Dear Catholic friends: give me the best videos, articles, and books in defense of the Roman Catholic Church. Bonus points if you can put them in order like a class course.
I created a playlist for myself with videos to watch. Any other additions are welcome:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQFSqqmSId62BvC7IiLSOEW_at388naP_&fbclid=IwAR3rFGdkAR5fBNZLJf4L-vXUFELG2fOLJT02j9Ee4gBXG3t82aMfxNsGfkM
Here at Walking Christian we have already produced a fair amount of content that deals with Tom Jump in one way or another. But after a recent facebook post I had some tangential thoughts that I wanted to put down. So at the risk of being accused of either being obsessed with the man or beating a dead horse, let’s take a look at a fallacy Tom Jump commits but doesn’t seem capable of seeing.
If you do not hang around the YouTube apologetics scene you may have missed the frustrating antics of Mr. Tom Jump. Tom Jump (TJump on YouTube) is a self appointed internet philosopher who thinks he’s cracked epistemology in a deeper and more meaningful way than the last few thousand years of deep thinkers. His website claims that he didn’t set out to wage a war against Christianity but his unique epistemology just happens to touch on every aspect of the Philosophy of religion. So to try and get some ‘street cred’ as it were, Jump has taken to challenging a great diversity of apologists, some of whom are even well known and respected such as Dr. Michael Brown, Trent Dougherty and even Kwaku El the new face of Mormonism.
I first became aware of Tom Jump when he challenged my Walking Christian colleague and friend Gil Sanders to a dialogue/debate on the topic of Reasons to Believe in God from the Thomistic perspective. The conversation was infuriating to watch as Gil gave a version of Thomas Auinas’ argument from change. Tom Jump challenges the very fundamental elements of basic life. I have said on record in our debate after the show and I will continue to say that there is no way Tom Jump can be consistent with this radical skepticism. If he applied this same method to real life, he’d never get out of bed in the morning because he’d be questioning if the bed even existed. Nevertheless he thinks it helps him avoid being accountable for his sins so he adopts a scorched earth policy and destroys everything humanity knows about the world around us. In their conversation instead of dealing with any of Gil’s argument, the conversation became “change isn’t real” for nearly two hours.
I recently for the first time had my own encounter with Jump on social media. This was no more than a few comments but I think I noticed something that I am not sure anyone else has. A Few days prior to this writing a facebook friend (who will not be named) made this post tagging Tom Jump.
ORIGINAL POSTER18 April at 12:34
Tom Jump What experiment do you do to distinguish physical neurons from non-physical neurons?
Jump responded in these words.
Tom Jump
you need to learn how predictions work…
assume mind is physical
Make any prediction about anything
If prediction right consistently and repeatedly and can make more predictions…
Thas evidence of mind is physical brains.
you dont need to prove physicalism only make predictions that are right
The debate in this thread is over whether or not the mind (soul) is independent of the body or if the physical brain is all there is to human consciousness. For more of my thoughts on this matter (pun intended) I invite any reader to take a look at part 2 of our series on demonology where I attempt to give a Biblical and ontological account of what the soul and spirit beings are.
Several others jumped in (pun intended, pun always intended) with arguments and resources. In particular out-of-body experiences were being discussed as evidence for the mind being a separate thing from the brain. Over and over again Tom Jump can only say “good then you can convince the scientific community… till then gl with that”
Then someone makes this comment.
Commenter
Tom Jump Science can’t differentiate between dualism and physicalism because even if a prediction of physicalism was disconfirmed by current science, you would just claim future science will be consistent with physicalism
To which I add my own response.
Isaac Farley
Physicalism of the gaps. Nice
For anyone who may not know, nonbelievers often accuse Christians of committing what is called the God of the Gaps Fallacy. If science can’t explain something then that gap can be filled in by saying, “God did it.” Such as, we have a theory of evolution to explain how life on earth became diversified in a physicalistic way but there is not currently a consensus theory on how life began to exist (called abiogenesis) so many people will claim God created life and that is its explanation. The contention is that we fill-in the gaps by suggesting God, but eventually science will understand everything. Scientists and naturalists believe that with enough time we will eventually discover a natural explanation for everything which we used to give credit to God for.
I’m flipping this argument on its head and accusing Tom Jump of an unjustified belief in Physicalism by saying, “we haven’t proved physicalism yet but we will.”
Jump replies to my comment with this one.
Tom Jump
Isaac Farley there is no such thing as physicalism of the gaps, its just induction.
Its only an X of the gaps, if X has never been demonstrated to exist
I think Mr. Jump missed the point of my comment. Maybe I also missed his point as well, I leave that determination up to the reader. This is how the exchange played out after.
Isaac Farley
Physicalism has yet to be shown. It can only be validated by presupposition. Now go ahead and posit that future scientific discoveries will affirm your physical presuppositions.
Tom Jump
Isaac Farley its been demonstrated physical stuff exists… im holding a cup poof done
cant be a gaps argument anymore
Isaac Farley
If you’re saying “that physical things exist therefore materialism is fact.” Well then not only is that physicalism of the gaps it is also a non sequitur.
“Matter exists therefore matter is all that exists” This was the end of our micro-conversation but the plot thickens because spurred on by this event I took a look at more of Jump’s YouTube discussions and I found something interesting that further validates my accusation that he commits the Physicalism of the Gaps fallacy.
In a debate with AskYourself (who by the way is also named Isaac) from November of 2019 on the question of “Are There Moral Facts?” I was astounded to hear Tom Jump defending the idea that morality is objective. I sent Gil this message “Mon 17:39 Did you know tom jump believes in objective morality?????????”
