24AR29-43

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AR 29:43 - A powerful question for skeptics

In this issue:

APOLOGETICS - "spiky questions" and Occam's razor

ENVIRONMENTALISM - if plants were legally regarded as "sentient," would this give them rights?

ISLAM - Ayaan Hirsi Ali on persecution and free speech

Apologia Report 29:43 (1,684)
November 22, 2024

APOLOGETICS

"The Evangelist's Razor: A Powerful Question for Sceptics" by Joash Arnold (Gospel Coalition Australia, Sep 26 '24) -- "Yes, some sceptics ask questions because they are curious, earnest, and willing to listen. But others ask questions, get an answer, and then move on to the next question as if that first one didn't even matter. Sometimes the sceptic is a hedgehog: their spikes are used to keep people at bay. Or you may meet a rhino: a person who comes at you relentlessly to chase you away. In both cases these tricky questions are a defence. ...

   "The tireless task of answering obscure questions is difficult to do well. It means we need to be well-versed on a whole range of topics and be able to answer niche questions. It's exhausting. Is there a better way? ...

   "Philosophers have established shortcuts to deal with systems of knowledge. They call them epistemological razors (like a shaving razor). Their function is to shave off unnecessary explanatory information. The most famous of these tools is Occam's razor: 'Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily'. Or in easier terms: don't add unnecessary parts to an explanation if a simpler one exists. Using Occam's razor we can shave off all the unnecessarily complicated solutions.

   "Sceptics have used epistemological razors to great effect in their dialogue with Christians. Consider Sagan's <www.tinyurl.com/AR-on-Sagan> standard: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Or Hitchens's <www.tinyurl.com/AR-on-Hitchens> razor: what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. ... Rather than respond to a Christian's arguments, the New Atheists cut down how much they needed to respond to. However, the New Atheists applied this razor in ways that was at times disingenuous. Their fatal error, especially Hitchens, was that they thought the razor was an argument in and of itself. They didn't realise that it was meant to shave off part of the bad parts of an argument, not trim it down to nothing! Their use of epistemological razors was arrogant and ironically obscurantist. ...

   "What can Christians do to have more productive apologetic conversations? We can apply a razor of our own: 'If I answered this question, would you become a Christian today?' Most people will say no. But even this simple answer requires them to stop and think. That's the beauty of this razor. It has a disarming effect. It prompts the sceptic to self-reflect....

   "The Christian removes the defensive spikes so they can tenderly address what is troubling the sceptic deep down." (If ever there was a great opportunity to emphasize the too-often ignored concluding part of 1 Peter 3:15, this is it. Unfortunately, Arnold doesn't.)

   "This razor does not mean that you shouldn't learn answers to those spiky questions. But it will require us to believe Paul's words that our sceptical friend cannot rationally ascend above the state of sinful, perishing humanity (1 Cor 1:18–20). It is unhelpful for us to endlessly entertain the spiky questions of belligerent or disinterested sceptics; it will only fuel further obscure speculation. ...

   Yet, he concludes: "When we use this razor we highlight the end goal of apologetics, the end goal of evangelistic conversations." <www.tinyurl.com/3wkxhj96>

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ENVIRONMENTALISM

"Plants Are People Too?" by Steven Hayward (powerlineblog.com, Sep 30 '24) -- "The New York Review of Books has a [feature] by and follow-up interview with Elizabeth Kolbert, [a staff writer at The New Yorker] who up to this point has distinguished herself as one of the leading climate change hysterics. Her newest obsession might be called 'the secret life of plants.'" (Hilariously, although Hayward includes the NYRB review link, <www.tinyurl.com/2yzsdu2r> he is so exercised over the content that he fails to identify the source detail regarding the trio reviewed:

* - The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, <www.tinyurl.com/bdz768tr> by Zoë Schlanger

* - The Nation of Plants, <www.tinyurl.com/39hphkhe> by Stefano Mancuso

* - Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence, <www.tinyurl.com/mnfc4vmt> by Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence).

