Attend or view online the debate on the topic Is Faith in God Reasonable? between two American leading philosophers William Lane Craig vs Alex Rosenberg

The much awaited debate about the existence of God (or rather, the reasonableness of belief in God) between two leading American philosophers, theist William Lane Craig and hard-core atheist Alex Rosenberg, will can be watched online. 

VIEW DEBATE ONLINE:
February 1, 2013
Friday, 7 9:30 pm EST LIVE or 7-9:30 pm PST DELAYED
Sign up online at www.biola.edu/debate

ATTEND DEBATE LIVE:
February 1, 2013
Friday, 7 9:30 pm EST
Purdue University
Eliott Hall of Music
West Lafayette, IN
Cost: FREE
More info: www.apologeticsevents.com

I'll attend that debate, so stay tuned for my comments or review of it. 

For a devastating critique of Rosenberg's book "An Atheist's Guide to Reality", read these series of posts by philosopher Edward Feser.

William Lane Craig on Bertrand Russell's teapot analogy: Another bad atheist objection which is based upon the confusion of absence of evidence with the existence of contrary evidence

 

Many atheists, wholly incapable of formulating solid arguments against the existence of God, are forced to argue for a wholly implausible position, namely that the absence of evidence for God suffices to think that God doesn't exist. They illustrate this point with examples, like "we believe that Flying Pink Elephants don't exist because there is not evidence for these things".

But obviously we don't deny the existence of these things because we lack evidence for them. On the contrary, we deny the existence of such things because our CURRENT knowledge (e.g. about zoology and the biology  and genetics of elephants) implies that it is likely that such animals (e.g. flying  pink elephants) don't exist.

The atheist analogy has this form: "We lack evidence for X, therefore we must believe that X doesn't exist", when actually the examples mentioned by the atheist have this form "Our current knowledge implies that X is unlikely, and given that we don't have positive evidence for X which could counterbalance that, we have to conclude that X's existence is unlikely".

The atheist conflates the cases in which, given our knowledge, it is unlikely that certain entities do exist; with the (wholly different) cases in which there is absolutely not evidence whatsoever for the existence or non-existence of some entity. In the latter case (in contrast with the former), the proper position is agnosticism, because we have no reason at all to believe or disbelieve the thing in question.

Just an example: In this blog, I've never written a post about how to repair PCs or to buy in Amazon. Readers of this blog have absolutely no evidence for the claim that Jime Sayaka knows how to repair PC or buy things in Amazon. Now, are you readers justified in concluding that I don't know how to do these things? Obviously not, your proper position about this question is agnosticism: You don't know if I have such knowledge or not.

Now, suppose that you claim that on your bed  is Pamela Anderson right now. You go to your bed and you don't see her. In this case, the fact that you don't see her is CONTRARY evidence for the claim that she's there. Why? Because if she were there, on your bed, you WOULD see her. And You don't. 

In logic, this is known as modus tollendo tollens (If A, then B, Not-B, then Not-A).

Note that the example of Pamela is, from a logical point of view, wholly different from the example of Jime not posting anything about repairing PCs (my knowledge about how to repair PCs doesn't imply that I'm going to post about it... specially since it is not a blog about PCs).

Summarizing: The atheist objection conflates cases of absolute absence of evidence for X, with cases in which we have, based upon our current knowledge (and the expectations based on this knowledge), CONTRARY evidence for the existence of X.

Atheist "geniuses" and "brights" cannot understand this, and it is a waste of time to try to explain this to them.

That atheists like Richard Dawkins and Lewis Wolpert have used such objection is understable, since they're not sophisticated philosophers nor thinkers. We cannot ask them (nor we can reasonably expect) that they can understand hard philosophical issues or fine and subtle logical matters. But when  trained philosophers like Bertrand Russell or John Shook engage themselves in such sophomoric modes of argumentation, we can only feel a deep dissapoiment and lack of intellectual respect for them, and tell to ourselves: SHAME on them.

Sheer atheistic pseudo-intelectualism, bad philosophy, stupidity and mediocrity on behalf of atheistic wishful thinking.
 

John Lennox, PhD on the God of the gaps argument and the arguments for God's existence

Some atheists, who even don't understand the basic principles of logic, argue that the arguments for God's existence are "God of the gaps" arguments, that is, arguments which are based on "gaps" in our knowledge of the world.

The "God of the gaps" argument has this logical form:

-There is a gap in our scientific knowledge regarding X, therefore God caused (or did) X.

No one of the best known theistic arguments have the above logical form. Some of these arguments are deductive arguments (e.g. the kalam argument), where the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises (and the premises themselves don't include any "gap" in our knowledge, but on the contrary, positive claims of knowledge).

In this short video, Oxford mathematician and philosopher John Lennox explains why the theistic arguments are NOT based on gaps in our knowledge (in fact, as stressed above, theistic arguments like the kalam are based on positive claims of knowledge, for example, in our scientific and common sense knowledge that whatever begins to exist has a cause and our scientific knowledge that the universe began to exist. No "gaps" exist in this argument at all, all of its premises are based on positive, actually existent, valid, rock-solid and extremely plausible scientific knowledge).

