Doubting Marcus

Science, Science, Science and Then a Miracle Happened

The distinguished lab coat of science should be more appealing than the cloak of the divine but selling miracles wrapped in science has always struck me as odd. There are many people who are determined to stress reliable methods were used to determine the facts surrounding a miracle while simultaneously holding that it is rational to believe the alleged miracle which followed those events was a violation of the natural rules which science and history completely depend on.

This has become a rather wide phenomenon, you see this in creationists somewhat in creationists who argue for Noah’s ark being scientifically believable, but perhaps most prominently this duality of thinking is present in the debate about Jesus’ resurrection. There some theologians impress upon us how good the evidence is that there was an empty tomb while still holding it reasonable to believe the resurrection itself was a miracle. Besides unfailingly being based on misunderstandings of history, science and often requiring lies, it seems more than a bit of an oddity to spend the bulk of your time appealing to science only to conclude with “and then a miracle happened.” I think people who do this have failed to see they undercut their own criteria for what makes a belief reasonable.

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The Race the Media Won’t Tell You About

Last week every conspiracists’ favorite politician, Texas congressmen Ron Paul announced his retirement. For those unaware, the cult of Ron Paul among conspiracy theorists is rather enormous but with his retirement they will need a new political hero in this epic real-life tale of good versus evil.

I’m genuinely curious as who they will select when Paul’s term ends at the end of the year. That said at this early point in the race to be living god of the conspiracists, officially known as the Ayn Rand Memorial position, here are my three favorites:

Allen West - The Florida congressman may be seen as an outsider in this race but what West lacks in constitution worship and support for isolationism he makes up for in rounded conspiratorial thinking. In a short couple of years in the national stage he has already brought McCarthyism back, used a Nazi analogy and compared himself to Harriet Tubman freeing the black sheeple who mindlessly follow the Democratic party. With that type of rhetoric what conspiracy theorist could resist?

Rand Paul - The natural successor, Ron Paul’s son, and current Kentucky senator cares so much about the limiting government that he would have allowed the racial discrimination of the old South to continue rather than use government to stop it. Such a strong streak of anti-government sentiment will be hard to beat but he does have one major drawback. Choosing Ron Paul’s son would reek of aristocracy and the only thing more evil then aristocracy to a conspiracy theorist is… not accepting their conspiracy theory as true.

Jesus - In what would undoubtedly dismay the many atheist conspiracists, the return of the holy one from Nazereth to his rightful place as defender of the United States constitution [citation needed] would send real patriots for liberty into a frenzy and, as an added bonus, cause wine prices to plummet. If you listen to Christian conspiracists none could be better at returning America to the land of the free and the home of the inalienable property-rights than it’s true founder, a 1st century Palestinian Jew with a streak for giving up your worldly possessions.

The Trinity Challenge for Easter

Creating a complete and noncontradictory account of Jesus’ resurrection from the four gospels has been an ongoing challenge from nonbelievers to Christians every Easter for a few years now. This type of challenge highlights the fundamental and mutually exclusive  nature of the gospels with regards to perhaps the key event in the life of Jesus but another major problem in traditional Christianity comes to my mind on Easter: the doctrine of the trinity. The idea that the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit are God yet the three are distinct persons has officially been with Christianity since the Nicene Council but has never been shown to be anything but incoherent. Yes there have been attempts to explain how 3 persons can be one substance but when they rise above mere word games they all devolve into modalism or some form of polytheism, both of which are banished within the majority of Christian denominations.

The problem is if the Son is equivalent to God and the Father is equivalent to God then the Son and the Father are necessarily identical (If S=G and F=G then S=F). The alleged events of Easter brings this problem into focus because the Son was sacrificed by the Father to the Father but if they are both God then the memespeak is correct and God chose to “sacrifice myself to myself to save you from myself.” However according to the Bible Jesus was admittedly not omniscient and also prayed to a “you” separate from himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. If these are attempted to be overcome by saying Jesus was both fully human and fully divine then the Father and the Holy Spirit, which were not at any point fully human, then they are not identical to Jesus.

I have to admit the reconciliation of these problems seems so hopeless to me that even the mention of them almost seems unfair, as if I’m picking on Christianity, but in fairness the original Easter Challenge is similarly unresolvable. Nevertheless I am going to ask for clarification of what it is exactly Christians believe. I am not asking that Christians explain the doctrine of the trinity coherently, that almost certainly can not be done, I’m merely asking that they clarify the relationships within the trinity for the Easter events and to follow that to it’s full logical conclusion about the sacrifice, the death of Jesus and the implications of the resurrection. For example, if Jesus is God then Jesus necessarily sacrificed himself to himself but also because Jesus died before his resurrection then God died, which makes the resurrection all the more impressive. Simple enough, right? Good luck.

Can you follow who did what to whom on Easter to it’s logical conclusion?

