Straightforward contradiction between two "revealed from a higher spiritual source" books: the Urantia Book and Conversations with God (Neale Donald Walsh) about reincarnation

 Before you read this post, you have to be familiar with this one. There, I claimed that many influential New Age Spiritualities and Religions contradict themselves regarding basic doctrines or aspects about the spiritual nature and fate of human beings. Whatever their differences, what they have in common in each case is a radical revisionism of the traditional Christian view of Jesus.

In this post, I want to illustrate my point with an example taken from the very influential book called The Urantia Book and another influential one called Conversations with God. Keep in mind that, as I stressed in my previous post, both groups (like most revisionistic groups about the historical Jesus among the paranormal community) have 3 things in common: 

1-The group or movement in question originated in the United States of America.

2-The group or movement in question claims to have privileged access to information about the historical Jesus (and other related spiritual matters) from a high-level spiritual (and hence supposedly reliable) source through paranormal means.

3-The group or movement in question provide a revisionistic liberal view about Jesus which is clearly anti-Christian (i.e. contrary to traditional Christianity), in which key Christian concepts like "sin", "salvation",  "hell", etc. (doctrines which are the ones mainly connected with negative feelings or emotions of anti-Christians) are denied or reinterpreteted in a way which sounds (feels) good and "nice" for contemporary anti-Christian ears.

I will show specific examples of this later, but in this moment I want to stress the contradictions in key doctrines defended by both groups which proves that, at least, one of them is FALSE.

Let's mention the example of reincarnation:

In the famous Urantia Book, you can read this about reincarnation:

A mortal never returns to his native planet during the dispensation of his temporal existence, and if he should return during a subsequent dispensation, he would be escorted by a transport seraphim of the universe headquarters group (39:4.15)

Note carefully that reincarnation is straightforwardly denied, not merely made unlikely or rare or exceptional. It is said that a mortal NEVER returns to his planet to live again. Not qualification about exceptions is found in the Urantia Book, as far I've read it. (On this point, they fully agree with traditional traditional Christianity).

 

Keep in mind that this book (which provides a kind of liberal reconstruction of the historical Jesus) supposedly comes from advanced extraterrestial beings who are spiritually more advanced than us. So, presumibly, they know what they're talking about. The implication is that it is a reliable source of information about spiritual matters.

Compare, however, with Neale Donald Walsh's book Conversations with God, in which is God himself who supposedly is giving Walsh the answers. When Walsh asked "God" about reincarnation, "God" replied like this:

You have had 647 past lives, since you insist on being exact. This is your 648th. You were everything in them. A king, a queen, a serf…. No, there is not such thing as karmic debt – not in the sense that you mean… You are not obligated to do anything (p.204)

As you can see, "God" is contradicting the information given in the Urantia Book about reincarnation, and explicitly asserting that Walsh lived several lives (more of 600!).

Also, "God"'s reply includes a subtle AMORAL element (strangely very similar to some oriental philosophies and contrary to the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament) according to which "You are not obligated to do anything", in other words, no moral obligation at all exists. This amoralistic view is repeated and stressed in the book.

Note that, for a American anti-Chrisitian individual raised and educated in a fundamentalistic Christian family which (wrongly) forced onto him negative feelings of guilt and fear of divine punishment and "sins", the above "there are no obligation at all and hence not punishment" liberal view is a kind of emotional release and fresh air. This is exactly what the anti-Christian WANTS to hear. (This kind of person, if interested in Jesus scholarship, will tend to be sympathetic to the views of liberal groups like the Jesus Seminar, because this liberal group also tell him what he largely want to hear and which resonates with his anti-Christian sensibilities, specially when such information is presented as the representative mainstream conclusions of contemporary scholarship. This anti-Christian animus is the main reason why these kind of books like Walsh's have been best-sellers in USA or at least had very sympathetic reception among the public in USA).

I'm convinced that all or most of these New Age movements are based on wishful thinking about what people WANT to hear regarding spiritual matters, and they choose these journeys because they provide them with the positive, nice, refreashing and liberating emotions which were repressed or inhibited when they were being raised in Christianity, so Christianity triggers in them extremely negative feelings and memories of guilt and fear.

