Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed is posting reactions to chapters in a book he has (I believe) contributed to, focusing on the sociology of conversion: that is, conversion from an to various forms of Christianity, and other beliefs like atheism. The most recent reaction focused on common characteristics of conversions from Christianity to deism/agnosticism/atheism, and I thought I might add a few thoughts about the comments that were made by “RJS” there.

Firstly, RJS focuses on what he takes to one of the underlying reasons for deconversion; now I haven’t read the book (nor do I need to, since I’m really just responding to the reaction, not the book itself), but my guess is that the reason given here is one that has come out of the mouths of those deconverted. In this case, the reason given by such people is “a quest for intellectual coherence.” This does indeed seem to be one reason universally given by people who convert to these types of position, so it would seem reasonable to believe that this is in fact the case, and I assume that is what RJS has done here.

But the matter is more complicated than this, because, as Paul tells us, YHWH has made himself known to all people in such a manner that they have no excuse not to worship and thank him. Further, he adds that everyone who has not converted to worship of YHWH is suppressing this knowledge of God in some manner.

The implication of this for our understanding of apostasy is that we must understand the reasons given for deconversion as somewhat disingenuous, since we know that the deconverts know God exists; intellectual coherence cannot be achieved by suppressing knowledge of the truth. This may seem arrogant, but it is only so if we’re just making this up; if God has in fact revealed this, then it is not arrogant to recognize the truth.

Following upon this underlying point, RJS brings up three issues that are given by atheists/agnostics/deists for the deconversion, and they will probably not be new to anyone who reads/comments on this blog on a regular basis. They are: Scripture, Theology, and the practical lives of Christians.

Under Scripture, RJS essentially means the doctrine of inerrancy coupled with a belief in young earth creation. RJS mentions that science has proven the earth is old, and young earth creationists both give pitiful scientific arguments against old earth arguments, or else simply believe in a young earth because of the text and not because the physical evidence is unconvincing.

In reply, I would say that if God tells us that the world was created miraculously, then we have grounds to think that reasoning as if it were not created that way (i.e., by assuming that it was created through natural processes) will lead us to incorrect results. Further, if God has in fact told us the approximate age of the universe, then we have grounds for believing it is that old. It seems to me that the question ultimately comes down to: did God reveal the age of the universe to be younger than current estimates, and/or do we trust God? But it should be noted: if one can trust God, and if he did in fact reveal the earth is “young”, it is not unreasonable to believe such a thing. If he did not reveal such a thing, it is still reasonable to trust God. Thus ultimately the issue is irrelevant to the intellectual coherence of believing in God. Because of this, one would be justified in thinking that using it as a reason to disbelieve God is actually disingenuous.

The second reason that deconverts give for disbelieving God is “theology”, by which it is apparently meant: it seems that God is unjust according to (some) traditional theologies, and according to Scripture. Essentially, this is the problem of evil again. However, once again, since we know everyone knows God exists and is good, we have reason to suspect that such arguments are disingenuous. And there is indeed good reason to think so, as if I’ve mentioned in a previous post: both the stronger and weaker forms of the argument presuppose things that Christianity teaches are false (i.e., that God can do literally anything, and that we would always be capable of knowing and evaluating whatever reasons God might have for allowing evil, if he had them). Both of these things also follow from the fact that we know God is good: since we know he is good, apparent evidence to the contrary must not be what it seems.

The third reason given by deconverts is the behaviour of Christians, that is, the bad behaviour of people who are (apparently) not supposed to be bad. The problem with this argument is that it is a straw man; Christianity does not claim that people who claim to be Christians will never do anything unfitting of that claim. Further, it does not claim that people who have the Spirit working in them will always behave perfectly, or even decently. Now, sometimes these points may not be clear to some Christians who are struggling with the temptation to apostasize, and thus perhaps we can take this complaint at face value as sincere; when this excuse is used as a reason to disbelieve in the goodness of YHWH, however, we know it cannot be, for the reason I’ve repeated several times now. And once again, there is good reason for this: as I’ve just said, God does not promise that the activity of the Holy Spirit will make Christians noticeably better, or even decent, in every situation, and thus the fact that it doesn’t doesn’t make God untrustworthy.

Now, I’m sure that any fairly attentive person will notice that this entire time I have been begging the question; that I’ve been assuming Christianity is true in order to prove it true. But this is not invalid, for two reasons: firstly, I’m partly talking to Christians on this blog, and thus these are assumptions taken for granted, and secondly, if Christianity is in fact true, then I’m simply assuming the knowledge we have (according to Paul in Romans 1), so all these arguments are sound.

