Skeptic Tank Text Archive File

Pages 2-6: summer 1993

WILL THERE BE SPIDERS IN HEAVEN?

                          Farrell Till 

   The inerrancy doctrine is an inevitable consequence of belief in the divine 
inspiration of the scriptures.  Inerrantists recognize that if the Bible was 
indeed verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnimoral deity, then 
by necessity it would have to be completely inerrant in every detail written in 
it.  This is why we frequently hear fundamentalists say that the Bible is 
inerrant in matters of science, history, geography, chronology, etc. as well 
as matters of faith and practice.  Their belief in verbal inspiration allows 
them no other conclusion but this.

   Past articles in The Skeptical Review have exposed many inconsistencies in 
the biblical narrative concerning matters of science, chronology, history, 
etc., and recently we have begun to focus on another facet relevant to Bible 
inerrancy--the element of logic.  If the Bible was really inspired by an 
omniscient, omnipotent, omnimoral deity, then the logic used by its writers 
would have to be impeccable, for how could a person being guided by such a 
deity in everything he wrote, word for word, be capable of faulty logic?

   That biblical writers were not perfect in their use of logic is evident to 
anyone who is willing to examine the Bible with an open mind.  Faulty logic is 
most evident in the New Testament, probably because of a need the writers 
felt to convince their readers that Jesus was the Messiah whom God had sent 
in fulfillment of Old Testament promises. With no logic on their side, their 
attempts at argumentation were necessarily faulty. The Apostle Paul, who 
seemed to fancy himself as a master of argumentation, made some horrendous 
mistakes in reasoning.  His lack of ability in logic was very much in evidence 
in his famous defense of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.  At one point 
in his narrative, Paul said, "If there is a natural body, there is also a spir-
itual body" (v:44).  Paul's argument could be stated in the form of a modus 
ponens syllogism:

     MAJOR PREMISE: If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual 
     body.

     MINOR PREMISE: There is a natural body.

     CONCLUSION: Therefore, there is a spiritual body.

The major premise of this syllogism is a conditional or hypothetical sentence 
that contains two parts: an antecedent (the "if" statement) and the conse-
quent (the conclusion derived from the antecedent).  For a modus ponens syl-
logism to be sound, it must be demonstrably true that the antecedent undeni-
ably necessitates the consequent, and this is where Paul's logic fails.

   There is absolutely nothing in the existence of a natural or physical body 
that would necessitate the existence of a spiritual body.  I am aware of the 
deep-seated desire in humans for life after this one, but desires, wishes, and 
hopes prove nothing.  To arrive at truth in this matter, we must lay aside 
dreams and aspirations and examine all the evidence under the microscope of 
cold logic.  If this is done objectively, one will have to reject Paul's argu-
ment, because it is an obvious non sequitur.  The existence of natural or 
physical bodies does not necessitate the existence of spiritual bodies.  Dogs, 
cats, fleas, and spiders have physical bodies, so does this mean that they 
also have spiritual bodies? Will there be spiders in heaven?  To accept Paul's 
argument, one would have to believe that there will be, because they too 
have "natural bodies."  That doesn't leave us much to look forward to, does 
it?  We spend our lives here tolerating mosquitoes, fleas, spiders, and cock-
roaches only to find out that we will also have to put up with them all 


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through eternity.

   The same type of non sequitur (conclusion not justified by its premises) 
occurred in a Pauline argument intended to show that the fact of baptism 
proves the existence of a spiritual resurrection.  After stating that in the act 
of baptism one is buried as Christ was buried in his death, Paul said, "For if 
we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also 
shall be in the likeness of his resurrection" (Romans 6:5).  In this statement, 
we see the "if this, then that" elements of a conditional or hypothetical 
sentence.  In other words, Paul was arguing that if "this" (burial with Christ 
in baptism), then "that" (resurrection to a new life).

   No one denies that religious experiences can bring about significant 
changes in people's lives, but Paul's argument here is purely arbitrary.  The 
ceremony of baptism, as Paul perceived it here, was symbolic of the death of 
one's old life and resurrection to a new life only because Paul arbitrarily 
declared it was so.  Other religious sects of the time practiced baptism as 
nothing more than a ceremonial cleansing.  They saw nothing at all in it to 
denote burial of "the old man" and resurrection of "the new man."  Some 
religious sects (including the Israelites of the Old Testament) thought that 
there was advantage to worshiping their gods in "high places." Had the 
custom survived into New Testament times, I suppose some "inspired" writer 
could have argued that one's act of climbing a mountain to worship was a 
symbol or likeness of the ascension of Jesus into heaven.