The danger of this is that you cannot settle what is true based on your emotions and feelings. Such a approach is extremely misleading and potentially (spiritually) very dangeous, because if for the argument's sake Christianity would turn to be true (at least his basic teachings about Jesus's exclusivistic role for salvation) then we won't have excuse, because the New Testament information about Jesus already suggests that false prophets and sources of information astutely claiming to be the real Jesus or the real voice of God will appear with "sheep's cloting" in order to deceive us: "Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it.  For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand." (Matthew 24: 23-25)

Since it is an extremely important question from the spiritual point of view, you cannot settle this question appealing to your emotions and feelings about what you WANT to hear about Jesus and God. You cannot settle it through blind faith, supported by a bunch of positive and relieving emotions and wishful thinking, regarding the reliability of an "inner voice" supposedly heard by a person (already strongly biased against Christianity), or the information received from a bunch of putatively advanced extraterrestials beings or "elder brothers", through automatic writing or dreams, claiming to be the real Jesus or the true God.

You have to examine seriously, objectively and rigurously the evidence about Jesus' teachings and his resurrection, even if what you find is strongly unpalatable or triggers on you negative emotions And to do the same regarding other religions and spiritual traditions.

This is a very hard and consuming task, but our spiritual fate can crucially depend on this.

An Ufological factor in the debate between traditional Christians and New-Age Religions and Spiritualities' revisionistic views about the historical Jesus?

 In a previous post, I commented on the late ufologist and abductee Dr.Karla Turner, who based on her research, concluded that alien intelligences have been controlling and maniputaling us for years. One of the ways of alien manipulations is "appearing in such forms as Jesus, the Pope, certain celebrities, and even the dead spouses of the abductees."

According to Turner and other ufologists, the technology of these beings is impressive and some of them (the "bad" ones) use it in order to manipulate us in different ways. 

One of these ways is manipulation through religion and spirituality. Understading the human needs for trascendence and ultimate meaning, supposedly they exploit such needs promoting the creation of cults and religions, contacting (through paranormal means) certain key people and giving them spiritual information, presenting it as coming directly from some respected or influential spiritual teacher of humankind (e.g Jesus) or even God himself.

A careful survey of the most important of these New-Age cults, religions or spiritualities reveal that there are important inconsistences among the respective teachings (e.g about reincarnation), but they tend to have one aspect in common: a revisionist reading of the historical Jesus and basic Christian teachings.

As consequence, traditional Christians are interested in confronting these New-Age movements and exposing (what they believe) are false teachings desgined to mislead the public.

My purpose here is not to settle the debate between Christians and their opponents, but to provide a brief summary of the debate and how aliens (if they exist and are as Turner suggests) can be exploiting such a situation.

The Christian attitude against New-Age revisionism about Jesus has a basis in the New Testament. There, Jesus is reported as having said "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits....' (Matthew 7:15-16) and also "Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it.  For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand." (Matthew 24: 23-25)

The "sheep's clothing" mentioned there, obviously is not intented to be taken literally, but figuratively as a cover which is astutely designed to deceive and fool certain kinds of people. And one of the ways to deceive someone is to tell him what he/she want to hear. 

We have to keep in mind that what people want to hear is person-relative and culture-relative. For example, a traditional Christian won't want to hear any anti-Christian spiritual teachings or doctrines, but people hostile to Christianity and sympathetic to spiritual matters will be eager to hear any teaching about the historical Jesus which doesn't fit with the traditional view of Jesus, specially if such teaching comes from a putative revealed or paranormal source. They will tend to give credibility to the latter over traditional teachings.

In summary, for biblical Christians, it is not only previsible or possible that certain spiritual or paranormal sources or people will claim to be transmitting revisionist teachings about Jesus, but that such a thing has to be fully expected if the New Testament teachings attributed to Jesus are true. 

Regardless of the spiritual implications of this controversy, this dispute between traditional Christian and New Age revisionist views about Jesus has a clear cultural component, i.e. it has to do with the history, ideology and culture of Western societies. 

As evidence for this, we can see that such revisionist groups have mainly originated and developed in the United States of America, a country in which a certain version of Biblical Christianity is dominating (specially a fundamentalistic, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific and obscurantist version of Christianity which is at variance with the rationalistic and philosophically sophisticated version of classical Christianity and current Christian scholarship). 

Such obscurantist version of Christianity has produced a strong anti-Christian reaction, which is the breeding ground for the flourishing of alternatives spiritualities and religions (also of militant forms of atheism).

Just consider these hard facts:

1-Even though not a cult nor a religion, the so-called Jesus Seminar (a radical group of liberal scholars) was founded in United States. They're leading representatives of radical revisionistic scholarly views about the historical Jesus, views which are clearly and demostrably anti-Christian (but misleadingly some of his representatives present themselves as Christians).

