Bob Prokop: Early on in George MacDonald's fairy story Phantastes, we come upon the following scene. The book's main character (Anodos) is suddenly confronted by a magical creature, who then speaks to him. Allow me to quote the passage in full:
"Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?"
"No," said I, "and indeed I hardly believe I do now."
"Ah, that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable."
That little three line exchange is one of the most profound statements I have ever read about how many people approach the miraculous. Just think about it. Were a person to come across a single lifeform in an otherwise lifeless universe - heck, were he to find a single strand of DNA, he would either refuse to believe it existed, or proclaim it a miracle. But here we are in the real world, surrounded by trillions and trillions of incomprehensibly complex lifeforms, and all too many many people dismiss it all as just “the way things are", or even the product of blind, purposeless chance.
The same thing goes for the Resurrection. Its very singularity is a stumbling block to many skeptics, but the same people will not be bothered for a second by the fact that there are billions of people alive all around them right now. Why should coming to life a second time be any more unbelievable than the first time? (The usual objection is we don’t see it happening every day.) So is it "mere repetition", in MacDonald's words, that makes the starkly incredible fact of one's own existence so casually accepted?
I believe that MacDonald has hit upon an unexamined (and therefore unchallenged) assumption underlying skeptical thinking. Let me call it The Singularity Problem. (A problem, that is, for the skeptic.) Basically, the issue can be stated quite simply. A main objection to miraculous events raised by skeptics is that they are not common, or even sui generis. Thus, we frequently hear people objecting to Christ’s Virgin Birth because we don’t see such births happening around us as a norm. But why should we? The singularity of the event is definitionally mandated by its miraculous nature. Until we somehow rule out the possibility of one-of-a-kind events on grounds stronger than ruling them out on principle (which, after all, amounts to a "because I said so" argument), we cannot object to their existence on those grounds alone.
I say this underlying assumption needs to be examined and defended, not simply accepted a priori. Otherwise, the skeptic must somehow make the case that we are not quite literally surrounded by countless miracles all the time.
Any inductive inference is an induction from the observed to the unobserved, and proceeds by similarity. So a dissimilarity to what we have experienced in the past is a stumbling-block to belief. But if you make it too big of a stumbling block, you will end up thinking that the lunar landing that Bob and I are both old enough and privileged enough to have seen and heard on televison (one small step....), was really the result of machinations in Area 51.
67 comments:
Thus, we frequently hear people objecting to Christ’s Virgin Birth because we don’t see such births happening around us as a norm. But why should we?
I object to it because it is only mentioned in two of our four canonical gospels, and the two stories are completely incompatible with one another, thus giving me sufficient reason to doubt the veracity of either tale.
As far as a physical resurrection goes, there simply is no way to ever prove that these miraculous "singularities" ever truly happened. Belief in the Resurrection belongs in the realm of faith, just like other miraculous "singularities" such as Muhammad's ascension to heaven or Joseph Smith's visit by the Angel Moroni.
Oh dear. The infamous distinction between proof and faith. I would agree that you are never going to get proof beyond a reasonable doubt satisfactory to all reasonable persons. But it is surely possible for some miracles to have better evidence trails supporting them than others.
Different people are going to assess the antecedent probability of the miraculous differently. But in the New Testament you have miraculous claims interweaved with highly realistic narrative, something you don't find in the writing of that period. People of the time wrote myths, they wrote legends, and they wrote history. They did not write novels, where they would research as much as they could find out about, say, Forks, Washington, and then weave a vampire story around that. People like C. S. Lewis who are accustomed to reading mythical literature get to the gospels and find them too darn prosaic. They don't read like myths at all.
From Chapter eleven of "The Christian Delusion" Richard Carrier writes:
Fifty years after the Persian Wars ended in 479 B.C. Herodotus the Halicarnassian asked numerous eyewitnesses and their children about the things that happened in those years, and then wrote a book about it. Though he often shows a critical and skeptical mind, sometimes naming his sources or even questioning their reliability when he has suspicious or conflicting accounts, he nevertheless reports without a hint of doubt that the temple of Delphi magically defended itself with animated armaments, lightning bolts, and collapsing cliffs; the sacred olive tree of Athens, though burned by the Persians, grew a new shoot an arm’s length in a single day; a miraculous flood-tide wiped out an entire Persian contingent after they desecrated an image of Poseidon; a horse gave birth to a rabbit; and a whole town witnessed a mass resurrection of cooked fish! (pp. 291-92)
It takes more than a realistic sounding narrative to convince me that extraordinary events happened in Palestine 2000 years ago. And I do not consider myself an atheist. I live by the maxim that extraordinary claims do indeed demand extraordinary evidence for my belief. The miracles found in the bible do not have extraordinary evidence; they have just the opposite: mundane anecdotes.
Herodotus was the ultimate gullible tourist who seems to have all manner of tall tales from all over and to have believed anything any guide told him. There were things like claiming to have seen a inscription on a pyramid when there are no inscriptions on pyramids. If he was skeptical it was because he occasionally met a tall tale even he could not believe. Also none of these stories required any commitment from anyone. There is no reason to believe anyone even took them that seriously. The gospel miracles do not seem to be in the same category.
Well said, Walter.
As to the original post, here's the answer.
Physical instrumentation leverages vast amounts of inductive inference. They reflect huge amounts of statistics, and this is reflected in their statistical and systematic uncertainty.
Let's consider the idea of a perpetual motion machine - a machine that violates the conservation of energy by producing more energy than it consumes. From what we know today, this is all but impossible.
Now, imagine Prof. Reppert invents the first and only perpetual motion machine. Such an invention would be just the kind of singular event that Prokop is talking about.
By Prokop's logic, science couldn't confirm the invention violated the conservation of energy. This is incorrect.
Let's suppose a scientist tries to confirm that the Reppert machine violates conservation of energy. The scientist brings in his instrument, and the instrument agrees Reppert's machine is indeed violating physical laws.
Well, maybe the instrument is broken.
There is some probability that the machine is broken, and there is some probability that conservation of energy is not inviolable after all. Suppose the probability that the machine is broken is one in a million, and the probability we are wrong about conservation of energy is one in a trillion. In that case, the scientist would be rationally justified in not believing that the machine violates conservation of energy.
However, the scientist is easily going to be able to test the theory with just three instruments. The odds that two instruments are broken is one part in a trillion, comparable with the existing evidence for conservation of energy. A third machine will make it obvious that the Reppert machine works, and that the original theory was wrong. That is, by stacking up reliable instrumentation, we can confirm singular events.
Skeptics hold their beliefs provisionally according to Bayesian principles. Singular events can easily be found and confirmed if enough instrumentation is available and can be applied in a controlled experiment.
But it's also true that some singular events will occur without such instrumentation, and it would be irrational for anyone to believe such events happened even if they did.
I'll just add that the story about the scientist and three instruments allows the scientist to rationally believe the claim. It doesn't necessarily do the same for you or I. We need confirmation that the scientist didn't just claim to have applied three instruments.
For us to believe the claim, we want a lot of evidence about collaborations of scientists, each with incentive to disprove the other, each applying their instruments independently. This is how science works.
But even within the scientific community, an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. The more outlandish the claim, the more verification will be required.
I can't imagine how Christians would think their evidence gets anywhere remotely close to this level of requirement.
