A little note from God
I jumped into the argument with Nicholas Beale, and – like several other people there, ended up surprised and a little shocked at his evasiveness, or shiftiness as Eric called it. NB said on Thursday about the putative Loving Ultimate Creator:
If a LUC exists then (s)he is unlikely to be incompetent and will therefore have some communication with the people (s)he loves. So if (s)he exists it’s reasonable to suspect that at least one of the major religions has a substantial core of truth.
I pointed out that the LUC hadn’t communicated with me, for one. He replied:
of course God communicates with you. But he doesn’t force you to listen or respond. That is freedom – and love.
I find that kind of thing annoying – downright rude in fact. No God does not communicate with me, and it’s presumptuous for strangers to tell me it does. Then of course what NB said is silly nonsense besides. I retorted, and got an even sillier response:
Surely you have heard of Jesus of Nazareth? A really fundamental difficulty that a lot of atheists seem to have is that they don’t seriously consider the possibility that Christianity is true…I’d hope that everyone on this blog would (at least on reflection) agree that if C is true then the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is a genuine communication from God.
No, I don’t. Even if ‘Christianity is true’ (and it’s not clear what that means) the fact remains that I have received no communication from God. It can’t be called a communication if I remain unaware of it and/or don’t believe in its validity. I don’t take the stories in Mark, Matthew and Luke to be anything other than stories with perhaps some traces of truth in them about what Jesus said. They’re words in a book; books can be wrong, they can be faked, they can be corrupted in transmission, they can be garbled. I don’t take some words in a book to be a communication from God, and I don’t think it’s sensible for anyone to take them that way – yet it proved to be impossible to get Nicholas Beale to deal with that question instead of a different one of his own choosing. He didn’t answer anyone else’s question either. Altogether it was not a very impressive performance.
Y’know, for all the talk of a loving God, I have found him…well…not so loving. Good thing he didn’t go into the clergy, because he has no pastoral skills. Cannot display human warmth, does not listen, hurls personal insults every which way, brags about credentials, tries to snow people with jargon and unnecessary technicality. All not impressive. And there I had thought I was a nice atheist, but he makes me want to be unnice.
It is weird to claim that xtianity is ‘true’ – for one thing, xtianity is not a monolith, so not one thing. Why pretend that it is? Second, do philosophers say things like “Philosophy is true?” “Philosophy of language is true?” LInguists don’t go around saying “Linguistics is true.” It sounds stupid. And it just doesn’t sound like English to me.
Ophelia your report here shocked me – that he would reply to you with that smarmy crap about God sending you emails and then loving you so so much that it gives you the lovely freedom to ignore them. What an arrogant and infantilizing reply. That’s why I went and read the whole conversation.
NB may be a religious xtian, a management consultant, and have a 6th grade reading level but he also comes off as a shockingly nasty kind of person and not only a shifty arguer but a really snotty one too. This guy is trying to sell Christianity over science? What a piece of work.
Bravo to you, Eric and Jean K for your prods at him. That whole business gave me the damn creeps.
He uses the most infuriating mode of argument possible. He says one thing that’s really stupid, then when someone tries to point out the flaws, he says something else that’s even stupider and unrelated to the first thing. It’s impossible to have a serious debate with people like that because they are spewing out fallacies at a faster rate than they can be refuted.
“I don’t take the stories in Mark, Matthew and Luke to be anything other than stories with perhaps some traces of truth in them about what Jesus said. “
Since they are flatly contradictory in much of what they retell, we must take them as stories, even if we self-identify as Christians.
One of the things I enjoyed about God is Not Great, was Hitchens’ account of how he came to accept the historical reality of Jesus precisely because the accounts of his birth in the Gospels were so obviously faked (if there hadn’t been a real Nazarene that contemporaries knew about there would have been no need to invent a series of unlikley events to persuade people that, despite appearances, he was actually born in Bethlehem as the prpheecies required).
I’d be interested in knowing Beale’s arguments for rejecting Judaism and Islam, followed by a good explanation of why none of them apply to Christianity.
As Jean says, NB lacks people skills entirely. Something frighteningly cold about him, which is maybe why his God is so loving. NB does not have the ability to “hear” the other position. Arguing with him is like arguing with a computer programmed to answer all possible counter-arguments. Those who have played chess with a computer will understand what I refer to.
Well, Jean, after all, Nicholas Beale appears in Debrett’s! So he is not bound by the rules of evidence. Not sugarplums, but earldoms, dance in his head!
But he is not just evasive, he’s downright shifty. He plays on the illusion that his book was launched by none other than the archon of the universe, and challenges others to have a book so launched, so that others may be able to argue on a level with him. But when he is challenged he has a range of strategies (which must derive from greatness):
It’s a formdiable panoply of weapons!
And how I discover (at a thread below) that he’s even talked about me at his book blog. And called me a he! What? And attributed posts of mine to Julian Baggini. (shaking head)
If he freaks out this badly when he encounters skeptics, I think his book tour (if there’s to be one) is going to be a mess. What seems to set him off the worst is the fact that people don’t necessarily take his ideas seriously–they literally think God stuff is a bunch of nonsense.
I’m afraid this just can’t be helped, because many people honestly do. Just listed to an MP3 of Dennett vs. Plantinga, and Dennett is full of derision and mockery. Not personal, not nasty, but he thinks Plantinga’s guided evolution is a fantasy, just silliness. Plantinga handles that with grace, which is something Beale is completely lacking.
