Second Response To Jensen
Dennis Jensen wasn’t too thrilled with the language and tone of my last response. And, I suppose I can’t blame him, I was quite strong. I do believe his arguments are less than impressive. But, I shall endeavor to be less harsh in this response.
Jensen's response to my first response was quite lengthy indeed. Intimidating to try to respond to all of it just because of the amount of time involved! For this reason, I'm just not going to be able to respond to it all, at least at this time. I may expand on my response in the future.
The first point I want to respond to is this:
Jensen: "If Doland has answered my above question in one of his writings concerning the historicity of the Gospels, I hope he does not expect me to search through those articles to find my answer--because I won't. I am here responding to Doland's previous critique, not to some other article. Doland needs to respond to my critique directly or simply refuse to answer it."
Excuse me Mr. Jensen, but I never signed on to be your mommy to spoon feed you. I did not "hurl the elephant" presenting you with unreasonable amounts of resources. I provided links to good articles by sources that are more qualified than me. For example, Richard Carrier has a doctorate in history, specialty is Roman history. He has one, I don't. So, I use him for a reference. You refer to sources yourself. So, you need to be willing to read a few articles, or, as Bill O'Reiley says, "shut up". I ain't spoon feeding you.
With that out of the way, let me begin responding to his points. In my previous response to Jensen, I wrote a fair amount on the subject of free will. I have used that material and expanded upon it to create a new paper, "Free will: Is it possible?" (You can click on the link and read this, right Jensen?) It expands upon what I wrote before to hopefully make it more clear. I also quote from the Bible where it specifically contradicts free will.
One subject that comes up in Jensen’s responses deals with probabilities of life. Making useful claims based on probabilities is nontrivial, much harder than most laymen understand. I concede that even people that have studied math and should know better often do as poorly as some laymen. I discussed this some in my original paper and in my response, but, Jensen still doesn’t get it. I shall make another stab at it.
First off, if he wishes to claim that life as we know it is extremely improbable naturalistically, I’d be the first to agree. The problem is, it is a meaningless claim. The odds of any specific set of numbers coming up in a state lottery is on the order of one in 15 million. If the numbers were say, 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, 49, would you not believe it happened naturalistically since the odds of it happening are 1 in 15 million so it must have been a miracle? Low probability doesn’t necessary bear any useful information on whether something could have happened or not. The low probability of the lottery numbers being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49 bears no relevance as to whether those numbers could have been picked or not.
The point is, no matter what the universe is like, the odds of it being exactly like it is are infinitesimal. But that doesn’t make our universe any more or less likely than any other possible universe.
There simply is no way to calculate the odds of the universe coming out the way it is naturalistically. But even if you could calculate it, and even if it came out an extraordinarily small number – as no doubt it would – it would still be a totally useless statistic.
Now the next subject to discuss is the idea of initial probabilities. If I were to accurately guess that the numbers of the lottery were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49, that would indeed be a very lucky guess. Now say somebody were to tell me something like, “I saw the numbers of last night’s lottery, and they were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and… either 48 or 49, I can’t remember”. Now with that information, if I were to guess the numbers were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49, and I’m right, did I successfully guess 1 in 15 million? No, I successfully guessed one in two. All the other possibilities had been eliminated.
Given that I have information that the lottery numbers were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and either 48 or 49, what reasoning process might I use to make a guess what the actual numbers were? Would it make sense for me to have reasoned something like, “well, the odds of the lottery numbers being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 48 are one in 15 million, so, therefore it must have been 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49”. Obviously not. The initial probabilities of the two choices being each 1 in 15 million is no longer relevant. The only thing of relevance is the relative probability. Of the two choices that I have to choose from, the relative probability is the same. Each of the two choices has the same relative probability so either choice is equally likely.
To recap, guessing the lottery numbers are 1, 10, 11, 26, 30 and 49 is a 1 in 15 million proposition if you don’t have any information, but it is a 1 in 2 proposition if you have are given all the numbers, except for the last one which is only a choice of 2 numbers. The point being, use of probability requires quantifying what you know, and what you don’t know. If you don’t first quantify what you do and don’t know, then probability is useless. You then erroneously calculate probabilities of one in 15 million when it is really one in 2, or vise versa.
