Seeing Reality As it is, Not As We Wish to See it.

Too many people see reality as they wish to see it, and not how it actually is. The atheist, for example, ignores the obvious design evident in living beings because, for some strange reason, he doesn't want there to be a designer. When you have some atheist scientists saying that the probability that even the most primitive of life would originate by random chance is a lot less than 1 out of 10^1018 (e.g., Eugene Koonin) -- there are only 10^80 atoms in the observable universe -- then the game is over. The smartest scientists in the world cannot make even the most primitive forms of life, yet the atheist wants us to believe that life spontaneously generated by random chance. Laughable. Literally. The atheist persists in seeing reality as he wants to see it -- he has already made up his mind that, come hell or highwater, he cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Likewise, "orthodox" religious believers see reality not as it is, but as they wish to see it. The orthodox Christian does all sorts of mental gymnastics to try to justify God commanding people to kill little innocent kids -- and even infants -- in the Old Testament (e.g., 1 Samuel 15:1-3). The orthodox religious believer will say, "oh, God was just being merciful when he ordered the slaughter of infants; he was just sending them straight to heaven," or "oh these stories weren't meant to be taken literally." He will make up any number of theories to avoid confronting reality. He cannot fathom that his holy book contains errors, even in the moral realm. He sees reality as he wishes it to be, not as it is. The same mentality is present, mutatis mutandis, in orthodox Muslims, Mormons, etc. Alas, man's tribalistic nature blinds him to the truth. And this tribalistic nature and confirmation bias is present not just in the religious realm, but in all walks of life. Nowhere do we Americans see this tribalistic mentality on display more than in our current political climate. We must try to see reality as it is, not as we wish to see it. Only by confronting the truth can we craft solutions to the world's many problems.

The Age of Humans According to Genesis and Science: A Contradiction?

In this post I pose a number of questions regarding the eternal issue of Genesis vs. science. I don't claim to have any solutions here. Many parts of the Old Testament have always struck me as rather primitive and problematic for the modern believer. A particularly thorny issue for the modern believer is how to reconcile the fact that the Book of Genesis strongly implies that human beings are only 6,000 or so years old, with the fact that the best current scientific estimates say that homo sapiens sapiens began as a species approximately 200,000 years ago? I suspect that many of the Christian intelligentsia simply ignore this question and sweep it under a rug. The world class Christian theologian and philosopher William Lane Craig has admitted that this is what he has done in a recent podcast, and that thorough research into the "scary" issue may lead him to conclude that the Genesis account is simply factually incorrect.

I should point out that this issue is logically distinct from, albeit still associated with, the evolution debate.[1] After all, even if one denies that humans have common ancestors, the science simply precludes humans' being ~6,000 years old -- our species is much older. I suppose one could simply deny the validity of all the science that leads to this conclusion, but that seems to be completely indefensible. Multiple strands of scientific evidence coalesce to demonstrate that human beings are far more ancient than 6,000 or so years. Even if one grants that there are gaps in the genealogies of Genesis, which seems plausible, the gaps are going to give you a few thousand years extra at best (perhaps dating Adam and Eve c. ~10,000 years ago); they're not going to bridge the huge gap between 6,000 and ~200,000 years. And most scholarly commentators on Genesis seem to think that the the genealogies were meant to be taken more or less in a historical sense. They seem to be correct to me; even if many aspects of Genesis are not meant to be taken literally, which doesn't seem implausible, the idea that the genealogies are not meant to be taken more or less literally strikes me as far-fetched. Perhaps the longevity of some of the people in the genealogies are exaggerated, but certainly the genealogies as a whole are meant to be more or less historical. From what I have read, it seems safe to infer that the Christian tradition has overwhelmingly viewed them as historical. So the burden of proof is on the exegete who claims otherwise.

Some Christian theologians and philosophers have tried to reconcile recent science and Genesis by saying that homo sapiens sapiens go back ~200,000 years, but souls were only infused in two individuals of the species, viz., Adam and Eve, about 6,000 - 10,000 years ago. While this is a creative solution, it honestly strikes me as the machinations of delusional rationalizing theologians. There are multiple problems with this narrative, but I will just list two. First, since we would have inherited harmful mutations from our common ancestors we wouldn't have been initially created free from death, disease, etc., as the Christian tradition has always claimed was the case prior to the Fall of man. Second, we have evidence of tools being used and pictures being drawn considerably earlier than 10,000 years ago, but the use of tools and especially artwork suggests that there were minds roaming the Earth considerably earlier than 10,000 years ago. So the idea the idea that Adam and Eve were the first humanoid persons or creatures with minds on Earth (around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago) seems to be incorrect.

