Where does Jesus get His Authority? Where do His Followers get Theirs? Part 3

 What about Jesus?

2. Can good and evil be really beyond opinion without God? (Disturbing)

Back in part 1, I already argued that a universe with no God can have no free will. But even granting that we can be autonomous in an atheistic world, perhaps humanity can never make any objectively -- that is, beyond opinion -- right decisions.

Towards the end of the book, it is argued that since people discovered laws of the universe, and atheists believe they were not caused by law makers, it would be best to not assume God must cause morality. 

The adequacy of non-theistic explanations aside, maybe they aren't assuming. Atheists must "provide an explanation for holding moral laws to a different standard from other objective laws[.]" (1)

In my old post on God and evil, cited in the next post, I point out that many atheists (like Dawkins from part 1) have denied right and wrong are objective. Now I must say that I don't argue they are right because they couldn't be wrong. Rather it is to strike the reader as pointing out they very well might be right, for they are intelligent experts on atheism. Moreover, the New Atheists exploded onto the scene after 9/11, and often can attack religion by pointing out (for argument's sake) "evil" things done in the name of God. Their bias by no means leads them to conclude right and wrong completely does not exist.

What they try to do is explain that moral laws are different than others. Science explains how things are, not how they ought to be. There is no scientific test for morals. Even though science proves that punching causes bruises, we take our moral knowledge to that, and don't scientifically realize "Oh, that's bad!" 

Leading sociobiologist Micheal Ruse wrote: "Morality is a biological adaption no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction ... and any deeper meaning is illusory." (2)

Consider a world like some cultures are similar to nowadays. In this imaginary realm, evolution led to women being stuck in home lives (all must reproduce) and could never be prominent enough to even run a laundromat. All men, on the other hand, had evolved to be muscular and commanding. They do get married, but are very uncompassionate. The wives do not feel loved.

Where would anyone, in that imaginary world, get the idea that women should be loved by men? That's the way nature formed them to be. There was never any plan, any specific way anything should be.

I suppose a possible objection could point out how when humans came into being, they formed communities and created a social structure that believed in moral rules. Abiding in them, the people managed to thrive. Henceforth, morality became objective then.

This couldn't be disproven by the immoral scenario above, because it acknowledges there is no unchanging standard of morality that exists. Still, how could any "ought to's" come from a universe with no moral furniture? Morality can only be presented as objective so far as that the rules will be enforced, and people will want to follow them to not get hurt, and care for their loved ones. I call these physical reasons for being moral, and not true moral reasons.

In the conclusion of the last chapter, after going through sooooooooo many moral arguments, the author writes:

"But criticizing [moral skepticism] is one thing; actually showing how moral knowledge is possible is another. So there's a lot more work that needs to get done, for those who are convinced that we have some moral knowledge, your task is to show how we can acquire it. For the doubters, your task is either to offer adequate replies to the criticism I've leveled, or to provide a sixth skeptical argument that can withstand scrutiny." (3)

At reading that, I immediately thought, "How about the fact that while so many people have tried for centuries, no one can still explain how we are justified in knowing basic things like stealing is morally wrong?" Sure, scientists will tell you that there are some things they cannot explain (like dark matter), but how do they know it exists? They see the effects it causes. They do have knowledge of what leads them to the unknown. Why is justification for our most basic deep-seated beliefs so evasive?

Religion and free will are intuitive. Indeed, the farther back you go in history the more and more people who will believe in God. They went by (for argument's sake) "proofs" from nature. Only God could create their living world. Indeed, even children are inclined to theism because of the world around them, even if raised by atheists. Are God and free will true because people "know" it? Or were they just pounded into the human race by means without a Divine Creator, i.e. evolution? Atheists will claim the latter and point out it is the genetic fallacy to insist a belief is right because people were just formed to easily believe it, with no other evidence (God is not proven on the sole basis of humanity's theistic inclinations). As Micheal Ruse argues, this is the case with morality.

