It was 1989, despite the howling winds, sleet and freeze all around us I felt secure and warm in the sleeping bag my parents had bought me. Our tent was pitched on the slopes of Mt Rupaehu white out conditions had ensued and a blustering wind raged outside. I was one of several teenage boys holed up in the tent as part of a weekend exercise for the boarding school I was attending.

It was the first mountain craft weekend at Tihoi. Tihoi was a six month "venture school" modelled on outward bound to which St Paul's sent all it's fourth formers. I found the students at this school weird. I was an urban middle class boy, (though my grandparents were working class). I had attended state schools my whole life and since intermediate it was common to have several Maori and pacific Islanders in my class. I had even been friends with some. The kids at Tihoi were different. Most of them came from rural farming backgrounds; they had been in elite boarding schools since age seven. There was only one Maori at our school, though we only spoke a couple of times, I admired him immensely; he was one of the most motivated people I had ever met. Inga’s father was a minister and clearly was committed to his son’s development. Inga voluntarily did twice as many cross country runs a week as was required and did it in hiking boots to ensure he was being physically challenged. This while others slacked of and tried to get away with not doing any and the rest of us did the bare minimum to avoid getting in trouble. Inga topped the school in academic achievement as well he came first in science ( at St Pauls we ranked each other and the rankings were known to all). He was different to the Maori had experienced in previous schools, who were almost always low achievers academically, often obese, and frequently flirting with criminal activity. Prior to that point, I had developed some unfair sterotypes of Moari people. Inga for ever shattered these. I felt the need to repent before God for holding these views.

But something else happened at Tihoi, and I remember vividly the conversation on that mountain. As we lay awake at night talking one of the students informed me passionately how his father was part of an anti Maori group, how NZ would be served better if all the “niggers” as he called them, were made to live in the south Island and Pakehas lived in the north Island. He was adamant that this is what Maori deserved and they had asked for it. I was somewhat appalled by this, yet few of the other boys in the tent seemed fussed at all. Another student expressed disdain that Inga “that nigger” was even at the school. When Inga was not in ear shot they referred to him as “coon” I was horrified, this was New Zealand after all, not South Africa.

Inga never returned to St Paul’s after Tihoi. He received a package in the mail full of letters telling him he was an unwanted nigger and expressing general racist vitriol he was so upset by this that he walked out of the school and disappeared for a day or two to get over it. I felt absolutely sickened. I remember seeing him win the school tug of war competition when his father passionately cheered him on, I also remember one of the other kids remarking that their parents wished that “coon” would shut up and only politeness prevented them saying this out loud. After Tihoi was over Inga never returned. I did not blame him at all. Who would want to return? But I felt St Pauls was the worse for this, they had lost one of their best students and best athletes who had more drive and commitment than any other student I encountered in my time at high school. I never knew what happened to Inga. But I was saddened by the fact that he had felt he had to do leave. I was also disgusted by the glee others showed when he did.

But one thing I also remember from that time was the rumour that I was to hear over and over again in my time at high school even after I left St Paul’s six months latter. (I left because I did not wish to associate with the kids who attended this school any more) This was that Maori groups were secretly training with weapons, waiting for an opportunity to strike. This was often said in muted tones, as though lots of people knew about it and yet no one dared do anything about it. This urban legend came up over and over in the debates I had with other students over race relations. While I tried to get them to understand that previous governments had stolen Maori land, had violated a treaty they had signed with Maori and that hence there were some legitimate grievances. This was always brushed aside; they were out to get us. They were being trained in military tactics getting ready to strike. It was hard to convince people who held fears like this. I remember a work colleague once telling me that she knew people in the military, that the army was dominated by Maori and it was only a matter of time before they began assisting the activists. I always took these urban legends with a grain of salt. The sources were hardly reliable people and it was always hear say and to be honest I had little respect for these peoples opinions anyway.

In light of recent events it’s saddening to see that these rumours may now be substantiated in the eyes of many New Zealanders. The revelations that the police have raided several places up and down the country, that they allege that various far left activists were compiling weapons and training and planning potential strikes against the “colonial oppressor” is not what New Zealand needs. Of course the evidence is not all in and caution is needed until all is revealed. But I find myself in a state of disbelief. That at least on one issue, my interlocutors were, inadvertently onto something. I would hate to see the kind of people that drove Inga from our school reinforced in their prejudice and I would hate to see other Inga’s; other promising Maori students denied opportunities and subjected to appalling harassment and abuse because some people believe their ignorant rantings have been confirmed.

Matt

Today I took the day off work and Matt and I headed to the Family First Forum. It was a worthwhile day out, all the speakers were great. What was especially impressive was the diversity of the speakers and the range of worldviews and political persuasions - this was an impression I formed even before we got to the panel of MP's from every party. Also well done was Bob McCoskrie's MC-ing, the organisation from the behind the scenes people - especially the food, the entertainment ranging from the local school doing a national anthem cum haka to Ben Lummis' live performance.

