Interpreting Plato and St. Paul, Part I

"I have no general answer to these questions (other than that on those issues on which Tradition has definitively spoken, those Christians like Catholics and the Orthodox who accept Tradition as an infallible guide are going to be better off)."

Why do you believe this is the case, Dr. Pruss?

Alex,

I don't think you're going to get very far in generalities; the devil (or God) is always in the details of any particular exegetical problem.

I will say that the general pattern of orthodox thought seems to have been: (i) in the case of historical or scientific claims, Scripture winds up getting "re-interpreted". (See controversies involving Galileo, Darwin, ancient Palestinian history.) (ii) in the case of ethical claims, either (a) the claim gets relativized to a time or culture (as in certain OT laws, or length of hair for men and women in the NT) or (b) gets re-interpreted to get at the "underlying principle" (as in "spare the rod and spoil the child"--few of us use rods; or instructions about women not wearing gold or braiding their hair), or (c) just hold the line--Scripture gets it right and the culture gets it wrong.

Two things: You'll have to forgive me Alex...but why should anybody believe the Scripture is inerrant? And I'm ignorant of these issues, big time, but what object exactly is picked out by the phrase 'The scripture' such that that thing is said to be inerrant?

Mr. Moore:

Thanks for pressing me on this point.

Suppose I accept the inerrance of Scripture but also believe that premarital sex is permissible. (Nothing much rides on the particularities of the example. I shall assume that premarital sex is not permissible, but if you disagree I can use a different example.) I then come to Scriptural texts that seem to say the contrary. Now I have a consistency problem. There are at least three ways I can resolve it: (a) change my mind on premarital sex; (b) interpret the said passages of Scripture so that they do not challenge me any more; or (c) abandon my belief in the inerrance of Scripture. Now, we may suppose that (c) is not an option--my belief in Christianity and in the inerrance of Scripture is firm. That leaves (a) and (b).

So what do I do? Suppose it seems to me, on the basis of philological and similar evidence, 90% likely that the interpretation of the Scriptural texts in question prohibits premarital sex. But suppose that I am of a very strong opinion that premarital sex is permissible, and assign a 94% probability to that permissibility. Then Scripture will lower my confidence in the permissibility of premarital sex, but I will continue to think that it is more likely permissible than not. And hence, even though I believe in the inerrance of Scripture, the possibility of alternate interpretations makes it rationally possible to act as I would even if Scripture were silent on the topic. I am inclined to think there is a problem here--this would make it very difficult for Scripture to challenge deeply culturally embedded beliefs.

However, suppose that I also accept the infallibility of an authority, e.g., Tradition, which authoritatively tells me that premarital sex is wrong, and suppose that there is very, very little ambiguity about what the authority tells me in this case (sometimes there can be ambiguity in the authority's pronouncements and the problem could remain; but in the case of premarital sex, there isn't any ambiguity in the Tradition's condemnation of it).

Dr. Pruss,

“All exegesis makes use of a principle of charity which urges us to try to harmonize the writings of a particular author and to interpret them in a way that makes as much of the text true as is reasonably possible.”

This is a rather uncharitable view of biblical exegesis. As described, it suggests a presumption of inerrancy prior to reading or interpreting the biblical text. I would argue, however, that any good exegete, even one who believes in inerrancy, approaches the text as objectively as humanly possible. He then applies his knowledge of the biblical languages to interpret the words and statements. Because words generally are defined by time and culture, these considerations are relevant in arriving at an accurate interpretation. At this point, a good exegete does not apply his own presuppositions or any other evidence or considerations external to the text in question.

It is only when the interpretation is contrary to one’s understanding of the subject (based on one’s presuppositions or other evidence) that “a principle of charity” may be necessary to reconcile Scripture with these external considerations. In other words, I would say that biblical interpretation does not follow from a presumption of inerrancy, but an effort to reconcile our exegetical conclusions with the external evidence in a way that shows deference to Scripture (maybe I’m being a bit naïve). Inerrancy, then, for those of us who accept it, is a final check on our interpretation.

I think a distinction must be drawn between exegesis and personal interpretation. Exegesis involves what I mentioned above—analysis of the biblical language based on the understanding and culture of the time. Personal conclusions on what the text means may factor in one’s ethical and cultural presuppositions, modern scientific evidence, and even one’s view of inerrancy. Assigning probability values based on these external considerations affects only one’s personal conclusions concerning the text.

I understand that biblical interpretation is not always as neat and tidy as I’ve made it sound. But I don’t think that biblical interpretation involves a different set of rules than those that apply to interpreting any other ancient text.

Dear Heath,

Concerning (1): The points you raise certainly highlight what many Christians take to be a threat to a reasonably high view of Scripture. But I wonder just how worrisome these alleged challenges from science and history really are. I’ve never been too troubled by them. If one takes (say) the Old Testament to be a an admixture of various genres—not all of them historical—then it seems to me that one can rest easy with the most of what science has to say about the world. Treating the OT this way certainly isn’t ad hoc, but is fairly consistent with the ancient Church’s approach to Biblical literature. St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and a host of other early Christian thinkers were quite comfortable with whatever science had to tell us, and indeed they thought that what we learn from “the book of nature” can enable us to interpret the Scriptures properly. So I guess my question is: in what way does (1) really pose a problem for the view Alex endorses?

By the way, I really like reading your contributions here and on other blogs.

Shawn

By the way, I was reading your response as if you were raising a worry for Alex's post. I apologize if this was not your intent.

I echo Christian's question: Why think Scripture is inerrant? What do you mean by inerrant? Do you think orthodoxy (whatever that might mean) requires inerrancy? Do you hold it on Scriptural grounds? If not, where in the tradition, prior to modern forms of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, is their a strong presumption of inerrancy?

I can't bring myself to accept inerrancy, mostly b/c I'm skeptical that it can even be formulated in a meaningful and helpful way, as making a substantive claim about how we the read texts we have, in such a way as to be helpful to the life of the Church. That and I find the text always pushing back against more simple-minded formulations; the texts more-or-less flatly contravene themselves in places--harmonizing it all requires too much special pleading.

Mr. Gelina:

Well, it is easy for Catholics to give one answer to the question of why one should think Scripture is inerrant. :-) One should think Scripture is inerrant because the infallible Tradition of the Church (formally expressed in Vatican II's declaration Dei Verbum, and earlier taught by the unanimous agreement of the Church Fathers) says so. :-)

What do I mean by inerrant? I mean that it is divinely guaranteed to be without error. The exact modality of "divinely guaranteed" is something that needs more elucidation, but in practice all we generally need is that p is entailed by its being divinely guaranteed that p.

What do I mean by saying that the Scriptures are free of error? I mean that every proposition asserted or taught by a text of Scripture is true.

How to determine which proposition a text expresses? Ah, it this that is the hard work of exegesis--there are few shortcuts here. Following Vatican II, I think the intentions of the human authors determine what is asserted (Dei Verbum says: "everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit").

As for apparent contradictions in the text, I do think we need to be open to the possibility of a wide variety of literary forms being employed in Scripture. I am not completely averse, for instance, to the idea that, say, the story of Jonah might be an instructive fable (nor am I endorsing that idea). Nonetheless it is inerrant, i.e., everything that the author asserts or teaches in the story is true. What one asserts or teaches in giving an instructive fable is at least the lesson of the fable, but perhaps quite a lot more.

Going back to the original question of why we should think Scripture is inerrant, if one is not satisfied with my reliance on Tradition--there may be fears of circularity--one may need a more careful spiral approach, as worked out by various apologists. On the spiral approach, we start by arguing that the Gospels are at least a moderately good historical record of Jesus's doings and sayings. We argue that among these sayings are ones tantamount to his claiming to be God. We further argue that we have good reason to believe these claims, e.g., because of his character (neither a liar nor a lunatic, hence Lord) or because of miracles like the resurrection that we have good historical reasons for positing. I assume you know the drill here--it's standard apologetics.

Now, if Christ is God, all his teachings are true. This is a limited inerrance: an inerrance of those sayings of Jesus that the Gospels (still only seen as a moderately reliable historical text) get right. We need to bootstrap our way up from here. One way is to argue that there are sufficient sayings promising the coming of the Holy Spirit that will guide the Church in truth to get the idea that those teachings of the early Church that were generally accepted are true.

Now we do more historical work. It appears that certain texts were generally accepted as expressing the faith of the Church. Therefore, the doctrinal teachings of these texts are correct. Among these texts is 2 Timothy, which asserts that all of Scripture is divinely inspired. This is a doctrinal teaching accepted by the early Church, and hence true.

Thus, all of Scripture is divinely inspired. (To get to this claim we rely on Scripture, viz., 2 Timothy, but we do not assume that 2 Timothy is inspired--that would be circular--but merely that 2 Timothy is an expression of the faith of the early Church.) But God is omniscient and perfectly truthful. Thus all of Scripture is guaranteed to be true. Hence, the doctrine of inerrance holds.

Now we need to do some more detective work to figure out what texts comprise Scripture. The spiral continues. Since the faith of the early Church is true, all the texts unambiguously accepted do comprise Scripture. This is going to get us the Gospels and Paul, as well as a lot of Old Testament texts. Nonetheless, there will be disputed texts like Sirach, Maccabees, 2 Peter, Hebrews and Revelation. To get these texts we probably have to argue for the infallibility of the Church, and then make use of the Church's teachings on the canon. We can do that on the basis of Christ's promises of the Holy Spirit to the Church, which we used early in the spiral, or Paul's statement in the undisputedly canonical texts that the Church is the pillar and ground of truth.

Sorry to go so long into it. There is nothing original in what I've said here. It's mainly based on Van Noort's Dogmatic Theology from the 1940s, but I think this is a pretty standard apologetic spiral.

Of course, one "price" of the spiral is that in addition to the inerrance of Scripture it gets you the infallibility of the Church.

When I said that "All exegesis makes use of a principle of charity which urges us to try to harmonize the writings of a particular author and to interpret them in a way that makes as much of the text true as is reasonably possible", I was not speaking just of biblical exegesis. I was speaking of all exegesis of texts--a principle of charity is going to be important always.

I am concerned about an exegetical method that brackets inerrance while doing the exegetical work, while at the same time also being concerned about an exegetical method that doesn't bracket inerrance. The concern is due to the principle that whenever we're trying to figure out something, we should bring to bear all relevant knowledge. Inerrance seems relevant. (Oh, and yes, I do know Scripture is inerrant. Faith is a form of knowledge, knowledge by testimony--divine testimony.)

Hi Alex:

Thanks for the details. I've always wondered what the line was supposed to be. I think there are some serious problems, though, with the spiral above.

"I mean that every proposition asserted or taught by a text of Scripture is true."

Is Scripture the Bible? If so, what version and why that version?

"I think the intentions of the human authors determine what is asserted."

This answers the first question, sort of. Then it's just an empirical question as to what exactly these authors were inspired to write (sing) and whether (1) any of the Biblical authors were in fact inspired and (2) whether some other inspired individuals were left out in the rain.

Now, I'm unclear why we should think anything in the Bible was inspired, so that's a huge problem. But let me set that to the side.

"We argue that among these sayings are ones tantamount to his claiming to be God."

But this arguement has been discredited. See Dan Howard-Snyder's "Mad, Bad, God or Merely Mistaken." But suppose I'm wrong about that.

