I thought this was a quick and dirty explanation for evolutionary theory that gets at the core elements taken into consideration regarding the overarching theory. In science, a “theory” is made up of already existing facts and laws, which are combined to articulate a larger explanatory narrative i.e. a theory. So when people say something is “just a theory” what they don’t realize is that in science, the facts and laws drawn upon to make such a claim are not in question. The larger explanation utilizing said data is what is up for discussion. The laws and facts drawn upon have already been shown to stand up to rigorous empirical testing and verification. If we can clear up the use of this terminology, it can get us further down the road in discussing these kinds of questions. Hope it helps.
Did Jesus go to theater camp?
Partially reconstructed theater at Sepphoris
When we read in Matt. 6:1-8;16-18, curiously, Jesus demonstrates knowledge of theatrical terminology and practices which would seem out of place in first century Jewish contexts. How did Jesus know what a “hyporcrite,” literally one who wears a mask or plays a role, meant when he lived in a largely rural town? Did Jesus go to theater camp? It may sound a bit cheeky, but the truth may not be so far off. Richard A. Batey in “Jesus and the Theatre,” New Testament Studies vol. 30 no 4, O 1984, pp. 563-584, makes a strong case that Jesus knew Greek theatrical terms such as hypocrite, “hupocritai” occurring in Matt 6, vv. 2, 5 and in 16 “hupocrites”, because he lived close to the Hellenistic Roman city of Sepphoris. How is this significant?
Sepphoris was founded by Herod Antipater as “the seat of his power and centre of culture” in Galilee and Perea. Here, the remains of a Greco-Roman style theater have been found in the style of Vitruvius, a great architectural mind who built the Roman water system. Herod the Great had sent his children to Rome to be educated and trained in the ways of Roman politics and culture. When Herod Antipas returned and subsequently took control as one of four tetrarchs or rulers of the region after his father died, he founded a city resplendent with Roman luxury and opulence, symbolizing the embodiment of Roman culture he had experienced while in the capital of the empire. Being that the city was only an hour’s walk from the town of Nazareth and that Nazareth was along the main highway south of Sepphoris makes it likely that Jesus traveled there. Jesus was involved in a trade, carpentry, that would require commerce with such places and it is likely Jesus travelled to Sepphoris to conduct business and knew some Greek in order to carry out regular business deals. It is here that the young Jesus may have talked to actors or seen a performance of Greek tragedy. One can imagine Jesus taking a break from his hard work and listening in on a practice between actors, seeing them getting ready for a show or catching the show with his dad while they were in town.
In Jesus’ own description of the hypocrites in relation to fasting, Matt. 6:16-18, he describes how they paint their faces, the same way actors prepared for their tragic roles and comedies. Additionally, according to Craig Evans, the description of “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” in Matt 6:3 is actually instructions about how to use one’s hands in performance. Clearly Jesus knew something about the theater and some of its mechanics. The remains of a theater in Sepphoris has been found and dated to the period of Antipas based upon Hasmonean coins discovered in the orchestra area. (Coins were often thrown as praise for good performances, much like roses today at ice skating events.) Hupocritesoccurs thirteen times in Matthew compared to once in Mark and three times in Luke. The theme became important for Matthew in delineating true worship from false piety and he uses it often. This would not make sense unless Jesus knew what the term meant. Even more so, Jesus’ indictment of the pharisees and teachers of the law, the religious folk, as “hypocrites” would be particularly biting as the religious Jewish elite saw acting as a form of lying. This is why they are offended when Jesus accuses them of false piety. He is calling them a bunch of liars. Pretty in your face. Matthew utilizes this theme to great effect throughout his Gospel. It would appear that Jesus had to have known some kind of Greek and more specifically, Greek theatrical terms, in order to make the kind of accusations he was making. How did he acquire such Greco-Roman terminology? Did Jesus go to theater camp? The idea makes me smile just a little bit. Regardless of how he came to know the terms, Jesus certainly understood what they meant and used them to great effect. Jesus didn’t “act the fool” but told it straight. That’s why he was so controversial.