So, now when it comes to the issue about whether “life, universe and everything” could have come about naturalistically or by divine intervention, Christians invariably try to use the initial probability of naturalistic options. Again, there is no way to calculate it, but I concede that if there was it would be a low number. But that doesn’t increase the probability of a supernatural answer. If you could use probability at all, you would have to use the relative probabilities of the two options.
For illustration purposes, let us suppose you could calculate the probability of “life universe and everything” existing naturalistically was 1 in a billion while the probability of everything existing via supernatural means was 1 in a million. If you could do that, well, then you’d have something. You could say the supernatural is 1000 times more likely than the natural.
But obviously you can’t. You can’t calculate either. But, I can concede that at there are at least some methods to calculate at least some elements of the naturalistic universe. So, you wind up with a seemingly impossible probability of the world exiting naturally, and conclude “therefore God”. But that is akin to my analogy of concluding that the lottery must have been 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49 because the odds of it being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 48 are 1 in 15 million.
Further, this misuse of probability makes it easy for God to win. For while there are some methods to calculate the odds of some portion of the natural universe, there is no way to calculate any odds at all on supernatural alternatives. None at all. So you utterly no possible way to ever do any relative probability calculations, making it trivial to say “therefore God” without actually having any evidence at all. Using the same reasoning, I could say, “the odds of the lottery being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49 are 1 in 15 million, so, it must have been God Himself that caused those numbers to come up. “
I’ll use one more analogy. I know I’m being redundant, but, the points I’m making invariably go over the heads of most Christian laymen, so, I want to try to make the point as clear as possible. Let’s say the state decided to make a super-duper lottery. If you win, you win all the money on earth. The entire planet is yours. But, you’ve got some daunting odds against you: The lottery computer will pick a sequence of a trillion numbers. And each number the computer picks will be between 1 and a trillion. Any number of duplicates allowed. That makes the odds of any specific sequence being 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 raised to the 1,000,000,000,000 power possibilities. I think that is a number that has more zero’s in it than there are atoms in the universe. It’s a big number.
So, lottery day comes along and the computer picks out some sequence. Whatever sequence it picks, the odds of that specific sequence would be 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 raised to the 1,000,000,000,000. That's a probability so small as to make the numbers that Creationists pull out look like sure things. Did that mean it was an act of God to come up with that sequence? No. It doesn’t matter how small of a probability you calculate, it doesn’t lend even the tiniest of evidence towards a supernatural explanation. None at all. Zero. Period.
I think I’ve drilled that one to death. I know I was overly redundant there, but, its an important point, and I just don’t know how to get the point made. That’s the best I can come up with for now, so, I’ll move on finally.
So, now I will respond to Jensen’s specific points. He responds to my use of the “God the Ironworker” analogy:
Jensen: "I would reply that because the nature of free choice is such that God leaves this as an area outside of God's control.”
What, exactly is “outside of the control” of an omniscient, omnipotent entity? Please answer with explicit details. The actual answer is, by definition, NOTHING. If there is anything outside of God’s control, he is by definition, not omnipotent.
Jensen: “God graciously says, this is an area in which I will not interfere.”
How can he *not* interfere? He creates our personality, right? That is interference! He creates our desires, that is interference. He creates our abilities. That is interference. You make these claims that are blatantly self-contradictory. Further, per my free will article, the Bible specifically states that God interferes with free will purely on God's whim:
Jensen's response to my first response was quite lengthy indeed. Intimidating to try to respond to all of it just because of the amount of time involved! For this reason, I'm just not going to be able to respond to it all, at least at this time. I may expand on my response in the future.
The first point I want to respond to is this:
Jensen: "If Doland has answered my above question in one of his writings concerning the historicity of the Gospels, I hope he does not expect me to search through those articles to find my answer--because I won't. I am here responding to Doland's previous critique, not to some other article. Doland needs to respond to my critique directly or simply refuse to answer it."
Excuse me Mr. Jensen, but I never signed on to be your mommy to spoon feed you. I did not "hurl the elephant" presenting you with unreasonable amounts of resources. I provided links to good articles by sources that are more qualified than me. For example, Richard Carrier has a doctorate in history, specialty is Roman history. He has one, I don't. So, I use him for a reference. You refer to sources yourself. So, you need to be willing to read a few articles, or, as Bill O'Reiley says, "shut up". I ain't spoon feeding you.
