Monday, November 26, 2012

Coyne betrays his ignorance of theology. Again.

The biologically intrepid but theologically illiterate Jerry Coyne has a few things to say about Pope Benedict's reaffirmation, in his new book, about the Virgin Birth. Not very intelligent things, mind you, but when has that ever stopped him?

He first takes note of a reference by the Pope to the Holy Spirit being one part of the Trinity, to which he responds:
Note that the Trinity is not an explicit claim of the New Testament, but a doctrine (now ironclad) made up by Church fathers from some questionable references in the New Testament. And it’s not accepted by many Christians (e.g. “Unitarians”, Christian Scientists, and Mormons). Once again, theology has just made something up. But I digress ...
No, the Trinity is not explicit, but nature doesn't exactly announce in explicit terms that operates on evolutionary principles, but Coyne believes that. In the case of the Trinity, the assertions are clear and the inference is straightforward: The person of the Father is God; the person of the Spirit is God; the person of the Son is God; there is only one God; therefore, there are three persons in the one God. You can disagree with it, but you can't coherently quibble with the claims or casually dismiss the inference.

And someone please inform Jerry that the Unitarian, Christian Scientist, and Mormon churches are not exactly your paradigm Christian institutions. They reject every central tenet of the Christian faith. So on what grounds can anyone call them "Christian"? Because they claim to be? Historically, a Christian is someone who can affirm the Nicene Creed. These institutions reject it. This is not theological rocket science.

Does Jerry accept Scientology as science? It claims to be.

Coyne goes bumbling along, asking (on the basis of a yahoo.com report--yahoo being a well-known repository of theological scholarship) why the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection are "cornerstones of faith" while the Flood, Adam and Eve, and the parting of the Red Sea are not (answer: for the same reason that systematic circulation of the blood or that photosynthesis converts light into chemical energy or that tides are caused by the Moon are "cornerstones of science"--because, although they are scientific conclusions, they are not determinative of what is science and what isn't); why he accepts creation but does not reject evolution (answer: because not all evolutionary belief is Darwinian); and why he accepts some Biblical truths as literal and some as metaphorical (answer: because some Biblical truths are intended as literal and some are intended as metaphorical).

But I don’t see the Virgin Birth as such an unequivocal truth. Nothing really depends on that tale except the notion that Jesus was an extraordinary (i.e., divine) being. And by holding fast to such a ludicrous doctrine, the Pope is making things tough for his Church, and harder for adherents to accept its doctrine in an age of science.
Naw. Nothing depends on it. Except the central claim of Christianity. That's all.

And as for making things "tough on the Church" because we are in the "age of science," Coyne can't name one discovery of science that makes belief in the Virgin Birth "tough." The Virgin Birth is a miracle, and, as I've pointed out, science, as science, can have exactly nothing to say about it.

Coyne says the Pope has "embarrassed himself." And he didn't even blush when he said it.

Did I mention that the Pope has more knowledge of history and theology (as well as the philosophy of science) in his little fingernail than Coyne has in his whole body?


8 comments:

CrusadingMedievalist said...

"Embarrassed himself." Really? To the Pope, one of the leading theologians in Christianity? Apparently.

Singring said...

'Naw. Nothing depends on it. Except the central claim of Christianity. That's all.'

So are you saying that you, as a Christian, believe in the virgin birth?

You believe that a woman who never had sex was impregnated miraculously by God?

Martin Cothran said...

Singring,

Precisely. Now give me your scientistic argument proving that this didn't or couldn't happen.

Singring said...

'Precisely. Now give me your scientistic argument proving that this didn't or couldn't happen.'

Huh?

I never claimed that there was a scientific argument ('scientistic'?) of the sort.

Neither do I have a scientific argument that proves that pigs can't fly or that Mohammad didn't take a ride in the sky on a flying horse.

If you choose your beliefs on the basis of what can't be proven to not be so, you must have one interesting cornucopia of beliefs, ranging from spoon-bending psychic powers to invisible unicorns. How does that mesh with rational thinking, I wonder?

Martin Cothran said...

No thing that cannot be proven should be rationally believed

The Virgin Birth cannot be proven

Therefore, the Virgin Birth should not be rationally believed

Is this your argument, Singring? If not, restate it for me.