Sam Harris is Afraid of Religion
I’ve been asked by a friend to comment on these five segments of a talk by Sam Harris about the nature of faith and reason in the modern world. Let me start with a couple general observations from my time spent listening to atheists about faith etc. and then we’ll get into my responses to the video. I find that many times there is a general disconnect between theists and atheists because Christianity is a rather large and general category into which many pour everything from mild agnosticism to right wing politics and much of it having practically nothing to do with Christianity as a faith properly speaking. The faith itself is diverse and contains a variety of streams and nuances that is lost on most who are unwilling or simply don’t care to know the difference. A lot of times I read comments by atheists and I wonder what they are talking about because what they articulate is not Christianity. I applaud those who want to understand what Christianity says on its own terms, folks like yourself who are more open to actually learning about something before criticizing it. Now that the preliminaries have been dealt with, I’ll dive in to the videos.
Faith Vs. Reason in the Modern World (Aspen Ideas Festival July 2-8, 2007)
Video 1
My first impressions of the video are that I would agree with Harris that any belief is up for debate and discussion, religious or not, if it is worth pursuing. I pick up on an unnecessary dualism he is creating immediately where he positions modernity against religion as if the two have not existed throughout the same periods. I also think he is privileging technology to set apart our period in history as opposed to others which experienced the same if not more competition of ideas. The reason people continue to appeal to ancient traditions for their moral guidance is because they have proven themselves. Ideas that last thousands of years tend to have more credibility than those which were just said yesterday. When he says that his statement about the fact that we shouldn’t be appealing to these ancient ideas for modern problems needs no argument, he is really revealing a cultural bias that favors novelty over anything old. He is also begging the question with such reasoning. For Harris and many other atheists, Sept. 11 has been a watershed moment for reason’s need to triumph over religion. “Look at what can happen” is the thought behind this recent movement. The same thing happened after the thirty years war in Europe which brought on modernity as we understand it today. I wonder since we live in a world created by such reactions if the recent occurrences simply show the lack of modernity’s ability to deal with religious thought in general. Maybe the shift to the personal ghetto of individual religious piety was a bad idea?
Harris makes some logical fallacies in his discussion of the three types of responses of the defense of God. First, the three options is reductionistic. There are more than three options i.e. what if some part of some religions are true? Second, invoking probabilities as a way of writing off religious assertions is nonsense. It’s a red herring. As far as his reasoning for the attestation of Jesus’ life and teaching, he makes an incorrect claim about extracanonical references to Jesus. There are several. He also reveals a complete lack of historiography which tells us that documents that are centuries removed from their original periods are still considered reliable and trustworthy. A few mere decades is more than enough evidence of textual veracity.
Harris views miracles as an abrogation against the laws of the natural world. Christianity does not view miracles in this way. His view is the same as Hume. C. S. Lewis has an entire book devoted to this subject, On Miracles, which delineates these ideas. God does not use unnatural means to bring about miraculous events. These are my thoughts on the first video.
Video 2
As we set in to video two, it becomes apparent that Harris is fixated upon miracles as the main content of religious devotion. This is a huge misread of faith in general. The Christian faith is partially concerned with Jesus’ miracles or the miraculous events surrounding his life. However, these are only a segment of the faith tradition. Largely Christians worship and follow Jesus because of the demonstrable power of his ethical teachings and example of what God desires for humanity. Harris is wrong in his statement that Christianity believes God dictated the Bible. That is not the understanding of inspiration most Christians uphold. They believe God inspired the authors in such a way that their own personal thoughts and writing conveyed God’s words to humanity through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Also, the ten commandments were not set up in an order of importance so comments about their order are non-sequitor.
The usefulness of ideas is a pragmatic way of viewing knowledge. Harris is a rational, empiricist so he has no use for this category of knowledge but I think there is some correlation between usefulness and the truth of something in different areas of life. It’s a major factor for scientific discovery. This does not mean it is always the case that something useful is true, but it also does not mean that the opposite is always the case. To deny any correlation can be evidence is special pleading.
