Toast

I´m not really an "angry atheist on YouTube", but this weekend, I decided to pretend that I am, but since I don´t have any YouTube channel (and absolutely no intention of creating one), the blog will have to do. Today, we will be looking at a two year old video from Answers in Genesis Canada, a branch of the young earth creationist ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG), headed by Australian-American Ken Ham. I know that AiG are presuppositionalists (see further below), unless I completely missed some new development, but I never understood their more specific theology, except that they are fundamentalist Protestants. But are they Calvinists, Baptists, or what? 

The AiG-Canada video isn´t about creationism, though, but rather deals with the issue "With so many religions, how can you know Christianity is right?". It´s only a little over five minutes, so I realize that it might be problematic attacking it, but then, nothing stops AiG from making a video presentation that is, say ten or twenty minutes, so I will comment it regardless. 

Right of the bat, the clip is *disingenuous even according to the AiG´s own worldview*, since as already noted this ministry is presuppositionalist rather than evidentialist. A presuppositionalist *doesn´t* prove his worldview - he merely presupposes it. Thus, AiG can´t even coherently ask the question they are asking here, and then answering with (supposed) evidences. The AiG´s real position is that "the Bible" (really their specific interpretation of evangelical Bible versions) is true simply because it is. All scientific facts are then interpreted (or rather re-interpreted) on this "Biblical" basis, which means that AiG´s worldview can´t really be falsified or independently tested. It simply *must* be true, period. 

Thus, if the facts point to a 4 billion years old earth, this simply must be wrong since the Bible suggests it´s only 6000 years old, so some seriously distorted geological "facts" must be found that correlates with this theological position. And if none can be found, that is no problem, since the fallback position is always "the Bible is right anyway". AiG seem to suggest that this method is self-evident, since everybody (even Darwinists) use it, except of course that their presuppositions are different. But how do you prove that your presuppositions are the right ones? As far as I can tell, the AiG has no way of actually demonstrating this, except to somehow claim that logic and coherence can only come from God, and therefore atheists are illogical and hence wrong, but this argument (even if true) doesn´t disprove other theist religions or other Christian denominations. Maybe God is a Methodist rather than a Baptist? Or a Shia Muslim Platonist? 

I wonder what AiG would do if forced to argue with another presuppositionalist group, for instance the Hare Krishna, which presupposes the truth of the Shrimad Bhagavatam? It would quickly become a very, very absurd exchange! In practice, AiG are forced to argue with (supposed) evidences best they can (like every other human being), and I suppose this YouTube channel is an example of this... 

AiG begins by criticizing the statement that all religions are true. They point out (correctly) that this can´t be the case. Part of Christianity´s truth is that other religions are false! However, does anyone really hold the position that all religions are literally true? I suspect that this is a straw man argument. The actual argument could be that all religions have the same moral message, that they all have a part of the truth, that they have the same truths if interpreted allegorically, or that there is an esoteric tradition or perennial philosophy underlying all religions. These statements may be empirically wrong (they probably are), but the point is that nobody, as far as I know, claim that X and not-X are both literally true. The closest thing would be the claim that all religions are "true" in the sense that they all lead to their stated goal - thus, Protestants actually end up in Protestant Heaven, which is "Hell" to Catholics, and vice versa with Catholic Heaven.

AiG further states that we can discard all religions with stories that can be easily disproved. This is correct, but if so, AiG themselves can be discarded, since young earth creationism can be easily disproven. For instance, the most popular radiometric dating method, which uses C-14, gives ages of up to 60,000 years, ten times the age expected by AiG´s Biblical literalism. So even this method, which can only be used on organic material, collides with Answers in Genesis! There are Bible verses which suggest that the Earth is flat or that geocentrism is true. There are many Biblical stories which are absurd on naturalist presuppositions, most famously the whale of a tale about Jonah (or was it a big fish). Yes, you can argue that God can make miracles, but that escape hatch can be applied to many non-Christian religions also. And *any* bizarre claim can be defended on presuppositionalist grounds. Thus, the Hare Krishna deny the Moon landing and re-interpret all the facts accordingly: sure, everyone saw something on TV which supposedly was Buzz Aldrin walking on the Moon´s surface, but this can be re-interpreted as a Deep State conspiracy on the basis of the presupposition that an extremely literalist Vedic cosmology must be true! And since this is declared true by presupposition, you can´t really argue with it...

Next, AiG´s Canadian representative says that religions that rely solely on feelings can be discarded. But this is another straw man, since as far as I know, no religion claims to be based solely on feelings (but I could be wrong - maybe a particularly mushy form of New Age would qualify). AiG´s example is reincarnation, but this is *not* a belief based on "feeling", but on (supposed) empirical evidence, usually involving so-called past-life memories. But memories aren´t "feelings". Perhaps AiG´s point is that people believe in reincarnation for psychological reasons, while belief in eternal Heaven and Hell are held on manly objective grounds? But it´s certainly possible to think that reincarnation is true, but consider it bad - indeed, much of Hinduism and Buddhism is based on this notion (this is admittedly a very short summary of a rather complex set of positions). A Buddhist could perhaps argue that AiG are the emotional whimps, since they want bodily resurrection and paradise rather than nirvana...

