In my earlier post on the historical reliability of the gospels I responded to Arthenor’s post at http://arthenor.wordpress.com/, as far as those gospels and an historical Jesus were concerned; there were other issues in his blog post that required some attention, but were not relevant to the topic of the gospels.  Unless you read Arthenor’s blog post most of this will seem rather random, if you are interested you can check it out at the above link.  I will briefly go over these other concerns now, though again I will not be going point by point through Arthenor’s post; it would be too long and they can really be covered in an overall manner.  These other issues are a significant misunderstanding of my position as it pertains to god, Biblical matters such as the flood or Ezekiel, and allegations of philosophical bias; and that old canard of “science is like religion” that I felt was implied.

At some point the notion has crept in that I simply wish to disbelieve in the supernatural, and so deny the existence of all supernatural things, people, events or books that contain such as real occurrences without any reason beyond preference.  This notion has allowed circular arguments to be invented for me and absurd definitions attributed to me.  It has also been utilized to frame my argument against an historical Jesus as nothing more than a philosophical bias hidden under a veneer of historical argument; this suggests that I disbelieve for the sake of disbelief, and my position is essentially an irrational one based on personal desire.  The greater topic of the Bible came up out of my reference that it was fiction and a requested expansion on that reference.  Not everything I mentioned was claimed as a specific contradiction within the book; the absurdities of Ezekiel are just that-fiction, absurdities-not a contradiction to any other part of the Bible.  Though the story does have at least one, it is not of concern here.  As to why I consider tales of creation, flood and Ezekiel’s ravings about fantastical creatures to name but a few to be fiction, it has nothing to do with a simplistic notion that I just don’t want to believe because I do not like it.

Let me explain-to impart any credibility to any given claim we must demand credible evidence; that is to say that merely taking a story as evidence enough by itself does not suffice.  First we can see if the claim is plausible. If the claim is that in ancient times a man walked up a mountain and saw a goat then it is certainly plausible.  After all there is nothing unusual about such a thing: men, mountains and goats are all known to exist and such an event is well within the realms of probability.  If one were to replace goat with fire breathing dragon (the big ones of fantasy tales say) then we have a problem, for dragons are not known to exist nor known to ever have existed, so the claim is no longer immediately plausible.  If a claim is of an extraordinary nature then we should also demand an extraordinary level of evidence. The creatures and events of the Bible are not above this requirement.  We should also ask if said claim is in breach of any physical laws that for every other known thing to exist are so far inviolable and have a wealth of experimental and observational evidence to back them up; to further ask does the supernatural explanation posited advance our understanding and intellectual ability or stunt it.  We should also postulate more plausible explanations before concluding in dragons, as Mr. Dawkins said, “if you hear hooves clip clopping down the street one night it may very well be a zebra or even a unicorn but, before we assume that it’s anything other than a horse, we should demand a certain minimal standard of evidence”.  Of course it goes without saying that the burden of proof lies with those who make such claims or argue for the truth of claims beyond the ordinary; it is impossible for me to prove a negative.

When I encounter god, creation stories, global floods and Ezekiel’s ranting I ask myself, what is the evidence to support these claims?  One book of stories is all there is, a single unverifiable source.  There is no other reference to these things or events; there are no present day examples of these weird creatures Ezekiel saw, no fossil evidence or even other descriptions from alternate sources.  The alleged god stopped making any form of demonstrable act millennia before anyone was in a position to create useful records; in fact this alleged god is so uninvolved these days, He may as well not be present at all.  The stories of creation and flood also stand in direct opposition to a very healthy body of scientific observation, experimentation and data which tells far more about the formation of the world than that “god did it” excuse.  I reject this absurd excuse because there is no objective evidence for the claims and what evidence we do have tells a different story; no personal philosophy, no preferred world view, just the evaluation of the existing scientific evidence and deductive reasoning.  Now unless anyone can provide objective evidence for the existence of this god, creation, flood and Ezekiel’s ramblings beyond one biased, subjectively interpreted tome — even amongst Christians — then I have nothing to change my provisional conclusion that none of it ever existed.[1] Much like I — and Arthenor I’d wager — provisionally conclude that powerful and easily upset Zeus, Thor and his mighty hammer Mjolnir or leprechauns also do not exist.  Furthermore the many contradictions of the Bible, the bizarre activities of an allegedly omnipotent and omniscient being, the manifest flaws of the plan and His frankly deplorable genocidal maniac OT character further argue against the existence of Christian Judaeo god; I am certain that He does not exist.