Of the speakers, Christine Rankin was especially memorable for me. Maybe it was because she spoke a little about her background and motivations and life turning points and I could really relate to where she was coming from or maybe it was the outspoken, confident, right-wing, woman thing - cause I so get that.

John Tamihere was impressive too. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what he said and wondering how he could ever have been in the Labour Party.

The political panel was really good too. Judith Collins was outstanding. Absolutely outstanding (it warranted repeating - you had to be there). Nick Kearney (who stood in for Heather Roy) was a close second and did a very good job. The two Future MP's Judy and Gordon basically had the same policy so it was kind of funny thinking of them as being from two different parties - Gordon is an impressive individual and I really do hope he has success with Future NZ but I just cannot... I am just not a centrist. He was really good on some issues but goverment sponsored marriage courses just make me want to run and scream - Judith and Nick were great on that when they pointed out that those initiatives, whilst excellent and important for the good of society, were not and should not be in the domain of the government. Russell Fairbrother and Sue Bradford did a good job of playing the villians - given the audience they were almost always going to bomb with their answers though they did both manage the odd answer that got agreement.

I somehow ended up baiting Russell Fairbrother - Bob says he will hereinafter refer to me as the giggle girl for it - a few questions on conscience issues had come up, the panel had all stipulated that this or that issue was a conscience issue for their party and then gone on to expound their personal view. Each time Russell had his turn at this it grated me more and more - I mean Labour allows conscience votes?!? puh-lease! I sat quietly (well fairly quietly) through Russell's "smacking was always illegal" then 20 minutes later "this bill did not make smacking illegal" contradiction but the repeated references to Labour allowing conscience votes was too much - I laughed out loud, my giggle audibly echoed just as Russell paused after alluding to yet another of the instances Labour allowed their MP's to vote on a conscience issue, other giggles erupted but mine was lingered in such a way that any cynic present might have suggested was a little too perfectly timed and executed (never!). It seemed to hit a nerve, Russell began aggressively claiming that Labour respects conscience voting which simply elicited more howls of laughter from the audience and the panel of MP's.

Another pearler was Sue Bradford's suggestion that the claim that a light smack was essentially the same thing as beating a child with a horse whip, block of wood or a piece of hosepipe - this elcited howls of outrage. At another point she said she could not see any value in locking up violent, recidivist offenders for long sentences and did not understand why anyone might think doing so was a good idea.

I sat next to some very impressive teenagers - homeschooled (what a surprise) - very sharp. Their reasoning skills and ability to see how things followed was evident by their comments to each other both as they critiqued and evaluated the answers the MP's gave to the questions and as they commented on Matt's commentary to me (he cannot watch panel discussions without commentating - even talks to the television during political debates).

All in all a very worthwhile and enjoyable day.

Madeleine

[Photos swiped from http://section59.blogspot.com]

A little while ago I posted up some thoughts I had about the war in Iraq. These thoughts did not come in a vacuum. At the time of the invasion I read several books on the morality of war. At the time of compiling this article had just read James Turner Johnson's works on the issue and was reading the medieval ethicist Vitoria’s De Indus . This morning I discovered a discussion about my article at the Manawatu Christian Apologetics Society website . One correspondent Murray asks several questions about my post. These are good questions so I will clarify here.

Just War Theory is all very well, and sounds good. However, I would ask the following in respect to the 6 requirements needed to call a war “Just” by this theory:
1. Who decides what a “just cause” is? When religion is involved [especially] the word “just” is completely dependant upon your world view.

The question of what constitutes a just cause, is simply an extension of the more general question when is a person justified in using violence .In the Christian tradition, two answers are forthcoming, to defend innocent people from attack and to punish those guilty of crimes. Hence, in the writings of Theologians the two cases have generally been either to defend people from an attack upon their rights or to punish a person for an offence committed. My understanding is that Jewish and Islamic traditions do not differ greatly on these conclusions, and international law about war in fact is largely based on just war theorizing.

Murray seems to espouse a kind of relativism, whereby what’s right and wrong depends on what a person thinks. The problem is he does not seem to apply this consistently because he condemns the US invasion for violating principles he and the peace movement think is correct. If no one has a right to decide these questions then the peace movement doesn’t either.

2. When does any nation have a lawful authority to wage war, and whose law do we judge this right by?

OK here the answer is relatively straightforward. The right of a government to go to war is simply an extension of governments police powers. If a criminal attempts to rape or kill people within the geographical realm over which a government has authority then the government can use force to prevent this and also can use force to try and punish anyone who does hence the existence of a police force, courts and prisons. Just war theorists simply note that there seems no reason why this authority ceases to exist when the person committing the offence is a soldier from another country as opposed to a domestic criminal.

I have never heard anyone give an answer as to why this should make a difference. If the NZ government cannot use force against foreign soldiers who invade us why are they required to protect Greenpeace demonstrators on a peaceful march from violence? Or why are they allowed to protect children from violent parents and yet not allowed to protect those same children from bullets from a foreign army?

3. There is usually no such thing as a “last resort”, simply preferred resorts. If invading Iraq was a last resort what is a nuclear bomb? The resort after the last resort?

