Highlights from the Cain Campaign

Herman Cain has dropped out of the race for U.S. President, so I want to take this opportunity to highlight what I liked when Herman Cain was running:

1. I liked Herman Cain’s campaign theme song, Krista Branch’s “I Am America”, even though I don’t care for the Tea Party movement and find it to be judgmental and selfish.

2. I enjoyed Herman Cain’s smoking ad (not because I support smoking, but rather because of the Krista Branch song and Herman Cain’s smile at the end), and even more Jon Huntsman’s daughters’ response to it (because, well, I like Huntsman’s daughters and think that they’re one of the bright-spots of Huntsman’s otherwise lackluster campaign). And Herman Cain was a good sport about their response because he told Huntsman’s daughters that he thought their spoof was funny.

3. The Gingrich-Cain debate was worth watching because it was an intelligent discussion of domestic issues, and it’s refreshing to see that. I wish I could see more of it! While I appreciated the candidates talking about how they could reform health care and preserve Social Security, I thought that underneath their sophisticated policy analysis was a conservative view that the poor are poor because they are lazy, and I did not care for that. But you can watch the debate to judge for yourself if my impressions are correct. It’s educational to watch, even though Cain is out of the race.

4. I thought that Ann Coulter’s column on Herman Cain was an important contribution to the political discourse. Coulter argued that David Axelrod was behind the accusations against Herman Cain, and that his goal was to make Cain leave the race so that Obama would be able to play the race card—-to say that people who oppose him are racist (which he couldn’t say if the Republicans were voting for Cain). Ann Coulter supports this by noting that Alexrod lived near one of Cain’s accusers, that many of the accusations are coming from Chicago (Obama’s political base), and that Axelrod has a history of digging up (or exaggerating) dirt in the lives of Obama’s political opponents.

There is really no evidence for Ann Coulter’s claims, but it did appear to me to be plausible. Some friends were telling me that the charges against Cain were manufactured, and they speculated that the women were being paid or offered a job for smearing Cain. But I wondered who would have a motive to orchestrate a smear campaign against Cain, since Cain did not strike me as a heavy-hitter in the race—-enough to be a genuine threat to anyone, I mean. But, considering the many times I have heard Obama supporters say that the hatred against Obama is due to racism, it does strike me as likely that some of Obama’s staff would continue to want to play the race card, since (well) Obama does not have too many other cards to play (and I’m saying this as someone who will probably vote for him in 2012). So Ann Coulter’s conspiracy theory made a degree of sense to me, and it also raised the possibility in my mind that Cain was telling the truth when he made his emphatic denials. But, in the end, I don’t know who’s telling the truth.

5. What I most liked about Herman Cain’s campaign is that people who said that America was not ready for a black President after Obama was elected were actually enthusiastic about supporting an African-American Republican. I believe that’s progress.

David Marshall: "Some Riddles of Evolution"

Today, I’ll blog about Chapter 4 of David Marshall’s The Truth Behind the New Atheism. This chapter is entitled “Some Riddles of Evolution”. Whereas, in Chapter 3, Marshall expresses some openness to evolution, in Chapter 4 he appears to question it, at least until the last few pages.

I’ll say before I write about Marshall’s questions that I do not know much about evolution, for science is not my field, and so I welcome correction. I will not, however, publish any comments that call me or anybody else stupid.

Now, on to Marshall. Several of his questions about evolution resemble the objections to it that I heard when I was growing up. First, Marshall expresses skepticism that something as complex as DNA (which was likely a prerequisite for the first life) could have emerged by chance. Second, in response to the evolutionist point that viruses and bacteria mutate to become resistant, he says that “I have seen none claim that in the relatively well-known recent history of these pathogens, any have in fact evolved into something strikingly new” (page 70). That reminds me of the the strands of creationism that are open to micro-evolution but not to macro-evolution. Third, Marshall says that helpful mutations (which are the basis of evolution) are rare. And fourth, he asks why we don’t see too many helpful mutations nowadays. His fourth point called to my mind a question that a relative of mine used to ask: “If evolution is true, why aren’t we still evolving?”

