Subversive Thinking

Atheist philosopher Stephen Law's skeptical argument against Jesus' existence and agnostic historian Bart Ehrman's reply

2012-01-24T13:52:00.001-08:00

In his blog, atheist philosopher Stephen Law, poses a formal argument to be skeptical of Jesus's existence (this argument is a fine example of how the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" skeptical principle can be used to doubt whatever claim you don't want to believe. In the case of Jesus' existence, virtually no professional historian or scholar doubts of his existence on the grounds of an argument like Law's... I'll give as an example the best-selling author and influential critic of Christianity, the agnostic historian and New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman's reply to the denialism of Jesus' existence).

You have to keep in mind that Law is a philosopher, not a professional historian. So, in order to evaluate some of Law's premises in his argument, you will have to compare Law's knowledge of ancient history with the knowledge of history of contemporary professional historians.

Law's argument is this:

1. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In the absence of extraordinary evidence there's excellent reason to be skeptical about the claims.

2. There is not extraordinary evidence for any of the divine/miraculous stuff in the NT documents.

3. Therefore (from 1 and 2), there's excellent reason to be skeptical about those extraordinary claims.

4. Where testimony/documents combine both mundane and extraordinary claims, and there's excellent reason to be skeptical about the extraordinary claims, then there's pretty good reason to be skeptical even about the mundane claims, at least until we possess some pretty good independent evidence of their truth.

5. The NT docs combine extraordinary and mundane claims about Jesus.

6. There's no pretty good independent evidence for even the mundane claims about Jesus (such as that he existed)

7. Therefore (from 3, 4, 5, and 6), there's pretty good reason to be skeptical about whether Jesus existed.

Let's to comment briefly on some of the premises of this argument:

Regarding premise 1 (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In the absence of extraordinary evidence there's excellent reason to be skeptical about the claims.), we can reply, quoting this author: "Skeptics, both of the genuine and the pseudo variety, have elevated this double standard to a principle of science: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence! But this principle does not hold up to logical scrutiny, because a claim is only ordinary or extraordinary in relation to a theory. For the sake of making this point, let us assume a scenario in a hypothetical new science in which there are two pieces of evidence to be discovered, A and B, each equally credible, each one suggesting an obvious, but incorrect explanation (call them (1) and (2)). (1) and (2) are mutually incompatible, and a third, highly non obvious explanation (3) that accounts for both A and B is actually correct.

As chance would have it, one of the two pieces of evidence A,B will be discovered first. Let A be that piece of evidence, and further suppose that the scientists working in that hypothetical field all subscribe to the principle of the double standard. After the discovery of A, they will adopt explanation (1) as the accepted theory of their field. At a later time, when B is discovered, it will be dismissed because it contradicts (1), and because A and B are equally credible, but A is ordinary relative to (1) and B is extraordinary.

The end result is that our hypothetical science has failed to self-correct. The incorrect explanation (1) has been accepted, and the correct explanation (3) was never found, because B was rejected. I therefore submit that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is not suitable as a guiding principle for sound scientific research. All evidence, whether it supports accepted theories or not, should be given the same level of critical scrutiny. "

Ordinary or extraordinary are relational properties of claims relative to a theory or a body of knowledge. In the case of New Testament documents referring to Jesus, they contain extraordinary claims relative to the naturalistic, atheistic worldview, but not relative to a theistic worldview in which God, whenever he wanted and for purposes which only he fully knows, could intervene selectively in certain events (and a theistic worldview was essential in Jesus' teachings and hence is part of the religious context to understand Jesus' putative miracles).

If you assume a body of knowledge or theory or worldview which excludes a given X phenomenon, then whatever claim for the existence of X is intrinsically and by definition considered extraordinary. For example, if you assume atheistic materialism, then phenomena like miracles, survival of consciousness or paranormal phenomena are antecedently improbable (in fact, impossible). This is why a materialist like Richard Wiseman concede the evidence for remote viewing but remains skeptical of its existence appealing to is putative "extraordinary" nature: "I think that they meet the usual standards for a normal claim, but are not convincing enough for an extraordinary claim."

Hence, it is not the intrinsic qualitity of the evidence, but the putative extraordinary nature of the claim (considered in the context of a assumed materialistic worldview) which precludes Wiseman's belief in the evidence.

In case of Law, since his naturalism precludes the miraculous as "normal" phenomena, whatever claim of supernatural events is, by definition, extraordinary, and give us a reason to be skeptical of such claims.

Premise 6 is simply false. An example of a mundane claim related to Jesus is his death by crucifixion. It was a common method of execution employed by Romans and more importantly, this fact is attested in independent non-Christian sources of the same period. For example, historian Josephus comments "When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of highest standing amongst us, had condemmed him to be crucified" (Antiquities, 18.64).

As consequence of this independent evidence (plus other credible Christian and non-Christian sources), virtually all historians and scholars agree that Jesus died by crucifixion (which implies Jesus' existence). This is why, even a revisionist and radical skeptical and atheist scholar like John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar has conceded "That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be" (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 145).

Again, Law is not a professional historian and probably this is the reason why he claims a premise like the number 6, a premise which any major (atheist) professional historian and New Testament scholar would consider simply ignorant, incompetent, agenda-driven and ridiculous. (The only "scholars" who assert this are an extremely tiny minority of atheist fanatics, like for example online atheist apologist Richard Carrier, or Jesus Seminar "scholar" Robert Price, who have not much weight or influence in the academic community with their idiosyncratic ideas. These individuals have as their main purpose in life to destroy Christianity and the best way to do it, they believe, is to deny Jesus' existence).

Finally, in response to people skeptical of Jesus' existence, agnostic scholar and historian Bart Ehrman comments:

Bart Ehrman vs. Craig Evans debate: "Does the New Testament present a reliable portrait of the Historical Jesus?"

2012-01-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

Edward Feser lecture: Natural Theology must be based in the philosophy of nature, not natural science

2012-01-23T05:10:00.000-08:00

Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara, an M.A. in religion from the Claremont Graduate School, and a B.A. in philosophy and religious studies from the California State University at Fullerton.

William Lane Craig and Peter Williams vs Andrew Copson and Arif Ahmed - Cambridge Union Society God Debate, Oct 2011

2012-01-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

In the facebook page of the Cambridge Union Society, you can read the voting results of the above debate: "On the Motion - "This House Believes God is Not a Delusion": Ayes 243, Abstentions 129, Noes 229: The motion passes by 14 votes." in favor of Craig/Williams vs atheists Copson and Ahmed.

It's interesting and even astonishing that in a so prestigious scholarly debating society like the Cambridge Union (not precisely a friend of Christianity), Christian philosophers William Lane Craig and Peter Williams have beaten atheists Andrew Copson and Arif Ahmed.

In my opinion, the format of the debate wasn't ideal for a serious scholarly discussion. Formal philosophical arguments need to be examined carefully, slowly and in depth, without ditstractive cavils and uninformed objections from "the public" (who tend to be ignorant of the most sophisticated arguments for and against a given thesis). Moreover, in a debate (in which both sides present philosophical argumentation) the need for a careful reflection and objective evaluation of the arguments in their strongest formulations is even more needed.

In any case, even in these less than perfect conditions, the atheist debaters lost in their own "home".

This is further evidence of the extreme intellectual weakness of the atheist case.

A french psychic makes predictions for 2012 -- From 30 years ago (Subtitles in English)

2012-01-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

I have no idea who that guy is, and I don't trust in that video (it seems to be fake, indeed). In any case, I let the video here for your consideration because it has caused some interest on the internet.

Regarding the "end of the world" in 2012, I don't think it is going to happen. I think Mayan prophecies have been largely misrepresented, but this is a complex topic.

Regarding an "encounter with aliens" in 2012, after my study of ufology, I think there is evidence (not conclusive, but more or less good and interesting) to think some beings outside the Earth have been in touch with us for a long time. This could include beings from other planets, or from other dimensions (in both cases, they could be considered "aliens").

