Dust to Dust

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to Ashes to Ashes.

Ernie,

I am sorry that my writing has not lived up to your standards of clarity, and that I have not responded satisfactorily to your attempts to guide the discussion in the direction you wanted. Without your guidance, where would we be? Thankfully, you have no unarticulated assumptions or we would be in real trouble. Better yet, we can be certain that your philosophical understanding is well-grounded.

As you might gather from the previous paragraph, I found the tone of your last post occasionally condescending.

I will readily admit to being an amateur in matters of philosophy, and between my developing understanding and my imperfect communication skills, it comes as no surprise to me that you might have trouble tracking me. On the other hand, I have gotten feedback from people that do have backgrounds in philosophy, and they have not found my writing difficult to understand or out of line.

Have you considered the possibility that you might have implicitly-held, unarticulated assumptions that prevent you from understanding? I suspect you have considered the possibility, just as I have. The funny thing about such assumptions is that they can be very difficult to uncover, and I think our ongoing discussion has been helpful in this regard. What I object to is the insinuation that I am insufficiently reflective on such matters. Please take care of your own speck.

When I described Universal Utilitarianism as "metric, not imperial", the paradigm that I was attempting to describe is one in which we can assign moral value to our actions by reference to some metric. Different moral systems described within this paradigm will be differentiated on the basis of their metrics. In this paradigm, assignment of moral value is not the same as saying that we have an obligation to act morally, and so I denied that UU was "imperial". I have not said that the metric defines the paradigm. I did say that "the metric defines morality." While perhaps a poor choice of words, my intent was to communicate that under a moral system like UU or DU, we make moral judgements by reference to the metric defined in that system. In general, these systems require no reference to God or intrinsic value; that is, while a metric could be defined in reference to God or intrinsic values if they existed, there exist sensible metrics that do not.

Now, for the last six months we have been focusing on the first of two "goalposts". As I have noted several times now, you said you were willing to defend the proposition that "belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is as well-justified and essential for social inquiry as belief in the transcendent mathematical nature of the universe is for scientific inquiry." You later described this as "Ontological dependence on an omnipotent, benevolent Deity as the ultimate source of virtue and truth". Is it so surprising then that I would attempt to show that a transcendent moral purpose is not essential, or that morality can exist independent from God? How can you now say that you are "simply trying to get [me] to articulate [my] underlying assumptions"? Were your assertions mere rhetorical devices that you did not really intend to defend or support, despite your claims to the contrary?

Looking back at your Shared Paradigm of Morality, my question about its utility derived from my perception of its inability to help us make progress toward or away from the proposition under discussion. You were describing the metric as a means by which we can evaluate moral systems or moral theories. I would describe the metric as a means by which we can evaluate actions. Under this paradigm, the metric is not separate from a moral system; it is the core of a moral system. If we agree on the metric, we are basically agreeing on what it means to act morally (assuming we can actually evaluate the metric in practice).

The only kinds of systems that the metric can evaluate are systems of concrete guidance on how to act in various situations; that is, the metric could be used to evaluate prototypical actions or prescriptions for actions. These evaluations will depend on what is true about the situations and actions described. The evaluation may be different in a reality where God exists compared to one where he does not. This is possible because the metric is defined without reference to God, and since the metric is defined without reference to God, it can neither have nor demonstrate ontological dependence on God. In my mind, if we agree on a metric such as has been suggested, we would be denying the very statement you said you would defend.

I guess that would be progress.

You suggested that I take the next month to reflect on why I "hate Christianity so much" or why it is "something evil to be opposed, rather than merely something imperfect to be improved". I have thought about that for far longer than a month already.

Briefly, it comes down to two things. First, that the core truth-claims of Christianity are very probably false. Second, that those holding these false beliefs frequently (though perhaps not necessarily) bring harm to themselves and others.

How this plays out varies of course, since there is a broad spectrum of beliefs held by Christians of various sorts. This is a point on which I disagree with Sam Harris, who faults moderate Christianity more than Christian fundamentalism, on the grounds that such moderate Christians provide legitimacy for fundamentalists and further, that the continuing existence of religious moderates will stand in the way of progress towards a truly rational spirituality. (See, for instance, the third-to-last paragraph here.) While there may be some truth in that, I do not think we can hold one group morally responsible for the actions of another on these grounds. While I still disagree with some of the beliefs of liberal Christianity, I do think that many people arrive there by exercising the kinds of reasoning and reflection that are likely to be associated with better social behavior; that is, while they may still hold false beliefs (and who doesn't?) they will generally cause less harm than those of more conservative and especially fundamentalist bents.

As I hinted above, Christians are obviously not alone in holding false beliefs. Everyone does, including atheists, including me. So why should I pick on Christianity? Because that is where I came from and where a significant part of my "world" remains. I made significant life decisions on the basis of my prior beliefs, decisions that cannot now be undone but which were based on falsehood. I spent precious time (and yes, money) on a lie. While I know you disagree on the question of truth or falsehood, I would hope that you could understand how a person who makes this kind of transition would feel hurt and angry. It is not at all uncommon. The reference to Sam Harris above was taken from an ongoing dialog he is having with Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic writer. Later in the dialog, Sam writes:

I have received thousands of letters and emails from people describing just how painful it was for them to finally admit that they were duped by Christianity, and that they duped their children in turn. I have heard from many ministers who have ceased to be ministers, and even Christians. More commonly, I hear from people who are terrified to articulate their growing skepticism about the doctrine of Christianity for fear of being shunned by friends and family. I do not doubt how much psychological and social pressure religious people are under. I don't think you should doubt it either.

I have also seen the influence of Christianity on various political and social issues, and frankly the results have not been pretty. Was it inevitable that Christian beliefs would lead to these problems? Perhaps not. If Christianity were not a factor in American politics, would something else cause similar problems? Perhaps so. In a sense, the problem is not with Christianity itself, but with the kinds of thought processes (or lack thereof) that sustain Christianity and other religions or ideologies here and elsewhere. But Christianity forms a substantial part of the problem here and now, so that is another reason to address its problems rather than something else.

You asked why I do not treat Christianity as something to be improved. The answer is simple. The foundation is rotten. I do not mean by that that the foundation is evil, just that it is broken. The factual basis is not there. What is there gets in the way.

To be sure, there is room for improving Christianity even on the foundation it has, and I can appreciate that there are those who are trying to do so, including yourself and, if his book is any indication, Brian McLaren. Similarly, I can appreciate the work that some Christians do to educate others on (for instance) evolution, even when they wrap it in theological trappings. And I can appreciate that there are Christians that are doing important work helping other people, motivated by their beliefs. My concern, however, is that human psychology will make it difficult to counter the more pernicious varieties of Christianity while preserving the comparatively healthy sorts. Plus, I believe it is still suboptimal.

(It may sound like I am now agreeing with Harris on moderate religion, but this is not the case. I recognize moderate religion as progress, but have no wish to make it a particularly comfortable place to stop.)

I hope that that clarifies my motivations somewhat. If further explanation is necessary, I would be happy to attempt it. And if you need to take a break, we can pick up here or elsewhere in a month or so.

Alan

More on Daniel

I thought I would follow-up on a couple of things related to my previous post, On Daniel, but to do so, I want to back up a little bit and consider very briefly the subject of miracles. David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, wrote about the subject of miracles and one of his arguments is relevant here. He argues that in order for us to accept someone's testimony about the occurrence of a miracle (a highly improbable event), all other possible explanations for that testimony (including human fallibility and deceit) would need to be even less probable. That is, even if a miracle did occur, it would be nearly impossible to have sufficient reasons to believe that it occurred.

This argument, and others that Hume presented, are not uncontroversial, not least because they appear in some cases to beg the question. My goal here is not to dive into that mess, but simply to introduce the idea that when we are confronted with testimony of a miraculous or supernatural event, we ought to have very good reasons for finding that testimony reliable before drawing any conclusions from the occurrence of the event itself. If the testimony to an improbable event is questionable, we ought not rely on that testimony to draw important conclusions.

Now, as I mentioned in my introduction to Daniel, the prophecies recorded in Daniel are often used as evidence for the inspiration of the Bible and the truth that it therefore contains. Relating this back to the point of the previous paragraph, the prophecies are said to be supernatural in origin, and we have a conclusion being drawn (or at least supported) by the supposed reality of those supernatural events. This motivates the question, then, whether we really have good reasons for finding the testimony sufficiently reliable to justify the conclusion that the prophecies were inspired.