To his credit, Marshall interacts with new atheist arguments against Intelligent Design. ID advocate Michael Behe has argued that the eye is a problem for Darwinism, for the eye needs certain parts for it to work, and Behe cannot imagine animals surviving in a stage where they would have an eye without one of its important parts. The implication, for Behe, is probably that it makes more sense to say that God created the eye, than to say that the eye evolved through stages, some of which lacked the parts that were necessary for the eye to function. Richard Dawkins’ response is that even a deficient eye can work on some level, and so animals can survive with that. But Marshall retorts on page 74: “The question isn’t what happens when half the complete structure is missing. The question is what happens when half its parts are missing. What good is an eye without an optic nerve? Or an optic nerve that connects only halfway?”

Marshall also points out what he believes is a contradiction in Dawkins’ approach to Intelligent Design. Dawkins acknowledges that “genuinely irreducible complexity…would wreck Darwin’s theory,” and he quotes Darwin as saying that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possible have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” And yet, Dawkins also says that “Searching for particular examples of irreducible complexity is a fundamentally unscientific way to proceed: a special case of argument from present ignorance.” According to Marshall, Dawkins challenges skeptics about evolution to look for irreducibly complex organs, and then he says that such a search would be unscientific!

Notwithstanding his questions, Marshall does appear to admit that there is evolution, for he states on page 77: “Species do not…change as gradually as Darwin anticipated—-something dramatically new appears, then remains much the same for long periods.” Marshall also asks if nature itself could be a design program, which may mean that God could have set natural selection into motion to bring about design.

A prominent theme in this chapter is how evolutionists have sought to censor and stigmatize any critique of evolution, even when it has been made by someone (say) with a doctorate from Cambridge. Marshall speaks favorably of an interaction between ID proponent Behe and evolutionist Kenneth Miller: “A better way to decide whether [irreducible complexity] can be disposed of at all (say, by positing intermediate uses for new organisms) is to read both sides of the debate” (page 75). And yet, at the end of the chapter, Marshall expresses discomfort with voices from both sides: “Both sides discredit themselves at times by forcing all science into a theological cage that depends on what great Christians thousands of years ago already saw as a naive reading of Genesis, and some atheists by ‘No Bleevurz Aloud’-type postings on the doorpost of Le Club Scientifique” (pages 76-77).

I won’t offer a thorough critique of this chapter, but I’ll say this: Evolution still does take place, as new species are developing. But I think that Marshall raises a good question when he asks why we have not seen it that much with humans. An evolutionist answer that I have read is that we survive as we are and thus are able to pass on our genes, and so the point here may be that we do not need to evolve, or that we haven’t been weeded out by natural selection (see my post on Jerry Coyne here). But that explanation does not satisfy me, for why can’t we survive and have helpful mutations? I doubt that helpful mutations came only on an “as needed” basis in the history of evolution, for fish were surviving quite well, but some of them still had a mutation that led them on the path to becoming something else. Why don’t we see this with humans, that often?

On the whole issue of whether the gaps in evolution should encourage scientists to throw in the towel and say “God did it”, or to have faith that there is a natural explanation out there and to search rigorously for it, I’d say that they should feel free to look for a natural explanation, and I question whether theists should root their belief in God so heavily in the existence of gaps.

Psalm 53

For my weekly quiet time this week, I will blog about Psalm 53 and its interpreters. In this post, I'll do what I did a few weeks ago with Psalm 51: I will copy and paste the Psalm in the King James Version (which is in the public domain), then I will comment on the verses that I want to comment on.

To the chief Musician upon Mahalath, Maschil, A Psalm of David.

