Liar, Lunatic or Lord: Difference between revisions

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Based on all the best historical evidence we currently have, everything we know about the [[new testament]] gospel is [[Overview of early Christianity|completely consistent with it being a fiction]] written some time in the late 1st and early 2nd Century.
Based on all the best historical evidence we currently have, everything we know about the [[new testament]] gospel is [[Overview of early Christianity|completely consistent with it being a fiction]] written some time in the late 1st and early 2nd Century.
It needs to be noted that the Bible never claims to be a historical or scientific text book, and to subject it to this mind set is inappropriate. Whether a person believes or dismisses the story of Christ there must be a basic acceptance of uncertainty. Christians must realize that they are called to faith, which implies a level of doubt. Rather than argue for the absolute assurance in the Biblical text, Christians should acknowledge the fact of hoping in something that might not necessarily be true. Christ can neither be proven nor disproven; one can have faith that it’s true or false.


===False premise p2: False dilemma===
===False premise p2: False dilemma===

Revision as of 15:20, 2 May 2011

The liar, lunatic or lord argument attempts to present a case through process of elimination of all other options, that Jesus Christ must have been god.

Background information

Even a number of theologians have pointed out that the liar, lunatic or lord argument is unsound. Apologists such as William Lane Craig cite this argument as a good example of a bad argument for Christianity. This argument has also been referred to as the "trilemma" by Josh McDowell.

Despite this, the argument is widely used, and widely loved, by the more general Christian audience, as are many of Lewis' other equally flawed arguments such as the argument from desire.

Argument

C.S. Lewis version

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity c.1952:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Syllogism

p1. Jesus made certain claims
p2. These claims are of a nature that has certain implications about his character
a. Lunatic: Jesus was not God, but he mistakenly believed that he was
b. Liar: Jesus was not God, and he knew it, but he said so anyway
c. Lord: Jesus was telling the truth and is God
p3. Through process of elimination we can exclude the possibilities of lunatic and liar
a. Existential evidence
b. Textual evidence
c. Historical evidence
c1. Therefore Jesus was/is the the lord and God in human form.

Counter arguments

False premise p1: Unfounded Assumptions

The first problem with the argument is that it assumes the efficacy of the bible. It assumes that the depiction of Jesus in the bible is historically accurate and an accurate depiction of his character, including (but not limited to) the words and claims attributed to him.

There is no first hand contemporary evidence that the words attributed to Jesus are his own. Indeed there is no first hand contemporary evidence that Jesus existed at all.

Based on all the best historical evidence we currently have, everything we know about the new testament gospel is completely consistent with it being a fiction written some time in the late 1st and early 2nd Century.

False premise p2: False dilemma

Based on the shaky grounds of the first premise, the argument creates a false dilemma to suggest that Jesus as appearing in the gospels is either telling the truth or not. This of course neglects the obvious possibility that he is a legend, in which case his claims (or those claims attributed to him) are neither true or false, but partially or entirely fictional.

Nearly everything that is "known" about the life of Jesus, or his claims of godhood, come from the Bible, which Christians regard as inerrant but atheists do not. Jesus may not have existed, or he may not have said all the things that were attributed to him.

The premise also ignores hybrid possibilities. For instance, that Jesus may in fact have been a lunatic who said true things (much like an insane person who thinks he's Napoleon may still be able to tell you the correct day of the week or the prevailing weather conditions) or that he might have been the Lord and a liar (unlikely, but inconvenient for Lewis' intended point). At heart, the dilemma commits the genetic fallacy, of assuming that an idea from a bad source is itself inevitably tainted.

Finally, the premise also ignores the very real possibility that Jesus existed and did say some of the things attributed to him, but may have been misinterpreted. Many believers will refer to themselves as "Children Of God" (or similar phrasings), but they presumably do not mean this literally. In a similar fashion, if Jesus did refer to himself as the "Son Of God," he may have intended it as a metaphor that was misunderstood by subsequent audiences. (In fact "Son of God" meant a righteous man, the Messiah or a prophet. This did not in any way mean the "physical" son of God, a very pagan belief that Jews considered very blasphemous.) Additionally, the term 'Lord' is a term of nobility and respect that has subsequently been confused to be synonymous with 'God'. When the disciples call Jesus 'Lord' they are not necessarily confirming a belief that he is God.

