Triablogue, History and methodological naturalism

This is my reply to an article by Steve Hays at Triablogue entitled

"I never claimed to be doing history"

Friday, November 01, 2019

In addition, "history" is ambiguous. It can mean different things:
i) What actually happened in the past

If that's what the speaker means, then they lack epistemological sophistication unless they claim to be direct eyewitnesses, since it's obviously true that whether some event "actually" happened can only be gauged in terms of probability.  If the common person fails to make such critical distinction and equates probability with actuality, that doesn't change anything I just said.  There is no such thing as "actually happened" for the investigator looking at third-party sources, there's only "degree of probability".

However, I don't find it necessarily fallacious for the person who thinks there's a high degree of probability, to regard this as "actually happened".

ii) What demonstrably happened. What historians think happened. What historians think probably happened or probably didn't happen, what definitely happened and what definitely never happened.

I think that's far closer to the truth.

iii) So "history" in the sense of (ii) comes down to the personal judgement of individual historians.

And since the rules of historiography cannot be employed in mechanical fashion, so that making a probability assessment for a historical event is as easy as figuring out whether baking soda and vineger fizz when mixed, it will prove impossible to get people to agree on many events for which we have only ancient and disputable evidence. 

In other words, when your case is limited to ancient disputed evidence (and inerrantists, evangelicals and "reformed" Christians disagree about the degree to which the gospels are historically reliable), you'd have to be high on crack to pretend that this case can be so good that only "fools" would deny it.  Hell, juries today that deliberate about evidence that was created as late as two years before, often cannot come to agreement after the american judicial system has done its best to get through the dross and provide them with established facts.  Any Christain who come bobbing along and insists 2,000 year old documents of questionable authenticity/authorship and text are "reliable" is more interested in yelling for Jesus than in common sense.

iv) Ehrman appeals to historical criteria, but criteria are value-laden and mirror the worldview of a given historian.

That's a good thing, since there is no such thing as presuppositionless analysis.  Presuming the reliability of one's 5 senses is far more objective than one's suspicion that maybe they are just brains in vats wired up by space aliens to think they are people on earth doing investigation.

For Ehrman, "history" is what's left over after you filter the historical evidence through the pasta strainer of methodological naturalism.

That's a good thing too, otherwise, the cops, to be fair, would have to spend equal amounts of time pursuing leads generated by purely naturalistic methods, and leads generated by purely psychic or "prayer" methods.  If your own kid was kidnapped, you would put no faith whatsoever in having the cops focus all of their energies in leads generated solely by the prayers of other Christians, you would instead ask that  they presume the infallibility of their 5 physical senses and pursue any leads generated by purely non-supernaturalist investigation methods, like empiricism.  When you child is kidnapped, you suddenly (and conveniently) lack the motive to highlight the alleged "fallacies" of empiricism.   The more the cops fail to follow leads generated by purely naturalistic investigation methods, the less likely you'll ever see your kid again.

But there's no presumption that we should operate with methodological naturalism unless metaphysical naturalism is true.

We atheists don't have to prove something "true" to regard it as a safe assumption, we only have to show that it is a reasonable position to take.  Metaphysical naturalism is what's behind all scientific progress, while attempts to grow in knowledge by purely supernatural means have provided precisely nothing, except the very type of word-wrangling that your apostle Paul specifically forbade (2nd Timothy 2:14).

You will exclaim that the OT prophets accurately predicted events hundreds of years ahead of them.  I am quite aware of the apologetic of "predictive prophecy" and after having examined all the OT texts Christians constantly put forward (Isaiah 7:14, Daniel 9, Micah 5:2), I still find faulty exegesis, naturalistic guessing and late authorship to account for any such cases more reasonably than the "god told them" explanation, which, by being grounded in an infinite complexity, obviously violates Occam's Razor far more than any naturalistic explanation would.

In other words, when I say supernaturalism does not have as good of a track record of helping us discover "truth" as non-supernatural methods have, I know what I'm talking about and I defy any "apologist" to prove different.  We've discovered a lot of truth since the Enlightenment...which of those truths were uncovered by God revealing something supernaturally to any human being?  NONE.

Or maybe the deep thinkers at Triablogue will attack my "scientific progress" model and claim that their bible-god doesn't care about mankind's scientific progress and shouldn't be presumed to desire to give any such knowledge by supernatural means?  Ok, how many Triablogue members live a daily life that is enhanced by that modern technology and discovery that this bible-god allegedly doesn't care to reveal supernaturally?  Do you use a computer, cell phone or debit card?

If God doesn't wish to supernaturally reveal "scientific" discoveries, might that argue that God is against the unbelieving world trying to advance in technology?  What did God fear might happen when unbelieving mankind tried that before?  Read Genesis 11:6.

So that's a dishonest shortcut. To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, methodological naturalism has all the advantages of theft over honest toil.

The atheist who depends upon his naturalistic presuppositions to interpret new evidence, is no more "dishonest" than the Christian who depends on her supernaturalistic presuppositions to interpret new evidence.   The question is which person is more reasonable.

What you need to do is show that the naturalistic presuppositions are false or fallacious.

I've read Triablogue's entries alleging that empiricism is "fallacious".  You've never shown any such thing, and the fact that even sincere committed bible-centered Trinitarian evangelical Christians think presuppositionalism is total bullshit, is quite sufficient to justify the atheist outsider, if they choose, to regard that debate as utterly futile, and to therefore avoid it entirely and then go forth in the world interpreting new evidence in the way that everybody else does...by the use of their 5 physical senses.