What does "Mahalath" (or, actually, "Machalath") mean? It could be an instrument, or even a dance, for E.W. Bullinger associates the term with the Hebrew word mecholoth, which refers to dances (Judges 21:21; Psalm 149:3; 150:4), and Bullinger speculates that this Psalm relates to David's dance after God had brought David through difficulties. Jewish and Christian interpreters have related the term to the Hebrew word machalah, which means "sickness". Some Christians have argued that Psalm 53 is about humanity's spiritual sickness, for it talks about human depravity in vv 2-4, plus Paul quotes v 3 in Romans 3:10, as part of his argument that all have sinned and thus need a savior. The Jewish interpreter Rashi holds that the term is used to convey that Israel was sick after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 C.E.

Another Jewish interpretation is found in the medieval Midrash on the Psalms, and it states that Abigail brought forgiveness (mechilah) to David after he sought to kill her husband, Nabal, for his ingratitude and inhospitality towards David and his men. Psalm 53:1, after all, refers to the "fool", and the Hebrew word for that in this verse is naval. In this interpretation, Psalm 53 concerns the events in I Samuel 25: Nabal's churlish behavior did not indicate any God-consciousness on his part, but David trusted that God would deal with Nabal, and David received forgiveness for his own quick-tempered and drastic attempt to kill Nabal and Nabal's men.

¹The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.

I have two points for this verse. First of all, I got tired of listening to smug sermons on this verse saying that atheists are fools whose unbelief has nothing to do with intellectual objections that they may have to the existence of God, but rather pertains to their rebellion against God's authority over their lives. Granted, there are many atheists who may not like what traditional religions (namely, Judaism and Christianity) have defined as "God's rules" (especially in the area of sex). But that does not mean that the atheists' arguments are invalid.

Second, Charles Spurgeon made a comment about how atheists may not be vicious, but the principle of atheism left unchecked leads to immorality. On the one hand, I disagree with Spurgeon here, for there are countries that do not have a strong theistic component yet have low crime rates. On the other hand, I can see a degree of merit in what Spurgeon is saying because, in a culture that does root morality in theism (such as ancient Israel), a rejection of theism could entail a rejection of morality, as people conclude that they can do what they want without consequences. A culture that does not root morality in theism, however, most likely won't have that problem.

²God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God.

Augustine asks why God has to look for people who understand and seek him, when God (being omniscient) already knows how that search will turn out. Augustine's answer is that the Bible says that God seeks something when it really means that human beings are seeking it. Augustine appeals to I Corinthians 2:10, which says that the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. That passage says that the Spirit searches, when actually the Spirit is enabling human beings (in this case, believers) to search. According to Augustine, because the Spirit's search in I Corinthians 2:10 is intertwined with human activity, Psalm 53:2's statement that God searches means that human beings are the ones looking for God-fearing people.

³Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

I have three points for this verse. First, in my post on Psalm 14 (which is very similar to Psalm 53), I noted that some interpreters (both Jewish and Christian) did not regard Psalm 14 to be an indictment of all of humanity, but rather an indictment of all of a particular group, such as the invading Babylonians. I found the same sort of thing in my study of Psalm 53 and its interpreters. Rashi, for example, says that Psalm 53:3 means that no one in the army of the Roman Titus stood against Titus' plan to ransack Jerusalem and the Temple. All of Titus' army was corrupt! (For Rashi, Psalm 14 is about the Babylonian invasion of Judah and Jerusalem in the sixth century, B.C.E., whereas Psalm 53 pertains to the Roman invasion in 70 C.E., and that is why there are two Psalms that say essentially the same thing: they are commenting on two separate events.)