That some atheists keep saying that theistic arguments are based on "God of the gaps" arguments, is evidence of their ignorance and intellectual incompetence. If their misunderstanding is intentional, then it suggests that they misrepresent the argument in order to convey the impression (to other atheists) that the theistic arguments are so bad that they don't need to be taken seriously.

Pure self-deception in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance felt by not having good objections to the proper formulation of the theistic arguments.

This is one reason why sosphisticated theists continously kick the butts of atheists in public debates.

The High Christology about Jesus in the source "Q": Early evidence for the traditional, divine view of the historical Jesus

The Q document or source is a hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus, assumed by most scholars to be a common source behind the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, but not found in the Gospel of Mark. This hypothetical source, if it exists, is the oldest material regarding Jesus, and hence the traditions contained in it are likely to be historical because they pass the criterion of date.

Many liberal scholars, who are experts in the misuse of the criteria of authenticity, often use "Q" in order to deny the distinctive, Christian view of Jesus. They argue that many of the Christian features and sayings attributed to Jesus don't appear in "Q", and hence are likely to be later inventions. (This sort of argumentation is based on the negative use of the criteria of authenticity. If a tradition doesn't appear in the early sources, it doesn't make it non-historical, specially is such tradition passes positively other criteria of authenticity like multiple attestation, dissimilarity or embarasment.) In fact, the crucifixion doesn't appear in "Q", but does it make the crucifixion a Christian invention? Obviously not. In fact, the overwhelming majority of scholars agree that the crucifixion is the best known fact about the historical Jesus.

So, the argument "It is not in Q, hence it is not historical" is a fallacious inference based on anti-Christian prejudices and abuses of the Q material on behalf of an anti-Christian agenda. (See an egregious example here).

On the other hand, is it true that the "Q" source present a Jesus very different than the traditional, divine view of Jesus? Like in the case of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, the answer seems to be NO. 

EVIDENCE OF HIGH CHRISTOLOGY IN Q

Consider the Q saying in Mattew 4: 1-7 and Luke 4: 1-11:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted^[a] by the devil. ² After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³ The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’^[b]”
⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ⁶ “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’^[c]”

⁷ Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’^[d]”

Note carefully that the condition of the Son of God (with extraordinary divine powers and prerrogatives like making stones to become bread and being specially protected by God's angels) is attributed to Jesus by the foremost, heavenly and spiritual enemy of God, namely the Devil!

Note that Jesus didn't deny his condition as the Son of God. Rather, he rejects the devil's demands in order to avoid putting God to test (which is commanded by the Old Testament in Deut. 6:16, which in passing shows Jesus' respect for the Old Testament).

It shows that already in the very early, Q material, Jesus is seen clearly and irrefutably as the Son of God, and such divine, exclusivistic status is put not in his lips (nor in the lips of his earthly followers), but in the lips of God's foremost spiritual enemy.

This is powerful evidence for a high Christological view about Jesus in Q (which coheres well, not only with Jesus' resurrection, as an exclusive prerrogative of the Son of God, but also with the mysterious individual specifically selected by God to suffer for others' sins in Isaiah 53; a view which was part of the early Christian teaching and considered as of "first importance" by Paul, and with Jesus' exclusivistic self-perception as the only way to God).

EVIDENCE OF JESUS' EXCLUSIVISTIC SELF-PERCEPTION IN Q

Many liberal scholars, who appeal to Q in order to make a Jesus in their own image, a kind of New Age sage whose main activity consisted in telling a bunch of nice stories and positive thoughts in order to change people's perspectives and worldviews (more or less the equivalent to a contemporary Deepak Chopra or Wayne Dyer and other self-help gurus) often ignore or try to undermine the evidence for Jesus' exclusivistic self-perception and rigurous, severe jugdamental character in Q.

But the evidence for Jesus' exclusivistic self-perception exists in Q. Consider Mattew 7:21-23 and Luke 13:24-27.

In Mattew 7:21-23:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!

Note that Jesus links his own person with the conditions for entering God' kingdom. He see himself as someone with the prerrogative and the right of making moral and spiritual jugdments and evaluations about others and telling to the ones who are not going to be saved "I never knew you, away from me, you evildoers" (This expression clearly denotes spiritual rejection and moral reprobation).

Can any unbiased, objective person sensibly think that the Jesus in "Q" was merely a nice guy telling a bunch of beautiful stories to change other people's perspectives? Such a view is clearly a purely prejudiced, blind, wishful thinking and emotional opinion based upon a extremely limited part of the evidence. 

In addition to telling stories or trying to change people's perspective (obviously Jesus did that, but not only that), more importantly Jesus was presenting himself as the only mediator between God and the human beings, and therefore as the only person with the prerrogative and the "last word" to judge others morally and spiritually regarding God's kingdom and salvation.

Consider the version of this saying in Luke 13:24-27:  

Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. ²⁵ Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ ²⁶ “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ ²⁷ “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!