It’s hard to get exactly what Murray’s point is here. First, use of Nuclear weapons are almost always ruled out by a just war theory on the basis of principles of discrimination (only combatants can be targeted) and proportionality ( the force used must be the proportionate to the threat being repelled).

As to Murray’s other point, again the idea of a last resort is simply an extension of principles governing a resort to violence in other contexts. The basic idea is that if a conflict can be reasonably and realistically resolved without violence, then to use it is unnecessary and hence unjust.

In the case I wrote about. The the US wanted regime change. They wanted the Baathists out of power. Given the horrendous record of this government in violating the rights of its citizens and other citizens that was a perfectly reasonable request. One that Saddam could have granted, and was morally obligated to grant. (Did Saddam have a right to torture kill and massacre people?) He did not grant this request. Hence Iraq did not fight as a last resort.

On the other hand if Saddam had made reasonable concessions, if he had agreed to write a new constitution granting basic rights to Iraqi citizens, had set a date for free and open elections with international observers etc and organized a transition. Then the US should not have invaded or at least delayed the invasion until the sincerity of these concessions was apparent.

.4. Who is the judge of the “possibility of waging war with a reasonable chance of success”? What is success and who determines it, by what guidelines is success measured? Success is dependant upon the original aim. (in Iraq this was removal of WMD, then when that was found lacking it was changed to “regime change to bring democracy”. No,luck there, sow whats next, control of oil flow? well, I guess that has been almost achieved…). If we don’t know the aim of waging a war (i.e. we were told it was WMD in Iraq, but obviously was not as they are still there and no WMD found) then how can we possibly judge the likeliness of a successful war?

With any moral question the person who needs to answer the question is the person engaging in the action The role of being a moral agent is to ask oneself is what I am about to do the right thing? So in this case the government has the duty to ask, before it goes to war whether it’s likely the end for which they are fighting is one they are likely to achieve. This is determined by examining the factual information and making the best assessment one can *at the time of the decision*. (not on the basis of what was known after the event) Like all factual decisions it’s fallible. If this counts against making it then one should not make any factual decisions which involve life and death.

Murray’s response to some extent proves the point of my original post, because after dismissing the idea of doing so he inconsistently criticizes the US for not making this assessment adequately. However, as I noted its not just the US who have a duty to act justly so does Iraq, and it seems blatantly obvious that Saddam had good reasons for thinking that he could not successfully fight of a US invasion, hindsight confirms this to a far greater extent than it does with regards to the US belief that they could defeat Saddam. Yet Murray ignores this and applies the standard only to the US despite suggesting that the standard is meaningless.

It is precisely this kind of garbage that lead me to not support the peace movement.

5. To prevent evil we must agree on what evil is. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.

Well this slogan is simply false. A terrorist is a person who targets non combatants for the purpose of striking terror into the population so as to achieve political ends. A freedom fighter is a person who engages in war for the purpose of liberating a people from oppression. It’s simply false to conflate these categories. A person can use terrorism to enslave people and a person can fight for freedom without using terrorism.

However again, Murray is also very inconsistent here, if what constitutes an unjust attack on another’s rights is simply relative. If what counts as an unjust act of war (terrorism) and what is justified (freedom fighting) is simply arbitrary and relative. Then on what basis does he condemn the US invasion. Its funny how, when dictators act unjustly we can’t condemn it because morality is relative, when the US uses force suddenly the standards the peace movement believe are correct apply to the US government even when it disagrees with them.

If one cannot make judgements that certain actions are evil, then one cannot judge George Bush's actions as evil.

6. How is it possible to wage a war in a civilian area (e.g. a city) and at the same time use only “proportionate and discriminate” force? Any attempt at this would result in a quagmire within hours, which any invading army knows full well. Which is why Baghdad was bombed from the air. In that particular case “Just War” is surely an oxymoron.

I find this response surprising because just war theorists have frequently and repeatedly discussed this very issue.

The problem Murray points to is this. According to traditional just war theory a state can (in certain circumstances) use proportionate violence against enemy combatants but not against non-combatants. However, this requires the ability to distinguish between the two and to be able to attack one without attacking not the other. For this reason in addition to refraining from targeting combatants, there is also a duty to not use combatants as human shields (hence the traditional European method of meeting at a battlefield in Uniform).However, if enemy combatants dress like civilians, look like civilians, hide amongst civilians and attack from within civilians centres it becomes extremely difficult to repel them without hitting civilians in the cross fire.

There are really only two responses to this problem: The more sensible response is the one suggested by several just war theorists such as Donagan, Walzer Ramsey etc that in such cases, soldiers should take reasonable care to avoid hitting civilians, but if they cannot defend themselves from attack without killing some civilians then the responsibility for the deaths is not theirs, its rather the fault of the enemy who choose to attack from amongst them. This suggests that the duty to not kill non-combatants does not apply to human shields if there is no reasonable way of hitting the assailant without hitting them.