Further, AiG states that some religions don´t believe in God, so instead they claim that the universe created itself through a process of evolution. I suppose you could look at Buddhism, Jainism and certain forms of Hinduism this way through AiG´s theological lenses, but since the cycles of time these systems operate with are really eternally recurring, the claim that the "universe created itself" sounds strange. Rather, Buddhism says that the universe is eternal, albeit cyclical. "Evolution" is also a strange word to use here, since (unless I´ve misunderstood these systems - they *are* complex) the universe seems to re-emerge more or less fully formed each time. I actually wonder if AiG may have subconsciously conflated real Eastern religions with modern Theosophy or the New Age! Or maybe that *is* what they mean, but if you say "some religions don´t believe in God", that triggers my Pavlovian reflex for (traditional) Buddhism. The deeper question is of course: why can´t the universe be eternal? Why can´t it be caused by a pantheist or panentheist "god"? Indeed, why can´t it have a material cause?

Naturally, AiG then claims that evolution has "never" been proven. In a five minute video, this is obviously impossible to argue for in detail. Let me just note that if AiG are right, not just evolutionary biology but geology, paleontology, archeology, astronomy and basic physics (yes, really) must be wrong as well. There is always a risk or chance that everything we know about the past (or even the present) could be egregiously wrong, but what are the chances that essentially *all* sciences have been wrong about their chosen subject-matters for centuries? I would consider that highly unlikely, to say the least. At worst, science might be wrong about materialism, since you may miss the non-material if your method prohibits you from even looking for it. But non-material evolution for billions of years is still evolution in the AiG´s worldview. I wonder if AiG´s supporters really understand how extreme young earth creationism (really young universe creationism) in its "Biblical" form actually is? 

After this, AiG essentially writes off all religions except the Abrahamic ones with a sleight of hand trick. Their speaker simply declares that the only religions that can be investigated using philosophical, historical or scientific methods are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. To call this a bold statement would be to underestimate the case considerably! At least on a common interpretation, many of the ideas considered typical of the so-called Abrahamic religions (the standard term - not the AiG´s, and not mine either) really hail from Zoroastrianism, a Persian "dualist" religion which isn´t even mentioned in the Bible. The following "Biblical" (and Quranic) ideas may come from Zoroastrianism: monotheism, the monotheist god speaks to all of humanity through a chosen prophet, holy war for the one god, the apocalypse followed by a new creation, the immortality of the soul, angels and archangels, the resurrection of the body, the Devil, the Messiah. More broadly, all religions can be studied historically, philosophically and/or scientifically. Nothing precludes us from studying, say, Lap shamanism or the neo-Zen of Alan Watts in this manner! The point of AiG´s sleight of hand is pretty obvious: Judaism and Christianity are based on two version of the Bible, while Islam is based on a scripture strongly inspired by both. And the point of the exercise is to prove Christianity...

Of the three religions analyzed, AiG states that Christianity is the best attested one. Have they forgotten that the Old Testament was originally the *Jewish* Bible? I doubt it - their point is presumably that the New Testament plus the Christian understanding of the Old Testament are better attested than (post-Jesus) Judaism or Islam. *But this is not a historical position, but a theological one*. AiG conflates historical attestation with theology, once again showing their basic presuppositionalism. Here is another way to say this: modern religions are empirically better attested than ancient ones, but AiG doesn´t believe in their messages, since they don´t accept the theology! Even modern miracle claims are better attested (sort of) than ancient miracle claims. For instance, the mother of Hindu guru Sai Baba (supposedly) confirmed that she was a virgin when giving birth to the future god-man. Does AiG believe this? Of course not, yet the manuscript distance is zero in this case, and we even have an eye-witness, who is moreover the person whom it chiefly concerns! 

In the video, AiG actually says that the Gospel stories of Jesus are the most verifiable of "these ancient texts" (presumably a reference to Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts). The word "verifiable" is, I think, another dead give away of the fact that AiG are doing theology, not history. To say that the death and resurrection of Jesus have been verified is a much stronger statement than his existence as a historical person being well attested, or the NT scriptures being early. The theological slant is also obvious when AiG claims that Jesus fulfilled the OT´s Messianic prophecies. The problem here isn´t so much that the video is short, it´s that the entire method of the presenter is flawed from the beginning. Once again: Answers in Genesis don´t believe in Mormon prophet Joseph Smith´s strange claims (yet there were signed eye witness testimonies to some of his revelations - as pointed out by an atheist critic of AiG on YouTube), Sai Baba´s virgin birth (attested by his mother), the resurrection of Swami Yukteshwar (attested by his famous disciple Yogananda, who saw it with his own eyes, and wrote about it in his autobiography), the attainment of rainbow bodies of Tibetan masters at death (again, multiple eye witnesses, supposedly including hostile Chinese soldiers), etc. 

Finally, the presenter states that Christianity have transformed the lives of millions of people, freed them from sin, and given them hope for eternity. This is once again a theological statement, which may even be controversial among Christians. Thus, most Christian Churches probably wouldn´t say that all believers have been "freed from sin", if this is taken to mean "sinless". And without a confession and penance before a priest ordained by a bishop with apostolic succession, it may not even mean "forgiven". Empirically, there is no evidence that Christians (or evangelical Christians) sin less than others, certainly not on leadership level. Conversely, there seem to be Hare Krishna freaks, cultic Jehovah´s Witnesses, charismatic kooks and UFO-believing UFOs who seem just as happy as your average evangelical (or even happier, since many Protestant fundamentalists seem damn angry all the time). Haven´t they been "transformed"? AiG would say no, but once again this is a theological presupposition...  

With that, I end this commentary. Or LARP.