Jesus is putting himself in the place of the "owner of the house". Is this, plausibly, a religious pluralistic self-perception by Jesus? Obviously not. Is Jesus in "Q" being merely a teller of nice stories? Definitively NO.

He's putting himself in the foremost, senior spiritual position regarding salvation. This position allows him to make moral and spiritual authoritative judgments and reprobations about who are going to be saved and who are going to be rejected. The WHOLE point of Jesus' words in the above passage in "Q" is precisely to make such distinction between who are going to enter God's kingdom (the ones following the narrow door) and the ones who are not going to enter (the ones following the wider door or doors, which implies that MOST ways to God don't lead to God at all, they're only false appearences)..

If you don't like such Jesus, or such view doesn't make you to "feel good" is irrelevant (it tells us more about yourself than about the historical Jesus). The historical evidence is there, and you have to have the GUTS to accept it. Like it or not.

What we cannot do is to misrepresent the evidence (like is done by many liberal scholars) in order to create a Jesus who is not the Jesus portrayed in the evidence.

Consider a further saying in "Q" (Mattew 11: 27 and Luke 10:22):

In Mattew 11: 27: "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

In Luke 10: 22: "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

In addition to being in "Q", this saying passes also the criterion of dissimilarity. So the saying is very likely to be authentic.

Note that Jesus claims that everything what he has received comes from God (which could be plausibly interpreted as implying full divine authority, which coheres well with Jesus's forgiving sins and correcting some laws of the Old Testament, actions which only God was allowed to do). Moreover, he explicitly excludes OTHERS from knowing God, because only the Son (Jesus), and the ones chosen by the Son, know the Father. This is pretty straightforwardly evidence for religious EXCLUSIVISM in "Q".

Could be Jesus more clear in his religious exclusivism? It is simply astonishing to discover how liberal scholars, and some non-scholars (for example, followers of the New Age, "feel good" spiritualities), try to misrepresent this clear, straightforward evidence.

They don't like a Jesus like that, that's all.

But any sane, normal adult knows that the REAL world (including the real spiritual world) is not and doesn't necessarily have to be like we want it. (Thinking otherwise implies an extreme and childish egocentrism and, at the bottom, extreme lack of humility, a desire of be like a mini-god who decides what exists or not... What kind of person can believe that God, or the spiritual world, has to be as one wants it? Why exactly Jesus, if actually divine, has to be religious pluralistic and non-exclusivistic? Why exactly, if a perfectly just God exists, evil human deeds have to be ignored and bypassed by such God? Why exactly God's perfect love have to override God's perfect justice? These and others interesting questions cannot settled on a priori grounds, specially when such apriorism is based on wishful thinking and our personal, ego-based opinions and emotions).

This put me on the track, regarding the idea that people who are sympathetic to "feel good" spiritualities have, as a rule (perhaps there are exceptions), been emotionally injured by Christians or Christian-related matters during their childhood. Because they're acting like children on spiritual matters. They are stuck in their childhood on matters related to spirituality. They have an immature, purely or mainly emotional criterion for choosing spiritual truths.

Expressions like "I don't like a Jesus like that", "I'm incapable of loving a God like that", "I don't want a God who punishes people", "If God is like that, I would prefer atheism" and so forth (that I've heard and read VERY often enough in such American people), are expressions suggestive of a child-like, immature, purely voluntaristic mentality. Feelings, desires and emotions override hard thinking and rigurous exploration of the truth. Prejudices are used as assumptions about the evidence (assumptions which often override the evidence, as shown here). 

The whole approach is flawed from the beginning.

To be honest, I don't want to be too harsh or rude in this post, but I find absolutely shocking how many Americans think like that. It is astonishing (and very dissapointing). 

In America, you can see people more or less familiar with the New Testament scholarship complaining about the Gospel of John being theologically coloured and late (in comparison with the synoptics), and in the same time these people follow and are sympathetic to A Course in Miracles, the Seth Material, The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus or the Urantia Book, which are extremely late, 20th century American sources about Jesus wholly disconnected from the Jewish context of Jesus' life, coming from dubtious paranormal origin and hence very much more later and unreliable than the Gospel of John (which is around the year 100 and comes from a person who "could" know Jesus directly, even though this view is minoritary among scholars), and such New Age spiritualities about Jesus offer information at variance with each other (as I've shown here), and with the earliest evidence about Jesus, including the evidence for high Christology in Q.

America is a great, amazing country, but I'm dissapointed of many people here by their immature, emotional, "feels good" approach to spiritual matters. Also, I feel a kind of sorry for them, because it is my conviction (and perhaps I'm wrong) that a mainly emotional, wishful thinking approach to spiritual matters is very dangerous and potentially self-destructive.

Only God knows...

The criterion of multiple attestation in Historical Jesus research and its misuses by liberal scholars on behalf of naturalistic conclusions

The criterion of multiple attestation says that when a tradition (e.g. event, deed, teaching, saying, etc.) about Jesus is reported in two or more early, independent sources, such tradition is likely to be historical or authentic. 