I don't discard that a "open, public contact" will happen some day, but I see no reason to think it will happen in 2012.

The two faces of Bart Ehrman: The scholar vs the debater. An analogy with skeptics Richard Wiseman and Ray Hyman

2012-01-11T05:49:00.000-08:00

Studying carefully and critically the literature pro and against the case for Jesus' resurrection, I've identified a consistent pattern of dishonesty, sophistry and double standard in some skeptical scholars which is very similar to the one typical of paranormal skeptics like Richard Wiseman and Ray Hyman. Like in the case of parapsychology, this pattern tends to support the thesis that skeptics don't have good arguments against the position that they attack (psi, in case of paranormal skeptics; or Jesus' resurrection, in case of New Testament skeptical scholars). So, they're forced to use sophistry in order to support their case.

I'm going to give irrefutable evidence for this contention, using as an example the leading and influential agnostic New Testament scholar and historian Bart Erhman.

Bart Ehrman: the scholar:

Remember that the 4 main historical facts used commonly as evidence for Jesus's resurrection are 1)The burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea; 2)the empty tomb; 3)Jesus' post mortem apparences and 4)The origin of the Christian belief. (Actually, there are at least 12 historical facts that could be quoted as part of the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection, but just the 4 mentioned above sufficy to make a reasonable minimal case for it).

In his early scholarly works, Ehrman was skeptical of some of these facts. However, in his most recent academic works, he accepted that the historical evidence for these 4 facts is historically good and reliable.

Let's see the references:

1-Regarding the burial by Joseph of Arimathea and the empty tomb, Ehrman wrote: "the earliest accounts we have are unanimous in saying that Jesus was in fact buried by this fellow, Joseph of Arimathea, so it's relatively reliable that that's what happened. We also have solid traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later" (From Jesus to Constantine: Lecture 4, the teaching company, 2003).

Please, read the above paragraph very carefully, twice if necessary, because it is essential and crucial to my arguments below.

2-Regarding Jesus' post-mortem appearences, Ehrman wrote "we can say with some confidence that some of his disciples claimed to have seen Jesus alive" (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium, 1999, p. 200)

3-Regarding the origin of the Christian belief in Jesus' resurrection, Ehrman wrote "For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus' followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution" (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium, 1999, 231)

Like most New Testament scholars, Ehrman agrees with the historicity of the 4 main facts mentioned as evidence for Jesus' Resurrection. Ehrman's disagreement is methodological: Historians don't have access to miracles or supernatural events; hence, an historian cannot accept Jesus' resurrection as an historical fact (even if it ocurred).

By the way, the above references reveal the wholly ignorant, strongly prejudiced and misguided comments by Alex Tsakiris about the debate between Ehrman and Craig. In Tsakiris' podcast in which he interviewed Chris Carter, Alex commented that "In fact, if you go on YouTube as I have, you can hear some of these debates where these very convincing, well-spoken scholars and historians like William Lane Craig who is one of the guys who is a Christian Apologist who does this a lot. In the background here I’m playing a little bit of a clip from his debate with Bart Ehrman, who is a biblical scholar who has come to the conclusion that some of these claims in the Bible and the most important claims in the Bible don’t really hold up historically... You see, in my mind if you listen to the debate between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig, Bart Ehrman mops the floor with him. If you can really be objective and stack up the facts point by point on who really has the strongest argument, there’s really no contest. But if you’re a committed Christian and you really want to believe the Gospel story exactly the way that it’s written, you’ll find plenty of solace in William Lane Craig’s arguments."

Tsakiris' comments reveal the hostility, ignorance, ill-informed criticism and anti-Christian bigotry that I've discussed in my previous posts. As a matter of fact, the debate between Craig and Ehrman was about the historicity Jesus' resurrection, and in Ehrman's published works (as I've demostrated above) HE ACCEPTS ALL THE FACTS MENTIONED BY CRAIG AS EVIDENCE FOR JESUS' RESURRECTION! (So the debate wasn't mainly about the relevant "historical facts", but about the best explanation of these facts).

Hence, to which "facts" of the Bible that only Christians like Craig believe in, is Tsakiris referring to? To the 4 facts mentioned above? Obviously not, because these facts are agreed by most New Testament scholars, including Ehrman himself as I've demostrated above.

To Jesus's resurrection? Well, Ehrman himself doesn't deny it, he only denies the historian's competence to claim that it occured. So, Ehrman's argument is purely a methodological one.

And by the way, Ehrman's argument is based on Hume's argument against miracles (an argument which is used also by contemporary skeptics like Wiseman against paranormal and afterlife claims), but which most philosophers (including Chris Carter) consider fallacious and invalid. In fact, I must suppose that Tsaskiris reject Hume's argument too, otherwise he would have to reject a priori the evidence for parapsychology and the afterlife and wouldn't be sympathetic to these matters. (And note that Hume's argument applies both to miracles and paranormal claims too, even if the latter are not miraculous. Hume's argument, if sound, would apply to the latter too and this is why skeptics like Randi, Shermer or Wiseman use it, in the form of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence")

If Tsakiris rejects Hume's argument against miracles in order to reject skeptical objections against the paranormal and the afterlife, then he cannot buy into Erhman's argument either. So which is the motive of Tsakiris' sympathies to Ehrman's case? Exactly in which part of his debate with Criag was Ehrman sweeping the floor with him?

If Tsakiris were cognizant of the technical literature about Jesus' resurrection, he would know that Ehrman was misleading the audience in his debate with Craig, because Ehrman was affecting a skeptical position which himself rejects as false and historially unjustified. He was falsely being skeptic of historical facts that in his own published work he has accepted as "historical facts" which can be reliably accepted with some confidence based on the historical evidence alone.

That Erhman mopped the floor with Craig? Well, regarding the 4 facts mentioned by Craig, it is impossible, since Erhman accepts all of them in his own published works. Regarding Jesus' resurrection? Impossible, since Craig met Ehrman's Humean challenge using the work of agnostic philosopher of science John Erman, who proved (using Bayes' theorem of probability) that Hume's argument is demostrably fallacious (in fact, John Erman's book is entitled "Hume's Abject Failure"). Bart Ehrman hadn't any answer to Craig's technical argument against Hume.

So, clearly Taskiris watched the debate with his anti-Christian wishful thinking glasses, not with the objective, rational and academically responsible classes of the best scholarly literature on Jesus' Resurrection (including Ehrman's) and the best works of philosophy regarding Hume's argument, Bayes' theorem and probability theory.

This kind of anti-intellectualism, prejudice and arrogant ignorance (masked with the language of science, "facts" and objectivity) is common in some paranormal circles, and it is one of the reasons why most philosophers, scientists and scholars in general, even open minded ones (like the authors of the book The Quantum Enigma) don't like to be associated with these groups.

I've been increasingly dissapointed with this lack of intellectual rigour, ignorance and prejudiced bigotry which exist in some paranormal circles.

Bart Ehrman: The Debater

People unfamiliar with Erhman's own academic works, like Tsakiris, will be taken in by Ehrman's claims in his debate with Craig. In this debate and fully unable to reply consistently to Craig's arguments, Ehrman was forced to deny his own claims (published in his academic works) in order to contradict Craig¡s case.

For example, we see above that Ehrman considered that Jesus' burial by Joseph of Arimathea is relatively reliable because it appears unanimously in the earliest historical sources (This is the reason why most New Testament scholars, including atheists, accept this as a historical fact).

However, for debating purposes and in order to contradict Craig and undermine his case, Ehrman said in his debate with Craig "We don’t know if Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea."

Note Ehrman's affected and purely speculative skepticism, which is totally contrary to the claims that he has made in his own published academic works regarding Jesus' burial. Ehrman the scholar is different than Ehrman the debater.