   Paul's argument here is just another example of a Bible writer who was 
long on assumption and short on proof.  If one is resurrected to a new life 
after baptism, then what do we say about the person whose religious fervor 
subsides after the emotionalism of the moment that led him to be baptized?  In 
backsliding, does he "spiritually" find his "old man," which was crucified and 
buried with Christ, and reenter that body? There is simply no logic in Paul's 
argument.  It is religious whim and caprice--and nothing more.

   In Romans 3:5-6, we find Paul at it again; only this time he is begging 
the question. In speaking of the righteousness of God, he asked, "Is God 
unjust who in-flicts wrath?"  His answer was, "Certainly not! For then how 
will God judge the world?"  Begging the question occurs when an argument 
assumes crucial points that need to be proved.  In this case, Paul was argu-
ing that God cannot be unjust simply because he inflicts wrath on people, be-
cause God is going to judge the world and he could hardly judge the world 
justly if he himself is unjust.  Paul offered no evidence at all to prove that 
God is indeed going to judge the world; he merely presented it as an assump-
tion that he apparently expected his readers to accept.  He undoubtedly did 
this for the obvious reason that there is no way that he or anyone else could 
prove that God is going to judge the world, so at a loss for logic to prove 
his point, all he could do was beg the question.

   Paul was no better at arguing from analogy. He showed this in an attempt 
to prove the abrogation of the law of Moses:

        Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who 
     know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as 
     he lives? For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law 
     to her husband as long as he lives.  But if the husband dies, 
     she is released from the law of her husband.  So then if, while 
     her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an 
     adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so 
     that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. 
     Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law 
     through the body of Christ, that you may be married  to
     another--to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should 
     bear fruit to God.  For when we were in the flesh, the sinful 
     passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our 


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     members to bear fruit to death.  But now we have been delivered 
     from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we 
     should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness 
     of the letter (Rom. 7:1-6).

Paul's apparent intention here was to compare the abrogation of the law of 
Moses and its replacement by a new covenant with the marriage relationship. 
His analogy concerned a widow who enters into a second marriage, but he had 
obvious difficulty keeping straight what corresponded to the wife and what 
represented the husband and even who or what had died.

   A wife was bound to her husband as long as he lived and, unless her 
husband had died, could not marry another without committing adultery. If, 
however, her husband died, she was free to contract a second marriage 
without incurring the stigma of adultery. Paul seemed able to get that much 
of it right, but when he tried to analogize the widow's situation with the 
relationship between the two covenants, he got confused and had the widow 
dying rather than the husband (law).

   In The Mythmaker: Paul and the invention of Christianity, Hyam Maccoby 
very effectively identified the points of confusion in the analogy:

        It seems that the correspondence intended is the following: 
     the wife is the Church; the former husband is the Torah, and 
     the new husband is Christ. Paul tells us that a wife is released 
     by the death of her husband to marry a new husband; this 
     should read, therefore, in the comparison, that the Church was 
     freed, by the death of the Torah, to marry Christ. Instead, it is 
     the wife- Church that dies ("you my friends, have died to the 
     law by becoming identified with the body of Christ") and there is 
     even some play with the idea that the new husband, Christ, has 
     died.  The only term in the comparison that is not mentioned as 
     having died is the Torah; yet this is the only thing that would 
     make the comparison valid (p. 69).

"Dying to sin" was such a recurrent image in Paul's writings that in this 
passage he apparently lost sight of who was supposed to represent what in 
his analogy, so he wound up having his Christian audience "die" to sin 
rather than the law die to free Christians to marry another.  Such a mistake 
would be no big deal in the writings of an ordinary man, but we have to 
wonder why Paul, writing under the verbal guidance of an omniscient, omnip-
otent deity, could have made a logical error like this.

   In Maccoby's commentary on Paul's analogy, he noted another flaw:
        On the other hand, there is also present in the passage an 
     entirely different idea: that a person becomes free of legal obliga-
     tions after his or her own death.  This indeed seems to be the 
     theme first announced: "that a  person is subject to the law so 
     long as he is alive, and no longer."  The theme of the widow 
     being free to marry after the death of her first husband is quite 
     incompatible with this; yet Paul confuses the two themes through-
     out... (p. 69).

My reaction to the muddled way that Paul tried to present his argument is the 
same as Maccoby's: "Confusion cannot be worse confounded than this" (Ibid). 
More than that, I have to wonder why a verbally inspired writer would not 
have a better sense of logical analogy than this.