Like any other criterion of authenticity, the proper application of this criterion is the positive one, that is, the criterion is used to establish what is historical about Jesus. The negative application (that is, using the criterion to establish non-historicity when an event or saying don't pass the criterion) is improper, because it is possible that a given event or saying was produced or uttered by Jesus just once in a specific moment, and it is only recorded in one independent source. (In fact, the overwhelming majority of the events or sayings of Jesus, for example in his teen years, don't appear at all in the historical record. If the criteria of authenticity were used negatively, then we would have to conclude that such events or sayings never happened, what is clearly  false and absurd). The improper, negative use of the criteria of authenticity is very common in the scholarly liberal literature about the historical Jesus (because it allows them, astutely and cleverly, to left out crucial evidence for the historical Jesus which supports the Christian-traditional view of Jesus, like traditions suggesting high Christology or Jesus' exclusivistic self-perception. This manipulation of the evidence by liberal scholars have to be exposed, carefully criticized and documented, and intellectually castigated as examples of atheistic deception, misdirection and charlatanism). Moreover, it is possible (and it is often the case), that a given tradition about Jesus doesn't pass one criterion, but passes others (e.g. the tradition doesn't pass the criterion of multiple attestation, but passes the criteria of disimilarity and/or embarassment). 

See brief examples of liberal scholars' misuse of the criteria of authenticity here.

I've  carefully collected in the past few months a very large documentation and references of examples of prominent liberal scholars abusing and misusing the criteria of authenticity in order to manipulate the sayings and teachings of Jesus. I'm going to publish this data either in this blog, or in another blog specifically created to address this massive scholarly deception (because a detailed and objective critical discussion of this could require another, independent blog, but I haven't decided yet. Just I can say that the pseudoskeptical manipulation of the parapsychological evidence pales in comparison with what liberal scholars are able to do regarding Jesus' person, sayings and teachings). Stay tuned.

The criterion of multiple attestation is one of the most important ones, because if one event or saying is recorded on two or more independent historical sources, then the event or saying is unlikely to be an invention or fabrication. As religious pluralist and liberal scholar Marcus Borg explains:  

if a tradition appears in an early source and in another independent source, then not only is it early, but it is also unlikely to have been made up (The Meaning of Jesus, p.12)

As Borg correctly notes, it is unlikely that two (or more) independent sources will record the same tradition about Jesus if such tradition is a pure invention. A more likely explanation is that the tradition actually comes from Jesus himself, and was recorded in several sources.

Example of a tradition about Jesus which passes positively the criterion of multiple attestation dismissed by some liberal scholars

To mention just one example of a tradition about Jesus which passes positively the criterion of multiple attestation is the BIRTH NARRATIVES about Jesus.

The only two Gospels which include explicit birth stories are consistent in saying that Jesus was born in  Bethlehem (the birth narratives are independently attested in Matthew and Luke, in the sources used by each of them). And no evidence in the Gospels contradicts such view (i.e. the references to Nazareth never say that Jesus was born there).

So, on the positive, proper application of the criterion of multiple attestation, we have to conclude that it is likely that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

But contrary to that evidence, many liberal scholars (including a serious ones like Antonio Piñero) have argued that Jesus probably was born in Nazareth, and that the reference to Bethlehem is a later addition, created when Jesus' figure was already exalted among Christians, and hence the Gospel writers had the necessity to create a  Jesus which fits with the old Testament predictions about the Messiah's birth in Bethlehem.

"Skeptic" Michael Shermer claims more or less the same point, arguing for a "tension" in the Gospels about where Jesus was born (which is clearly false, as Jesus scholar Ben Whiterington III points out):

Please, note very carefully and exactly how Piñero's anti-Christian assumption about "Jesus' exaltation by Christians" overrides the proper application of the criterion of multiple attestation! In the mind of liberal scholars, the assumption that Christians are fabricating the evidence has more weight (for purposes of historical conclusions regarding the reliability of such evidence) than the criterion of multiple attestation.

In other words, and for the shame of liberal scholarship, an anti-Christian prejudice becomes itself a kind of criterion of non-historicity, which we could formulate like this: If a tradition about Jesus supports the distinctive, divine view of Jesus, then it is non-historical and was the product of a later Christian invention, even if such tradition passes positively the criteria of authenticity. (Note that implicit in this liberal "criterion" is the a priori assumption that Christianity is false and cannot be true).

It is very hard to think of a more clear example of prejudice and bias against one given position.

Perhaps, we could find a parallel in the case of pseudoskepticism and parapsychology: If a given psychic or medium is caught on fraud, then he's a fraudulent charlatan and fake psychic. But if the psychic passes positively the tests, then it proves nothing because it is "possible" that the scientists were fooled by the psychic's clever tricks, or that the experimental design was flawed. This still will be the case if the positive evidence is found in tests designed by "professional skeptics and debunkers", like in the following case in which an vedic astrologer passed positively Michael Shermer's test:

Clearly, the atheistic, naturalist assumption that the paranormal doesn't exist overrides the empirical evidence for the paranormal. For "skeptics", the evidence is relevant and sufficient ONLY if it confirms their opinions. If the evidence is contrary to their views, it has not sufficient evidential value at all and may be dismissed.

