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This is a follow-up to my previous post about my on-going conversation with Randal Rauser and followers of his blog about whether the moral atrocities described in the Bible are evidence that the Bible is not a sacred text.

I have been attempting to defend the position that the fact that the Bible contains episodes in which God commands or approves of or brings about moral atrocities (such as genocide) is evidence that the Bible is not the word of God. My reasoning is fairly simple. Since God, if he exists, is omnibenevolent, he would abhor genocide (and slavery, and the killing of every person on Earth save one family, etc.). He would be horrified by the depiction of himself as commanding/approving of/bringing about such things. So, he cannot regard these texts as his Word and thus nor should we.

I should point out something that I made clear when the discussion at Randal’s blog began: Though I find it difficult to believe that the Bible is sacred, based on the depictions of God that I mentioned, I am humble enough to recognize that people that I admire, people that I care deeply about, and people that are manifestly smarter and better educated than I believe that the Bible is sacred. Thus I am more than willing to listen to those who disagree with my conclusion.

It is important to note that Rauser shares my moral intuition about the Biblical episodes in which God is portrayed as commanding, e.g., genocide. Randal believes that an omnibenevolent being would not make the commands attributed to God in 1 Samuel 15:3. He agrees that the command presented there is a genocidal command and that it is impossible that it accurately reflects the will of God. Of course, that does not mean that Rauser accepts my conclusion that the Bible is not sacred.

Rauser has been pushing back against my postition by offering a series of literary analogies, examples in which artists present moral atrocities in their texts but do not explicitly condemn them (or make their own views concerning these atrocities known in any other way). He has mentioned, for example The Red Badge of Courage. Stephen Crane, says Rauser, is not obligated to make his own views about the morality of warfare. Indeed, Crane’s novel is an indictment of war despite the fact that the author does not make his own views clear.

Another example that he provided is fictional: Suppose a group of editors decided to put together a collection of texts that collectively tell the history of the United States. Rauser calls this the American Omnibus

So imagine for the moment that the Americana Omnibus exists and there are many diverse reading communities that regularly read and study the text in a quest to understand what it means to be American. These reading communities disagree on how to read the text at various points and thus on just what it means to be American. Some read the text as supportive of manifest destiny, for example, while others read it as an indictment of manifest destiny. I am not an American, nor am I committed to studying the Americana Omnibus to discern what it really means to be an American. But recognizing the diversity and complexity that exists in the Omnibus and the diversity and complexity that is predictably mirrored in the text’s various reading communities, at the very least I will withhold any magisterial statements on whether the Americana Omnibus is “good” or “bad”, on whether it is worthwhile to form oneself as an American by reading it or not. I certainly wouldn’t call for the text to be trashed. Such a claim would reflect nothing more than my own hermeneutical dullness.

The problem with both of these examples is that they are importantly disanalogous to the Bible. It is not just that the Bible contains morally problematic episodes. It portrays God as commanding moral atrocities and bringing about moral atrocities. For the American Omnibus analogy to work, it would have to include depictions of the editors themselves as supporting or bringing about moral atrocities. Similarly, The Red Badge of Courage does not contain depictions of Stephen Crane doing horrible things and so it is not relevantly analogous to the Bible either.

Now, if the finished American Omnibus somehow did contain episodes in which the editors themselves were depicted as approving of or bringing about moral atrocities, surely they would want to do something about that, assuming, that is, that they are morally upright and believe the depictions to be in error. Presumably the editors would disassociate themselves from the work. Similarly, I maintain that God would disassociate himself from the moral atrocities that he is portrayed as commanding or bringing about in the Bible.

This suggests a principle (which Randal dubbed “JMAP,” “Jason’s Moral Artist Principle”) that lies behind my suggestion that the moral atrocities portrayed in the Bible are evidence that it is not sacred:

JMAP: A morally upright editor/compiler/author would disassociate himself from any any passages within his/her text which depict him/her as commanding/approving of/bringing about moral atrocities.

After initially misinterpreting my claim, Randal offered the following relevant scenario as a potential counterexample to this principle:

Imagine that Jones is a black man who is charged with raping and murdering a white woman. Jones happens to be an editor, and in the wake of the charge he flees town, goes underground, and edits and publishes a volume called The Guilt of Jones which collects all the evidence against him. Jones knows that some people will read the book and conclude that Jones is guilty of the crimes, and he contains within the book no repudiation of the evidence.