This seemed like a bizarre opinion to me in particular because I am one who favors the presuppositional approach to apologetics (hence my comments above about the presuppositions). As in dialogue with unbelievers I most often point out that in a universe with no God, there can be no objective morality. Yet it is impossible to live as a consistent moral relativist. I have also adopted a little bit of William Lane Craig’s presentation of the Moral Argument with moral epistemology. So not only is it impossible to live as a consistent relativist but we all know in our hearts and conscious that good and evil are real. Stalin was wrong for murdering millions of people last century, and if we all died off and there were no humans left, Stalin would still have been wrong regardless if there were any humans left to judge his actions. Most of us do not understand why we believe in objective morality but we don’t have to know how we know something in order to know that we know something.
Morality is a property of character. Said simply, if a room is empty, no persons in that room, then there is no morality in that room. Persons are moral, things are not. Trees do not have bravery, persons do. Clouds are not kind, persons are. So if morality exists, and is independent (objective) of what anyone thinks, then the logical conclusion is there is some person whose character is objectively good. Such a person would be the all good God who Christians believe in.
What’s strange though is that Tom Jump does believe that morality can exist in an empty room. That somehow objective morality can be a trait of physical matter in some way shape or form. He believes moral laws exist in the same way that gravity is a law. UseofReason wrote a good analysis of Tom Jump’s moral theory, where this is is explained a little clearer. In the dialogue with AskYourself Jump states that he believes objective morality is embedded in some particle or wave or other physical aspect of the universe which we have yet to discover.
That my friends is what we call Physicalism of the Gaps.
I mean this is just bananas. Mr. Jump recognizes that morality is objective (like the rest of the world, apart from psychopaths). But yet again to undermine the Biblical conclusion he posits somehow, that morality is a physical thing. Or is at least reducible to a physical explanation. What is this?
Anyway that was all I had to say on the matter. Please leave your own response to this in the comments.
Jesus’ resurrection is the most radical claim that any religion has ever made about God. The idea that God would become a man in order to suffer the most humiliating death is difficult to believe. Now we take it for granted because it is a story we hear all of the time, but back then it would’ve been a stunning claim and it still should be received as such. Crucifixion is described by Josephus to be “the most wretched of deaths.” It’s not terrible merely because it is the most painful, although that’s part of it, but it is terrible because it is also the most shameful. I believe the shame aspect of Jesus’ death is the most significant part of his suffering. His divine honor was replaced with utter inferiority and derision. You have the Son of the Highest King being brought before men to die. The very act of crucifixion was a ritual intended to strip you of honor. Nailing your arms and legs to the cross, for example, represented a total loss of power. This is significant given that this is the Almighty God that we’re talking about here.
It’s difficult to relate to the horror of shame in our individualistic society. A collectivist society like Japan can relate to this better than we can because shame takes high precedence (which explains their high suicide rate) as it did in ancient times. But imagine your most embarrassing moment. If you can’t think of one then visualize yourself accidentally defecating in front of your friends and family. As juvenile as this might sound, I urge you to try to visualize this event and their faces because I want you to feel the force of this shame. Suppose that this moment has become publicly known via the internet as a meme or a vine. Now you’re a laughing stock of the world, the equivalent of a “Bad Luck Brian” but worse. You couldn’t even walk outside without someone mocking you. Jesus’ shame is similar, but infinitely worse because of his divine status. The greater your status, the greater your humiliation.
It was foolish to the Romans and Jews to create a religion that proclaims the cross as its central message. Jesus was most likely crucified naked, and even worse, he lost the ability to control certain bodily functions like the release of excrement. This is not to say that he actually defecated, but it does emphasize how shameful the cross is. In fact, it’s so terrible that in ancient times it was almost unspeakable. The most detailed description we have of a crucifixion are the gospels themselves. The cross was proudly declared by Christians as proof of Jesus’ greatness, but it was used by society as proof of their madness. As Justin Martyr points out, “They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God.” Go back to the scenario I asked you to imagine and suppose that a handful of followers made you out to be a god after that event. Do you see how ludicrous that would be?
It’s no less ludicrous in Jesus’ case, but if this is the case then Christianity should’ve died within the first century. However, this is not what happened. Christianity multiplied at surprising rates in the first few centuries of its existence. In the eyes of the Jews, Greeks, and Romans, the entire notion of a crucified God was as absurd as claiming pigs fell from the clouds. Paul embraces this truth when he says, “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness” (1 Cor 1:18). Now if Paul was just telling the Jews and the Gentiles a nice bedtime story, then maybe Christianity would survive. But instead he presents it as a historical fact. Every reputable historian agrees that Jesus was crucified. Even the skeptic John Dominic Crossan said, “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.” No critic of early Christianity ever denied that the crucifixion occurred, but in fact used it to their advantage. How then could something so ridiculous come to be so highly regarded?
The only reasonable explanation for that is the resurrection. An insurmountable difficulty like this can only be overcome by an impossible act. The only being we know who can do this in principle is God. To quote Paul again, “if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Cor 15:14). It’s no good to propose that the resurrection is an invention of the apostles in order to redeem Jesus’ honor. Why would they affirm He is God after He was humiliated on the cross? That only increases the humiliation and increases the problem! It’s far more sensible to affirm He was a martyr of some injustice than to affirm He is God. Making it believable is the goal of any fiction that’s being disgusted as truth. If Christianity is an invention then the apostles failed miserably in making it believable because it was regarded as foolish by the Jews and the Gentiles. The only event that can overturn the shame of the cross is a real resurrection.
As oxymoronic as this may sound, I believe Jesus rose from the dead because it is ridiculous and impossible. Jesus conquered death so that I may live. May He receive the honor, praise, and glory forever and ever. Amen.