With that out of the way, let me begin responding to his points. In my previous response to Jensen, I wrote a fair amount on the subject of free will. I have used that material and expanded upon it to create a new paper, "Free will: Is it possible?" (You can click on the link and read this, right Jensen?) It expands upon what I wrote before to hopefully make it more clear. I also quote from the Bible where it specifically contradicts free will.
One subject that comes up in Jensen’s responses deals with probabilities of life. Making useful claims based on probabilities is nontrivial, much harder than most laymen understand. I concede that even people that have studied math and should know better often do as poorly as some laymen. I discussed this some in my original paper and in my response, but, Jensen still doesn’t get it. I shall make another stab at it.
First off, if he wishes to claim that life as we know it is extremely improbable naturalistically, I’d be the first to agree. The problem is, it is a meaningless claim. The odds of any specific set of numbers coming up in a state lottery is on the order of one in 15 million. If the numbers were say, 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, 49, would you not believe it happened naturalistically since the odds of it happening are 1 in 15 million so it must have been a miracle? Low probability doesn’t necessary bear any useful information on whether something could have happened or not. The low probability of the lottery numbers being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49 bears no relevance as to whether those numbers could have been picked or not.
The point is, no matter what the universe is like, the odds of it being exactly like it is are infinitesimal. But that doesn’t make our universe any more or less likely than any other possible universe.
There simply is no way to calculate the odds of the universe coming out the way it is naturalistically. But even if you could calculate it, and even if it came out an extraordinarily small number – as no doubt it would – it would still be a totally useless statistic.
Now the next subject to discuss is the idea of initial probabilities. If I were to accurately guess that the numbers of the lottery were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49, that would indeed be a very lucky guess. Now say somebody were to tell me something like, “I saw the numbers of last night’s lottery, and they were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and… either 48 or 49, I can’t remember”. Now with that information, if I were to guess the numbers were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49, and I’m right, did I successfully guess 1 in 15 million? No, I successfully guessed one in two. All the other possibilities had been eliminated.
Given that I have information that the lottery numbers were 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and either 48 or 49, what reasoning process might I use to make a guess what the actual numbers were? Would it make sense for me to have reasoned something like, “well, the odds of the lottery numbers being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 48 are one in 15 million, so, therefore it must have been 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49”. Obviously not. The initial probabilities of the two choices being each 1 in 15 million is no longer relevant. The only thing of relevance is the relative probability. Of the two choices that I have to choose from, the relative probability is the same. Each of the two choices has the same relative probability so either choice is equally likely.
To recap, guessing the lottery numbers are 1, 10, 11, 26, 30 and 49 is a 1 in 15 million proposition if you don’t have any information, but it is a 1 in 2 proposition if you have are given all the numbers, except for the last one which is only a choice of 2 numbers. The point being, use of probability requires quantifying what you know, and what you don’t know. If you don’t first quantify what you do and don’t know, then probability is useless. You then erroneously calculate probabilities of one in 15 million when it is really one in 2, or vise versa.
So, now when it comes to the issue about whether “life, universe and everything” could have come about naturalistically or by divine intervention, Christians invariably try to use the initial probability of naturalistic options. Again, there is no way to calculate it, but I concede that if there was it would be a low number. But that doesn’t increase the probability of a supernatural answer. If you could use probability at all, you would have to use the relative probabilities of the two options.
For illustration purposes, let us suppose you could calculate the probability of “life universe and everything” existing naturalistically was 1 in a billion while the probability of everything existing via supernatural means was 1 in a million. If you could do that, well, then you’d have something. You could say the supernatural is 1000 times more likely than the natural.
But obviously you can’t. You can’t calculate either. But, I can concede that at there are at least some methods to calculate at least some elements of the naturalistic universe. So, you wind up with a seemingly impossible probability of the world exiting naturally, and conclude “therefore God”. But that is akin to my analogy of concluding that the lottery must have been 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49 because the odds of it being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 48 are 1 in 15 million.
