Loose Canons

There is, I think, I fairly common view among Christians (and especially conservative Christians) that the Bible with all of its various books and authors, is describing a single overall truth. Sure, the Old Testament may appear to have a different sort of theology than the New Testament, but that (in this interpretation) reflects the ongoing work of God and his plan for humanity. Sure, there may appear to be conflicts among various New Testament writers, or even among various writings by the same author. These are taken to be indications that the underlying truth may be subtle, and that further study will resolve these apparent difficulties by uncovering a unified underlying framework. This kind of outlook is particularly likely, I think, among those that believe the Bible is the inspired, infallible word of God.

I will not pretend to know exactly how common this type of view is, but I can say that it would have described my own views on the subject for most of my life. However, as I began to re-evaluate my beliefs, I encountered compelling reasons to discard this view in favor of another. In this alternative view, the various books of the Bible reflect the understandings and goals of their authors, understandings and goals which change over time and which are not mutually consistent. Under this view, it is particularly important to identify the context in which the authors wrote, and even who they were (or were not).

Perhaps the most important reasons derive from the development of the New Testament canon. (Perhaps I should say canons, since there are several, but I will focus just on those 27 books that constitute the canon with which most Catholic and Protestant Christians are familiar.) There were many other Christian writings that were not accepted into the canon. How did we get the collection that we have today? Why should we give them particular trust and exclude the others? A common answer given by Christian apologists is that three factors were critical: apostolic authority, doctrinal correctness and widespread use. Apostolic authority means that the books were written by apostles, or by close associates of the apostles in the cases of Mark and Luke. Doctrinal correctness and widespread use seem like fairly obvious criteria, but I will return to them in a minute.

We know of a great many early Christian writings that claimed to have been written by apostles. The Gospel of Judas was in the news last year about this time, having been recently found and translated, but there were many others that claimed Paul, Peter, Thomas, James, Barnabas, Mary Magdelene and even Jesus as authors. All are agreed by modern scholars to be pseudonymous; that is, they were not written by the people that they claim as authors. So, based on the criteria suggested above, they were correctly excluded from the canon, at least the canon accepted by the Catholic church and inherited by Protestants.

However, scholars in the last several hundred years have developed strong cases against apostolic authorship for many of the writings that were included in the canon, including all of the gospels and as many as seven of the epistles normally attributed to Paul, and several others. Some of the cases are stronger than others.

For example, the pastorals (I and II Timothy and Titus) are among those attributed to Paul that are almost certainly forgeries. Evidence for this derives from writing style, vocabulary, doctrine and historical context. Over one third of the words used in the pastorals are not found in any of the other Pauline epistles, but they are common among second century Christian writings. As an example of doctrinal differences, in the uncontested Pauline epistles there is nothing like the misogynistic doctrines described in I Timothy 2:9-15. (I Corinthians 14:34-35 contains similar language, but this appears to be a later scribal insertion, based both on the content of our earliest manuscripts and the lack of continuity with the surrounding verses.) Regarding historical context, the pastorals concern churches with well-developed hierarchical structures, structures which had not yet developed in Paul's time, but consistent with early second century authorship.

Without going into any more detail here, let me just list the books whose apostolic authorship is seriously questioned by modern scholarship: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Ephesians, Colossians, II Thessalonians, Hebrews, James, I and II Timothy, Titus, I and II Peter, Jude, and Revelation. As I said, some of these are more certain the others to be pseudo-epigraphical, but that is more than half of the New Testament books. And these conclusions were not reached by scholars out to destroy Christianity, but generally by Christian scholars seeking to understand the documents that lie at the foundation of their beliefs.

Doctrinal correctness is another interesting issue. The development of the canon was triggered by competition between various doctrinal positions. The first canons were developed in the second century by Gnostic Christians, with "orthodox" Christians responding with their own canons, eventually leading to the canon accepted today. I put the scare quotes around "orthodox" because the question of what is orthodox and what is not is an important question here. While historically one position "won" and came to be called orthodox (which means "right doctrine"), does that really mean those doctrines are correct? Or were they just more popular? How do we know what are the correct doctrines? We cannot appeal to scripture, not when the decisions about what to consider scripture were based on doctrinal correctness to begin with!

If we fall back on apostolic authority we encounter trouble quickly enough due to the questions of what was really said by the apostles. If we fall back on inspiration by God apart from apostleship, who is to say what was inspired by God and what was not? The heretics (as judged by what became the orthodoxy) also claimed inspiration. We cannot even rely on mutual consistency because, whether or not there is some as yet unknown unifying underlying theme, some apparent inconsistencies are as yet unresolved.