Regarding the empty tomb, remember that Erhman has published that "We also have solid traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later"

But these "solid traditions" that have convinced the scholar Ehrman and most scholars of the historicity of the empty tomb is, for debating purposes, "forgotten" by Ehrman the "debater", who said (in his debate with Craig): "We don’t know if his tomb was empty three days later."

Regarding Jesus' post-mortem appearences, remember that Ehrman the scholar has written in his scholarly works that "we can say with some confidence that some of his disciples claimed to have seen Jesus alive" and "For it is a historical fact that some of Jesus' followers came to believe that he had been raised from the dead soon after his execution"

However, Ehrman the debater has a different opinion about this historical fact: "We don’t know if he was physically seen by his followers afterwards."

You can see how Ehrman the scholar/historian is different than the Erhman the debater. In the context of a debate, Ehrman is prepared to lie and misrepresent the evidence, even openly contradicting and publicly destroying his own published academic works, just in order to win the argument in front of an audience which, like Tsakiris, is solidly ignorant of the evidence and of Ehrman's own academic works explicitly supporting the evidence.

Analogy with Richard Wiseman and Ray Hyman:

Skeptics of the paranormal make use of the same tactics than Ehrman.

For example, Wiseman one day can say that "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven" (link here) and the next day to appear in TV saying that there is not good scientific evidence for remote viewing.

Ray Hyman can say one day that the evidence for the SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research.

And the next day he can publish an article on the Skeptical Inquirer saying that no good evidence for remote viewing exists.

This kind of duplicity, dishonesty and sophistry suggests that the case for skepticism regarding these matters is very weak, and this is why the skeptics in question make use of such a tactics.

If pushed against a corner (like Erhman was in his debate with Craig), I'm sure that skeptics like Wiseman and Hyman would contradict his own published statements too, if it is strategially useful to debating purposes or to convince a given ignorant audience that the evidence for psi is not good.

They will prefer to look inconsistent instead of being wrong regarding his cherished skeptical beliefs.

Death and the path of the Apprentice by Jorge Carvajal Posada

2012-01-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

Jorge Carvajal Posada is a Colombian physician, medical doctor and spiritual teacher. He's the creator of "Sintergetic Medicine" (Medicina Sintergetica, in the original Spanish language) which is a fusion of all known medical therapies (conventional, alternative, complementary, energetic, etc.) and consciousness studies.

For years, and from good reliable sources known by me, I've heard stories of Carvajal's amazing success in diseases considered as "incurable". He has an astonishing erudition of both conventional medicine and alternative therapies.

Unfortunately, his books and lectures are not available in English. However, in the following videos, you can watch a Carvajal's lecture on "death" and how this is relevant to "life". The video has subtitles in English. Enjoy:

5 basic conclusions about my psychological experiment on pseudo-skepticism as a trait of the human mind

2012-01-07T04:51:00.001-08:00

In a previous post, I mentioned one experiment that I did to test the hypothesis that "Human beings tend to be pseudoskeptics regarding conclusions or ideas they disagree with"

I used as an example the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection (which in my opinion, and for my complete astonishment, is reasonably good).

Here are some of the conclusions of my experiment:

1-Pseudoskepticism is a property of the human mind. It has to do with the functioning of the human mind when it is confronted with data, evidence, facts or arguments which are incompatible with previous strong beliefs.

In the case of my experiment, most of the readers who commented to me were people strongly hostile towards Christianity, and hence Jesus'resurrection is not even a possible alternative worthy of consideration, whatever the evidence for it is. This is why they used commonly known pseudoskeptical tactics (red herrings, falsehoods, sheer speculations, ill-informed criticisms, double standards, straw men and unproven assumptions) in order to explain (or explain away) the evidence for Jesus' resurrection.

I was astonished to find intelligent people appealing, for example, to the evils caused by Christianity as a serious or relevant objection to Jesus' resurrection (an argument that is obviusly ridiculous and that they wouldn't take seriously if it were used to attack their own positions sympathetic to spiritualism or parapsychology).

This red herring shows that their hostilite to Christianity is largely emotional, not rational. You don't determine the truth or falsehood of a given worldview or position on the grounds of the behaviour of some of its radical followers. You determine it on the grounds of the evidence alone.

2-Pseudoskepticism is essentially a psychological method to protect a given set of basic beliefs from falsification or refutation, not a method to find the truth.

This is a motive of serious motive of concern for me, because I consider pseudoskepticism a major obstacle to find the truth and to being rational.

3-Pseudoskepticism includes a self-protecting method: The person behaving as a pseudoskeptic DOESN'T and CANNOT realize that his attitude is irrational. On the contrary, he considers his position perfectly rational and valid, even "obvious". Moreover, he'll consider that people who disagree with him are irrational, stupid and ignorant, because they're not able to see the same that the pseudoskeptic can see as obvious.

Again, this is a motive of concern because it implies that the possibility of self-correction (essential to any truth seeker) regarding strong basic beliefs is excluded in advanced or undermined.

For example, you'll remember materialist philosopher J.J.Smart arguing that "Someone who has naturalistic preconceptions will always in fact find some naturalistic explanation more plausible than a supernatural one... Suppose that I woke up in the night and saw the stars arranged in shapes that spelt out the Apostle's Creed. I would know that astronomically it is impossible that stars should have changed their position. I don't know what I would think. Perhaps I would think that I was dreaming or that I had gone mad. What if everyone else seemed to me to be telling me that the same had happened? Then I might not only think that I had gone mad-- I would probably go mad" (J.J.C. Smart in his contribution to the book Atheism and Theism, pp.50-51. Emphasis in blue added)"

Note that for Smart, God's existence won't be accepted regardless of the evidence. Not even publicly confirmed objective evidence will produce a change of opinion in him regarding the falsehood of naturalism. Confronted with irrefutable evidence for supernaturalism which he cannot deny, he'll choose to believe that he has gone mad.

For my astonishment, some of the anti-Christian people who wrote to me has a similar position: They confessed that they won't accept Jesus' Resurrection, or its relevance as evidence for Christianity, regardless of the evidence. For people like them, Christianity is false a priori.

Note that in both cases it is not the evidence, but the pseudoskeptic's strong beliefs, which determine the conclusions that he'll have. In fact, these strong beliefs even will determine what kind of data will count as evidence (and what data won't count as evidence). Again, it is not the evidence, but the pseudoskeptic's own belief system, which determines his reading of the evidence.

Actually, his negative emotions and past experiences (probably negative ones) will determine largely his wordlview.

In my case, when I examine whatever topic, I don't know in advance where the evidence is going to lead me (precisely by this reason is that I'm researching the topic in question). And I'm emotionally and intellectually prepared, if the evidence leads me to it, to accept a conclusion, belief, idea or theory that I find strongly repugnant or impalatable.

For example, I find repugnant the idea of reincarnation, but if the evidence for it is good (as I think it is, even thought not conclusive), then let it be. If the evidence leads to Jesus' resurrection (as I think it does), let it be. If the evidence leads to Islam, led it be, if the evidence leads to atheism, let it be and so on.

You have to detach your emotions, dislikes and tastes from the sober, always cold, rational evaluation of the evidence.

I think this is the proper mindset of a truth seeker.

4-Just for the record: I've also experienced pseudoskepticism in myself and have used the same peudoskeptical strategies to refute a matter which I disagree with. So I'm familiar to it in first-person. I've also used the same unproven speculations and purely imaginative scenarios ("it could be that...", "perhaps it is..." and so forth) in order to avoid a conclusion that I don't like.

Precisely for this reason, I'm almost obssesed with the psychology behind pseudoskepticism and what method could be used to counter it, because pseudoskepticism is a major obstacle to the truth.

Currently, I can see when I'm begining to use these pseudoskeptical methods and inmediatly try to stop them. I say to myself that I'm trying to find the truth, not to protect my beliefs and compare the structure of my objections with the ones used by pseudoskeptics in order to see if I'm using the same tactics.