Second, I noted in my post on Psalm 14 that Augustine had an interesting interpretation of "there is none that doeth good, no, not one". I said: "The Septuagint for the verse can be translated to mean that 'There is none that does good, there is not up to one,' and Augustine interprets 'not up to one' as 'except one,' indicating that the verse is saying that there is only one man who does good. For Augustine, that one man is Christ." What was interesting in my study on Psalm 53 is that I encountered a similar interpretation in the Jewish Midrash on the Psalms, only it said that the "one" who was not wicked was Abraham, and that Psalm 53 concerns the vast wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Third, the Orthodox Jewish Artscroll translates sag in v 3 (which the KJV renders as "is gone back") as "are dross", presumably because a Hebrew word for "dross" is sigim. Drawing from the Midrash Shocher Tov and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the Artscroll states: "One who has gone astray can find his way back. But dross cannot be reconverted into a refined metal". According to this interpretation, Psalm 53 is about the hopelessly wicked. But I'd like to think that there is always hope when God enters the picture----that people who cannot become good by themselves can become good through divine intervention.

⁴Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.

W.O.E. Oesterley translates this verse differently: "Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? They devour my people; they eat the bread of God but call not upon his name." Oesterley gets "his name" from v 5, which begins with the word sham, "there". Oesterley thinks that sham should be emended to shemo ("his name") and put into the end of v 4. For Oesterley (and many others), Psalm 53 is about corrupt priests, who eat the bread of God (sacrifices, or the shewbread) yet lack knowledge about God and do not honor God in their lives. Oesterley dates Psalm 53 to the Greek period, and he says that Jewish interaction with the Greeks led to godlessness, a disregard of the God of Israel. (Oesterley says that the Greeks had gods, but that the Psalmist regarded those gods as nothing.)

⁵There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.

John MacArthur aptly notes that v 5 is what distinguishes Psalm 53 from Psalm 14. Because Psalm 53:5 appears to talk about a battle, with its language about encampment and the scattering of the enemy's bones, MacArthur proposes that Psalm 53 was applying Psalm 14 to a battle situation, in which the Psalmist was hoping that God would defeat a foreign aggressor against Israel. Others have this interpretation as well. Marvin Tate believes that Psalm 53 pertains to a battle. The fourth century Christian exegete, Theodore of Mopsuestia, apples Psalm 53 to God's defeat of the Assyrian Sennacherib. And, as I said in my comments on Psalm 53:3, Rashi related Psalm 53 to the Romans' invasion of Jerusalem. The application of Psalm 53 to a foreign aggressor against Israel comes into play in interpretations of Psalm 53:1, which condemns the fool who says there is no God. After all, one of Rabshakeh's arguments against Hezekiah was that the God of Judah was no more powerful than the God of Israel and the gods of the other nations that Assyria conquered (Isaiah 36:18-20). And Rashi states that Titus thought that he killed the God of the Jews when he tore the Temple curtain!

There was an interesting interpretation of "thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them" in the Midrash on the Psalms. According to this view, these were words that were spoken by Israel's enemies against Israel, as Israel's enemies believed that God had forsaken his people. But the Midrash goes on to affirm that God will never despise his people, Israel.

⁶Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.

On the basis of vv 5-6, I think that Psalm 53 relates to foreign aggressors against Israel, but what gives some interpreters difficulty is v 4, which criticizes those who oppress God's people and do not call upon God. As some have noted, the Gentiles were not expected to call on God, for God was the God of Israel, whereas the Gentiles had their own gods (see Deuteronomy 4:19; 32:8-9). That's why some conclude that Psalm 53 is criticizing Jews who are deemed to be godless. But those who have dated Psalm 53 to the Greek period could say that the Jews who were considered godless had a close relationship with Israel's foreign oppressors. Whether Psalm 53 is pre-exilic, exilic, or post-exilic, perhaps it is lambasting all wicked people, foreign and domestic.

David Marshall: "Does Evolution Make God Redundant?"

Today, I’ll blog some about Chapter 3 of David Marshall’s The Truth Behind the New Atheism. This chapter is entitled “Does Evolution Make God Redundant?”