   Hayward trots out the supporting evidence behind his discomfort: "A body of recent scientific research suggests that plants can adapt to new information, predict the future, communicate with animals, and confer privately with each other. Should we think of them as sentient? ... Plants communicate with one another. ... Plants are also able to confer privately, with just their kin, by emitting chemicals only relatives can interpret. ...

   "Ultimately the lesson the nation of plants wants to deliver is: wise up! At the rate people are running through resources ... there isn't much time before the entire biosphere starts to unravel. 'I do not believe that the gravity of the situation is clear to most people,' Mancuso writes.

   "Calvo argues that people have undervalued vegetable intelligence because plants are so different from us: 'We can't look at their faces to understand what is going on internally.' Still, he believes, it should be possible for us to sympathetically engage with them....'

   "People who consider it their ethical obligation to reduce animal suffering can—and often do—become vegans. ... But no human or, for that matter, animal of any kind can survive without consuming plants, either directly or indirectly. ...

   "Calvo seems reluctant to follow his logic to its logical conclusion. The furthest he's willing to go is to ask: 'Were plants to be given the status of 'sentient,' would this give them rights that might encumber our exploitation of them?' People have, he acknowledges, 'been slow to consider these issues.'" (Indeed.)

   From this point onward, Hayward's joking satire takes over entirely. <www.tinyurl.com/2yzsdu2r>

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ISLAM

"Islam and Apostasy" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Restoration, Sep 24 '24) -- Hirsi Ali reports that "almost a dozen Islamic nations, including some of the largest, have laws prescribing death for anyone who chooses to walk away from Islam. ... Radical clerics claim that this is the punishment handed down by God in the Koran.

   "It is not difficult to see why." She includes "some of the relevant passages concerning apostates. ...

   "Can it really be the case that Islamic nations in 2024, many of them American allies, actually execute apostates? Sadly, the answer is yes. In Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, the Maldives, Mauritania, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and my native Somalia, apostasy carries the death penalty. Brunei only joined that list in 2015, so it is not as if the practice is disappearing (though it was recently abolished, at least in theory, in parts of the Sudan). In some nations it is up to the local states, including large nations like Nigeria and Malaysia.

   "In most other Muslim nations, lesser but still severe consequences await renouncers. ... In nominally secular Bangladesh in 2010, a list of secular ex-Muslims was published in various media outlets. No charges could be filed, but 8 of the 83 people named have been killed by vigilantes. So far. "Moderate" Indonesia sent Alexander Aan to prison in 2012 for posting in an atheist Facebook group, because, as his judge put it, he "caused anxiety to the community and tarnished Islam". Imad Iddine Habib, a Moroccan who publicly criticized Islam, only escaped a seven-year prison sentence by fleeing the country. In Kuwait, apostasy can result in the forfeiture of property and children. Similar family and inheritance laws apply throughout the Middle East."

   Hirsi Ali wants it known that "most victims of Islamic extremism today are innocent Muslims. ...

   "Governments across the world are failing to uphold appropriate legal standards for freedom of religion and speech, allowing rampant criminalization of social media posts and religious practice to go unchecked." Doesn't this seem to be getting closer to home?

   She reports that "a New Jersey ... senior senator, a Democrat by the name of Bob Menendez, had to resign following his conviction for taking Egyptian bribes. Unfortunately, you read that correctly: An American senator was in the pocket of a foreign power actively persecuting Christians. ... 

   "Most of the subversion of our society is from within—but by no means all. I hope Menendez' Coptic Christian chief-of-staff, who has been given his former boss' seat by New Jersey's Democrat governor, does better. ...

   "The imprisonment of Yemeni refugee Abdulbaqi Saeed Abdo at the hands of Egyptian authorities is a surreal example of censorial blasphemy policies in action." (She describes this in detail earlier in this essay.) It's also illegal. ...

   "From China to Pakistan, from Russia to Syria, from the UK to Egypt—free speech must urgently be defended from our age's resurgent Stalinism. ...

   "As an aside: I do not point to the United Kingdom pettily, but because of the real and present danger to free speech posed by the Labour Party and the presence of a well-established Muslim Brotherhood network that works within the Labour party. They recently scrapped the previous government's proposed free speech laws for universities, seemingly because of Chinese pressure." <www.tinyurl.com/4snt3ews>

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