2-Very influential and putative paranormal or spiritual sources of revisionist information about the historical Jesus like the Urantia Book, A Course in Miracles, Conversations with God (by Neale Donald Walsh), Mormonism, etc. comes from the United States. (I call these sources "paranormal", because the information that they supposedly received came through paranormal means like automatic writing, an "inner voice" heard by the chosen person, putative extraterrestial contact, telepathy, "visions", paranormal dreams, etc.)

It is a coincidence that all or most of these movements come from USA? I don't think so.

These facts are telling, they tell us a lot if interpreted in the context mentioned above about the ideological dominance of a certain version of biblical Christianity in USA and the anti-Christian reaction which it has caused there.

Just for the record: I'm extremely skeptical of the claims of all of these sources (specially of the Jesus Seminar) and of the claim that the groups mentioned in point 2 has an actual paranormal or spiritual origin. I consider all of them to be fundamentally unreliable, misleading and unscholarly sources of information about the historical Jesus. 

But for the argument's sake, let's take their word for granted and assume an actual paranormal origin of these sources.

It is curious not only that these groups were born in the United States where the anti-Christian reaction is strong, but that their main teachings and doctrines are revisionisms of traditional Christianity and tells exactly what the anti-Christian movement wants to hear, producing a new, wholly palatable to contemporary post-Christian (or anti-Christian) ears, version of the historical Jesus. Since what people want to hear is culture-relative, the ideal choosing for positing new (revisionist) information about Jesus is precisely a culture (like the American culture) in which an anti-Christian reaction already exists and is strong and therefore revisionistic theories will tend to be accepted sympathetically or at least with less rigurous critical filters.

The dream of putative manipulative aliens (and other spiritual entities with bad intentions) have come true!

If Turner is right, and aliens are interested in manipulating us, among other methods, through a bunch of new religious doctrines conflicting with the mainstream Christian view, then it seems to be likely that they use the following strategies:

1-Contact people who are part of the anti-Christian reaction, i.e. people hostile or unsympathetic to Christianity, because these are the ones who will tend to believe the new information that the aliens will provide. (Not surprinsingly, if you study the biography of the founders of these groups, many of them have been previously hostile to Christianity, some of them being even atheists. They are exactly the kind of people who will be biased in favour of any anti-Christian teaching transmitted paranormally by the putative authoritative source about the real Jesus).

2-Focus in teaching what people WANT to hear, i.e. what is emotionally satisfying and ideologically palatable. Anti-Christians want to hear that the distintive aspects of Christinaity are false or wrong. Therefore, the revisionist information has to:

-Deny or cast doubt on or reinterpret the idea that Jesus perceived himself (or was) the only son of God. In a spiritually pluralistic society, an overwhelming majority of people (even some Christians) will be sympathetic to this pluralistic concept. If you check carefully the information of these new spiritualities, you will see in most of them that a consistent feature consists precisely in putting down the exclusivistic view of Jesus, and the portraying of him as a spiritual teacher among many other, perhaps with a higher spiritual level in relation with us, but not with an exclusive spiritual status above any other teacher.

-Deny or cast doubt or reinterpret key biblical concepts like "sin", "forgiveness", or "salvation".  The reinterpretation in question is, of course, the one palatable for the anti-Christian audience. The concepts will be reinterpreted in the light of our contemporary culture, spiritual prejudices and sensibilities and wishful thinking instead of the actual historical context in which such words were uttered (e.g. the monotheistic Judaism of the first century).

3-Exploit the negative emotions and feelings typically connected with Christianity.

As an outsider (i.e. as a person who wasn't born nor educated in USA nor indoctrinated in monotheistic religions), I've observed carefully that in my anti-Christian friends and non-friends, they have an emotional discomfort with Christianity. When you asked them, they relate negative emotions and feelings of guilt, fear of punishment (by God), resentment and other negative emotions connected with their experiences in a Christian familiy and churches.

According to my observation, most of them are ignorant of the best literature of Christian theology and philosophy, and they're only familiar with the vulgar, obscurantist version of Christianity which is common in USA. As consequence, their understanding of key Christian doctrines (and philosophical debate about them in the literature) is totally abscent or extremely superficial.