At the outset, let me say that this was a fair and judicious chapter about science and Christianity. Marshall acknowledged the evidence for an old earth and the existence of human beings and animals long before 6,000 years ago. While Marshall raised some questions about evolution—-as when he noted that Darwin himself saw problems in his own construct, and said that the “missing links” fossils “often bring up more questions than they answer”—-he still admits that natural selection occurs and that “the basic pattern of life’s history” in the fossil record “roughly follows Darwin’s scheme” (page 57). Marshall also is open to the possibility that Genesis 1 is not literal history, but may be like a parable—-a story that instructs us. At the end of the chapter, Marshall says that faith is reasonable, but that God has left room for doubt so as not to be stifling. Marshall refers to I Kings 19:12, in which God speaks to Elijah in a still, small voice. Marshall closes the chapter by saying: “For some, evolution has shouted down the voice of God. For others, it allows them to hear that voice in a new and more subtle way” (page 59).

But I disagreed with a few points that Marshall made. On page 55, Marshall said that “The world has often quarreled with Genesis, and gotten the worse of it.” As examples, he says that the biblical views that the universe had a beginning and came from nothing and that all of humanity is descended from one man and one woman have been scientifically vindicated. My opinion is different. On the first “biblical” view, creation ex nihilo, it is debated whether or not Genesis 1 even has creation ex nihilo. Many biblical scholars, both conservative and liberal, have contended that what we see in Genesis 1 is God creating the cosmos out of already existing matter, not God creating it out of nothing. That would mean that Genesis 1 overlaps with ancient Near Eastern stories such as Enuma Elish rather than being ahead of its time.

On the second biblical view, the descent of all of humanity from one man and one woman, Marshall says that science has confirmed that, for humans share 99.9 per cent of their DNA, meaning (in Francis Collins’ words) that we are “truly part of one family.” I can understand Marshall’s reasoning here. After all, evolutionists have said that monkeys and humans share a common ancestor because they both share a high percentage of their DNA, so why can’t we say that humans sharing a high percentage of DNA demonstrates a common descent from two people? But, overall, science does not claim that all of humanity descended from one man and one woman. Indeed, there is a prominent scientific belief that there was a Mitrochondrial Eve from whom women inherited their mitrochondrial DNA, and a Y-Chromosome Adam from whom men got their Y-chromosome DNA. But an article on Biologos (which consulted Francis Collins) states that “Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam lived at different times, were probably separated by thousands of years and quite possibly were in different locations” (see here). Moreover, a few articles on Biologos’ site dispute that all of humanity descended from one human couple, and one of them goes into scientific reasons that such is unlikely (see here and here).

Turning to another topic, Marshall says on page 57: “Few animals (and of course, no plants) have the intellectual capacity to suffer. Higher animals can and do—-though not, probably, as much as we think, looking at it sympathetically from the human point of view.” I do not know what the significance of Marshall’s statement is here, but animal suffering is a serious theodicy problem, according to some skeptics (see here and here). For human suffering, theists can simply say that God is putting us through pain in order to make us better people, but why would God make animals suffer, when they do not morally and spiritually develop (at least at the level that we do)? To support his claim, Marshall cites an article by apologist Glenn Miller of Christian Thinktank (see here). I did not plow through all of Miller’s article (which is well-researched, as his articles usually are), but it does appear to be worth the read, for it questions if animal suffering is really as widespread as skeptics say. Speaking personally, I do believe that some animals (such as cats and dogs) experience pain, which is why cruelty to animals is such a horrible thing.

Hubner on Paul and Boasting

I'm continuing my way through Hans Hubner's Law in Paul's Thought. In this post, I will use as my starting point something that Hubner says on page 108:

"In the presentation of the detailed exegesis of Gal 6.1-5 or rather 5.26-6.5 and in the discussion thereof...[i]t is clear that Paul does recognize a genuine claim on the part of the Christian to 'glory' on the basis of his life's work and sees this work as something which is relevant to judgement...In the course of developing this argument, he does certainly make it quite clear that he assumes there is a claim to 'glory' before the final judgement of God, not indeed for works of the law which have been duly performed, but indeed rather for a Christian life understood as a 'work'."