Further, this misuse of probability makes it easy for God to win. For while there are some methods to calculate the odds of some portion of the natural universe, there is no way to calculate any odds at all on supernatural alternatives. None at all. So you utterly no possible way to ever do any relative probability calculations, making it trivial to say “therefore God” without actually having any evidence at all. Using the same reasoning, I could say, “the odds of the lottery being 1, 10, 11, 26, 30, and 49 are 1 in 15 million, so, it must have been God Himself that caused those numbers to come up. “
I’ll use one more analogy. I know I’m being redundant, but, the points I’m making invariably go over the heads of most Christian laymen, so, I want to try to make the point as clear as possible. Let’s say the state decided to make a super-duper lottery. If you win, you win all the money on earth. The entire planet is yours. But, you’ve got some daunting odds against you: The lottery computer will pick a sequence of a trillion numbers. And each number the computer picks will be between 1 and a trillion. Any number of duplicates allowed. That makes the odds of any specific sequence being 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 raised to the 1,000,000,000,000 power possibilities. I think that is a number that has more zero’s in it than there are atoms in the universe. It’s a big number.
So, lottery day comes along and the computer picks out some sequence. Whatever sequence it picks, the odds of that specific sequence would be 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 raised to the 1,000,000,000,000. That's a probability so small as to make the numbers that Creationists pull out look like sure things. Did that mean it was an act of God to come up with that sequence? No. It doesn’t matter how small of a probability you calculate, it doesn’t lend even the tiniest of evidence towards a supernatural explanation. None at all. Zero. Period.
I think I’ve drilled that one to death. I know I was overly redundant there, but, its an important point, and I just don’t know how to get the point made. That’s the best I can come up with for now, so, I’ll move on finally.
So, now I will respond to Jensen’s specific points. He responds to my use of the “God the Ironworker” analogy:
Jensen: "I would reply that because the nature of free choice is such that God leaves this as an area outside of God's control.”
What, exactly is “outside of the control” of an omniscient, omnipotent entity? Please answer with explicit details. The actual answer is, by definition, NOTHING. If there is anything outside of God’s control, he is by definition, not omnipotent.
Jensen: “God graciously says, this is an area in which I will not interfere.”
How can he *not* interfere? He creates our personality, right? That is interference! He creates our desires, that is interference. He creates our abilities. That is interference. You make these claims that are blatantly self-contradictory. Further, per my free will article, the Bible specifically states that God interferes with free will purely on God's whim:
So you see God is kind to some just because he wants to be, and he makes some refuse to listen. (Rom. 9:18).
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Jensen: “It must ‘be created and operate under God's design.’ Agreed. God gives us the ability to freely choose.”
What, specifically, is not under the control of God's design? Again, refer to my freewill paper for more information.
Jensen: "Does Doland think he is actually not free? Does he think then that the courts are wrong in holding people responsible for their actions? Couldn't someone say, 'I couldn't help it; I had to kill my wife; I wasn't free to do otherwise'?"
I understand that it is not a pleasant idea that we are just chemical automatons, doing what chemical processes do. That is what seems to be the case, but that doesn’t mean I like it. So, in your criminal/court scenario, it many ways, it is true, the criminal didn’t have a “choice” – he did what the chemicals in his body set out to do. Of course that is also true of the judge and jury. Whether the court does or does not hold him accountable, the judge and jury did what their biochemicals set out to do.
Of course if we define “choice” as being, “the act of brain biochemicals doing what they normally do”, then by that definition, then yes, the criminal had a “choice” and the judge/jury had a “choice” on what to do with the criminal. So, in that sense, we have “choice”. But if we were to somehow clone the entire universe, right down to every atom, then the people in the clone universe would make the exact same “choices”. (This isn’t taking into account quantum uncertainty – I know of the concept of quantum uncertainty, but am not educated enough on it to apply it properly. Conceivably, due to quantum uncertainty, maybe the people in the clone universe might do something different.)
So to Jensen’s question, “Does Doland think he is actually not free?” – depends on what you mean by “free”. If you mean “free” to do other than what my biochemicals are going to do, no, I’m not. But if you define “free” as being the action of those biochemicals, then yes.
Jensen: I think the best view is the one William Craig argues for: God is timeless sans creation but enters time with the first creation.