Exaclty the same happens with many liberal scholars: Given their naturalism, the supernatural cannot exist. Therefore, even if the evidence for the historical Jesus passes positively the criteria of authenticity, it will be rejected if it supports a supernatural or divine view of Jesus (in the case of Jesus' birth, the evidence shows that it meets the Old Testament predictions about the place of the Messiah's birth, supporting the Christian view that Jesus was the Messiah). Given the liberal scholar's naturalism, the Old Testament "predictions" cannot be true. Therefore, the evidence about Jesus' birth in Bethlehem  HAS to be the creation or fabrication of Christians given their exalted view of Jesus. Clearly this begs the question against the Christian view about Jesus, and precludes any historical evidence as being reliable and having strong weight to support the distinctive aspects of the traditional, Christian view of Jesus). Sheer atheistic deception.

The criteria of authenticity were created to discover which aspects of the historical Jesus could be justified on historical grounds. When you apply consistently such criteria, you find that many of the traditional, Christian aspects of Jesus can be justified historically (including his exclusivistic self-perception, resurrection and so forth). 

As consequence, liberals are forced to misapply the criteria in order to avoid such Christian view. This is why some of the liberal reconstructions about the historical Jesus (e.g. suggesting that he was a mere teller of stories, a wise man mainly interested in changhing people's minds) are extremely incomplete and misleading. They're based on misuses of criteria of authenticity which create a partial, mutilated Jesus.

This kind of scholarly sophistry, deception and charlatanism on behalf of a priori atheistic and religious pluralistic assumptions has to be properly debunked.

Another scholar who is a seasoned expert in the misuses of the criteria of authenticity is Bart Ehrman. I'll write a whole post (or series of posts) with specific examples of Ehrman's egregious misuses and missapplications of these criteria, but in the following recent lecture by William Lane Craig about Ehrman's work on the historical Jesus, some examples are clearly mentioned and discussed:

Atheist philosopher Mario Bunge on mind-body dualism and the violation of the law of conservation of energy in his book Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry

In his book "Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry", world-renowned atheist philosopher of science and physicist Mario Bunge offers several objections to mind-body dualism. One of them is this:

Dualism violates physics, in particular the law of conservation of energy. For instance, energy would be created if a decision to take a walk were an event in the nonmaterial soul. Moreover, dualism is inconsistent with the naturalistic ontology that underpins all of the factual sciences. This makes brainless psychology an anomalous solitary discipline. It also deprives the science of mind of the panoply of surgical and pharmaceutical tools that allows it to treat successfully the mental disorders that do not respond to psychotherapy. (p. 150)

Actually, Bunge is providing several objections in the above quotation, but I'm going to comment in his argument that dualism violates physics.

What Bunge doesn't mention (and this is astonishing, because he is himself a professional physicist, with a PhD in that science) is that the law of conservation of energy applies only in CLOSED SYSTEMS (that is, in systems which are closed from the input of external sources of energy). Properly speaking, the law says that in a closed system, the energy is always conserved. 

But if a non-material soul (God, spirits, etc.) exists, then the whole point is that such entities are not part of the closed system of the physical world.

As comments philosopher Uwe Meixner:

It is alleged again and again that the nonphysical causation of physical events is bound to violate received physics because it, allegedly, entails the violation of the law of the preservation of energy, or the violation of the law of the preservation of momentum. Repetition does not make false allegations any less false. First, in physics, the mentioned preservation laws are always asserted under the condition that the physical system with regard to which they are asserted is a so-called closed system: that no energy or momentum is coming into the system from entities that are outside of it, or is going out of the system to entities outside of it. Now, physics is silent on the question whether the entire physical world is a closed system. Moreover, it does not seem to be an analytic truth that the physical world is such a system. It follows that in order to have the nonphysical causation of physical events conflict with the preservation laws, it is necessary to go beyond physics and to assume the metaphysical hypothesis that the physical world is a closed system." (New Perspectives for a Dualistic Conception of Mental Causation. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15, No. 1, 2008, pp. 18–19)

 As physicist Ulrich Mohrhoff commented in my interview with him:

Energy is only conserved within a closed physical system. To assume the universal validity of the law of energy conservation is to assume that the physical universe is causally closed. If one assumes that the physical universe is causally closed, then nothing nonphysical can influence the goings-on in the physical universe. This begs the question of whether the physical universe is causally closed. I have discussed this in detail in a paper titled “The physics of interactionism,” which appeared in Journal of Consciousness Studies 6 (Nos. 8–9, pp. 165–184) and The Volitional Brain (Imprint Academic, 1999). It can be downloaded at http://thisquantumworld.com/PDF/Mohrhoff_JCS.pdf.

Bunge's argument against dualism based upon physics is a textbook example of the fallacy of begging the question.

A COMMENT ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES

Traditionally, a miracle has been defined as a violation of natural laws. More exactly, we should to define a miracle as something which is physically impossible, that is, impossible given the operations of nature based on natural laws.

