Michael Horner's Blog

Is it Arrogant to Make Exclusive Claims to Truth?

May 14th, 2012

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In my search for truth about God and religion it has become clear to me that there is some confusion with respect to exclusive claims to truth. There is a widespread view today that it is arrogant and intolerant to make exclusive religious claims to truth because the implication is that anyone who disagrees with one’s own religion is then wrong.  Religious inclusivists who think that all religions lead to God, will often accuse Christians of arrogance without realizing that given their own criteria, they too are ‘guilty’ of this same ‘arrogance’.

You see, everyone is exclusivistic. Everyone thinks their religious view is true, otherwise why would they hold it? Honestly now, don’t you think that what you believe about religion is true? You might say, “No, I hold a much more tolerant and inclusive view – I think all religions are true or lead to God.”

But notice what follows from that. It follows that anyone who disagrees with that view is wrong. But that is exactly why the inclusivist accuses the exclusivist of arrogance, the implication that those who disagree with them are wrong. So on his own criteria the inclusivist is arrogant to hold to his view.

Religious inclusivism is just as exclusive as Christianity. Religious inclusivists think their claims are true and exclusivists’ claims are false and anyone who disagrees is mistaken. Moreover, inclusivism hides its exclusivity behind a deceptive façade of alleged openness and tolerance. But religious inclusivism is just another absolute position in sheep’s clothing, and is therefore no more open or tolerant than any other exclusive claim to truth. Only inclusivists can see the ‘real truth’ about religion.

Religious inclusivism is not only deceptive and arrogant; it is also incoherent because it espouses religious relativism. Relativists claim that “all religious claims are relative” but notice that statement itself is a religious claim that is not relative. It fails its own test and is thus self-contradictory, and self-contradictory statements are necessarily false.

Religious pluralists often impose their relativistic framework on religions and do not let them speak for themselves about what they believe. This is a clear example of arrogance. Ironically, they require the conclusion that all other religious views are not equally true, but equally flawed and that relativism is the larger, grander truth!

The philosopher W.L. Craig captures the key point here well when he writes, “the pluralist also believes that his view is right and that all those adherents to particularistic religious traditions are wrong.  Therefore, if holding to a view which many others disagree with means you’re arrogant and immoral, then the pluralist himself would be convicted of arrogance and immorality.”

But what about the atheist or agnostic?  I find it humorous and a little sad when those whom I debate from this camp try to portray themselves as more open and tolerant than the “arrogant Christian.” But again notice that atheists think that their view about religion, that there is no God, is true and that anyone who disagrees is wrong. Atheists think all religions are wrong! Clearly they think their view is exclusively true just like the “arrogant Christian.”

But surely the agnostic is not exclusivistic, is he? I have found that most people who use this label do so in what many call “a hard agnostic” way. That is, they think that no one knows the truth about God and religion and no one can know the truth because it is impossible to do so. Well, this may be the most exclusive claim of all! The hard agnostic is claiming to know that no one can know the truth about God and religion. This is an incredibly strong claim. Moreover, they think that anyone who disagrees with them is wrong. So clearly this is another arrogant, exclusivist view.

The only way out of this dilemma would be to hold “a soft agnostic” position where one says “I don’t know the truth about God and religion but I am open to finding out what it might be.”

The point I am ultimately trying to make here is that no one is actually arrogant for holding to a particular religious view or an inclusivist view or an atheist or hard agnostic view.

  • Christians are not being narrow minded, but acting rationally with what they think they know.
  • Religious inclusivists are just acting on what they think they know – that all views are right.
  • Atheists are merely acting on what they think they know, that there is no God and all religions are false.
  • Hard Agnostics are just acting on what they think they know – that no one can know.

 

Everyone is exclusivistic, but it doesn’t mean you are arrogant! How one communicates what they believe could make one arrogant. That is why the apostle Peter told fellow Christians that when they told others about the reasons they had for what they believed, they were to do it with gentleness and respect and with a clear conscience. Good advice for everyone it seems to me.