Are we left then simply with widespread use? From what we can tell today, the apocryphal Gospel of Peter was more widely used than the Gospel of Mark. It was discarded due to passages that could be used to support the Docetic "heresy". As another example, The Shepherd of Hermas was also widely read but eventually excluded from the canon. As far as I know, this was due to explicitly non-apostolic authorship. So, widespread use alone is insufficient.

So, while perhaps well-intentioned, the criteria of apostolic authorship fell victim to forgeries. The forgeries were probably intended to lend apparent apostolic authority to competing doctrinal positions. For doctrinal correctness to be useful as a criteria, an external mechanism for determining doctrinal correctness would be required. Since apostolic authority was already undermined by undetected forgeries (at the time), apostolic authority could not have really been that mechanism. Widespread use was clearly viewed as insufficient, since that criteria was trumped by lack of apostolic authority and by doctrinal issues. (One might make the case that widespread use could have been sufficient for inclusion in the canon, but in any case, it would be insufficient grounds for judging the texts even probably true.)

Where does this lead? I think it causes grave problems for anyone who grounds their beliefs on the authority of scripture, particularly if their view of scripture includes the entire New Testament. As I said at the beginning of this post, that describes some Christians, but not all. That is, some Christians hold different views about the role of the Bible in forming and supporting their beliefs. By itself, these considerations do not imply that now-orthodox Christian doctrines are false or that New Testament accounts of Jesus and the early church are incorrect. They do highlight some of the reasons that these doctrines invite critical examination and that the supposedly historical accounts should be viewed suspiciously.

Following up on EWE

In yesterday's post I made a number of assertions without a significant amount of elaboration or references. I plan to fill some of that in during the next few posts. Today I am just going to pass along a few links.

First, I happened to come across again today an essay I had read before, Richard Carrier's Why I Am Not a Christian. His essay covers some of the same points I was trying to make, but from a different angle and at somewhat greater length. It is a worthwhile read.

Second, regarding Lee Strobel's books, the Secular Web has reviews of a number of his books: The Rest of the Story, a review of The Case for Christ, The Case Against Faith: A Critical Look at Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith, Another Case Not Made: A Critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator and Objections Sustained!, another critique of The Case for Faith. I have not personally read all of them, and it has been awhile since I read any of them, but I am fairly confident they will present good summaries of the reasons skeptics find Strobel's books unconvincing.

Evidence? What Evidence?

<rant>

While I have not brought it up for quite awhile, one the major reasons that I left Christianity was that the supposed consequences for disbelief were vastly out of proportion to the evidence available and our ability to make sense out of it. That is, at least according to some common versions of Christianity, the consequence of disbelief is eternal damnation, an unending tortuous existence. Whether this is punishment imposed by God or the natural consequence of our sinful nature, either way the only way out (we are told) is belief in Jesus as the savior of the world, the one atoning sacrifice, and so on. And yet, what reasons do we have to believe that this is true? Are those reasons so compelling that only the rebellious would disregard them? Are they so solid that those who, having heard them, deserve hell for not believing?

Some would say, perhaps, that people do not deserve hell for not believing; rather, they deserve hell because they are imperfect, sinful creatures and hell is the natural or deserved result of such a state. We should be thankful, according to this view, that God provided a way of escape. But if this is so, why did God do such a poor job of providing evidence to those for whom lack of evidence is a stumbling block? Some Christians have said that, for those who don't believe, that the evidence is not really the reason for disbelief, but this is not the case. While there are certainly people for which this is true, just as certainly there are people who have honestly searched through the evidence, found it lacking, and so did not believe. The problem is not willful rejection of compelling evidence. The problem really is lack of evidence.

The central claim of Christianity, I think it is fair to say, is that Jesus died and was raised in order to save us. (There are liberal Christians who would dispute this, but my argument here is not with them.) This, like many other important aspects of Christian belief, involves a claim about a historical event. This event would have occurred nearly two thousand years ago during a time of even greater credulity than we experience today. The only accounts of this event come from those who were neither indifferent nor skeptical, and those accounts contain clear signs of legendary development as well as purposeful embellishment from the first to the last. They were written over a span of thirty to forty years, and the earliest one was written at least thirty years after the events described.

