Was Man Created Before or After the Animals?

An oldie but goodie:

Version 1

1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Version 2

2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul...
2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Therefore, the Bible is not literally true.

Is God Moral?

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. --Mark Twain

Assumptions

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the God of the Bible does exist. How can we determine whether it's moral to obey Him?

If one defines "moral" as "whatever God says," then it's tautological that we must obey. So let's assume that "moral" means something else, something that most of us basically agree on even if we can't articulate. Something based fundamentally on human empathy for each other and, to a lesser extent, for other animals.

If "moral" isn't defined as "whatever God says," but we know that God is all-good and all-knowing then we must obey Him nevertheless. However, if we know that god is not all-good or that He is not all-knowing, then we must question whether obeying Him is moral. It's possible, after all, that God is evil, that He created us in order to amuse himself with earthquakes and war.

Let's stipulate that He is all-knowing, or at least that He knows more than we do, since this would be true of any reasonable definition of God.

The Question

The only question remaining is, is God all-good? Since we're working from the assumption that the word "moral" is not synonymous with "whatever God says," we must use some criteria for deciding whether God is moral, and judge Him by His words and actions.

The Evidence

Since the God we are discussing is the God of the Bible, then we have his words, and if we believe that God created the Universe, we have his actions. Can we prove that God is all-Good from either of these two sources? I don't think so -- each provides material which at least raises doubts. In the Bible, God commands animal sacrifice, he kills every person and animal on Earth except those allowed into Noah's Ark, orders the killing of anyone who violates the Sabbath, orders the killing of blasphemers, orders the killing of the Midianite women and children and "taking" of their virgins, the killing of worshipers of other Gods, the killing of non-virginal brides, etc. (Find these and more at the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.)

Similarly, the world, which He created, is full of suffering -- rape, murder, sickness, natural disasters.

Conclusion

It might be possible to justify the actions and orders found in the Bible and the horrible circumstances found in the world, but we must acknowledge that we cannot simply assume that God is all-good based on His Book or on the universe. Nor does any amount of goodness in the Bible or in the world exonerate God of his questionable words and actions -- a doctor who saves thousands of lives but cruelly murders his wife cannot be said to be all-good. It may be -- however unlikely it seems to me -- that God has some divine plan that makes everything that appears bad to us part of a larger good, but we cannot make this assumption without assuming what we are trying to prove -- that God is all-good.

What are we left with? We cannot know for sure that God is all-good, so we cannot know for sure if following his commandments is moral. We must decide on a case-by-case basis what we shall follow and what we shall disobey.

In the absense of evidence of God's morality, I maintain that it is moral to disobey commandments which we deem immoral. If God spoke directly to me and told me to murder an innocent child, I would be forced to disobey. Similarly, I could not support Biblical laws which I believe immoral -- even assuming I believed in both God and the divinity of the Bible.


(Hat tip to Sadie Lou for suggesting this topic.)

On Scientific Naturalism

Let’s start with a quick experiment. You can grab three coins and actually do the experiment, or just do a thought experiment.

Drop one coin and watch it fall. Do this again. Hold out the third coin.

If you were to do this again, what do you think would happen? If you could get ten good Christians to pray that this next coin wouldn’t fall, would it still fall? How about one thousand faithful Muslims? How about one billion people of any faith? I think that it would still fall. Drop the third coin.

Our understanding of the world around us, and our abilities to predict what will happen are based on naturalism -- the basis of science. Naturalism is how all people live their lives most of the time. --Why Atheism, by Mark Thomas

"Why Atheism" is a good primer on scientific naturalism and atheism.

What Does "Supernatural" Mean? or Splitting Hairs, Part III

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." John Stuart Mill

I'm having a very interesting discussion with David over at Sago Boulevard about the word "supernatural." My argument is that it is a word that religious and superstitious people use to dodge the evidence that what they believe in doesn't exist.

Let's start with a basic definition. Nature is, according to the relevent definition in Merriam Webster's Online Dictionary, "the external world in its entirety." That's pretty much how I would define it as well. Supernatural, on the other hand, means (1) "of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil" or (2) "departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit.)"

We can toss out the second definition as irrelevant, because it's talking about appearences and attributions. The first I don't quite agree with, since nobody would call a galaxy so far away that we couldn't observe it "supernatural," although such a galaxy would fit this definition. So what do religious/superstitious people really mean by "supernatural?"

Maybe they mean "of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable (even in theory) universe." This takes care of the parts of the universe that are too far away.

But if we carefully study even this revised definition, something will strike us. The word "beyond." "Beyond," according to m-w Online, means either (1) "on or to the farther side of : at a greater distance than," (2) "a : out of the reach or sphere of b : in a degree or amount surpassing c : out of the comprehension of," or (3) "in addition to : BESIDES."