Question: What have you noticed about the way people state their religious views? Do you think tolerance requires that we avoid making exclusive claims to truth?

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We Don’t Have the Original New Testament Documents. Is This a Problem?

May 8th, 2012

We don’t have the original New Testament documents. Is this a problem? In my early years of investigating the trustworthiness of the Bible I discovered that even though a lot of people at the popular level thought this was a problem, the scholars who worked in this field (called textual criticism) did not think it was a concern.

I discovered that the scholars recognized that even though we don’t have the original of any of the 27 individual letters or ancient historical biographies that make up the New Testament, that there were two factors that gave them confidence that the text we do have is substantially true to the original:

1. The number of early copies that we do have.
2. The short time gap between the original and the earliest copies we do have.

Since writing was done on perishable material at this time, copies had to be made in order to preserve the writings. Textual critics were well aware that there were some differences in the New Testament text among these copies – differences that were the result of both deliberate and accidental changes that early scribes made when copying these texts. But the vast majority of these differences were minor things akin to the way we have different ways of spelling some words in English.

Most importantly, given that we have thousands of New Testament copies from fragments to entire books, we are able to compare these copies with each other and ferret out the changes that were made. This then allows us to reconstruct the original.

I used to give the following illustration to show the effectiveness of this process:

Imagine that you are an English teacher and you write an original poem on the blackboard and ask you class of 100 students to memorize it. After 30 minutes you erase the poem and ask your students to write the poem down from memory word for word.

You ask a third party to analyze these 100 manuscripts and try to determine what the original text of the poem was. Let’s say that he finds the manuscripts to be exactly the same except for one word. Ninety-eight of the manuscripts have the word “and” in the fourth line and two manuscripts had the word “but”. With a strong degree of confidence he could reasonably conclude that the original most likely contained the word “and”.

This is similar to what we can do with the New Testament documents. Because of the number of early copies of the texts, we can reconstruct the text to around 99.8% accuracy. As for portions in questions, the differences are so minor that, for the most part, they do not affect any major Christian doctrine or historical event.

This was considered a “settled issue” and was the standard view among critics until the textual critic Bart Ehrman, a former fundamentalist, began publishing articles and books around 12-15 years ago claiming that we can’t be sure of what the original New Testament said. Ehrman’s argument is essentially that we don’t have copies of copies of copies of the originals. Our copies come hundreds of years later. Therefore, we can’t be sure of what the originals said.

According to Daniel Wallace, a frequent interlocutor with Ehrman, Ehrman’s position was not based on any new discoveries but only on what Wallace calls Ehrman’s “fundamentalist presuppositions” which he retained even after rejecting fundamentalist theology. Wallace thinks Ehrman’s views are an example of a “radical skepticism” that goes far beyond what the manuscripts tell us. “The evidence is otherwise,” according to Wallace.

In addition, Wallace calls attention to the fact that the average classical Greek writer has less than 20 copies of his works still in existence. “Stack them up,” he says, “and they’re 4 feet high.” With the New Testament there exists 5813 copies or fragments in the original language of Greek, a stack towering over the other classic Greek texts.

Moreover, if one considers copies in one language removed from Greek, then the number of New Testament manuscripts swells to over 24,000 that can be compared with each other. And these numbers are growing! I recently had the privilege of being part of a hands-on investigation in Dallas that extracted unidentified papyri that had not been seen by human eyes for close to 2000 years. Until the results are published in a year or so, I am not able to say much more about this, but I can say that some amazing Biblical discoveries were made!

Wallace and his team, who are dedicated to digitally preserving all the Greek copies and fragments of the New Testament still in existence, have in the last few years discovered 70 more Greek New Testament documents that have been “lost” in libraries and museums around the world. Wallace estimates thousands more left to be discovered and some of these are very early documents.

We have far more partial and complete copies of the New Testament which are they dated much closer to the original than the writings of Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Josephus, Polybius, Pausanias, Herodotus, or Xenophon.  The earliest existing manuscripts of these authors are 700 – 1,800 years removed from the original. According to Wallace, when it comes to the New Testament, “There are three times more NT MSS (manuscripts) within the first 200 years than the average Greco-Roman author has in 2000 years.”