By in any case, their main criticisms and objections seem to be connected with emotional factors, not with rational ones. It is not lack of historical evidence for Christianity that they complain to, but the negative feelings connected with key Christian concepts like "sin", "hell" and so forth. This observation seems to be confirmed by the fact that they new New Age spirituality that they have adopted is lacking of good scientific or scholarly evidence in its favour, but even so they accept it because it makes them feel good. In other words, it is not a matter of evidence but of feelings (otherwise, it becomes inexplicable that they accept as most reliable a source of information of the 20th century about Jesus, than the early, 1st century documents, witnesses and written sources about Jesus which support the traditional view about him).

This lack of proper technical information about the religion which they happend to reject, strong wishful thinking plus the negative emotions connected with these doctrines provides the perfect breeding ground for spiritualities which promote positive feelings and emotions, even if they lack of any serious and objective evidence in its favour.

If aliens are manipulating us, it is key in their strategy to use these negative emotions to create, with a "reverse effect", a strong predisposition in favour of any new teaching about Jesus which promotes positive emotions. 

This would explain their stressing in reinterpretation or denial of key concepts like "sin", "hell", "atonement" or "salvation", which typically are the ones connected with negative emotions and feelings of anti-Christians.

At least this is what I've carefully observed and I have to admit that I haven't found exceptions in the people whom I've known. Perhaps they exist, however. 

In this post, I've taken for granted (for the argument's sake) that alien exists and Turner is right about them.  I've suggested that the alien hypothesis explains well the revisionistic views of Jesus of paranormal origin (paranormal dreams, automatic writing, etc.), not because these revisionistic views be false, but because they are strategically useful to the alien manipulations.

If the traditional view of Jesus is true or false, or whether the revisionistic view is true or false, is something that I haven't evaluated in this post (even though my current reading of the historical evidence of Jesus' teachings doesn't support these revisionistic views, which are far beyond and even run in many cases contrary to what the evidence points out.).

My purpose has been to suggest a possible connection between alien manipulation and new sources of information about Jesus in a social and cultural context apt to such religious manipulation. 

It is up to you to evaluate these sources  and connections and draw your own conclusions.

        

Learning to think with conditionals and counterfactuals

One of the features of good philosophy is the ability to think with conditionals and counterfactuals. You can discern a sophisticated thinker (not only in philosophy, but in whatever field) in part by his ability to think like this. In philosophy this is essential, because often you're trying with to make sense of purely conceptual, possible or hypothetical issues, not just of factual realities as in science (in this sense, science is more limited in its intellectual scope than philosophy).

I'll discuss some examples taken mainly from philosophy and briefly from New Testament studies and Jesus scholarship.

Let's to clarify our terms:

A conditional is a proposition of the form "If P, then Q". 

A counterfactual is a conditional in which the antecedent ("P") is factually, actually false (i.e. the antecedent is contrary to the facts).

 

Example of a conditional: "If James Randi is a materialistic atheist, then he's a skeptic of the paranormal". 

Example of a counterfactual: "If James Randi had lost his million dollars challenge while testing a psychic, that test would be considered unreliable and non-conclusive by most professional skeptics".

The above is a counterfactual because Randi has not actually lost his challenge (at least not officially), so the above conditional has an antencedent contrary to facts.

Likewise, the above counterfactual about Randi is likely to be true: people who knows how organized skepticism works will tend to agree with it.

In philosophy, these notions are very useful because they allow you to explore the IMPLICATIONS of certains scenarions, state of affairs, hypothetical situations and propositions, and hence to evaluate critically their plausibility.

The above philosophical datum is essential while reading analytic philosophy and debates between theists and naturalists (among other debates).

 

I've been astonished to be apparently serious philosophers, who are absolutely incapable of thinking in terms of conditionals (or understanding arguments in conditional terms), at least in topics in which they are not specialized.

Examples of conditional arguments in philosophy and bad responses to them:

 

Alvin Plantinga has developed a sophisicated philosophical argument according to which, if evolutionary naturalism is true, then there is not reason to think that our cognitive faculties are reliable. Before commenting on this argument, let's to clarify two key concepts:

1-By evolutionary naturalism, Plantinga understands the conjuntion of naturalism plus Darwinian evolutionary theory.

2-By "reliable" cognitive faculties, Plantinga understands cognitive faculties which produce mostly true beliefs in the appropiate cognitive enviroment (e.g. for a normal, healthy person, her memory of what happened yesterday in her own life tends to be reliable, i.e. produce mostly true beliefs about what happened yesterday. But for a drunken person, such faculty tend to be unreliable).