Camping With Jesus

Sometime early this Sunday morning when Harold Camping is wondering how to explain that he is still right because the world did “spiritually end” there will be many, including numerous Christians, who call him out for being dimwitted. Who dares suppose they know the plan of God? In truth Camping will just be (again) adding his name to a list of those who wrongly predicted the end was nigh. Accompanying Camping on that lengthy list are those of many different religious views but in one respect Camping, like many Christian apocalypticists before him, will be achieving one of his most important goals albeit not in the way he intended. This is because when Camping is wrong yet again he will be following in the footsteps of Jesus himself who believed the world would end within the generation he spoke with.

“At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory…” Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. - Mark 13:26, 30

“Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” - Luke 9:27

…Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I am,” said Jesus. “And you [Caiaphas] will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” - Mark 14:61-62

Even if these words hadn’t been Christian scripture their sentiment of an imminent end of the world could easily be heard today on the lips of Harold Camping and previously in best-selling books like Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth or in Edgar Wisenhunt’s 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. It’s verses like these, which survive historical scrutiny, that cause essentially all reputable scholars on the subject of the historical Jesus to conclude that Jesus was an apocalyptic Jewish teacher who taught people how to live their lives given that the world as they knew it would soon be ending. This idea not only makes sense of the words and actions attributed to him that survive historical analysis but also the actions and belief of the early followers of Jesus and this view is found in the authentic Pauline epistles:

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. - 1 Cor 15:20

…we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. - 1 Thes 4:17

…for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. - 1 Thes 5:2-3

So while many Christians will scoff at the idea that the world is soon to end, or that any person could possibly know the date, we should all remember the question they so often like to pose “What would Jesus do?” The lesson is not that Jesus wouldn’t ridicule Camping’s followers, it is the irony that Jesus did that which modern Christians now see as worthy of scorn. The day will soon come in which Camping and his followers will be largely forgotten but the day in which all Christians should acknowledge that in many ways Jesus was no different than Camping is already upon us.

Why No One Should Take Miracle Claims at Face Value

American physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff once conducted an experiment in 1972 with subject Ingo Swann and the following is what happened according to their reports:

Swann focused his attention on a magnetometer, which detected the rate of decay in magnetic fields, and the output of the magnetometer doubled for about 30 seconds. When asked to stop thinking about the device it’s output fell back to normal but when Swann spoke of the magnetometer it again showed a spike.

Given that no one denies these experiments did take place what conclusions, if any, should we draw from these facts alone? Should we believe that the events are merely a fabrication and that such experiments never took place? Can we conclude that what they implied, Swann psychically controlled the magnetometer, necessarily occurred?

While nearly everyone will acknowledge without some reason to doubt the events really happened it’s reasonable to conclude that these experiments took place but the same can not be said for assuming the events took place as described. Given just these facts it would be fine to conclude it’s possible it happened as Targ and Puthoff described but it’s not at all reasonable to say it necessarily is the case or even to believe that it occurred this way. Swann could have in fact controlled the magnetometer with his mind but the magnetomter could also have been malfunctioning, there could have been interference, there could be missing details from the story which demonstrate that this was an elaborate trick, etc.

Without repeated tests in which multiple magnetometers were used, the testing area checked for possible interference, Swann examined for all possible trickery, etc. you’d merely be taking their reports that it happened as proof that it happened. In order to conclude the best explanation is that Swann really was controlling the magnetometer you’d have to weigh the array of possible explanations, determine what would rule out each explanation, see which explanation fits best with the observed phenomena and all similar phenomena and so on. To believe Swann really did control the magnetometer with his mind without some way to subject the claim to this type of critical analysis would be to reject all your experience, and all known experience, about how the world works simply because someone reported something which seemingly defies explanation. You would, in other words, be believing without justification. The fact that in this example, taken from James Randi’s book FlimFlam!, we have additional details which clarify that the events didn’t really occur as described is beside the point.

This is a problem that underlies all miracle claims from holy books. Without some way to test the subjects and verify the abilities claimed you’d simply be taking the human author’s word as proof that these miracles indeed occurred as reported. Unlike the Targ and Puthoff experiment, which happened in 1972, these miracle claims come from a pre-scientific age in which we can be all but assured no proper cross-examinations of the events took place let alone the events described being later tested in a controlled setting. It’s not hard to imagine that a modern magician with many simple illusions would be hailed as divine in the times of holy books because people simply didn’t have a firm grasp on the nature of reality or the methods by which they can be deceived (indeed many magicians use simple tricks like this today to fool people into believing they have paranormal powers). This doesn’t even account for the overwhelming possibility that during that the oral or written traditions that proceeded the accounts available to us today were consciously and unconsciously bolstered and/or completely fabricated.

This is why the amount of evidence that those in the times of the alleged miracles really believed these miracles occurred is not relevant to establishing they really did occur or that it is reasonable to believe they occurred. Without some way to subject the claims of miracles to the type of controlled analysis required to rule out alternative explanations all you have is claims of miracles and such claims are no more worthy of belief than Targ and Puthoff’s claim that Swann really did control the decay of a magnetic field with his mind. Unless you are prepared to accept all stories like those of Swann at face value, which would include many mutually exclusive claims, you certainly shouldn’t accept those of the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, the Bible or any other holy book.