Do we have other reasons to trust these authors? We do not know who they are. The attributions to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John do not come (as far as we can tell) until another fifty to one hundred years after they were written, and scholars have discovered substantial reasons to doubt them. We also know that Christian forgeries were common during this era, as attested by the number of pseudo-epigraphical gospels, epistles and apocalypses that were written during this era. But perhaps the fact that these other documents were eventually rejected by early Christians gives us reason to trust the writings that they accepted? No, for we also have excellent reasons to believe that many, perhaps even a majority, of the other New Testament books were also not written by the traditionally accepted authors. These reasons are not simple guesses, but the result of years of careful study by scholars (usually Christian scholars) who examine the theological themes, language usage, external references and evident historical context to make their assessments. There is still debate over some cases, of course, but in other cases the evidence is strong and the agreement substantial.

The same sorts of evaluations place substantial portions of the Old Testament in doubt. This is not to say that the books of the Old Testament are entirely fictional. Many of the historical events described have some support from archeology and other historical sources, and in other cases we might accept the Biblical descriptions as prima facie evidence of their historicity or at least, of some kernel of historical truth. But yet, there remain significant portions that appear mythical or legendary. We have comparable writings from other ancient sources, but when these other sources describe the intervention of gods in the world, we accept that they are mythological. We can see instances where the Hebrew authors have borrowed concepts from the belief systems of their neighbors and incorporated those concepts into their own. (Examples include the Ugaritic mythology and the dualism derived from Zoroastrianism.) Do we have good reasons, then, to believe the Hebrew accounts but not the others?

Perhaps we should depend on the fact that Christian beliefs have persisted for two thousand years, and Judaism for another thousand before that? Other belief systems have survived for comparable lengths of time. Christianity may be better represented in the world today, but I think a strong argument can be made that this representation can be attributed to the technological and economic growth and subsequent imperialism by European nations where Christianity happened to be dominant. Some would say that this technological and economic growth itself was dependent on Christianity, but this is hardly an uncontroversial claim, especially considering Christianity's prominence during the Western civilization's decline during the second half the of the first millennium.

What about the subjective experience of Christians? Can we not look to the improvement in the lives of believers as evidence to the truth of their beliefs? Unfortunately, similar claims of improvement can be found among the adherents of other belief systems, systems that contradict the claims of Christianity. What proves too much proves nothing at all. Additionally, when we actually look at sociological research for evidence of this improvement, the results are remarkably ambiguous, and occasionally the reverse of what is claimed. If there is evidence to be found here, right now the signal is buried in the noise.

Can we look to philosophy? Is God a logical necessity? Christians have proposed ontological arguments, the teleological arguments, moral arguments, transcendental arguments, even pragmatic arguments. None have been successful. Of course, philosophical arguments have also failed to disprove the existence of God. We must look elsewhere.

What about science? So far, science has not detected God, and I say that only partly in jest. Science has been our most reliable method of learning about the reality we inhabit, and yet we cannot look to science for direct observational evidence of God. For the most part, science has been busy explaining those aspects of the natural world that were previously thought to be dependent on God. Theists are holding out in the shelter of the Big Bang, claiming that a beginning to the universe must indicate a First Cause, an Unmoved Mover. Even supposing this might eventually turn out to be the case, given the general retreat of religious claims before the advances of science, it hardly seems reasonable to depend on our current ignorance about events so remote from us in time and outside our experience for evidence about something even more remote from our observational capabilities.

In the face of this startling lack of evidence, and sometimes contrary evidence, we are told that the consequence for disbelief is eternal hellfire. God loves us and wants the best for us, of course, but the evidence we have was the best he could do? Is there a good reason for him to withhold better evidence from us?

It would infringe on our free will, some say. Nonsense. Twice nonsense. First, because some of these same people will point to the amazing signs and prophecies performed and fulfilled by Jesus (we are told) as evidence of his divinity. If you believe that if God supplied better evidence he would infringe on our free will, but you also believe he performed those signs, then you believe he already did infringe on the free will of those who saw the signs. Why not again? And second, how does additional information infringe on anybody's free will anyway? Does learning something or observing something infringe on your will? If anything, it empowers you to make better choices. If anything, among those who would freely choose to believe if there were better evidence, withholding that evidence is what infringes on free will.

Or should we just believe without evidence? It's a faith thing, right? But how do you choose what to believe on faith? Why this and not something else? If there are no reasons to believe this one thing instead of something else, well, then there are no reasons to believe this one thing instead of something else. No, it has to come back to reasons, and I mean reasons in the sense of evidence, not in the sense of consequences — like the threat of hell.

When all is said and done, the evidence just is not there. If we were asked to believe a fairly ordinary thing with insubstantial consequences, perhaps we might believe it on the evidence we have. Instead, we are asked to believe an exceptional thing with almost inconceivable consequences. A good God would not leave us in this situation. Perhaps God does not exist after all. Perhaps he is not good. Perhaps (and some Christians do believe this), perhaps the whole hell thing was a bit of a mistake. Something has to give.