An important point to keep in mind is that we are not talking about absolute proof one way or the other. It is not the case that we can prove with 100% confidence either that the Daniel was written about 630 BCE and contained actual prophecies, nor is it the case that we can prove with 100% confidence that Daniel was written about 165 BCE and contained only successful retrodictions (and failed prophecies). Rather, we are looking for a conclusion best supported by the evidence available to us, and the degree of certainty that we can reach will restrict the certainty with which we can make further conclusions. If we could be 99% confident (whatever that means) that Daniel was written in 165 BCE, then despite the 1% chance that Daniel is authentic, we would be unjustified in relying on its authenticity to draw further conclusions. According to Hume's argument, we would need to be nearly 100% certain that Daniel is authentic before accepting its miraculous accounts as true. Rather than quibbling about how close to 100% we need to get, let us use a very generous threshhold of 51% certainty, that is, barely more likely than not.

But how do we establish, or calculate, the degree of certainty afforded by the evidence? One way is to use Bayesian inference, which involves assigning probabilities to various alternative hypotheses with or without each piece of evidence. In some situations the probabilities involved can be determined with a fair degree of precision; in other situations, assignment of probabilities is more problematic. I will not try to assign probabilities related to the hypotheses and evidence concerning the authenticity of Daniel. Instead, I will only point out that, qualitatively, a piece of evidence E makes a hypothesis H₀ more certain if the probability of E given H₀ is higher than the probability of E over all possible hypotheses H_i.

(The probability of a hypothesis being true, independent of any evidence, is called its prior probability. Hume's argument can be understood in terms of Bayesian inference by assigning low prior probabilities to miraculous explanations, and higher prior probabilities to non-miraculous explanations.)

Suppose, for example, that we observe a sequence of coin flips, but we do not know if the coin is fair or if it is two-headed. So long as the result of each successive coin-flip is heads, the evidence grows stronger and stronger that the coin is two-headed, since the probability of (say) ten heads in a row is far higher under the hypothesis that the coin is two-headed compared to the hypothesis that the coin is fair. We can never be absolutely certain that the coin is not fair so long as the flips continue to result in heads. However, as soon as tails is observed, the evidence for a two-headed coin drops to zero since the probability of a tails occurring under the two-headed hypothesis is zero. In other words (and in line with our intuition), since the probability of a long string of heads is high for a two-headed coin and low for a fair coin, the observation of a long string of heads is evidence for a two-headed coin.

Now (without bothering to assign precise probabilities) we can look at how the various pieces of evidence contribute to the conclusion that Daniel was written about 165 BCE. Let's call that hypothesis H₁₆₅ and the competing hypothesis H₆₃₀. (And we will pretend that these are the only two hypotheses.)

Consider the point concerning Daniel's description of Darius the Mede. Under H₁₆₅, the author of Daniel was mistaken about the identity of the king who conquered Babylon. You can immediately see how it might be difficult to assign actual probabilities. What is the probability that an unknown author would make a mistake about events that occurred almost 400 years previously? It would depend on the background and resources available to that person. The value would certainly be greater than zero and less than one but it seems folly to attempt to assign a value with any precision. On the other hand, we may still be able to make a meaningful comparison with the probabilities associated with other hypotheses.

Under H₆₃₀ there are (at least) three sub-hypothesis alternatives. First, Daniel may have simply been mistaken in what he wrote about Darius the Mede. He was incorrect about the identity and nationality of this ruler. Since (under this hypothesis) Daniel is supposed to have been intimately acquainted with the rulers of Babylon, the probability of his making this kind of mistake must be very nearly zero. Second, perhaps it really was an otherwise-unknown Darius the Mede that conquered Babylon and all of the other sources that indicate otherwise are incorrect. An evaluation of this possibility requires information about the nature and volume of contrary sources. The third possibility is a mixture of the first two with an additional twist: that there really was a Darius the Mede involved in conquering and ruling Babylon that somehow was never mentioned in the other records available to us, and that either Daniel was mistaken about the scope of his role or that we have misinterpreted the text as it describes that role.

In both of the last two cases we are faced with the possibility that there was an actual person of some importance who was Darius the Mede. No mention of this person has been found in contemporaneous Babylonian records or in other comparably ancient accounts. Are we justified in assigning a very low probability to any hypothesis that requires the existence of such an important yet unknown person?

If we stated that based on the lack of evidence of such a person that he (probably) did not exist, a critic might accuse us of an "argument from silence". "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Is this criticism valid?

There are certainly cases where an argument from silence is fallacious. Just as certainly, there are cases where it is not. If I stated that there was an elephant in my living room, and when you looked, you could not see one, you would hardly give me any credit for saying "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and continuing to believe that there was an elephant in my living room. On the other hand, if I stated there was an invisible, incorporeal elephant in my living room, then the lack of visual and tactile evidence would not be evidence against my claim. (Of course, it is hardly evidence for my claim either.) How can lack of evidence be conclusive in one case and not the other?

We can frame our answer to this question by going back to Bayesian inference. The probability we would assign to the piece of evidence "no elephant is visible in my living room" given the hypothesis that there is an elephant in my living room is very low compared to the hypothesis that there is no elephant, so the lack of evidence strongly confirms the no-elephant hypothesis and disconfirms the elephant hypothesis. However, the "no elephant is visible in my living room" evidence is equally probably under the invisible-elephant and no-invisible-elephant hypotheses, so that this evidence fails to provide suppport for either. To put it another way, we do not expect visual evidence for an invisible entity, so the lack of such evidence is not meaningful.

In a similar fashion we can address the second and third sub-hypotheses concerning Darius the Mede and the lack of evidence for his existence. If we have reason to expect that we would have found such evidence had he actually existed, then the lack of such evidence is meaningful. Not conclusive, but meaningful. Since we do have evidence for the identities of both the Babylonian kings as well as their actual conqueror (Cyrus the Persian), and since this evidence has no temporal gaps where another king might fit in, the lack of evidence for the existence of Darius the Mede as ruler of the empire that conquered Babylon is meaningful. Further, since we also have evidence regarding names of other officials of the empire, including the name and nationality of the governor of Babylon under Cyrus, the lack of evidence for someone named Darius the Mede in such a capacity is meaningful. So, these sub-hypotheses are not certainly false, but they are probably false.

To take another example, consider the facts that the earliest manuscripts of Daniel (from the Dead Sea Scrolls) come from late in the second century. Is this evidence of late authorship? This, in a sense, is another argument from lack of evidence. The late manuscript dates (compared to 630 BCE) would only be strong evidence for later authorship if we had reason to expect to find earlier manuscripts. In this case, the oldest manuscripts we have of any Old Testament book (so far as I know) are less than one hundred years older than Daniel manuscripts, so this is a case case where the lack of evidence is not particularly meaningful. On the other hand, like the coin-flipping example above, a single contradictory result would have been a tremendous blow to the case for late authorship. Also, beyond there being no earlier manuscripts for Daniel, there are no references to Daniel from earlier sources, while such references do exist for other books, and that does have some evidentiary value.

(I should note that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain fragments from all of the Old Testament books except Esther and Nehemiah. If it were the case that all of the other books were represented in manuscript fragments from the earliest part of the second century BCE, the later dates of the Daniel fragments would be more significant. However, I have not found any indication that this is the case.)

As a final example, consider my treatment of Josephus' account of Daniel being shown to Alexander the Great. Under H₆₃₀ this could be true and if so it is not particularly improbable that Josephus would have reported it. Under H₁₆₅, this event could only be a legend (or perhaps an outright lie) that was incorrectly reported as fact by Josephus. Assuming H₁₆₅, is this improbable? No. Josephus was not himself witness to the events; they occurred nearly 400 years before he reported them. The story could have developed as a legend. Josephus had a fairly obvious apologetic purpose in writing his history; he has a recognizable bias that attempts to present the Jews and their religion in a positive light to the Romans. Further, he represents other demonstrably incorrect statements as facts. So under both H₆₃₀ and H₁₆₅, it is not improbable that Josephus would have included the account of Daniel being shown to Alexander the Great, which means that these statements cannot be taken as strong evidence in favor of H₆₃₀. This is not an outright rejection of Josephus. We might even conclude that, as an individual piece of evidence, Jospephus' account provides more evidentiary value to H₆₃₀ than to H₁₆₅. But it cannot provide significantly stronger support to H₆₃₀ than to H₁₆₅, and it is not our only piece of evidence. The weight of the larger ensemble of evidence, most scholars conclude, is for H₁₆₅.