Well, we've already ruled out 1 and 2a with our distant galaxy example. It seems like they must mean "beyond" in the sense of 2c or 3. Let's take them one at a time.

2c) Let's say that supernatural means "of or relating to an order of existence [out of [our] comprehension of] the visible observable (even in theory) universe." What does this mean? If the supernatural exists, even if we couldn't comprehend it, we should at least be able to observe it. Since when is observation limited by comprehension? I can observe a kid acting out "beyond" reality, meaning I can't comprehend how a human being could behave like that, but I'm still observing it. I can't comprehend in some senses the Big Bang, but I can still observe (indirectly) that it happened. I don't think we can use this sense of "beyond" to make "supernatural" mean anything.

3) Perhaps supernatural means "of or relating to an order of existence [in addition to or besides] the visible observable (even in theory) universe." This implies that supernatural beings reside someplace other than the universe. However, time and space are bound by the universe, so there is no "outside" the universe (or "outside" time.) Some scientists do hypothesise a "multiverse," where reality is made up of many universes, but it's a heavily criticed line of reasoning, and proponents of the "supernatural" surely don't mean "something that's natural, just in a different universe," anyway.

I'm left with the conclusion that "supernatural" doesn't mean anything more than "non-existent," or perhaps "fictional." In one sense, Huckleberry Finn could be said to exist, but I don't think that's what theists mean when they talk about the supernatural. "Supernatural" is a term applied to that which doesn't exist in an effort to make it seem like it does.

There's one more point I'd like to make, and that is that scientific claims are always extraordinarily detailed and concrete while religious ones tend to be vague and abstract. I think this is the case because detailed and concrete religious claims were too easily to disprove and the faithful have adapted. Now you'll very rarely see a falsifiable religious claim. (People raise the same objections about string theory, an area of exploration that many claim is not scientific because it's not falsifiable.)

How to Argue with Smart People, or Why I Like to "Split Hairs"

Smart people, or at least those whose brains have good first gears, use their speed in thought to overpower others. They’ll jump between assumptions quickly, throwing out jargon, bits of logic, or rules of thumb at a rate of fire fast enough to cause most people to become rattled, and give in. When that doesn’t work, the arrogant or the pompous will throw in some belittlement and use whatever snide or manipulative tactics they have at their disposal to further discourage you from dissecting their ideas. Scott Berkun

I believe this applies to many blog commentators, and not just the smart ones. They hop, skip, and jump from argument to argument and topic to topic, never letting you pin down the flaws because by the time you get there, they're already somewhere else.

Scott Berkun has some ideas about how to prevent people from doing this. Although he's talking mostly about working on a software development team, I think his advice is relevant to all of us.

So your best defense starts by breaking an argument down into pieces. When they say “it’s obvious we need to execute plan A now.” You say, “hold on. You’re way ahead of me. For me to follow I need to break this down into pieces.” And without waiting for permission, you should go ahead and do so.

First, nothing is obvious. If it were obvious there would be no need to say so. So your first piece is to establish what isn’t so obvious. What are the assumptions the other guy is glossing over that are worth spending time on? There may be 3 or 4 different valid assumptions that need to be discussed one at a time before any kind of decision can be considered. Take each one in turn, and lay out the basic questions: what problem are we trying to solve? What alternatives to solving it are there? What are the tradeoffs in each alternative? By breaking it down and asking questions you expose more thinking to light, make it possible for others to ask questions, and make it more difficult for anyone to defend a bad idea.

No one can ever take away your right to think things over, especially if the decision at hand is important. If your mind works best in 3rd or 4th gear, find ways to give yourself the time needed to get there. If when you say “I need the afternoon to think this over”, they say “tough. We’re deciding now”. Ask them if the decision is an important one. If they say yes, then you should be completely justified in asking for more time to think it over and ask questions.

I realize now that this technique is what I always try to do, but I've never spelled it out before. I try to keep the focus on a single aspect of an argument until it's settled. I don't let my opponent shift the goalposts, gloss over an assumption, or use fallacious logic in order to befuddle me.

The best part is that you can often (well, "rarely" is probably more accurate) convince your opponent that they need to rethink their position, since it's basically a house made with shoddy materials on a shaky foundation.

In his essay, he also includes the reasons he believes smart people defend stupid ideas: they inherited them from parents, they've gotten away with defending them before, groupthink, short-term thinking, desire for an idea to be true, following stupid leaders, etc.

I think religious people are particularly likely to hold bad ideas due to tradition, following stupid leaders, and the desire for an idea to be true.