According to J-MAP, Jones’ action is not “morally upright” because he failed to condemn the false attributions in the edited volume. But this is an absurd charge, for Jones could easily have morally serious reasons consistent with his upright moral character for undertaking the publication of this volume. Imagine, for example, that he envisions that others will read the text and conclude the evidence is flimsy and the charge motivated by nothing more than racial prejudice. Imagine, in addition, that he believes many of those who initially read the volume and conclude he is guilty will later be forced to reconsider their own conclusion based on further evidence, and that this will serve as a spotlight illumining the racial prejudices within their own hearts.

Is this a counterexample to JMAP? I argued that it is not. I claimed that by publishing such a volume, Jones would be violating a duty he has to himself and his readers. To himself he has the duty to not present false and misleading information about his alleged crime without at least attempting to correct the record. To his readers he has the responsibility to present the entire truth about the allegations, at least to the best of his ability. That Jones might believe that some of his readers will conclude that the evidence is flimsy is not a reason to not present any exculpatory evidence that he has. After all, if readers would conclude that the evidence is flimsy, then by adding the exculpatory evidence, Jones could only be aiding their discovery of the truth. Surely presenting the entirety of the evidence is more likely to convince readers that the case is flimsy and based on prejudice.

Furthermore, regardless of what he might believe, if Jones does not include any attempt to refute or at least deny the charges, some readers are going to conclude that he is guilty (I can imagine many readers asking, “Why else would someone accused of such crimes publish a volume that detailed the evidence against him?”). This is a disservice to those readers. They deserve the truth, even if they are unable to process it because of their racial prejudice.

Rauser claimed that in asserting that Jones would have done something wrong, I have endorsed the absurd. He also claimed that I offered nothing to support my contention other than my own personal incredulity that a person in Jones circumstances would publish such a volume. But he is wrong on both counts. I offered arguments in comments to his posts similar to the one I provided above (actually my arguments at his site are much longer and more involved). Nor is it absurd to think that Jones has done wrong; that is, it is not absurd to believe that a writer of a non-fiction work (which is what Jones’ volume would be) has a duty to present the whole truth, at least to the best of his ability.

The most bizarre aspect of my exchange with Rauser concerns his charge that in dismissing the Jones example, I expressed confusion about how philosophical argument works. He claims that my response to the Jones example was to say that I found it highly improbable. But, says Rauser, the likelihood of the scenario is beside the point; the point is that it is possible for someone to act as Jones does in the example. That is enough to show that JMAP is false.

But Randal couldn’t be more wrong about this. For one thing, while it is true that I did say that I found it implausible that anyone would do what Jones is described as doing in the example, that was not intended as an argument that the example is irrelevant to JMAP. The example is irrelevant to JMAP, but that is not the reason.

Here is the reason: since JMAP is a moral principle, you cannot prove that it is false by describing a possible scenario in which someone violates it. That would be like claiming that abortion cannot be wrong because doctors abort pregnancies every day. JMAP says only that a morally upright person will disassociate himself from texts in which he is described as committing a moral atrocity. In other words, JMAP  implies that not disassociating yourself from such texts is wrong. For the Jones example to be a counterexample to JMAP, it must be the case that, in publishing the volume, Jones does not commit a wrong. If it is wrong for Jones to publish the volume, then he is not morally upright in doing so. I agree that it is possible (though unlikely) that someone might do what Jones is described as doing. But that is not relevant. The question is whether doing so is wrong.

I argued above, and in comments on Randal’s blog, that if a person knows that the charges against someone are false, then it is wrong to publish a volume that contains descriptions of the evidence against him but contains no attempt to refute the evidence, present exculpatory evidence, or deny the charges. Randal did not respond to these arguments (indeed, he falsely claimed that I did not offer them). Instead he said that I was confused about how counterexamples work. He claimed that in describing the scenario, he had defeated JMAP; the mere possibility that someone might act as Jones is described as acting is enough to show that JMAP is not true. I, says Randal, don’t understand that this is how thought-experiments work.

But, as I said, the Jones example only works as a counterexample to JMAP if, in publishing the volume, Jones does no wrong. To repeat, I am not claiming that the implausibility of the Jones thought-experiment suffices to show that it cannot falsify JMAP. Rather, I am claiming that it does not falsify JMAP because Jones is not morally upright if he publishes the volume. So, I am not the one who is confused.

Now, Randal is more than welcome to argue against my claim that it is wrong for Jones to publish The Guilt of Jones. But he did not do that. Instead he chose to charge me with confusion.