5-Paranormal pseudoskepticism (of people like Shermer, Hyman, etc.) is a natural corollary of the strong belief in metaphysical naturalism and atheistic materialism. This is a species of pseudoskepticism, not qualitatively different than any other form of pseudoskepticism (it is only different in its contents, not in its overall methods of debunking).

The methods of pseudoskepticism are pretty the same, regardless of the topic discussed.

This is why the best method to attack paranormal pseudoskepticism is to attack metaphysical naturalism and atheistic naturalism (an insight that most parapsychologists have not realized and this explains the parapsychologist's naive and largely non-efficacious attempt to reply to the skeptic using scientific evidence and arguments alone. The latter is necessary, but not sufficient, because what is at stake is not only the evidence, but how this will be read in the light of worldview considerations. This is why Chris Carter's book Parapsychjology and the skeptics is an original contribution to the field, because it is one of the few books which addresses these worldview considerations).

Stephen Braude on the evidence for the afterlife or survival of consciousness

2012-01-07T04:01:00.000-08:00

More on reincarnation and spiritualism and experimental testing

2012-01-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

In the previous post, I proposed an experiment that could settle the question about reincarnation. However, I think my argument needs some qualifications.

I was assuming a purely scientific approach to the question, not a religious or philosophical one. In this sense, I assumed that the best scientific evidence for reincarnation comes from the empirical studies with children who remember past lives.

Based upon these assumptions, my argument was that, as with any scientific hypothesis, you test it by their consequences. In the case of reincarnation, the reincarnation hypothesis predicts that the same soul was transfered from a dead body to another body. Hence, providing evidence that the soul of "reincarnated cases" is not reincarnated at all (but only apparently so), is evidence that the hypothesis of reincarnation is false in those cases.

In other words, if reincarnation is true, then the same soul of the dead person is now IN the body of the child who remembers past lives. Therefore, his soul is NOT in the afterlife anymore (the implication is that if the soul is found there, then reincarnation regarding that soul cannot get off the ground).

In other words, if reliable mediums could discover that, in these cases, the spirit or soul of the dead person is STILL in the afterlife (and hence NOT in another body in earth), then it refutes the hypothesis of reincarnation on thoses cases.

I think the logic of this argument is correct and impeccable.

Now, it could be argued that at most the experiment shows that in cases of children with past lives experiences the hypothesis of reincarnation doesn't apply, but it doesn't refute the hypothesis of reincarnation in general.

However, the above objection implies actually a major scientific concession against the reincarnation hypothesis, because:

1-The best scientific evidence of reincarnation is the evidence of children with past life memories or birthmarks suggesting a past life wound or cause. Therefore, if the best evidence for reincarnation is actually not evidence for it, then a fortiori the weak evidence for it won't do the job either.

2-Reports and communications from some mediums supportive of reincarnation conflict with reports from mediums who don't support it, or even are hostile to it. And from conflicting reports alone you cannot draw any solid conclusions about the existence or not of reincarnation. In this case, the most reasonable conclusion based on such a conflicting reports is agnosticism.

However, agnosticism about reincarnation based upon spiritualism plus positive evidence that the so-called "best reincarnation cases" are not reincarnation cases at all, push the balance strongly in favor of the non-existence of reincarnation.

3-Reports from people who have had hypnotic regression and have discoveried memories of past lives is a kind of evidence weaker than cases of children who remember past lives, because in general it is purely subjetive and not confirmed by objective evidence (e.g. autopsies, etc.). But even if these reports could be confirmed by objective evidence, point 1 could apply to it too (and experiments as the one proposed by me could be used to test the reincarnation hypothesis in those cases of hypnotic regression too).

This is why I thnk the experiment that I proposed, if produces the result discussed here, would provide excellent evidence against the existence of reincarnation.

Obviously, reincarnation would still be a logical possibility, but empirical science is not interested in purely logical possibilities (which only exist in a skeptic's imagination, who tries to resist a conclusion that he doesn't like through the use of pure speculations and unproven assumptions); science is interested in logical possibilities actually supported by empirical evidence.

As has argued philosopher of science and survivalist Neal Grossman "So there is a big difference between a hypothesis that is merely logically possible (that is, a hypothesis that is not self-contradictory) and a hypothesis that is really possible (that is, a hypothesis for which there are empirical reasons to believe might be true). Of course, any real possibility must also be a logical possibility, but the converse is not true. The fact that a given hypothesis is logically possible, that is, is not self-contradictory, is not a reason to believe that it is a real possibility, that is, that it might be true. Science is concerned with real possibilities only, not with mere logical possibilities"

Grossman's point is a basic principle in the philosophy of science. Science doesn't need to refute all the possible alternative explanations for a given set of data (in fact, the number of such an alternatives is potentially infinite). Science is interested only in the hypotheses which, given our background knowledge, the current evidence available and a few of heuristic principles, are really possible (i.e. likely to be true).

This is why the defender of reincarnation can't appeal to speculations about "group souls" and other purely logical possibilities to which we have not evidence at all (or just extremely weak evidence). Only if he can provide evidence of the existence of "group souls" PLUS evidence that it could account for reincarnation cases, then it would be a living possibility which has to be considered and evaluated.

In conclusion, my experiment is just a modest proposal for evaluating reincarnation empirically. I'm sure my experiment needs to be qualified and perfected in the details, in oder to make it useful in an actual experiment design with mediums and cases suggestive of reincarnation.

Solving the tension between spiritualism and reincarnation: An experimental proposal

2012-01-04T11:21:00.000-08:00

The comments of some of my readers about my post on the tension existing between spirtualism and reincarnation, has motivated me to think about a possible way to solve this debate on empirical grounds.

I'd suggest the following: To try a series of controlled experiments in which reliable mediums try to communicate with the spirits of the dead who, apparently, are reincarnated in children with past life memories.

Let's to expand this proposal:

1-We need contemporary "reliable" mediums like John Edward, Suzane Northrup or David Thompson (I mention these just because they're widely known and for illustrative purposes alone. You can think in other currently practizing mediums).

2-The mediums need to have access to the best current documented cases of children with past life memories (specially of cases in which the death of the person whose soul is supposedly reincarnated now is recent and well documented).

3-And several, properly double blind controlled experiments with the mediums need to be carried out (for reasons of experimental design, obviously the mediums cannot know in advanced that the identity of the dead person whom they are trying to contact seem to correspond with the past memories which the children are remembering now).

Possible results and conclusions:

1)If the reincarnation hypothesis is true, then we'd expect that the mediums CANNOT contact in the afterlife with the same person who died (and is believed to be reincarnated now). The reason is that such a person is not in the afterlife anymore. This would provide strong evidence that chidlren who remember such memories are actually reincarnated.

2)On the contrary, if mediums DO contact with the same person who died (and is now supposedly reincarnated), then the reincarnation hypotesis is false. In fact, I'd consider this evidence as a knock-down argument against reincarnation.

If this second result is the case, whatever strong evidence is gathered in cases of children who remember past lives cannot be considered as evidence for reincarnation anymore, and has to be explained in terms of, for example, paranormal access to fragments of memories of a dead person (or by any other hypothesis not related with reincarnation).

Possible objections of a defender of reincarnation:

Confronted with the scenario 2, the defender of reincarnation will have to attack mediumship itself. He'll have to argue that mediumship in general, or the mediums of the experiments in particular, weren't reliable, and hence their communications cannot be believed.

Unless he can provide good evidence for this conclusion, I think the defender of reincarnation would be trapped against a corner. This would reveal that his commitment to reincarnation is not rational but pure wishful thinking.

Another defense by the defender of reincarnation would be appealing to the hypothesis of "group souls" mentioned by Michael Tynn in my interview with him, and defended by some spiritual teachers like Silver Birch according to which "there are what you call ‘group souls,’ a single unity with facets which have spiritual relationships that incarnate at different times, at different places, for the purpose of equipping the larger soul for its work."