False premise p3: Unsupported evidence

Even accepting the first two false premises, the so called evidence for the exclusion of lunatic and liar possibilities is questionable at best.

Many apologists, including some who are qualified psychologists, attempt to show that Jesus could not have been a lunatic. There are two major problems with this.

  • First, is a complete lack of evidence. The idea of performing a real psychological diagnosis on someone that has been presumed dead for 2000 years, based solely on a few scarcely descriptive tales, from the very book that purports to reveal the truth of his divinity, is nothing short of laughable.
  • Secondly, they make a case of special pleading. Despite the fact that Jesus isn't depicted as a rabid, uncontrollably raving maniac, doesn't mean he was necessarily sane. Any of the psychologists who attempt to claim Jesus was not insane would have no hang ups about committing a person today that made similar claims. Indeed if Jesus made his claims today, he would fit right in at the asylums full of other people that think they're God, Jesus, Napoleon etc.

Jesus could also have been a liar. Lewis disregards this because he claims Jesus was a great human teacher. However, much of Jesus' advice was bad advice. And regardless of his lesson content, being a great teacher doesn't by fiat logically exclude the possibility that he could lie. Jesus also had great motive to lie. Despite the trouble Brian found himself in, there are presumably a great many selfish benefits to being mistakenly considered a human deity.

Additionally, some forms of the liar, lunatic or lord argument further commit the fallacy of begging the question, by accepting the 'biblical miracles as evidence for the lord' option, which of course a priori assumes the conclusion of Jesus' divinity that the very argument attempts to prove.

Other counter arguments

  • Lewis makes the straw man presumption that lunatics speak falsely, rave without moments of clarity, never say anything worth paying attention to, etc. In truth, one may suffer from a delusional belief or fixation and function adequately or even superlatively in society.

Additional notes

Trilemma/Dilemma

The reason for the use of dilemma in False premise p2. rather than the titular trilemma, is due to the fact that despite there being three options, two of those have effectively the same outcome as far as the argument is concerned. The multiple options are really nothing more than a red herring, as the argument's outcome is that the claims of Jesus are either true or not true.

Additionally, formal logic deals exclusively with dichotomies, not trichotomies. The overall argument attempts to prove he is the lord. So to actually express all three options, logistically it would need to be presented as two separate, but hierarchical dichotomies. (lord:(liar:lunatic))

The main dichotomy: That he is either the lord or not-lord.
The sub dichotomy if he is not-lord: That he is either a liar or lunatic.

Links

See also

External links

Reference


v · d Arguments for the existence of god
Anthropic arguments   Anthropic principle · Natural-law argument
Arguments for belief   Pascal's Wager · Argument from faith · Just hit your knees
Christological arguments   Argument from scriptural miracles · Would someone die for a lie? · Liar, Lunatic or Lord
Cosmological arguments   Argument from aesthetic experience · Argument from contingency · Cosmological argument · Fine-tuning argument · Kalam · Leibniz cosmological argument · Principle of sufficient reason · Unmoved mover · Why is there something rather than nothing?
Majority arguments   Argument from admired religious scientists
Moral arguments   Argument from justice · Divine command theory
Ontological argument   Argument from degree · Argument from desire · Origin of the idea of God
Dogmatic arguments   Argument from divine sense · Argument from uniqueness
Teleological arguments   Argument from design · Banana argument · 747 Junkyard argument · Laminin argument · Argument from natural disasters
Testimonial arguments   Argument from observed miracles · Personal experience · Argument from consciousness · Emotional pleas · Efficacy of prayer
Transcendental arguments   God created numbers · Argument from the meaning of life
Scriptural arguments   Scriptural inerrancy · Scriptural scientific foreknowledge · Scriptural codes