(This I think is a general point about self defence a F 16 would have been justified in shooting down one of the United Airliners heading for the world trade centre for the same reason and similarly a policeman could shoot a suicide bomber threatening to blow up a mall who was also carrying a baby )

Murray however takes a different option which I consider mistaken. He suggests that when the enemy fights from within a civilian area it is wrong to defend oneself against their attacks. This seems to lead to a conclusion that as long as I hide behind civilians and use them as human shields I gain protection from the morality, however if I don’t do this and refuse to use human shields I do not. This seems problematic if not outright perverse.

In a sense however Murray answers his own question he notes attacking a city would result in mass civilian causalities, he therefore notes that because of this an alternative method was used precisely to minimise these causalities. Exactly, that’s what a just belligerent tries to do in such cases, minimise civilian causalities. Would Saddam have made an effort to do this, I doubt it.

RELATED POSTS:
Iraq and the Just War Theory: Why I Choose not to Support the Anti-War Movement

This morning I recieved word that my article Abortion and Capital Punishment : No Contradiction, will be published in one of the next 3-4 issues of Think.

The article was originally part of my PhD thesis.

I would like to thank Perfect Man whose comments motivated me to submit this section of my thesis for publication.

I am not a sports commentator, and would not consider myself any expert on the question. Like many New Zealanders I love rugby, I played it as a child and at high school. Recently I played a game at the College I teach at and remember the thrill of breaking three tackles and later scoring a try in the annual married versus singles match.

My father played for Waikato and played in an upset match took the Ranfurly Shield off Auckland. My grandfather was Chairman of the Waikato Rugby Union. He was a wise and insightful person and I remember the shock I experienced, as a young Waikato undergrad, when he informed me that he despised Waikato University. He remembered the activists tearing down rugby park fence, initiating violence and threats to his friends and colleagues when Hamilton hosted that infamous game with South Africa. My Grandfather was shocked that academics, people who ostensibly were committed to reason and persuasion would attempt to use force, threats to prevent him and others from watching a game. He was not a racist or a supporter of apartheid and watching a game between Waikato and South Africa no more made him one than watching a game with China makes one a communist or watching a game with Fiji makes one a supporter of military coups. He simply wanted to watch a game and was subjected to threats, force and abuse for doing so and he never forgave Waikato University for this.

In hindsight I should have heeded my grandfather’s warnings. I learnt the hard way that my grandfather’s assessment of Waikato University student activism was correct. Having been subjected to threats of violence, minor assaults, vicious personal abuse and repeated slanderous character assassination for arguing vigorously for more conservative viewpoints I now sympathise with my grandfather considerably.

So rugby is to some extent in my blood, and with this pedigree what I say may make me sound like just another ignorant red neck. But I think the referee is responsible for the All Blacks defeat by France on Sunday. I don’t condone the anger and nastiness that has been thrown at the ref by some. But I also dislike the facile analysis dominating talk back radio today. I hear that we lost have a “blame the authority” mentality fostered by welfare. Its all socialisms fault and blaming the ref is symptomatic of this. Apparently, we need to be less socialistic in our thinking, like the French apparently are.

The issue for me is this: the score was 20- 18. At least two French tries came about as a result of bad refereeing decisions. The first was the sin binning of Luke McAlister the second an obvious forward pass which should have been picked up and wasn’t. The Dominion post this morning notes a third, when the All Blacks had possession towards the end and were attempting a counter strike, the referee signaled advantage and then when the AB’s acted on this signal he disallowed advantage giving the French possession at a crucial time.

I am also sick of hearing people minimise these facts. We have been told that bad ref calls happen and the all blacks should have been able to win despite this. I disagree, its perfectly reasonable in international rugby for the players to expect competent refereeing. And while the odd bad call is to be expected, the consistent bizarre incompetence displayed on Sunday is not acceptable in an international match. People should not have to win despite incompetent referees. Those refs should not be there. It’s not the players job to make up for referee incompetence, the organizers have a duty to ensure competent officials are in charge of matches.
This is not welfarism: True one problem with some welfare policy is that people make the government (and hence the taxpayer) responsible for problems which they are not responsible. To take an example, the DPB makes the government responsible for meeting the costs of rearing children, when the person responsible for this the defaulting parent is not made responsible. If you doubt this try the following experiment (a) Tell the IRD that you will not pay taxes and see what happens. Then (b) get an non custodial parent to tell IRD they will no longer pay the child support payments which the IRD are required to collect and hand over to the custodial parent. Use the same excuse in both situations (such as I can’t afford it, I am a student etc) see what happens. Compare the results of (a) and (b).

I know first hand of a man who owes the IRD several thousand dollars as a result of a student loan. His wife is also owed several thousand dollars in child support payments and has been owed this for years. They have not seen this money, and for sometime the IRD informed them that they could not collect the money because at the time much of this debt was built up the person who owed it was a student.

But while this is one feature of welfarism it is not corrected by “an official is always right, we are always to blame” attitude. In fact one feature of welfarism is a misguided trust in authorities and officials. A belief that somehow that private individuals or corporations cannot be relied on to do certain things while governments can. According to this mind set the profit motive corrupts but power does not.