I really believe that since morals are not self-verifying (they aren't used to deny they exist), to prove them one must go to God. This is because of what I do know about the world.

3. What is the Christian God like? (Not disturbing)

Before I read part of The Fundamentals of Ethics, I had already come across this challenge, in both reading and from my own thoughts. Critics of Divine Command Theory ask if God wills things to happen because they are good, or if things are good because God wills them. If the latter is true, then God could make it moral to kill babies (an example used when this was asked to prominent Christian apologist J.P. Moreland)(4). The former demands that God isn't really God! He may be highest conscious force over all the universe, but still has to submit to something else. 

The Christian response dodges the problem, though. 1 John 4:8b says that "God is love." Not just "God is loving," but God is love. Since God is a perfect being, He is perfectly loving, and morality is founded in Him. 

There was never a time when God decided for morality to be, He always was (and is) good. God is timeless. He is the self-sustained, uncaused Cause. Therefore Him being moral is just like that.

Hebrews 13:8 says "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Of course. God being God is not expressed temporarily with the universe. God outside of time cannot change, and so His nature is and will always be.

An important point I have to make is that many things about God are ultimately beyond human understanding. How could anything sustain itself? It is a logical contradiction to say something or someone was self-caused, but only a mystery as how a Being can be self-sustained. We can't mathematically or scientifically express how God can be that way. 

It could be argued that this bypass of the problem with Divine Command Theory is circular. Why is God good? Because He is God. And where does God get goodness? It is grounded in His nature.

But proof of truth is circular, and arguably only reasonably explained by God (a post on that cited in the next post). Truth shows itself to exist because to deny truth is to say it is true that there is no truth. God would be the logical cause for this. Here, logical cause means not what preceded it, but what is the sufficient conditions. God, having an absolute intelligent Mind, grounds truth. Also in light of God being self-sustained, and therefore beyond human understanding, a Christian can believe God was/is always good, because God was/is always God. Only when something begins to exist is circular reasoning necessarily fallacious. 

But I can still do some reasoning. St. Augustine of Hippo, an ancient early church father, presented the Trinity as the Father being the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love. Morality, then, is not a social construct (what is made is caused), but a Social Essence. 

Therefore, morality on Earth is derived from the way He is. This is to say that while God never faced evil when He existed outside of creation, He was all-knowing, and knows exactly how His Perfect Being would act in any situation. Animals are lesser creatures, because only humans are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27; James 3:9). Since people are worth more than animals, we are supposed to care for them (Proverbs 12:10). 

Animals show us that any creation with feelings matter. God is a very creative Creator, who loves life. God, animals, and humans all can suffer (God does emotionally and did even physically when He willed to come down to Earth). But we are more than just an animal, we are made like God in our ability to reason and love and enjoy good things! (An argument for that cited next post.)

Moreover, God did actually come down to Earth, taking on the form and being of a human. He obeyed His parents (Luke 2:51), blessed many people by healing the sick and casting out demons, and ultimately showed the greatest love achievable by dying on a cross (the worst form of punishment) to ransom every other member of the human race (John 3:16, 15:13). 

4. Why the Bible instead of another book?

"Different religions offer us different sacred texts, whose details sometimes contradict one another. So we must choose. There is presumably one right choice and many wrong ones. The odds are stacked against us.

"[Christians] must justify the claims that God exists, that God has communicated with humanity, and that their favorite sacred scripture is the one that contains God's wisdom. It won't be easy to do this." (6)

I'm not sure how "easy" I could say it was for me to defend the Bible, but I do know I have three defenses of the New Testament. If reading many books, both by believers and non-believers, and compiling appropriate information together is difficult, than I would say defending the Bible wasn't easy for me. But that wasn't very challenging, argumentation-wise. And of course now it's easy for me to just cite what I have come to learn and believe.

Depending on how far back someone wants to go, defending the Bible becomes more and more work. Think archeological proof: something has to be dug up and verified, and this would have to be put alongside many other things. Or consider verifying solely written history: tests for determining accuracy must be formulated, and then texts must be scrutinized. But for us, we just have to know where to look. And then defending the Bible can be considered easy. (Citations will be next post.)