So until anyone can objectively prove His existence then it is not acceptable to use the argument from ignorance of “god did it” to paper over any absurdity that crops up.  If every time we encountered the then unexplainable and posited an omnipotent deity to be responsible then we would learn nothing, no scientific discovery; so why should we make an exception for one group solely because it was written?  Actually it is interesting to note that leaning on His omnipotence to excuse what is otherwise a physical improbability is replete with pitfalls for the theist.  In the Floods case we might ask that if He was so perfect why His only solution was a murdering deluge instead of just fixing His creation, in fact how did He create such broken creations in the first instance never minding that due to His omniscience He should have seen it all coming.  Why was He even angry given the inevitability of it all, how could a perfect being become angry in that manner?  That is just a mere taster of the illogical quandary anyone invoking omnipotent “god did it” will bring and I don’t see any other variety.

Mr. Arthenor on the other hand appears to just believe, to accept anything once it was written down, written down in one specific book mind and he apparently does not consider objective scientific evidence in this matter.  What is most unhelpful is when he resorts to making stuff up in an attempt to protect his position by making out that I think like he does, and that this makes my arguments against him as valid when turned against me, belief versus belief:

He says, “However, in the case of divine creation, it is not the evidence, but philosophical bias of the exact kind you demonstrated when you argued the gospels should be rejected as historical based on the laws of physics which has been used to rule out divine creation.”

Ahem, utter rubbish.   I reject the Biblical divine creation precisely because the evidence — contained in Evolution and other sources — contradicts it and there is no objective evidence to support the existence of a creator.  Nor have I ever utilized the laws of physics against the supernatural miracles to dismiss the gospels, I merely pointed out that the miracle stories additionally contravened the well tested laws of physics, and could not be accepted as real without corroborating evidence, though this was evidently not recalled.  A natural explanation is where the evidence has led us, so I can see no ‘a priori’ assumption or ‘philosophical bias’ to lend these allegations any succor here.

The entire paragraph on secular bias is of a similar vein, depending on his self-serving notions of how and why I think or what supposed version of scientific analysis I am using; essentially one big straw-man.  Allow me to once again clarify; first I think that I have adequately explained my position on the historical usefulness of the gospels, and also made clear just why any claims of the supernatural are not to be accepted at face value.  At no point did I offer a justification of atheism, certainly not on the grounds Arthenor created.  His creation of four points of what I may allegedly mean by science and then choosing the most advantageous is illogical; his writing it does not make it so.  I use the evidence and data gained by scientific observation and experimentation, the opinion of those qualified in their respective fields, and along with my — hopefully — critical, rational reasoning reach a conclusion based upon a good evidential foundation.  There is no arbitrary preference in these matters; there is evidence existing, lack of it, and reason.

When I said that science is not a competing dogma I said it, and explained it as a counter to Arthenor’s suggestion that science ‘needed’ to discredit Jesus and his miracles to remain relevant; as though science was like another religious dogma trying to assert it’s authority.  By my reading of his words he was suggesting that science was a structured set of beliefs without evidential foundation followed by a group of people that find them pleasing, as in a faith much like religion.  This frankly stupid canard is routinely trotted out in an attempt to drag science to religions level, one must wonder at how poorly theists think of their beliefs when their argument is to accuse opposition of being as poor as that opposition views religion.  Like I have repeatedly said above, science = observation, experimentation, data, peer review and conclusion based upon previous; as Sagan said, it is our best tool.[2] All the religious dogma I know on the other hand is a structured set of beliefs lacking any credible foundational evidence, often followed by people that largely just accept it, no demand for objective evidence, no critical appraisal, just faith.  That is why many theists make such a great deal over the importance of faith, faith is of such importance in religious matters precisely because without it there is no evidence to be relied upon.

Hopefully it is now clear that I do not just arbitrarily dismiss supernatural claims, solely because they conflict with some personal desire for a non-supernatural world without god.  I evaluate the evidence and have so far found no compelling evidence to support supernatural claims, be they Biblical or any other; in fact the evidence we do have is often contrary to these claims.  Therefore these supernatural Biblical events for all intents and purposes did not take place, and so they must be fictional creations by their authors for metaphorical purposes; which in turn suggests that the Bible’s origins are not divine.  I would also suggest that in the future any opinion on my position be phrased as such, and refrain from absolute declarations on how I think, so we might avoid further mistaken statements.

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[1] Intriguingly Arthenor was keen to dismiss Phlegon’s Marvels as tongue in cheek to make his reference to the Jesus crucifixion event more concrete and not that of a man given to flights of fancy.  I wonder, in what manner was Phlegon dismissed yet Ezekiel found plausible?  It looks like shifting standards.

[2] “There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything” (Carl Sagan, scientist, Cosmos, 1980[my emphasis]).