Sure the AB’s made some mistakes, and they could have played better, that’s all true. But the point is they shouldn’t have needed to, to beat the French they simply needed one thing a competent referee. And it is reasonable to expect them to have been given one. If you can reasonably demand something, aren’t given it, and as a result fail when you would not have, then you can be justifiably upset.

The fact that its predictable that officials will act incompetently and arbitrarily does not mean we should condone them does so. Nor does it mean we should require people to flourishing in spite of it and then blame them when they do not. It means we should try and reform authorities to minimize this, so that people do not need to bend over backwards to flourish. Even on a bad day the AB’s still should have won, because they had the talent to do so, arbitrary incompetence by officials prevented this. This is wrong and should not have happened. Of course it needs to be put in perspective, far worse injustices occurred in the last few days. But it was still wrong and telling people that thinking this is welfarism is absurd.

A born baby is also totally dependent on its mother, only instead of being fed and sheltered by the mother’s automatic internal processes, it is fed and sheltered by the mother’s consciously controlled external, behaviour. How can that make a difference to whether or not a foetus is a human being? [2]

It is doubtful, however, that adoptions are possible for every child whose mother cannot care for it. The world abounds with homeless orphans; even in the industrialised West, where there is a waiting list for adoption of healthy (white) babies, suitable homes cannot always be found for troubled adolescents; inner city, AIDS babies, or many of the multiply handicapped children whose parents have tried to care for them but whose marriages broke under the strain.[3]

Not PC has taken exception to my recent criticism of his blog. He also takes issue with my comments on faith and reason. His responses I think are illustrative of the popular secular mindset so it’s worth responding here.

PC expounds a great deal of rhetorical energy describing my work in pejorative terms. I committed to arguing that “black is white” if the hierarchal Church says so. My reasoning consists merely of “word games” my standards of debate are “low” and my writing is a “tangled thicket” of “misdirections”. Unfortunately simply using pejorative names to describe a position does not provide any reason for rejecting it. A rational person, and PC claims to be a follower of reason, provides arguments. It is to these that I will turn.

1.) PC objects to my comments in a previous blog where I criticised the statement that it is irrational to believe something without proof. (a proposition which was labelled [2] in the original post) PC writes:

Now he may or may not have been referring to exchanges here at Not PC, but if he is then proposition 2 is misstated. What I've said here is that a proposition without proof is flatly arbitrary, and the arbitrary is out. Arbitrary statements don't even get to be called irrational; they don't even get to the table. Matt then goes on to base a whole post on this misstatement.

Now the key word here is *if*.In fact I was not referring to exchanges in not PC. However it’s worth noting that even if I was, PC’s rejoinder could be easily responded to. One could simply change the word “irrational” with the word “arbitrary” in my argument and everything else would still follow. My conclusion would be that it’s not always “arbitrary” to believe things without proof and each of my arguments would be reasons for this altered conclusion.

Not PC clearly takes issue with this conclusion. Latter in his post he states:

Matt himself provides us with an tip that is like a signpost for those of us curious about christian epistemological standards. Says Matt: "you can rationally believe certain things, in certain situations, without evidence."

Oddly PC thinks that simply noting the existence of my thesis refuts it. However, in reality, PC merely demonstrates his lack of understanding of the issues. I am not in this comment defending “Christian” epistemological standards. The thesis that one can rationally (or non arbitrarily) believe some things without proof is largely uncontroversial amongst secular epistemologists. In fact Aristotle, whom not PC attempts to follow, accepted this claim for some of the very reasons I provided in my blog. Roy Clouser summarizes the problems:

If everything needs to be proven then the premises of every proof would need to be proven. But if you need a proof for every proof, you need a proof for your proof, and a proof for your proof of a proof and so on-forever. Thus it makes no sense to demand a that everything be proven because an infinte regress of proofs is impossible( Knowing With the Heart p 69)

As the above citation shows, there are arguments for the position I advanced. There are serious philosophical problems with claiming that all beliefs need to be proved. Strangely PC does not even attempt to address these arguments. Instead he merely asserts my position, calls it “Christian epistemological standards” and thinks that’s enough to rebut it. Unfortunately it is not.

2.)PC goes on to state

as all assiduous listeners of Monty Python are aware, "an argument is a connected series of propositions intended to establish a conclusion." What I posted above was not an argument. It was one post with four quotes, one point and an invitation to think about it; some thoughts for a Sunday on how faith undercuts reason. It was not an argument,

I had assumed that when PC was contending that faith destroys knowledge he was actually attempting to provide reasons for his conclusion instead of several assertions. That I though was a more charitable interpretation of PC’s work Apparently, I was mistaken, my contention that he provides a weak argument for his conclusion is mistaken, I should have said he provided none at all. Does this make his position more defensible, No

3.) PC also contents I misinterpreted his position on Tertullian, he states “. I do not "cite" Tertullian as "a Fideist." I simply quoted what he said.” Well what according to PC did Tertullian say? PC contends that Tertullian is one of several thinkers who “held the view that faith is antagonistic to knowledge and reason, a divorce which [Tertullian] approved.” However, as I pointed out in my blog, fideism is the name given to the view that faith is antagostic to reason. Hence PC, by his own admission did contend that Tertullian is a fideist. He simply was unaware the position he attributed to Tertullian has a name and that name is fideism.