Singular events are fine, but the more singular and contradictory with past experience, the more evidence you need. The scribblings of some collaborating, superstitious, religious fanatics just isn't going to cut it.
One more exercise. We hear that the NT authors wouldn't have done X unless Y was true. For example, we hear that crucifixion was so nasty, that the disciples would not have gone around saying Jesus was crucified because it would be humiliating.
Whatever. Let's say this is true. What kind of statistical weight should you assign to this sort of information?
Remember, the idea is that there were so many peculiarities about the NT stories that the authors were more likely telling the truth than the alternative (lying, deluded, etc).
The odds of a resurrection is one in a billion. If you can show that the probability of every naturalistic attempt at explaining the NT is smaller still, then Christianity wins.
Alas, the kinds of factors raised by Christians aren't anywhere near the level required.
Tally up all the peculiarities about the NT stories, and you'll barely make a dent in the odds of the resurrection being true. Even with no serious effort on the part of the skeptic.
You can't argue that the NT authors wouldn't have done X unless Y was true with much reliability at all.
Throw in some of the factors working against the authors (e.g., what we know about cognitive bias) and Christianity gets nowhere.
Is this the naturalism-or-chaos argument, which says that unless we have naturalistic constraints, we really can't in any rational way, go from the unobserved to the observed. So, the inference to Angel Moroni or the dictation of the Qu'ran is no better or no worse than any inference to the NT miracles. Just as anything follows from a contradiction, so, once methodological naturalism is abandoned, anything goes, which really means that nothing goes.
Bob Prokop writing:
Walter, the two Gospel Infancy Narratives are not at all incompatible. They are exactly what one should expect if the underlying eyewitness testimony behind Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts came from differing, complementary sources.
Apology in advance to any that might find the following reasoning “sexist”, but after all, the First Century was rather big on traditional male/female roles, and this is the time we are discussing here.
Matthew’s account of Christ’s birth and infancy is written decidedly from a father’s point of view. Joseph is the main character, and everything is expressed in terms of his reaction to what happens. It is also very externally focused. Upon hearing of Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph’ s first concern seems to be “what will everyone think?”. The birth itself (a woman’s affair) is passed over in silence. But societal reaction to that event, plus an emphasis on keeping his family safe from external threats (Herod, Archelaus), is what drives the narrative. There is no introspection here; it is all very action-oriented - very male. Precisely the sort of account one would expect, had Matthew obtained his information from a source close to Joseph.
Then we have Luke. Now all the focus is inward, contemplative, family-centered – very female. The main actor is now Mary, and everything is seen from her perspective. Unlike in Matthew, where the biggest event in Christ’s early life was fleeing from persecution, in Luke the most traumatic event in Christ’s first 30 years on Earth is his mother losing track of him in the big city. Very appropriate, were Mary herself the eyewitness source behind Luke’s version of the story. Again, family-centered, personal, emphasis on feelings, with that repeated refrain, "Mary kept all these things in her heart, pondering them".
No, the accounts are not incompatible, they are complementary.
Are you kidding me, Bob? Catholic scholar *Raymond E. Brown even concludes that the nativity accounts are not compatible between Matthew and Luke.
*The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library). Yale University Press. p. 36. ISBN 0-300-14008-8.
There is even a ten year discrepancy between the two gospel accounts.
Wikipedia on the date of the nativity:
The Gospel of Matthew places Jesus' birth under the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC. The author of Matthew also recorded that Herod had all the male children in Bethlehem two years old and younger executed,[35] based on a prophecy relayed to him by the magi that a new King of the Jews had been born in the town. The order's instruction of "two and under", along with the inference that it took Herod time to realize that the magi were not about to deliver the child to him, implies a birth no later than 6-4 BC. The Gospel of Luke dates the birth ten years after Herod's death during the census of Quirinius, described by the historian Josephus.[36] Most scholars consider the Gospel of Luke to be mistaken,[37] though some writers still attempt to reconcile its account with the details given by Josephus.[38][39]
Bob Prokop writing:
No, I'm not kidding. But please don't make the mistake of numbering me among the Literalists. Nothing could be further from the truth! I have no quarrel with there being minor discrepancies between the Evangelists' accounts (one angel or two? exact wording of various quotes, order of events, etc.), but I stand convinced by the weight of evidence that the overall historicity of the Gospels is a reasonable proposition. (In fact, I believe it takes a considerable amount of mind-games and pretzel bending logic to reject their historicity.) And yes, this includes the Infancy Narratives. There may be minor "factual errors" (if one insists on labeling them as such) in the accounts, but they remain substatively true to actual events.
(As a good example of what I am referring to, I would not seriously debate whether Mary spoke the precise words of the Magnificat when she visited her cousin Elizabeth. But that such a visit did indeed occur, and that words were indeed exchanged, I have no doubt.)
Victor,
Is this the naturalism-or-chaos argument, which says that unless we have naturalistic constraints, we really can't in any rational way, go from the unobserved to the observed.
Since I'm not sure if your question is directed at me, I think the answer is No.
Do you mean "regularity-or-chaos"?
If Harry Potter's intentional magic was regular as clockwork, it would become physics, and everyone would be able to believe it.
And I do think that a regularity-or-chaos argument can be made. However, that's not the argument I'm making. You and Bob seem to be arguing that Bayesian reasoning doesn't work because it can't tackle singular events. I'm explaining why it can.
So, the inference to Angel Moroni or the dictation of the Qu'ran is no better or no worse than any inference to the NT miracles.
I don't think there are arguments that render these events impossible.
I think that some claims of the paranormal are more likely to be true than others. I think that Christianity is probably better supported than Mormonism. Still, that's kinda like saying that you'd have a better chance than me of surviving 7 rounds in the ring with Bruce Lee. (I think UFO abduction is far more likely to be true than Christianity.)
Bob Prokop writing:
Dr. Logic, thank you for your question. But no, I don’t think I’m arguing that at all. Although George MacDonald expressed it far better than I can in his book, what I am saying is that we are quite literally surrounded by events and circumstances that by rights we should consider miraculous. The only reason we do not do so is their ubiquity. But were we to come across any of these as a singularity, their miraculous nature would be obvious.
To get to the nub of the matter: the very fact that I am here at all, that such an incomprehensibly complex organism as my physical self exists and operates, that I have consciousness, free will, memory, that at one time I did not exist but now I do, all these things, but for their commonplace nature (there are, after all, billions of us around) would by all rights be considered miracles were they to be encountered as singularities. But we have no problem “believing” in them, solely because of what George MacDonald calls “repetition”.
So it would seem that a major stumbling block to the skeptic’s acceptance of the historicity of the Resurrection would be its singularity. But this implies a presupposition that singularities are ruled out on no other grounds, other than their non-repetitiveness. But this assumption should not go unchallenged. Why, other than an unexamined bias against the idea, should singularities be ruled out? This has not been addressed.
And bringing up Mohammed or Joseph Smith does not advance the conversation. Just as a hypothetical repetitive event which turns out to be not true does not rule out the veracity of other repetitive events, neither do untrue claims of truth for some hypothetical singular events determine that all others are similarly debunked.
And bringing up Mohammed or Joseph Smith does not advance the conversation. Just as a hypothetical repetitive event which turns out to be not true does not rule out the veracity of other repetitive events, neither do untrue claims of truth for some hypothetical singular events determine that all others are similarly debunked.
