The Human Faces of God (A Review)

American's Biblical literalism has a shocking burliness. Gallup reported in 2007 that 1/3 of Americans believed that the bible is literally true. The strength of this hermeneutic increases when the 47% of people believing the bible is "Inspired by the Word of God" is factored. The unquestioned authority among Americans of the bible becomes 78% believing that the book is a literal document or has its authorship in an invisible deity.

This is an unsettling statistic since archeology, the critical-historical method, Radiocarbon dating, The Burgess Shale, and philosophy of religion offer reasonable defeaters to this claim and provide evidence to consider the minority position the bible is, "Ancient fables, histories and legends recorded by man".

We see consequences of biblical literalism in obvious public positions against the idea that legal protections should be afforded by all people both in history's record (with slavery) and today's headlines (opposition to gay marriage) and in more subtle positions where Christian Zionists oppose a two-state solution because the eschaton of Revelation demands a hegemonic Israel prior to King Jesus's Millennial reign.

Biblical literalists will graft themselves to their tradition as the only viable morality because the bible confirms that their literal belief in the bible is true. This of course is circular reasoning and illogical but, the biblical literalist will rest in appeals to authority found in their community. The most onerous of these community pillars is the tradition of biblical inerrancy articulated in the Chicago Statement formulated in 1978 by Evangelicals frightened that their moral authority would be displaced by liberal interpretations of scripture being considered in the face of scientific evidence and progressive political policies (e.g. The Feminist Movement).

The opening paragraph of its preface exposes the attachment to authority and controlling obsession with obedience Evangelicals seem to need for emotional and psychological balance,

"The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God's written Word. To stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority."

Thom Stark's excellent book "The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When it Gets God Wrong" takes a deliberate step towards the bold assertions inerrancy makes and debunks the exegesis as less than the moral authority it presumes.

Stark provides insight how when one reads the bible as a psychological history of ancient people looking to make meaning of the ineffable it is easy to empathize with things like the Israelites desire to post-rationalize their hostility towards outsiders in God's demands for the Canaanite genocide but, when one takes the bible as the flawless systematic blueprint for humanity then one must either mutilate the text to afford genocide or practice moral relativism to explain it away.

Thom (he and I have exchanged emails so I am going to risk the familiar here) is an honest man who draws from respected sources to show that the harmonization the inerrancy movement wants is not the reality of the text and it leads to a psychological immaturity that defers moral agency to an imagined authority.

He shows by using the bible and the Chicago Statement how that the bible is not a systematic meta-narrative pointing to a singular moral conclusion but an argument around morality that demands we examine ourselves if we are to conceive moral evolution. He exposes the fallacy of biblical inerrancy by showing how the Chicago Statement defends itself with special pleading and tautologies that affirm an authority before the fact until after the fact what is revealed does not comport with modern ethics (e.g. slavery, and the aforementioned genocide). He reveals how the bible itself exposes the myth of monotheism and indicates that Yahweh was a warrior god amongst a pantheon who receives his Israel inheritance from a superior being and then defends it in bloody battle against his brethren deities. Thom illustrates how my favorite books, the wisdom books of Job and Ecclesiastes, auger a disbelief in an after-life or supernatural agency that will save and instead show a god who conspires with Satan in the former to test our stamina or an absent god in the latter which demands we see reality for the opportunity to love those closest to us without precondition or dogma. He exposes the Jesus movement for their inaccurate understanding of the Eschaton (the end times) as an imminent reality and traces this misunderstanding to Jesus himself as a failed apocalyptic prophet. Yes, Thom says (as far as we know by the Synoptic Gospels) that Jesus was wrong (gasp)!

I loved this book. It builds my personal appreciation for the bible as a source of cultural understanding without playing to the fear-based need for certainty Evangelicals practice in their selfish worship of it. I find Thom's work to be kindred to the efforts of Robert M. Price and his Bible Geek Podcast, Robert Wright's "Evolution of God" and humble skeptical inquiry from blogs and podcasts like "Reasonable Doubts" or "Common Sense Atheism".

The real shocker is that Thom is a practicing and professing Christian with what seems like an abiding faith commitment (despite fundamentalists attempts to indict him with the crime of Marcionism). He details how his scholarship altered his view of religion in the final chapter of the book and while I have trouble with some of his analogies I think that I could trust to have a functional relationship with him as I maintain the peace and justice commitments Christianity gave me while respecting reason, skeptical inquiry, humanism and atheism. His exegesis is not the fundamentalism of many of my former church-mates and public leaders like Al Mohler that can only increase ethnocentrism and denialism but neither is it the post-modernism of emergent churches that seek to rescue Jesus from his historical milieu with an appeal to neurotic emotionalism.

Thom is an honest scholar who practices a disciplined approach to a biblical hermeneutic that does not ignore the horrors it can invite but also does not deny the inspiration it can bring. My hope is that his honesty will help change the Gallup statistics so that believers' beliefs hone to a more humble scholarship that will seek real solutions to the realities we face.

The Narcissism of Believers

Wikipedia defines Narcissism as, "the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others."

I have found this trait more and more evident within religious believers as I progress in my Christian deconversion.

Theists want their personal beliefs endorsed because they "feel" them to be true and when these heart-felt superstitions are challenged for the consequentialist immorality they invite (see William Lane Craig's defense of genocide), the theist demands counter-conclusions to trump theirs. They want to hold a rationalization "pissing contest" rather than enage in a conversation rooted in deliberative thinking and falsifiable evidence.

They seem to be saying that they have conclusions for the questions and if you don't then they win.

It seems they do this so they can feel safe within their belief and to insulate themselves within their social group's mores as a defense against dissent.

Michael Egnor (a fellow of the Discovery Institute - the PR organization that tries to deny biological evolution for the sake of Judeo/Christian creationism and theocracy - see their aims articulated in "The Wedge Strategy") offers excellent evidence of this obsessive psychological quirk towards certainty when he creates a "strawman" argument against "New Atheism" at the Discovery Institute Web-site.

Egnor writes,

"But what about arguments for New Atheism? Casual perusal of New Atheist discourse reveals recurring themes. The New Atheism Cliff Notes: 1) There are no gods 2) Theists are IDiots 3) Catholic priests molest children. Surely there's more to New Atheism. Some old atheism (Epicurus, Lucretius, Hume, Russell, Quine) was pretty profound. New Atheism should be even better. Reason, Modern Science, Brights, etc . . . I want to learn more about what New Atheists really believe. So I'm asking Moran a few questions, although other atheists (Myers, Coyne, Novella, Shallit, etc) are invited to reply on their blogs, and I will answer."

His questions,

1. Why is there anything?
2. What caused the Universe?
3. Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?
4. Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?
5. Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?
6. Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself?
7. How can mental states be about something? Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)?
8. Why is there evil?

First off, Eignor's unwillingness to enable comments at his blog post indicates he does not want to know what "New Atheists" believe. Rather it indicates a desire to preach to his choir with a false definition of "New Atheism" and declare victory a priori based on his social groups preferred superstition that "goddidit".

Secondly he is dishonest. He does not disclose that he is a Roman Catholic in his post nor does he offer his position on atheism relative to this bias. Instead he exposes the equivocation theists embrace by illustrating that multiple (and competing) religious world-views have wrestled his questions with their unique theologies. He aligns himself with religious views he would deem either atheist or heretical (and atheist arguments -- further equivocating by asserting atheism has a metaphysical ground, it doesn't). He does this to intimate consensus for his strawman. He states,

"I'm not expecting a treatise on each. Theists don't have all the answers. I don't expect New Atheists to have them either. But each metaphysical tradition -- Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, animist, old atheist, heck, even Scientologist and Raelian -- has addressed at least some of these questions, for better or worse."

I find his challenge and the series of questions evidence of how theists are unable to consider worldviews other than their own.

I have read the "New Atheists" with appreciation. I have enjoyed the work of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Victor Stenger, PZ Myers, Daniel Dennett, Opehlia Benson, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins.

I find no ideas where the "New Atheists" are offering a “New Atheism” with a catechism or set of conclusive answers.

Egnor’s premise for asking these questions rests on the belief that the "New Atheists" are offering a definitive belief system. He is equivocating on the “New” qualifier. The “New” in “New Atheist" refers to the strategy of social engagement today's atheists employ. It refers to the willigness to embrace the taboo that one must give automatic deference to religion and ignore consequentialist arguments against it. That is the only thing "New" and if one reads Thomas Paine one would have to argue that this "Newness" is not "New". The "New Atheism" should only be seen as a tactic to thaw the cognitive biases left over from the Cold War where covert military strategy sought Christian iconography to rally public sentiment against a dangerous "other" (e.g. "In God We Trust" on our money and "Under God" in our pledge). If one didn't assert theism then one was a godless communist.

The only "doctrine" inherent in "New Atheism" is a desire to observe a secular society and evidentialist arguments (see PZ Myers frontal assaults on Chris Mooney's accomodationist atheism or the recent debate between Coyne and Myers on what would constitute as evidence for a deity).

Critical thinking is not conclusion and that’s where Egnor gets everything wrong.

Claiming an allegiance to the "New Atheists" does not preclude an organizing doctrine to a certain world-view nor an obsessive need towards conclusion.

That type of divine command grounded in pre-suppositional dogma is the epistemology of theists, not atheists.

I am sensitive to the "New Atheists" and might even consider myself one because I am sick of having to give religion a pass but am more interested in the “Christian Atheism” of Robert Price than Sam Harris’s neuroscience. My preference comes from my interest in literature and mythology over experimetnal science. Therefore my answers to the questions would not stem from a “New Atheist” belief system (because there isn't one) but rather simple atheism which only asserts the disbelief in god(s).

This is why Egnor’s challenge serves as a strawman because it attempts to challenge an epistymology (New Atheism Metaphysics) that doesn't exist. He has his preferred superstitious answers to these questions which revolve around his version of god and/or the discredited notion of Intelligent Design (AKA "God of the Gaps"). He doesn't want dialogue but rather he wants to assert his superstitions as superior due to their well-rationalized conclusions.

He admits in his challenge that any religious answer to this is nothing more than psychological preference by offering the diversity of theological method used to answer each.

None of these questions has a conclusive answer and the “New Atheist” position would not be a definitive answer but rather a suspension of superstition as “the answer”. "New Atheists" ask that we apply critical thinking to continue the human conversation regarding ethics rather than deferring to dogmatism and sacred texts to assume authority. Egnor projects his bias onto his opponent and only succeeds in staring at his own reflection as evidence that the world is as how he sees it.

For the record, here are my answers to his questions (I'd love to read yours because, unlike Egnor I am interested in critical thought and have thus enabled comments):

1. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.
2. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.
3. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.
4. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.
5. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.
6. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.
7. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.
8. I don’t know. Let’s use the scientific method and critical thinking to continue to try to figure it out and let’s leave religious presuppositions out of policy decisions so we don’t create legal inequality between belivers and non-believers.