RJS’ “But” brings up an important related issue: the culture that Westerners inhabit is one that has most fundamentally taken for granted that the Christian God does not exist. And for those looking for possible explanations for disingenuous arguments against the Christian faith, this is one important place to start looking: as we all know from grade school, peer pressure is incredibly hard to resist, and even more so when one doesn’t feel very strongly that one wants to.

The last point that RJS raises is in relation to Intelligent Design. In my mind, the relevance of intelligent design is fairly negative and minimal. That is, it serves to show that arguments used defend an alternative explanation to the Christian one (or even ones just closer to Christianity than to classic Neo-Darwinism) aren’t reasonable. Really, someone with a faith-commitment sufficient to deny YHWH will hold to the alternative explanation anyway, with full conviction that it either has or will solve every problem with itself, which means these arguments are of limited value when considered apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit. Considered apart from an apologetic context, however, it is an edifying issue for Christians to study if only because it makes clear in yet one more way that God is incredibly wise and involved in creation.

To bring this response to a close, I want to make explicit my central point: ultimately, whether you think there could be evidence against the truth of Christianity depends on whether you think Christianity is true in the first place. Some (or even most) people (including Christians) may not see this, but this logically follows from the both the truth of Christianity and from the claims it makes about what all people know. Or, to put this all another way: there is no neutral way to even consider whether God is untrustworthy or not, because to do so is to already have listened to the voice of the serpent.

That is, is God a deceiver if the omphalos hypothesis is right? I don’t think so, for the following reasons.

Firstly, the universe only has an “apparently old” age in the sense that, when interpreted through a grid which inductively extrapolates backwards from the present, based on current period processes, we can mathematically estimate how long the processes have been running. But it is not as if the rocks have flaming messages from God (a la Douglas Adams) written on them telling us the time and date of their creation. This means that any age they appear to have is based on our inductive reasoning being applied to the objects of nature, not because the objects of nature themselves, or God on them, “tell” us their age.

Secondly, God has never promised that our inductive reasoning will always be correct. As well, we know that our inductive reasoning can often be (and has been) incorrect.

Thirdly, a deception is a falsehood communicated by an intelligent agent. But our inductive conclusions are not propositions communicated to us by God.

Fourthly, if God actually has told us how old the universe is, it is obviously wrongheaded to say that he has deceived us.

Thus I can’t see how the objection sticks. This is not to say that the hypothesis is true: if God has actually not told us the age of the earth (i.e., if non-”literal” interpretations of Genesis are exegetically correct, or if there is no divine revelation at all, or if there is no God to reveal anything), then there is probably no reason to disagree with our inductive extrapolations from current periodic processes. The truth of the hypothesis must be established apart from rebutting the above objection.

(The other objection to the omphalos hypothesis mentioned at wikipedia, that it is unfalsifiable, also fails: if it is established based on it being divine revelation, falsifying its claim to be divinely revealed would remove any reason to believe in a young earth, unless inductive reasoning could separately tell us that the earth was young. So it is falsifiable rationally and theologically, though not through empirical induction from the very things that it says cannot tell us the age of the earth.)

There has been some recent discussion about the philosophy of science and the movie Expelled in connection with ID and the intelligent design movement. Much of this has assumed that everyone is familiar with ID is. In order to make this more complicated, ID does not mean just one thing. It means a few things.

ID is sometimes taken to refer to a family of theories about the origin of information in the universe. These family of theories all state that some information or structure in the universe was created by an intelligent being. In this sense, ID is NOT a theory. This family includes any theories of alien design, all forms of Creationism and every theory that claims that God designed the constants or laws of the universe. It would do well to note that by this definition Darwin believed in an intelligent designer. I will call this the wide family definition of ID.

Sometimes ID is taken to refer to a different family of theories. These are the theories that claim that information created by an intelligent being is empirically detectable in principle. These theories do not necessarily claim that intelligent beings actually created anything at all! I will call this the empirical family definition of ID. It would be useful to note that both criteria are sometimes combined. In that case, the family of theories could be called the narrow family. This narrow family excludes all fideistic theories (ie. some versions of creationism) and still includes some versions of “alien creation” theories.

Sometimes ID does not refer to a family of theories, but to a particular theory of design. An example, now famous, is the design of the bacterial flagellum.  Behe has claimed that this feature is designed. The structure did not originate from any mechanical process at all. The evidence is the claim that the formation of all such structures (irreducible complex ones) using any evolutionary process is highly improbable. This theory could (in principle) be disputed by other thinkers favorable to ID. It is one of many. There is no single Theory of Intelligent Design.

Sometimes ID refers to a research program or a heuristic. In that sense, one arrives at scientific theories by assuming that the object of study was designed. For example, one might suppose that so-called junk DNA has a useful function. One would then begin research to find out what that function might be. In this kind of case, ID is not a theory. It is a way of thinking that encourages scientific research.