"Now, if Christ is God, all his teachings are true."

Why think this? For all we know, Christ may have had a good reason to state falsehoods. It's "beyond our ken" what Christ's reasons may have been and what good may come out of his stating falsehoods. Moreover, perhaps there is a good reason why God allowed Christ to be deceived into thinking he was God.

"[Timothy 2] which asserts that all of Scripture is divinely inspired."

This is circular. I don't see anyway around it unless you have an independent argument to think Timothy is likely to be true.

"Since the faith of the early Church is true."

This hasn't been established. Again, for all we know God allowed people to believe they were inspired, for good reason, when they were not. And even if there were some divinely inspired people, we have been given no reason to think the early Church included any of them.

"One "price" of the spiral is that in addition to the inerrance of Scripture it gets you the infallibility of the Church."

Are these the same people that deride gay marriage? That would be, by my lights, a justified Moorean shift.

But, criticism aside, thanks for the interesting post and I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Christian:

There is a legitimate question as to which version of the Bible is the inerrant one. I would say that the canon is the Catholic one, which has a long history. But there is still the question of which version of the texts. There, I am inclined to say that it's the one actually written by the original authors/redactors. To say that requires a distinction between authors/redactors on the one hand and copyists on the other. Fortunately little rides on it, since extremely few of the manuscript discrepancies have any doctrinal significance (especially to those who do not accept sola scriptura).

As for Christ deceiving us in his teachings, if he is God, it wouldn't just be deceit, but lying. Lying is always wrong. Hence, God does not lie. (Sceptical theism--which anyway I don't endorse--should not allow God to violate negative deontic norms. If it did, then Cartesian scepticism would ensue.)

Could one be merely mistaken in thinking one is the omnipotent and omniscient God? Not, I think, if one has the strong monotheistic view of divinity that comes from Judaism, and one is sane and of moderate intelligence, at least not unless there is some higher power trying to deceive one. (If I thought I was God, I would try to heal some of the sick. Then, unless some higher power was trying to deceive me, I would fail. And my failure would show me that I am not God. There are complications if kenotic views of Christianity are correct, but such views are philosophically flawed.)

Alex
As always a very interesting post.

Couple of comments:
1) when probablities are assigned and they are reasonably close why not simply without judgement as to the truth or falsity of what is being claimed. This, of course, is what Descartes proposed and unfortunatley it seems that many, if not most, have not taken thilesson to heart; there are three options to how we can respond to any assetion - claim that it is true, claim that it is false, or claim that we do not know if it is true or false. Sometimes we just do not know.
2) Why be charitable, why not simply use the anlystical tools we have and let the chips fall were they may. I think that we can safely discount any proposition or theory that leads to a contradiction (or an absurdity). When reading a text I look at the soundness of the argument, or, at a minimum, the reasonableness of the assertion relative to the supporting evidence. If I determine that a premise is false or unsupported then it is not reasonable to assert that the conclusion is true or reasonable.
3) Regarding you response to Christian (sorry Christian for butting in) it seems that you are overlooking rational alternatives to God being Good. Simply defining Him as good will not suffice, it begs the very question being asked. It seems to me that when we are dealing with a being and its creation (assuming such a being and an act of creation), the only thing we can asert about this being is that it has the knowledge and power to bring the creation about. Nothing from the facts of creation as it unfolds historically tells us anything about the moral nature of God. Surely an evil being could have created this world and deceived us into believing that it is a completely good being. The best deception is the one that goes undetected or is not refutable based on the evidence. Paraphrasing the Usual Suspects; the devils greatest achievement is convincing human beings that He is a good God. As far as I understand the Bible (an admittedly I do not understand it as well a scholars do) everything that is asserted about God and our relationship to Him would make sense if God were a deceiver. The problem with Descartes' Evil Demon is that he does not effectively get rid of it. Deception would be a perfection for an evil being.

As most of you have probably figured out, my fingers think differently then my brain.

In the first sentence the word 'without' should be 'withhold.' Other errors I apologize for, but it is what it is. Someday computers will have a 'stupid' check.

"There, I am inclined to say that it's the one actually written by the original authors/redactors."

Again, I take it you think this because you think the original authors were "in fact" inspired. But that claim hasn't been established. Perhaps there were inspired people none of which were original authors, or there were inspired people, some of which didn't get represented in the canon. Either way a crucial premise has gone undefended.

"Lying is always wrong."

What? Is allowing someone to suffer always wrong? I take it that duty is a strong one. If so, the argument from evil is going to be quite easy to justify.

"Not, I think, if one has the strong monotheistic view of divinity that comes from Judaism, and one is sane and of moderate intelligence."

But this just appeals to the "one must be crazy, sick or stupid" line of reasoning. That's to say it begs the question in a bad way. The point is that one could be merely mistaken in thinking one is God, as Howard-Snyder puts it. There are quite a few examples throughout history of people believing they were God and it's easy to tell a story according to which they could be justified in thinking so without being nuts. Suppose there is prediction that a God will be born, that other people seem to think you are it, that you have an uncanny sense of compassion and are intelligent and that, on a number of occassions, you performed "miracles" for which you could find no reasonable explanation. Suppose you heard voices saying "Hey, you're God by the way..." In such a circumstance, so it seems to me, so long as one is ignoring the logic of identity one could be justified in thinking one is God.

But again, it seems to me that God could have a good reason for decieving one into thinking she is God. I don't think deception is always wrong. God is no Kantian. And so that would make the case even easier to describe.

Hi Alex (please call me Luke!),

I agree that Catholics have a more principled rationale for inerrancy than non-Catholics, but, for better or worse, we’re not all Catholics. And I’m not sure I agree that inerrancy finds unanimous support in the Fathers. It probably depends a lot on what we mean by inerrancy. The sort of inerrancy I’m familiar with, which I take you to be rejecting, is what we might call “plain sense” inerrancy; the Bible speaks plainly, and what the plain sense says is true. Surely very few, if any, of the Fathers would have recognized that sort of claim.

So I’m still wondering about exactly how you want to formulate the view. Here’s a couple worries:

(1) Original languages: presumably you want to say that the texts are contradiction-free in their “original manuscripts,” but not necessarily in later transcriptions and translations, since there seems to be quite a bit of divergence their, as any textual apparatus shows us. But we don’t have the original manuscripts. And in some cases, where we draw the line for “original manuscript” will be arbitrary, since many of the OT material circulated for a long time as oral tradition before being put in manuscript form. Anyways, the general point is that, because we don’t have the original manuscripts, it’s difficult to see how inerrancy actually bears on how we, today, interpret the texts we do have; as far as the Church here-and-now is concerned, it’s more or less an entirely unhelpful, bordering on vacuous, claim.

(2) I lose my sense on what it means to say of the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, or Ecclesiastes, that the propositions they express are true. I just don’t know if poetry, or the Wisdom tradition generally, works like that. Are you wanting to say that, for any given sentence of Scripture text, it’s possible that it expresses multiple propositions? Is this what allows us to do justice to the richness and manifold senses of biblical poetry? I need help here.

(3) What do you want to do with contextualization. Do we index Paul’s claims about women needing to pray with their head covered, or men being forbidden from having long hair, to a particular time and place? Presumably we think that at least some of what’s going on in the Scriptures no longer applies to us. In what sense do the propositions these claims express true?

(4) The spiral method is fine in principle; I just find it overwhelmingly implausible on empirical—indeed textual—grounds. Again, there’s too much special pleading. I think we can and should hold that the Scriptures are highly reliable guides, but highly historical, contextual, and messy as well. There are a couple of spots in your explication of the spiral method that I’ uncomfortable with—I think, e.g., that form criticism and the like shows that at least some of Jesus’ sayings were accumulated from different sources over a period of some time, and I’m not sure that your view leaves room for the messiness of such a process; things might have gone wrong here-and-there in the details, though on the whole it might still be quite reliable.

Luke,

(0) The Church Fathers had a fairly sophisticated view of inerrance, and I suspect their view entails mine. (Their view probably entails more. I am not here discussing the additional kinds of meaning--say, mystical ones--of Scripture that they accepted. There, inerrance is harder to formulate, because there it is the intentions of the divine rather than human author that are relevant.)

(1) I am not deeply worried about original languages, since as a practical matter of fact, the deviation between MSS is very rarely of doctrinal significance (it may be more of an issue for those who accept Sola Scriptura as I said; it really wouldn't matter for me if it turned out that some long passage expressing some Christian doctrine was a later insertion if that doctrine could also be grounded in Tradition). Sure, there is always room for a touch of uncertainty whether the original text contained some claim. But this does not strike me as a particularly serious problem. When we do Plato scholarship, we generally take it that the manuscripts we have, some fine points that scholars rightly concentrate on aside, pretty closely reflect what Plato wrote.

(2) Yes, the poetic texts are more difficult. Now either they do assert or teach propositions or they don't. Suppose they don't. Then, these texts are trivially free from error. I am inclined to think they do teach propositions ("assert" may not be the right term here; it is for reasons like this that I used the disjunctive formulation in my post). Which propositions? That requires the hard work of exegesis. But the Psalms teach us that God is majestic, that God is trustworthy, that man is untrustworthy, and all kinds of other general propositions of that sort. More specifics require more hard work. In any case, I do not think inerrance is all there is to Scriptural inspiration, just as the "literal meaning" (in the proper sense of the word, as the intended meaning, and as distinguished from the "literalistic meaning") is not all there is to the meaning of Scripture. Inspiration entails inerrance, but there is no entailment the other way around (lack of error is a negative claim while inspiration is a positive one; a text could be inerrant without being inspired--God might, for instance, be watching an uninspired author and miraculously preventing him from setting down falsehoods).

(3) Whatever Paul was asserting is true. It takes the hard work of actual exegesis to figure out in any specific case whether the author was intending to say that F is always wrong or was merely intending to say that F is wrong in a given context. The same is true of ordinary language--it is at times hard to figure out exactly what proposition was intended. It may at times be true that no specific proposition was intended by a speaker or write. In that case, I don't quite know what to say. My inclination is to say that then a range of propositions is expressed, and what is inerrantly taught is at least that at least one proposition in that range is true.

I want to index Paul's statements about head covering in the way Paul indexed it, but I don't know for sure how Paul indexed it. This doesn't bother me, since I do not have any commitments to all of Scripture being understandable to us. If I were a Protestant woman, I would probably be inclined to go the safer route and cover my head in church, unless I could come up with a good argument that Paul indexed it to his culture. However, as a Catholic, I have a trust in the liturgical practices of the Church, and since these practices no longer include obligatory head covering, I trust that probably (this is not an infallible Church teaching) it was indexed to a particular cultural situation.

(4) I have no objection to the employment of form critical scholarship early on in the spiral. Indeed, that is exactly what would have to be done. One would need to establish that the particular sayings of our Savior that are needed for the further steps are genuinely his. Here, however, I want to say with C. S. Lewis, that a sensitive reader can detect what sayings are clearly in character, and this is a great help in this task.

Christian:

I agree that just might be logically possible for a sane and moderately intelligent person to falsely but justifiedly believe he or she is God. However, I think this is extremely unlikely. There would have to be various apparent miracles. Extraordinary insights. Etc.