Plantinga's argument is complex, but roughly he thinks that evolutionary naturalism only justifies the belief that our cognitive faculties are adaptive and pragmatically useful to survival and reproduction, but this doesn't implies that these faculties produce mostly true beliefs, because false beliefs (e,g, religious beliefs according naturalists) can be useful for evolution and be selected for despite their falsehood. Moreover, all what is required by evolutionary theory is that our cognitive faculties provide consistent indicators of the relevant details of the local enviroment, but obviously the existence of mere consistent indicators of the enviroment doesn't imply that our beliefs about the enviroment in question are true (e.g. when a man have a prostate tumour, there are tumour markers which consistently are present with the tumour and reliable indicators of the tumour; but it doesn't imply that tumour markers have "true beliefs" about the tumour. They are just biological correlates of the tumour. Likewise, perhaps our cognitive faculties provide us with specific biological indicators when we are in presence of a predator or food, but it doesn't imply that our cognitive faculties produce beliefs which are true, i.e. that refer and represent the object accurately, specially beliefs which are irrelevant to biological survival and reproduction, like beliefs about quantum mechanics, metaphysics or mathematics).

Note that Plantinga's argument is conditional: IF evolutionary naturalism is true, THEN there is not reason to think that our cognitive faculties are reliable. 

Naturalists who lack sophistication reply to this argument in a way that shows that they don't understand the nature of conditionals. For example, they reply "But our cognitive faculties ARE reliable, look at science for example"

But this reply obvious misses the point, because the argument is not whether our actual cognitive faculties are reliable or not, but if they WOULD BE reliable given evolutionary naturalism. If the answer is no, then the actual reliability of our faculties is evidence against naturalism.

Another common objection is "But if our beliefs are mostly true, then they're more likely to be selected for by natural selection". Fine, but the problem is that our beliefs being true is NOT required by natural selection and evolution in order to work (look at plants or bacterias or mosquitos... they have not "true beliefs" as far we know, but they have evolved perfectly by natural selection and by most time than human beings, despite of not having reliable cognitive faculties nor rationality nor a conscious mind). You don't need to pose the reliability of cognitive faculties in order to explain the work of natural selection on biological organisms and the survival of a given species. In fact, not even consciousness in a organism is itself necessary for natural selection in order to do its job.

And given naturalism, we have not reason to expect that certain biological organisms (e.g. human beings) will have consciousness, let alone a rational and reliable mind. Therefore, we have not reason to think that our cognitive faculties are reliable if naturalism were true.

Plantinga's argument is NOT that it is impossible that our cognitive faculties be reliable given naturalism; rather his argument is that, IF naturalism were true, THEN it is unlikely that our cognitive faculties be reliable (even if they happen, by accident, to be reliable). Can you understand the logic of the argument? (For a detailed defense of Plantinga's argument, see his lastest book Science and Religion: Where the conflict really lies")

Another example of misunderstanding of conditionals is in the case of the moral argument for God's existence. The argument says:

1-If God doesn't exist, then objective moral values don't exist.

2-Objective moral values do exist.

3-Therefore, God exists.

The first premiss poses a negative conditional which implies that objective moral values are grounded on God (note that it doesn't say that they're grounded on God's arbitrary "will" or arbirtrary commands. They could depend on God's perfect and holy nature. Even God's will is limited by his nature... for example, God cannot "will" to be extinguished foreover... because it would violate his nature as a necessary and eternal being. Many atheists, in their intellectual superficiality and spiritual blindess, simply cannot grasp the point and prefer ground human morality in imperfect, contingent and non-personal grounds like biological evolution, or contingent personal circunstances like human conventions, scholarly consensus, the deliverances of the human mind, etc.).

By "objective" moral values, it refers to a mind-independent realm of moral order which is part of (in the case of theism, created by God) reality. It doesn't refer to moral beliefs nor propositions nor statements, nor to subjective projections of our subjective consciousness. (Atheists tend to conflate their own sense of moral conviction with the actual existence of morality... a conflation which they wouldn't accept if a theist would appeal to his own subjective conviction that God's exist. The atheist's own convictions are seen by them as facts, but the convictions of theists are delusions, wishful thinking, ignorance or self-deception).

The argument is posed against naturalistic alternatives of morality (since the most plausible and scientifically-informed form of atheism is metaphysical naturalism). 

The argument implies that IF atheistic naturalism were true, THEN there is reason to think that objective moral values do not exist in a universe which is wholly material and void of any intrinsic and trascendent spiritual and moral dimension (Note that in theism, given that God is trascendent and intrinsically spiritual, talking of a moral order of creation make sense).

