Putting The FUN Back In DysFUNctional: Public Universities and the Post Hoc Fallacy

Today's featured error in reasoning, the Post Hoc fallacy, comes with a brief study in how professors at public universities typically apply it in one facet of the study of religions. And you guessed it, the intended victim is the Christian faith, not Urantianism or some obscure form of voodoo. Gee, what a surprise. I am shocked SHOCKED that men would so target the biblical faith. To accompish our scrutiny, we first need a brief introduction to an ancient Persian religion. I apologize in advance for this.

Zoroastrianism names an ancient Persian religion, which in certain ways bears similarities to both Judaism and Christianity. It also deviates from these in important ways. Zoroastrianism, for instance, represents a kind of metaphysical dualism -- where the good "god" (Ahuri-Mazda, "god of light") and the bad one ("Ahriman") share equally ultimate attributes. Here, the ping-pong game never ends. Good battles evil continuously and the problem of evil is the same as the problem of good (since one could not tell the two apart in principle).

C.S. Lewis has already well noted the logical difficulty with such religions -- i.e. metaphysical or ethical dualisms. You could never know WHICH was the good guy or which the evil (since presumably the evil guy would lie and say he was the good guy too). This is an unresovable form of what is often dubbed the "liar's paradox." Other internal contradictions attend such man-made notions, but this one -- courtesy of Mr. Lewis -- will suffice for now. I don't know whether or not you will have noticed, but C.S. Lewis was extremely bright. His critique applies equally well to all forms of polytheism too.

There was a movie series running on teevee for some time, called "The Highlander," which had as its tagline a very provocative phrase -- "In the end, there can be only ONE." This is exactly the case when it comes to the questions of ultimate norms -- God, Truth, Good, etc. If you have more than one "highest" cosmic feature -- they eventually compete for allegiance in principle. One always ends up superceding the other. If not, everything reduces to nonsense in that system for lack of unity (One-ness, or integration) -- since the competing parts (like Ahuri-Mazda vs. Ahriman) imply conclusions not consistent with those of their competitors -- destroying what might otherwise be the mutual consent of all the parts. If Ahuri-Mazda and Ahriman were actually two different persons, they would doubtless fail to get along, demanding contradictory behaviors of their adherents.

These would give rise to different and competing ethical and legal systems on earth, two different and competing cultures, one of which could not prevail over the other. This would mean war without end. Thus the ability to know the truth about anything, to distinguish good from evil behavior, and to have peace on earth eventually, means simply this: In the end, there can be only one. The God who is stronger will necessarily prevail, and so too his appointed representatives. This follows by good and necessary consequence from the nature of the cosmic situation in which we live (natural revelation tells us this).

Only religions which have the Good as the ultimate can distinguish which is the true ultimate voice in the cosmos. In Christianity this problem is resolved by the fact that God places His Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers, enabling them to distinguish the Truth from counterfeits, and provides them with general and special revelation to distinguish the true from the false by the ordinary means -- observation, hearing and induction and deduction (logic is an important, transcendent feature or aspect of natural revelation, since revelation of any kind depends upon logic).

Jesus said,"MY sheep hear my voice, and they follow me." John said, "Ye have no need that any man should teach you, for ye have an anointing from the Father." [Here, "any man" refers to people outside the church -- see context]. Here, the problem of evil ends on Judgment Day, where evil comes to a screeching halt, and all of Satan's minions get a big fat pink slip.

But if you attend a public university in the U.S., they will tend to notice the similarities between religions more than the differences. Do not assume that your professor can distinguish what is true from what is not because he has an advanced degree. The emphasis upon such similarities is mostly due to the influence on the academic world of the German school of biblical criticism, a man named "Rudolf Bultmann," and a particular sociological method of comparing religions called -- are you ready for this -- "religiongeschictliche" (said in English simply as "religion" -- the ordinary pronunciation -- with "Geh - SHIKT - Likk - uh" tagged on the end ). Say it fast ten times.

This method of interpreting the history of ideas tends to see ideological causes (idea B comes from Idea A) based on two criteria only. 1. Are the two ideas sufficiently similar and 2. Did idea B follow idea A in time. This renders such assumptions particularly susceptible to today's highlighted fallacy. It commonly goes by two different names, and why not, since Simon was also called Peter. The first label is -- Latin fans prepare yourselves -- "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc." This is not easy to translate but runs something like "It comes after the thing, therefore it caused the thing." Americans abbreviate it as the "Post Hoc" fallacy, which others dub the "Non Causa Pro Causa ("Not the cause for the cause") fallacy.