Galatians 6:4 states (in the King James Version): "But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another." Is this saying that Christians can boast about the work that they do in living the Christian life? Hubner appears to answer in the affirmative, which is ironic because (like Rudolph Bultmann) Hubner argues that Paul in Romans criticizes boasting in the performance of the law, which (for Huber's Paul) is a misuse of the Torah. Romans 4:2 states that, even if Abraham were justified by works, he could not boast before God, which is interesting because it seems to say that Abraham could not legitimately boast even if he were righteous by his works. Hubner contends that the reason for this is that boasting contradicts the recognition of dependance upon God that God wants us to have.

Another issue that comes up in that passage on page 108 is the contrast between the works of the law and the Christian life. A point that Hubner makes continually throughout his book is that there is a difference between atomizing the law into a matter of individual righteous deeds and transgressions and a more holistic treatment of the law. For Hubner, the former was what much of Judaism did to the law, although Hubner acknowledges that there were Jewish attempts to sum up the Torah into general principles, such as refraining from covetousness or hurting one's neighbor. Paul in Romans, by contrast, has a more holistic perspective. Paul does not criticize individual transgressions as much as the power of sin itself. And, for Hubner, Paul regards walking according to the Spirit to be "the true character and substance of the law" (page 145) and believes that the Spirit is God's internalization of the law on the hearts of believers, which contrasts to the external observance of the law that prominent elements of Judaism promoted. For Hubner, that does not mean that Paul thought that circumcision or the food laws were mandatory, for Hubner believes that Paul regarded those particular laws as annulled. And yet, Hubner still maintains that Paul in Romans views the law as a standard for Christian conduct (not a method of salvation), but a standard that is fulfilled when Christian walk according to the Spirit (which entails love for neighbor). My impression is that, like many other Christian interpreters, Hubner thinks that Paul redefines what observing the law means: For the Christian, fulfilling the law is not obeying a bunch of individual commands, but rather yielding one's life to the main point of the law, love.

Hubner overlaps a little with the New Perspective on Paul, but he mostly goes with the Old Perspective. In my opinion, he overlaps with the New Perspective in his acknowledgment that Paul encouraged Christians to boast on account of their work of living the Christian life. My impression is that the Old Perspective's Lutheran Paul would not have supported that, for he would have expected Christians to see their good works as not good enough for God, which was why they needed grace. But I would not bet the farm on my impression here, for perhaps even the Lutheran Paul saw a place for God to reward Christians who do good works; granted, their works are not good enough to justify, but maybe God still honors Christians for doing good under the influence of God's spirit. I think of C.S. Lewis' statement that God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.

Where Hubner differs from the New Perspective is in his characterization of Judaism as a religion that encourages boasting and the atomization of the law. The New Perspective views Judaism differently. Moreover, while I thought that Hubner wrote this book before E.P. Sanders' revolutionary work, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, was released, Hubner actually does engage Sanders' work. Perhaps Hubner's book originally came out before Sanders' work, but what I read was a later edition in which Hubner added a section critiquing Sanders. I thought that Hubner's critique of Sanders was fair, particularly his interaction with Sanders' statement that "The subject of Galatians is not whether or not humans, abstractly conceived, can by good deeds earn enough merit to be declared righteous at the judgement; it is the condition on which Gentiles enter the people of God." Hubner says that Paul talks about both issues: the entrance and condition of Gentiles in the saved people of God, and whether or not circumcision and the observance of the law played a role in that.

David Marshall: "Are Scientists Too 'Bright' to Believe in God?"