Obviously, this is a purely speculative possibility, and the defender of reincarnation which takes this idyosincratic view has the burden of proof that such a "group souls" exist and that this provide the explanation for reincarnation cases.

In any case, the experiment with mediums mentioned above could include specific questions about the existence of such a "group souls" and whether they can explain the cases suggestive of reincarnation. The communications received will have to be considered in order to evaluate the plausibility of the "new position" of the defender of reincarnation.

I think this kind of experiments, if carried out competently and replicated, would provide an almost definitive answer regarding reincarnation.

Spiritualism and reincarnation: Bad bed fellows?

2012-01-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

Studying the afterlife literature, specially the evidence from spiritualism, one gets the impression that there is a kind of tension between the portrait of an afterlife given by spiritualism and reincarnation. More specifically, the tension is between the spiritualistic information according to which reincarnation doesn't occur and the evidence for reincarnation.

For example, in my interview with one of the world's leading experts in the scientific evidence for an afterlife, Michael Roll, when I asked him about reincarnation, he answered: "Never come across reincarnation in my studies. Never heard a medium say, "Sorry, you can't make contact with him/her as they have gone back to Earth." See the book The Case Against Reincarnation by James Webster on my website. The aim is to let people all over the world know that we all survive the death of our physical bodies and that we are responsible and liable for what we do on Earth. We must not go off on any tangents, keep out of the psychic jungle at all costs."

Michael suggested James Webster's book against reincarnation, a whom I interviewed too. James' view is strong "No amount of research will prove reincarnation as the theory is false to begin with"

One afterlife spirit who communicated through John Sloan (who was in my opinion, a true medium), the famous direct voice medium who was researched by Arthur Findlay, when asked about if we reincarnate, replied "Now it is a question that I find difficult in answering. I have known no one who has. I passed over many years ago, and I have round about me those who lived thousands of years ago on Earth. That's all I can say because my knowledge does not permit me to say more." (On the edge of the etheric, p. 61)

Note that we have here 3 pieces of evidence, coming from different spiritualistic sources (including an afterlife sources) which suggests that reincarnation doesn't happen:

1-A world leading expert in afterlife studies, Michael Roll, who has never found evidence for reincarnation in his studies.

2-An spirit in the afterlife who claims not knowing anybody who has reincarnated (but without denying explicitly the possibility of reincarnation)

3-Another spiritualist researcher, James Webster, who claims the hypothesis of reincarnation is false.

This seems to support the thesis that reincarnation doesn't exist, or at least that solid evidence for it is weak or non-existent.

Evidence for reincarnation

However, it is hard to dismiss the evidence for reincarnation gathered by researchers like Ian Stevenson, Jim Tucker, Titus Rivas and others.

But this evidence doesn't come from spiritualism (or from afterlife sources), but mainly from empirical cases of children who have had putative past-life experiences, which in principle leave open the possibility that past-life experiences are gotten through paranormal means not related to reincarnation as such (a hypothesis defended by some researchers).

In any case, the point is that the evidence from spiritualism seems to be more or less in tension with the evidence from reincarnation.

I mentioned spiritualistic researchers who are skeptical of reincarnation. However, not all of them are. For example, Michael Tynn, when I asked about reincarnation, replied "I have come to the conclusion that reincarnation exists, but it doesn’t play out the way most people who believe in it think it does. I believe that the non-local aspects of time put it beyond human comprehension. I accept Silver Birch’s communication about reincarnation that “… there are what you call ‘group souls,’ a single unity with facets which have spiritual relationships that incarnate at different times, at different places, for the purpose of equipping the larger soul for its work.” I don’t really understand that, but I accept that there are celestial matters that are beyond human understanding and language."

Note that Tynn accepts reincarnation, but in a very qualified way (the inclusion of "group souls" which is a single unity with many facets), a position that many survivalists will reject or find unpersuasive.

Guy Lyon Playfair, another afterlife research, is skeptical of reincarnation. When I asked him about the matter, he replied "The word reincarnation implies the permanent return of a whole personality, and I don't think the evidence generally supports that, although there are cases where it does seem possible, when there are birthmarks and behaviour patterns as well as memories. I'm thinking of people like Jenny Cockell, Om Sety and most recently James Leininger in which identifiable people do seem to have returned to earth, but such cases are very rare. On the whole, though, I think that what people call reincarnation is more like temporary transfer of fragments of memory, etc."

Neal Grossman, on the other hand, strongly supports the idea of reincarnation "All mediumship communications of which I am aware and that discuss the concept of reincarnation, are strongly supportive of that concept. (e.g. The Seth Material). The evidence collected by Stevenson, Tucker, and others, is impeccable and conclusive. Some mediums can even get information about past lives. (I don’t know the type of mediums you have experienced, but I am aware that a few are Christian based, and they interpret everything in such a way as to be consistent with their prior religious beliefs)."

However, the mediums that I had in mind when I asked the question to professor Grossman have nothing to do with Christianity. In fact, they're mediums like John Sloan and others mediums investigated by atheists like Michael Roll, who precisely support a skeptical position regarding reincarnation. For example, in his recent interview in Skeptiko, medium August Goforth comments "I have a huge library of books written by mediums and spiritualists that go back almost a couple hundred years. I noticed not a single one mentioned reincarnation."

On the other hand, if we have to question the source of the information on the grounds of religious beliefs, we could argue against the source of the evidence for reincarnation in the way that James Webster has argued: "Also many of the children Stevenson researched were from Eastern countries who practiced religions and belief systems (e.g. Hinduism and Buddhism) soaked with reincarnation, past lives and karma."

We could say the same of mediums who have read or are sympathetic to belief systems and religions which support the idea of reincarnation, and hence such a beliefs colours the putative afterlife communications from mediums which support reincarnation.

So, the bias cuts both ways.

But this is besides the point. My point is that we find here the tension that I mentioned before. On one side we found long time afterlife researchers who have found no evidence at all from the spiritualistic communications regarding reincarnation. On the other hand, we find scholars like professor Grossman who consider that the evidence for it is "conclusive" and that some mediums get informations about past lives.

Or researchers are reading different spiritualistic literature, or they're leaving their own biases to strongly influence their conclusions.

My own opinion is that the evidence for reincarnation from people like Stevenson is good but not conclusive. More research and theoretical analysis need to be done.

However, I don't have clear how the evidence from spiritualism, overall, tend to support or refute the idea of reincarnation. I suspect that, overall, spiritualism tends to support a skeptical position regarding reincarnation, even thought some spiritualistic communications support the idea too.

A social and psychological experiment by Jime Sayaka on how the mind works

2012-01-02T03:20:00.000-08:00

(This is not me)

Before I begin this post, I'd like to thank the many e-mails that I've received since my lastest post on Jesus. Sorry if I haven't replied to all of them, I don't enjoy of so much time as I'd desire. (I haven't replied to many other mails which arrived to me several weeks or even months ago, for the same reason, so sorry again).

In this post, I'll comment on the preliminary results of an informal psychological experiment which I've performed in my blog (with the help of some of my readers). Obviously, I didn't informed any of my readers of this experiment, because they were the subjects of it.

The purpose of this very informal experiment was to test the hypothesis "Human beings tend to be pseudoskeptical of theories, ideas or conclusions that they disagree with".

So (if my hypothesis is true) pseudoskepticism in general is a consequence of how the human mind works (pseudoskepticism of the paranormal is just a species of this).

My motivation to perform this experiment is my almost obsessive interest in discovering the nature of human disagreement and, specially, understanding the psychology of hard-core atheists and pseudoskeptics. In order to avoid bias against mterialistic pseudoskeptics, I performed an experiment with paranormalists, survivalists, spiritualists and mystics who read my blog.