A 16-post blog project titled "The Resurrection of Jesus" uses and argues for claims that are so well-evidenced, even many skeptical scholars accept them. I used material from both believers and non-believers, including responses from and to information in 6 debates. 

Now I will introduce, if you haven't already learned about him, one of Christianity's biggest critics. Famous New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman is a self-proclaimed agnostic. He argues that none of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses. But I present some arguments he has used and also use critical formula to determine what in the Gospel of Mark is verified. Not only is there a lot of evidence that Mark goes all the way back to Peter, a Disciple unsurpassed in being close to Jesus, even four miracles contain embarrassing testimony and clearly wouldn't have been invented that way, alongside many other claims. 

Finally, the book of Acts is one of history's finest works. Sir William Ramsay, once an unbeliever, changed his mind upon actually being present in ancient Asia Minor itself, along with other research. Drawing on mostly his book and another, I present over 150 facts verified outside of the Bible. Then, there is the matter of unlikely inventions and miracles. One piece of unlikely invention is a miracles.

If I am right, there is a lot of evidence for any single of these historical arguments. And this swerves to saying the Bible is true, and every other religion opposed to it is false. 

To begin with, the law of noncontradiction says two different claims cannot both be true in the same time and in the same sense. Since, say, as is directly argued for with Mark, Jesus claimed to be God and proved it with doing many miracles, any belief system that doesn't recognize Him as the one true God is false.

But sometimes skeptics try to argue against Christianity by drawing parallels to other claimed events. This is to show that since both cannot be true but are just as evidenced, no one can reasonably conclude any one is true. I can add that historical arguments do not aim for proof as certain as this computer in front of me, so it is at least possible two religions seem to have great proofs.

Still, if there is firm evidence for one belief system, such arguments would look suspicious and should be treated with skepticism. A reasonable person doesn't have to study Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Jainism, and so on to confidently believe in Jesus on the basis of good evidence which has been scrutinized skeptically. 

Also, it wouldn't necessarily be very challenging to at least get a little educated on the origins or big events with other religions. I believe no other religion has any book comparable to Acts, the Gospel of Mark, and the revelations to Jesus's former followers and other unbelievers after His crucifixion.

I think of specifically two cases I have come across, the first in detail and the latter only as a quick example. While the Quran arguably goes back to Muhammad, the only verified miracle in it is the Quran itself. Muhammad denied the ability to work miracles and instead pointed to the Quran. Only later is there miracle claims, like wolves saluting him or trees bowing down -- these aren't embarrassing. As a matter of fact, some Muslim scholars see these as later inventions because the Quran doesn't record, and seems to deny, them.

Then there is the case of what many scholars (to be fair, they probably aren't Buddhist) see as quick legendary development. Generally what it takes for legend to form in history is a removal from the eyewitnesses and being generations afterward, making a historically late claim. But there is some considerably early claim with something related to ancient Buddhists. Yet this would have to be examined in its own merit. How unlikely is it that they would invent something about him? Is the supernatural claim embarrassing? Did their faith just suffer a crushing blow, and was renewed by this miracle, in the face of persecution and disapproval from God if false?

Christianity is a special case, and very defensible. In the next-to-last post on the resurrection, I point out:

"There is no other belief system comparable to one with the original eyewitnesses claiming to have seen an anti-cultural 'resurrected crucified Messiah,' right after despair and disbelief, in the face of persecution." (6)

Citations:

1. Russ Shafer-Landau, The Fundamentals of Ethics, ed. 5 (Oxford University: New York, NY. 2018), 356.

2. Michael Ruse, "Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics," in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 262-269. 

3. Shafer-Landau, Ethics, 375.

4. J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (Prometheus Books:1993), 130.

5. Shafer-Landau, Ethics, 74.

6. https://onechristianthought.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-resurrection-of-jesus-closing.html