Last night, I read Chapter 2 of David Marshall’s The Truth Behind the New Atheism, and it is entitled “Are Scientists Too ‘Bright’ to Believe in God?” Marshall responds to the new atheist charge that most North American and English scientists are atheist or agnostic, and that religion hinders science.

Marshall addresses this charge in a variety of ways. He says that he knows many scientists who do believe in God, that people with doctorates in East Asia are likely to be believers, that the vast majority of scientists in the sixteenth and seventeenth century were devout Christians, and that there are renowned Christian apologists (i.e., Alister McGrath, Richard Swinburne) who have training in the sciences. He notes examples in which Christianity has actually assisted science. Evolutionary philosopher Michael Ruse, for instance, “points out that even Darwin drew ‘heavily’ on Anglican natural theology, concluding ironically, ‘Without Christianity, I doubt we would have Darwinism’” (page 38). And Stephen Hawking credits Augustine with realizing that time originated with the universe, a concept that “is now an element in the standard big bang interpretation” (page 49).

Marshall spends some pages wrestling with the question of why so many Western scientists are agnostic or atheist. He says that the modern university is a culture that is hostile to faith, and one reason is that a lot of people going into the sciences feel that they’re entering a new world of discovery, as they leave behind religious beliefs that they feel shackled them. (But Marshall goes on to say that there are some scientists who then enter into a newer world of excitement and adventure, the world of faith, after they have become disenchanted with the Enlightenment story.) Marshall also talks about the bias against miracles within the Western scientific community, the way that some conservative Christians present certain non-essentials (a young earth) as crucial for the faith, and the lack of opportunity that many scientists have to weigh the evidence for Christianity. On page 47, Marshall states: “Leading scientists at research universities work long hours. How much time does an 80-hour work week leave to study arguments for the historical Jesus, talk to missionaries about answered prayer, research the role of Christianity in reform movements, or even soak in Jesus’ words very deeply?”

I think that Marshall makes an important point on page 41: “If scientists believe for nonrational reasons, then their lack of faith isn’t relevant to the truth of religion. The word of an Oxford zoologist would be a mere celebrity endorsement, like Harrison Ford selling Kirin lager beer in a Japanese commercial. It’s unreasonable to be swayed by a celebrity endorsement unless the celebrity knows what he’s talking about.”

For me, the implications of this insight are that it doesn’t matter how many scientists are atheists or Christians. What is important is that scientists seek to understand and conceptualize the world in an accurate manner, and that includes them being open to contrary evidence. If religion hinders a scientist from doing this, then religion is problematic for science in that case. If religion can help a scientist in that endeavor, then perhaps it’s an asset—-but I want to stress that a scientific insight is valid because it fits scientific criteria, not because it conforms to a religious authority. I say this because some conservative Christians like to make a big deal about scientific discoveries that conform to the Bible (i.e., the universe having a beginning, water-channels, etc.), and so they conclude that we should simply trust the Bible as an inerrant document to which science will catch up. But science is not about dogmatically accepting a religious document as the final say: it’s about investigating and verifying and making corrections when one is shown to be wrong. Marshall interacts with this point, on some level, for he notes that scientific communities can be rigid, and that theologies can be fluid. Fine. I doubt that any group is perfect or absolutely flawed. But a key point in this discussion should be that science must be free to go where the truth leads, even when it appears to contradict a religious dogma.

I want to switch to the issue of miracles, which Marshall addresses in this chapter. He actually sums up what he says about the topic in Jesus and the Religions of Man, which I will read later. But I’ll interact with what he says right now, for I asked yesterday what he does with non-Christian miracles (since he considers Jesus’ miracles to be evidence for Christianity). On pages 45-46 of The Truth Behind the New Atheism, Marshall states the following:

“Miracles invite verification, usually historical, while magic often flaunts its irrational character. Miracles are usually practical, while magic is showy—-bleeding statues, levitation, Mary in a loaf of bread. Miracles enhance human dignity, while magic undermines our humanity—-it makes us bark like dogs, or ‘[affect] Godhead, and so loosing all’ in Milton’s words. Miracles point to God; magic to something or someone else. Finally, miracles come in response to requests, while magic makes demands. Like a fireman ‘running red lights,’ miracles actually affirm the dignity and reasonableness of natural law.”