But it is important to understand that natural laws include implicitly ceteris paribus conditions or assumptions, that is, conditions that are assumed in order to make operative and relevant the natural law in question in a given case. 

As philosopher William Lane Craig comments:

natural laws are assumed to have implicit in them certain ceteris paribus assumptions such that a law states what is the case under the assumption that no other natural factors are interfering. When a scientific anomaly occurs, it is usually assumed that some unknown natural factors are interfering, so that the law is neither violated nor revised. But suppose the law fails to describe or predict accurately because some supernatural factors are interfering? Clearly the implicit assumption of such laws is that no supernatural factors as well as no natural factors are interfering.

In the case of the law of conservation of energy, as Meixner and Mohrhoff pointed out, the implicit assumption behind Bunge's objection is that the universe is a closed system. Given such condition, the law of conservation holds. Delete such condition, and the law of conservation doesn't hold anymore, because interfering factors outside of the physical universe (e.g. the causal action of God or any nonmaterial soul) could be creating energy, so in that case the universe wouldn't be working as a closed system.

Naturalists, including brilliant philosophers like Bunge, are so convinced that atheistic naturalism is true, that they are intellectually blind to see the implicit conditions which make relevant the natural laws in question. Hence, they commit the sophomoric mistakes of using naturalism-assuming arguments against views which precisely challenge naturalism (what is question-begging).

The insights by Craig, Meixner and Mohrhoff provide us with a philosophical framework to understand the occurrence of events which are physically impossible (but possible for nonphysical modes of causation coming from non-physical entities, if they exist). That is, for "miracles".

If God exists, then in principle it cannot be excluded that God could be causally efficacious in the world in certain moments. In such case, the effects directly caused by God (which bypasses the natural laws) will be events inexplicable from the perspective of natural laws, because such events are not consequence of the functioning of natural laws (Note that, in the standard Big Bang model, the beginning of the universe from a singularity would be plausibly a case like this, since the singularity is not the effect of any natural law, because natural laws themselves, together with matter, energy and space-time, were created in such Big Bang singularity. This is why, in order to avoid theism, even sophisticated and brilliant atheists like Quentin Smith are forced to hold the extremely implausible, wholly unwarranted and purely ad hoc view that the universe's beginning came from "Nothingness").

We have to keep this in mind, because common atheist objections against miracles tend (like Bunge regarding dualism) to beg the question against the theist. For example, some atheists claim that the resurrection of Jesus is impossible because it is physically impossible (given our current scientific knowledge of anatomy, cell biology, celullar apoptosis) that a dead body comes to life again.

But the believer in Jesus' resurrection fully agrees with the atheist that such thing is physically impossible. The Christian is not arguing that Jesus rose naturally from the death, but that Jesus rose supernaturally (i.e. in virtue of nonphysical, nonnatural modes of causation which bypasses the functioning of natural laws) from the death.

The atheist objection conflates the proposition "Jesus was risen naturally from the death" with the (wholly different, from an ontological viewpoint) proposition "Jesus was risen supernaturally from the death". While the former is extremely unlikely (even physically impossible), the latter is impossible only if supernatural modes of causation doesn't exist. But this begs the question against theism, which postulates precisely a supernatural and omnipotent being called God.

As William Lane Craig comments:

With respect to the resurrection of Jesus, for example, the hypothesis "God raised Jesus from the dead" is not improbable, either relative to our background information or to the specific evidence. What is improbable relative to our background information is the hypothesis "Jesus rose naturally from the dead." Given what we know of cell necrosis, that hypothesis is fantastically, even unimaginably, improbable. Conspiracy theories, apparent death theories, hallucination theories, twin brother theories--almost any hypothesis, however unlikely, seems more probable than the hypothesis that all the cells in Jesus's corpse spontaneously came back to life again. But such naturalistic hypotheses are not more probable than the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. The evidence for the laws of nature relevant in this case makes it probable that a resurrection from the dead is naturally impossible, which renders improbable the hypothesis that Jesus rose naturally from the grave. But such evidence is simply irrelevant to the probability of the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. That hypothesis needs to be weighed in light of the specific evidence concerning such facts as the post-mortem appearances of Jesus, the vacancy of the tomb where Jesus's corpse was laid, the origin of the original disciples' firm belief that God had, in fact, raised Jesus, and so forth, in the religio-historical context in which the events took place and assessed in terms of the customary criteria used in justifying historical hypotheses, such as explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, and so forth. When this is done, there is no reason a priori to expect that it will be more probable that the testimony is false than that the hypothesis of miracle is true.

If God exists, then we cannot say that it is "improbable" that a miracle occurs, because such probability cannot be calculated given God's decisions being free. How are you going to calculate the probability of what a fully free agent like God (if He exists) is going to do in a specific moment?

The atheist simply assumes that it is impossible or extremely improbable, since he doesn't believe in miracles (because he doesn't believe in God). So, naively (or ignorantly), he tries to interpret the miracle in terms of the probability of such event given our knowledge of the natural working of the world. But such knowledge is irrelevant to assess the probability of supernatural events coming from a free agent.