Here in the middle 7:50 we really see what Harris is driving at, reason as religion. He is concerned with certainty and he feels only reason can provide such knowledge. This is my major issue with the new atheists. They simply cannot escape the restrictions of their own assumptions to inquire into other forms of knowledge. If one is unwilling to be critical of one’s own assumptions in the pursuit of knowledge, then of course no other form of enquiry will be dubbed logical. That conclusion is demanded from the outset. This is special pleading.
Video 3
Harris paints a just so picture of ethics that I find particularly unconvincing. One need only look for the numerous atheist charities….in the world to see what I’m talking about. If ethics were so obvious, why is the world so bad? When people like Harris appeal to the ease at which we can teach our children about ethics and morality, I wonder how he can be so historically bereft of the traditions which he owes this state of affairs to. It’s very easy to benefit from the advancement of ethical thought from a tradition such as Christianity. I find it hard to believe that such would be the case if religions did not exist. Rose colored glasses indeed.
Harris embarks on the next phase of atheist pet projects these days, ethics in the Old Testament. I have no qualms with the description of absolutely terrible things happening in the OT. It is a cornucopia of human depravity. When you’re talking about ethics in the Late Iron Age, one wonders why it is so surprising. Atheists tend to retroject 21st century notions of ethics onto ancient peoples and point and say “look at how unethical.” Does this make sense when they stand on the shoulders of millennia of ethical development? Harris’ comments about ethics in the ancient Near East are completely wrong. Egyptian, Assyrian and other law codes in fact affirmed the killing of an adulterer as part of their cultural norms. The Bible parallels the cultures of its day in its presciptions for the breaking of laws for the community. Harris’ comments about slavery are ignorant as well. He uses an American notion of slavery and anachronistically positions it as the slavery talked about in the Bible. This is apples and oranges. In the first century roughly one-third of all people were in slavery as endentured servants or willing slaves of one form or another. This was a culture of patronage where only 1-5% of the population held 90% of all wealth. Being free actually could be a very bad thing when you had little access to resources. Most in slavery lived much more comfortably than those who were not. Yet, we also see Paul in the book of Philemon instructing Philemon’s slave owner to welcome him as a brother i.e. as a free person. So pictures of the Bible as supporting slavery like American slavery are naïve and uninformed about the first century world.
As far as the treatment of women is concerned, I agree with Harris that the church has unfortunately been a promulgator of certain notions about female personhood which largely have been due to the influence of Greco-Roman culture and its views about women. This is not so much the content of the bible as it is the traditions that developed after the New Testament ie. 3rd cent. onward. So when Harris points to Greek philosophers to show how ethics was so obvious for people in the 5th cent and then condemns Christianity for, what was largely Greco-Roman influences, we really are seeing some picking and choosing going on when Harris tries to paint a picture.
The Greeks viewed women as property and as dogs. In a culture dominated by reason, they showed no more ethical development in their consideration for women than the supposed counterexamples he tries to show us. So which is it Sam? Isn’t reason supposed to free us from these prejudices? It apparently did not for most of western civilization. One need only look to the teachings of Jesus and Paul to see that they were radically countercultural in regards to women. They let them learn, take positions of authority, and the early church protected women from harm of spouses. There are recorded letters of Roman magistrates complaining about Christian’s who are multiplying in number because they do not expose their children and treat their wives with respect as opposed to beating them. I will admit that the church has a bad record when it comes to women but I think the sources we have in the Bible stand as a counterexample to some of the behavior that developed at a later time due to other cultural influences. This is one of the reasons I am not Catholic. They rely too heavily on the early church period traditions which were problematic in this area.