Naturalism, as a non-personalistic worldview, can function fine without any person at all (just imagine that human beings and all of life on Earth were destroyed by a meteorite... would it refute naturalism? Obviously not. Naturalism is fully compatible with an universe void of life, composed of pure brute physical, mechanical and insentient matter).

So, in naturalism, we wouldn't expect to life to emerge from purely insentient matter (in fact, naturalists think that life is an exceptional event in the universe). Moreover, even if life were (by a lucky accident) to exist, you wouldn't expect that PERSONS would eventually appear. But even if persons were (by another lucky accident) to appear, you wouldn't expect that such persons would have intrinsic moral values either because in naturalism persons are simply ANIMALS (relatively evolutioned primates with a relatively more complex organized brain having more complex intelligence in order to survive and reproduce). But having a more complex intelligence does nothing to prove that such organisms are the locus of objective moral value (after all, intelligence is not a necessary condition of moral value, otherwise little babies and people who are mentally retarded or impaired or suffer of severe brain coma or are in a vegetative state by some disease would be morally irrelevant, amoral and without any intrinsic value, which is clearly wrong. Also, nobody would claim that artificial intelligence would make a machine the locus of moral value... and in naturalism, the difference between an intelligent machine and a biological organisms including human persons is purely chemical and physical, not ontological because both kinds of objects are material (composed of a bunch of physical particles organized in certain ways), and physical matter has not moral properties according to natural sciences).

This argument, posed in conditional terms, is iron-claded once you think hard about it. Sophisticated atheists, who are able to think with conditionals (If naturalism were true.../ Or If theism were true...) have realized this and recognize that naturalism doesn't provide rational grounds for thinking that an objective moral order exists.

But other atheists, incapable of thinking with conditionals, simply cannot understand the point. For them, moral values exists, period.

Let's  to mention a concrete example of how atheists misunderstand the argument:

In his debate with William Lane Craig, atheist ethicist and moral philosopher Walter Simmon Armstrong, after trying to justify morality in a naturalist worldview, replied like this:  "Craig still might ask, “What’s immoral about causing serious harms to other people without justification?” But now it seems natural to answer, “It simply is. Objectively. Don’t you agree?” (God? A debate between a Christian and an Atheist, p 34. emphasis in blue added)

That Armstrong is unable to understand the conditional nature of Craig's argument is evident in his misrepresentation of Craig's question. Actually Craig asked what is immoral about causing serious harms to people without justification GIVEN NATURALISM (i.e if naturalism were true). After all, according to evolutionary theory, animals kill each other often, and for naturalism human beings are the evolutionary by-product of such wild, violent, permanent struggle for existence with other species and organisms in which some animals destroyed others in order to survive. It is just part of nature (the nature to which the naturalist is "everything that exists").

More importantly, note that Armstrong doesn't understand at all that the debate is about the ontological grounding of morality, posed in terms of conditionals and counterfactuals.  He simply CLAIMS that moral values are objective. But Craig is not disputing the existence of objective moral values, what he's disputing is the counterfactual claim that moral values WOULD exist IF naturalism were true.

To avoid any suspicion that I'm misrepresenting Craig's view as a counterfactual claim, note carefully the conditional form of his reply to Armstrong: "This claim is, however, very problematic for the atheist. First, given atheism, why think that it is true? Why, given atheism, think that inflicting harm on other people would have any moral dimension at all? Sinnott-Armstrong rejects Atheistic Moral Realism. So why would it be wrong to hurt another member of our species? He answers, “It simply is. Objectively. Don’t you agree?” Of course, I agree that it is wrong, since I am a theist. But I can’t see any reason to think that it would be wrong if atheism were true. For on atheism we are just animals, and animals don’t have moral duties. Sinnott-Armstrong retorts that human beings are unlike other animals because we are “moral agents.” But this claim seems to assume precisely what needs to be proved, unless some neutral content can be given to the concept of “moral agent.” (ibid, p. 68)

By "atheism", Craig is referring to the metaphysical naturalism which Armstrong defends (you have to keep this in mind, because naturalism implies a bunch of pressupositions which run contrary to morality, including its disregarding of nonphysical causation, free will and moral responsability).

Note that Armstrong's reply that human beings are special because we're "moral agents" is irrelevant and question-begging (because assumes, not proves, that naturalism grounds objective morality, which is a logical pre-condition for any agency to be "moral") and misses the point again because the issue at stake is IF human beings WOULD BE moral agents GIVEN naturalism. Again, the conditional and counterfactual nature of the argument is misunderstood by Armstrong.

