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CCC comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong
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Of course theists can say false statements, I'm not claiming that. I'm trying to come with an explanation of why some theists don't accept a certain form of argument. My explanation is that the theists are embarrassed to join someone who only points out a weak argument that their beliefs are silly. They do not make the argument that the "Talking Snakes"-argument is invalid, only that it is not rhetorical.
The point of the original cautionary tale suggests that the argument "talking snakes cannot exist, thus Christianity is false" is as valid and as persuasive as the argument "monkeys cannot give birth to humans, thus evolution is false". In both cases, it's an argument strong enough to convince only those who are already convinced that the argument's conclusion is most likely correct; and in both cases, it shows that the arguer fundamentally misunderstands the position he is arguing against.
How do you misunderstand christianity if you say to people: "There is no evidence of any talking snakes, so it's best to reject any ideas that hinges on there existing talking snakes"?
Again, I'm not saying that this is usually a good argument. I'm saying that those who make it present a logically valid case (which is not the case with the monkey-birthing-human-argument) and that those who not accept it, but believe it to be correct, does so because they feel it isn't enough to convince others in their group that it is a good enough argument.
I'm also trying to make a distinction between "culturally silly" and "scientifically silly". Talking snakes are scientifically silly and sometimes culturally silly.
The misunderstanding is that Christianity doesn't hinge on the existence of talking snakes, any more than evolution hinges on monkeys giving birth to humans. The error in logic is the same in both arguments.
Why doesn't Christianity hinge on their being talking snakes? The snake is part of their origin story, a core element in their belief system. Without it, what happens to original sin? And you will also have to question if not everything else in the bible is also just stories. If it's not the revealed truth of God, why should any of the other stories be real - such as the ones about how Jesus was god's son?
And, if I am wrong in that Christianity doesn't need that particular story to be true, then there is still a weaker form of the argument. Namely that a large percentage of christians believe in this story, and two hundred years ago I'd guess almost every christian believed in it, but you cannot find any leading evolutionist who claims that monkeys gave birth to humans.
Ultimately, outsiders cannot define the content or centrality of parts of a belief system. If believers say it is a metaphor, then it is a metaphor. In other words, if believers retreat empirically to the point of invisible dragons, you can't stop them. Invisible dragons aren't incoherent, they are just boring.
That large sub-groups of Christians believe something empirically false does not disprove Christianity as a whole, especially since there is widespread disagreement as to who is a "true" Christian.
Citation needed. You sound overconfident here.
I would say CarlJ is right about general Christian belief in the past from Historical Theology by Gregg R. Allison
For how this would apply to the snake in the garden see this: Jamieson
And also correct that the doctrine is important to many Christians today from Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem
So I think a successful attack on this point would be significant.
But I think Eliezer is correct there isn't extra improbability in the snake than in other elements of the creation story. I don't think most people would find absurd the possibility that an engineer could build a snake like robot that you could use a radio link to speak through, so, given the creation of entire planets and all the plant and animal life, someone talking through a snake in not an additional stretch.
But I think Yvain is getting at something additional here. The reason the snake in particular seems absurd is that talking animals pattern match to things like Kipling's Just So Stories and Aesop's Fables. But that connection is in the map, not the territory. Using that as your leading argument against Christianity makes it sound like you've used a lazy and flawed heuristic to dismiss the religion, rather than actually considered it rationally and found it wanting.
Thank you for the source! (I'd upvote but have a negative score.)
If you interpret the story as plausibly as possible, then sure, the talking snake isn't that much different from a technologically superior species that created a big bang, terraformed the earth, implanted it with different animals (and placed misleading signs of an earlier race of animals and plants genetically related to the ones existing), and then created humans in a specially placed area where the trees and animals were micromanaged to suit the humans needs. All within the realm of the possible.
But, the usual story isn't that it was created by technological means, but by supernatural means. God is supposed to have created the world from some magical ability. So, to criticize the christian story is to criticize it as being magical. And if one finds it difficult to believe one part of that story, then all parts should be equally contested.
Regarding Yvain's point - I think it is true that one could just associate "stories about talking animals" with "other stories about animals that everyone knows are patently false" and then not believe in the first story as well. But, it is not just in the mind's map of the world that this connection occurs, because the second story is connected to the world. That is, when one things about Aesop's Fables you know (though not always consciously) that these stories are false.