Like many Christian hypothesis, this is just untestable. How would I perform an experiment to determine whether it is possible for an entity to be timeless and yet be able to enter time? I can’t definitively prove Craig wrong, because it can’t be proven one way or the other. Which makes it a useless statement. If someone proposes, like Hume, that motion of objects like billiard balls is actually caused by undetectable gremlins, how could I prove that wrong? I can’t, and I can’t prove it right. It is therefore useless.
But, even though I can’t definitively prove Craig wrong, I can say why it fails the plausibility test. For the very definition of “creation” requires order, meaning time. If I create something, there is a time before it exists, a time when I do the creation, and then a time afterwards. Jensen has God creating time, when the very act of creating time implies time exists to begin with!
The term to use here is "incoherent." Craig's hypothesis is incoherent because it is internally inconsistent. So, not only is Craig’s hypothesis untestable, it just isn’t even coherent. Which makes it utter complete total feldergarb.
Jensen: "Doland claims that the God of the Bible regretted creating humanity (Genesis 6:6),"
Correct, that is the correct verse. “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.”
Jensen: "I don't see any passage indicating that God regretted sending the flood so I'm not sure where Doland got that idea."
Here is the passage:
What, specifically, is not under the control of God's design? Again, refer to my freewill paper for more information.
Jensen: "Does Doland think he is actually not free? Does he think then that the courts are wrong in holding people responsible for their actions? Couldn't someone say, 'I couldn't help it; I had to kill my wife; I wasn't free to do otherwise'?"
I understand that it is not a pleasant idea that we are just chemical automatons, doing what chemical processes do. That is what seems to be the case, but that doesn’t mean I like it. So, in your criminal/court scenario, it many ways, it is true, the criminal didn’t have a “choice” – he did what the chemicals in his body set out to do. Of course that is also true of the judge and jury. Whether the court does or does not hold him accountable, the judge and jury did what their biochemicals set out to do.
Of course if we define “choice” as being, “the act of brain biochemicals doing what they normally do”, then by that definition, then yes, the criminal had a “choice” and the judge/jury had a “choice” on what to do with the criminal. So, in that sense, we have “choice”. But if we were to somehow clone the entire universe, right down to every atom, then the people in the clone universe would make the exact same “choices”. (This isn’t taking into account quantum uncertainty – I know of the concept of quantum uncertainty, but am not educated enough on it to apply it properly. Conceivably, due to quantum uncertainty, maybe the people in the clone universe might do something different.)
So to Jensen’s question, “Does Doland think he is actually not free?” – depends on what you mean by “free”. If you mean “free” to do other than what my biochemicals are going to do, no, I’m not. But if you define “free” as being the action of those biochemicals, then yes.
Jensen: I think the best view is the one William Craig argues for: God is timeless sans creation but enters time with the first creation.
Like many Christian hypothesis, this is just untestable. How would I perform an experiment to determine whether it is possible for an entity to be timeless and yet be able to enter time? I can’t definitively prove Craig wrong, because it can’t be proven one way or the other. Which makes it a useless statement. If someone proposes, like Hume, that motion of objects like billiard balls is actually caused by undetectable gremlins, how could I prove that wrong? I can’t, and I can’t prove it right. It is therefore useless.
But, even though I can’t definitively prove Craig wrong, I can say why it fails the plausibility test. For the very definition of “creation” requires order, meaning time. If I create something, there is a time before it exists, a time when I do the creation, and then a time afterwards. Jensen has God creating time, when the very act of creating time implies time exists to begin with!
The term to use here is "incoherent." Craig's hypothesis is incoherent because it is internally inconsistent. So, not only is Craig’s hypothesis untestable, it just isn’t even coherent. Which makes it utter complete total feldergarb.
Jensen: "Doland claims that the God of the Bible regretted creating humanity (Genesis 6:6),"
Correct, that is the correct verse. “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.”
Jensen: "I don't see any passage indicating that God regretted sending the flood so I'm not sure where Doland got that idea."