I'm astonished by these kind of replies by sophisticated atheist philosophers (I consider Armstrong to be a serious and good one).

A final example:

In New Testament scholarship, specially regarding the life and teaching of Jesus, you can see how implicit conditionals are operative in the mind of scholars. Since most of them are not philosophers, perhaps they don't understand the proper nature of conditionals and their proper use and function. But they use them (in fact, everybody does), sometimes with sad consequences.

For example, in liberal scholarship, there are at least two implicit conditionals being actively operative in the mind of many scholars:

1-If the scientific (naturalistic) conception of the world is true, then  Jesus's actual historical identity, life, deeds and teachings wouldn't be as the Gospels say.

2-If the early Church HAD NOT manipulated the teachings and life of Jesus, then you WOULDN'T find in the Gospels an exalted view of Jesus who was God, who was the only son to God and who was resurrected.

As I said, these conditionals are implicit (even though in the Jesus Seminar's books, some of their naturalistic pressupositions are explicit). But a careful philosophical analysis of their work make it evident.

The first conditional produces extreme skepticism regarding the Gospels' accounts of Jesus, specially about any aspect of Jesus' implying supernatural events.

The second conditional allows to disregard, as an invention of the Church interested in produce an account theologically coloured (and hence, considered as unreliable and non-historical) any claim suggesting that Jesus pereived himself to be divine in some sense (either implicitly as God himself or as the son of God or as the risen one). Any claim about Jesus' resurrection, sayings implying divine authority (or the same status that God), or a special and exclusive connection with God, is seen with extreme skepticism and is explained away or interpreted in a way which is compatible with the above conditionals.

This anti-Christian prejudice tends to be rationalized in many liberal scholarly writings through a misuses of the standard criteria of authenticity, which are used positively and negatively (according to the scholar's particular purpose), and as necessary (instead of sufficient) conditions, in order to produce a preconceived notion of what Jesus would be if the above two conditionals were true.

The result is a historically misleading version Jesus which has almost nothing to do with the four biographies in the Gospels plus the early Pauline information about Jesus nor with the Jewish context in which Jesus lived and taught (a Jewish context which included, for example, the Old Testament view about "sins"... so, Jesus' claims of having authority to forgive sins has to be understood in the full Jewish background according to which only God had authority to forgive sins, which tells us a lot about Jesus' self-perception and how he was perceived by his followers and enemies).

But such liberal Jesus is very similar to the liberal scholar's own values and beliefs about corpses that cannot come back to life (after all, if God doesn't exist as the liberal scholar thinks, then the resurrection is a non-starter), about no religion being the "true" or only one (after all if God doesn't exist, no theistic religion can be true), about a Jesus who was a mere sage (among any others, and hence compatible with religious pluralism), a mere teller of stories for changing people's perspectives (a kind of Jewish version of Wyne Dyer or Deepak Chopra), etc.

The whole procedure is a misleading and question begging effort to undermine and destroy the traditional view of Jesus on behalf of contemporary religious pluralist and secular sensibilities which implicitly define what is palatable or not for most people in religious (and moral) matters.

The above is relatively easy to recognize once you study the evidence without preconceived opinions nor wishful thinking about what historical Jesus must or must not be, but my point here was to analyze briefly only one particular aspect of the question (some liberal portraits of Jesus) in terms of conditionals and counterfactuals. A more comprehensive treatment of this problem, including the conditionals and counterfactuals implicit or explicit in non-liberal scholars (conservative, Jewish, etc.) will be addressed in other posts.

Learn to think with counterfactuals and conditionals, and your thinking will tend to be a lot of deeper and wider, specially in matters in which is easy to be mislead by superficial or apparently counterintuitive impressions or assumptions (like in the moral argument, which as said above is commonly misrepresented by atheists as dependending on God's "arbitrary will").

The Expendables 2: The Dream Team of the action and martial arts movies

 

If you are a fan of action and martial arts movies, you cannot miss Stallone's The Expendables 2. In no other movie you will get so many superstars and legends together. For example, in other movie you see Chuck Norris with Arnold Schwarzenegger:

Or the action heros of the 80s Bruce Willis, Arnold and Stallone:

In the 80s, while being a young boy, I dreamt of watching these guys together in the same movie. For several reasons (perhaps "egos", competition, money or whatever) in that time almost never you could be several superstars working in the same movie. Forutnately, Stallone has made that dream reality with the Expendables 1 and 2.