But how can you know that Gabriel did not dictate the Qur'an to Muhammad? How do you know that Moroni did not visit Joseph Smith? It is so easy to label other miraculous singularities as fakes, yet the evidence for Christianity's miracles really are not that much better than these other contested claims. As of 2007 the LDS Church has 13.9 million adherents--a large number of whom would passionately defend the miraculous singularity of Moroni's visitation with Smith.
Not to start another OTF argument, but what this tells me is that people can and do believe very outrageous claims on the flimsiest of evidence--or no evidence at all. We tend to set the evidence burden much lower on religious traditions that we are brought up in. Someone not brought up in Utah will dismiss Mormon claims with nary a second thought. A person born in Riyadh will scoff at the thought of Jesus resurrected, but have no problem believing that Muhammad ascended to heaven on a winged horse.
Bob,
I don't think there's anything wrong with singular events per se.
The problem is getting to an inference that a singular event actually occurred.
Can you clarify your objection in terms of inductive inference?
The rules of inductive inference say that, to the extent that experience gives us knowledge, the more we experience a regularity, the more likely that regularity is to hold in the future.
Suppose we were transplanted into an alien environment. We notice that days are 4 hours long and nights are 10 hours long. How confident are we that future cycles will (a) exist and (b) consist of 4 hours of daylight in a 14-hour cycle?
Well, after one day, we won't be very confident. But after experiencing this 100 days in a row, we should be a lot more confident that the days will fit the same regularity.
Now, suppose that after 10,000 cycles, we wake up and it's dark when we expect it to be light.
In the first hours after we wake up, we will legitimately be skeptical that the "sun did not rise."
We've come to expect reliability from the daylight on this alien world. Initially, we would be skeptical. We would start wondering whether our shipmates had reset our clock as part of a practical joke, or whether our clock had failed. We might wonder whether our eyes are failing. Or our sanity. After all, it's possible that any one of these alternative things could happen.
Obviously, after enough time passes, and after enough data is collected, we will be able to confirm that the sun did not rise. However, if the sun fails to rise just this one time, our descendants will legitimately be even more skeptical. Eventually, after 100,000 days have passed, our descendants will see that it is more likely that we were binge drinking, hallucinating, lying, or just plain mistaken than that that the sun failed to rise. For them, the sun is far more reliable than people are.
That is, as time passes without verifiability of the original claim, even a well attested claim degenerates into implausibility.
Now, Bob, I want to ask you how your argument applies to this hypothetical scenario. Should those who witnessed the darkness not be initially skeptical that the sun didn't rise?
Should our descendants not be skeptical of our claim if enough time passes without a re-occurrence?
Bob Prokop writing:
Dr. Logic, let’s turn the argument around and (just for one moment, please) assume that Christianity is true. Under those ground rules, we are faced with the fact that God became a very particular human being (Jesus) at a very specific time and place (First Century AD in a province of the Roman Empire. But most importantly, He did this ONCE, and he died ONCE, and rose from the dead ONCE.
So by ruling out the possibility of singularities on a “because I say so” line of reasoning, the skeptic predetermines the result (in at least his own mind) of any consideration of the truth or falsehood of Christianity. But he has no good reason to reject such a possibility. All of the examples you stated about observing patterns apply only to repetitive events, but do not address the issue of one-of-a-kind events in the slightest.
So I guess I’m asking the skeptics to at least be honest. Behind all the sturm und drang about sources, composition dates, testimonies, evidence, etc., lurks a killer presupposition (which is completely unprovable) that rules out a reasonable discussion of the issue from the very beginning.
Bob,
Yes, let's assume Christianity is true, and that the events alleged to have occurred in the NT are true.
I maintain it would be irrational for us to believe that they happened even if they did because the evidence is insufficient.
I'm not ruling out the possibility. I'm saying that the probability of Christianity being true from our epistemic perspective is smaller than the alternatives.
In fact, let's alter our priors such that we believe God exists and is (obviously) capable of miracles. Based on this information alone, it's still extremely improbable that God would incarnate himself as a human. It's also extremely unlikely he would do this only once. It's further extremely unlikely that he would pick first century Palestine. And then to ascend instead of hanging around as an immortal humanoid - that seems improbable, too.
Indeed, let's suppose that you believed a god exists and that this god would instantiate himself as a human just once (and let's assume that you believe this for some non-circular reason). Ten billion people have ever lived. Quite possibly, another 100 billion will live in the future. Why some guy in the first century? And what evidence would you need to say that God was in Jesus versus the Buddha or David Koresh or one of the thousands of folks currently locked away in mental wards across this country?
I would think you would demand a lot more evidence than the NT. Certainly vastly more evidence in order to be confident that Jesus was the one.
In the case of skeptics, we don't believe God exists (p < 0.5) and we don't believe such a God has any good reason to incarnate himself just once.
You're painting the situation as if I'm ruling out the claim automatically, and I'm not. I'm just saying that some facts could be true without us being able to be confident about them. For example, the legend of Arthur and the Sword in the Stone could be true, but we would be irrational to believe that it was true. (And that story is a lot more likely to be true than the Resurrection.)
Dr. Logic: it's still extremely improbable that God would incarnate himself as a human. It's also extremely unlikely he would do this only once. It's further extremely unlikely that [..........]
You seem to be awfully confident of what God would or would not do. You've calculated the odds, have you, come up with some percentage of how likely God is to do something? OK, great, please show your working. I want to see just how to arrived at these extremely low numbers.
DL,
I rate the odds lowfor two reasons. First, because we *don't* know what he is likely to do or not do a priori, we ought to spread the probability equally across all the things God could logically do. That list is immense.
Second, to the extent that we can use induction to alter the probability distribution, history tells us that incarnations and resurrections are unusual thing for God to do.
If you think that abiogenesis is improbable, why? Isn't it because you think that the number of molecular interactions that lead to life is small compared to the number of interactions you can imagine, and you think all possible interactions should be weighted equally, all things being equal?
Walter,
You quote the following line from Wikipedia:
"The Gospel of Luke dates the birth ten years after Herod's death during the census of Quirinius, described by the historian Josephus."
This claim depends on several disputable premises. Their conjunction is highly dubious. See the extensive discussion in Lardner, Credibility of the Gospel History, Part I, vol. II, Book II, ch. 1, pp. 248-329. This discussion does not even take into account Ramsay's suggestion of Quirinius's earlier stint in Syria.
Tim,
I have heard the ad hoc explanation that Quirinius may have been governor of Syria twice. There is no good evidence for this assumption. Conservative Christians will often go to great lengths to produce some kind of contrived harmonization of disparate accounts found in the bible--usually to try and hang on to some nuanced notion of biblical inerrancy.
Other examples would be some of the attempts to harmonize the differing tales of Judas death, or how Jesus appeared to the disciples in Galilee and Jerusalem during the same time period.
The accounts were likely written by a later generation of followers based on divergent oral traditions. No need to attempt implausible harmonies just to rescue the notion that these accounts are penned by primary eyewitnesses.
Doctor Logic: we ought to spread the probability equally across all the things God could logically do. That list is immense.
Sure, there an infinite number ways God could have made the universe without becoming incarnate. And an infinite number of ways in which he could have become incarnate. If you don't have some calculation to show how one infinte set is meaningfully bigger than the other, then all you really have is a hunch, a gut feeling, about what you think you might or might not do if you were God.
[Do] you think all possible interactions should be weighted equally, all things being equal?