4.) PC continues that

He[Me] carries on in this manner, acribing to me all sorts of things I haven't said and positions I haven't taken, eg,"First, [PC] provides some counter examples to anti-evidentialism..." and "Second, he offers some criticisms of the Kalam Cosmological Argument...". In other words, he faults me for insufficiently countering in the comments section two very specific theological sallies, when my response was simply to two fairly general and poorly argued points.

PC states that he was not attacking the kalam cosmological argument and anti-evidentialism. He was rather attacking some general and poorly argued points. Well what were those points? One was the claim that God provides the best explanation of the origin of the Universe. In Philosophy of Religion this argument is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The second, was PC’s contention that its *arbitrary* to believe without evidence. In the literature this is known as evidentialism which is of course the anti-thesis of anti-evidentialism.

Hence, contrary to what PC affirms, he in fact did comment on these issues. It’s just that PC is so unfamiliar with the literature as to know that the positions he criticized had these names. Moreover the arguments he raised were in fact general arguments against these positions not criticisms of specific popularized versions. Hence everything I said stands. PC offered dubious arguments against both positions.

Finally, PC continues to make some questionable claims. He states that I am a doctoral student training to be a theologian. In fact I am a professional theologian with a doctorate. He asserts, that the Gospels were probably written in the second century and third centuries despite the fact the few NT scholars accept such a late date, and again without any evidence. He ignores the numerous scholarly debate about what Kant’s views on religion actually were. He seems unaware for example of Kant’s rationalistic methods in Religion within the bounds of reason or Kant’s attempt to argue for God’s existence in the Critique of Practical Reason. He seems unaware of the debate over whether Kant was a deist, a closet atheist or a Lutheran and he, oddly, seems to think that Kant’s position in the First Critique is clear and obvious (has he read it?) He refers to Mr Alvin Plantinga as a Theologian when it’s Dr Alvin Plantinga and he is a Philosopher.

Not PC has a blog on "How Faith destroys Knowledge". The basic line of argument appears to be as follows: three famous thinkers appear to hold that faith and reason are at odds and that faith is the preferable stance. I am tempted to say so what? Does the fact that three people appear to believe this mean it's true? The only reason PC provides for thinking it is, is that Christopher Hitchens and Ayn Rand say so.

PC also makes some fairly dubious clams. He cites Tertullian as a Fidest and states that the Gospels were written around in the third century AD. Both claims are highly questionable.

What intrigues me most however is his discussion of in the comments section.

But there is no evidence for fairies at the bottom of my garden, spiders on the far side of Mars, or an unlimited bar tab at my local with my name on it.

Until or unless evidence exists for any of these (or for gods, dragons, unicorns or centaurs), then as far as reason and good sense are concerned, they're part of the realm of myth, legend and wishful thinking respectively.

"What caused the start of the universe?"

This is a question that is doubly meaningless. Existence exists. There is no start to existence, though there may be changes to the form in which existence is constituted (through hypotheses such as the big bang for example). But here you're proposing god simply to plug gaps in your knowledge, sort of like a dog-ate-my-homework line.

And even if you reject that obvious point -- that existence has always existed -- and you insist on hypothesising that a god kicked existence into existence, then your hypothesis poses a further who question: who kicked your god into existence, and who kicked her god into existence, etc., etc., etc.

"God done it" is not an explanation, but an admission one doesn't yet have one.

PC here addresses to two issues. First, he provides some counter examples to anti-evidentialism ; the position that belief in God is rational in the absence of evidence for its truth. Second, he offers some criticisms of the Kalam Cosmological Argument: the argument for God's existence based on the fact it has a finite past. I think on both issues he is mistaken, and demonstrates unwittingly some popular confusions on these issues.

Turning first to Anti-Evidentialism. Anti-Evidentialists have argued that you can rationally believe certain things, in certain situations, without evidence. It does not follow from this that one can believe any old thing without evidence. Nor does it follow that the mars and spider examples meet these conditions. These latter claims would require argument. Unfortunately PC gives none.

Similar misunderstandings occur with PC’s critique of the Cosmological argument similar misunderstandings emerge he states

This is a question that is doubly meaningless. Existence exists. There is no start to existence, though there may be changes to the form in which existence is constituted (through hypotheses such as the big bang for example).*

The problem here is that those who propose this version of the cosmological argument do not claim that *existence* started to exist, nor do they argue that something outside of existence ( ie. Something non existent) created existence, that would be absurd. What they claim is that the spatio temporal universe began to exist and that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Not PC’s interpretation of the argument follows only if one assumes that the spatio temporal universe is the totality of existence which of course begs the question.