Lying is always wrong--in speaking one solicits someone's trust, and in lying one betrays that trust in the act of soliciting it, and this is wrong. Allowing another to suffer is not always wrong (think of deserved suffering, or of suffering where the agent has other pressing duties, vel cetera).

It's unlikely no doubt. But the idea is that being merely mistaken is no less likely than being crazy, and certainly no less likely than being "right", which, by my lights anyway, would be logically impossible (though nothing I said above rests on this secondary point).

And you can't possibly think that lying is always wrong. Suppose you're safeguarding Jew and the gestapo comes to the door: Are there any Jews in here they ask? You say No. You lie. You do nothing wrong, full stop.

Or suppose Someone takes hostages, you're one of them and the police phones. The hostage taker, call him Elvis, tells you to tell the police that he has left the building...You do, and so you lie, but you do nothing wrong.

And again, if the catholic church decrees that gay marriage or extr-marital sex is a sin they are simply mistaken, full stop.

Shawn,

I was not so much raising a problem for Alex's view (he's surely alive to all the cases, and possibilities for response, I enumerated) as just saying there's very little one can say at a level more abstract than particular cases.

As for the cases I mentioned in (i), all of them are instances where at least many Christians had to change their minds about the genre of an OT passage in the face of scientific evidence. In other words, it is not self-evident what genre a piece of writing belongs to, and very often it has been the case that a passage gets assigned a new (non-factual) genre just when the scientific evidence makes it implausible as a factual passage.

Christian,

You wrote, "And again, if the catholic church decrees that gay marriage or extr-marital sex is a sin they are simply mistaken, full stop."

If you don't mind me asking, how did you come to this judgment, Christian? What major presuppositions helped you formulate this ruling judgment against the Catholic Church? Are you presupposing morality is objective? Assuming you are, how did you discover the moral truth that homosexual and premarital sex is not sinful/evil?

Also, I am not sure the Christian, or moral objectivist, is forced to say that lying is right in some circumstances. They could always reply that lying is wrong on every occasion; however, sometimes lying is the prima facie best decision at the time. The Christian is then able to reply that though they did in fact sin by lying in some circumstance where it was better that they lie than tell the truth, they are forgiven by the grace of God through Christ and their conscience is clean knowing this and that they chose the best possible option at the time. To talk about objective rights and wrongs apart from including talk of forgiveness and retributive justice just doesn't make much sense to me.

Hi Kevin:

They could say of all of that, but they would be mistaken.

A few points: I won't argue for the claim that, say, murdering an innocent child for fun is wrong. I won't argue for that because I cannot produce any argument whose premises would be more obvious than the conclusion. The same goes for gay marriage or gay sex. I don't have any argument whose premises would be more obvious than the conclusion. All I can say to someone who disagrees is "Well, you're sorely mistaken and you need to take a serious look in the mirror."

But whatever, here's an argument:

P1. Heterosexual sexual between consenting adults is permissible.

P2. Heterosexual sexual between consenting unmarried adults is relevant similar to Homosexual sex between consenting adults.

C. Therefore...

"To talk about objective rights and wrongs apart from including talk of forgiveness and retributive justice just doesn't make much sense to me."

I don't believe you even think that. Above I said, "murdering an innocent child for fun is wrong" and didn't refer to either forgiveness or retributive justice. But you understood what I meant. But, if you claim not to, I won't try to convince you. I would direct you to one of the thousands of ethics texts that discusses moral theory without even mentioning forgiveness. Their authors seem to understand what they're writing about.

Hi Kevin:

They could say of all of that, but they would be mistaken.

A few points: I won't argue for the claim that, say, murdering an innocent child for fun is wrong. I won't argue for that because I cannot produce any argument whose premises would be more obvious than the conclusion. The same goes for gay marriage or gay sex. I don't have any argument whose premises would be more obvious than the conclusion. All I can say to someone who disagrees is "Well, you're sorely mistaken and you need to take a serious look in the mirror."

But whatever, here's an argument:

P1. Heterosexual sexual between consenting adults is permissible.

P2. Heterosexual sexual between consenting unmarried adults is relevant similar to Homosexual sex between consenting adults.

C. Therefore...

"To talk about objective rights and wrongs apart from including talk of forgiveness and retributive justice just doesn't make much sense to me."

I don't believe you even think that. Above I said, "murdering an innocent child for fun is wrong" and didn't refer to either forgiveness or retributive justice. But you understood what I meant. But, if you claim not to, I won't try to convince you. I would direct you to one of the thousands of ethics texts that discusses moral theory without even mentioning forgiveness. Their authors seem to understand what they're writing about.

Christian:

Thanks for the argument.

A couple of problems in your argument. First, P2 has "consenting unmarried adults" while P1 has "consenting adults". The Catholic should not grant P1 in the case of unmarried adults.

Secondly, there is a question as to what "sex" means. If it means penile-vaginal intercourse (pvi), then P2 is simply false, because pvi between opposite-sex couples is not relevantly similar to pvi between same-sex couples, as the former is possible and the latter is impossible. If, on the other hand, "sex" includes any mutual orgasmic activity, then the Catholic should not grant P1 without a restriction of sex to pvi.

By the way, "you can't possibly think" claims are easily falsified, namely they are falsified by the other person thinking the allegedly unthinkable thought. :-) Yes, I do think lying is always wrong, even to save many lives. (I do, however, have a paper arguing that some things that a lot of people think are lies really aren't lies.) Whether in practice I would live by this in a difficult case depends on grace and free will.

Christian,

You're right. I should have said, "To talk about objective rights and wrongs apart from consideration of forgiveness, retributive justice, et cetera (Revealed Divine Consequence) just doesn't make much sense to me." I believe morality is objective iff something very much like the theistic God exists and provides a way for knowledge of good and evil. If the only sufficient foundation for an objective moral theory is God, it is only right to consider Revealed Divine Consequence into our ethical judgements. Consideration of consequence seems to be, largely, at the heart of all ethical theories. Why not take into account the most important consequences?

However, what is the foundation for your moral conclusions? What makes them objective? Dr. Pruss makes some good points concerning the inadequacies of your arguement. However, I would add that the rightness of an action requires more than mere human permissibility to be objective upright. Human permissibility is too weak a foundation for any good ethical theory. If it were a strong enough foundation, your argument would go:

1) Not all dispprove of X
2) Therefore, X is morally permissable.

However, if you disagree, you believe human permissability is a sufficient foundation for morality, why would you say the ethical judgments of Christians are "sorely mistaken."? How do you consistently state the moral judgments of some are wrong without either making all things permissable (which it sounds like you don't believe they are) or contradict your own reasoning?

Hi Guys:

The argument above was sloppy no doubt. Let's make it clean.

P1. Heterosexual oral, anal or vaginal sex (sex, for short) between consenting adults is prima facie permissible.

P2. Heterosexual sex between consenting adults is relevantly similar to homosexual sex between consenting adults.

P3. If P1 and P2, then homosexual sex between consenting adults is prima facie permissible.

Therefore...

Alex...Catholics may deny P1 for sure. But that would just show their view is wrong, I think. They will appeal to the authority of the Church and I'll appeal to the authority of my intuition. I mean just consider some examples: a couple deserted on an island who have sex, or consider sex before there were marriage ceremonies, or sex between hermaphrodites, or sex between aliens whose members don't fall into male/female categories at all...and on and on the counterexamples to the Church are endless...

But, if you still hold on, I really don't know what to say other than to challenge your belief that the Church is a reliable source for moral truths...I wouldn't know how to do that if you didn't take these counterexamples as genuine counterexamples, I've never run across anybody who doesn't. But as I said before I would like to know why you think the members of the Church were inspired rather than that they mistakenly believed they were inspired.

"Yes, I do think lying is always wrong, even to save many lives."

Okay:)

Kevin...you said "Why not take into account the most important consequences?" and this is my reply: You can believe God is the source of morality, that's a defensible view, but my point was that you don't need to believe this view to "make sense" of rightness and wrongness. That is, you understand moral claims apart from a theory about them...whether the theory provides truthmakers for those claims is another question, a question well worth discussing, but that wasn't my point...

I like Huemer's view of moral knowledge according to which there are universals like rightness and wrongness that we grasp in intuition. I'm a moral realist, as they say.

"Human permissibility is too weak a foundation for any good ethical theory."

I don't know why you qualify permissibility with 'human' but the ethical theory I believe in isn't restricted by biological categories.

"How do you consistently state the moral judgments of some are wrong without either making all things permissable or contradict your own reasoning?."

Check out PeaSoup, it's an ethics blog and it will give you a good idea how philosophers talk about ethics. But in response to your question, I just don't see the worry. Christians are wrong if they judge a certain act, say, sex between consenting same-sex adults, as impermissible. I judge it permissible and believe I'm right. One of is correct. Of course, one of is correct "not" because one of us makes the judgment, rather, one of us is correct because one of us has accurately described the moral facts, be they divinely laid down on the one hand, or not, on the other.

The crucial question, as I see it, for Alex's post, is whether we should trust the original sources of certain writings. Insofar as these sources are reliable it then becomes a difficult, though possibly tractable, empirical question as to what they were actually inspired to write, but we ought not sidestep the interesting philosophical question. Were their inpired people at all, were they, if they did exist, represented by the canon? Were inspired people left out?

Christian,

Intuitively, I know your ethical claims are incorrect and that your ethical theory is inadequate in providing consistent moral truths. You might get lucky every now and again but mostly, I believe, you are going to be wrong. With nothing but your intuition to guide you and by your rejection for any adequate foundation for the existence of objective moral values and moral knowledge, any explanation you could give for the rightness or wrongness of any action is going to be off. You might find yourself being right in pointing to an action and confirming that that action is morally valuable or invaluable; however, once you start explaining how you know this is the case or begin to explain your reasoning, from what you have demonstrated so far, your are doomed to lead yourself consistently astray, morally speaking.

Your moral theory has a few strengths: 1) morality is objective (something people intuitively know), 2) moral realism does obtain (moral claims can be true), and 3) you will likely have others join your side rather easily as their intuitions will be as unfortunate and inaccurate as your own. People will always find a way to justify their actions to their conscience as long as they want to do it bad enough. According to your system, who is to say you are wrong and what does it matter—your intuitions must be right and their intuitions must be wrong. However, the weakness of your theory is, if theories about the sources of moral values and moral knowledge play a more significant role in the understanding and discovery of moral truths than you are willing accept, (which is likely the case seeing that, quite intuitively, objective moral values exist iff God does exists) you will likely find yourself living a very immoral life and leading many people in the same immoral direction.

Kevin, I'm unclear what I said brought about such hostility, but I'm sorry if I offended you. Sometimes I forget that these subjects can be sensitive.

Now, methodologically speaking, you've made alot of claims above, but you didn't argue for them.

For example: "I know your ethical claims are incorrect and that your ethical theory is inadequate in providing consistent moral truths."

But look, I neither provided an ethical theory nor have you given an argument against one you seem to think was provided. That's no good. Recall, I asserted that sex between same-sex couples is permissible, seems to me to be a Moorean fact, or something near enough to it, but I went ahead and gave an argument.

Then, you and Alex appeal to the authority of the Church, but then I gave counterexamples. You didn't respond to those counterexamples, for example, you didn't consider whether it's permissible for hermaphrodites to have sex or enter into a marriage. If it is, then how exactly is the Church going to handle that.