This approach can be seen in Bart Ehrman debate with William Lane Craig, in which Ehrman argued that we don't see people walking on water or coming to life after they're dead... but obviously it only shows that naturally, these things don't happen. (It tells us absolutely nothing about if such things could happen supernaturally in specific, exceptional cases of God's action in the world). Craig called Ehrman's bad arguments "Ehrman's egregious error and blunders", and proved with the Bayes' Theorem, that Ehrman's objections against miracles are mathematically false.

The above arguments discussed in this post don't prove that dualism or the resurrection are true. But they prove that the typical and most common atheistic objections against such positions are, when examined in detail, extremely weak and sophomoric and (in some case, like Ehrman's) mathematically false.

There are not reasons to take such objections seriously.

The Historical Jesus and the concept of a savior selected by God who will die for the sins of humankind in the Old Testament: Isaiah 53

One of the problems that I've noted in some liberal scholarly reconstructions of the historical Jesus (specially in the so-called Jesus Seminar) is a strange tendency to interpret Jesus wholly outside of his strong Jewish context. These scholars look at Jesus with the glasses of 21th century person, not with the glasses of a first-century Jew. Lacking the full cultural and religious context for an accurate interpretation of Jesus' teachings and deeds, many liberal reconstructions tend to reflect more the scholar's own ideology and values than what Jesus really was.

In popular anti-Christian books, it is often said that the idea that Jesus died for the sins of humankind was a fabrication or invention of the Church. Atheists, religious pluralists and other readers eager to believe this tend to uncritically accept such view, without proper critical scrutiny and examination of the evidence in its proper historical context and Jewish background.

As a matter of fact, there is some evidence, in the Old Testament, that God planned to send a person who was going to suffer for other people's sins. 

Let's examine the evidence.

Consider carefully Isaiah 53 (read it several times slowly, please):

Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
³ He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

⁴ Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
⁶ We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
⁸ By oppression^[a] and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.^[b]
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
    and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
    nor was any deceit in his mouth.

¹⁰ Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes^[c] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
¹¹ After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life^[d] and be satisfied^[e];
by his knowledge^[f] my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,^[g]
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,^[h]
because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors

Note that the above saying is not a creation of the Christian Church, since such passage is from the OLD Testament (Christianity wasn't still born). But such passage clearly makes the point of a person that will be chosen by God in order to suffer for other people's sins. This view is already present in the Jewish background.

Now, consider these teachings and facts about the life of Jesus:

1-As a first-century Jew, Jesus recognized the Old Testament, and even quoted it often to make his points.

2-He taught authoritatively about God's kingdom and the conditions for entering in it.

3-In prayings, he called God "Abba" (an expression which suggested close contact or familiarity, something roughly like "daddy" in English, but not exactly).

4-He placed himself in the place of God in matters which belong only to God (e.g. he forgave sins; he corrected authoritatively some of the Old Testament laws given by God, and so forth).

5-He used expressions which, in the Jewish background, were connected with God (e.g. The expression Son of Man or "coming in the clouds").

6-As consequence (and previsibly), the Jews (who were hard-core, extremely radical monotheists) instigated against him the charge of blasphemy.

7-Jesus predicted his own death 

8-He was tortured and suffered unimaginable physical and psychological pain in the cross (among wicked criminals who were crucified with him)

9-He was buried by a rich man: Joseph of Arimathea.

10-He was risen from the dead (if you don't believe in the historical evidence for the resurrection, don't matter. Just assume it for the argument's sake, since I'm making a purely exegetical point in this post).

I ask unbiased and open-mind readers the following question: Does not Jesus' life and teachings (and I mentioned above only some of the less controversial ones, most of which can be defended using the standards criteria of authenticity) fit well with Isaiah 53?. I think any person would see clearly that at least an interesting close similarity between Jesus' life and Isaiah 53 does exist.

In the eyes of the Jews who were followers of Jesus, there is existed a clear continuity between the divine teachings of the Old Testament (including the predictions of Isaiah 53) and Jesus' own life which parallels such teachings and, apparently, fullfilled such predictions. 

The death of the risen Son of God was obviously understood as the death for the sins of the humankind. What other plausible theological interpretation could be offered to Jesus' death, specially if we take into account Isaiah 53 and its parallels with Jesus' life?

So, the popular anti-Christian idea that the Church conspired to create falsely and out of nothing (and for mean reasons) a Jesus who died for ours sins is simply false. The conclusion of the early Christians, who were Jews, was the only viable, reasonable and logical theological interpretation of Jesus' death given the Old Testament prophecies about a person chosen by God in order to die for other's sins and Jesus' own life, exclusivistic teachings, and resurrection which seemed to actualize such prophecy. In fact, any other interpretation (given that Jewish-plus-Jesus background) would be arbitrary, contrived and irrational.

And note that we have not added here Jesus' sayings suggesting that his own death is "for others", because if we add that as evidence, then the case for the Christian view being the most reasonable interpretation of Jesus' death seem to be hard to avoid. 