My impression is that Marshall here is addressing the question of what happens when we allow for the possibility of supernatural intervention into the world. Does that mean that we have to accept every silly miracle report? That’s a reason that many scientists choose to be naturalists and to preclude the possibility of supernatural intervention at the outset: they fear a slippery slope! I think that Marshall is seeking to establish some criteria for what supernatural phenomena is genuine, and also to show that believing in the supernatural is reasonable and respects the natural order. That’s my understanding of his points’ significance in The Truth Behind the New Atheism, and I do not know what their significance is in Jesus and the Religions of Man.

I wonder, though, if Marshall would consider the miracles that non-Christians do to be magic rather than true miracles. If so, then I would have a problem with that, for there are plenty of non-Christian miracles that resemble the miracles that Jesus did—-they bring healing, for example, and, in some cases, there is a claim that eyewitness testimony supports them. Marshall may say that these non-Christian miracles are magic because they don’t point to God. But that would be a tautology because it assumes Christianity to support Christianity. But I’m speculating here about what Marshall might say, and so I may have to read more to see how and if he addresses non-Christian miracles.

Hubner on Development in Paul's Thought on the Law

I started Hans Hubner's Law in Paul's Thought.

Hubner's argument is that there was development in Paul's thought regarding the law. In Galatians, Paul presents the law as temporary, since Paul affirms that Christians are not under a schoolmaster, which the law indeed was. Moreover, Galatians 3:19 states (in the KJV): "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator." According to Hubner, this verse means that the law was given by demons in order to increase transgressions by human beings, and the verse corresponds with Galatians 4, which equates being under the law with being subject to the elements (and v 8 criticizes serving non-gods). Hubner still maintains that Paul in Galatians believed that the law contained God's desires regarding human conduct, but he holds that Paul viewed the law as an institution of slavery.

According to Hubner, Paul's anti-Torah, anti-circumcision attitude alienated Jewish-Christians and the church in Jerusalem, and so Paul toned things down when he wrote Romans, since he wanted the support of the Jerusalem church. That's why Paul makes positive statements about the law in Romans----about the law being God's standard, holy, good, spiritual, and from God himself. At the same time, Hubner notes, Paul regarded Christ as the end of the law in Romans 10. I will note that (if we continue the trajectory) the Book of Acts goes a step further than Romans, as it depicts Paul as a devout Jew as well as attempts to refute charges that Paul is teaching Jewish-Christians to abandon circumcision and the Torah. We go from the law being temporary and from angels (Galatians), to the law being temporary and from God (Romans), to the law being something that Jewish-Christians can still follow (Acts).

I encountered a similar approach to Paul's thought regarding the law in W.D. Davies' Jewish and Pauline Studies, only my impression (which could be wrong) was that Davies believed Paul thought in Galatians that demons exploited the law to enslave people, rather than being the actual originators of the law. The belief that Paul has a different view on the law in Galatians and Romans contrasts with how my Armstrongite heritage handled Paul's approach to the law. In tapes that I heard on Galatians, the pastor started by looking at how Paul treats the law in Romans, the idea being that Romans is where Paul thoroughly lays out his ideology, and so we can't understand Galatians without first looking at Romans. And, the argument ran, the law in Romans is presented as God's righteous standard of conduct, and so, since Paul regarded the law as authoritative and from God in Romans, he must also in Galatians. (I was usually dissatisfied with how Armstrongites handled Romans 7, which presents Christians as no longer married to the law.) But, for Hubner, we can't understand Galatians by reading it through the lens of Romans, for Paul's thoughts on the law in Romans and Galatians are different.