   A frequent device of persuasion used by New Testament writers was the a 
fortiori argument, but they frequently bungled their attempts to use it.  In 
this kind of argument, a conclusion of greater necessity is arrived at by 
comparing it to a generally accepted conclusion of less significance.  "Drunk 
drivers deserve to have their licenses revoked," one might argue, "so how 


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much more should those who drive while stoned silly by drugs have theirs 
revoked?"  Anyone so arguing would be using the a fortiori approach to 
persuasion, and it was a common device used by New Testament writers.  In 
Hebrews 10:28-29, it was used by the unknown writer of this epistle: 
"Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of 
two or three witnesses.  Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, 
will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, count-
ed the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and 
insulted the Spirit of grace?"  In other words,  the writer  was arguing that 
if disrespect for the law of Moses brought death, then surely open disrespect 
for the covenant of Christ will merit even harsher punishment.

   The conclusion that the writer reached, however, violated a basic princi-
ple of a fortiori argumentation, which is that the conclusion (the how-much-
more element) cannot validly exceed the premise it depends on. In my drunk-
driving illustration, for example, the punishment demanded for driving while 
"stoned silly" on drugs was the same as for drunk driving--the revocation of 
one's license.  The argument did not attempt to prove that if one's punish-
ment for drunk driving was the revocation of his license, then the penalty 
for driving under the influence of drugs should be a prison sentence or the 
death penalty; it merely argued that if driver's licenses are revoked for 
drunk driving, then the same penalty should be imposed for the greater 
offense of driving while "stoned silly" on drugs.  The Hebrew writer's appli-
cation of the argument, however, deviated from the standard a fortiori pat-
tern and concluded that a much harsher punishment should be given to those 
who trample underfoot the son of God than to those who just disobeyed the 
law of Moses.

   In 9:13-14, the Hebrew writer made the same reasoning error: "For if the 
blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, 
sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of 
Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, 
cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"  The 
cleansing of the conscience or spirit would be greater than the cleansing of 
the flesh, so once again the writer used a fortiori logic to obtain a conclusion 
that went beyond the premise it was derived from.

   The Apostle Paul also made frequent attempts at a fortiori argumentation, 
but, like the Hebrew writer, often misapplied it.  In The Mythmaker (p. 65), 
Hyam Maccoby analyzed Paul's use of the form in his epistle to the Romans 
and identified several statements with conclusions that exceeded the premises 
they were derived from.  Two of them were these:

        For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God 
     through the death of His Son, much more, having been recon-
     ciled, we shall be saved by His life (5:10).

        For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the 
     one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and the 
     gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one (5:17).

Just a cursory examination of both passages will show that Paul tried to 
derive  a fortiori conclusions that far exceeded the premises he was arguing 
from, so apparently he was no more skilled at this type of reasoning than was 
the Hebrew writer.

   Some will no doubt say that the reasoning in the above examples of a 
fortiori argumentation is sound, even though it may have technically deviated 
from the traditional form of the argument.  Does it not make sense to think, 
one might say, that if the blood of bulls and goats cleansed the flesh, the 
blood of Christ would be much more efficacious in the cleansing of the soul? 
To so argue, however, is to venture into pure speculation.  As Maccoby said 
of Paul's a fortiori arguments whose conclusions exceeded their premises, 


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"Such an argument has no precision about it, for how do we know how much 
to add to the data given in the premise in order to arrive at the conclusion" 
(p. 66)?  Besides that problem, we have every reason to wonder why a 
writer verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would not know 
how to use logic that was as firmly established in Jewish legalism as was a 
fortiori argumentation.

   Another problem in many of the a fortiori syllogisms in the New Testament 
is the flagrant resort to begging the question that characterized so many of 
their premises.  In Hebrews 9:13-14, for example, the writer's argument was 
if the blood of bulls and goats cleansed the flesh, then surely the blood of 
Christ will be even more efficacious in cleansing the soul.  Yes, if... IF, IF, 
IF!  But what proof did the writer give that the blood of bulls and goats 
could purify flesh?  He gave none.  He simply expected his reader to assume 
that the statement was true.  He begged the question.  Likewise, Paul in 
Romans 5:10 begged the question in the premise of his argument: "For if 
when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His 
Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." 
What was his proof that the death of Jesus reconciled us to God?  He gave 
none.  He merely stated it as a fact to be assumed without proof and pro-
ceeded to draw his conclusion, i.e., the life of Jesus will be much more effi-
cacious in saving us.  Thus, many of the a fortiori arguments in the New 
Testament were doubly flawed.  They didn't just reach conclusions that far 
exceeded the premises they were derived from, but the premises themselves 
were often no more than mere assumptions.

   Such examples of reasoning as these are flawed through and through. 
They constitute formidable proof that the Bible is just another fallible book 
written by very fallible men.  No omniscient, omnipotent deity had anything 
to do with writing it.  To say otherwise is to insult the omniscience of the 
deity who is presumed to be the source of the inspiration.              


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