As I suggested in a previous post, there are two guys who are needed in the Expendables in order to make it the perfect Dream Team action movie: Steven Seagal anhd Jackie Chan.It is likely that Seagal will be acting in the next Expendables movie, but I haven't heard anything of Chan.

I recommend this movie for every fan of action movies and martial arts movie, specially for fans of 80s action movies.

The ego in Martial Arts: The example of Steven Seagal's feud with Jean-Claude Van Damme and the upcoming movie The Expendables 3

One of my heros in martial arts action movies is, without doubt, Aikido master Steven Seagal. I'm a die-hard fan of his movies, his life and his martial arts career. In contrast with actors who became martial arts movie stars (like David Carradine, who was an actor, not a martial artists), Seagal is a true, seasoned martial artists who become an actor. There is a difference here.

However, according to the most reliable information about Seagal's personality, it has to be admitted that his tends to run contrary to the spirit and values of Aikido and most other martial arts. Seagal has been reported as being egocentric, extremely arrogant kind of person.

Seagal's arrogance is both regarding his person and regarding his style (Aikido), and this has casued him a lot of problems in the martial arts community. In future posts, I'll provide specific evidence for these claims.

In this post, I want to illustrate Seagal's improper attitudes toward his fellow martial arts actor Jean-Claude Van Damme. It is not well known (except among readers of martial arts magazines or Hollywood stories) that Seagal has been almost always hostile and condescending regarding Van Damme.

Watch for yourself Seagal's body language and dismissing comments when questioned by Arsenio Hall about Van Damme:

Even though they haven't met a lot, it is almost unavoidable in Hollywood to meet each in parties or public events or invitationsm from friends in common (like in the case of Stallone):

In fact, in one of such meetings between them, Seagal's open dismissing comments about Van Damme almost caused a street fight between them, in a Sylvester Stallone's party some years ago, as Van Damme explains in this interview:

Keep in mind that these problems happend several years ago (mostly in the 90s) and I ignore the current state of their problems. Currently, there is a rumour that Seagal will be present in the upcoming Stallone's movie The Expendables 3 (in which Van Damme will be acting too), and God wants that it happens, because Seagal is an icon in the martial arts acting community, and I don't conceive The Expendables being fully complete without him (keep in mind that Jet Li, Jason Stathan, Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Randy Couture, and others martial arts stars have been part of the Expendables' two previous movies).  I'd like to see Jackie Chan there too, but it is unlikely. 

Since it is possible that Seagal and Van Damme will work together, I hope their problems will be a matter of the past. In fact, at least on Van Damme's side, there is a disposition to be sympathetic to have Seagal in the movie:

In fact, as far I know, Van Damme has always said good things about Seagal, but unfortunately, it is Seagal who dislike Van Damme. In any case, let's to expect that these problems won't affect them when they work together in the Expandables 3. I'm looking forward to watch that movie!.

My reflection about all this is that Martial Arts should be a path for spiritual self-discovery, not a way to feel oneself superior or "better" than other people. In fact, most correctly trained and seasoned martial artists are good and nice people, they have been taught (and teach when they're senseis or instructors) to respect others, to be humble, to help other persons, to keep his fighting skills in secret or at least in a low public perfil and so forth.

 Exceptionally, however, one finds people like Steven Seagal who, apparently, think his skills make him superior to other people, including (specially) other fellows martial artists like Van Damme.

Hope Seagal's personality and previous problems with Van Damme won't be a problem for their presence together in the Expendables 3, the "Dream Team"of martial arts movies.

Glenn Peoples: Excellent Podcasts on philosophy, theology, New Testament studies and social matters

Glenn Peoples, PhD is a young Christian philosopher from New Zeland of great knowledge, insight and sophistication. I've been hearing some of his podasts on philosophy and theology, and to be honest, they seem to me to be excellent.

He explains clearly the issues and the objections and replies to particular philosophical or theological doctrines (stressing common misrepresentations and misunderstandings), so you can gain in a few time a solid and reliable understanding of different matters.

Some of his podcasts that I've found very useful and insightful (because they're widely and very often misrepresented, specially by atheists) are the following:

1-Divine Command Ethics theory

2-The epistemological objection to Divine Command Ethics

3-Alvin Plantinga on properly basic beliefs

4-Sam Harris on science and morality

5- What is faith? 

6-Intelligent Design

7-Osiris and Jesus

Peoples also has an excellent lecture on New Atheism and morality: