The Nature Of The Claim

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1997/March-April:

by Farrell Till

Christian apologists argue that skeptics are unreasonably illogical when they reject biblical miracle claims. They disdainfully refer to this as an "anti-supernatural bias." In my debate on the resurrection with Michael Horner, he said in concluding his first speech, "One cannot rule out the resurrection because of a prior assumption that miracles are impossible," and went on to say, "As long as it's even possible that God exists, miracles are possible" (The Horner-Till Debate, Skepticism, Inc., 1995, p. 8). Of course, Horner himself was arguing from "a prior assumption," because he was assuming that if a god exists, it is a god who intervenes in human affairs to perform miracles. Such a view would be contrary to Deism, a religious philosophy that believes in a creator who made the world to operate according to the natural laws instituted at the time of creation, so if assumptions are not allowed skeptics, we have to wonder why Christians think that they should be entitled to argue from an assumption that a god does exist and that he/it is their particular god. There is an inconsistency here that they need to explain.

Did Marco Polo Lie?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1996/July-August:

by Farrell Till

We often hear biblicists argue that there is as much proof for the historicity of Jesus and the events attributed to him in the New Testament as there is for the existence of Julius Caesar and other historical characters. They claim that those who reject biblical characters and events have no logical basis for accepting anything that we have learned through historical records. A recent controversy surrounding a well known historical character will illustrate the erroneous thinking of those who so argue.

The Historicity Of Jesus

More common sense from Farrell Till concerning the 
historicity of Jesus (read Mt 27:45-55 to get the 
background for the following comments). From the 
Errancy Discussion list, 19 June 1997:

> TILL
> Peter, there are arguments from silence, and there are arguments from
> silence. It is unreasonable, for example, to suppose that certain events
> could happen and go unnoticed in contemporary records. How likely 
   would it be that the bombing in Oklahoma City would not have been 
   mentioned in contemporary records?

KIRBY
OK, I'll buy that. I would agree with you that the saints and the darkness
probably didn't happen. This only seems to have relevance to the doctrine
of inerrancy, not the historicity of Jesus.

TILL
But can't you see! The complete silence of secular contemporary records on
the life of a man who allegedly attracted multitudes from foreign countries
and surrounding towns and cities, and performed in their presence all sorts
of amazing signs and wonders makes it extremely important that the writings
about him that were left by his avowed disciples be exceptionally
trustworthy, but how can anyone consider records trustworthy that contain so
many impossible-to-believe entries like the three-hour period of darkness
and the resurrection of the many saints? If we wouldn't give claims like
these the time of day if we found them in any other book, why should we
accord them any more consideration just because they are found in a book
with "Holy Bible" embossed on the cover?

My argument all along has been that the NT gospels are so saturated with
fantastic claims about this man Jesus that, without extrabiblical
corroboration, it is impossible to determine what is fact and what is
fiction. Unfortunately for the Christian position, there just are not any
extrabiblical corroborations for its central claim of a resurrection from
the dead.

>TILL
> Far more likely than that a three-hour period of
> darkness from the failure of the sun's light would go unmentioned.
> Josephus's father was a priest "of great reputation in Jerusalem" (*The
    Life of Flavius Josephus,* 1:2), who would have therefore moved in priestly
> circles at the time Jesus was allegedly tried, crucified, and resurrected.
> Chapter 1 of the autobiograph will give a chronology that establishes the
> time frame. Matthias would have been in his 20s at the time. Chapter 2
> discusses Josephus's education, but he makes no mention of his father 
   ever having referred to the extraordinary events that allegedly 
   accompanied the crucifixion of a man named Jesus. I find this very 
   unbelievable and a most compelling "argument from silence."

KIRBY
I think you mean "believable."

TILL
No, you missed the point I was making. I was saying that I find it
unbelievable that Josephus's father could have witnessed three hours of
darkness at midday and a resurrection of many saints and yet not talked
about them enough to have made an impression on Josephus that would
have been reflected in his works by references to those events. When
World War II ended, I was 12 years old. I had a first cousin who piloted
an LST (landing barge) on D-Day that ferried soldiers from ships out at
sea to Omaha Beach. When he returned home, family members would
sit mesmerized and listen to him tell about his experiences that day, and
all that he experienced were only ordinary, perfectly natural events that
accompanied a massive invasion. I had another cousin on the other side
of my family who was a tail-gunner on a B-29 in the pacific area, and
we enjoyed listening to his reflections on bombing missions his crew
had flown, but there was nothing miraculous about any of the events
he talked about. Are we to assume that Josephus's father and countless
other contemporaries saw very phenomenal events in Jerusalem one
day and just shrugged them off and never talked about them or reported
them to people they had contacts with. Again, I will say that I find this
very unbelievable.