"your intuitions must be right and their intuitions must be wrong."

I wish my intuitions were always right, but alas, that isn't the case. I do, however, think we should judge a theory partly on the basis of it's consistency with intuition. And that's why I gave what I took to be intuitive counterexamples.

"Quite intuitively, objective moral values exist iff God does exists."

Well, I'd be curious if others share this view. That doesn't seem at all intuitive to me, though it may end up being true if God necessarily exist. Do you have an argument for this claim? What is your response to Plato's Euthyphro problem? You know there are many educated Christians who think morality is independent of God.

Finally, Kevin, the view I put forward above, the one you think is quite bad, is in large part one I would accept even if I were a Christian, not only in namesake.

Christian, I doubt Kevin thinks he has provided anything other than what seems obvious to him. But I think that's the point. You haven't done any more than that either. What he's shown is that two can play at that game. You even seem to acknowledge this. But that's what makes it hard for me to see how you can't step back and see that you're offering nothing methodologically superior to what Kevin's offering.

You assume that our moral intuitions are reliable, and he gives an alternative account about how it would be that our moral intuitions are drastically unreliable, one that makes sense to me given what I observe about human nature. His resistance to your arguments or claims (since even the arguments rely on controversial claims) is simply because he doesn't trust our moral intuitions that way you think you can trust yours.

I think the game you're playing might backfire anyway. Don't most people have intuitions that gay sex is immoral? I thought the standard philosophical response to that fact is that the intuitions are unreliable in this case. We say the same about deeply-ingrained racist intuitions and deeply-ingrained misogynist intuitions. If the "gay sex is wrong" intuition is unreliable, what makes the "gay sex is ok" intuition more reliable, and how can you provide an argument that someone with the "gay sex is wrong" intuition will be able to accept?

Hi Jeremy:

Thanks for the comment. Just about everything you wrote seems to be mistaken.

"You haven't done any more than that either."

Yes I did. I gave an argument, he did not.

"What he's shown is that two can play at that game."

No he did not, he gave no argument. I did.

"But that's what makes it hard for me to see how you can't step back and see that you're offering nothing methodologically superior to what Kevin's offering."

Kevin said false things and gave no arguments, I said true things and gave arguments and counterexamples. If that's not a methodological difference, I'd like to hear from you what a methodological difference consists in.

"You assume that our moral intuitions are reliable."

Nope. Not only do I not assume that, I even said my intuitions are "alas" sometimes mistaken. Read what I wrote.

"he gives an alternative account about how it would be that our moral intuitions are drastically unreliable."

Again, that's false. No "account" was given at all. Assertions were made and that's about all.

"His resistance to your arguments or claims (since even the arguments rely on controversial claims) is simply because he doesn't trust our moral intuitions that way you think you can trust yours."

My arguments may rely on claims controversial to people who take the Bible or Church as authoritative, but nobody else takes them to be controversial as far as I can tell. That's why I asked for arguments, rather than mere assertions to the effect that we should take the Bible or Church as authoritative. It's said the Bible is inspired, I asked why we should think that, and yet, there has been no answer given.

"Don't most people have intuitions that gay sex is immoral? I thought the standard philosophical response to that fact is that the intuitions are unreliable in this case."

So then I take it "the standard response" suggests that gay sex is not immoral after all, which is what I'm claiming. That's nice. And insofar as people have this intuition, I think it's religiously motivated, if we can call such judgments motivated by religious belief intuitions. I call them biases. So the standard response seems to work in my favor after all does it not?

"If the "gay sex is wrong" intuition is unreliable, what makes the "gay sex is ok" intuition more reliable."

One is true, the other is false and reliability is a truth-conducive notion.

"how can you provide an argument that someone with the "gay sex is wrong" intuition will be able to accept?"

I'm not sure. I gave a second argument from analogy. Nobody has responded to it yet. That's one way. Another way is to undermine the theory that is supposed to support the claim that same-sex sex is wrong and that means having a theory stated. Nobody has done that though I take it the argument assumes the reliability of the Bible and infers from that the claim that same sex sex is wrong. I gave counterexamples to the claim that sex outside of marriage is wrong as well as others, thus undermining the theory.

What more one can do I don't know. I'm quite certain that I've already done more than enough, and perhaps have been too charitable in my responses.

I have a lot I want to say but I haven't worked through it all, so I will hold off on posting any of that. Now, Christian, my intuitive opinion is that rational intuitions alone are inadequate for devising moral truths. Why is this? It seems that moral intuitions (MI), as Jeremy called them, are something of a different sort than say mere "rational intuitions." Not that MI are not rational, they are, but they are more than rational. MI have an additional aspect that makes them markedly different than mere rational intuitions.

Now, you might disagree with this, Christian, but I believe you will bear the burden of proof in demonstrating that I am wrong. I believe you need to be able to demonstrate that one discovers objective moral truths and discovers what is in fact required, forbidden and permissible in the exact same manner as one would discover any other truth. When one intuitively reasons the truth of the law of non-contradiction and when one intuitively reasons "torturing babies for fun is always wrong," these two truths are reasonable, yet, they not reached in the exact same way. We have added something to our reason in the second example that is not present in the first.

To engage in moral reasoning one proves they have moral knowledge. However, moral knowledge is not necessary to prove the truth of merely rational truths, like the law of non-contradiction. Therefore, moral knowledge must play a significant role in devising moral truths. How does this work? I have some ideas, but I will hold off on those for now (they do not necessarily depend on the authority of the Bible, Church or Tradition though). My ideas mainly involve considering the ENTIRETY of one's inherent moral consul. The entirety of one’s inherent moral consul includes more than the mere faculties of reason. Accordingly, I do not believe (by my estimation of the reasoning your have demonstrated in any of your arguments) that you have properly considered anything other than mere rational reason in deciding what should be permissible or not. How does moral knowledge play a role in how you decide what actions are in fact required, forbidden or permissible?

By the way, Christian, I wouldn’t describe my previous response to you as hostile. I would, however, describe my response as sincere or passionate. And, to some degree, shouldn’t we be? Obviously our passion shouldn’t be blind to reason, but surely we should, at the least, discourse like we believe what we are saying is significant, quite possibly, even eternally significant. Why did you feel the need to address Dr. Pruss initially or to take a stand for what you believe is the permissibility of homosexual and premarital sex? Was it that you had nothing better to do with your time? Surely this isn’t the case. Certainly, when discoursing about ethics we in some way feel, or ought to feel, that we are defending the good we know we ought to defend and battling the evil we know we ought to battle for purposes and causes significantly greater than ourselves.

Kevin,

I said your response was hostile because you wrote: "you will likely find yourself living a very immoral life and leading many people in the same immoral direction."

I hope you can see how that can reasonably be interpreted as hostile. But whatever, tone doesn't get represented very well online, and I'm sure my own tone has been misunderstood as well, so forget it.

I think moral intuitions are rational intuitions. Take the following moral claims:

1. Rightness is not identical to redness.

2. If x is better than y and y is better than z, then x is better than z.

3. If a state of affairs s has only right-making properties and no wrongmaking properties, then bringing about s is permissible.

I assume we can know these claims a priori by way of rational intuition. I defer to a defense of this by Huemer.

You seem to think this view is wrong, that we know (1) - (3) differently than we know:

4. If x is greater than y and y is greater than z, then x is greater than z.

I don't see the difference. I don 't see what has been added in (4) that is not in (2) such that one requires a different source of intuition for its justification. So I deny the burden of proof. You need to argue that intuitions wrt to transitivity in one case, though not the other, requires a different source of intuition.

However...I agree with you that I have not "considered anything other than mere rational reason in deciding what should be permissible or not." This is just as it should be if I'm right.

And I also agree that we are defending the good we "believe" we know:) I think it is very important to challenge people on the issue of the authority of the Bible or Church since, if I'm right, the Church is mistaken and this mistake is responsible for serious undeserved harm and injustice. We fought racism not too long ago, today our fight, by my lights, is homophobia (among other problems) and I think the Church is responsible for much of this.

I'm going to let this posting go and move on to Tim's new post since it raises the problem I've been trying to point out in this thread...

hugs,
c

Defining exactly WHAT an objective moral value IS may be a difficult task; however, whatever objective moral values are, they don't appear to be the sorts of things that exist if God does not. To reason like a naturalist about things that exist in the actual world which would not exist if metaphysical naturalism obtains simply doesn't make sense.

Your reasoning above (in points 1-4) is reasoning about morality. However, if you remember what I said, I said that moral intuitions are MORE than rational intuitions--they are everything that rational intuitions ARE PLUS something else, namely moral knowledge. By rational intuitions alone, you could quite possibly make all things permissible, at least you would be able to convince some that this is the case.

I have no problem with the a priori. It is because of a priori rational intuition I am making many of the points that I am.

Big hug, little hug, Big kiss, little keese.

Christian, giving a massively question-begging argument requires asserting premise your opponent won't agree with. The fact that you put them together in premise-and-conclusion format and he didn't doesn't mean that you've supported your view any better than he did.

He did give an account. Giving an account is perfectly compatible with asserting things you aren't arguing for. That's a crucial methodological distinction, in fact. People who don't have arguments for their view will often give accounts of how they think it works, and that at least serves as a potential explanation of some fact.

Yes, the standard view among philosophers is that gay sex is not immoral. I don't see why that claim should be controversial. Philosophers believe lots of things that are false, and sometimes the dominant view at some time is false. Since anti-essentialism was dominant in Quine's time but essentialism was dominant after Kripke, it follows that a false view was dominant in one of those times. Are you proposing that we use a head-counting method of determining which controversial philosophical claims are true? If we did that, then we'd have to say that the truth value of these claims changes when majority opinion changes.

I think you are very much wrong about religious motivations for the view that gay sex is wrong. I think most people who believe that are just disgusted by it, the same way anti-black racists are disgusted at black people. It's a separate matter whether that disgust is caused by a truth-conducive process, but that disgust doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with whether someone is religious. Michael Levin uses it as his primary argument for why he doesn't think he should have to associate with gay people, and there's nothing religious about Levin in the least. On the contrary, I find that many religious people tend to be more likely that people like Levin to have good relationships with gay people while disapproving of gay sex. But that's the minority view among those who disapprove of gay sex. Most people who are opposed to it have little of the religious motivation.

"If the "gay sex is wrong" intuition is unreliable, what makes the "gay sex is ok" intuition more reliable."

One is true, the other is false and reliability is a truth-conducive notion.

Again, you beg the question.

J-

My argument wasn't question begging.

Consider P1...

P1. Heterosexual oral, anal or vaginal sex (sex, for short) between consenting adults is prima facie permissible.

Is this question begging? It avoids your disgust point, which is to say, if disgust is what drives people into thinking gay sex is wrong, then people shouldn't think P1 is is false for that reason. And if someone denies P1 becausethey think the adults must be married "open to the possibility of procreation" or something like that, then (a) that's a substantive consequence of denying the premise and (b) is extremely implausible. Again, consider a heterosexual couple abandoned on a deserted island, they are not married, but it would be permissible for them to have sex. So P1 is not at all question begging.

Consider P2...

P2. Heterosexual sex between consenting adults is relevantly similar to homosexual sex between consenting adult.

