the present as in a past. God still does miracles even today. Catholics argued from the beginning of its tradition that there was more than one meaning to scripture, based the way the New Testament writers used the Old Testament.
In each one of these, Loftus has shown that the Catholic Church was right all along. Total objectivity and accuracy is not possible. Loftus showed that much of the Old Testament was not written by prophets and most of the New Testament was not written by apostles. This matters little to a Catholic, who believes in the Bible simply because the Church tells him to. He showed how the New Testament used the Old Testament in a way not originally intended. The Catholic taught this for over a thousand years to support its four senses of scripture. Loftus found it peculiar that miracles stopped in the first century. But the Catholic Church see many more miracles since then, and has even opened these miracles to scientific investigation by objective parties. Loftus criticized Christianity for having so many denominations with different interpretations of the Bible. Catholics warned Protestants 500 years ago that this would happen. This is my main thesis on this web site. Although there are many wonderful Protestant Christians out there, Protestantism has made Christianity vulnerable to all kinds of skepticism. After the Reformation came the Enlightenment and Deism, and then atheism. Luther said we can read the Bible without the Church. Then people believe they could find truth without the Bible. Then they said we can find truth without God. Then people start to question whether there is such a thing as truth.
In many ways, I can identify myself with Loftus. I, too, was a minister in a
The difference between Loftus and me is that ultimately I still loved God. I do not sense that Loftus loved God for a very long while, if at all. God is not just a philosophical argument. He is a Person. But the book is not yet done for Loftus. Maybe deep down he has this love for God and will come back to him. I will keep him in my prayers.