So what is the solution for the Christian or Jewish believer in Genesis? I don't know. I personally believe that the genealogies are meant to be largely historical, that modern science is correct that the human species are far more ancient than 6,000 - 10,000 years old, and that the aforementioned ensoulment theory is hopeless.

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[1] For what its worth, I personally think that Michael Behe's position is the closest to the truth -- viz., that random mutations and natural selection are certainly not the motor of evolutionary change, but that common ancestry is still true to some extent (though I confess to have only devoted any substantial time to studying the former; I adopt the latter position because that is what the scientific consensus says is true, and the prima facie case for common ancestry -- as distinct from the bolder claim of universal common ancestry -- seems decent).

A Googillion Number of Perfect Beings and Orthodox Trinitarianism

A few years ago I wrote and posted the following argument against the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (OT) on Facebook. I thought that it would be good to post it on this blog. Note that by 'perfect being' I mean a being that has all perfections essentially and lacks all perfections essentially. 

1. Assume orthodox Trinitarianism (OT) is true. [assp]
2. If OT, then possibly, there exists more than one perfect being. [prem]
3. So, possibly, there exists more than one perfect being. [1,2 MP]
4. If possibly, there exists more than one perfect being, then possibly, there exists a googillion perfect beings. [prem]
5. So, possibly, there exists a googillion of perfect beings. [3,4 MP]
6. If possibly, there exists a googillion amount of perfect beings, then there exists a googillion amount of perfect beings. [prem]
7. So, there exists a googillion of perfect beings. [5,6 MP]
8. If (7), then ~(1). [prem]
9. So, ~(1).  [7,8 MP]

The argument is a logically valid argument. The only premises that are not assumptions and which do not follow from the logical rules of inference are (2), (4),(6), and (8).

Premise (2) is clearly true on OT. I will stipulate that OT is the Christianity that is consistent with the first part of the Athanasian Creed—it is widely accepted as teaching Christian "orthodoxy". On orthodox Christianity, the three Persons share one divine nature (ousia), and so have all the same properties that go along with that nature. As the Athanasian Creed says, "the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost." So, the three Persons have all perfections essentially and lack all imperfections essentially.

Premise (4) also seems to be true. Presumably, the only reason that one would deny the existence of a multiplicity of perfect beings is if it is impossible that more than one perfect being exists. However, the orthodox Trinitarian does hold that it is possible for  more than one perfect being to exists; on (OT),  the Father is perfect, the Son is perfect, and the Holy Spirit is perfect—so you have three perfect beings. Given this, a fortiori, it is possible that there exists three perfect beings. And since the orthodox Trinitarian grants that there can be a multiplicity of such beings, there doesn't seem to be any principled way for the Trinitarian to deny the possibility of there being more than three perfect beings. Why can't there be ten, a billion, or a googiliion of such beings? The burden of proof is certainly on the advocate of OT to argue that (4) is false. 

Premise (6) seems to be true.  This is because existing necessarily seems to be a perfection. If this is the case, then it follows that if there is a possible world W in which a perfect being P exists, then P has the property of existing necessarily in W. So given that there is a possible world in which P necessarily exists, it follows, by the S5 axiom, that P exists in every possible world—including the actual one.

Premise (8) seems true. Though the Athanasian Creed does not explicitly say there can't be a billion or more perfect beings, but this is clearly implied by the creed.

So it seems like we have a decent argument against the orthodox version of the Trinity. In my opinion, premise (4) is the only controvertible premise.  Perhaps one could argue that it is unmotivated; but I don't know – at the very least the argument seems reasonable to me. It does seem like the property of being greater than any other being is a perfection, but clearly only one being or entity can have this property. So there can only be one perfect being. If one is going to reject this reasoning, then why can there be only three perfect beings, rather than four, five, six, or a googillion of them? 

The Miracle of the Holy Fire -- a Pious Orthodox Fraud

Every year on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter), thousands of Orthodox faithful (both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox) gather at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where they participate in a so-called miraculous ritual -- the Miracle of the Holy Fire. To be concise, the ritual consists of many Orthodox faithful gathering with unlit candles outside of the alleged tomb of Jesus, which is itself housed inside the church of the Holy Sepulcher (and there is decent evidence that it is the authentic place of Jesus' burial). They wait for the Greek Orthodox Patriarch to enter the tomb with his unlit candles and come out with a supernatural flame -- the Holy Fire. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem enters the tomb and makes a short prayer; it appears that sometimes some other clerics accompany him. After the short prayer it is alleged by the faithful that his candle(s) lights up miraculously. He then walks out of the tomb and hands the fire off to other people, starting with clerics. It is also alleged that the fire doesn't burn for the initial few minutes (many in the interwebs claim around 30 minutes, or even exactly 33 minutes for the age of Christ). So we have the two following extraordinary claims here: 

(1) The patriarch's candles are supernaturally lit in the tomb, 

and that 

(2) The fire doesn't burn for a few minutes after its miraculous descent.