Here is the passage:
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” Genesis 8:20-21
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True, it doesn’t specifically use the word “regret”, but, the tone is clearly of lament. So, as I said, you have a God that knows everything that is ever going to happen, and yet somehow "repents" of His own actions! Further, even if we forget about the omniscience issue, repentance implies making an error, but God is perfect! How can a perfect entity make an error to repent of? And if God Himself can make errors, then by what rational can He punish people for all eternity? God can make mistakes, but humans aren't allowed to under threat of eternal damnation? Can I send God to hell for His mistakes? Honestly, it just blows my mind that theists don't see how utterly preposterous what they propose is!
Jensen: “The idea of regretting or repenting of an act or choice in both cases simply means that God responded to people as they deserved and according to the manner in which they first responded”
Look up the words in the dictionary, please! It means to have a change of heart, a change of mind, something impossible for someone that already knows everything!
Jensen: “I think the answer is found in understanding that sometimes God displays different and seemingly conflicting attributes and actions that ultimately do not conflict.”
Translating Jensen's spin into English, "yeah, they contradict, I just don't want to admit it." They do contradict. Plainly and obviously.
Jensen: “But God cannot know what is logically impossible to know any more than God can do what is logically impossible to do.”
What you are saying is that there are limits that not even God can bridge. Some things are impossible, period, even for God. But, then what is the source of “logical limits”? Some theists argue that God Himself defines what is and what isn’t possible. That God could decide, for example that square circles can exist because He defines it so. Others, like you, say that logical limits exist and not even God can do anything about it. But, if so, that more or less obviates a need for God to exist at all! If some things are possible and some things are not, and this is true whether or not there is a God, why do you even need a God then?
Jensen: “Let's assume that God does have such knowledge without it being necessary that such known worlds or portions of such worlds exist. If God's nature is absolute goodness, then God could be motivated to actualize that known possible world which would end in the greatest good and God would be emotionally involved in doing so. God does not want to merely know what good is possible, God wants it to actually be.”
Why? If I know every single detail about you, right down to where every atom is, and what trajectory each atom will ever take, what is the difference to me if I actually put those atoms there, or if I just know that I could put those atoms there? What’s my motivation? What is the real difference between something being "actual" and not actual from God's perspective? What makes it more "real" because there are atoms or not?
Jensen: If God cannot know what future events (involving free choice) will occur without their occurring, then at a different ("prior") stage in God's being…
You put the word “prior” in quotes because you are at least cognizant that it is senseless to speak of “prior” of a timeless entity. But, you want to assume that something analogous is possible, a “God time” if you will. Well, that’s just another untestable, incoherent claim. What, exactly, is this “time that isn’t time” that God has, and how do I test that it does or doesn’t exist? You have NO way to answer this. Its just wild speculation.
Jensen: “God knew it would be worth it because of the ultimately greater good that would come no matter how evil the world may turn out to be.”
You again are placing contrivances upon God, that He somehow couldn’t enact his “greater good” without the evil that happens to come along. This is just a plain contradiction to an omnipotent entity.
Jensen: It would be interesting to see what evidence Doland would accept as "solid evidence" for Caesar's existence (any of the Caesars) or anyone else in ancient history Doland is sure actually existed. I doubt that he would be able to find anything better than that of Jesus' existence. (There are surely many more such references to Caesar, but are any of them qualitatively better?)
As a matter of fact, yes, they are indeed qualitatively better. This is a frequent allegation of Christians, and it has been examined by Richard Carrier. In the following passage by Carrier, he isn’t specifically talking about Caesar’s existence vs. Jesus’, it is comparing Jesus’ alleged Resurrection with Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. It isn’t exactly the same as per Jensen is asking, but it is analogous:
Jensen: “The idea of regretting or repenting of an act or choice in both cases simply means that God responded to people as they deserved and according to the manner in which they first responded”
Look up the words in the dictionary, please! It means to have a change of heart, a change of mind, something impossible for someone that already knows everything!
Jensen: “I think the answer is found in understanding that sometimes God displays different and seemingly conflicting attributes and actions that ultimately do not conflict.”
Translating Jensen's spin into English, "yeah, they contradict, I just don't want to admit it." They do contradict. Plainly and obviously.
Jensen: “But God cannot know what is logically impossible to know any more than God can do what is logically impossible to do.”