No not at book blog as such, for further clarification >> starcourse.blogspot.com
Jean, yeah, the way he talked to you was mind-boggling. You did an admirable job of telling him so!
Yeah what everyone else said, too.
It is extraordinarily frustrating trying to argue with someone that thoroughly and determinedly evasive – someone who deploys that list of Eric’s with such energy – frustrating and depressing. The mental desert is depressing.
Very amusing though the way he successfully performed exactly what Julian said at the end of the review. Their book ‘vividly illustrates how, if you are sufficiently committed to a belief, it is always possible to interpret other facts to fit in with it.’ Beale might as well have said at the outset, ‘Yes, like this, see?’
It’s also amusing that he says at his blog that Julian’s review is quite favourable when Julian says at the beginning of the post that the FT compelled him to make it more favourable. On the other hand it’s depressing that the FT did that.
Julian will have his work cut out for him at that debate on Tuesday.
Yeah, OB, I too second your first sentence up above.
Andrew, on February 28th, 2009 at 5:52 pm Said: @ TPB.
“They are fooling themselves and no one else. And all the sophisticated quantum fiddling, convoluted high flown theological waffle in the world isn’t going to change that. And the people who will suffer wont be those like NBeale, but those at the bottom of this pile of humanity. Those lesser mortals who have to find their way in the mindfield of a society NBeale and his ilk are perpetuating.”
Exactly, Andrew, and they think that every one else, but themselves, are the ignoramuses of this world, because they do not ride on the back of the Jesus of Nazareth donkey.
‘All the sophisticated quantum fiddling, convoluted high flown theological waffle’ sells books and NB knows this only too well. He as it were, is seemingly (allegedly) so riding high on the crest of the Polkinghorne wave.
Yes, I too have found mister Beale to be rather condescending, rude, and evasive. Not too much sign of the supposedly ‘Christian’ behaviour. Based upon his avoidance of some awkward questions and the poor quality of his arguments generally, I don’t think that he has much to be smug about. I have to say that seeing his reaction when his beliefs are questioned makes me even more happy not to live in a time or place where the religious have the power to limit my freedom and compel me to adhere to their beliefs.
I’ve just added a further comment to the post in question, but I am sure it will have no effect upon NB.
Actually, Beale did me a favor. I had always had the idea that the Syntopic Gospels, which I took to reflect the teachings of Jesus with some editing, contained a certain wisdom, that the teachings of Jesus contained elements worth considering, although they had been distorted by that sick, neurotic and sexually-repressed/obsessed Paul. As I tried to dialogue with Beale, I realized that I couldn’t think of anything in the Synoptic Gospels which could be considered especially wise or worth following, except perhaps the idea of forgiving those who offend us, which is hardly novel.
Well done, Eric and Nick – I thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments.
What is the meaning of “star” behind starcourse?
Sharing:points of view and experiences
Talks: in which the Christian faith is clearly explained.?
Active: discussion after each talk. No question is too simple or too hostile. Everyone’s point of view is respected.
Reflection?
It is self explanatory!
Not entirely novel, Amos, but not always good advice, either.
Ta! Marie=Therese. It was not entirely fun, but it was a learning experience, surely. You will know them by their coldness and rather superior ways, those Christians.
There’s some good stuff in the synoptics, I think, but none of it is novel. Burton Mack says it’s just standard-issue Cynicism, which Jesus could have picked up in the bohemian coffee shops of Sepphoris. Anyway it’s fer sher not novel.
I was particularly struck by NB’s insistence that God had communicated with us and we were wilfully ignoring that communication.
I teach ESL children, many with a very limited command of English. If large numbers of students do the wrong question for homework or look at me blankly, I can scarcely claim to have communicated with them, even though in my mind I am sure I have explained very clearly what was required.
Judging from results, as measured by any believer’s notions of supernatural truths, God has a communication problem with the majority of the world.
A being which can organise the universe in 6 days with all its alleged marvellous fine tuning should be able to communicate a more coherent and convincing narrative and set of doctrines than it has done so far.
Eric – you rocked! I thought your contributions on the problem of suffering at Talking Philosophy were as succint, clear and forceful as any I’ve seen.
And anyway, why has NB been ignoring the FSM’s repeated loud and clear entreaties? I know for a fact that he has been communicated with, so he has zero deniability.
Stewart,
The FSM can touch touch him with its noodly appendage, but it can’t make him feel!
“if C is true”
But since it isn’t (Jesus being made up by committee rather argues against this), what then?
“If a LUC exists then (s)he is unlikely to be incompetent and will therefore have some communication with the people (s)he loves.”
What good is a communication to people if they can’t tell whether it came from God or not? That’s a pretty damned incompetent way of communicating.
Similarly, what good is a communication from me, if people think I’m Nicholas Beale? I have to now stop calling myself “NB” here at B&W comments.
“What good is a communication to people if they can’t tell whether it came from God or not?”
Neil Bishop and say your prayers and you will find out whether it came from God. :-)
Starmonkey2:
How will I determine that it came from God? Just because I have a feeling? And am I to naively suppose that my feelings are uninfluenced by my culture and life history? How many Jews and Christians pray over the Upanishads to see if they are from God? What results do they get? The same as born Hindus who pray for such knowledge? (If the results are different, then they aren’t reliable). What makes you think I haven’t said my prayers?
Starmonkey2:
You were making a pun, weren’t you? I thought “and” was a typo, and I took you literally. Egg on my face.