Dang. Almost Two Years Later...

I forgot I already have this blog. I almost started a new one.

So in Tremont on Tuesday, while Emilia and Helen galavanted around the Lincoln Park playground, I had a discussion with two friends: Jeff, and his wife Pandora. Jeff told me that he likes to read books that are against Christianity (he and Pandora are evangelical, I believe). He asked me if I knew about Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," then proceeded to give me two of the arguments from the book. The first had to do with similarities between the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literature (in this case, the Egyptian Book of the Dead). The second was the classic atheist question/argument: "Well, who created God?!" I told them I was familiar with these objections.

Pandora asked me if this made me question my faith. I told her no, because there are good responses to them. First, alleged parallels between other Near Eastern literature and the Bible usually break down when one really looks at the passages or stories in question. For example, the resurrection of Osiris in Egyptian mythology bears little in common with resurrection in Jewish thinking (the former being tied to the Egyptians' cyclical view of reality; the latter reflecting a linear view of reality, culminating in the end of the world). Also, similarity in stories (for example, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah's Ark) may simply reflect two accounts of a common, historical or cultural event. I submit that it would be shouldering an nearly unbearable burden of proof for one to assert that this is definitely plagiarism. Simply saying that one is earlier than the other is not enough.

In response to the old atheist "Who made God?"-line, I defer to William Lane Craig's two principal responses: 1. In order to recognize something is the best explanation, you don't need an explanation of the explanation. To require this would destroy science, for it would imply an infinite regress of explanations. If astronauts find a pile of ancient machinery on the dark side of the moon, they are justified in inferring this to be the work of intelligent extra-terrestrial life, even if they can't explain where these life forms came from, and other such questions. 2. The traditional concept of God in Christianity is one of a metaphysically necessary being. That is, a non-contingent being that exists by the necessity of its own nature. So therefore, the question "Who made a metaphysically necessary being?" is utter logical nonsense.