Is this question begging? No, unless very many arguments in ethics are question begging, like Singer's shallow Pond, Unger's UNICEF case and many others. And the point behind premises like P2 is that they force those who deny them to come up w/ a relevant difference between a pair of cases, an important strategy in philosophy.

"He did give an account." I'm unclear what account your referring to.

"Are you proposing that we use a head-counting method." No, but when a large group of educated people share a moral intuition, that's nice. But I never deferred to majority anyway, I gave an argument and have a contrary intuition and asked for an argument to the contrary, which is the way to do things.

"I think you are very much wrong about religious motivations for the view that gay sex is wron."

Here you may be right. Maybe it's just a matter of disgust and overgeneralization, but that's a matter for empirical research. I'll remain agnostic on this one, but insofar as the Church supports an immoral view, it deserves to be challenged, even if the Church isn't responsible for the existence of the view.

And finally, we may be talking past one another here, but you wrote: "If the "gay sex is wrong" intuition is unreliable, what makes the "gay sex is ok" intuition more reliable, and how can you provide an argument that someone with the "gay sex is wrong" intuition will be able to accept?"

On the assumption that the first is unreliable that's because it yields a false belief and given bivalence the contrary is true and so considering that belief alone, the intuition which yields it is reliable. This is not question begging, that is, assuming the first belief is false.

K-

"By rational intuitions alone, you could quite possibly make all things permissible,"

What do you mean??? Intuitions don't make things permissible. And we have intuitions that many things are not, like harming others, lying, promise breaking, etc...If these intuitions are right, then it's not true that all is permissible.

" if you remember what I said, I said that moral intuitions are MORE than rational intuitions."

But I don't see what more you need to intuiting (4) than to intuit (2)? You can call one moral, but that's not a difference in intuition or its source. And I don't see what moral knowledge has to do with intuiting (2) except for the trivial point that intuiting (2) gives one moral knowledge of (2). Using your reasoning we can go on to say there is mathematical intuition, logical intuition, moral intuition, property intuition, spatial intuition, etc...each requiring it's own knowledge. But there is just no reason to make all these divisions. Nor is there a reason to distinguish rational intuition from moral intuition as rational intuition plus something extra.

(laughs...keeses)

Christian:

The argument for the permissible of same-sex sexual relations was aimed against the traditional Christian view of sexuality. The traditional Christian view of sexuality denies P1--this includes both Catholic authors as well as folks like Luther and Calvin.

I actually find it quite plausible that if one grants P1, then the permissibility of same-sex sexual activity follows. But I see no reason to grant P1.

It seems to me that if my opponent denies both p and q for the same reason, then an argument for p that uses q as a premise is not going to be very good.
For instance, suppose that you offered me the following argument in favor of insulting Frechmen:
P1. It is permissible to insult Belgians.
P2. There is no significant moral difference between insulting Belgians and insulting Frenchmen.
Hence: It is permissible to insult Frenchmen.
This is going to be a bad argument against me, and does not lead to any revision of probabilities on my side, because my reason for holding that it's wrong to insult Belgians is exactly the same as my reason for holding that it's wrong to insult Frenchmen, namely that I believe it is wrong to insult people.

Similarly, I have exactly the same philosophical reason for opposing same-sex and opposite-sex oral sex, etc., namely that (a) it is wrong to induce a feeling of biological sexual union in the absence of biological sexual union, (b) only heterosexual intercourse (without condoms or withdrawal) includes biological sexual union, and (c) orgasm is a feeling of biological sexual union.

So against me, the argument carries no weight. (If anything, I think I have better arguments against these acts in opposite-sex cases than in same-sex cases, because in opposite-sex cases the excuse that these are the only kinds of sexual acts physically possible is lacking.)

It might carry some weight against some contemporary Protestant authors who allow oral sex, etc., to married heterosexual couples but not to homosexual couples, but they will still insist that the marriage is essential.

I also suspect, though there I could be wrong, that the intuitions you have for accepting P1 (e.g., liberal intuitions about the permissibility of consensual acts that do not overtly harm others) are also directly reasons for accepting the permissibility of same-sex sexual activity. If so, then the argument has no additional rational force even for you. :-)

Alex:

My argument wasn't solely "aimed against the traditional Christian view of sexuality." I meant to argue against any view according to which same-sex sex is wrong. I do agree that traditional Christians will reject P1 for the very same reason they will reject the conclusion, namely, that sex outside of marriage as well as sex between same sex couples is forbidden by the Church or Bible. In that sense, the argument will be unpersuasive. I understand this fully. I just want to be very clear on which premise is denied, and you were, P1, and why, and again you were clear, (a) - (c). So thanks. That's all I wanted.

Here's me response:

(a) It is wrong to induce a feeling of biological sexual union in the absence of biological sexual union.

Problems: If this is a moral principle it's either basic or derived. It must be derived since it makes reference to a biological concept and basic moral principles will not. An example: it's wrong to kick puppies. This is not basic since we derive it from more basic claims like, roughly, it's wrong to cause pain and kicking a puppy causes it pain. So my first worry is that there is no basic moral principle, together with the empirical facts, from which you can derive (a). And since (a) must be derived if it's true, it follows that it's false. Secondly, there are many ways to induce a feeling of biological sexual union that seem permisible so (a), if true, would overgeneralize. For example: mutual masturbation and oral sex between married couples not aiming at pvi sexual intercourse is permissible, the production of erotic lovescenes from which viewers get sexual pleasure is permissible, and self-masturbation is permissible. Now, you may deny these claims, but for those of us who find these claims very plausible, we will have a reason to reject the view upon which thsis denial is based.

(b) Only heterosexual intercourse (without condoms or withdrawal) includes biological sexual union.

I don't know why we should believe this unless you're stipulating what a biological sexual union is. Is the idea that a biological sexual union is a sex act that naturally leads to procreation? If so, then there's a counterexample: infertile married couples that engage in pvi sex. Moreover, it seems permissible for married hermaphrodites to engage in sexual intercourse and if this is right, then either (a) or (b) will be false depending upon how you interpret the phrase 'biological sexual union'.

Your right about by why I accept P1 and same sex sex, namely, I have "liberal intuitions about the permissibility of consensual acts that do not overtly harm others." These intuitions seem right to me. But I'm unclear why you said "If so, then the argument has no additional rational force even for you." It's true that P1 follows from my liberal intuition with the empirical facts as well as the conclusion, but if we establish P1 by appeal to intuition and the facts (and theory and considering counterexamples, etc.), then we can use the above argument to establish the conclusion "even if" there is another argument for the same conclusion based upon premises one accepts! There are tricky questions here, no doubt, about overdetermination and transmission of justification from multiple arguments, but whatever...it may turn out that the above argument will not give me more justification for the conclusion than I already think possess on the basis of my intuition.

With respect to (a), it follows from a general principle prohibiting self-induction of morally significant feelings or emotions in the absence of the reality that they signify. For instance, after having done a selfish deed, it would be wrong to self-induce the kind of glow of satisfaction that we have when we have acted selflessly.

Claim (b) requires the hard work of analyzing why mating produces precisely the kind of biological unit that romantic union seeks. See my "Not out of lust" on my website.

Alex:

First...checking out your c.v...good God you have alot of interests! One of these days you're going to have to let me pick your brain on infinitesimals in probability theory, okay?

Back to the question...

Problems: There is a difference between epistemic goods and moral goods, such that it's bad to have a false belief, but not morally bad, and it's bad to have herpes, but not epistemically bad.

Your defense of (a) treats the badness of a variety of sex acts as involving a "mismatch" between the experience and the reality it could correctly represent, making the badness of the acts epistemic, and not moral, and so even if you're right, all you will have shown is that these sex acts are like false beliefs, but I take it the benefits of these "false beliefs" outweigh the costs to those engaging in them:)

As to your example, "it would be wrong to self-induce the kind of glow of satisfaction that we have when we have acted selflessly."

I think it's not wrong, but that one who does this has a vice, and so glowing in such a way is evidence of a defect in character. We need no general principle to explain this, or, supposing we do, here's a better candidate: don't be an ass.

I perused your paper, but I just don't buy it. Supposing for the sake of argument that there is some important biological unit that romantic union seeks, homosexuals will respond by saying, "Okay, and there's this other important unit, call it a schmiological unit, and our romantic union seeks it, and it's just as important as a biological unit." Moreover, they will go on to explain how deception is bad and being in a heterosexual relationship would involve deep deception to their partner, they will talk about the value of friendship and how their own relationships involve that value, etc.

So, I just don't think the defense works. And there are also the counterexamples I mentioned before.

Christian:

I think it would be morally wrong to self-induce a belief one takes to be wrong (e.g., by signing up for a course of brainwashing). I think it is even more clear that to self-induce an inappropriate emotion is wrong.

The "other kind of unity" response is an interesting one. It would imply that romantic love between homosexuals is intrinsically a different kind of thing from romantic love between heterosexuals. If this is true, then parity arguments for gay rights are endangered.

The challenge would be to find the relevant kind of unity. I suspect it wouldn't be the sort of unity that consummates romantic love. (Quick argument: Paradigmatic sexual acts that are done by male same-sex couples can also be done by heterosexual couples. But these acts, e.g., oral or anal sex, do not consummate romantic love in the heterosexual couples. So these acts at least do not intrinsically consummate romantic love.)

I have no problem with saying that most homosexuals should not engage in heterosexual relationships. Fortunately, I also believe that celibacy (when chosen for the right reasons) is better than marriage.

But the thread has gone too far off topic.

I think our basic difference here is whether moral wrongs must always involve harm to another. That this is a basic difference is indicated by the fact that you find emotional self-deception not immoral, while to me it is a completely clearly vicious and hence immoral act.

I suppose the difference may in part be induced by the fact that I am a theist while you (if memory serves) are not. If one is a theist, then it is quite plausible that vicious acts that do not affect any other persons (e.g., thinking uncharitable thoughts) can be wrong, because we do not have autonomy in the modern sense: we exist as beings that have roles in a grand plan (roles that do justice to our natures, etc.)

(On the other hand the difference could be just terminology. Thus, you might say it is a vicious but not immoral act, where an immoral act is a vicious act that harms others.)

Alex:

For what it's worth, the view I've been pushing is one that, though I'm not a theist, is one that I would accept if I became convinced of theism. I think Christians should believe as Christians that gay sex, masturbation, and other sexual acts outside of a heterosexual marriage are all permissible. They should think the Church and the Bible, insofar as they condemn these acts, are mistaken. The relevant claims to the contrary were not inspired at all and God has given us the natural moral sensitivity through rational intuition and compassion to see through the errors made in the past. That's what I would think if I were a Christian.

This of course raises the issue of whether we should take the the Bible or Church as inerrant, and I think not. I haven't seen any argument to the effect that I should trust the pronouncements of the Church over considered intuition. If the Church pronounced that 2 + 2 = 5 I would reject the pronouncement, I hope you would too, but then if intuition can trump the Church in some cases, I don't see why we should delimit intuition from trumping the Church in other areas.

Christian,

You wrote, "I think Christians should believe as Christians that gay sex, masturbation, and other sexual acts outside of a heterosexual marriage are all permissible. They should think the Church and the Bible, insofar as they condemn these acts, are mistaken. The relevant claims to the contrary were not inspired at all and God has given us the natural moral sensitivity through rational intuition and compassion to see through the errors made in the past. That's what I would think if I were a Christian." This is one of the most absurd things that I have ever read.