Singring said...

This is obviously not my argument. First of all, the word 'proven' has no place in this context, it is a word used in mathematics, not in science. Outside of mathematics, nothing can be proven, so your use of this word in this context is inappropriate.

I thought my sarcasm on this point in the earlier post was clear, but apparently it wasn't.

The correct version of my argument would be something like:

Nothing that cannot be supported by the empirical evidence should be rationally believed.

The Virgin birth is not supported
by empirical evidence.

Therefore it is not rational to believe in the virgin birth.

Now, before you jump up and down with your tired old 'How do you empirically support the belief in empirical evidence!' nonsense, please remember that I fully agree that there are some basic beliefs that we all (every sane human, that is) have to just take on as a fundamental starting point - one of them being that what we experience with our senses and can test using our senses is in fact an accurate and true reflection of nature.

Of course, you and every other Christian share this basic belief.

But here you are, making an additional claim that goes beyond this fundamental belief: the claim that a virgin bore a human being.

This belief needs to be justified with empirical evidence to be held rationally.

The sheer fact that you cannot disprove this belief (which I wholly agree with) is by no means sufficient to hold this belief rationally. You seem to tacitly acknowledge this with your last post. After all, if not being 'disproveable' were the only criterion for admitting a belief to the rational category, you'd have to be a Hindu/Mormon/Muslim/Christian/Jew... etc.

So I ask you: what other reasons, particularly empirical evidence, do you have to support this belief in the virgin birth?

Martin Cothran said...

Singring,

what other reasons, particularly empirical evidence, do you have to support this belief in the virgin birth?

You can't support a belief in a historical claim through empirical evidence--unless you have a time machine you'd like to tell us about. You are stuck with the testimony of witnesses and historical documents. This kind of evidence is no less "rational" than empirical evidence.

So the rational evidence for the Virgin Birth is the historical testimony, in this case, of St. Luke and St. Matthew.

Singring said...

' You are stuck with the testimony of witnesses and historical documents. This kind of evidence is no less "rational" than empirical evidence.

So the rational evidence for the Virgin Birth is the historical testimony, in this case, of St. Luke and St. Matthew.'

That's the problem right there. We know from empirical evidence that eye-witness accounts are frequently unreliable.

With this in mind, we have to judge the testimony of supposed eye-witnesseses based on the empirical evidence surrounding them (as any good historian will tell you).

The testimony you cite in support of your belief therefore instantly loses credibility if we look at that empirical evidence:

1.) The documents we have containing this testimony (empirical evidence) clearly indicate that the authors lived dozens of years after the death of Jesus and did not even speak his language. They were Greeks and certainly were not direct eye-witnesses to the events. It is highly doubtful they even had contact with any actual eye-witnesses.

2.) Many of the claims they make directly contradict the wealth of empirical evidence we have today. Virgin births don't seem to occur these days, nor do the other purported miracles they describe. I'm certain you wouldn't take the eye-witness account of a Hindu that a statue started crying milk as convincing testimony that this was a miracle worked by his God today, would you? Likewise, you wouldn't accept the eye-witness testimony of Mormons who attest to the golden tablets John Smith was transcribing, despite the court-certified documents that record their testimony within the past 150 years. Clearly, these are not rational beliefs (or do you want to tell me you think they are?).

So why do you accept 2,000 year old transcribed testimony from a non-eyewitness that makes similar claims as rational support for your belief?

3.) Even if we suppose that Matthew and John were actual eye-witnesses alive at the time, do you really think they were privy to Mary conceiving Jesus? How did that work? Were they in Mary's bedroom throughout the 10 or 12 prior to Jesus' birth?

If they weren't how did they know how Mary was impregnated and who did it? Did Mary just claim that she was? Do you think it more likely - based on the empirical evidence we have available today - that she a virgin mother than that she was raped by her husband or maybe some other man - or maybe even had an affair - and claimed to have conceived as a virgin to protect her life? Do you think it more likely that she was a virgin mother than that she was simply delusional?

Do you really want to tell me that you consider hearsay testimony about a purported virgin birth 2,000 years ago in an area where miracle claims (that you don't believe) were a dime a dozen as sound foundation for a rational belief in the virgin birth?

Come now...