So, to trigger the mind to establish a connection between Eden and Aesop, the mind makes the connection that "Stories that people believe are false", but the mind has good arguments to not believe in Aesop's fables, because there aren't any talking animals, and if that idea is part of knocking down Eden, then it is a fully rational way to dismiss Christianity. Definitely not thorough, and, again, it's maybe not a reliable way of convincing others.
Biologically speaking humans are animals and we talk. And since evolution resulted in one type of animal that talks couldn't it result in others, maybe even other that have since gone extinct? So there has to be an additional reason to dismiss the story other than talking animals being rationally impossible. You mention that the problem is the "magical" causation, which you see as a synonym for supernatural, whereas in Christian Theology it is closer to an antonym.
So let me tell you a story I made up:
Thahg and Zog are aliens in a faraway solar system study species of other planets. One day Thahg shows a pocket watch to Zog and says "Look, I think a human made this." Zog says, "What's a human?" "A human is a featherless biped from Earth" Zog thinks about what animals come from earth and the only one he can think of is a chicken. He laughs and says, "You think a plucked chicken made that? Boy, are you nuts!"
And of course Thahg would then look at Zog like he was nuts, because the absurdity Zog is seeing is coming from Zog's own lack of appropriate reference categories rather than an actual problem with Thahg's conjecture.
For another example suppose the Muslim woman Yvain was talking to had said "I don't believe that evolution could work because alleles that sweep through populations more often then not reduce the kolmogorov complexity of the genes' effect on phenotype." Yvain may still think she is just as wrong, but she has demonstrated intellectual engagement with the subject rather then just demonstrating she had no mental concept for genetic change over time, like the 'monkeys give birth to humans' objection demonstrates.
So the problem is saying that talking snakes are magical and therefore ridiculous sound more like "My mental concepts are too limited to comprehend your explanation" than like "I understood your explanation and it has X, Y and Z logical problems."
I think there are two separate questions here.
First: does saying "hahaha, these guys believe in talking snakes, how ridiculous" sound like it demonstrates a lack of understanding and engagement? I think the answer to that is clearly yes, at least if you say it to thoughtful people with some understanding of this stuff. (But maybe not if you say it to people who are already convinced or to people who haven't given serious thought to these questions at all; so maybe Maher was preaching to the choir[1] and/or trying to shock unthinking believers into questioning their beliefs for the first time.)
[1] A curious phrase, that. Some Christian churches -- I'm thinking e.g. of Anglican cathedrals and Oxbridge college chapels, where the music is a Big Deal -- have quite a lot of people in their choirs who are there only for the music and might be perfectly reasonable targets for preaching.
Second: does saying "hahaha, these guys believe in talking snakes, how ridiculous" actually demonstrate a lack of understanding and engagement? I think it clearly does in some cases (and suspect Bill Maher is one), but I think (1) there really is an argument against (some versions of) Christianity based on the silliness of believing in talking snakes, and (2) some (rude) people may choose to express it in simple in-yer-face terms even though they're capable of making a more sophisticated version that isn't so liable to look like lack of understanding and engagement.
The sophisticated version I have in mind, which I've sketched elsewhere in this thread, goes something like this.
I personally think that saying "hahaha, talking snake" is counterproductive as well as rude, and I agree with Yvain that if you find a lot of smart people apparently believing in talking snakes then you should very seriously consider the possibility that (1) they don't believe quite what you think they do and/or (2) their beliefs are more defensible than they sound. But I also think -- and my impression from the note at the end of the OP is that Yvain does too -- that someone saying "hahaha, talking snake" may actually have a pretty good understanding of the issues and be making (or at least gesturing towards) a reasonable argument.
[EDITED to acknowledge that the devil-snake interpretation is quite widely believed and comment on that, and to tweak some wording a bit elsewhere.]
I hope you're familiar with Clarke's Third Law?
Believers can say "we've chosen to take it as a metaphor now".
But if the believers make statements referencing the past or other believers, they can't say that any more. And typically they do.
I believe you are making a charge (which I have heard made before) that the claim that some scriptural passages were intended as metaphors is a relatively recent innovation among believers to accommodate religion to modern scientific discoveries, and that it breaks with the traditional, literal interpretation of those passages. In fact, there is a long tradition among theologians to recognize that much of scripture should be interpreted metaphorically and/or allegorically rather than literally. Examples include Origen of Alexandria (late second - early third century CE) who took much of the Garden of Eden story to be allegorical, Augustine of Hippo who stated (in a work entitled The Literal Interpretation of Genesis from the early fifth century) that much of Genesis cannot and should not be interpreted literally, and Irenaeus of Lyons (second century CE) who interpreted the Garden of Eden story allegorically (in Against Heresies).