Not PC then cites the famous “who made God objection”

then your hypothesis poses a further who question: who kicked your god into existence, and who kicked her god into existence,

I have never understood the force of this argument. Those who defend the cosmological argument state that the universe has certain features ( for example a contingent modal status or finite past) which mean its existence requires some form of explanation and they conclude that from these premises that there must be a being that *does not* have these as an explanation. Consequently, it’s false that the question arises at second remove. Of course simply actually reading a defender of the argument would have cleared this up.

I suspect however that PC has not read Christian thinkers he has read Ayn Rand and various libertarian caricatures of Christian thinkers. On the basis of these caricatures he denigrates Christians as irrational and politically dangerous. That is unfortunate.

Recently in correspondence with non believer I have repeatedly meet with the following argument. This is usually touted as a kind of self evident mantra.

[1] There is no proof that God exists [2] Its irrational to believe something unless you have proof . Therefore: [3] belief in the existence of God is irrational.

Now we need to elaborate what is meant by proof here; in Philosophical Theology the word is historically used for the various philosophical arguments that purport to show God exists. Such, things as the Cosmological, ontological, teleological, and moral arguments for Gods existence as well as the 2 dozen or so other arguments that have been proposed. I take it then that claim then that there is no proof means that these arguments all fail.

I think this argument is a bad one. I’ll elaborate why below.

First note there is an interesting relationship between [1] and [2] , in that if [2] is true then a person should not believe in [1] unless they have some arguments for the truth of [1] merely asserting [1] is not enough. If I believe [1] in the absence of a reason for doing so I am, according to [2] irrational, and hence in the very same epistemic situation the proponent of this argument claims a theist is in. Consequently, the first thing, that needs to be asked is: what’s the basis for asserting [1]?. In order to rationally accept this premise, the objector would need take me through the most sophisticated versions of the cosmological, teleological, moral and ontological arguments being proposed in the literature today and demonstrate that they all fail. Now few atheists I know can do this, most in fact have never even read these arguments and have next to zilch familiarity with the literature on these arguments. It seems to me then that these people hold to an incoherent irrational position. They maintain [1] without any proof or reason at all and then assert in [2] that one should not maintain things without proof or reason.

However, to be fair, some atheists have studied this literature and believe they have rebuttals of the arguments in question. So to advance the argument let us assume they are correct, this takes us to [2], but here I think several problems arise.

First, [2] leads to a regress problem, suppose I believe P, to be rational I need proof, therefore I need an argument and I need to be able to rationally believe the premises of this argument. But then by [2] I need proof for these premises. But then I have to believe further premises and I will need proof for this and so on. Unless we stop at some point and believe something without proof, we will be irrational in believing everything.

Second, [2] leads to scepticism, since at least the time of Hume it has been fairly clear that some of the most important beliefs we hold cannot be proved. Consider the belief in a physical world that exists independently of our senses. It has proven difficult if not impossible to find any argument for the existence of this world which does not assume the external world’s existence as an implicit premise. Familiar Sci Fi scenarios where a person is plugged into a virtual reality machine show its logically possible for the world to not exist and us think it does and have all the current experiences we do and hence deductive arguments from the way things appear are unsound. Inductive arguments appear also to fail. For an inductive argument to work one need’s to assume that the future will resemble the past, that there is uniformity in the world. But the existence of the world is what one is trying to prove. William Alston has argued, cogently I believe that the existence of the external world cannot be proven, neither can for that matter the existence of other peoples thoughts and feelings, the existence of moral rightness, the existence of a past and numerous other things. So if [2] is true we are in serious epistemological trouble.

Third [2] is incoherent, suppose [2] is true, then it follows I should not believe anything without proof. But then I should not believe [2] without proof. Until I become aware of some compelling argument for [2] its irrational to accept it and if the skeptic has no argument to offer me, he is irrational accepting it as well. I think the points above show that such an argument is impossible. Any such argument will employ premises which will need to be justified by other premises, which will need other premises and so on and seeing even things such as the existence of the physical world cannot be proven its doubtful such an argument can get off the ground.

The claim that one is never rational in believing in something without proof “on examination consists of a mass of incoherence. The objector contends that the theist is irrational why? Well because according to a claim for which he has no proof, one should not accept things without proof, oh and according to another claim he has not proved, theism has not been proved. Hardly compelling stuff if the premises are true we should reject them, and if they are not true then the argument is unsound.

When I began studying Theology and Philosophy I discovered that some important Christian traditions claim that not all beliefs require proof to be rational in order to know anything at all, some things need to be taken for granted unproven. On this they are clearly correct. Second, and interesting they maintained that certain theological beliefs about God should be accepted this way.

Now this does not mean that there is no place for rational argument in assessing theological claims, or in thinking about this issues. If one starts assuming belief in God is true, one still need to reason *from* this and see if it can provide coherent answers to various, metaphysical, moral and existential questions. One still needs to ask whether various arguments against belief in God is sound. One still needs to show the implications of what one believes are not contrary to obvious facts. And one needs to be able to examine whether theism is able to cohere with and be consistent with other things we know. One requires arguments to do all these things and if a one cannot do these things reason may provide us grounds for rejecting theism.