But all things never are equal. You don't say, "Gee, DL, I accept that your claim of 1+1 being 2 is possible, but there are so many other numbers to choose from that it's far too unlikely that it really is 2." Sure, resurrections are "unusual". But Lincoln's getting shot is "unusual" — never happened before, will never happen again. The Titanic's sinking from an iceberg was unusual. Archimedes discovering buoyancy in the tub was unusual. But that doesn't tell us anything useful. Once again, we come down to instincts or presuppositions.
DL,
Sure, there an infinite number ways God could have made the universe without becoming incarnate. And an infinite number of ways in which he could have become incarnate. If you don't have some calculation to show how one infinte set is meaningfully bigger than the other, then all you really have is a hunch, a gut feeling, about what you think you might or might not do if you were God.
Unfortunately, you're oversimplifying things. God could incarnate himself 0..N times, and in each incarnation he could be a human, horse, pig, eagle, or as one of countless alien forms.
Even if we neglect combinatorial terms in which he appears as more than one species, it's at least [0,1,2,...infinity] x [human, horse, pig, eagle, satyr, dragon, ... infinity] x [other factors]
So, while there may be X ways God could incarnate himself as a single man, there will be more like X^2 ways he could incarnate himself twice as two men, and so on. If we take the limit where X tends to infinity, the ratio of the single incarnation case goes like 1/X. It would be bizarre to characterize the two probabilities as the same. There are explosively more ways for God to incarnate himself multiple times as multiple species than there are ways for him to incarnate himself just once.
I can make an analogy to this argument using a classical physics problem. Imagine that there are two perfectly-hard colliding spheres. If they hit exactly head-on, they'll bounce back along their original trajectory. That is, the angle of reflection will be 180 degrees. If their axes don't align, they'll bounce off their original trajectory (a glancing hit). They could have the slightest of glancing blows, and exit with only a 1 degree change of trajectory.
Now, we might ask, what is the probability that the balls will collide then exit the system between 180 and 179 degrees?
In classical physics, there are an infinity of ways that the balls could collide and almost bounce right back in this way. However, no one would think that this number of ways is the same as the number of ways the balls could exit between zero and 179 degrees.
By your logic, we should always take any individual scenario as a 50/50 hunch whenever there are an infinite number of scenarios. That's not correct.
As for the assassination of Lincoln, yes, singular and unusual events do occur. But we believe those events occurred because we have evidence strong enough to cancel out the low a priori probability. It may be a priori improbable that Lincoln would be killed at a particular theater on a particular date by a particular assassin. But the evidence cancels it out in nice Bayesian fashion.
For some reason, this reminds me of the joke about a physicist at the racetrack trying to solve the problem of which horse will win: "Assume a spherical horse ..."
Of course the evidence for Lincoln's assassination overcomes the low prior for that event. The parallel claim is that, in like manner, the evidence for Jesus' resurrection overcomes the low prior for that event.
Tim,
The parallel claim is that, in like manner, the evidence for Jesus' resurrection overcomes the low prior for that event.
Yes, this is what Christians need to do. But look back on the thread, and see that DL is basically rejecting smooth distribution of probability.
DL is saying that the a priori probability that God would incarnate himself in Jesus ought to be assessed by gut feeling. If DL thinks (thanks to his gut) that God (a) exists, and (b) would incarnate himself in Jesus in first century Palestine with, say, 15% likelihood, then I would not not be surprised that he considers NT testimony adequate to the task. But by assessing that probability at 15%, DL is unfairly discounting the probability of God incarnating himself as a thousand dragons, or a thousand-and-one dragons, or a thousand-and-two dragons, etc.
The point I was making earlier is that even if you think the odds of resurrection are much greater than one in a billion because you somehow reject inductive inference from the natural world, you still have comparable challenge in picking out Jesus as the "resurrectee" in a supernatural world.
You can't go around thinking the story of Jesus is something God was remotely likely to have enacted. On the other hand, even if you thought that it was improbable from a naturalistic perspective, the story is still vastly more likely to have arisen from a naturalistic scenario.
A flat distribution works fine for some physics problems, but it is a lousy way of trying to do history.
"You can't go around thinking the story of Jesus is something God was remotely likely to have enacted."
Sure you can. "Remotely likely" is cheap; all the more so in view of the various pieces of evidence we have that make it overwhelmingly more likely than the disjunction of all of the incarnation-as-a-bunch-of-dragon scenarios. Trying to generate a prior with a flat distribution across syntactically similar alternatives, a la Carnap, just ignores huge amounts of the evidence.
Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as President. Why is would it be so strange that Quirinius would have two nonconsecutive terms as governor of Syria?
Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as President. Why is would it be so strange that Quirinius would have two nonconsecutive terms as governor of Syria?
Richard Carrier deals with the "twice governor" claim here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/quirinius.html#II
Carrier's claims about governorship miss the point; Quirinius could have been referred to as hegemon even if he was not the appointed governor, just as Josephus uses this term both for Volumnius and Saturninus, though the former was not the appointed governor.
His claims about the reading of the Greek are at variance with the considered judgment of a number of eminent authorities on that language. Details may be found in many sources, e.g. Charles Heneage Elsley, Annotations on the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, 5th ed., vol. 2 (London: C. & J. Rivington, 1824), pp. 140-46; Frederic Louis Godet, A Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke (New York: Funk & Wagnells, 1887), pp. 74-80; Nathaniel Lardner, Credibility of the Gospel History, Book 2, Part 1, in Andrew Kippis, ed., The Works of Nathaniel Lardner, D. D., vol. 1 (London: William Ball, 1838), pp. 260-345.
I guess it comes down to "dueling" scholars again ;)
Even as an amateur exegete I can read the account in Matthew followed by the account in Luke, and tell that these two stories are contradictory, not complementary. Catholic scholar Raymond E. Brown also shares his learned opinion that the accounts contradict.
Mark's earliest gospel contained no virgin birth story and could be read as endorsing an adoptionistic christology. Matthew probably found that unsuitable so he pumped up Jesus' resume a little for his gospel adding a supernatural birth to counteract the "heresy" of adoptionism.
Luke may have heard a different tale via oral tradition and passed on a slightly different story.
John, apparently, did not think the virgin birth story worth mentioning, since his Jesus was a preexisting Logos mediator figure.
Disclaimer: I am using the traditional author's names for convenience, as I do not believe that those people truly were the authors of the gospels.
More like dueling "scholars." Carrier is not a serious Greek scholar and has been caught doing completely illicit things in his rendering of 1 Corinthians 15. He's not a serious philosopher either, notwithstanding his claim to be the equal of Aristotle.
It isn't necessary for the accounts to harmonize perfectly in order for them both to contain substantial reliable information. Every historian is familiar with this phenomenon.
But you seem to think that there are larger problems for the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke -- insuperable ones that render it impossible for us to take both accounts as seriously as, say, we would take two accounts of the murder of Julius Caesar. Would you be willing to lay those out for us?
Bob Prokop writing:
This is largely a repeat of what I posted earlier, but I’ll say it again. The differences between the two “Infancy Gospels” can largely be accounted for once one accepts that Matthew’s is told from Joseph’s point of view, and Luke’s from Mary’s. (Yes, yes, I know full well this cannot be “proven”, but it explains much, which is sometimes just as good.)