While it is certainly the case that some believers traditionally interpreted Genesis literally (and some still do), it is also the case that there is an ancient tradition of interpreting Genesis metaphorically/allegorically and so modern believers are by no means breaking with tradition if they interpret the serpent metaphorically.
Pretty much every variation on a religion you can think of has been thought up by someone, at some time in the past. You can't use that as your criteria for "ancient tradition" without making the whole concept of "ancient tradition" meaningless because now everything is one. How mainstream was the belief that Genesis is not literal?
For that matter, since religion is supposed to provide eternal truth, the idea of having a minority tradition in sometinng seems problematic. If a religion has multiple traditions at once, how do you decide which one counts as the "real" one that nonbelievers should be criticizing? And if the ancients had beliefs A or B, but moderns only have A, how do you decide that that counts as the ancients believing A (so you can claim that moderns are following tradition) rather than as the ancients believing B (which means that moderns are breaking with tradition)?
Well, the three authors that I listed are among the most influential early doctors of the church, so their views are definitely mainstream (albeit not universally held).
I don't know about that. I listed three very influential early Christian theologians who took much of Genesis to be non literal.
Your point that there are divergent views on the matter of how literally to take Genesis is certainly true and not in dispute. I alluded to that fact in my post when I said:
However, I don't see how that conflicts with my point that one can interpret the serpent story metaphorically without breaking with early mainstream Christian traditions. Moreover, you wrote:
I don't see how the fact that there are divergent interpretations of some scriptural stories is particularly surprising or problematic, unless you are trying judge ancient religious texts against the stylistic standards of modern historical or scientific writing (which presumably most people would not recommend doing).
I suspect that two hundred years ago, most scientists believed that human beings were not descended from monkeys. That does not make evolution denial a "core belief" of science, nor do the beliefs of Christians two hundred years ago automatically constitute the beliefs of Christians today.
The attitude of science to its past and the attitude of Christianity to its past are very (and relevantly) different.
In science, everything is meant to be revisable in the light of new evidence; authority is always supposed to be subordinate to reason and experimental results; there's a reason why the motto of the Royal Society is nullius in verba.
Christianity, on the other hand, has authorities up the wazoo. (Different authorities for different sects.) The Bible (held by many to be perfectly free from error). The Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church (held by many to be perfectly free from error, subject to certain conditions). The ancient creeds (held by many to be perfectly free from error). The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church. The Apostolic Fathers. Luther. Calvin. Aquinas. Augustine. Accepted as authorities (in so far as each one is, by any given Christian) not in the way that someone might appeal to, say, Murray Gell-Mann ("he's incredibly smart and has been very reliably right before -- but of course whatever he says can be checked by other people and anyone can make mistakes") but simply because they're Known Authorities.
In science, a discovery from 200 years ago may be admired as an impressive piece of work, but the assumption is usually that since then we've improved our techniques, done more careful analysis, and superseded it.
In Christianity, all the central ideas are centuries old, they are explicitly passed down the generations, and they are believed largely because there is a tradition (etymology: a thing handed down) saying that one should believe them -- and, in many cases, because it is thought that they originally -- centuries ago -- entered the world at the command of God.
The best reason for accepting any given scientific theory is generally that there is good experimental evidence that it describes the world accurately. In principle, anyone -- at least anyone with the right skills and equipment -- can repeat the experiments and redo the mathematical analysis and arrive at the same conclusions. (Or, in some cases, arrive at different conclusions and show that everyone's been wrong.)
The best reason for accepting the central doctrines of Christianity is that there is a ~2000-year history of other Christians accepting those doctrines and believing that they derive from the all-knowing all-good creator of the universe.
(Of course the above is a bit too black-and-white. In practice most scientists believe a lot of what they do because they heard it from other scientists whose judgement they trust. Some Christians believe some of what they believe because it just feels right to them, or because they consider that God told them directly. But the difference I describe is there and it's a big deal.)