An adventage of addressing so many topics in my blog and interviewing a number of different people, is that you can discover how human psychology works from a wider perspective. In fact, my motivation for addressing so many topics is precisely to learn to understand a given situation from a broad range of possible perspectives (not limited to my own's perspective alone).

However, this particular investigative methodology (which I use intentionally) runs contrary to how the mind works.

The mind seems to be designed to explay away phenomena or evidence that it finds unpalatable or incoherent with other beliefs, desires and expectations. It sees as natural and "obvious" ideas that fit previous beliefs, and as silly, ridiculous or implausible ideas that runs contrary to one's prejudices.

Evidence for this is the use of unproven assumptions which are added to the actual evidence in order to avoid certain conclusions, and make the evidence fits the person's previous beliefs about how the world works.

Before of commenting on my experiment, I'd like to point out a preliminary point:

As most of my readers are sympathetic to the paranormal and the afterlife, I'll mention just one example from pseudoskepticism in order to show how the human mind works. This example has the adventage that most of my readers will agree with me here:

-Regarding the SAIC experiments on remote viewing, Ray Hyman conceded that "The SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research. In addition, I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present."

So far, so good. Which is the correct scientific conclusion from an experiment like that? That the results support the psi hypothesis. It is the correct conclusion given the specific evidence of the case. Any unbiased person will accept that evidence (at least provisionally) and the conclusion.

However, in order to protect his skeptical position, Hyman is forced to ADD to the current specific data an unproven assumption based on a sheer possibility: "Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility--especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered"

Note that Hyman 's argument is literally true, but (applied as an objection to the specific SAIC experiments) it is flawed because it is a SHEER SPECULATION. It's a pure generality which is not proved in the speicific case. No actual and specific evidence is provided to support the idea that, in the specific case, a "potential flaw" exists.

Now, the readers sympathetic to parapsychology will agree with me that Hyman is using a dishonest trick and double standard in order to avoid the acceptation of the evidence for psi.

However, materialists and skeptics will consider Hyman's position "pretty reasonable" because after all (so they will argue) parapsychology and psychic research has a long and known history of incompetence performing experiments, frauds, delusions and deceptions (as has been conceded, for example, by George Hansen in this article). So, presuming a potential flaw not discovered yet is reasonable.

Now (you'll ask) why people sympathetic to parapsychology tend to agree that Hyman is wrong, and "skeptics" tend to agree that he's right? Try to reflect hard on this please.

The answer is that the belief "Hyman is wrong" fits the paranormalist's strong belief that remote vieweing exists. Hence, he's prone to accept conclusions that support his previous beliefs. On the contrary, for the skeptic, that "Hyman is wrong" is likely to be false, because Hyman's anti-psi position supports the skeptic's strong belief that remote viewing doesn't exist. Hence, the skeptic is prone to accept conclusions against the existence of the paranormal.

The asture reader will discover a lot of how the human mind works examining the above simple example carefully.

What most readers won't consider is that exactly the same applies to all the human beings (including themselves).

Let's to analyze again Hyman's mistake: it consists in using a unproven assumption to explain away the force of the evidence for psi. He's not denying the evidence as such, rather he's adding a unproven assumption (a potential undiscoveried flaw) in order to avoid the psi-favourable conclusion. Note that Hyman's assumption is not false in general; but it hasn't been proven in the specific case. Regarding the specific case, it is sheer speculation. It doesn't constitute specific evidence IN the particular case.

I agree with the paranormalists (and against the pseudoskeptic) that Hyman is wrong.

THE EXPERIMENT:

In order to test my hypothesis and fully cognizant that most of my readers are sympthatetic to spiritualism, mystics, New Age and parapsychology, and that most of them are strongly anti-Christians, I decided to use the evidence for Jesus' Resurrection (which I've been studying a lot since some time ago) in my experiment.

As consequence, I've written a series of posts sympathetic to the possibility (even probability) of Jesus' Resurrection and its putative divine origin in order to discover the common reaction of my anti-Christian readers. (By the way, everything that I've written about Jesus represent my true opinion and views about him, so I haven't been lying in my conclusions and I stand to them).

What I discovered was that, in general, they commit the same miskates and tend to use the same or very similar tactics than the pseudoskeptics, in order to avoid conclusions that they don't like (specially a conclusion favourable to Christianity).

In particular:

1-Ignorance of the literature and of the relevant evidence and scholarly arguments:

Many of my readers admitted openly that they have not studied the best literature about this matter. However (like seen in pseudoskeptics) they feel competent to judge (and dismiss) a complex scholarly topic appealing only to their personal opinions, tastes, beliefs and prejudices.

You have realized how many popular and online pseudoskeptics don't even know the best evidence for psi, and repeat confidently the same falsehoods and stereotypes (like "all the psi experiments are flawed", "there is no replication of psi experiments", "The only positive evidence for psi came from parapsychologists who are strong psi believers", "No skeptic has ever found positive evidence for psi" and so forth).

Exactly the same kind of demostrably false and ill-informed arguments that I've found in some of my readers ("The empty tomb is only believed by Christian scholars", "Liberal scholars are interested in facts and evidence alone, not in ideology", "Christian scholars just believe by faith and are not interested in facts" and so forth).

Any unbiased study of the literature would expose the falsehood of these ideas.

2-Red herrings and irrelevances:

In the case of parapsychology, you will remember that many online pseudoskeptics argue "If psychics were real, then they would be millionarie using psi powers to win the lotery". Or "If psi exists, then why no one of them has won the Randi's challenge?" and so forth. The implication is that psi doesn't exist.

Any rational person, even a skeptic, would see that the above are not serious objections to the existence of psi.

In the case of some of my readers, I received similar red herrings and irrelevances. For example "Christianity has done a lot of evil, look at the Inquisition" or "If Jesus' resurrection is real, then where is he now?" or "The trinity is absurd, thinking about 3 persons in a same being is incoherent".

Obviously, all of this is irrelevant regarding the historical factuality or non-factuality of Jesus' Resurrection. You don't need to know "where is he now" in order to conclude, if the evidence is good, that the resurrection probably happened. Likewise, the evils caused by some Christians in the history is not a reason to think that Jesus' resurrection didn't ocurred.

And the coherence or incoherence of the trinity cannot prevent us to study the evidence and, eventually, if it is good, to conclude in favour of Jesus' resurrection (By the way, regardless of whether the doctrine of Trinity is true or false, I don't think it is incoherent when properly formulated. Read this post by Christian philosopher Edward Feser about it).

3-Straw men, caricatures and unsympathetic formulation of the position being criticized:

You're familiar with pseudoskeptics misrepresenting the position being defended by the psi or survival proponent. Remember the pseudoskeptic's misrepresentation of the "filter hypothesis" to explain the mind-body connection, which the pseudoskeptic subtly misrepresents as a one-way connection (from the soul to the brain), when the survivalist constantly stresses that his position is a two-way (soul affecting the brain, like in the placebo effect; and brain affecting the soul, like neurological diseases or brain intoxications).

In the case of the hypothesis of Jesus' resurrection, the argument is misrepresented (grotesquely in my opinion) as a defense of the Bible, or as apology of the Church's beliefs, or creationism regarding biology. I was astonished to see some of my readers arguing like that.

They reveal a astonishing unability to understand even the most basic arguments (a trait which I thought, apparently wrongly, was exclusive of hard-core atheistic pseudoskeptics).

4-Falsehoods:

You'll recall the cases of pseudoskeptics arguing that "No skeptic has ever gotten positive evidence for psi", "psi hasn't be replicated" . Any person familiar with the literature would know that these claims are false.

In the case of Jesus, a few of my readers argued that Jesus probably didn't exist. Others say that perhaps Jesus existed but that the evidence for his existence was very weak, almost non-existent.

Any person who has studied something of history knows that these claims are false.