For instance, why does Luke mention the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem prior to the birth of Jesus, where Matthew does not? I have heard it from the mouth of more than one female Christian today that it is because Mary remembered for the rest of her days every step of that journey made when she was nine months pregnant, whereas for Joseph it was just another (and probably uneventful) event. Why does Luke put the shepherds front and center, while Matthew focuses on the Wise Men? Perhaps because Joseph was more impressed by the visit of foreign dignitaries, whereas Mary was touched by the shepherds’ account of angelic choirs.
Then the follow-on narratives. The Joseph-centered account (Matthew) concentrates on the child and his mother in danger of their lives, and on Joseph’s own need to care for them (fleeing to Egypt, and then [back] to Nazareth). Very masculine and action-oriented. Juke’s account meanwhile centers on the one incident in Jesus’ childhood where the parents may have felt embarrassment (Why did we not keep track of him in the big city?). This is the very incident that would have most stood out in a mother’s mind across the years.
We all too often dismiss or even ridicule Medieval legends and pious embellishments of the Gospels, but here is one case where I really think the popular account got it right. That is, Matthew’s source was someone close to Joseph, and Luke’s eyewitness narrative was from Mary herself. Read in this light, the two Gospels are not at all contradictory, but rather “masculine and feminine” versions of the same events.
More like dueling "scholars." Carrier is not a serious Greek scholar and has been caught doing completely illicit things in his rendering of 1 Corinthians 15. He's not a serious philosopher either, notwithstanding his claim to be the equal of Aristotle.
Do you honestly think that Carrier is the only one who believes the accounts are contradictory? How about Bart Ehrman, Raymond E. Brown, John D. Crossan, James F. Mcgrath and quite a few others. Will you impugn the scholarly credentials of all these people simply because they are not wed to conservative dogmas? Do you reject all historical-critical scholarship of the bible because you think that it is based in naturalistic presuppositions?
Walter,
No, I don't impugn their credentials. But if they insist that the accounts are wildly contradictory -- and I have seen video of Ehrman doing so -- I will be hard put to keep from impugning their intelligence.
The word "contradiction" means something, and "omission" is not a synonym for it. The failure to make that distinction is at the heart of the sort of argument from silence that has been pervasively abused in New Testament studies. Here, at least, we have an error in historical reasoning that need have nothing to do with naturalistic assumptions. The uncritical use of the argument from silence is simply a sloppy way to do history.
I should add that I think Bob's most recent remarks above are very sensible.
Here is Dr. James F. Mcgrath's take on the two nativities:
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/12/contradictory-christmases.html
Walter,
So McGrath entitles his post "Contradictory Christmases" and then proceeds to generate a contradiction, not between any single statement in Matthew and another in Luke, but rather between the impression that he thinks a reader of Matthew's gospel on its own would get regarding where Jesus' hometown is and the impression that he thinks a reader of Luke's gospel would get regarding where Jesus' hometown is.
This is simply not a serious discrepancy. It might fuddle a certain sort of fundamentalist, but by the standards of ordinary history it's a shoulder-shrug level problem. Neither account looks complete. Luke's source (cleary an Aramaic document being translated, almost certainly a document that comes from Jesus' family and plausibly from Mary) apparently doesn't mention the flight into Egypt. Maybe Luke himself wasn't aware of it; maybe he was but wanted simply to present his source document as it stood. So what?
Have you seen the actual contradictions we run into all the time in multiple independent accounts of secular historical events? Have you ever made any attempt to see what would happen if the methods here being applied to the Gospels were applied to Roman history?
The point that I am making is that quite a large number of biblical scholars do declare the nativity accounts to be irreconcilable. And I am sure that you can name a number of conservative NT scholars who feel differently. I guess it boils down to whether one believes the bible to be the inspired Word of God or just a compilation of human authored documents with no divine mind behind them. Obviously, I lean towards the latter.
Bob Prokop writing:
But Walter, whether or not you believe the accounts has no bearing on whether they are irreconcilable, which they most clearly are not. Are my hands irreconcilable when I knit my fingers together. Of course not! You don't have to be a literalist or a fundamentalist (neither of which I am) to recognize that the two accounts are simply relating differing subsets of the totality of events ocurring around the Incarnation.
Cite me one single passage in either Gospel that is CONTRADICTED by the other. You can't, because there aren't any! The skeptic is forced back upon the illogic of the Argument from Silence.
Walter,
(1) The accounts are contradictory only if they assert things that cannot both be true. This is the definition of contradiction. "You'd kinda think that X if you were only reading A, and you'd kinda think that Y if you were only reading B, and X and Y are incompatible" doesn't stack up. In historical inquiries outside of the religious sphere, we routinely modify our initial understanding of secular historical documents by comparing them; that's just part of reaching reflective equilibrium. I am not saying this out of a desire to preserve the reputation of the Gospels at all costs; I am simply stating the obvious.
(2) Your dilemma leaves out the most interesting option: that these are generally trustworthy documents that convey a great deal of information regarding the events on which they report. This position seems to be amply established by historical evidence of all kinds. It neither presupposes nor rules out any particular theory of inspiration. It is compatible with there being minor errors, free paraphrases or reasonably faithful summaries of direct discourse, and numerous omissions in the texts. This is the same standard to which we hold other historians like Josephus or Tacitus and by which we judge them to be better or worse as historians.
It seems plausible to me that your objections are directed, not principally at the truth of the central line of the Gospel history, but at some version of fundamentalism that carries a lot of extra baggage with it. If this is what's going on, you would save yourself from some unnecessary criticism by trying hard to separate the baby Jesus from the fundamentalist bathwater.
Walter writing-
Cite me one single passage in either Gospel that is CONTRADICTED by the other. You can't, because there aren't any! The skeptic is forced back upon the illogic of the Argument from Silence.
I can cite a number of them, Bob, but the Christian apologist will always have a "possible" answer for an "apparent" contradiction. I have already hinted at some like the fact that one gospel has Jesus' post-easter appearances in Galilee, while another has them in Jerusalem. I am sure that you will claim that it was both, but I am not drinking that Koolaid :)
Walter writing-
It seems plausible to me that your objections are directed, not principally at the truth of the central line of the Gospel history, but at some version of fundamentalism that carries a lot of extra baggage with it. If this is what's going on, you would save yourself from some unnecessary criticism by trying hard to separate the baby Jesus from the fundamentalist bathwater
Your criticism does not bother me. Let me be clear what I believe. I believe that there was likely an historical Jesus who was just a man, not the incarnation of God. I believe that the gospels contain some history that is shrouded in myth. I do not believe the gospels were written by eyewitnesses at all; they are propaganda documents written to foster belief in Jesus as the Messiah. I am not convinced that the earliest believers worshiped Jesus as a God but instead saw him as a mediator.
Bob Prokop writing:
Walter, just who are these earliest believers, who supposedly did not worship Jesus as God? I won’t even try to quote Acts here, because I’m sure you’ll dismiss that book as “propaganda”. But what about Paul? Even the most atheistic of biblical scholars admit that his letters pre-date the Gospels. Yet they contain statements such as (paraphrasing here, I’m too lazy to look up the passages right now):
“He is the image of the invisible God.”
“In him the fullness of God dwelt bodily.”
“All things were created through him and for him.”
I could go on, but you get the point. Paul clearly worshiped Jesus as God and creator.