On Daniel

Motivation

In my ongoing dialog with Ernie, we have not yet addressed something about which I am most curious, which is his stance on the reliability of the Bible. One of the more curiosity-provoking statements he did make was:

... I trust the Bible because it explains the divinity I observe, not vice versa. To me, the Bible is a reflection of belief in God, not the cause; a subtle but crucial distinction...

He also later said he was willing to defend this statement:

Belief in the Biblical narrative regarding God's role in shaping religious faith is as central and well-justified as belief in the scientific narrative regarding evolution's role in shaping anatomically modern humans.

From these statements (and a few others) I think it is safe to say that Ernie continues to place great weight on the Bible, even if he will not defend absolute inerrancy. From my occasional readings of the devotional posts he includes on Radically Happy: A Transformational Bible Blog, it also seems safe to say that, in practice, his treatment of scripture is fairly conventional.

While it has not been my intent to provide commentary on his devotional posts, his most recent series has been covering the Book of Daniel. I am not sure how aware he is of the controversy surrounding Daniel, but the purpose of this post is to give an overview of the reasons that the authenticity of Daniel should be doubted, including rebuttals to some of the common arguments offered in defense of Daniel by Christian apologists.

A Brief Introduction to Daniel

The Book of Daniel purports to be written by a Jew (named Daniel obviously) that was taken as a captive to Babylon when Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar. He becomes an advisor to Nebuchadnezzar and also to later kings, being found "ten times better [in wisdom and understanding] than all of the magicians and conjurers who were in all his realm." (Daniel 1:19-20) His importance to Christian apologetics is due primarily to his prophecies, which are intended to illustrate the inspiration of God.

The (non-prophetic) events described by Daniel occur between about 597 BCE and 530 BCE. The prophecies cover events for at least 370 years after that, and possibly (depending on one's interpretation) much farther. If these were true prophecies (and they were accurate), this would indeed be impressive.

On the other hand, if the Book of Daniel were not actually written during the 6th century (all dates will be BCE unless otherwise noted) but instead much later, the "prophecies" would not really be prophecies and their accuracy meaningless. What reasons do we have to suppose this might be the case?

First Verse, First Problem

The first major problem is that, despite Daniel's supposed role near the center of power for nearly sixty years, he demonstrates substantial ignorance of the period that he describes. In fact, the problems start with the very first verse of the first chapter, because he claims that Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar during the third year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. Jehoiakim reigned from about 608 to 597, so the third year of his reign would have been around 606-605. Jerusalem did not fall to Nebuchadnezzar until 597; according to 2 Kings 24:6-12 this was three months afterJehoiakim died and his son Jehoiachin had ascended to the throne. So right away, Daniel is off by eight years and one king. But this is hardly the most serious problem.

Belshazzar

In chapter five, Daniel relates the famous story of the disembodied hand writing mysterious words on the wall during a banquet held by King Belshazzar, words that Daniel is able to interpret. Five times during the dialog that ensues, Nebuchadnezzar is described as Belshazzar's father, and once Belshazzar is described as Nebuchadnezzar's son. This is false. Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son Evilmerodach (or Avil-Marduk or Amel-Marduk), who was succeeded by Neriglissar (Nergal-ashur-usur). Neriglissar was followed by Laborosoarchod (Labashi-Marduk), who was usurped by Nabonidus (Nabu-nahid) whose father was Nabu-balatsu-ikbi (as found in Babylonian inscriptions). Nabodinus had a son Belshazzar. It is not possible that Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar's father; we have no reason from contemporary sixth century records to even suspect they were related since the line of succession was broken by usurpation.

Worse than that, Belshazzar was never king! Nabonidus was the last Babylonian king before the kingdom fell to the Persians in 538. Belshazzar did rule in his father's stead while Nabodinus more or less abandoned his post to pursue archeological studies. However, contemporaneous records are clear that Belshazzar was not actually king. Belshazzar also died before his father, and he died in the tenth month of the year, four months after the kingdom fell, not the same night as Daniel reports.

Is it credible that Daniel, having ten times the wisdom and understanding of anyone else in the Babylonian kingdom and being a member of the royal court, would get these facts wrong? Certainly not. But even that is not the end of the problems of Daniel's supposed history.

Darius the Mede

Daniel states, at the end of chapter five, that Babylon fell to Darius the Mede. As I stated above, Babylon actually fell to the Persians, and it was Cyrus who conquered Babylon, not Darius. Cyrus the Persian, not Darius the Mede. (The Medes had already fallen to the Persians in 550.) The first known Darius was Darius the Great, a Persian king that reigned from 522-486. That Darius did organize the empire into satrapies, but only 20 of them, not 120 as Daniel 6:1 reports.

Why would Daniel believe Babylon fell to the Medes? Interestingly, both Isaiah (13:17-19) and Jeremiah (51:11,28) had predicted that this would occur, but they were wrong. Daniel writes in 9:2 that he was reading Jeremiah. (Humorously, some apologists have used the predictions in Isaiah and Jeremiah to defend the accuracy of Daniel on this point.) Similarly, the apocryphal pseudo-epigraphical book of Baruch, thought to have been written in the second or early first centuries, recorded that Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's son (Baruch 1:11). This is the first small clue of when Daniel was actually written.

Prophecy: Success and Failure

The other clues derive from the accuracy of Daniel's prophecies. Starting with his interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's statue dream in chapter two, and then from chapter seven through chapter twelve, various visions and prophecies constitute a substantial portion of the book. Without going into all of the details, and while there are disagreements about how to interpret some of the visions, cases can be made that the visions do correspond to actual events that followed the time that Daniel supposedly lived. Of particular interest in this post, however, are the events described in Daniel 11 and 12.

This chapter begins with the ascendency of the Persian empire, followed quickly by a Greek empire led by a mighty king, clearly a reference to Alexander the Great. When Alexander died, the Greek empire was split into four pieces, ruled by men who were not his descendents, just as verse 4 states. Verses 5-20 trace out an accurate (if brief) reconstruction of events that followed Alexander's death, particularly related to the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties. In verse 21 we pick up with "a despicable person", who can be seen to refer to Antiochus IV (or Antiochus Epiphanes) whose acts include looting the Jewish temple, erecting an altar to Zeus in the temple and sacrificing a swine there, forbidding Jewish sacrifices and other rituals, and generally behaving very badly. The historicity of these events is supported by (at least) the deutero-canonical book of I Maccabees, and I know of no reason to doubt them.

Again, Daniel's description of events related to Antiochus IV is very accurate -- to a point. Verses 21-39 track very closely with what is known about Antiochus IV from the time he took the throne in 175 until 165. At that point, the predictions go completely off the rails. In verses 40-45 (the end of the chapter), Daniel predicts that Antiochus IV will again invade Egypt and that this time he would succeed. Daniel also predicts that, due to "rumors from the East and from the North" he would "go forth with great wrath to destroy and annihilate many", only to die between the sea and the "Holy Mountain" (Jerusalem). However, Antiochus IV did not invade Egypt again, and he died in Persia (according to I Maccabees 6:1-16)

The troubles continue into chapter 12, which more or less predicts the end of the world which (to my knowledge) has not occurred yet. As Ernie points out, there are a variety of interpretations among Christians (and Jews, I suppose) of what this all means. The one possibility he neglects to mention is that the prediction was intended to be relatively straight-forward and immediate, but was also incorrect.

Because of this sudden transition from successful "prediction" to failure (and also because of the historical problems above), we have good reasons to believe that the Book of Daniel was in fact written somewhere around 165 BCE, not 530 (or so). The amazing predictions would not be predictions at all, but instead recent history.

Evidence of Early Authorship?

Of course, dating Daniel this late would be impossible if we had clear evidence of its existence prior to this date. Is there any such evidence?