Obviously, the shorter the time interval, the less opportunity for changes to have been made; and more importantly, the greater number of copies to compare with each other the easier it is to determine the original reading. The number of early manuscripts of the New Testament we have to compare with each other is far superior to any other ancient text by far. Ehrman’s radical skepticism does not seem justified given this almost embarrassing overabundance of early manuscripts.

If you would like to read more about this topic check out  Daniel Wallace’s response to recent blog comments by Bart Ehrman.

Question: Do you think we are being presumptuous if we think God should have preserved His Word in a less messy fashion?

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A Universe Balanced on a Razor’s Edge

May 2nd, 2012
A Cosmic Exclamation Point

A Cosmic Exclamation Point by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center

Is our universe the result of impersonal, unguided chance or an intelligent mind? In recent decades scientists have been stunned by the remarkable discovery that our universe appears to have been fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life with incredible precision. It appears that our universe is balanced on a razor’s edge. For example, if the force of gravity or the atomic weak force had been altered by as little as 1 part out of 10100 the universe would not have been life permitting.

Stephen Hawking estimates that a decrease in the expansion rate of the universe by even one part in a hundred thousand million million one second after the Big Bang would have resulted in the universe re-collapsing long ago. A similar increase in the speed of expansion would have stopped galaxies from forming. No galaxies – no life!

Roger Penrose, an Oxford Mathematical Physicist, calculates the odds of the special low entropy condition of our early universe having arisen by sheer chance as being at least as small as one part in 1010(123).  How can dozens of values like these be explained? There are only 3 possible explanations:

  1. Physical Necessity
  2. Chance
  3. Design

1. Physical Necessity – it had to be those values – it was physically impossible to be other than what they are
However, it can’t be due to physical necessity because the constants and quantities in question are independent of the laws of nature. In fact, string theory predicts that there are 10500 different possible universes compatible with nature’s laws.

Even Hawking and Mlodinow in their recent book, The Grand Design, reject the hypothesis of physical necessity: “It appears that the fundamental numbers, and even the form, of the apparent laws of nature are not demanded by logic or physical principle” (p. 143).

So could the fine tuning be due to chance?

2. Chance
The problem with this alternative is the possibility that all the constants and quantities would, by chance alone, fall into the life-permitting range is inconceivably minute.

We now know that life prohibiting universes are incomprehensibly more probable than any life permitting universe. So if the universe were the product of chance the odds are overwhelming that the universe would be life-prohibiting.

In order to rescue the alternative of chance, atheists have therefore been forced to an extraordinary hypothesis. They’ve had to posit the existence of an infinite number of randomly ordered universes. These universes compose a sort of world ensemble or multiverse of which our universe is but a part. Somewhere in this infinite world ensemble, finely tuned universes will appear by chance alone and we happen to be one such world. The very fact that scientists must resort to such a remarkable hypothesis shows that the fine-tuning does cry out for an explanation.
There are however at least two major failings with the multiverse hypothesis:

  • There is no evidence that there are any other universes, much less an infinite number of them, and that they are randomly ordered.
  • If our universe is just a random member of a world ensemble then it is overwhelmingly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe.

 

Roger Penrose has calculated that it is unbelievably more probable that our solar system should form suddenly by random collisions of particles than our finely tuned universe should exist by chance. Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison.

So if our universe is just a random member of a world ensemble it is inconceivably more probable that we should be observing a universe no larger than our solar system. Observable universes like that would just be much more abundant in an ensemble of universes than massive universes like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us. Since we are not observing a small universe, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On atheism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no multiverse.

Moreover, even if there is a multiverse, does the multiverse itself exhibit fine-tuning? Hawking and Mlodinow appeal to superstring or M-Theory to explain the generation of the multiverse. But M-Theory requires precisely eleven dimensions if it is to be viable. So this only pushes the problem back a notch. M-Theory cannot account for why just that number of dimensions should exist. The fine-tuning that cries out for an explanation just increases in scope.