And by the way, I actually agree with you that the four Gospels flatly contradict each other in minor details concerning the post-Resurrection appearances. Not being a literalist, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest, because they are unanimous in the main point, which is that Christ literally and physically rose from the dead and was seen by the disciples.
But my challenge to you was specifically directed to cite a contradiction in the infancy narratives. You will not be able to find one.
Bob Prokop writing:
A family of four (father, older son, younger son, daughter) go to the circus. The next day, the daughter describes in great detail the clowns, the balloons, and the elephants. The younger son goes on and on about the hot dog, ice cream, and candied nuts that he ate. The older son, so taken by a beautiful girl he saw there, doesn’t mention the circus at all, but describes his meeting her. The father talks about the traffic, the difficulties in parking, and complains about the high ticket prices.
Incompatible accounts? Contradictory? Using the same “logic” used by skeptics concerning the infancy narratives, there probably was no circus, or at the least, this family obviously did not go there!
Bob, since you have no problem believing that the bible contains errors in the post-easter accounts, then why staunchly defend the inerrancy of two obviously different virgin birth stories? I know you don't like to follow links, but I have posted a few which shows these stories to be irreconcilable except with flights of apologetic imagination.
Such as:
It is "possible" that Quirinius was legate twice in Syria.
It is "possible" that there were two censuses.
It is "possible" that "Luke" was referring to an earlier Governor, etc.,etc..
Dr. McGrath pointed out serious discrepancies in the accounts here:
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/12/contradictory-christmases.html
Apologists like to break out the elmer's glue and paste together two different stories to produce an implausible "harmony", then declare that is not a discrepancy, just an Argument from Silence. Another famous example is the differing tales of Judas's death. Apologists will glue the story of his hanging with the one of him throwing himself headfirst into a field where his bowels burst out. The apologist will try to claim that both happened but each author was only emphasizing part of the story. The most parsimonious explanation is that the gospels are based off of divergent oral traditions.
I could go on, but you get the point. Paul clearly worshiped Jesus as God and creator.
I believe that Paul worshiped the Father through Jesus as mediator, but we will have to save this argument for a future thread. Suffice it to say that the Jews in this time period were thoroughly familiar with the concept of a mediator between a transcendent Yahweh and humankind. Deification of Jesus is a later development in predominantly Gentile Christianity.
Walter,
Let me summarize your position as you've presented it here:
(1) You can't cite a pair of contradictory claims from the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke, but you just don't believe that they're substantially historical, and you kind of somehow feel that they're contradictory anyway, because each mentions so much stuff that the other leaves out.
(2) You realize that, although at the end of his Gospel he mentions only appearances in Judea, Luke doesn't actually say that these are the only ones that took place. But you think the fact that he didn't talk about the appearances in Galilee is enormously telling. That, along with a comment about Kool-aid, is all that you think is necessary in the way of actual argument for this thesis.
(3) You claim that the Gospels were "propaganda documents."
(4) You deny that the earliest Christians worshiped Jesus as God.
On points (1) and (2), as far as I can tell, you're arguing from silence. This form of reasoning isn't, as such, an instance of anti-supernatural bias; it's just incredibly weak, particularly under the circumstances, as I've pointed out elsewhere on this blog. The mistaking of it for a strong argument is, however, very convenient for those who have anti-supernatural biases.
As for (3), the claim that the Gospels are "propaganda documents" is severely underdetermined. I freely grant that (a) they were intended to be persuasive, and (b) they were written by people who believed that what they were saying was important. But this is true of a great deal of good historical writing -- and of a physics textbook as well. It does not follow that the authors had motives to shade the truth.
As for (4), as Bob has pointed out, the evidence of Paul's epistles simply kills the hypothesis that the earliest Christians had a significantly lower Christology than that portrayed in the Gospels. The undoubtedly authentic Pauline epistles are jam packed with the highest Christology, and Paul (who, as Bart Ehrman himself admits, knew the founders of Christianity, including a member of Jesus' immediate family) expressly claims that he had compared his doctrine with theirs.
Bob Prokop writing:
Don't want to get bogged down in terminology here, but I'm not "staunchly defend[ing] innerancy". I happen to greatly dislike that term, as it has no universally agreed upon definition. But I am defending the Gospels' historicity - quite a different matter. An account can be historically accurate without being literally true in every fine detail. Otherwise, we would have no history at all.
You can't cite a pair of contradictory claims from the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke, but you just don't believe that they're substantially historical, and you kind of somehow feel that they're contradictory anyway, because each mentions so much stuff that the other leaves out.
I already mentioned the most glaring contradiction: Herod died in March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD. The best you can do is retreat to mere possibilities to salvage any harmony between the two accounts. Lots of things are possible, but are they plausible?
As far as Paul's lower christology, that is a complicated subject that is difficult for me to defend using a combox on someone else's blog.(This is not a Forum/Messageboard). I would steer you towards Dr. McGrath's book "The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context" where he lays out the claim that the earliest Jewish believers would have seen Jesus as the agent of Yahweh and not the incarnation of Yahweh, which would have been blasphemous to a Jewish monotheist.
With this said I am going to end with this: C.S. Lewis once remarked that Christianity never felt less real to him than when he was defending an argument using apologetics. I have to agree. The more an apologist resorts to ad hoc explanations to harmonize disparate accounts in the New Testament, the less likely I am to believe.
Nuff typed! I will see y'all again in a future discussion.
Walter,
Re: the census:
(1) That's not even prima facie a contradiction between Matthew and Luke; it's a charge that Luke got something wrong. So your saying this in response to my earlier comment is really beside the point.
(2) Luke has already dated these events to the reign of Herod the King (Luke 1:5). He further demonstrates elsewhere (Acts 5:37) that he is quite familiar with the census of AD 6 mentioned by Josephus. Therefore, readings of Luke 2:2 that are consistent with his knowledge of the census mentioned by Josephus are, all else being equal, preferable to a reading that makes Luke contradict himself.
(3) There are several reasonable ways to read the rather awkward Greek of Luke 2:1-2. Only one reading suggests that Luke (or his source) was dating the birth to the time of the census of AD 6 and thereby creates a prima facie tension within Luke's writings.
You dispute this, pointing to an essay by Richard Carrier. I pointed out in response that Carrier has a poor reputation as a translator of the Greek of the New Testament, and I directed your attention to nearly a hundred pages of detailed discussion by people who actually are qualified scholars, of the translation of Luke 2:2. As far as I can tell, you haven't bothered to look into any of it. (For what it's worth, I did read Carrier's article.)
I might add that Nigel Turner, who is the author of one of the leading textbooks on New Testament Greek, argues that Luke 2:2 should probably be translated, "This census was before the census taken when Quirinius was governor." [Turner, Grammatical Insights into the New Testament (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2004), pp. 23-24.] There is precedent for this use of πρῶτος, e.g. in Aristotle's Physics 8, 263a11; see also the use of πρῶτον in John 15:18. A large number of scholars of various persuasions think this is the best rendering of the Greek.