Thus ends the list of what ID is. ID is not creationism. It lacks political agendas and faith commitments. ID is not the Intelligent Design Movement (IDM). ID is not a revision of creationism. It is both too general and continues much earlier thought. ID is three things: it is a theory about specific features of the world, a family of such theories, and a research program.

Bene Diction has a longish post on the mess over Ben Stein’s new movie, Expelled and the controversial screening which saw biologist P.Z. Myers tossed out (though Richard Dawkins was let in!). It appears that the producer of Expelled is a bit of an interesting case himself, says Bene D:

“Expelled producer Mark Mathis, a former broadcaster and owner of Mathis Media (check out his client list!) is willing to lie, play people for fools, play the fool, spin, trash and do whatever he needs to do to get this movie into the public spotlight and get this paid for. He is quite open about his rules of engagement.”

Go read the original post, it expounds much more on this aspect of Mathis. I know that if these are his rules of engagement, then Mathis certainly fits into an established mold as a documentarian-propagandist unafraid to let boring facts ruin compelling footage, a good score and an authoritative narrator’s baritone voice. In this he goes along with the likes of Aaron Russo who claimed Americans don’t have to pay income tax, or the people who say that the same group who botched Iraq so badly somehow carried off 9/11 as a top-secret inside job.

As an aside, this is not to say that documentaries are awful things, there are some rather good ones out there. It’s just that film (or, more likely, DVD) is an excellent format in which to propagandize people. The pictures, the music, everything moves you along to the inevitable conclusions that the filmmakers have laid out carefully from the first pre-production meeting to the final cut.

What’s more frustrating is that documentaries often do not need to resort to the sorts of hysterics that have become their hallmarks. As an example, the premise of, say, Fahrenheit 911 (that the war in Iraq was driven by misinformation peddled by powerful interests – with horrific consequences) is perfectly defensible without resorting to Michael Moore’s level of theatrics.

What is troubling about a film like Expelled is that it is so clearly aimed at a Christian audience. It’s no secret that the producers are courting faith-based private schools, home-schoolers, and others who they figure are sympathetic to the film’s message. What kind of reputation will Christians get for buying into something that’s been produced by people who quite openly admit that they are propagandists and who filmed many of their subjects under false pretenses? I suppose for someone like Mathis, this all just the same as business and politics, or maybe it’s okay because everyone does it. That troubles me.

Hey, do you want a Ph.D? I sure do. Then come on down to Patriot University! That’s where Dr. Dino did his Ph.D.!

Here’s an excerpt from Hovind’s dissertation:

He was born in 1809 and died about 1880. He was very anti-Christian and tried to influence anyone he could not to believe in God. He was very full of godless ideas. He was a very avid agnostic, racist, and an evolutionist. He believed in a great infinite age of the universe. He was very influential in furthering the ideas of evolution, particularly in the country of England.

For more Hovind action, click here.

And the winner of this award goes to …… the good “doctor” himself, “Dr.” Dino! I first came across Dr. Dino watching a VHS of his lectures on creationism in a friend’s basement in high school. I’m not sure if I was a convert at the time, but convert or not, I remember thinking that Hovind was terrible … and a bit of a prick.

So, what’s Kent been up to these days? Well besides being the principal creator of Dinosaur Adventure Land, appearing on the Ali G show (can someone find the link for that?), Kent has landed himself in prison! Apparently the good doctor has failed to pay over half a million dollars in taxes. Big daddy government doesn’t like it when that happens so Kent’s in a little bit of trouble right now. His response? Kent claimed he was employed by God, made no income, had no expenses and owned no property. I’ve heard that argument works real well with the IRS.

The fraudulent douchebag now has a blog up and running. Is Hovind remorseful? Of course not. Read this drivel.

The Inklings used to keep themselves amused by reading Amanada McKittrick Ros’ notoriously bad prose. They would have competitions where the winner was the one who could read her work the longest without laughing.

We should do this with Kent.

Here’s a quote from Kent:

KH: Hey, Paul! How are you doing?

Apostle Paul: Very well, except I’m in prison – sort of. I have lots of freedoms here in Rome. This beats all the other jails and prisons I’ve been in. I’m allowed to have lots of visitors (Acts 28:30) and I get to preach the kingdom of God with no restrictions (Acts 28:31). I even have my own house.

KH: What do you do in your free time?

Paul: I have lots of good books to read as well as searching the law, the prophets, and the Psalms. I write letters to churches that I helped to start. I also write to young preachers to encourage them and instruct them in the faith. I keep really busy! I’ve been waiting for months now to have Caesar hear my appeal. The legal system is so slow!

I didn’t make it past the first line.