5-Egregious double standards:

Skeptics complain that most parapsychologists are believers in psi and survival researchers are believers in the afterlife, implying that they're biased. Therefore (skeptics will argue), that "most" parapsychologists and survivalists accept the evidence for psi and afterlife is not surprising.

For example, Martin Gardner wrote: "How can the public know that for fifty years skeptical psychologists have been trying their best to replicate classic psi experiments, and with notable unsuccess? It is this fact more than any other that has led to parapsychology's perpetual stagnation. Positive evidence keeps coming from a tiny group of enthusiasts, while negative evidence keeps coming from a much larger group of skeptics." (The whys of a philosophical scrivener)

The implication is that "enthusiasts" (i.e psi researchers) get positive results because they're biased for the psi hypothesis.

Or skeptic of survival Keith Augustine regarding NDE researchers: "Many near-death researchers interpret NDEs as evidence for survival of bodily death. Because many people would like to know that there is an afterlife rather than simply take the notion on faith, the study of NDEs tends to attract researchers who already believe that they provide evidence for survival. NDEs are a natural lure to survivalists, since they offer the prospect of bolstering belief in survival and of offering hints about what exactly is going to happen to us when we die." (Near-Death Experiences with Hallucinatory Features, in the Journal of NDE studies, p.28-29)

The implication is that NDE researchers, in general, tend to be biased towards the survivalist hypothesis of NDE, and this is why many of them think that "something interesting" (for survival) can be found in NDEs. (And as Keith argues in other paper: "that those (NDE) researchers willing to devote substantial amounts of time and energy to conduct large-scale studies of NDEs tend to be predisposed to dismiss psychophysiological explanations of them."(Psychophysiological and Cultural Correlates Undermining a Survivalist Interpretation of Near-Death Experiences’’ Defended, Journal of NDE studies, p.170)

Now, survivalists will reject Gardner and Keith's suggestions as misleading and irrelevant. The survivalist will say that the fact that most psi researchers or NDEs researchers are sympathetic with the psi and survival hypotheses is not reason to consider them unreliable scholars. I agree with the survivalist here.

However, when it comes to New Testament scholarship and the discussion about Jesus' resurrection, the same anti-Christian survivalists will appeal to an argument similar to Keith and Gardner, namely, that "only the Christian scholars accept the evidence for Jesus' Resurrection" (implying that this conclusion is caused by the bias or prejudices of Christians).

In other words, the survivalist doesn't consider that the possible bias (mentioned by Keith and Gardner) are a problem for the field of parapsychology and NDE studies (because the survivalist agrees in advanced with psi and survival-favorable conclusions) but he will consider this bias a very serious problem (which casts doubts on the scholar's objectivity) when discussing a topic to which he disagrees with (e.g. Jesus' Resurrection).

6-Unproven assumptions and Hymanian sheer speculations:

For example, essential to the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is the historical evidence of an empty tomb. This is part of what need to be explained by any correct hypothesis regarding the events around Jesus' putative resurrection.

Confronted with this fact (accepted by most New Testament scholars), my anti-Christian readers' responses were more or less like these:

-It's an invention, a legend, a myth, not something real.

As expected, they cannot support this speculation with any concrete historical evidence which overturns the evidence for the empty tomb historicity. It's sheer speculation and wishful thinking.

-"Perhaps" the body of Jesus was stolen or dissapeared by other reasons. After all, this is not impossible.

As expected, not specific historical evidence was provided to support this "stolen body" hypothesis of Jesus' body, just a mere speculative possibility has been posed. Again, think in Hyman's "possibility" of potential flaws regarding the SAIC experiment, even thought he couldn't find any...

Note that, for the unbiased reader, these unproven speculations reveal the critic's emotional need to explain the known evidence in terms of a hypothesis different than the resurrection, because he doesn't believe in the latter (like Hyman doesn't believe in remote viewing). The critic's beliefs push him into purely speculative scenarios in order to explain the evidence in a way which is compatible with their beliefs and block a conclusion which they disagree with (i.e. Jesus' Resurrection).

Another interesting sheer speculation (which is particularly unlikely) was this:

-Jesus could have come to life again like in cases of NDEs and this would explain both his empty tomb and why the disciples saw him after his "dead".

Note that this speculation is unlikely if we taken into account the fact that the Romans were professional and experienced killers using the brutal method of the crucifixion. The evidence shows that Jesus was brutally tortured in his whole to death, not simply dead clinically due to some infarction or accident.

Moreover, in contrast with NDEers who came to life again and then died again (as the late Pam Reynolds), there is not evidence that Jesus died again (which is consistent with the hypothesis that the resurrection body is the same body transformed to make it fit for inmortality).

The latter fact (the non-existence of evidence for Jesus' second death) cannot be explained by the hypothesis that Jesus' first death was purely clinical and that he came to life again like in cases of NDEs.

That such a implausible hypothesis like that be posed as a living alternative reveals the critic's strong hostility towards the resurrection hypothesis.

Regarding my claim that, if Jesus resurrected, it was plausibly caused by God (as most scholars agree and how is plausible given the religiously charged context in which Jesus lived and the content of his theistic teachings), I received these speculations:

-Jesus "could" be a yogui with amazing paranormal powers.

Again, there is not good historical evidence at all that Jesus was a yogui. It is sheer speculation. Moreover, there is not evidence that yoguis can produce a resurrection body fitted to inmortality using their putative powers.

It's sheer speculation which is added to the known evidence in order to block and exclude in advanced the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead.

-Jesus was an expert in unknown meditation methods which enabled him to do that.

Again, there is not persuasive historical evidence that Jesus was an expert in meditation methods, nor that such methods, if exist and are mastered, would enable the practitioner to create a resurrection body fitted to inmortality.

In fact, meditation methods which are available in most Eastern practiques and philosophies are part of a system in which the human being has several bodies (the etheric body, the astral body, and so forth) and in no one of them (as far I know) posed that the same physical body will be resurrected after death. But even if one of these text posed something like that, there is not evidence that Jesus was an expert in that specific method, or that that method actually produces such a result.

Speculation is added to speculation to speculation to speculation in order to block a conclusion favourable to God as the cause of the (putatuve) resurrection of Jesus.

-Jesus was a practitioner and advanced student of Buddhism and it "could" explain his resurrection.

Again, there is not solid historical evidence that Jesus was a practitioner of it. Sheer speculation and unproven assumption. Moreover, Buddhism is in general atheistic and hence incompatible with the historically evidenced fact that Jesus's teachings were explicitly theistic, i.e. about God's kingdom.

The motivation behind these speculations is to avoid the conclusion that God raised Jesus from the dead. Now (you can ask) why some people try to avoid this conclusion with unproven assumptions and speculations? Why do they are not even open to this possibility, even if they (claim) to believe in God? After all, if God exists, he could create a resurrection body. Is not God supposed to be omnipotent and more spiritually powerful than any other creature?

I can understand that atheists and pantheists don't consider this as a living possibility, because for them God doesn't exist, and hence cannot raise Jesus (or anybody, for that matter). But that self-proclaimed "theists" try to avoid this possibility, appealing to wholly unproven assumptions and speculations + speculations + speculations?

I discoveried that the motivation for avoiding this theistic explanation of Jesus' Resurrection is either atheism or religious pluralism. Most of my readers seem to be sympathetic to both. New Agers, mystics and some "spiritual seekers" seem to agree with one of them too. They don't believe that there is "one way" which is exclusively the truth regarding spirituality. They think a lot of methods (meditation, chi kung, yoga, Easter practiques of all kinds, etc.) are part of the same "way" to God (or to "pure consciousness", or similar). Or they simply think that "God" doesn't exist, so the hypothesis in question cannot get off the ground.

Note that I'm not saying that atheism or religious pluralism are false. I'm simply pointing out how these beliefs determine the use of pseudoskeptical tactics when confronted with evidence which doesn't seem to support these beliefs. This is my main argument.

In future posts, I'll discuss in more details the conclusions that I've gotten with my experiment.