I just had to pop back in to show a quote from Father Raymond E. Brown:
Brown goes even further, calling into question the reliability of large sections of the New Testament. He encourages his readers to face the possibility that portions of Matthew and Luke "may represent non-historical dramatizations:"[10]
Indeed, close analysis of the infancy narratives makes it unlikely that either account is completely historical. Matthew's account contains a number of extraordinary or miraculous public events that, were they factual, should have left some traces in Jewish records or elsewhere in the New Testament (the king and all Jerusalem upset over the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem; a star which moved from Jerusalem south to Bethlehem and came to rest over a house; the massacre of all the male children in Bethlehem). Luke's reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong, as is his understanding of the Jewish customs of the presentation of the child and the purification of the mother in 2:22-24. Some of these events, which are quite implausible as history, have now been understood as rewritings of Old Testament scenes or themes.[11]
Excerpted from here: http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christian_Credibility.htm
Walter,
Thanks for that. So
(1) Brown is simply arguing from silence regarding Matthew,
(2) he is tendentiously assuming that πασαν την οικουμενην means the whole empire, notwithstanding Luke's use of a similar phrase elsewhere to mean Judea, and
(3) he has nothing to say (at least in your excerpt) about the hard evidence cited by all scholars since the days of Ramsay.
I doubt if anyone ever gave up anything but his faith on such flimsy grounds.
Here's another one just for Tim:
Some have tried to argue that the Greek of Luke actually might mean a census "before" the reign of Quirinius rather than the "first" census in his reign. As to this, even Sherwin-White remarks that he has "no space to bother with the more fantastic theories...such as that of W. Heichelheim's (and others') suggestion (Roman Syria, 161) that prôtê in Luke iii.2 means proteron, [which] could only be accepted if supported by a parallel in Luke himself."[10.1] He would no doubt have elaborated if he thought it worthwhile to refute such a "fantastic" conjecture. For in fact this argument is completely disallowed by the rules of Greek grammar. First of all, the basic meaning is clear and unambiguous, so there is no reason even to look for another meaning. The passage says hautê apographê prôtê egeneto hêgemoneuontos tês Syrias Kyrêniou, or with interlinear translation, hautê(this) apographê(census) prôtê[the] (first) egeneto(happened to be) hêgemoneuontos[while] (governing) tês Syrias(Syria) Kyrêniou[was] (Quirinius). The correct word order, in English, is "this happened to be the first census while Quirinius was governing Syria." This is very straightforward, and all translations render it in such a manner.
Excerpted from here:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/quirinius.html#Word
Right, Walter -- as I said, I read Carrier's article. The problem is just that what he says is false.
The interpretation in question does require that we take πρωτη as a term of comparison, on the model of John 1:15 (... πρωτος μου ην ...). But constructing a genitive of time with adverbs of comparison is done in the Septuagint, e.g., Jer. 29:2. It's a little awkward, but then, the whole sentence is somewhat awkward any way you slice it. And it avoids making Luke contradict himself -- a point you seem intent on ignoring.
More for Tim:
The majority view among modern scholars is that there was only one census, in 6 AD, and the author of the Gospel of Luke misidentified it with the reign of Herod the Great. In The Birth of the Messiah (1977), a detailed study of the infancy narratives of Jesus, the American scholar Raymond E. Brown concluded that "this information is dubious on almost every score, despite the elaborate attempts by scholars to defend Lucan accuracy."[72]James Dunn remarks: “It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Luke was mistaken”.[73] Geza Vermes comments, "from whatever angle one looks at it, the census referred to by Luke conflicts with historical reality".[74] W. D. Davies and E. P. Sanders: “on many points, especially about Jesus’ early life, the evangelists were ignorant … they simply did not know, and, guided by rumour, hope or supposition, did the best they could”.[75] J. P. Meier considered "attempts to reconcile Luke 2:1 with the facts of ancient history... hopelessly contrived",[76]. Raymond Edward Brown (May 22, 1928 - August 8, 1998), was an American Roman Catholic priest and Biblical scholar. ... James D. G. (Jimmy) Dunn was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. ... Geza Vermes (born 22 June 1924) is a Jewish scholar and writer on religious history, particularly Jewish and Christian. ... Ed Parish Sanders (born 1937) is a leading New Testament theologian (Th. ... John Paul Meier is a prominent Biblical scholar and Catholic priest. ...
Excerpted from here:
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Census-of-Quirinius#Sixteenth_to_eighteenth_centuries%20Encyclopedia%20%3E
I am done with this thread for good, now. I promise :-)
Walter,
What's your point? That a lot of people with advanced degrees think Luke made a mistake? I could have told you that already. And a lot of people with advanced degrees think he didn't. That's a wash.
In a case like this, counting noses doesn't advance the discussion. It all comes down to the evidence and the arguments.
'Why should coming to life a second time be any more unbelievable than the first time? '
Well, I'm convinced.
There is nothing remarkable about the resurrection.
It hardly proves there is a god as there was nothing extraordinary about it.
Bob Prokop writing:
To Steven Carr: No one was trying to "convince" you of anything. Please re-read the original post that started this whole conversation, especially the quote from George MacDonald. The whole point is that the are many things in this world that we take for granted, simply because they happen all the time. The fact that you and I are alive at all, with consciousness, free will, and inconceivably complex physical bodies, is utterly miraculous. We normally don't perveive this because we are surrounded by billions of such miracles. as the saying goes, "familiarity breeds contempt".
But until you come to grips with your unexamined predisposition against singularities, then there is no good reason to reject the Resurrection solely on the grounds that we don't see it happening every day.
My being here at all is so improbable (the odds against it approach infinity) that it qualifies as a miracle. It just happens to be one that happens all the time. Christ's coming to life a second time is not less probable simply because it happened only once.
Bob,
My being here at all is so improbable (the odds against it approach infinity) that it qualifies as a miracle. It just happens to be one that happens all the time. Christ's coming to life a second time is not less probable simply because it happened only once.
I'm sorry Bob, but this is complete and utter nonsense.
First, you're equivocating on the definition of miracle.
Second, if we take your claim as true, then we can concoct arbitrarily bizarre explanations for mundane events, and rank them as equally probable. But not every kooky explanation is equally probable.
When your car fails to start, why don't you look for the dragon that's causing the engine not to run?
Indeed, it is a tenet of rational thinking that the past is a guide to the future. If that were not so, then everything we know from experience would be worthless.
If you have an argument against Bayesian reasoning, you should state it in Bayesian terms, and then we'll see if it holds up.
Bob Prokop writing:
Thank you, Thank you, Dr. Logic!
You have precisely stated the thought process that I am questioning. You write, “it is a tenet of rational thinking that the past is a guide to the future.” But that is the case ONLY if you first make the (unproven) assumption that all events are commonplace. You have ruled out, prior to any discussion, the possibility of unique events. All I am asking is why? What is the justification, beyond “cause I said so!”, to this assumption?
By making it a “tenet”, you have decided the issue beforehand. Sorry, but that’s just not good enough.
As to the odds against our individual existence, the issue was best illustrated in a perfectly wonderful book by (of all things!) a Unitarian minister, Forrest Church, in Chapter 14 (Beating the Odds) of “Love and Death”. Indeed, I probably understated the case. The odds against any of us being here are an infinity of infinities to one.
Doctor Logic: DL is saying that the a priori probability that God would incarnate himself in Jesus ought to be assessed by gut feeling.