I think it best to stick with the "Post Hoc" label since this seems the more commonplace of the options. In any case, the Bultmann doctrine provides a particularly acute example of this fallacy in its application -- very popular in world religion classes and history of Christianity courses -- to the doctrine of angels.

On the conventional view, Christians and Jews borrowed their conceptions of angels from the Zoroastrians. Do not expect your professor to attempt to PROVE this. They take it for granted in their lectures. This is because they can't prove it, and yet it is what they were taught by their professors. In German, when you wish to insult as silly some notion or other you call it "In der luft" (an idea that comes "from mid-air"), meaning that it has no real foundation.

Such is the notion that the Jews and Christians got their angelology from the Persians. First of all, the Bible straightway tells us that Moses got his theology from Sinai, not Iran or Iraq. Second, Neither Jews or Christians borrowed ideas about God to determine orthodoxy in their faiths. The known details of their councils (Jamnia, Nicea, Chalcedon, etc) do not feature them wondering "What would Socrates do?"

The Bible -- and we must remember that such persons are pre-eminently "people of the Book" -- from cover to cover indicates that its ideas came from the prophets and apostles, who did not consult the local customs and traditions (but usually upbraided them as lies and idolatry in the Name of the Lord) in determining what they should say to God's people. Moreover, in many cases it claims that such persons directly encountered angels -- see Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Joseph and Mary, Peter the apostle, the women at the tomb of Jesus post-resurrection, etc.

To assume that a group of men had actually met angels, but needed to ask the Persians about it first to get their doctrine straight would be little short of ludricrous. This means that the professor who assumes the kind of ideological borrowing mentioned earlier simply ASSUMES that there is nothing historical about the biblical narratives at those points where it describes interaction between men and angels. Keep this in mind. This is simple denialism (called "question-begging" in informal logic, and in Christian ethics it is dubbed "suppressing the truth in unrighteousness").

But we wish here to focus on the idea that the professor believes 1. Zoroastrianism provides ideas of angels consistent with those of more "developed" views of Judaism and Christianity, and 2. Zoroastrianism's ideas about angels predate those of more developed views of Judaism and Christianity 3. Therefore, the Jews and Christians must have borrowed their doctrines of angels from the former.

To this you need only say, "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc" or else "Non Angelus, Pro Angelum" (their angels did not cause our angels) if you wish to be cute. In short, even if they could establish a positive correlation between two sets of ideas, this would be insufficient to show that one cultural idea CAUSED a similar notion i another culture. Though he dealt with a different (but analogous) notion of what a cause is, David Hume noted that the right sense of causation also includes the idea of necessity.

In terms of historical investigation (which treats particular causes rather than general ones more often than not) this means that to show that A caused B, you need eyewitness testimony (written down or otherwise) to show a causal connection between what are otherwise simple parallels -- which may have a common cause predating both their offspring, or else has two separate causes (one for each of their offspring), or it may turn out that the causal relationship is just the reverse of what we expect (i.e. they got their angelic conceptions from our ideas about them). Who is really borrowing from whom, eh?

If you pay close attention in that class where historians argue about which caused what -- and oh how they argue about which causes gave rise to which events or trends (this is actually historiography or philosophy of history), you will notice they challenge just the idea of causation taught by Bultmann (without naming it), and prove far more careful in assigning causes than your history of religions teachers. This means you can use what you learned in your advanced classes against the teachings offered in your earlier courses. This is academic Judo at its finest.

The universities -- a Christian invention of the 12th and 13th centuries -- are no longer in any way integrated enough in their teachings to bear that name -- they are diversities. Though you can still learn a great deal there that is worthwhile. I attended the California State Diversity at Hayward, where I learned how to say to my teachers, "Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc." I recommend you do the same.

You might also learn to find academic ways to say, "That is dead wrong" (i.e. In Der Luft). You might try, "In my opinion, that idea remains epistemologically inadequate and sub-Christian, propounding as it does several unwarranted premisses, apparently not related to their purported conclusions by logical necessity."

When the guy next to you whispers "What did you just say?" you tell them, "I just said that idea is false, foolish, fleshly and demonic." Ah, diplomacy. "Diplomacy," said one comedian, "is the art of saying 'Nice Doggy' until you can find a rock big enough to do the job." Presbyterians call that "Presuppositional apologetics."