I will now examine these two claims, starting with the second first, as it is the easiest to disprove. 

(2) is clearly false. We have thousands of people attending this Holy Saturday ritual in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher every year. And a significant number of the people have recording devices with them; in fact it is almost always broacast live by some stations. If (2) were true, then videos of people putting their hand in the fire for ten seconds or more would have surfaced by now. Unsurprisingly, we have no such videos. The videos that I have seen online attempting to document the non-burning quality of the flames (e.g., this one) are just of people waving around the edge of the candle flame very quickly over their bodies, not really impressive feats -- and certainly not ones that require an appeal to the supernatural. And the pictures probably just caught that very small timeframe where a part of the person's body goes over the flame. There are images of skeptics and people in totally different contexts doing the same thing with candle flames. Here are some such images:

As you can see, there is nothing remotely supernatural about such feats. Again, if (2) were actually true, then we would have expected there to be videos of people keeping their hands in the supposed holy flame for more than ten seconds. In fact, we should expect some videos demonstrating these for a lot longer intervals, since the claim is that it doesn't burn for a few minutes. But of course we have neither type of video. Therefore, (2) is clearly false. 

Now, just because (2) is false does not necessarily mean that (1) is also false. So what about (1)? Well, (1) is not as easy to disprove as (2). But this not surprising in the slightest, since skeptics, cameras, and the like are not allowed with the patriarch in the tomb when the alleged miracle happens. Nevertheless, the evidence for (1) is almost non-existent. People are not allowed in the Tomb when the patriarch enters and "retrieves" the alleged holy fire. [1] So it doesn't seem like we have good positive testimonial evidence from people in a position to know that the patriarch's candle is supernaturally lit. Even a cursory look at the alleged historical testimonial evidence for the genuineness of this miracle reveals that none of the these people actually witnessed the candle being supernaturally lit. All we can responsibly infer from these testimonies, and I will assume that they are properly and accurately referenced, is that this ritualistic practice can be dated to around the ninth century at the earliest. Indeed, the absence of early documentary evidence for this ritual is itself suggestive of its non-supernatural character; but I will say no more in this regards, as a philosophical and historical excursus is beyond the scope of this blog post.

So is there any tangible evidence that the patriarch's candle is supernaturally and not naturally lit? Well, many of the pious faithful claim that Israeli guards search the patriarch before he goes into the tomb. If this were true, and if we could rule out that there is some sort of igniting mechanism in the tomb, then this would indeed be some evidence for the genuineness of the miracle. But it is just not true; as a matter of fact Israeli guards do not search the patriarch before he enters the tomb. Prior to entering, and as as a sign of humility, the patriarch just takes off all of his clerical garments apart from a white sticharion, the most basic of priestly vestments. And it is not the Israeli security guards but other clerics who help him do this. The Israeli guards appear to just be there for security, and this is probably how the urban legend that they search him originated. But you don't have to take my word for it. Here is a video of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem disrobing and entering the tomb; and here is another one. You can see that the Israeli guards don't really touch him at all. It would be trivially easy for the patriarch to sneak in a match or a lighter. Moreover, we have no good evidence that the tomb is even searched by people unsympathetic to the miracle prior to the patriarch's entrance. As we have seen, Israeli security personnel don't even search who enters. So the possibility that there is some igniting mechanism inside the tomb remains very real. [2]

All in all, there is no good evidence for this alleged miracle, evidence which would overcome its low prior probability. For those not acquainted with Bayesian probability theory, the probability of a proposition P is equivalent to the probability of P prior to consideration of the specific evidence for P. So if I roll a fair die, I know that the prior probability that it will land on a 6 is 1/6, or about 16.7%. But if my friend tells me that someone has weighted the die to be biased towards sixes, then the probability that it will fall on a 6 is obviously going to be greater than 16.7%. My consideration of this relevant piece of information raises the probability that I will roll a 6, yielding a posterior probability greater than 16.7%. The posterior probability of P is just equivalent to the probability of P posterior to consideration of the specific evidence for P. Miraculous claims have low prior probabilities, which is why the supposed miracle of the Holy Fire has a low prior probability. But that doesn't mean that consideration of specific evidence cannot overcome low prior probabilities to yield a high posterior probability. The prior probability that a paralyzed friend of yours was healed is very low. Your default position should be to disbelieve this claim unless you come across adequate evidence of its truth. Perhaps ten highly reliable witnesses, some of them atheists, independently reported that this man was instantaneously healed after he partook in the Eucharist communion. And perhaps there are medical documents prior to the alleged healing that document your friend's paralysis. The conglomeration of these facts would be sufficient to overcome the low prior probability that a miracle actually happened, yielding a posterior probability greater than .50.  But this is very unusual; the evidence for miraculous claims is usually insufficient to overcome the low prior probability for their occurrence. So one would be unjustified in believing in them. The miracle of the Holy Fire seems like no exception here, as there is hardly any positive evidence that overcomes the low prior probability.  Reasonable and unbiased people should agree that the prior probability of this miracle is low, and that this low prior probability is not overcome by the specific evidence.