Before I conclude, I have to mention the state of Christian apologetics. The goal of apologetics is, I suppose, to defend the faith. In this, I suppose it has been successful, but not due to the evidence or arguments offered. They are successful because they give people who already believe the comfortable illusion that the faith has been defended. Some of the best examples of this are Lee Strobel's books, like "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for Easter". His shtick is to play the role of an "investigative journalist" and interview various Christian scholars, but I say "play the role" quite purposefully, because he accepts nearly everything they say at face value, even when one person contradicts another. To my knowledge, he never interviews anyone who substantially disagrees with his thesis and he never challenges anyone that agrees. Similar problems exist in other popular apologetic works. They defend their arguments from strawmen. They simply omit facts that are inconvenient to their case. They repeat anecdotes in support of their case that have no basis in fact. But for those readers that are hearing just what they expect, who trust their Christian authorities to tell them the truth, who would never consider reading anything that would actually challenge their beliefs, those readers are comforted by what they read and it seems good to them. I mean, who has time to look into it themselves? Best just to leave that to the experts. And so it goes.

Not every Christian apologist is like that, and not every Christian reader is like that. But some are. Just read the comments on Amazon.com for Lee Strobel's books...

</rant>

Apocalyptic Thoughts I

The Book of Daniel, which I discussed a few weeks ago, is an example of apocalyptic literature. "Apocalypse" comes from a Greek word meaning "a lifting of the veil" or "an uncovering". Apocalyptic literature in general describes the revealing of important matters that have previously been hidden. This type of literature and the beliefs so described were common through the centuries prior to and following the time of Jesus' life and the beginning of the Christian church, and in these cases the important matters related to God and his (coming) kingdom. There were both Jewish apocalypticists (like the author of Daniel) as well as Christian apocalypticists (like the author of Revelations).

Among the various factions that existed in Palestine during the life of Jesus, the Essenes had a clear apocalyptic bent. The Essenes, who left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, lived in communities separated from others in order to prepare themselves for the coming kingdom of God. I have also heard that the Pharisees may have held some apocalyptic views; at least, they appeared to believe in a coming resurrection, a belief not shared by the Sadducees.

This outlook can also be seen quite clearly in the New Testament. John the Baptist preached an apocalyptic message. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matthew 3:2) To the Pharisees and Sadducees, he said "who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matthew 3:7, Luke 3:7) "The axe is already laid at the root of the tree..." (Matthew 3:10, Luke 3:9) It was in the context of this message by John the Baptist that Jesus entered the public eye, and Jesus soon made very similar statements. "The kingdom of God is at hand." (Mark 1:15, Matthew 4:17) In Mark, Jesus frequently describes the coming Son of Man (an allusion to Daniel 7:13) who will bring God's kingdom to the earth, though strangely, there is little indication in those contexts that he is referring to himself.

When will this kingdom come? The quotes above indicate a sort of urgency, but there is yet more specific guidance on the matter. All three synoptic gospels quote Jesus as saying "This generation will not pass away until all these things take place." (Mark 13:30, Matthew 24:34, Luke 21:31)

Did it happen? First, we must answer a different question. What did Jesus mean when he said "the kingdom of God is at hand"? Was he referring simply to his own death and resurrection? Was that the arrival of God's kingdom? Was it the beginning of the Christian church at Pentacost? Or is there another way we should look at the issue?

If we take him to understand that his death and resurrection or the beginning of the Christian church were the beginning of the kingdom, we quickly run into difficulties. First, in the parallel passages from Mark 13, Matthew 24 and Luke 21 where Jesus said that the current generation would not pass away, the larger context is Jesus' response to a question from some of his disciples. He had just told them that the temple would be destroyed, and they ask when that will happen. He proceeds to describe the various things that must happen first: wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution by the Jews ("in the synagogues"), witnessing to kings, preaching to all nations, the abomination of desolation, tribulation, the sun and moon darkened, stars falling and then, finally, the Son of Man coming in the clouds. And it is after saying all of that that Jesus says, "this generation will not pass away until all these things take place." These events are clearly not related to the events surrounding Jesus death and resurrection or the beginnings of Christianity.

To reinforce this point, consider Mark 8:38-9:1 and Luke 9:26-27, where Jesus describes the Son of Man coming with the holy angels, and "there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power." Again, the Son of Man comes during the lifetimes of (some of) the disciples.

