Anarchists and atheists and Bibles, Oh My!

It is a danged shame that I can’t give all the fine comments that find their way into my blog the attention they deserve. But I do what I can, and last week I made a note to get back to the comments of AnAtheist.Net. I’ve included them below and numbered them for ease of reference (just like a medieval monk numbering biblical passages you might say).

(1) “Randal, you proposed two avenues for supporting your claim that the Bible is (somehow) an inspired document.”

(2) “First, of course, you claim that it is a properly basic belief. Now, I can understand why certain fundamental beliefs about the nature of our experience and our world could be taken as properly basic and necessary to accept in order to proceed any further. The data of our experience overwhelmingly points to a real, material world that exists 'outside' of us. We gain absolutely nothing by proposing, say, idealism or matrix-like scenarios.

(3) “Now, we have available to us billions of texts since the invention of writing and we can now find billions more virtually on the internet. That is a lot of writing. This overwhelming amount of data points to human beings as the sole creative agent. But now you come along and single out one small collection of these texts and declare that it is properly basic to believe that this one in particular is supernaturally inspired. Why not pick out other texts? Why a group of texts that happen to be important for your religion? Why is it not properly basic to believe that this comment is inspired? It seems to me that what is properly basic is to believe that ALL texts are ordinary (not supernaturally inspired) absent any defeaters that would make any particular texts extraordinary. A complete reversal of your position.

(4) “Secondly, you point to evidence for a historical resurrection. That seems to be a non-sequitur. Even if there was good historical evidence that a resurrection took place it does not follow that the group of texts assembled in the Bible (not to mention the entire rest of the book) about that event were necessarily inspired by God. If I was lucky enough to be there when it happened I could write down the "good news" and not make any claims of inspiration.

(5) “I was really hoping that sophisticated 'academic theology' could provide a much more substantial case for divine inspiration than such non-arguments. Oh, who am I kidding...”

Let's start at the beginning. The statement in (1) is misleading. I don’t argue that the prima facie proper basicality of belief in the inspiration of scripture supports that claim for somebody who doesn’t already accept it. But if such belief can be properly basic sans defeaters then this shows how a person can be rational and justified in believing in the inspiration of scripture sans an apologetic argument for the claim. And that’s significant for all those who care about being rational in their beliefs.

Next, let’s move to an argument in (3) that seeks to present, as I understand it, a defeater for the prima facie proper basicality of belief in the inspiration of scripture. The problem, in short, is arbitrariness. There are innumerable potential claimants for inspiration so how can you justify accepting just one? Thus AAN: “It seems to me that what is properly basic is to believe that ALL texts are ordinary (not supernaturally inspired) absent any defeaters that would make any particular texts extraordinary.”

I agree that this claim quoted at the end of the last paragraph is properly basic for AAN, but why think it is properly basic for me? After all, we have different starting points at the get go. Allan the Anarchist believes that all political systems are equally oppprobrius. Then he meets Michael Monarchist who continues to believe in the rule of the king. So Allan avers: “It seems to me that what is properly basic is to believe that ALL political systems are coercive absent any defeaters that would make any particular political system non-coercive.” Er, okay. That’s fair enough for Allan Anarchist. It’s his starting point and absent defeaters he’s free to it. But absent any defeaters for monarchy Michael Monarchist is free to his views too.

Next, let’s turn to (4). Here AAN makes another good point (hey they’re all good points, even if I don’t agree with them): “Even if there was good historical evidence that a resurrection took place it does not follow that the group of texts assembled in the Bible (not to mention the entire rest of the book) about that event were necessarily inspired by God.”

Right. But if there is good historical evidence that a resurrection took place then it is likely that God raised Jesus from the dead since we all know that human beings don’t come back to life without a sufficient cause. And that in turn raises the plausibility that the sacred texts held by the community of faith that has confessed the resurrection for two thousand years are indeed inspired. Thus, evidence of the resurrection grants to the outsider a measure of plausibility to the working hypothesis that the Bible is, in some sense, inspired.