3. Design
The fine-tuning argument can then be summarized logically by the following syllogism:

1. The fine tuning of the universe is due to physical necessity, chance or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity, or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.

This fine-tuning argument, taken together with the arguments for the beginning of the universe, and for the existence of objective moral values & obligations, tells us that the cause and designer of the universe is an intelligent, personal, good, immaterial, changeless, space-less, uncaused and enormously powerful being that existed in a timeless eternal state beyond the beginning of the universe.

This is consistent with the Christian concept of God, and therefore belief in God need not be a matter of blind faith. It can be a reasonable belief.

I find these arguments from cosmology fascinating! What do you think? Does this fine-tuning argument help you in your search for the truth about God’s existence?

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Three Ideas that Changed My Life

April 24th, 2012

Michael circa 1973

“Josh is Coming” was all over the campus at the University of Calgary. It was painted on all the plywood fences surrounding construction areas. It was written in chalk all over the sidewalks. It was on posters, banners, flyers. Everyone on campus knew that Josh was coming. I certainly did, and so I was really looking forward to hearing this rock band called “Josh”.

But when I showed up, a few minutes late, there was no rock band; only a guy standing up in front of 1000 students talking about God. My first reaction was to leave as fast as I could, and if this “Josh” had been a stereotypical evangelist, dressed in an all black or all white suit, and shaking a floppy black Bible at me, I would have left. But he was young and sharp and a dynamic, interesting speaker, so I sat down at the back of the room and listened to what would eventually change my life forever.

By the way, the reason I was so confused was that there was a rock group in Calgary at that time called “Jaws”, and I had just gotten the names mixed up in my head. Rather than a band called “Jaws”, I walked in on Josh McDowell, a travelling speaker and activist with Campus Crusade for Christ.

I recently spent some time with Josh and told him some details in the story of how God used him to change my life, and discover the truth to what life is all about. His positive response has prompted me to tell you the story as well.

There were three main things that Josh said that day that revolutionized my thinking and changed my life.

1. Knowing about God versus knowing God
Josh explained that there is a big difference between knowing about God and knowing God. Having been brought up with a church background and having been relatively devout, I thought I knew a lot about God, but I never would have said that I knew God. Furthermore, as a second year university student, although I wasn’t actively rebelling, I was letting God, church and my religion quietly slip out of my life.
Josh used phrases that were radically new for me, like “personal relationship with God”. If it truly was possible to know God in such a personal way, I was very interested.

2. Part of the solution or part of the problem
The second thing Josh said that really grabbed me was that the world needs changing. I was right with him on this one. I was an idealistic young man who really wanted my life to count, and to make a difference in our world. But then he said that unless we each underwent an inner transformation at the heart level, we would just be part of the problem, not part of the solution.
I knew he was right about this, at least as far as I was concerned. Although most people would probably have said I was a nice guy, I knew that that deep down inside I was a self-centered person. The way I treated people, especially girls, revealed the selfishness that dominated me and my relationships. I knew that I needed forgiveness and inner transformation if I wanted my life to count and change the world. Otherwise I was, and would continue to be, just part of the problem as Josh said.

3. Jesus Christ’s death on the cross paid the penalty for all of my sins, Past, Present and Future!
Then Josh combined the first two points and said inner transformation can take place is through a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Christ’s death on the cross provides the forgiveness that I knew I needed for the guilt that I felt for the way I had treated people.

But then Josh added a simple but profound point that revolutionized the way I thought about God. He said that Christ’s death on the cross paid the penalty for all of my sins, past present and future!!  Up until then I had thought I was forgiven only for the sins that I had confessed up to that point. He settled the issue in my mind when he said, “If Jesus’ death on the cross did not pay the penalty for your future sins too, then he is going to have to come back and die again for those sins! After all, all of your sins were ‘future’ compared to his death on the cross.”