What you are saying is that there are limits that not even God can bridge. Some things are impossible, period, even for God. But, then what is the source of “logical limits”? Some theists argue that God Himself defines what is and what isn’t possible. That God could decide, for example that square circles can exist because He defines it so. Others, like you, say that logical limits exist and not even God can do anything about it. But, if so, that more or less obviates a need for God to exist at all! If some things are possible and some things are not, and this is true whether or not there is a God, why do you even need a God then?
Jensen: “Let's assume that God does have such knowledge without it being necessary that such known worlds or portions of such worlds exist. If God's nature is absolute goodness, then God could be motivated to actualize that known possible world which would end in the greatest good and God would be emotionally involved in doing so. God does not want to merely know what good is possible, God wants it to actually be.”
Why? If I know every single detail about you, right down to where every atom is, and what trajectory each atom will ever take, what is the difference to me if I actually put those atoms there, or if I just know that I could put those atoms there? What’s my motivation? What is the real difference between something being "actual" and not actual from God's perspective? What makes it more "real" because there are atoms or not?
Jensen: If God cannot know what future events (involving free choice) will occur without their occurring, then at a different ("prior") stage in God's being…
You put the word “prior” in quotes because you are at least cognizant that it is senseless to speak of “prior” of a timeless entity. But, you want to assume that something analogous is possible, a “God time” if you will. Well, that’s just another untestable, incoherent claim. What, exactly, is this “time that isn’t time” that God has, and how do I test that it does or doesn’t exist? You have NO way to answer this. Its just wild speculation.
Jensen: “God knew it would be worth it because of the ultimately greater good that would come no matter how evil the world may turn out to be.”
You again are placing contrivances upon God, that He somehow couldn’t enact his “greater good” without the evil that happens to come along. This is just a plain contradiction to an omnipotent entity.
Jensen: It would be interesting to see what evidence Doland would accept as "solid evidence" for Caesar's existence (any of the Caesars) or anyone else in ancient history Doland is sure actually existed. I doubt that he would be able to find anything better than that of Jesus' existence. (There are surely many more such references to Caesar, but are any of them qualitatively better?)
As a matter of fact, yes, they are indeed qualitatively better. This is a frequent allegation of Christians, and it has been examined by Richard Carrier. In the following passage by Carrier, he isn’t specifically talking about Caesar’s existence vs. Jesus’, it is comparing Jesus’ alleged Resurrection with Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon. It isn’t exactly the same as per Jensen is asking, but it is analogous:
Christian apologist Douglas Geivett has declared that the evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus meets, and I quote, "the highest standards of historical inquiry" and "if one takes the historian's own criteria for assessing the historicity of ancient events, the resurrection passes muster as a historically well-attested event of the ancient world," as well-attested, he says, as Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C. Well, it is common in Christian apologetics, throughout history, to make absurdly exaggerated claims, and this is no exception. Let's look at Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon for a minute:
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It should be clear that we have many reasons to believe that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, all of which are lacking in the case of the resurrection. In fact, when we compare all five points, we see that in four of the five proofs of an event's historicity, the resurrection has no evidence at all, and in the one proof that it does have, it has not the best, but the very worst kind of evidence--a handful of biased, uncritical, unscholarly, unknown, second-hand witnesses. Indeed, you really have to look hard to find another event that is in a worse condition than this as far as evidence goes. So Geivett is guilty of a rather extreme exaggeration. This is not a historically well-attested event, and it does not meet the highest standards of evidence.
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The above is taken from Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story by Richard Carrier. Note that JP Holding wrote a rebuttal to that, to which Carrier wrote a more extensive response "The Rubicon Analogy". (Note to Jensen: if you really want to know how the historical evidence for Caesar compares to Jesus, then click the link and read it. If you don't really want to know, then "shut up") Again, I realize that the passage isn’t merely about Jesus existence, it’s about the alleged Resurrection. And, I’d even grant that there is at least some circumstantial evidence for Jesus’ existence. Therefore, it is not completely impossible that there was a historical Jesus. I’m just saying that the circumstantial evidence is meager, and unconvincing.
Jensen: "Most ancient biographical and historical accounts were penned at least a century after the events recorded and yet no one holds this as reason to doubt such writings."
This is simply not true, on many levels. For one, no, something written a hundred years after events, without any traceable source, is not, and never has been acceptable historical record. If I wrote a book on the Civil War and I had events in my book but no mention of these events are known prior to my book, and I had no traceable evidence to back up my claim, would my report on the Civil War be accepted? No. Obviously not.