Ernie refers his readers to an article on the prophecies of Daniel that includes this defense of authentic authorship:

The Book of Daniel is a stunning example of Bible prophecy. The book claims to have been written sometime in the 6th century BC, but because of the accuracy of its detailed predictions, Daniel's critics insist that it must have been written after the events described. They contend that it must have been written sometime after c.160 BC. Nevertheless, Flavius Josephus, court historian for three successive Roman Emperors, documents Alexander the Great receiving a copy of Daniel upon his annexation of Jerusalem in the autumn of 332 BC (Antiquities of the Jews XI, chapter viii, paragraphs 3-5). Furthermore, according to both the pseudo-aristeas account and Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews XII, chapter ii), Ptolemy Philadelphus (308-246 BC) commissioned the translation of the Septuagint (a.k.a. the LXX) from Hebrew into Greek in the 3rd century BC. Daniel is included in the LXX. Daniel is also included among the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) which date from about 200 BC (the oldest Daniel manuscript, 4Q114, dating from the late 2nd Century BC). [hyperlinks added]

The first reference from Josephus does specifically say that the Book of Daniel was shown to Alexander the Great. But it is important to remember that Josephus was writing in the late first century CE, over 400 years later. He cannot be regarded as a primary source, certainly not as a source that predated 165 BCE, and there was ample time for this story to develop as a legend. Josephus also reports a great many other things from Jewish history that we have good reason to disbelieve including, in Book 10, Chapter 10, the story of Daniel, though he merges the story with information gleaned from other sources, and not all of that correct either. (For instance, he does include the other Babylonian kings that followed Nebuchadnezzar, but substantially mis-states the lengths of their reigns.) As a source on Jewish history of the first century CE, Joseph has some authority, but we have little reason to trust him on the issue of Daniel.

As far as the Septuagint (LXX) is concerned, yes, it was commissioned in the 3rd century. However, the sources listed above do not enumerate the contents of what was to be translated and certainly there is no explicit mention of Daniel. (And again, both of the sources listed were written considerably later than the events described.) While the LXX was commissioned as early as 285 (early in the third century), it was not finished until the first century, around two hundred years later. This leaves plenty of time for Daniel to originate in 165 and still become part of the LXX.

The final claim above is a bit disingenuous. What does it matter if some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were dated from about 200 BCE if the oldest manuscript of Daniel was not dated until the late second century?

(While I cannot find it right now, I think I remember reading that the earliest known reference to the Book of Daniel and/or the earliest known manuscript was from about 130 BCE, not early enough to challenge authorship in 165 or so.)

Other Apologetical Defenses

There are apologetical defenses offered to explain the various difficulties I described above. Regarding the relationship (or lack thereof) between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, I am familiar with two explanations. One is that the use of the terms father and son were figurative, not literal, and simply reflected that they were both in the same succession of leaders of a single kingdom. The second suggestion is that they were in fact related (though not actual father and son) and that the terminology used was flexible enough to cover this kind of relationship.

It may be true that occasionally one man was called the son of another due to successional relationship. But reading Daniel 5, the usage, even emphasis, of the relationship suggests an actual family (and specifically father-son) relationship. Look at verse 11, where the queen addresses Belshazzar:

In the time of your father he [Daniel] was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods. King Nebuchadnezzar your father —- your father the king, I say —- appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers and diviners."

If the successional relationship between rulers was intended by the word "father", why did the queen need to emphasize that the father was king? It would have been implicit. Additionally, it is not until the second sentence that we find out that "father" refers to Nebuchadnezzar. If a successional relationship or non-father-son relationship was intended, this would have been ambiguous as any of the previous kings could have been meant and I suggest that, more likely than not, such a reference would have been disambiguated immediately if it was in fact ambiguous.

Keep in mind as well that Daniel shows no awareness of the Babylonian kings that followed Nebuchadnezzar, though there were four (and Belshazzar was not one of them). While the omission of any mention of these other kings is not by itself crucially significant, if they had been mentioned it would be far easier to make the case that the author of Daniel was actually aware that Belshazzar was not the literal son of Nebuchadnezzar. Because they are not mentioned, making the case becomes harder.

As far as a more distant family relationship is concerned, that cannot be disproven, but yet no archeological finding suggests that such a relationship existed. One cause of difficulty, however, comes from the Greek historian Herodotus, who lived during the fifth century BCE. Herodotus apparently gives a somewhat confused account of the Babylonian rulers, referring to two kings (father and son) named Labynetos, which some have identified as Nabodinus and Balshazzar, although others have identified the younger Labynetos with Nobodinus, and in some cases the older with Nebuchandnezzar. Additionally, Herodotus briefly mentions a Babylonian queen named "Nitocris" who some believe was the wife or daughter of Nebuchadnezzar and also the mother or grandmother of the younger Labynetos. In this way, some defend the existence a family relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Balshazzar.

Unfortunately, the various sources I have found have fairly divergent accounts of what Herodotus actually said, and I have not read his accounts directly. I get the impression, though, that what began as conjecture by earlier apologists attempting to reconcile the difficulties in Daniel is now being repeated almost as established fact, without correspondingly strong evidence (and not just in the case of the relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar). As an example, look at the Wikipedia article for Belshazzar and then read the discussion. A fair amount of what is stated as fact in the article is contested there and the disagreements seem to be fairly typical. So at this point, I can only recommend skepticism and further research about what support Herodotus can provide to those claiming a relationship between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar.

Still, as with the prior case, the lack of any sign of awareness that Nebuchadnezzar was not the actual biological father of Belshazzar makes claims that no actual father-son relationship was intended in Daniel more difficult to support.

And what of the fact that Belshazzar was never actually the king? Most apologists admit that he was just second in command, and not truly the king. However, he is plainly referred to as king, repeatedly. The text refers to his nobles. It is his reign that will be ended by the Medes and Persians (according to Daniel) and his kingdom that will be divided. To him the queen says "live forever", a phrase reserved for actual kings. And here again we must observe that there is absolutely no indication that the author of Daniel was aware of any other king. Resolving the contradiction between the text and historical fact in this way is ad hoc, and still unsatisfying.

A similar problem is encountered when we examine the common defense of the problem of "Darius the Mede", the fictitious conqueror of Babylon. Since we know for sure that there was no such king, apologists have suggested that perhaps there was a general, governor or viceroy who ruled Babylon under Cyrus that was named Darius and who was a Mede. This suggestion fails for several reasons. First, as with Belshazzar, the text of Daniel clearly refers to Darius as king, including again the phrase "live forever" (in 6:6 for instance). Second, right away in 6:1 we are told that Darius appointed satraps to rule throughout the kingdom. A local or regional ruler would not have this authority. Third, no reference to a person named Darius has been found that might refer to a person in such a position. Fourth, we do know the name of the governor of Babylon during the reign of Cyrus: Gubaru (or Gobyras), a Persian.

As I said above, there was a Persian king named Darius that followed shortly after Cyrus, Darius Hystaspes or Darius the Great. This was the king that actually introduced the satraps, and he was the father of Xerxes (Ahasuerus), where Daniel reports that Ahasuerus was the father of Darius. These hint at the possibility that the author of Daniel had this Darius in mind, but was mistaken on a number of key facts. Mistakes of this nature are understandable for an author at a later date, but not for someone who was personally involved, as Daniel is supposed to be.

Additional Considerations

This post has gotten rather long, but I should quickly mention several other items. First, this is not an exhaustive list of all of the problems with Daniel that suggest later authorship. Some hints come from vocabulary, for instance. There are problems with other "prophecies" of events that occurred between the sixth century and the second; as prophecies they fail and as history they demonstrate that the author of Daniel was relying on other faulty or incomplete sources of history (such as other books of the Old Testament).

Second, the Book of Daniel is unusual because various parts were originally written in two different languages, Aramaic and Hebrew. Partly for this reason, some scholars believe it had multiple authors, and possibly the various parts were written at different times (but still not by or about an actual historical figure).

Third, none of the other books of the Old Testament contain any reference to Daniel. There is a "Danel" mentioned in Ezekiel 14:14,20 and 28:3, mentioned along with Job and Noah. This suggests the person referenced here was from the more distant past, and in fact such a person is mentioned in the Ugaritic texts of the late second millenium BCE as "The Legend of Dan-el".

Fourth, I have to mention that, according to Matthew 24:15, Jesus referred to Daniel as a prophet. If Daniel is fictional, then either Jesus was wrong about him being a prophet, or Matthew was and he put words in Jesus' mouth.

Conclusion

The case against the authenticity of the Book of Daniel is strong. The apologetic defenses are ad hoc and unsupported by evidence.

Additional Resources

I spent somewhere around ten hours over the course of several nights reading about this subject and writing this post, including the articles to which I linked above. Some other articles that I read include:

Daniel in the Debunker's Den, http://www.atheists.org/christianity/daniel.html

Revealing Daniel, http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/comment/daniel.shtml

Beware of Bible Fundamentalists "Quoting" Sources, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1999/5/995bewar.html

Dating Daniel: A Response to Everette Hatcher III, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/2001/1/011dan.html

The Point That Hatcher Keeps Evading, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/2001/1/011point.html

Lions 1, Daniel 0, http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1998/6/986lions.html

Missing: One Goalpost

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to SPOM, spom, Spom, SPoM....