But the claim that one cannot prove theism from the outset does not. The traditions I mention deny one needs to be able to do this, one does not rebut them by simply asserting their claims are false one needs to provide them with an argument, and the incoherent nonsense which is often provided is not a very good argument.

In a recent issue of Salient Lindsay Perigo laments the “power wishful thinking”. Predictably he cites Christianity as a paradigm of such thinking. However, like many in the media who take swipes at orthodox or conservative expressions Christianity his analysis is superficial. Perigo writes.

Two thousand years of Christianity have been based on a lie, in which countless millions have blithely and willingly believed, notwithstanding its absurdity—in fact, because of its absurdity, as Tertullian proclaimed:
“The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is inappropriate. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible.”
He might have added: “and because something perverse in us makes us want to believe nonsense.”

Perigo here asserts that Christianity is absurd. Of course merely asserting some thing is absurd hardly constitutes a compelling objection to it. Perigo however suggests that, not only is Christianity absurd, but its practioners actually recognise it’s absurdity and believe because of it. The idea is that they deliberately go against what reason tells them and choose a path recognised as irrational He cites the famous “Credo quia absurdum” popularly attributed to Tertullian to substantiate this claim.

There are a couple of problems here: First, even if it’s true that one Theologian (Tertullian) has suggested that Christianity is absurd and commended belief in it for this reason it does not follow that all Christians or even many follow suit. To establish this Perigo would need to show that Tertullian’s position was the dominant mainstream one for most of Christian history. He does not even attempt to do so. Moreover, the suggestion Tertullains views, as Perigo interprets them was the mainstream views is very dubious .

Second, Perigo’s picture of Tertullian is inaccurate. Its was once common for people to Tertullian as a proponent of extreme fideism a position defined by Alvin Plantinga as “the exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone, accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason” and the “Credo quia absurdum” passage is the usual reason for this attribution of fideism to Tertullian.

The problems with the extreme fideist interpretation of Tertullian are nicely set out in an article by Robert Sider published in Classical World 73 (April-May 1980), pp.417-9. Sider notes two problems; first, the comment Credo quia absurdum is in fact a misquote and second, he notes that when understood in its context Tertullian was actually commending the Christian faith as rational and philosophically defensible. What Tertullian does in the passage Perigo cites is utilize a line of argument from Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Aristotle (who is something of a hero to Perigo) argues that if something is contrary to current expectations and highly improbable its unlikely that a rational intelligent person will believe it unless they actually witnessed it. Tertullian then is not saying we should believe what reason shows to be absurd because it is absurd. He is utilizing the best epistemological theories of his day to argue that belief in the Gospel is not absurd. Perigo relies on a popular but erroneous stereotype of Tertullian to make his point. A little reading on the issue would cleared have this up. In fact a Google search would have revealed it straight away.

After caricaturing Tertullian as an extreme fidest Perigo goes on to offer another caricature. He states

Taborites of Bohemia predicted that Christ would return to earth in February 1420. Believers in the prophecy braced themselves. ..As the date drew near, mass hysteria took hold, much as it is doing now over global warming. Expecting a huge flood, many people built boats or moved to higher ground. The flood never came. But all over the world, folk carried on believing whatever they wanted to believe.
The Puritans were especially enthused about an imminent apocalypse, notwithstanding Jesus’ singular failure to keep any of his previous appointments, and exported their enthusiasm to America, where it’s had a ready audience ever since.

Perigo cites the example of the Taborites a millennial sect who falsely predicted the imminent return of Christ. Perigo then suggest that Puritans held the same view and imported it to America and hence to contemporary American evangelicals. This is dubious In a study of Puritan Eschatology entitled The Puritan Hope Iain Murray notes that mainstream Puritan Eschatology was not millennial. Looking, at primary sources he argued that the Puritans developed the position that Christ’s return was not imminent the world had to be converted and the institutions of the world Christianised before Christ would return. Nor is it true that the Puritans view has had “wide audience ever since” in fact most American evangelicals today do not except Puritan eschatology ( some would say to their detriment).

Apart from caricature Perigo does provide the occasional argument for his claim that Christianity is absurd. He notes that “in her newly-released letters that Mother Teresa felt she was praying to no one all those years might give [Christians] some cause for pause” but why should it? Does the fact that a prominent apologist of Atheist Anthony Flew relatively recently decided that his advocacy of atheism for numerous years was mistaken and that a God exist give Perigo pause.

Perigo then notes that Kerry Packer after being dead for 15 minutes testified that “there’s nothing there” but again one wonders why this should bother Christians. Christianity teaches a resurrection of the dead at the parousia not popular the stories associated with “near death experiences” the movie ghost or the TV series Medium.

Perigo often says some thoughtful and interesting things. On theology and religion however he does not. Like most in the media he simply spouts stereotypes provides facile arguments and backs this up with ad hominem abuse.