In the case of Caesar, no doubt some parts of his history are more well documented than other parts. And therefore some things that we think we know about Caesar are more certain than others. This is the nature of history. But, there is NOTHING about Caesar that we take as fact that the only evidence for it comes a hundred years after his life with no supporting evidence. That just is not how historical research works.
Second of all, what Jensen implies, that there is historical writings about Jesus a hundred or so years later is also wrong! There are a few small references, such as the disputed Josephus accounts. But there is NOTHING of any substance written about the history of Jesus that doesn't directly come from the Gospels, even if you include stuff written hundreds of years later. That's right, even if I were to accept Jensen's claim that I should count histories written hundreds of years after Jesus, I still get essentially nothing. There simply is NO evidence for this Jesus character at all, other than the New Testament.
I have written this paper on Historical Methods (click the link, Jensen, it's not that hard...) This should help provide Jensen some basic ideas on how historical research actually works.
Jensen: "God does not sacrifice 'himself to himself.' God becomes a sacrifices by God's choice, not to change God's rules but because this fits God's rules."
Translation: God sacrifices Himself to Himself. And, yes, it is a change of rules, the Old Covenant Law is much different that the New Covenant.
Jensen: "But to answer Doland's claim, he has admitted more than once that Strobel has presented the initial case against theism or Christianity very forcefully."
Touché! Jensen makes a point that isn’t totally ludicrous. He is correct that I did indeed complement him on some of his presentations of the challenge. I was sometimes impressed with him for it, at least at the time of initial reading of the book. But, now, I see it as a “set-up”. That he starts out being more honest than you might expect, so that when he is dishonest later in the chapter, you might not notice it. Admittedly, that is personal impression, not necessarily fact.
Okay, that is all I have time for, for now. I know that Jensen has written tons more. I will get to some of his other points as time permits.
Jensen: "Most ancient biographical and historical accounts were penned at least a century after the events recorded and yet no one holds this as reason to doubt such writings."
This is simply not true, on many levels. For one, no, something written a hundred years after events, without any traceable source, is not, and never has been acceptable historical record. If I wrote a book on the Civil War and I had events in my book but no mention of these events are known prior to my book, and I had no traceable evidence to back up my claim, would my report on the Civil War be accepted? No. Obviously not.
In the case of Caesar, no doubt some parts of his history are more well documented than other parts. And therefore some things that we think we know about Caesar are more certain than others. This is the nature of history. But, there is NOTHING about Caesar that we take as fact that the only evidence for it comes a hundred years after his life with no supporting evidence. That just is not how historical research works.
Second of all, what Jensen implies, that there is historical writings about Jesus a hundred or so years later is also wrong! There are a few small references, such as the disputed Josephus accounts. But there is NOTHING of any substance written about the history of Jesus that doesn't directly come from the Gospels, even if you include stuff written hundreds of years later. That's right, even if I were to accept Jensen's claim that I should count histories written hundreds of years after Jesus, I still get essentially nothing. There simply is NO evidence for this Jesus character at all, other than the New Testament.
I have written this paper on Historical Methods (click the link, Jensen, it's not that hard...) This should help provide Jensen some basic ideas on how historical research actually works.
Jensen: "God does not sacrifice 'himself to himself.' God becomes a sacrifices by God's choice, not to change God's rules but because this fits God's rules."
Translation: God sacrifices Himself to Himself. And, yes, it is a change of rules, the Old Covenant Law is much different that the New Covenant.
Jensen: "But to answer Doland's claim, he has admitted more than once that Strobel has presented the initial case against theism or Christianity very forcefully."
Touché! Jensen makes a point that isn’t totally ludicrous. He is correct that I did indeed complement him on some of his presentations of the challenge. I was sometimes impressed with him for it, at least at the time of initial reading of the book. But, now, I see it as a “set-up”. That he starts out being more honest than you might expect, so that when he is dishonest later in the chapter, you might not notice it. Admittedly, that is personal impression, not necessarily fact.
Okay, that is all I have time for, for now. I know that Jensen has written tons more. I will get to some of his other points as time permits.