Video 4
I think in this next video we have the possibility of convergence. Human beings are described as being created in the image of God in the Bible. This means we have the capacity to make moral choices. Evolution shows this to be the case. I believe on this point we have both positions describing different sides of the same coin. What Harris fails to discuss is the fact that virtue ethics are developed in the brain through a variety of factors and the example stories provided in the Bible, both good and bad, are ways to inform our brain of virtue and ethical content development. This is essential for understanding why people still see the Bible as a way to inform our ethical behavior. Clearly context and time periods dictate our interpretive process and no Biblical theologian will disagree with this. The problem with people like Harris is that they make no room for the meaning making process and interpretive analysis that is inherent in any faith tradition. He posits a fundamentalism which says you must accept everything at face value, or you are somehow being inconsistent. I think this is ludicrous. If you are unwilling to allow the faith community to speak for itself and describe why they adhere to the interpretive methodology they employ, then you are in fact inventing a religion that is not the one you are talking about. Harris responds to and criticizes a fundamentalist view of the bible that few Christians uphold. He also has no clue or is not willing to admit that he is in fact upholding a dogma, empirical rationalism. The denial of such a commitment truly baffles me. He spends all this time critiqueing religious claims to truth, rationatlity etc. and yet cannot admit that he himself is committed to a form of enquiry concerning human knowledge. I would agree with his comments about creationism, which is an American phenomenon, but again this is a fundamentalist concern, a small segment of the otherwise larger Christian world.
Video 5
In this video, Harris makes a major misstep. He describes religious experience as purely the phenomenon that corresponds to religious devotion, yet he is unwilling to allow for God as a possible source for this material. In his words, such claims are “unjustified” and “unsubstantiated.” I find this restrictive form of dialogue the most disturbing. In essence it states that human experience cannot be used as a form of enquiry concerning the search for truth. If there is one thing current science has taught us, it is that our expectations influence our experiences. If one is priorly committed to atheism, then it is small wonder an atheist would not interpret their experience in light of theistic categories. They have predetermined a bias against that interpretive mode of description. What if that bias was wrong? What if our experience can inform our judgments about the nature of reality? The pie in the sky atheistic ethics Harris talks about here at the end is truly maddening. His attempt to create distance from atheistic regimes that committed mass killings and untold devastation is laughable. One of the curious things I’ve witnessed in these collections of videos is that Sam Harris is making these statements largely based on fear. He is afraid of what religion will do to society and wants to pre-empt that future fate. I wonder if Harris is actually creating a form of fascism through his rhetoric rather than making a case for atheism. He wants to rid the world of what he believes are dangerous ideas. Ideas have consequences. That is reality, religious or not. It seems rather peculiar to me that he tries to set religion apart from other ideas as if they are in some separate category. I question the prudence of doing anything out of fear even if for what are perceived as good reasons. Can fear affect our reason in ways we cannot anticipate? I believe it can. Fear is a dogma and that appears to be what Harris adheres to in these videos.
The Strangeness of the Gospel
A friend of mine, Clint Wilson, shared an excerpt from Michael F. Bird’s college textbook Introducing Paul a while ago and I thought it was very profound. It concerns the strangeness of Paul’s claims to first-century hearers. We would all do well to remember how unusual the claims concerning Christ are. It is easy for us this side of 2000 years of Christian history to see the Christian claims as “old hat.” Bird writes:
Imagine you are walking through your local university or college and hear in the quad an elderly man from South America telling people loudly about God’s love and salvation. He announces the ‘good news’ of Carlos Hernandez. He recounts how Carlos was a Peruvian peasant attested by man mighty deeds of power and miracles and who proclaimed the end of the world. But the chief men in the city of Lima feared his popularity with the peasant class, falsely accused him of being an Al-Qaeda terrorist and had him killed by electrocution. But a week later, this Carlos was raised from the dead and was seen by several American tourists. Then the man declares that ‘this Carlos was electrocuted for your sins and salvation is found through faith in him’. And then, to make matters worse he starts singing:
Carlos was there on that horrible chair
They tied him down with bolts and then zapped him with 40,000 volts
It was for you our saviour fried and died
Despite the fact that his chair caught on fire, this one is God’s true Messiah
The wisdom of the world has been refuted because Carlos was electrocuted
He is my saviour and my lamp, because he absorbed every deadly amp
Now I know that God does care, ’cause he sent Carlos Hernandez to the electric chair.