Um, is that supposed to be sarcasm? Of course I reject a "smooth distribution of probability" — that is to conflate probability with possibility. Or do you really suppose that God's becoming incarnate on the other side of the universe where no being could ever detect it is just as likely as becoming incarnate on Earth? But then I guess you'd also have to include "possibilities" such as God's becoming incarnate light-years away yet miraculously causing people to think they saw him on Earth, etc., etc. Or becoming incarnate two or three, etc. times but only being seen once. And of course becoming incarnate multiple times or as different creatures increases the possibilities — but at the same time reduces them because every additional fact puts restrictions on what else is possible [in that same universe]. Similarly, your claim rules out science: there are infinitely more possibilities without laws of nature than there are when restricted by laws, so we should never believe in natural regularity. We have evidence of Lincoln's getting shot? But it's vastly outnumbered by possibilities that he merely swooned and everyone around him suffered a mass hallucination, or planted false evidence just as a gag, or was replaced by alien pod replicates. Etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
the story is still vastly more likely to have arisen from a naturalistic scenario.
Except if you really meant what you said then, as indicated, "naturalistic scenarios" would always be less likely than supernatural alternatives. So the real conclusion you ought to draw is that given the infinity of ways God could have become incarnate rather than not being incarnate at all, is that you should believe that God definitely did become incarnate, even if you're not sure quite how or when. I doubt you'll convince anyone else that way, though.
Bob,
But that is the case ONLY if you first make the (unproven) assumption that all events are commonplace. You have ruled out, prior to any discussion, the possibility of unique events.
As Hume showed, the assumption of induction can never be proven deductively. But neither can deduction!
You yourself must subscribe to induction, and if you didn't, then you would be incapable of believing anything at all. Not even mathematics. But you're being inconsistent about it. You want to suspend induction when it's inconvenient for Christianity.
And, again, Bayesian reasoning does not rule out the possibility of unique events. Rather, it discounts the PROBABILITY of unique events by weighting possibilities equally. If I pick an apple from an orchard, that apple is NOT LIKELY to give me superhuman powers of telekinesis. But there's nothing in anything that I have said that suggests it is impossible. What we have is a lower bound on the frequency of apples giving people telekinetic powers (and on telekinetic powers in general). If we're rational, then that frequency observation conditions our expectation that an apply will give us telekinetic powers. Roughly speaking, if a trillion apples have been consumed without creating telekinetic effects, then we ought to think the odds of getting telekinetic powers from an apple are a trillion to one against. But that doesn't make it impossible.
In your defense of scripture, you state all sorts of mundane facts about kings, authors, human behavior, etc. You think it is improbable that people would act a certain way, e.g., that the NT authors would have written fiction. Buy why, by your logic, should we assume the people of the first century were like people of today? Why should we believe that people in the first century didn't just make stuff up? Why should we think humans in the first century didn't have magical powers of their own? It's only because YOU are assuming consistency and regularity. Maybe they were unique people! You just want to throw that consistency and regularity out the window when it suits your needs.
DL,
Similarly, your claim rules out science: there are infinitely more possibilities without laws of nature than there are when restricted by laws, so we should never believe in natural regularity.
You have this exactly backwards!
It is precisely because there are infinitely more possibilities without laws than when restricted by laws that we have a Bayesian inference to the laws in the first place!
I have a deck of cards that is either shuffled or sorted by suit and rank. I deal 2,3,4,5,6 of clubs off the top of the deck. Consistent with sorting. What should you rationally believe? Is the deck sorted or shuffled?
Well, while a shuffled deck is possible, it's not probable. You ought to believe the deck is sorted. There are 310 million alternative ways we could have dealt the top 5 cards of the top of the deck if the deck were shuffled. The observations are consistent with a tiny subset of possibilities consistent with shuffling, but necessarily true of the sorting scenario. That why inference from evidence can be so powerful when the alternative theory has more possibilities.
We have evidence of Lincoln's getting shot? But it's vastly outnumbered by possibilities that he merely swooned and everyone around him suffered a mass hallucination, or planted false evidence just as a gag, or was replaced by alien pod replicates. Etc.
Again, you have it backwards.
If I deal you a poker hand from a shuffled deck, the exact sequence of cards you receive is hyper improbable (again, 310 million to one). But you don't double-over in shock every time you're dealt a poker hand. This is because the aggregate probability of being dealt a hand is high, even as the individual possible sequences that contribute to the aggregate are low. You're gonna get something!
And the odds of getting one sequence is the same as the odds of getting any other.
If you told me a story about a person who was dealt a straight flush, in order, from a shuffled deck, it would be a little surprising, but not shocking. There are hundreds of millions of poker games a year. Probable every sequence is dealt very few years.
However, if you said that a person was dealt a card face up from a normal deck, and this card spontaneously transformed into a photo of Michael Jackson, I'm not going to believe you. The odds of this happening based on observed frequencies are far lower than the odds of multiple people all having schizophrenic psychosis all at the same time and misreporting the facts. That is, the "transforming to MJ" hand is far far less probable than even a straight flush.
That said, if you can repeat the card trick, we can easily be convinced. We can array equipment with enough reliability to confirm the phenomenon.
If, on the other hand, the card transformation only happened once, I won't believe you and I ought not believe you. Even if it really happened, it would be irrational for me to do so because the alternatives are MORE likely.
So, there are plenty of naturalistic scenarios (i.e., scenarios validated by our experience of frequencies) that can account for the NT. Yet you want to choose a scenario that is overwhelmingly discounted by our experience of frequencies. It makes no sense.
"Doctor Logic", for all his efforts, has only managed to prove the truth behind what Paul wrote in First Corinthians (1:19-26).
For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men.
"Doctor Logic", for all his efforts, has only managed to prove the truth behind what Paul wrote in First Corinthians (1:19-26).
Um, when you argue against reason itself, you lose the debate.
Thanks for the anti-intellectualism.
http://bit.ly/9rcAK6
Doctor Logic: You have this exactly backwards!
Quite possibly — I am trying to follow your line of thought and you don't seem to know whether you're coming or going. For instance, you seem to be confused about the laws in your unstated assumptions vs. the laws in your conclusions. In your example about the deck of cards, there is a regularity or pattern to be argued for in your conclusion (the order of the sorted deck). But there are also patterns implicit in your premises. You are assuming absolute laws of physics. You are assuming that no agent, natural or supernatural, manipulates the cards before you deal them. If we live in Wonderland and the cards are alive and can spontaneously reorder themselves because they don't want the Queen of Hearts to chop of their heads, then your conclusion won't follow. If solid objects can pass through each other and swiping your hand across the top of the deck might actually pull a card out from the middle somewhere, then your conclusion won't follow. You need to spell out your premises and justify your probabilities.
This is because the aggregate probability of being dealt a hand is high, even as the individual possible sequences that contribute to the aggregate are low. You're gonna get something!
You're going to get something IF a whole bunch of conditions hold true, from the laws of physics to Occam's razor. Where was Occam's razor when you were counting God's appearing as a thousand dragons on the other side of the universe as an equal probability to anything else? You're premises are wildly inconsistent depending on what conclusion you prefer.
Doctor Logick: Tell me, good sir, how was your journey to the new land of Australia?
DL: Truly, it was astounding! I saw divers delightful sights. I even beheld a black swan!
Doctor Logick: Liar! Every man knows all swans to be white.
DL: This is outrageous, sirrah! You dare to impugn my honesty? Why every member of my party can testify to the existence of these black swans!
Doctor Logick: Preposterous. The odds of such happening based on observed frequencies are far lower than the odds of multiple people all suffering madness all at the same time and misreporting the facts.
DL: Crikey! You, sir, are a quack.
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