Ernie,

If I understand your goal in introducing a "Shared Paradigm of Morality" (SPoM), you are trying to establish a framework that would allow us to compare "moral theories" and determine when one theory is superior to another. In particular (if I understand you) we would use the "means" of "our cognitive, perceptive ... and evaluative faculties" to evaluate moral theories according to a chosen metric, with "maximize happiness and minimize suffering" being an example which is probably not ideal, but at least illustrative and not too far wrong.

Unfortunately, I fail to see how this helps us.

The primary reason that I do not believe your SPoM will help is that, from my perspective, the metric defines morality. I do not have a separate moral theory that can be evaluated against the metric. The metric defines what is good and what is bad. Sure, we can construct derivative theories about what kinds of actions best satisfy the metric, and such theories have practical significance. But since they are derivative, they cannot challenge the metric itself, except perhaps to demonstrate that the metric has undesirable properties that might lead to a revision of the metric.

What you appear to be proposing are what I would call derivative theories. Yes, we can evaluate various derivative theories according to the metric. Suppose we could demonstrate that the best response to anger is love and forgiveness. Fine. That would be good to know (if it were true). However, so far as our dialog is concerned, such a finding helps little to not at all, because nothing in either the metric or the derivative theory demands that God exists or that Christianity (in any meaningful form) is true.

You could even demonstrate that some particular action is good under the metric, given Christianity or even just deism, and bad otherwise. But that does not help either, because the truth of Christianity or even just deism is just what is in question.

You might try to demonstrate that the moral precepts of Christianity satisfy the metric so well that they must have divine origin. This would be a different sort of argument, one that perhaps has some chance of traction. You would have to account, though, for various highly sub-optimal precepts in the Bible. And of course, you would actually have to demonstrate, not just assert, that the moral precepts of Christianity are really superlative in relation to the metric.

From my perspective, I think there exist sufficient grounds for objective moral truths without ontological dependence on God. Those grounds are established by defining morality in terms of metrics applied to other objective truths. What those moral truths are may depend on whether or not God exists and other related questions that are objectively true or false, but the existence of moral truths by itself is insufficient to require a deity. I do not see how further discussion on the subject can help us make any progress, unless we independently establish sufficient reasons to believe or disbelieve that God exists and has particular characteristics. Or do you question that sufficient grounds for objective moral truths can exist without ontological dependence on God?

I will give brief answers to the five questions that you raised:

1. If moral principles are not absolute, then what are they relative to? If they are relative to something which differs among potential observers, then in what sense are they objective?
2. Do we accept that emotions are a valid way to perceive reality? If so, do we only include "positive" emotional states like empathy, or also "negative" emotions like anger or hatred?
3. Why do people fail to act morally? Is moral failure primarily intellectual, emotional, or volitional? And how can it be prevented/corrected?
4. Is there a unique solution which globally maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering? Or are there multiple local maxima which maximize the happiness of one particular population at the expense of others?
5. Is it it our moral duty to choose an Operative Depiction of Reality that maximizes our motivation to do good, even if that conflicts with an ODoR that better fits the available evidence? Or is it possible -- within our existing paradigm -- to prove that no such conflict exists?

I am going to answer these from the perspective of Desire Utilitarianism (DU), as I understand it. According to DU, desires that promote other desires are good and desires that thwart other desires are bad. Actions can be evaluated in the same way. Also, desires are the only reasons for action that exist.

So, to answer (a), moral principles are relative to (the interconnected network of ) desires that exist. They are also relative to environmental factors which affects how some desires and actions affect other desires. For instance, gaining the technological capability to prevent some undesired consequences can affect the moral evaluation of desires and actions that might otherwise lead to those consequences. The moral evaluation of pouring CO₂ into the atmosphere would change if a cheap and effective method for later capture and sequestration of CO₂ were found.

Since we have experiences of emotion (and these experiences are real), we are perceiving a small part of reality when we experience emotion. This is true regardless of whether the emotions are "positive" or "negative"; labeling them as such is irrelevant to their reality. The reality of emotional experience is relevant to DU both we have desires to experience some emotions and not others. They are also relevant because they may cause, reflect or amplify desires to promote or thwart the desires of others.

Why do people fail to act morally? Alonzo suggests the following "formula":

Desires + Beliefs -> Intentions -> Intentional Actions

So, immoral actions can result from either immoral desires (desires that tend to thwart other desires) or false beliefs. Of course, in some cases moral actions can result from immoral desires combined with false beliefs, but only by accident, as it were. Similarly, moral desires and false beliefs can still lead to moral actions. However, moral actions will result most reliably when one has good desires and true beliefs.

How one prevents or corrects failure to act morally depends on whether the failure was rooted in bad desires or false beliefs (or both). If rooted in false beliefs, the beliefs need to be corrected (replaced with true beliefs). If rooted in bad desires, either the desires must be modified (if possible) or the action must be physically prevented. Alonzo argues that reason is ineffective at modifying desires, and that other tools like praise, condemnation, reward and punishment are needed.

Your question (d) is an interesting one, one that I have thought about. Under DU, the question would be stated a bit differently, but the same general flavor to the question would remain. I do not know what the answer is. It seems possible that either a single global maximum could exist, or multiple local maxima. Possibly, the existence of multiple local maxima might be reason to adjust the metric we use. Or, it may simply be a feature of reality.

Question (e) is also interesting. Before I answer, please recall the formula relating desires and beliefs to actions above and the subsequent discussion. The process by which desires get translated into intentions and then to actions is mediated by beliefs about how those desires will be fulfilled by various actions. An ODoR that conflicts with available evidence may change our expectations about the outcomes of various actions (and so, in effect, increase our motivation to do good), but the false beliefs (or at least probably false beliefs given the evidence) could corrupt our understanding of what is in fact good. Additionally, the false beliefs may interfere with our ability to bring about the good we desire.

Suppose my ODoR contains the notion that that Christianity is true and that we are all going to spend eternity either in heaven or hell. Because I desire happiness and lack of suffering both for myself and others, my desires and my beliefs would combine to create a strong motivation to do whatever is required to reach heaven and avoid hell, both for me and others, even if it meant enduring net suffering in this life. If this ODoR is false, this suffering will never be countered by eternal happiness, and what was thought to be good (and what would have been good if the ODoR was true) was in reality evil.

The issue is more complicated than that, but I hope you can see that motivation alone is not the only important factor.

Here is another way to look at the question. I have various desires with varying strengths. These desires will combine in various ways according to the expected outcomes of various actions, which I evaluate according to my beliefs. One of my desires is to know the truth, and this particular desire is strong, strong enough that I am not able to choose an ODoR that conflicts with my understanding of truth. Even if the desire were not quite so strong as that, promoting a desire for holding this ODoR would thwart my desire to believe truth (making it morally objectionable under DU). While not quite a proof that no conflict of the sort you describe exists, I think this hints at the approach such a proof might take.

I hope those answers are sufficient to help you understand where I am coming from.

Alan

The ODoR of Howard Van Till

Over at The Secular Outpost, Taner Edis passed along a bit of information about Howard Van Till, formerly a physics professor at Calvin College. He links to the written version of a talk given by Van Till last May to the Freethought Association of West Michigan in which he describes his journey from Calvanist dogmatism to (still Christian?) free-thought. Central to his talk/paper is the concept of one's Operative Depiction of Reality (ODoR), somewhat similar to a worldview but perhaps even larger in scope.

He touches on a number of points that reflect my own experience and observations. For instance, I have asserted that beliefs can produce positive effects without the subject of the belief being true. Van Till writes "The fact that one’s ODoR exhibits many utilitarian values does not ensure that any particular portion of it is true."

The paper is only ten pages long, and well worth reading.

What's Anger Got to Do With It?

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to Of Anger, Hatred, and Love.

Ernie,

I can appreciate that you are trying to introduce a new subtopic in our discussion that might help to illuminate the difference between the moral obligations we might have under your deistic hypothesis (or even Christianity specifically) versus any non-deistic or non-theistic alternative I might offer. As you know, just last night I wrote that the propositions under consideration were insufficient to provide this illumination. I had already seen your later post by the time I finished writing, but I was not prepared to respond to it yet, for reasons that I will now attempt to make clear.

As I read your post, I was a bit surprised to see you propose anger as a key topic that might open the way to greater understanding. Anger is primarily an emotional response to various kinds of provocation, and while I agree that (some) emotions are relevant to discussions of ethics and morality, I think this is primarily by way of the emotional states that are provoked by one's actions and whether we desire those states or not. Your focus on anger, on the other hand, appears to be aimed at how we express our anger or what we do in response to feelings of anger.