So, if it turns out that until 200 years ago all the scientists were wrong about something important, we should re-check any bits of their work that we're still depending on, but science is a largely self-correcting enterprise and it's probably no big deal. And our scientific opinions now are not supposed to -- and generally genuinely don't -- depend on the judgement, or the character, or the rightness-about-any-particular-issue, of those scientists 200 years ago and more.
But if it turns out that until 200 years ago all the Christians were wrong about something important, it's a really big deal. Because so much of what defines Christianity is what Christians of past ages have handed down, and because so often the case for believing X is something like "all the earliest Christians believed X".
I agree with this, although I do not think it is a sufficient argument to prove that Christianity is false if taken alone, and I think it is inappropriate to criticize Christians both for refusing to update on evidence and for changing their minds when they are mistaken (not that you did this here, but I frequently see it.) People certainly should change their minds when they are mistaken, and yes this makes it more likely that they are also wrong about the other things that they haven't changed their minds about yet.
I meant that the origin story is a core element in their belief system, which is evident from every major christian religion has some teachings on this story.
If believers actually retreated to the position of invisible dragons, they would actually have to think about the arguments against the normal "proofs" that there is a god: "The bible, an infallible book without contradiction, says so". And, if most christians came to say that their story is absolutely non-empirically testable, they would have to disown other parts: the miracles of jesus and god, the flood, the parting of the red sea, and anything else that is testable.
I didn't say it would disprove christianity - I said it was a weaker form of the argument: there is an asymmetry between the beliefs of christians and evolutionists. But, most christians seem to believe that there is magic in this world (thanks to god). Sure, if they didn't believe it, they could still call themselves christians, but that type of christianity would probably not get many followers.
A bit of googling on the Vatican website turned up this document, from which I quote:
So, the official position of the Vatican is that Genesis uses figurative language; that there was a temptation to disobey the strictures laid in place by God, and that such disobedience was freely chosen; but not that there was necessarily a literal talking snake.
In other words, the talking snake is gone, but there is still original sin.
As to the question of disagreement between the discoveries of science and the word of scripture, I found a document dated 1893 from which I will quote:
It's only fair to compare like with like. I'm sure that I can find some people, who profess both a belief that evolution is correct and that monkeys gave birth to humans; and yes, I am aware that this mean they have a badly flawed idea of what evolution is.
So, in fairness, if you're going to be considering only leading evolutionists in defense of evolution, it makes sense to consider only leading theologians in the question of whether Genesis is literal or figurative.
That text is actually quite misleading. It never says that it's the snake that should be thought of as figuratively, maybe it's the Tree or eating a certain fruit that is figurative.
But, let us suppose that it is the snake they refer to - it doesn't disappear entirely. Because, a little further up in the catechism they mention this event again:
The devil is a being of "pure spirit" and the catholics believe that he was an angel that disobeyed god. Now, this fallen angel somehow tempts the first parents, who are in a garden (378). It could presumably only be done in one or two ways: Satan talks directly to Adam and Eve, or he talks through some medium. This medium doesn't have to be a snake, it could have been a salad.
So, they have an overall story of the Fall which they say they believe is literal, but they believe certain aspects of it (possibly the snake part) isn't necessarily true. Now, Maher's joke would still make sense in either of these two cases. It would just have to change a little bit:
"...but when all is said and done, they're adults who believe in a talking salad."
"...but when all is said and done, they're adults who believe in spirits that try to make you do bad stuff."
So, even if they say that they don't believe in every aspect of the story, it smacks of disingenuousness. It's like saying that I don't believe the story of Cinderella getting a dress from a witch, but that there were some sort of other-wordly character that made her those nice shining shoes.
But, they don't even say that the snake isn't real.
I don't see what your second quote shows about my argument that if they don't believe in the snake, what keeps them from saying that anything else is also figuratively (such as the existence of God).
I agree there is probably someone who says that evolution is true and that people evolved from monkeys. But, to compare likes with likes here, you would have to find a leading evolutionists that said this, to compare with these leading christians that believe the snake was real:
Shouldn’t the Woman (Eve) Have Been Shocked that a Serpent Spoke? | Answers in Genesis
Who was the Serpent? | creation.com
Maybe it is wrong to label these writers as leading christians (the latter quoted is a theologian, though). So, let's say they are at least popularizer, if that seems fair to you? If so, can you find any popularizer of evolutionary theory that says that man evolved from monkeys?
(Apologies - accidentally double posted)
True - any part of the described incident (more likely, all of it) could be figurative.