In conclusion, no reasonable and objective person should believe in the miracle of the Holy Fire. The evidence for its authenticity is pretty much nonexistent. It is clearly a pious fraud perpetrated by some of the orthodox hierarchy who are afraid that revealing the truth would cause a massive scandal among the faithful. Shame on them. Sincere and ethical non-religious people are a lot closer to God than these frauds.

EDIT1: I spoke to a priest who has a priest friend very close to the event in question. He states that the patriarch just naturally lights the candles. This is some positive evidence that the miracle in question is in fact no such thing. 

 

EDIT2: Here's a recent testimony of an Armenian bishop who apparently works in or around the Church. He is speaking to an Israeli journalist and explicitly says the fire is lit from a lamp!

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[1] There are a few first-hand but unsourced testimonies floating out there in the interwebs; I will refrain from citing them until I can independently verify the sources (and, as we shall soon see, I do the same for the negative testimonies)

 

[2] Indeed, we apparently have second-hand testimony of this from clerics, and even orthodox bishops, floating out there in the interwebs. But I will not cite what they allegedly say here because I cannot access and independently verify the sources myself. Also circulating on the interwebs is the alleged prayer that the patriarch apparently utters before the alleged miracle, and it seems to imply that the flame is naturally lit. My sense is that these are accurate testimonies, as the relevant sources are cited to the page -- unlike the alleged positive testimony I've seen -- and as far as I have seen critics do not dispute them but attempt to explain them away. However, out of an abundance of scholarly care I will refrain from citing them, as I cannot independently verify the sources. So bear in mind the case against the genuineness of the miracle is very likely stronger than the admittedly quick one being made in this post.

"The Experience of God is Impossible" - Anthony Kenny

This is an interview I just found of Anthony Kenny, a former Catholic priest turned agnostic and a very fine philosopher. What caught my eye in the interview is Kenny's claim that the experience of God is "impossible." I tend to agree with Anthony Kenny that the experience of God is impossible. But it seems like every traditional theist would, or the very least should, agree. Of course no one can directly experience an essentially spaceless,timeless, and immaterial entity who is the ground of all being, much less one whose essence just is to exist. It seems that when believers say they have this or that experience of God, what they really mean is that they had an indirect and unnatural experience of God -- i.e., they experience His effects in time. So when someone says they had a (typical) mystical experience of God, Kenny and I would just translate that to "I experienced certain unnatural sensations of love, peace, etc., which are the indirect effects of God. " Somewhat tangentially, I suppose this line of reasoning makes sense of St. John's claim that "no one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is at the Father’s side, has made Him known (John 1:18)". The experience of God is impossible, and natural reason alone can only bequeath to us a (mostly) apophatic knowledge of God, i.e., of what He is not. We can infer, for example, that there exists a cause of the universe that is not material, not timeless, not caused, not limited in knowledge, not this or that, but we can not arrive at positive knowledge of what He is unless he chooses to reveal himself (e.g., through Jesus of Nazareth). And even if and when he does, even if God reveals to us positive information about what he is (e.g., a Trinity of love), this positive knowledge would be extremely limited and we still wouldn't experience God per se. In summary, the agnostic philosopher Kenny is right that it is in principle impossible to experience God, but that doesn't appear to be a problem for traditional theists. Believers just use the word "experience" in a more permissive or semantically fluid way than Kenny does.

I quote the relevant excerpt from the interview below: 

Experience of God is impossible. From a philosophical point of view, if God is a transcendent spirit, he can’t be the object of experience in the way other things can be the objects of experience. We experience things by the activity of discriminating — colour changes, the table ends, a sound gets louder, and so on — but, in God, there’s nothing to discriminate: all is everlastingly the same. That doesn’t mean that nothing can be said about God. People are saying things all the time — but not on the basis of experience. People who see visions are not really seeing God, in my view. A revelation by God is not the same as an experience of God. The Sermon on the Mount was a kind of revelation to the people who heard it, but they experienced Jesus, not the divine Spirit.