Since anger can be provoked and expressed in a variety of ways, and since anger can result from false beliefs as well as true ones, it seems like a pretty slippery concept to be an anchor for this discussion.

Now, you do propose a different definition of anger to use for purposes of this discussion: "the desire to punish those we believe did (or will) mistreat those we love" -- including, but not limited to, ourselves." This definition is a little better suited as a basis for discussion, but I dislike adopting specialized definitions that differ significantly from normal usage because we consciously have to substitute an unusual meaning for the word whenever we encounter it, and this creates "friction" that inhibits understanding as well as the possibility of (unintentional) equivocation.

In this case, I am confused by the conflation of "anger" (even in your limited sense) with "our moral obligation towards those who mistreat others". Certainly we often feel angry when somebody mistreats us or somebody else, and we might discuss whether we "ought" to feel anger in such circumstances. But it seems to me that the more central issue is how we should treat those that mistreat us or others, and how we deal with feelings of anger is just one part of the larger issue. This larger issue is dealt with (in various ways, with various degrees of success) by various "atheistic" systems of ethics. While the subject of anger specifically may not be addressed, I am not sure that it warrants specific treatment. This is not denial so much as comparative irrelevance.

Your focus, on the other hand, really does seem to be on anger -- except when it's not. Your sections on denial and dispassion focus almost entirely on anger and very little on the target of that anger and our related ethical obligations. The section on hatred, on the one hand, and forgiveness and love on the other, focus more on other mental states that might follow anger, with secondary consideration to how that plays out in action.

But there is another level at which I find your approach confusing. In your conclusion you say:

As far as I know, Christianity is the only moral system that commands us to love and forgive our enemies...

and then,

That said, I firmly believe that (III) is the option best able to satisfy our UU metric of "maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering."

There is something of a contradiction here. UU is (or defines) a moral system, and it does not depend on or equate to Christianity. If (III) were the option best able to satisfy the UU metric, then UU would demand (III). The best you could say (if this is even true) is that Christianity was the first to recognize or promote (III). If so, it was a valuable contribution of Christianity, but not otherwise significant. (Let me be careful to state that I am not sufficiently familiar with the various religious and philosophical movements to state that Christianity was in fact the first or only moral system to command forgiveness and love towards our enemies.)

On the other hand, I am not so convinced as you that (III) is the best possible alternative, or that there are only four alternatives. But that depends on how much you are focusing on "anger" versus "moral obligation towards those who mistreat others", and whether you are viewing (III) as sufficient or only necessary.

You wanted to know how I would deal with anger, hatred and enemies, if I do at all. Please do not be angry, but I will defer my answer to those questions until a later post. ;-)

Alan

Obviously Not A Reply

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to Obviously (Not).

Ernie,

I apologize if I have confused the discussion by qualifying my support for the statement "The goal is maximize actual and potential Happiness while minimizing actual and potential Suffering." I was concerned about the effect that would have, and it was for that reason that I volunteered to continue using the statement as is, despite my reservations. As I hope to make clear (or at least clearer), I see that statement as a simplified, intuitively straightforward approximation to a more deeply grounded theory of ethics.

I had referred you to a particular post by Alonzo Fyfe, the Atheist Ethicist, in which he provided a criticism of happiness as the sole criterion by which to assign moral value. He does this by describing a hypothetical situation in which perfect happiness is guaranteed, but one which at least some people would intuitively regard as immoral. His claim is that Desire Utilitarianism can account for these cases where happiness is outweighed by other, well, desires. This in no way contradicts the suggestion that in very many cases, happiness is the strongest desire, which is why I could still view total happiness as an approximation of a more complete theory of ethics.

Desire utilitarianism, as described by Alonzo, is much more subtle and powerful than theories built on total happiness alone. (I should note, by the way, that Alonzo's critique was not of utilitarianism generally, but only a specific measure of value that is frequently advanced by atheists, just as I had done.) While I am not sure if I can explain why that is succinctly, I think its explanatory power derives primarily from recognizing that desires are the sole reasons for action, and from the positive and negative feedbacks applied to good and bad desires.

You said were confused because Alonzo appeared to you to be "specifically critiquing Utilitarian metrics for failing to adequately explain our desire" for love and truth, and further, that he would disagree that statements II and III from our MSSB "are potentially testable truth claims given the [Utilitarian] definition of moral value." First, let me repeat that Alonzo was addressing only a particular definition of moral value, not all types of utilitarianism. He is defending a different definition of moral value, but still under the broader umbrella of utilitarianism. Second, let me repeat that the point of the counter-example was not to show that happiness is not a factor in determining moral value, only that it cannot be the sole factor.

I suspect that Alonzo would agree that statements (II) and (III) are potentially testable truth claims given (X) as a metric. His claim, I believe, would be that (X) is not the best metric, and that the definition incorporated into desire utilitarianism is superior. I am almost entirely certain that Alonzo would view (II) and (III) as potentially testable truth claims under desire utilitarianism. (By the way, I am taking your version of (III), "Truth is better than Falsehood" to mean "Belief in truth is better than belief in falsehood".)

Does that help?

Moving on to my criticism of your deistic hypothesis, I apologize as well for creating more confusion there, though in this case, the seeds were planted when you wrote:

I believe that:

1. We need a set of assumptions comparable to the MSSB in order to support meaningful "social inquiry."
2. Using a deistic hypothesis -- that "the various systems encompassing humanity are the result of a benevolent Purpose" (one sympathetic to human Reason, Virtue, and Happiness) --- we can derive the MSSB assumptions as theorems, rather than needing to state them as axioms
3. In science, a discrete list of facts is less powerful than a theory which explains them

[Emphasis mine.] I should have recognized that you did not mean "assumptions" so much as simply "statements" or "facts" or "propositions", since in (B) you spoke of deriving them. In fact, I described them in my response as "statements", but I probably put too much weight on your usage of the term "assumptions". Still, I stand by my claim that only (X) is necessary to support "meaningful social inquiry" (so that I disagree with (A)) and that the statements (I) - (IX) do not need to be stated as axioms (so that I disagree with (B), specifically the final clause, but read on).

Now in your last post you said:

I get that you "do not believe we need to treat (I) through (IX) as assumptions or axioms that could instead by derivable from a deistic hypothesis." [emphasis mine] My question was instead whether you agreed that we could derive something comparable to the MSSB starting from the deistic hypothesis; the last paragraph of your comment hints that you might, but I'd like to know for sure.

Let me explain how what you wrote gave a different impression. In your statement (B) you not only said "we can derive the MSSB assumptions as theorems" [emphasis mine] but also "rather than needing to state them as axioms". To me, this established a (false) dichotomy. If you had simply left off the final clause, I think your intention would have been more clear. I do see that you could have been merely contrasting one approach with another without claiming that the two together exhausted the possibilities. But then again, as I stated in the comments after my last post, the version of the goalpost statement that you were defending was that "belief in a transcendent moral purpose for the universe is ... essential ...". So again, I hope you can understand why I might have understood you to be making an exlusivist claim.

So now we return to the goalpost statement itself. You have suggested replacing the original statement with this one:

"Does the deistic hypothesis B provide a better explanation for the MSSB than an ethical metric such as X?"

The problem I have with this is that I do not think the statements in the MSSB are that difficult to explain under either the deistic hypothesis or an ethical metric like X. (I am not quite sure why the statements specifically about Christianity are particularly relevant to the deciding between a deistic hypothesis and X.) Additionally, it seems possible to me that a deistic hypothesis could in some sense include X, so that anything X explains, DHX would also explain. (Since you originally included X as a statement that DH could explain, this possibility appears somewhat likely.) In short, stated this way, I think the goalpost statement lacks discriminatory power.

I am of course open to reasons why you would disagree with this assessment. My basic position, though, is that there just is not enough meat on that bone.

Here is another perspective. Suppose we agreed on an ethical metric like X, where you consider it as part of a larger deistic hypothesis, and I considerate it the basis of a "standalone" theory of ethics. We also both agree that belief in truth is important to ethical behavior. The major relevant difference between us is what we believe to be true.

Way back in September, you advanced two propositions you would be willing to defend. We have spent the past four months on the first one, and in my view we have more or less agreed that your deistic hypothesis is consistent some core agreed-upon statements, but not necessary. Whether the DH is "more necessary" is as yet an open question, but in my view not a particularly interesting one, not unless the basis for discrimination can be strengthened.

