This post was inspired by a response Stephen Law got to his criticism of the liar, lunatic, or lord argument. It’s not very too the point, but a couple parts are worth picking out for discussion:

L. Ron Hubbard was not God, so it wouldn’t matter much if four or five people witnessed his resurrection.

Your email outlines some reasons for thinking that Jesus either didn’t exist (not enough non-Biblical evidence) or wasn’t God (his life was myth or embellished over the last 2,000 years); that would seem to me to put him in the “liar” category. As I said, if you think him a liar (or non-existent) or lunatic then any Philosophy will do because there’s no Absolute Truth. All things are relative, including ideas of god, history, existence, etc.

Let’s count the things wrong with this:

*Begging the Question*

The line about L. Ron Hubbard only distinguishes Jesus from L. Ron if we assume Jesus is God, which is what Stephen’s correspondent is supposed to be establishing.

*False Dilemma*

One of Stephen’s original criticisms of the liar, lunatic, lord argument was that it was a false dilemma (or rather trilemma), since it ignored the fact that the relevant claims may have been stuck in Jesus’ mouth by the Gospel writers, or he may not have even existed at all. Here, we get an interesting move of playing with words, so that “liar” means things other than “liar,” all for the sake of preserving the false dilemma.

*The argument from overboard praise*

Now for what really interested me in Stephen’s correspondent: if Jesus wasn’t God, there is no absolute truth. Where the hell did that come from. I admit the following is speculation, but here it goes: Christians (and members of other religions?) are so used to saying “God is Truth” and “Jesus is Truth” that they immediately jump from “there is no God” to “there is no truth.” The bizarre thing is that not only is the assumption unsupported, it’s not even clear what it means: is God supposed to be the property of being true? If so, does that make an God an abstract object, rather than a concrete one as usually supposed (non-philosopher’s translation: properties don’t normally have power in and of themselves, making God a property seems to be at odds with his being all-powerful).

This is a good time to reflect on where stuff like “God is Truth” comes from. Here, Hume’s speculations on the origin of monotheism may be helpful:

It may readily happen, in an idolatrous nation, that though men admit the existence of several limited deities, yet is there some one God, whom, in a particular manner, they make the object of their worship and adoration. They may either suppose, that, in the distribution of power and territory among the gods, their nation was subjected to the jurisdiction of that particular deity; or reducing heavenly objects to the model of things below, they may represent one god as the prince or supreme magistrate of the rest, who, though of the same nature, rules them with an authority, like that which an earthly sovereign exercises over his subjects and vassals. Whether this god, therefore, be considered as their peculiar patron, or as
the general sovereign of heaven, his votaries will endeavour, by every art, to insinuate themselves into his favour; and supposing him to be pleased, like themselves, with praise and flattery, there
is no eulogy or exaggeration, which will be spared in their addresses to him. In proportion as men’s fears or distresses become more urgent, they still invent new strains of adulation; and even he
who outdoes his predecessor in swelling up the titles of his divinity, is sure to be outdone by his successor in newer and more pompous epithets of praise. Thus they proceed; till at last they
arrive at infinity itself, beyond which there is no farther progress: And it is well, if, in striving to get farther, and to represent a magnificent simplicity, they run not into inexplicable mystery, and destroy the intelligent nature of their deity, on which alone any rational worship or adoration can be founded.

I’m convinced the tendency to bring praise of God to ridiculous extremes is real. My philosophy of religion prof from back in sophomore year, Keith Yandell, once told a story of a Sunday school class which concluded that it would be greater if God were so powerful he didn’t even need to exist, so God must be that possible. There are more respectable examples of this tendency that still don’t make much more sense: claiming God can do the logically impossible (some early theologians, not so popular today), claiming God, by his nature, could not possibly have not existed (popular today). It seems like a likely source for the “God is Truth” stuff.

Anyway, once you start spouting off that kind of silliness, the temptation to use it to make even sillier arguments becomes strong. It’s actually a bit hard to claim the further steps don’t follow, because the starting point makes so little sense you can’t say much about it. (Anything follows from a contradiction, as the logician’s truism goes). Call it the “argument from overboard praise”.

*Another Religion*

Finally, in the comments we get an example of the “just another religion” move, something so common I’m surprised I haven’t done a post on it before:

The most interesting point of these discussions for me is how much I see in these posts/blogs that looks like religion. I started to make the point with Stephen, but we got sidetracked. “Evidence” is the worship to the god of Reason. People can be “converted” to this church of Reason (“We may not convince Jamie…” and “It may be that we won’t change anyone’s mind”). Decrying the falsehood of other beliefs (“…idiotic fallacies…” and “silly”) is common. Just an observation.

The components in this case:

*Changing your mind = conversion, which would make any subject where you can change your mind a religion.
*Caring about something = worship, which would make anything people care about a religion.
*No bit of religious jargon for the “other beliefs” bit, obviously there are silly beliefs and lousy arguments in areas other than religion, and no good reason not to point this out.

All three of these points involve noticing superficial similarities, and ignoring the points that religion is actually being criticized for. Very common, in my experience.