I like the way this short excerpt gets us to reorient our thinking about the Gospel. It has never been some commonplace event, a blip on the radar of human history. It was something profoundly strange and unheard of….God becoming man and dying on a cross? What kind of God is that? And yet that is exactly what we proclaim. The death and resurrection of Jesus invokes two seeming absurdities: the infinite entering a finite world and the suffering of a deity. This is the message that Christians proclaim unabashedly. An incomprehensible movement of God that sends many rational minds recoiling in horror. Yet, it is not without rationale. It is a statement about the brokeness of people living in an absurd world, a mad world as one songwriter poignantly puts it. The absurdity of evil demands an equally absurd reality: a suffering God. A profound and indescribable truth bound up in human frailty; hanging on a Roman execution device the likes of which only a sociopath could conceive. In this event, the sins of the world collide with the God of love and they don’t stand a chance. The infinite God bears our pain in Himself. A beautiful truth, embodied in Jesus, in whom we place our hope. As the great Athanasius puts it, He was made man, that we might be made God. Food for thought as we anticipate Good Friday, commemorating Jesus’ death on the cross.
Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus
A copyrighted image of Jesus on the Cross
From time to time I’ll invite friends to contribute posts for discussion on my blog. My friend Clint Wilson has graciously accepted an invite to share from a talk he did on the resurrection of Jesus as viewed from an historical research perspective. I hope it can be enlightening in giving reasons why Christians uphold the resurrection as a true event in history. I will break this up into multiple posts so individual pieces can be discussed/debated without having to respond to the whole piece at once.
I. Importance & Centrality of the Resurrection
Resurrection is the linchpin of the Christian faith-you can’t have Xty without resurrection. In the first century we know of multiple messianic or quasi-messianic movements b/c of the records of the Jewish historian Josephus’, a contemporary with many of these movements. They, like Jesus went about proclaiming the kingdom of God, promising signs of salvation and wonders. And all of these movements came to an end with the violent death of the key figure or founder. In the 1st century when your movements leader was executed violently, you could either give up the movement or find yourself a new messiah. Yet, the jewish groups that followed Jesus didn’t do either of these things. They continued the movement and said that their recently crucified Jesus was the messiah and was therefore the Lord of the world. How can we explain this? Why did this group continue to move forward in promoting the Kingdom of God and say that their leader, who by the way had been crucified on a cross by the Roman empire, was in charge of it all? The answer that they all gave was that Jesus had been raised from the dead…he had been resurrected.
There are numerous instances in Scripture that indicate the centrality of the cross as a focal point for the Christian experience.
Proliferation of Resurrection teaching
- It was the focal point of the disciple’s preaching
- Many doctrines were based upon it
- Belief in it is required for salvation (Rom 10:9)
- It secured for us an inheritance in heaven (1 Pet 1:3-4)
- If it did not occur we are lost (1 Cor 15:17)
- It was the evidence that Jesus provided to validate his teachings (Mt 12:38-40; 16:1-4; Jn 2:18-21). The Resurrection was the chief reason provided by the apostles that Xty is true (Acts 17:2-3, 18, 31; 2:22-32; 1 Cor 15:17)
- It is claimed, therefore, that Jesus’ resurrection largely confirms Jesus’ claims, much of xtian doctrine, and the truthfulness of Xty (1 Cor 15:14).
Has the Resurrection fallen on hard times?
Professor Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford tells us in The God Delusion that a “serious” historical case can be made “that Jesus never lived at all”. In The Atheist Manifesto the French philosopher Michel Onfray contends that from start to finish Jesus was “a trick born of a rational mind”. “At that time,” he assures us, “Jews were not crucified but stoned to death.” And, finally, in the provocative God Is Not Great Christopher Hitchens speaks of Jesus’ “highly questionable existence” and says of the resurrection: “We have a right, if not an obligation, to respect ourselves enough to disbelieve the whole thing.” But do we?
I think that if we look at the historical facts we will see that the alternative theories which would seek to explain away a historically reliable physical resurrection are built on shaky if not unsupported arguments altogether and that that the evidence is in favor of Jesus’ rising from the dead.
the smoldering remnants 