Christians, for one, believe that their God, their God who hates evil but so loved the world that He willingly put on flesh and literally suffer to death on a wooden cross so that those who have done evil, that which is not good, will not perish. This same God is the source and foundation for all that is truly good and consequentially the plumb line by which we can measure how far off any person or any act is away from The Standard, The Only Good One. Now, if one accepts Christianity, the Christianity that has been revealed not the Christianity that has been made up by the intuitions of sinful men and women, they ought to accept a reasonable amount of fear. This is a fear that comes from looking honestly at ourselves and clearly at The Standard and asking not how does a good God allow people to perish but rather how does such a good God keep me from not perishing?

Even if this God commands us not to do something which is, for sake of argument, morally permissible, we ought not do this thing. It is as simple as that. Even if great and convincing arguments could be made that x is morally permissible, why should a Christian ignore the testimony of their Scriptures and do otherwise? This is foolish. I can, I think, see a little bit where you are coming from though. If the Bible, supposedly the true revelation from God according to Christians, revealed in someway that God was evil, should we at the same time believe that the Bible was a wholly true revelation from God. I think not. But this is not the same argument you are making.

The Bible is telling us, to very loosely paraphrase, “Hey Christian Lee! Don’t go down that road. I know that some have a propensity to do x and you might find yourself with the propensity to approve of x; however, I am telling you that I do not want you to do x, and in fact, I hate x. The Creator of all Heaven and Earth, The One who has designed how things ought to be, is telling you that x is in direct opposition to my creation and I will punish those who approve of x and those who do x if they do not repent of x and turn to Me.”

Also, I think, if your ethical theory considered one’s moral consul in its entirety, you would not come away with the permissibility of homosexual and premarital sex. You would actually come away with the forbiddance of these acts.

Christian, you are obviously a extremely bright and analytical fellow and philosophically you are well beyond me. However, I would encourage you to spend more time thinking about the consequences of that objective moral values exist and less time thinking about what is permissible or not. What are might be the consequences of you not having fully pursued the good you ought to pursue and you not having avoided the evil you ought to avoid? If morality is objective and justice is one of the most obvious aspects of objective morality. How might the Foundation of Moral Values deal with you? Will it not matter? Do these objective moral values just exist in some kind of Platonic form? If so, why do they make demands of you? Put the first things first.

Kevin:

It's always hard to know where to begin with you, you're claims are so sweeping...I'm a pick-a-nitty-gritty-point-and-stick-to-it kind of person. Alas...

" I would encourage you to spend more time thinking about the consequences of that objective moral values exist."

I actually agree. I'm a Consequentialist and think the theory is rather empty without an axiology of the good, but figuring out what matters is so hard. Soon...

"You would actually come away with the forbiddance of these acts."

I suppose that's possible, but from what I can tell these various sex acts involve more value than disvalue and hence, it will be prima facie permissible to engage in them. Note: I don't think the only value is pleasure, as some Consequentialists have...my doors are wide open to the Good.

"This is one of the most absurd things that I have ever read."

Hah! Check out defenses of epistemic conservativism, Huemer and (Foley?) for example.

http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/5.htm

They think, rightly, that all arguments must end somewhere and that seemings, characterized as rational intuitions, must ground these arguments. So, even a theist of your variety is committed to grounding his belief on seemings! Touche...

"Christianity that has been made up by the intuitions."

You still confuse a crucial point. Intuitions do not create morality, they give us access to an independently existing morality. Perhaps this morality is laid down by a Christian God for all I've said.

"If the Bible, supposedly the true revelation from God according to Christians, revealed in someway that God was evil, should we at the same time believe that the Bible was a wholly true revelation from God."

You say you wouldn't trust the Bible in such a case. Good. This is what I'm arguing...Moreover, the whole point is that you can't appeal to the Bible to see it's wrong and yet you would reject it if it said God was evil. That's what it says, according to me, if it says God condemns these various sex acts, or makes naughty bets with the devil (Job), or orders people to destroy cities including the children and animals, or allows disobedient children to be stoned to death, or orders people who worship other God's to be murdered, shall I go on?

The point is that the Bible describes God's moral sensibilities as though God were an angry six grader. So to answer this question:

"Why should a Christian ignore the testimony of their Scriptures and do otherwise?"

If the Scripture makes mistakes, then one should ignore it, and the scripture is full of big mistakes...see below...

http://home.earthlink.net/~owl233/biblequotes.htm

Christian,

If you believe the Bible "describes God's moral sensibilities as though God were an angry six grader," this may be due to the fact that we are a morally corupt and extremely prideful people, who have a propensity to throw temper-tantrums when God doesn't bow down to us. If God appears like an angry sixth-grader, it is probably because we, at times, reason like 2 year olds, who throw fits in the middle of grocery store isles because our Moms' say "no" to the jello pudding pops. I am sure we are quite an embarrasment to deal with publically, at times, and is this always the fault of the parent? If God treats us harshly because He is unable to reason with the unreasonable, who can blame Him? It is quite possible that you still will, but I believe that that would just prove my point.

Also, my wife and I will be praying for you, Christian.

KMO

"Also, my wife and I will be praying for you, Christian."

Thanks Kevin. You two will be members of a rather large prayer group no doubt:)

Well...do two things for me okay. Take those two links above, especially the first, and read the article. Also, think to yourself...setting to the side my debate with Christian, what "would" the Bible have to say in order for me to deny its inerrancy? What kinds of claims would it have to make about morality, or factual claims about the world, or theistic claims about God, in order for me to say: wait, that can't be right!

I will read from the links you suggest, Christian. I am pretty familiar with the passages Michael sites as proof that the Bible is not inerrant. I can see how someone might find themselves troubled by some of these verses. However, I would not expect philosophers, especially those with any biblical background, to be so troubled by them. Mainly, because if one begins to think hard about any one of these examples, especially in light of any other biblical understanding they might have and how to interpret a text, the problems typically quickly resolve themselves.

Since I am going to read your material, I have a request of my own. I would like you to go through Michael’s list of Bible verses and see if you are able to think of how these verses might not be a problem for the Biblical Inerrantist. Consider it a challenge in reason or some kind of logic puzzle to figure out. Some good questions to ask are:

1) Is the person who is claiming this verse creates a major problem for belief in the inerrancy of the Bible creating some kind of logical fallacy?
2) Try to create an actual argument from the verse for what you think it proves; then, see if it is valid. (Its soundness might be in question but that can be addressed separately).
3) What genre of literature is the passage in and who was the original audience? How might that play a role in how I should properly interpret this text.
4) Is it possible that my interpretation could be skewed based on an inadequate understanding of the context, immediate to broad?
5) What presuppositions, explicit or implicit, do I bringing to the text that might not be justified or that the Biblical Inerrantist could easily and consistently refuse to accept?
6) Could a skewed interpretation of the text come from a poor translation of the original language? (Most Inerrantist are going to say that only the original manuscripts (of whatever books they consider “scripture”) were inspired, not any translations or the transmission of the text.)

These may not fix all the problems but they are a start. Then, after you have attempted to solve these “puzzles” on your own and still find yourself hung up on a few verses, let me know and I will give you my opinion on them or the opinion of someone smarter than myself. If you aren’t willing to think critically about your own objections, I will not consider them to be so important that they are worth my time either.

As far as reasons that I would reject the inerrancy of the Bible, I have already given one example. I would reject the Bible as the inerrant (wholly good and perfect) Word of God if it said, clearly, that God Himself was not wholly good and perfect. This would not prove the Bible is necessarily inerrant but it would raise my suspicions high enough that I probably wouldn’t trust it. It would be like a con-man promising you that he is telling the truth.

As far as other reason, if Jesus’ body was found, I would reject Christianity along with its revelation.

As far as scientific reasons I might reject the Bible as inerrant, I think it would be possible to reject the Bible for this reason but from my understanding of the Bible one would be hard pressed to do it. There are too many unknowns, not only in the Bible but also in science. Also, I cannot think of any scientific discoveries, present or forthcoming, that would show that the Bible is not inerrant. Archeologically, I believe historic places and events could possibly be shown to not have happened or to not have existed but they would have to have some extremely strong evidence for me to reject all or portions of the Bible as inerrant.

As far as rejecting the Bible based on my moral intuitions, to me, this is a tough one. Its not that I believe our moral intuitions are completely unreliable, this is not the case. However, our moral intuitions in and of themselves are certainly weak for discovering all correct moral values. If God does exist and He is the Fountain of Morality, by which all goodness is measured and goodness flows, how ought one factor this into their moral intuiting faculties? How do we compare what is wrong for us, God’s creation, with what would be wrong for God. We do have clear examples in the Bible. The Bible tells us that God cannot lie—it is never right for God to lie and in fact He is so constrained by His perfections that He is incapable of doing so. However, can God kill? If so, what ways are morally right for God to go about this action and what ways are not (if there are any). What can God command of His creation and at the same time remain morally perfect? In what ways can God allow/restrict/afflict in His creation and still be morally perfect? How might understanding who we are metaphysically be influential on morality and how might my rejection or ignorance of understanding who I am and who my neighbor is corrupt my moral intuitions. How does my understanding any metaphysical teleology of our world influence what I ought and ought not affirm as good/permissible. Can God be found guilty of theft if all belongs to Him? We could go on, and on and we should, because these are questions of utmost importance.

C.S. Lewis talks about, seeking the second things as if they were the first things and missing both the second and first things but if we seek the first things first, we get both the first and second things; I think Lewis hit the nail on the head. One of my greatest reasons for accepting Christianity (one of many) is because I undeniably have moral knowledge. I know that moral values are objective and that these moral values make demands of me to do good and avoid evil. I also believe that if the moral values make demands of me then there will be consequences for my response to these demands—for good or bad. Obviously, objective morality does not logically entail Christianity; however, I believe Christianity makes the best sense of this remarkable phenomenon and, in my opinion, provides the greatest hope for those who hate evil and its effects and long for the day when all will be made right.

Hey...

"the problems typically quickly resolve themselves"

you may be right, i've just never heard a response that's come across as at all plausible, but theology isn't my territory, so i'm certainly open to suggestions...

"Consider it a challenge in reason or some kind of logic puzzle to figure out."

fair enough. i've thought a little about this before, but i'll think some more...now, i'm happy to accept 1-5 as important, but 6 seems weird to me. first, manuscripts aren't inspired, people are. insofar as a modern interpretation captures what a person was inspired to assert, it's "inspired" to, whether it's original or not. the same goes for a translation, though of course things that wre inspired can get lost in translation, and translations may end up stating things that were'nt inspired.

"if Jesus’ body was found, I would reject Christianity along with its revelation."

vanInwagen has an "interesting" view of the resurrection that may make this claim of yours suspicious.

as far as not finding scientific reasons..."but from my understanding of the Bible one would be hard pressed to do it." it's easy...

what about the six days creation story... all the animals on the little boat...water to wine...walking on water...a flat earth...900 year old people...age of the earth...virgin birth...parted sea...the flood...talking bush...the race of giants...

"However, our moral intuitions in and of themselves are certainly weak for discovering all correct moral values."

Okay, but i'd like to hear from anybody just one argument for the reliability of the bible that doesn't depend upon an intuition. i suggest it can't be done. and if i'm right, that means appealing to the bible as a source for moral guidance cannot be better than appealing to your own intuition...