For example, consider Mark 14: 22-24:

²² While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”

²³ Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

²⁴ “This is my blood of the^[a] covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them.

Or consider Mark 10:45:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Compare with Isaiah 53 above which says " because he poured out his life unto death,    and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many..."

There is a clear continuity between the teaching of the Old Testament about such mysterious individual chosen by God "to suffer for the sins of many", and Jesus' own self-perception, life, teachings and the reasons for his death. In the mind of Jesus' followers, what other theological significance could be given to Jesus' death? Was not Jesus the most plausible candidate to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah 53? If not,  why not? What other candidate was better than Jesus for the fullfilling of such prophecy?

Try to put yourself in the shoes of a first-century Jew who believed in Jesus' resurrection and try to answer the above questions objectively and unbiasedly.

Consider a further Jesus' saying in Mark 12:1-9:

Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. ² At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. ³ But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. ⁵ He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.
⁶ “He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
⁷ “But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ⁸ So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.
⁹ “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

Note that the parable (which highlights Jesus' exclusivistic self-perception as the Son of God), he uses a metaphor in which the messengers are "beat", "struck", "treated shamefully" and (in the case of some, including the master's heir =the SON),  "killed". The parable seem to have a predictive aspect, namely, that Jesus (who was sent by God) was going to be killed.

This point of being killed was made explicitly by Jesus in other sayings

Consider Mark 9:30-32:

³⁰ They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, ³¹ because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” ³² But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.

Here, Jesus predicted his own death (and resurrection, which his disciples didn't understood because for Jews the resurrection was a general phenomenon in the end of days, and no single person can be risen before that).

Clearly Jesus knew that he was going to be delivered to the hands of his enemies and eventually be killed by them (and then resurrected, which suggest that the whole plan was known by Jesus in advance). 

If Jesus was the man portrayed in Isaiah 53, then such knowledge of the plan is not surprising, because precisely it is God's plan (God's will, which Jesus respected about all things) that he was going to suffer and die for the sins of others, in order to fullfil God's predictions.

So, it is not surprising that Christians believe such a thing. What other thing could they plausibly to believe? Even Jesus Seminar's member and non-Christian scholar James Crossley agrees that " Famous terms for Jesus such as "son of Man" or "Son of God" really were being used by or of Jesus when he was alive. Jesus did really practised healing and exorcism; and Jesus really did predict his imminent death and probably thought it had some atoning function." (How did Christianity begin? p.1)

On the contrary, if Jesus was NOT the man mentioned in Isaiah 53 and the Christian interpretation of Jesus' death is false, then the following questions press: 

1-Which was the point of Jesus' death and resurrection, and he knowing, in advance, that such things were going to happen to him? What is the point of his predictions? What's the point of his resurrection?

2-Why Jesus, who was so powerful and special as to be resurrected, was incapable of avoiding his own death in the hands of their enemies?

3-Why did Jesus has a life which paralleled Isaiah 53 and that, previsibly, was going to create into the mind of his Jewish followers the misleading impression that he was the man selected by God to die for other people's sins? Wasn't Jesus powerful enough as to know, precognitively, that his own life was going to be interpreted in terms of Jewish predictions? If he was, then wasn't Jesus, in that case, guilty of deception, misdirection or, at least, of improper care or technical incompetence, specially given that he chose and selected carefully and personally all his direct disciples (including Paul, in his post-mortem apparition)?

Conclusion:

So, in this point, we have at least 3 possible options:

1)If Jesus' resurrection was historical and the basic facts of his life mentioned above are veridical, I think the Christian interpretation of Jesus' death having an atoning function in terms of Isaiah 53 is very likely to be correct. Jesus' life was as God predicted in the Old Testament prophecies, and God's will and overall plan was actualized by Jesus' ministry and life.

In this case, Jesus' self-perception as the exclusive mediator between God and human beings makes sense, and Jesus was consciously performing God's will (a will which only Jesus knew and that He decided, as the only Son of God, to reveal to humans in order to share with them the conditions for entering God's Kingdom).

b)If Jesus' resurrection happened, but his death didn't have any atoning function, then I think Jesus is guilty of a massive deception called Christianity, a deception of the most objectionale kind to which Jesus has to be reputed as the main responsible (for using a misleading and often criptic language; for living a life which paralleled Isaiah 53; for falsefly putting himself in God's place; for implying that he was the Son of God or the exclusive mediator between humans and God; and specially, and above all, for choosing a bunch of incompetent disciples who were incapable of understanding correctly Jesus' teachings, misrepresented his message and in passing created an amazingly influential, misleading and false religion centered around a person, instead of around Jesus' teachings, called Christianity).

But in this second case of such an incompetent and misleading Jesus, the resurrection becomes wholly inexplicable, an event which comes absolutely from the left-hand, without any clear theological or religious reason nor meaning.

c)If Jesus' resurrection didn't happen... then Christianity is a fairy tale and there is not point in wasting our time discussing this fantasy anymore.

You have to think by yourself, based upon the evidence, which ones of the above alternatives is more plausible.