Further evidence comes from Paul's letters and to a lesser degree, Acts. Early in Acts, for instance, the first Christians are described as selling their possessions, and this behavior makes the most sense for people who do not expect things to continue in their normal course for much longer. But Paul's letters provide much stronger evidence that the early Christians were still expecting the kingdom to arrive quickly. In I Thessalonians 4:15 Paul says "that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep." The clear implication to the recipients of this letter was that some of them would still be alive when Jesus returned. In I Corinthians 15:51 he writes "We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed," and again, his readers would certainly expect this to apply to them, that the events described would happen while some of them were still alive.

Did Jesus and Paul really mean the people living then when they said "this generation" and "we who are alive and remain" and "we will not all sleep"? Or did they really mean this to apply to whoever happened to be alive when the events did finally take place? The wording and intention is clear enough. The only reason to ask the question is that the events described clearly did not occur within the lifetimes of the first century Christians. Apart from this inconvenient truth, the teaching of both Paul and Jesus himself clearly anticipate the arrival of the Son of Man and the kingdom of God, as well as their dramatic precursors within the lifetimes of the earliest believers. Alternative explanations (including those found within later writings of the New Testament) are best understood as post hoc rationalizations intended to rescue Christian beliefs from the evident failure of the clear predictions of Jesus and the early Christian spokesmen.

Truth or Consequences

I am concerned about what is true, and as is clear from my writing here, I do not think that the central claims of Christianity are true. Anyone concerned about discovering the truth needs to be aware of fallacies. Fallacies are arguments (or types of arguments) where the premises do not actually provide logical support for the conclusion. You can find whole catalogs of fallacies around the Internet.

One type of fallacy is an argument from consequences. While there are several variants, a typical form goes like this:

1. If P, then Q.
2. Q is good (desirable)
3. Therefore P is true

Alternatively, it can be framed as an argument against some proposition:

1. If P, then Q.
2. Q is bad (undesirable)
3. Therefore not-P

Neither of these arguments is valid; in neither case does the conclusion follow from the premises, regardless of whether or not the premises are actually true.

Of course, people do not normally express themselves using this form explicitly, and in fact, some of the premises of an informally expressed argument may not even be stated. When this is so, the fallacy may be harder to recognize. Nevertheless, the fallacy is still there.

A pretty typical example in the context of a discussion about the truth of Christianity would be "Without God my life would have no meaning (or purpose, or hope)." This single sentence is usually the informal condensation of the argument:

1. If God does not exist, my life would have no meaning (or purpose, or hope)
2. Lack of meaning (or purpose, or hope) is bad (undesirable)
3. Therefore God exists

Stated in this way, it is clearly an argument from consequences, and so the conclusion does not follow from the premises, even if the premises were true. If God does not exist, and if it were true that meaning, purpose and hope were dependent on God's existence, well, then there would be no meaning, purpose or hope, no matter how much we might want those things.

Another example concerns morality. The claim is frequently made that without God, there would be no grounds for morality. In this case, the argument could be refined in several ways. If the hidden assumption were "Having no grounds for morality is bad", then the implicit argument would be fallacious because it would be an argument from consequences. On the other hand, the unstated assumption could be that "We have grounds for morality." In this case, the argument would not be an argument from consequences, but it still fails, for if the only grounds for morality were that God existed, the argument would be circular, since the conclusion is contained in one of the premises. On the other hand, if the second premise stated that we have grounds for morality that are independent of God, then the second premise would contradict the first premise (that without God, we have no grounds for morality) and the conclusion again would not be supported.

The existence of God or the truth of Christianity cannot be decided on the basis of how much you like or dislike either alternative. Not liking the perceived consequences of God's non-existence presents an emotional barrier to disbelief, but it has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of that claim. Further, if your hope (or meaning or purpose) is dependent on God's existence, but God does not exist, then your hope is false, your meaning fake, your purpose illusory. All of that might make you feel better, but it will not be real.

But what if, in addition to the arguments being fallacious, the premises are wrong? What if there can be hope, meaning, purpose and morality without God? If you believe in God because it gives you hope, you would be trading real hope for false hope. If you derive your morality from a non-existent God, but grounds for morality do exist apart from God, you may end up acting immorally. Your ill-founded purpose may be misleading. I think all of these are the case and these all contribute to the harm caused by Christianity.

The particular fallacious arguments that I described are fairly common, and their repetition is harmful because they raise an emotional barrier to proper belief, that is, belief based on true premises and valid arguments. In these cases, the premises are false and the arguments unsound. They do have emotional impact. People appear to fear the consequences they imagine or have been told would follow from God's non-existence. If so, disbelief might and probably will require some courage. But that fear cannot be allowed to prevent us from finding the truth, whatever it might be.

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.