"I believe Christianity makes the best sense of this remarkable phenomenon."

i think plantinga presents an argument like this somewhere...it's interesting, though my response is that moral realism isn't at all strange, nor is belief in numbers...i just don't understand the fuss about objective morality, or intuition, we have nice theories of both that strike me as inevitable and true.

the "clearest" case of a falsehood in the bible is in the story of noah. at one place it says he takes two of each kind of animal, and then it says seven, not too far afterwards, though i can't remember the verse...

"what about the six days creation story... all the animals on the little boat...water to wine...walking on water...a flat earth...900 year old people...age of the earth...virgin birth...parted sea...the flood...talking bush...the race of giants..."

There is no scientific evidence against water to wine, walking on water, 900 year old people, virginal conception, virgin birth, the parted sea or the voice from the bush. I have no idea what the scientific evidence against one of these would look like. A video-tape of the time of the event showing it did not happen? Eye-witness testimony to the contrary, or lack of testimony that one would expect? But no such evidence is available in these cases as far as I know.

Of course it is true that we do not observe such things most of the time. But that is the point of a miracle. :-)

A race of giants is the sort of thing that one might not unreasonably expect that evidence would be found for if it happened, and so the fact that we haven't found it might provide some evidence against the claim. But the evidence is weak. The race may have been localized, the fossils might be buried, or each individual might have been raised bodily from the earth at the end of the life. Or the giants may have just been very tall people.

As for a flat earth, oddly enough this did not seem to have bothered Christian thinkers over the centuries just about all of whom accepted a round earth. Inerrance means that everything asserted or taught by the author is true. It is possible to speak in such a way as presupposes an error, without actually asserting or teaching the error.

The classic example is due to Donnellan. I point to a corner of the room and say something like: "The guy drinking champagne is a senator." Suppose that it turns out that the senator is drinking gingerale instead. Nonetheless, what I asserted was true, for I did not intend to teach you about the champagne--I just used it to point out the guy. What I intended to assert was that that guy is a senator.

There probably are passages which are phrased in such a way as to indicate that the human author believed the earth was flat. But these passages do not assert the flatness of the earth. They're about something else altogether, I suspect.

The flood is an interesting case. It's worth noting that "the world" is a fairly flexible term in Scripture. Sometimes, for instance, in the New Testament it means "the civilized world". It seems quite consistent with the text to suppose that only the area containing humans was inundated. If the genealogies contain no gaps and are meant literalistically, the flood occurred around the tenth generation of humankind. Assuming a population doubling every generation, the population would have been about a thousand. Thus the area might have been quite limited.

It is possible that only animals from that region were taken. (By the way the count of animals is not a big deal. It seems that the general rule was two from every species, but kosher species were exceptional and represented in larger numbers.) And there is no difficulty in supposing a miraculous expansion of the ark. :-)

That said, it is not clear that the inerrantist needs to say anything like this. Asserted content depends on genre. If the genre is "work of history" (as conceived nowadays), then one might say what I said above. But who is to say that is indeed the correct genre? Here's a hypothesis (not entirely idle): There was an established genre of flood stories, which were carriers of theological or ideological messages. What a story from the genre would count as asserting was something other than fine details about animal counts. Rather, it would count as asserting theological or ideological messages. If so, then it might simply be that the story conveys the fact that for their wickedness, God wiped out most of humankind, while ensuring the preservation of animal species with the cooperation of a family of non-wicked humans. I am not affirming that. I am not sure we know enough about how the genre worked to affirm that.

The stuff about the age of the earth is based on assuming that the geneologies have no gaps and are meant as actual stories of descent. If the author's intent was to teach a partial sequence, with possible gaps, the calculations of the age of the earth are false. Moreover, it seems not unlikely that there was an established genre of genealogies as carriers of theological and ideological messages, and one might say the same thing about that as about the flood.

The six days of creation need to be taken in hand with texts that imply time for God is very different--a day for God is a thousand years for us, for instance, one text asserts (certainly not to be taken literalistically, though some have done so). While most of the Church Fathers took the six days to be six 24-hour days, St Augustine actually thought creation was instantaneous--God created pre-formed seed-like things that would evolve into the species that we see.

I like Abraham Heschel's description of Genesis 1 as a song of the glory of creation. We can imagine a song rearranging sequences, organizing events in different ways, etc. The asserted content of such a hymn is certainly not a linear sequence. Rather, it is theological messages, such as about God intending the existence of humans, creation being gloriously wonderful, etc. that are asserted.

Apparent contradictions within a single secular text are in general defeasible evidence of our misinterpreting the text, given a principle of charity. Genesis was put together by a redactor out of a number of sources. I think that the fact that the redactor was not bothered by such facts as that one source (in Genesis 1) used a different sequence of events from another source (in Genesis 2) is defeasible evidence that the redactor did not see the purpose of the text as being a linear historical account--if he did see it in this way, he would have harmonized. I happen to think that in the case of a creative redactor, such as we have in the case of Genesis, the redactor counts as the human author whose intentions are normative for interpretation.

Good stuff, Christian.
I am half-way through Huemer’s chapter and will be in a better place to dialogue about it’s content hopefully after today.
If you are weary on how to take my sixth point just focus on the language aspect for now. There is a great (and short and introductory) book by a fella named D.A. Carson called Exegetical Fallacies. I believe this is great addition to anyone’s library. If you have a few extra dollars it would be worth purchasing it used at Amazon and perusing it. He provides a much more exhaustive list than mine with very common examples of these fallacies as they relate to interpreting the Bible. If you don’t have the spare cash email me and I will mail my copy to you (kevmo79 (at) yahoo.com)!
As far as van Inwagen’s theory about the Resurrection, I know van Inwagen is a Christian materialist and that might strongly influence his interpretation of the Jesus’ Resurrection. However, Biblical exegesis is a little outside of van Inwagen’s area of expertise and I would refer you to N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. This is a very thorough book by a guy whose area of expertise is the Resurrection.
As far as scientific evidence that disproves the Bible, I know a young earth interpretation of the Genesis account of creation is a huge stumbling block to a lot of people. However, I do believe the a young earth interpretation of Genesis is warranted but at the same time I am not dogmatic that one of a few different old earth interpretations could not be right. William Lane Craig is just one philosopher/theologian who has contributed a lot to Big Bang Cosmology and accepts an old earth interpretation of the Genesis account. You might want to look into a progressive creationism account of Genesis. I have written a paper discussing some of these issues and if you would like to read it, I would not mind emailing it to you if you send me you email address.
As far a miracles in the Bible, I also wrote a paper in response to Hume’s Of Miracles that makes some good points about the inadequacies of Hume’s reasoning. I would be glad to send that to you as well—just let me know.
You also wrote that you would like one argument for the reliability of the Bible that doesn't depend upon an intuition. From what I have read from Huemer so far, he seems to reduce all beliefs as being accepted by some form of intuition of the other no matter what the evidence is based on. If this is so, I do not know that I could provide you a good response because whatever proof I provide that one should accept the Bible as the infallible Word of God (even if God Himself appeared coming down from the heaven’s proclaiming to all people in every place that we should believe this, it seems that even intuition that we should believe what our eyes are seeing, along with the testimony of others who say the same thing could be reduced to the intuition that we can accept these accounts as reliable). So, I don’t think I will do that route. I would say, however, that if morality is dependant on God and we have good reasons or intuitions to accept the Bible as the Word of God we can accept on a Greater And More Reliable Authority the testimony of the Bible. In Huemer’s example, the two arrowed lines seem different lengths but we accept the greater authority of our intuitions that the ruler is not tricking our eyes when we actually measure the lines and we form our belief that the lines are truly the same length based not on our intuition of our initial appearance but on the great intuition of the ruler’s “testimony.”
I believe I have read the Plantinga article you refer to and I do agree with him on this. I guess I have not read any thing good on how morality could reasonably be objective if it is not dependant on God. I am aware of a Platonic theory of objective moral values but this would just explain their existence not the actual demands we seemingly feel these objective moral values make on our lives. Also, if objective moral values do exist in some kind of Platonic form, so what? Kant’s critique that we cannot infer an “ought” from an “is” would surely apply to this theory, in my opinion.
Finally your example of the animals on Noah’s arc, I would send you to chapter 6 and 7 of Genesis again. It says, “Then the Lord said to Noah, "Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time. You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female; and of the animals that are not clean two, a male and his female; also of the birds of the sky, by sevens, male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth.” The major difference here is between clean and unclean animals and God’s desire that there be more birds who are wonderfully designed to spread the seed of plants to help re-flourish the land with plant life. I actually have a pond at my house in Tennessee that has never been stocked but has fish. Not only can birds spread seed but they can help repopulate fish to areas that have none (just an aside). There is an interesting distinction here though. The cleanness and uncleaness of animals does not appear to become explicit until the giving of the Mosaic Law in Exodus, much later than the Noahic flood. So, either God told Noah which animals were clean at the time he called Noah to populate his arc or the author of Genesis read his understanding of clean and unclean animals back into the story for his original audience the ancient Israelites. These may not be the only options but I do they could work.

Talk to you later, Christian and please email me if you want to read my papers or if you want me to send you Carson’s book.

Alex:

"There is no scientific evidence against water to wine..."

Doesn't induction count as scientific evidence? And if you asked an expert on the ocean and weather patterns, I suspect they would say it's very unlikely that a sea would part. That is, given all of their evidence, data about ocean currents, boyancy, salinity, etc., about how water displaces and underwhat conditions the ocean gets displaced, they would say it's very unlikely that a sea would part. I'm very confident about this, and it sure seems like science would confirm thisand henced it seems to imply that science confimrs that a biblical claim is false. The same goes for my other examples and so I'm confused as to how you would demarcate science.

...I suppose God could have expanded the ark, but then Noah wouldn't have built it and the Bible describes how big it was in cubits. So that verse would be false if God miraculously made it bigger...I mean the Bible doesn't say God expanded the ark and it sure seems to me the best explanation for the mistake is simply that the authors had no idea just how many different kinds of animals there are...the best explanation is not that God miraculously expanded the ark and pairs of all the animals on earth boarded it...right?

I like your distinction between presupposing an error and asserting something false. That seems both interesting and correct to me. I think it will take care of some of my worries, like the flat earth case.

But more importantly, you have a general strategy for responding to apparent falsehoods that seems wrong to me.

"What a story from the genre would count as asserting was something other than fine details about animal counts. Rather, it would count as asserting theological or ideological messages."

I findthe genere talk confusing. I think, pace vanInwagen, a Christian "should" think that Biblical authors used fables to convey important truths that required fables to reach the largest audience possible. These people were mostly illiterate and wouldn't understand the true account couched in scientific terms anyway...Against you, I think this means "not" that fables express important truths, but rather, that they express falsehoods (thus they are fables) but "convey" important truths. So the Bible contains falsehoods and conveys important truths. The assertion/information conveyed distinction shouldn't be blurred. We have an intuitive grasp of the distinction, and if the Bible says "six days" we shouldn't interpret as asserting 6ooo years though that information, God knows how, might be conveyed.

"I like Abraham Heschel's description of Genesis 1 as a song of the glory of creation."