I cannot tell you how this truth so radically changed the way I related to God. Whereas prior to understanding this detail, I related to God out of guilt and fear, now I understood that I can relate to God out of gratitude! He already accepts me! He already has forgiven me! He sees me a blank slate cancelling my debt because of Jesus’ death on the cross for me, and my response to what he has done for me.

By the way, I do see a role for confession of sins in the believer’s life, but that has more to do with experiencing God’s love and forgiveness on a daily basis rather than being forgiven.

I thank Josh for being courageous to tell me about the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Can you identify with any part of my story? Have you begun a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ? If you would like to, then check this out.

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The Worst Birthday Present Ever

April 17th, 2012

“All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

At least that is what cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin said at a January 2012 conference in Cambridge held in honor of Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday. But in a pre-recorded speech given at the conference Hawking had reiterated why he was uncomfortable with the idea of our universe having an absolute beginning:

“A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God.”

As his ‘birthday party’ conference progressed little did Hawking realize that he was going to get, what the author of a New Scientist article about the event called, “the worst birthday present ever.” (“Why Physicists Can’t Avoid a Creation Event,” New Scientist [January 11, 2012]).

In my early thirties I remember becoming persuaded by reading philosopher W. L. Craig and NASA scientist Robert Jastrow that our universe had an absolute beginning! In contrast to science and philosophy’s assumption, at least since the time of Aristotle, that the universe had just always been there, cosmology since the 1930’s lent powerful support to the idea that all matter, energy and even space and time came into being simultaneously a finite time ago.  Even more remarkable is that this beginning represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing!

Jastrow wrote about how many scientists struggled with this conclusion because of the obvious theological implications of the universe having a beginning:

  • Sir Arthur Eddington, Astronomer – “I have no axe to grind in this discussion but the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me.”
  • Walter Nernst, German Chemist – “To deny the infinite duration of time would be to betray the very foundations of science.”
  • Philip Morrison, M.I.T. – “I find it hard to accept the Big Bang Theory. I would like to reject it, but I have to accept the facts.”
  • Allan Sandage, Palomar Observatory – “It is such a strange conclusion….it cannot really be true.” (all cited by R. Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1978, p. 122, 123)

 

Even the labeling ‘The Big Bang’ by scientist Fred Hoyle in 1950 was an attempt to mock this bizarre new idea that our universe was not eternal, but actually had a beginning.  With his Steady State theory, Hoyle began the process of proposing alternative theories that avoided an absolute beginning to the universe.

In the 1970’s the ‘oscillating theory’ emerged popular amongst Russian scientists proposing that our universe is just one of an infinite number of expanding and collapsing universes. Since then numerous different models have been offered. However, one by one, each alternative theory has shown not to fit the data as well as the standard Big Bang model.

In 2003 cosmologists Vilenkin, Guth, and Borde proved that any expanding universe that is on average in a state of cosmic expansion cannot have an infinite past, but must have an absolute beginning. Vilenkin, an atheist and Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University, stated, “cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape – they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” (Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. p. 176)

At Hawking’s 2012 ‘birthday party’ conference Vilenkin presented a new paper on two of the latest alternative models that some had hoped would put an end to the idea of the universe having a beginning. But again even these new models failed to avoid a finite past. According to Vilenkin, “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

This is an incredible conclusion! He is not saying that the evidence for the universe having a beginning is a little stronger than the evidence of its eternal existence. Vilenkin is saying that all the evidence points towards the universe having a beginning!

For Hawking, this truly must have been the worst birthday present ever. Since the publication of his best-selling A Brief History of Time in 1988, he has moved away from the idea that the universe needs a creator. In his pre-recorded speech to the conference Hawking specifically mentions that if the universe had a beginning, or as he puts it “a point of creation,” “one would have to appeal to . . . the hand of God.” And to follow such a statement, Vilenkin shocks everyone, but probably no one more than Hawking, with his conclusion that all evidence points to exactly that – a universe that began a finite time ago!

It sure seems that the more we discover about our universe the more it points to God.

Have you given much thought to the fact that our universe had a beginning and the implications of that fact?

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