Farrell Till

The Absence Of Evidence (2)

From *The Skeptical Review*, March/April 2002:

By Farrell Till 

A favorite saying of apologists who have no evidence to support their positions is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In other words, they mean that just because they cannot find evidence that a biblical event happened or a biblical character or place existed is not evidence that what the Bible says did not happen or did not exist. We saw Everette Hatcher pursuing this line of reasoning when he was unable to cite extrabiblical evidence to corroborate the claim in Daniel that "Darius the Mede" was an actual historical character. In defense of the absence of any extrabiblical references to "Darius the Mede," Hatcher took a familiar track and argued that because such references to Darius the Mede had not yet been found did not mean that they would never be found. He quoted a comment that Dr. Wayne Bindle, a professor at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, had made to him in a personal e-mail. It seems that professor Bindle thinks that I haven't learned very much from the archaeological discoveries in the past 200 years of biblical names that had previously been unknown in extrabiblical records (TSR, March/April 2001, p. 3). The professor didn't cite any examples, so I have no way of knowing what specific names he was talking about. His argument, however, was obvious: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In this case, Bindle was carrying the argument a step further and suggesting that although no such records of Darius the Mede have yet been found, they will very likely be discovered someday.

Hatcher has joined the Errancy internet list to continue our debate on the authorship and inerrancy of the book of Daniel, and he continues to rely on the absence-of-evidence argument as a catch-all explanation to any lack of real evidence to support his claims. On January 1, 2002, he said the following in defense of his position that "Darius the Mede" was an actual historical person.

Archaeology is silent on the point of who Darius the Mede was, and if Till wants to base his argument on this kind of silent evidence he needs to remember how fast theories against the Bible like this have disappeared in the past when the spade of the archaeologist has turned up new information about ancient civilizations. The Hittites are just one example from the last century.

This is actually an argument that assumes biblical inerrancy, because the person who so reasons is really saying that if evidence to corroborate biblical claims hasn't yet been discovered, it probably will be found someday, since everything the Bible says is true. I'm sure that Hatcher or any other biblical inerrantist wouldn't be at all impressed if a Mormon used the same argument in support of archaeological silence about pre-Columbian civilizations mentioned in the book of Mormon, because he would recognize that it is probable that archaeology is silent about claims in the book of Mormon for the simple reason that the places, people, and events in those claims were not real.

The Absence Of Evidence (1)

Farrell Till responds to inerrantist Dave Miller's article in the Skeptical Review:

I commend Mr. Miller for an excellent definition of the Bible inerrancy doctrine and perhaps an even better explanation of the importance of the doctrine to Christianity. Maybe it is a carry-over from my own fundamentalist background, but I have a much deeper admiration for Christians who believe in a divinely inspired inerrant Bible than those who believe in a divinely inspired errant Bible. To the latter, I can only repeat what Mr. Miller said in the foregoing article: "If the Holy Spirit is responsible for what the biblical writers wrote, and if the Bible contains errors in historical details, then the Holy Spirit is the author of error" (p. 2). As Mr. Miller effectively argued, for the Bible to be authoritative, it must be inerrant; otherwise, man is left with an impractical moral guide, for what good is a moral guide that is blemished with errors? If the Bible says X, and one can establish that X is an untruth, then how can he trust anything else it says? 

Mr. Miller may have been on track in recognizing the absolute necessity of an inerrant, "trustworthy" revelation in order to give credibility and authority to a religious system, but he wandered far afield in his attempt to prove that the Bible provides Christianity with such a revelation. An entire section of his article was devoted to a discussion of "the biblical claim for inerrancy," but I have to disagree with his contention that the Bible claims inerrancy, because it doesn't. Every scripture that Miller cited in this section concerned either promises to send the Holy Spirit to guide the disciples in what they should say or claims that the scriptures were inspired of God or that prophets had spoken as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. However, to say that the Holy Spirit was sent to guide men in what to say or that men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit is not to say that whatever these men said or wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit was inerrant. To arrive at the doctrine of inerrancy, one must go through the logical process that Miller took us through in his article. A basic premise of this process is that if the Holy Spirit is omniscient and omnipotent, then any document that he verbally inspired would have to be inerrant, because an omniscient, omnipotent deity would be incapable of error.

I would agree with Miller's logic if he could prove three things: (1) an entity known as the Holy Spirit actually exists, (2) this entity known as the Holy Spirit is both omniscient and omnipotent, and (3) this Holy Spirit verbally inspired all of the writers of the Bible in everything that they wrote. Unfortunately for Miller's confidence in Bible inerrancy, these are all very big ifs, none of which he could actually prove if his life depended on it. This underscores the major problem in the Bible inerrancy doctrine: it is based on unprovable assumptions. Any belief founded on assumptions is worthless.

Even if we grant Mr. Miller the first two of his assumptions, he would still have a very high hurdle to clear in the third one. That hurdle, of course, would be to establish the truth of the biblical claim that its writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit. A claim is only a claim and must therefore be examined before its truth can be confirmed. Mr. Miller can never prove the truth of the biblical claim of divine inspiration. Claims of divinely inspired books are almost a dime a dozen. The Book of Mormon claims to be a "latter day" revelation from God; the Avesta claims that it was divinely inspired; the Koran claims that it was revealed to man by the angel Gabriel. So what evidence can Miller give us to prove that we should accept the biblical claim of inspiration over all the many others? Christian apologists have tried to give us such proof, but Miller made no attempt to do so in his article. Like so many Bible fundamentalists, he just made the claim and expected his readers to accept it. In the publication in which his article originally appeared, he could get away with this, because the paper is aimed at a predominantly fundamentalist audience. However, more rational readers, which we believe The Skeptical Review has, will insist on much more than what Mr. Miller gave them in the reprint of his article.