OKay. But this is the point I made above. Literally, Genesis is false, but it conveys something important. I'm fine with that, but it's a far cry from inerrantism.

"Apparent contradictions within a single secular text are in general defeasible evidence of our misinterpreting the text."

I don't see this. Why isn't it just evidence the author contradicted herself? This is especially plausible when we realize that we, and not they, are trained in logic and critical thinking, and we, and not they, have access to empirical facts that they did not, and we, and not they, have been educated and have read alot and...

The principle of charity is one thing, but it should not justify reinterpreting someone's words so that they say something true, people do contradict themselves all the time, even critical thinkers. It's philosophically nice so we can object to interesting views (we charitably reconstruct an argument to make it plausible, but without attributing it to the author), but I see no reason to think it should play a role on interpreting an utterance...

"the redactor counts as the human author whose intentions are normative for interpretation."

You mean we should interpret the text consistently with the intentions of the redactor. Interesting. Let me think about this. If this is correct then it definitely will broaden the idea of inspiration...

By the way, when I argued that the Bible contains obvious falsehoods, I mean that it does on a straightforward literal reading. I still think this is true, but if you're going to interpret things non-literally I no longer understand the claim that the Bible is inerrant...

Christian,

I do not know of any Christians that would have a problem with saying that it is impossible for seas to part, water to be turned to wine, a universe to pop into existence without a cause, that a dead man would rise from the grave after some prolonged time, et cetera, et cetera NATURALLY. But that is not what the Bible or Christians are claiming. The Bible is claiming these events happened SUPERnatually. How would you give an account that our intuitions can align with ultimate reality NATURALLY? In Plantinga's Naturalism Defeated he makes a great argument that if our beliefs/intuitions came about naturally, more specifically through Darwian evolution processes, then this would count as evidence that our beliefs/intuitions can be reliable. However, you would not want to abandon your belief that our intuitions should be trustworthy would you?

So many typos, so little time.

I meant to say, "In Plantinga's Naturalism Defeated, he makes a great argument that if our beliefs/intuitions came about naturally, more specifically through Darwian evolution processes, then this would be strong evidence against our beliefs/intuitions being reliable."

I don't think Plantinga's argument works, for a number of reasons. That argument should be considered very carefully though, so please don't take me as dismissive, there has been a number of responses devoted to Plantingas argument, a book in fact, some of which I think show it fails...perhaps someone will create a thread to discuss it! It is well worth it.

...Now, someone can certainly respond to an objection by saying "it was a miracle". For example, the sea being parted, water changing to wine, someone living 900 years...etc. We cannot exclude miracles a priori, I think. And Hume's argument is indeed weak, as is Broad's. However, I don't think the miracle response is a good response since the background likelihood that a certain claim like "water x has been changed to wine" is indeed quite low. We would need strong evidence to doubt a law that has been confirmed over and over again. Suppose I told you my buddy changed water to wine...you wouldn't say "oh, how cool, what a miracle", no, you would say, "bullshit." I say "bullshit" for the same reason. Of course, we then need to factor in the probability that people actually reported and sincerely reported, and that their reports were accurately reported in the canon, and on and on...that water was changed to wine or a sea were parted...against the background evidence. My claim is that this doesn't help, it's "almost" always more reasonable to think a miracle hasn't occurred than that one has...and so the appeal to miracles doesn't help. And so the objections stand, if we are to interpret the bible literally...

or to focus on an example, forget about those claims about "miracles" Jesus allegedly performed and consider other claims like all the animals fit on the boat...we should think that is very unlikely given what we know about the number of animals and the purported size of the boat, not to mention all that food! That all those animals fit onto the boat is unlikely. If you respond by saying it must have been a miracle, then I take it you share the intuition that the likelihoods are very low, or else why would it be a miracle? The next question is, what's more likely, that it didn't happen at all and got falsely reported as happening or was not reported as fact, but rather as myth, or rather instead that a miracle occurred? I say, "it didn't happen" is more likely. You seem to think the better explanation is that "a miracle occurred" but how can you defend this without appealing to the innerancy of the scripture which is the very issue that's in question? Moreover, if you doubt me when I say I parted the seas...how are you going to be able to justify this doubt without also justifying doubting that the seas were parted by Moses...I mean I can fill in details like God exists, he told me he has a special relation to me, some friends of mine know this I say, but God took them away to heaven so they can't authenticate my claim, and I can't do miracles anymore because God told me not to, etc...it's not hard to make the cases relevantly similar...but you wouldn't go, "oh, so I guess Christian may have raised the dead"...instead you should question the prior probabilities...miracles are in fact unlikely.

I have more to say about this and what you wrote earlier, but sleep beckons...

Honestly, Christian, I think your objections to Christianity are starting to sound less and less like they are coming from someone who believes Christianity, in its fullness, is irrational and more like they are coming from someone who simply doesn’t want to believe Christianity is true.

In the Christian worldview or perspective, we believe we live in a universe that was miraculously brought into existence by God. This God miraculously created humans, male and female, in His image to be in intimate relationship with him and to will and work for His good pleasure in this universe. We believe that the best inference for many of the things we find in this universe are best explained by this phenomenon, namely, the origin of the universe, the origin of life, that morality is objective, that we know morality is objective, that moral realism obtains, that this morality makes demands of us, that we largely can trust our intuitions and faculties, the amazing intricacies and apparent design that we seem to find in all of creation from the least of things to the greatest of things. However, I also believe our propensity to reject this belief and our propensity to reject God as our personal Creator, Savior, and Authority is also best explained by the Christian worldview.

There is something wrong with God’s creation, especially those God created in His image, and, quite intuitively, I believe we recognize this. According to the Christian perspective, this “wrongness” we experience in God’s creation is explained by evil and rebellion entering into it and this evil has, in some way or another, corrupted almost every aspect of it. My personal testimony of God transforming my life, which I believe was miraculous, has to do with God first showing me very clearly that there is something wrong with me. I did the evil I knew I should not do and I did not do the good I knew I should. I had a span of about 11 years where I used arguments, which seem a lot like yours, as smoke screens to justify my actions to my hurting conscience just to let me sleep at night. God used others to speak truth into my life and to help remove the lies which I had believed for so long. For me, it was not that Christianity was unreasonable it was that I was not reasonable and did not want to believe it because that meant a complete life change. I wanted no higher authority in my life than myself and I thought surrendering to this Higher Authority would make my life worse off than it already was. I also believe that my objections to Christianity would somehow get me off the hook when I had to stand before God and give an account of my life. These were both lies.

Christian, I may be way off but if Christianity is true and I believe it is, you are experiencing a lot of what I was experiencing a little more than 6 years ago. I think many objections to Christianity are prima facie justified and it is important to deal with these objections in order to for someone to have a vibrant Christian faith and to live in a close relationship with Jesus Christ, our God and Savior. However, like I said earlier, I believe we need to deal with the first things first and then God will begin working out all the second things. The first things are to clearly see ourselves as we are and our need for God and to ask God to meet us in our need by believing that we do need God and that Jesus did in fact come to earth to live, die, and rise from the grave in order to allow YOU, the rebellious, the opportunity to be in a right relationship with Him, the wholly good One. Right now you are not—you are at war with Him in your heart.

Augustine talks about a faith seeking understanding. When God transformed my life I still had questions and doubts but God was invited into the processes and He showed me things that I was blind to see or believe previously, things that are in fact very reasonable if Christianity is true, but I was unable to see and believe them because my heart was so far away from God. As long as you are seeking and looking for answers to your questions, I will join you in this process and play the role for you that others played for me, by speaking truth into my life and helping me to remove the obstacles I had to faith in Jesus, and God’s Word. However, if Christianity is true, we all must first see the truth about ourselves and deal with that first. If God is at work in your heart and all you have is maybe a little faith, I encourage you to place it in Him. A verse from Ephesians 2:8-9 says “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not by works so that no one may boast.”

I would encourage you, Christian, to read the book of Ephesians in the Bible and see if God confirms to you and your conscience any of the things that I have been saying. Will you do this and honestly search your heart?

Please hear all this in an attidute that the person writing this cares about you even though I do not know you.

No, no, no you have me all wrong. I simply think there are sound objections to the existence of God, namely Tooley's version of the argument from evil, and explanatory argument, and an argument from analogy I find persuasive. But suppose God exists nonetheless, I think there are sound objections to Christianity, namely the incoherence of the Trinity. But suppose that's wrong, I think there are sound objections to the Church and Bible, namely counterexamples, both factual and moral, to claims it makes...

That's just at the level of truth, but no doubt religion can work wonders for people, I accept that. I've toyed with the idea of Buddhism myself, but I'm too restless for it. And I have friend's and family for whom Christianity is a good thing...

But if Christians think Christianity is the best explanation for morality, the origin of the universe and other things, I would suggest that their prior probilities have been set to high, or that they are ignoring evidence and hence not updating right, or that they are not assigning the correct probabilities to incompatible hypotheses...all to say that Christianity is not the best explanation of anything. Physics/cosmology gives us the best explanation of the origin of the universe, Huemer's intuitionism:) about morality, and many Christian beliefs are simply fables that come from old greek myths, fables modeled on stories that were popular amongst illiterate people way back when, like the flood story and creation story...there's some sophisticated history for you...

The ephesians quote is interesting, by grace one is saved, which should lead us to think what? Hard to tell...

But look, the question about miracles is tough, my friend Dan Howard-Snyder has a paper on it, perhaps it's on his website. You should check it out. I mean it's hard enough to define a miracle given theism...and even more difficult given atheism...but my overarching point is that we should think violations of natural law are unlikely, so miracles are unlikely, so claims to the effect that they have happened are likely to be false. Of course, very good evidence can trump this,, but I haven't hear any such evidence, but I'm open to it...

Christian and Kevin,

Thanks for your contributions, but the conversation has strayed from the initial post and I think that your continued discussion is best taken up via email.

I hope no one is upset by this resurrection. I have only recently started reading this site and I found this old post, and I think it's very interesting.

Alex,

To go back to your comments on what you do when say you believe with 0.8 certainty that the Bible asserts p, but you believe independently that not-p with 0.85 certainty. I think the situation is more complex than you have suggested.

The Bible is interpretation, and it is infallible in that. To highlight what I mean let me draw a parallel with science. In science we have raw data that the scientist collects, they then interpret the data and present their conclusions. We may have problems understanding what the scientist in question has written and what their intention is, just as we have problems understanding the Bible. However, there are still other problems in science. The raw data may be inaccurate, it might also be misleading; the scientist could draw the wrong conclusions simply because all his data was collected around the same time, and so this led to a narrow perspective on the thing being studied. These problems are not problems with Biblical interpretation since we know that since it has its origins in God that it comes from a position of complete knowledge and understanding.

When we come to read scripture the only place that we can go wrong is having the wrong interpretation, whereas with other sources of knowledge we could have the wrong interpretation, but there could also be a problem with our data set.

Perhaps the situation might be this:

(1) We believe the Bible asserts p with 0.8 certainty.

(2) We believe from other sources that not-p with 0.85 certainty.

(3) We need a value that asserts how mush re-interpretation is required in order to have the Bible say not-p.

I suggest that if (2) - (1) is greater than (3) then we should opt for not-p otherwise we should believe p.

This means that you are opting for the option that requires the smaller leap in certainty.

I hope that this is clear.