Not necessarily. Communication does not need to be verbal. The temptation could have appeared in terms of, say, the manipulation of coincidence. Or, as you put it, a spirit that tries to make people do bad stuff.
But yes, there is definitely a Tempter there; some sort of malign intelligence that tries to persuade people to do Bad Stuff. That is a fairly well-known part of Catholic theology, commonly known as the devil.
The Vatican tends to be very, very, very, very cautious about definite statements of any sort. As in, they prefer not to make them if there is any possibility at all that they might be wrong.
And hey, small though the probability appears, maybe there was a talking snake...
Would I need to find leading evolutionists, or merely someone who claims to be a leading evolutionist? The second is probably a lot easier than the first.
My googling is defeated by creationists using the claim as a strawman.
...to be fair, I didn't really look all that hard.
Does Wikipedia count?
It would indeed, if it said that. The page you linked plainly doesn't.
You don't think that the creature Wikipedia refers to as CHLCA was a monkey?
Because if you replace the talking snake with, say, a monkey which gave Eve the apple and indicated by gestures that Eve should eat it, nothing much would change in Christianity. Maybe St.George would now be rampant over a gorilla instead of a dragon...
True, there would only be some superficial changes, from a non-believing standpoint. But if you believe that the Bible is literal, then to point this out is to cast doubt on anything else in the book that is magical (or something which could be produced by a more sophisticated race of aliens or such). That is, the probability that this books represents a true story of magical (or much technologically superior) beings gets lower, and the probability that it is a pre-modern fairy tale increases.
And that is what the joke is trying to point out, that these things didn't really happen, they are fictional.
If you actually believe that the Bible represents a true story about a magical being or beings then the obvious retort is that there is no problem at all with talking snakes. A talking snake is a very minor matter compared with, say, creating the world. Why wouldn't there be one? Just because you find the idea ridiculous? But it is NOT ridiculous conditional on the existence of sufficiently strong magic.
It's not impossible conditional on the existence of strong magic. I'm not so sure it's not still ridiculous even conditional on the existence of strong magic. Especially as, in the story, the snake doesn't appear to be magically talking, it's just "more cunning than any of the other creatures YHWH had made" or whatever exactly the text says.
We now know that talking requires a big fancy brain, such as humans have and snakes conspicuously don't (and don't have room for), and the right sort of vocal apparatus, ditto. Back in 2000BCE or whenever it was, of course it was well known by observation that snakes don't talk, but it presumably wasn't understood that they can't and why. And when we see an old story featuring a talking snake, which doesn't present it as able to talk on account of some sort of magic or divine intervention but just oh, hey, a talking snake, I think it's reasonable to say to ourselves "See, the people who wrote that story just didn't understand how implausible that bit of it is". And I think it's reasonable to see the talking snake as making the story less plausible than it would have been without it. And also, I think, less plausible than if its talking had been explicitly explained by magic or divine/diabolical intervention. Not because those are plausible explanations otherwise, but because the rest of the story is already committed to the sort of world in which such things might work, and in such a world a magically or divinely talking sheep is more plausible than an "ordinarily" talking sheep.
"Ridiculous" implies a context and the usual dismissive context here would be "Ha-ha, talking snakes, like in fairy tales for little children?" But that's not the context in Genesis.
You probably have a small box in your pocket or nearby. That box can not only talk, but even show moving pictures, from another side of the world, even. And yet, it doesn't seem to have a "big fancy brain".
I think it's quite unreasonable. People who told that story were, of course, well aware that garden-variety (heh) snakes don't talk. Clearly, that particular serpent was not one of those.
I am not sure, but I think that the conventional Christian interpretation is that the snake (which might have been a dragon) has been possessed by Satan and was no more than a remote-controlled drone, so to say.
In any case, I find the focus on talking snakes in a story which mentions things like "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" to be somewhat misguided :-/
How big and fancy a brain does a parrot have?
Nitpick:
Talking the way we do maybe requires a big brain. We have no reason to think talking in general requires one. AFAIK, there's no consensus on when language evolved, but many or most scientists seem to think it was after the human brain grew to its present size, not before.
New Caledonian crows have intelligence generally comparable to that of chimpanzees; not as great as, but not much less than either. Yet their brains weigh only 7-8 grams. Large snakes can have much larger brains than that. Anyway, brain size is relative to body weight; EQ is a better measure.