I have always been more interested in the second proposition:

Belief in the Biblical narrative regarding God's role in shaping religious faith is as central and well-justified as belief in the scientific narrative regarding evolution's role in shaping anatomically modern humans.

Or, as you later stated it:

Epistemic dependence on received Scripture as a reliable indicator of divine will.

So, can I suggest we put the subject of ethics on the back burner for awhile and move on? And, while we have ethics simmering, can I suggest that you read Alonzo Fyfe's book, "A Better Place: Essays on Desire Utilitarianism"? As I said, I think DU provides a more sophisticated and well-developed theory of ethics than UU, and so might address some of the issues you find lacking in other systems you have looked into. I would be happy to send you a copy.

What do you think?

Alan

Axioms, Hypotheses and Facts, Oh My!

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief. It is a response to A Minimal Set of Shared Beliefs.

Ernie,

With perhaps one exception, which I will discuss momentarily, the statements you list as being a Minimal Set of Shared Beliefs (MSSB) are agreeable to me, though as I mentioned before, agreement on the first few is not that earthshaking. Let me repeat them here for easy reference:

1. Happiness is better than Suffering
2. Love is better than Hate
3. Truth is better than Falsehood
4. Truth is compatible with both Love and Happiness
5. Love and Happiness are compatible with each other
6. There are some good things about Christianity
7. There are many things wrong with Christianity
8. It is both necessary and possible to improve upon Christianity
9. Reason and Empirical Observation are both key to improving upon Christianity
10. The goal is maximize actual and potential Happiness while minimizing actual and potential Suffering

The one item that I need to qualify, surprisingly enough, is the last one. As you note, this reflects what I have described as the metric of Universal Utilitarianism, which I brought into this discussion as being very near to my own thinking on the nature of morality. Participating in this discussion has, quite naturally, led me to further reflection and study. I have, for instance, described universal utilitarianism (or at least my understanding of it) as being incomplete since it "does not reflect our intuitions about how to treat those who mistreat others."

For the past month or so, I have been reading the blog Atheist Ethicist. The author, Alonzo Fyfe, is a philosopher who advocates "Desire Utilitarianism". By this he does not mean simply that whatever you desire is good or right, or that we should do whatever anyone else desires of us. Instead, desires and actions are judged to be morally good or evil based on whether they promote or thwart the desires of others. According to Alonzo (and I tend to agree so far) this provides a better foundation for making moral judgements than happiness and suffering alone. For instance, he argues that sometimes we desire other things more than happiness, so that merely bringing about happiness would produce a morally inferior result.

I may write more about Desire Utilitarianism later after I have better digested how it all plays out. My purpose in bringing it up here is that statement (X) represents an ethical theory that reflected well my thoughts at the time I brought it up, but which may be superceded by a better theory (one with more explanatory power) later. For now, I remain happy to continue using it. As you said:

For purposes of this discussion, let us both stipulate that this moral imperative is at least "proximately true" -- that is, any ethical theory we propose has to either incorporate or address this truth to be considered valid.

However, there is another reason that this statement needs attention, a reason more directly relevent to your argument.

You suggest that the deistic hypothesis allows us to derive all of the statements in the MSSB as theorems, rather than stating them as axioms, and further that a theory that explains a set of facts is more powerful than the set of facts themselves. From this you conclude that your goalpost statement is supported.

I think there are several flaws in this argument, and the most important problem is that (X) is a very different statement from (I) through (IX). The first nine statements, possibly excluding (IV) and (V), are all statements about the value of various things: happiness, suffering, love, hate, truth, falsehood, Christianity, reason and empirical observation. Statement (X) is different because it establishes the grounds for valuing one thing above another.

I submit that (X) is sufficient as a theory of ethical value (subject to the caveat above) and further that by itself it is sufficient to support meaningful social inquiry. The remaining statements are not assumptions nor axioms. They are statements that can be evaluated logically and empirically. Statement (I) follows trivially from statement (X). Statements (II) through (V) can be supported on both theoretical and empirical grounds, once (X) establishes the basis of comparison. Likewise, statements (VI) through (VIII) can be evaluated on empirical grounds. Statement (IX) is a bit out-of-place: reason and empirical observation are part of the methodology we adopt in evaluating not just Christianity but other purported statements of fact. Still, we can use meta-reasoning and meta-observations to evaluate the usefulness of reason and empirical observation in improving Christianity (or other evaluations of value) and so place value on them directly.

In this view, we do not need "a set of assumptions comparable to the MSSB" in order to support meaningful social inquiry. We need only the single (perhaps axiomatic) definition of moral value provided by (X). The remaining statements are not assumptions or axioms; they are potentially testable truth claims given the definition of moral value. So I disagree with your statements A and B because I do not believe we need to treat (I) through (IX) as assumptions or axioms that could instead by derivable from a deistic hypothesis.

The discussion above also hints at another problem. While I agree that a discrete list of facts is less powerful than a theory which explains them, we do not have just these two alternatives. That is, it is possible that other theories could explain those same facts. In such cases, we must look for other facts over which the proposed theories differ or apply heuristics like Occam's Razor and prefer simpler theories to more complex ones. I would suggest that introducing a deity or other Benevolent Purpose to explain the value of love and truth in promoting happiness is unnecessary, and so should be discarded unless we have other compelling reasons for retaining such an element in our theories.

I hope that gives you something to work with.

Alan

Responding to Provocation

This post is part of an ongoing dialog between my friend Ernie and me about the validity of Christian belief.

Ernie,

I apologize for dropping my end of the conversation for over a month now. As I said in my post several days ago, there have been a number of factors contributing to my delay. It is not that I have not been thinking about it. In fact, I have been reviewing and clarifying my thinking on various issues including some that we have discussed over the past fourteen months. No earth-shattering changes, but some changes nonetheless.

Let me first respond to the post in which you enumerated a number of things we seem to agree on. I do not have any serious disagreement with your list. I was, however, a little disappointed that agreement on some of the items, particularly (a) - (c) and even (d) was unusual enough to warrant mentioning. I imagine you did so more for completeness and emphasis than because agreement on those items was surprising; at least, I hope so. It did leave me wondering if I have been communicating my views so poorly that there had ever been a question about my stance on those statements.

In your latest oblique and provocative post, you wonder if my primary goal is "truth" or "love" and if I really believe the two are compatible. Let me state categorically that they are compatible. Truth is instrumental (to use your word, thank you very much) to love. Knowledge of the truth helps us to align the consequences of our actions with our intentions.

That does not mean that knowledge leads inexorably to love. Knowledge of the truth can be used for love or for hate, for good or for evil. I do believe, however, that knowledge can lead to a recognition of the interconnectedness of human communities and that we can all lead happier lives by working with each other rather than against; that is, that love is better than hate.

One of the things that confused me about your last post was how you linked to my post on Wisconsin's Marriage Protection Amendment. Now I suppose you might read that and get a fairly negative vibe from me about the authors of the flyer. Was my post lovingly written? Well, I think it was, in this sense: I wrote out of a genuine and strongly felt concern (love) for people that will be impacted by this amendment. Was it unloving for people to denounce racial bigotry? Was it unloving for people to speak out against the debacle that has unfolded in Iraq? Is it unloving for a parent to speak against the destructive behavior or a child? Was it unloving for Jesus to denounce the hypocrisy of the Pharisees?

So having stated clearly that love and truth are compatible, let me try to answer your question about which is my primary goal. I am unsure if you mean my goal in this dialog specifically or in life generally. Generally, I do not see either of those as being the goal: both play a role in reaching other goals, especially the welfare and happiness of myself and others, both present and future. In this dialog specifically, it seems to me there is greater disagreement about what is true than about love. As well, I believe that some of the harm done by Christianity is caused by people who want to do good but their actions are based on false beliefs, and this disconnect between belief and truth causes unintended harm. In these cases, it is the beliefs that should change. So, as a tactical choice, I think it would be fair to say that my writing has been more concerned with truth.

Finally, you asked about my basis for throwing the first stone and what I could offer in place of Christianity. Why am I the one throwing the first stone? From my point of view, the course of my life has been substantially affected by the beliefs that I held for thirty-plus years of my life, including a variety of (what I perceive to be) harmful effects. Those were the first stones. Perhaps my responses have been less than ideal. Certainly they have. But even so, my concern is for the truth, for the harm caused by Christian beliefs, and for the benefits to mankind that I believe will become possible when the obstacles raised by false beliefs are removed. (Christian and other religious beliefs are not the only false beliefs to be found, but due to personal history and circumstance, they are some of the most significant to me.)

I am sorry if you have been expecting me to be presenting an alternative to Christianity. I do believe better alternatives exist and can be described. For instance, I have previously referred to A Secular Humanist Declaration seven months ago. A recent version of the Humanist Manifesto, Humanism and Its Aspirations is also on the right track. I will try to include more content describing and advocating such alternatives.

Alan

A Belated Examination of the Christmas Accounts

Blogging has been on hold for a month, partly for lack of inspiration and partly for busy-ness. Worse, the subject of this post is over a week past (or over fifty weeks in the future). Better late than never, I guess.

Have you ever noticed how different are the stories of Jesus' birth as told in the books of Matthew and Luke? Last year I examined one important difference, that Joseph, Mary and Jesus travel to Egypt in Matthew but to Jerusalem in Luke, but this is not the only difference. In fact, the points of commonality are far fewer than the differences, some of which are contradictory.

What are the common elements in each account? King Herod, Joseph, a virgin Mary, Jesus, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and part of Jesus' genealogy. That is all.

Elements that are unique to each story but not actually contradictory include the census (Luke 2:1-3), an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream (Matthew 1:20), an angel appearing to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), the magi (Matthew 2:1-12), the shepherds (Luke 2:8-20), stable (Luke 2:7,12,16), a house (Matthew 2:11), slaughter of male children (Matthew 2:13-18)), Zacharias and Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-25,57-80), and Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:25-38). There are some interesting things that could be said about these events, and I will mention two of them again in a moment.

First, though, let us examine some of the contradictions.

Where did Joseph and Mary live before Jesus was born? Luke makes it pretty clear that their home was Nazareth because he tells us that they had to travel to Bethlehem for the census. In Matthew, on the other hand, there is no mention of Nazareth until the family is returning from Egypt. In Matthew 2:21-23 it is fairly clear that when they went to Nazareth, they were not returning to their prior home but that they chose a new home where they would be safer from the reign of Archelaus in Israel.

I have already mentioned that in Luke, the family travels from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to Nazareth, while in Matthew they travel from Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth. When did they leave Bethlehem? In Luke it is clear that leave as soon as the days of Mary's purification were complete (about forty days, apparently). The timing in Matthew is far less certain. We do know that Herod asks the magi when the star appeared and that he subsequently orders all male children under the age of two killed "according to the time which he had determined from the magi." Also, as mentioned above, Matthew says the magi visit Jesus and Mary in "the house", without further qualification. Without Luke's account to tell anyone differently, anyone reading that phrase would understand it to be Joseph and Mary's house where they normally lived. So, reading Matthew by itself seems to suggest that Jesus and his family remained in Bethlehem for as long as two years, since in this account Bethlehem was their home and they had no reason to leave until the threat from Herod materialized. But while this is the plainest reading, one could attempt to reconcile the timing in several ways. First, one might say that the star appeared two years before Jesus was born in order to give the magi time to travel. Second, one might say Herod may simply "playing it safe" by killing children up to two years old. In either case, while I believe a reading of Matthew alone argues for a longer delay than Luke alone, I also suspect very few Christians will be persuaded on this point.

A third contradiction can be found in the genealogies that Matthew and Luke give for Jesus. Matthew lists the genealogy from Abraham forward to Jesus, while Luke lists the genealogy from Jesus backwards all the way to Adam (and God before him). These differences are clearly not important. What is more significant is that the genealogies are different between David and Joseph. Matthew lists 26 men between David and Jesus, while Luke lists 40. Of those, only two names are shared, Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, near the middle of each list. (Interestingly, a footnote in my study Bible says that these names do not refer to same people!)

How can the lists be reconciled? I am aware of two strategies used by apologists, though perhaps there are others; this not an issue that I have examined carefully. One suggestion is that one of the genealogies records Joseph's ancestry (since Joseph was his legal but not natural father) and the other Mary (who was his only natural parent). This appears to violate the plain reading of both Luke and Matthew, both of which explicitly list Joseph as the penultimate person in the genealogy.

The other approach has been to claim that both genealogies are Joseph's, but that Matthew skipped some generations. I am not sure how those who hold this view resolve the fact that each list of names is so different. It is not enough to suggest that in each list two different names are used to refer to the same person since, particularly near David's end of each list, the names listed are known to refer to different people. Allowing Matthew to skip generations creates other problems, because Matthew is careful to point out that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian captivity, and fourteen from the captivity to Jesus. What meaning can this symmetry have if it is attained simply by skipping over generations whenever it is convenient?

(It is also not feasible to assume that Luke also skipped generations so that between the two we get a complete list. Not only would such a careful mismatch strain credibility by itself, it would require 66 generations between David and Jesus, so that, on average, each son would need to be born when his father was fifteen years old. Let me be clear that I am not aware of anyone who actually claims this is the resolution to the contradiction. Just sayin'.)

So there are as many as four contradictions between the two stories, some more certain than others. Now, let's return to the story elements that are neither shared nor contradictory. Of these, we have no separate basis for knowing anything about the angelic encounters, or the place where Jesus was born, or the shepherds. Conceivably, the various characters mentioned only by Luke (Zacharias, Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna) or even the magi in Matthew could have been mentioned in some kind of contemporaneous records, though I am not aware of any. (Josephus does mention John the Baptist, but I do not know if that includes his parents.) In any case, history's silence in those cases would not be surprising so it is hardly a basis for comment.

In the case of Herod ordering the slaughter of all of the male children under two years of age in and around Bethlehem, that would have been an event worthy of comment. As Richard Carrier notes, due to the life expectancy at the time, this would have represented approximately 10% of the population in the area. Nobody who wrote about Herod mentions this, even though it would be highly noteworthy, so the lack of mention makes the actual historicity of the slaughter questionable.

The other historically significant event mentioned was the census. Here the problems are more substantial. Luke claims the census took place while Herod was alive and while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Herod died in 4 B.C. Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until 6 A.D. (If Luke is referring to Herod Archelaus instead of Herod the Great then this is another contradiction between Luke and Matthew, since Matthew is clearly referring to Herod the Great.) Caesar Augustus did order a census of Judea, which was conducted by Quirinius, but this was not a census of the entire Roman empire or the entire inhabited earth. (An interpretation of Luke 2:1 consistent with this fact is not particularly unreasonable.) Some skeptics have questioned the need for Joseph to return to his ancestral home for the census, but apparently this was not so uncommon. More troublesome is why he would bring Mary along for the journey when she was expecting to give birth at any time. Why not leave her in the care of friends and family in Nazareth?

The answer to that question is, I think, the answer to many of the questions raised by the contradictions and other features of both accounts. Both Matthew and Luke needed to provide an explanation for Jesus being born in Bethlehem (as required by prophecy) while being raised in Nazareth. Matthew chose to represent Bethlehem as their original home and then manufactured a reason to leave and eventually settle somewhere else. Luke chose to represent Nazareth as their original home, so he needed to manufacture a reason for Mary to travel to Bethlehem to give birth, at which point they could return home to Nazareth.

Matthew's solution to the problem allowed him incorporate two (supposed) fulfillments of prophecy, one regarding the murdered children and one regarding God calling his son out of Egypt, though in neither case do the "prophecies" appear to be prophecies at all. He also is able to incorporate the "dangerous child" motif into the story, a theme that is very common in literature and mythology. But this solution required the introduction of a significant ahistorical event in addition to Matthew's tendency to manufacture prophetic fulfillments where no prophecy was intended.

Luke's solution, on the other hand, is far more plausible. There are some questions about the timing of the events he describes, and the inclusion of Mary on an unnecessary journey while in the final days of her pregnancy is rather suspicious, but so long as one is willing to accept that Jesus was born in 6 A.D. the difficulties are far smaller with Luke than with Matthew.

The Christmas story as told in Matthew contradicts the story as told in Luke in almost as many points as they agree. On the whole, Luke's version is more plausible. I consider it most probable that both accounts are almost entirely fabricated, but the account in Luke is sufficiently consistent internally and externally that I would not expect to convince anyone of that on the basis of the story itself, but only as part of a much larger evaluation of the trustworthiness of Luke.

Richard Carrier has written a far more detailed examination of the dating issues The Date of the Nativity in Luke, which also touches briefly on the other points of contradiction between Matthew and Luke. Mostly, though, he examines various suggestions that have been put forward for reconciling the dates implied by Matthew and Luke.