A modest and tentative year's end reflection: The identity of Jesus of Nazareth in contemporary scholarship

2011-12-30T19:53:00.000-08:00

I want to finish this year posting in my blog with a personal reflection of an "outsider" regarding many of the cultural and religious ideas in the Western world (even though, to be honest, I don't consider myself an outsider anymore).

Among scholars, there is a debate about the Historical Jesus (who was Jesus really, what his actual teachings are, etc.) and its connection with the biblical Jesus.

For traditional Christians, Jesus was the son of God and hence the exclusive way to God's Kingdom and so forth. For the people like the members of the so-called Jesus Seminar (leaving aside individuals like Robert M. Price who is a Jesus' denialist), Jesus was at most a spiritual teacher, social reformer and/or a cynic philosopher, who wasn't the Son of God and obviously wasn't resurrected in a literal sense either.

In my opinion, the true identity of the historical Jesus stands or falls, largely, with the historicity of the resurrection. If the latter is a historical fact, then the view of Christians seem to be plausible regarding the biblical claims of divinity about Jesus. Jesus wouldn't be simply another spiritual teacher or "reformer" among many others, with some interesting insights, sayings and contributions for spiritual salvation; but that his resurrection (provided this occured) is an unique fact in history which, giving its putative supernatural cause, seems to validate his radical claims and status and give him an unique authoritative and privileged position among "spiritual teachers". An unique extraordinary spiritual and plausibly supernatural event like the resurrection is what one would expect from an unique spiritual teacher sent by God with unique and special credentials as evidence of the divine authority of his claims.

The Jesus Seminar tend to reject Jesus' resurrection as an historical fact precisely because its members correctly and consistently realizes that the resurrection, if historical, would make hard to deny Jesus' unique connection with God and Christianity's exclusivistic claims of salvation. It could be denied only in a very idiosyncratic, largely arbitrary and contraived way (and no major New Testament scholar, including a radical critic like John Dominic Crossan, seems prepared to take this idiosyncratic and implausible view).

Summary of my reflections, ideas and suggestions:

The following is a summary of my current opinion about the debate regarding the historical Jesus. Please, don't take these points as an authoritative opinion (after all, I'm not a New Testament scholar even thought I'm studying the topic intensively) nor as conclusive conclusions. See them more as reflections and ideas for further inquiry and food for thought.

However, I'm going to support my opinions with scholarly evidence, references and facts (specially evidence coming from skeptics and critics of Christianity) in order to provide objectivity to my views and specially to avoid pure speculations, and force my interested readers to thinking hard about these questions.

Also, I'm not going to argue for or against Jesus' Resurrection in this post. I'm interested just in arguing for a conditional: If Jesus' Resurrection is true, then the view of Jesus by traditional Christians is, for most part, likely to be true (regarding Jesus' divinity, for example) and this includes exclusivism regarding salvation. If Jesus' Resurrection is false, then the Jesus Seminar' view of Jesus and pluralism regarding salvation are likely to be true.

Let's begin:

1-The Jesus Seminar's project is demostrably based upon naturalistic and atheistic assumptions. The purpose of this group is to create a portrait of Jesus palatable to a secular society and an anti-Christian audience.

In the introduction of the Jesus Seminar book The Five Gospels (five, because it includes the Gospel of Thomas), the authors confess: "The contemporary religious controversy turns on whether the world view reflected in the Bible can be carried forward into this scientific age and retained as an article of faith . . . . the Christ of creed and dogma . . . can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope" (p.2. Emphasis in blue added)

Note carefully that according to the authors, the "worldview reflected in the Bible" (i.e. theism!) cannot be accepted if we accept science. In other words, science implies atheism, not theism. This is exactly the same philosophical view of pseudo-skeptics and hard-core atheists like James Randi or Michael Shermer.

The Christ of "creed and dogma" (i.e. the resurrected Jesus, the Jesus who performed miracles, the Jesus who expulsed demons, the Jesus who is the savior, the Jesus who said "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son..." (John 3:16), etc.) cannot be true, if you are scientific (i.e. atheist). Given that there is not God, then it is impossible that the Son of God can exist, or that a supernatural phenomenon (like the resurrection) may be historical.

Based on this philosophical assumption, is not surprising that the reconstruction of the historical Jesus which the Jesus Seminar has made is of a Jesus who's purely naturalistic. And this is not a surprise either that the Jesus Seminar has to reject the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. What is an actual "miracle" for me is the fact that people like Crossan or Spong (and other Jesus Seminar's members) keep considering themselves as "Christians" (which is clearly misleading and, in my opinion, intentionally dishonest).

If you begin with naturalistic assumptions, you'll end with a purely naturalistic reconstruction of Jesus. In fact, the authors print in red only those words of Jesus which they consider to be authentic. The result (surprise!) is that around the 80% of Jesus' sayings (specially the sayings of a supernatural kind or that pointed out to a supernaturalistic and divine Jesus) in the Gospels are considered unathentic. Only around a 20% are considered actual sayings of Jesus, and these sayings portrait Jesus as a sort of social critic or reformer, the Jewish version of a Greek cynic philosopher.

2-In his writtings, the members of the Jesus Seminar, even the self-proclaimed "Christians" among them, are openly hostile to God's intervention in the world. However, they concede that if Jesus' Resurrection is historical, then a supernatural intervention is likely to be the cause of that event. And as they reject such interventionistic view of God, they are forced to reject the resurrection too.

For example, in a book with Marcus Borg, the leading Jesus Seminar's member John Dominic Crossan concedes that Jesus' resurrection as a historical fact "requires a 'supernatural interventionist' understanding of the way God relates to the world". (The Last Week, p.218-219 n18. Emphasis in blue added). Given that Crossan is supposed to be a Christian, not a deist, what is the problem of conceiving God as an agent who intervenes in the world? (The true answer is that Crossan is actually an atheist, not a Christian. He doesn't believe in mind-independent objectively existing God and hence cannot accept the intervention of a non-existent entity in the world. See point 3.)

The crucial point is that Crossan correctly realizes the close connection between the Jesus'resurrection and God's causal influence in that event. I agree with Crossan in this point (a point that is accepted by most New Testament scholars and historians, as proved by the fact that no atheist scholar defends the historicity of Jesus' Resurrection).

Agnostic historian and New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, in his debate with William Craig, argued "What about the resurrection of Jesus? I’m not saying it didn’t happen; but if it did happen, it would be a miracle. The resurrection claims are claims that not only that Jesus’ body came back alive; it came back alive never to die again. That’s a violation of what naturally happens, every day, time after time, millions of times a year... The evidence that Bill himself doesn’t see his explanation as historical is that he claims that his conclusion is that Jesus was raised from the dead. Well, that’s a passive – “was raised” – who raised him? Well, presumably God! This is a theological claim about something that happened to Jesus. It’s about something that God did to Jesus."

Just for the record: Ehrman doesn't deny the historicity of the resurrection, only the historian's competence to prove it because the resurrection, if ocurred, is a miracle. (Obviously this is a red herring, since his debate with Craig was entitled "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?", and not "Can a historian to prove historically that a miracle has ocurred?").

If the evidence for a putative miracle occurs in a context charged with strong religious significance (like in the case of Jesus, whose teachings were centered on God's Kingdom and spiritual salvation), then the miracle is not a merely ambiguous phenomenon, but one plausibly attributed to a supernatural origin (i.e. an origin connected to the God whose kingdom Jesus taught).

As atheist New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemman explains "Indeed, the miraculous or revelatory aspect of Jesus cannot be the object of any scientific approach. However, as long as theology is "paired" with historical thought (as it is on the one hand by the character of its central sources and on the other hand by modern criteria of truth), then it must be interested in a natural explanation of the miracle- or it must admit that even on historical grounds a supernatural explanation is more plausible" (The Resurrection of Christ, p. 21. Emphasis in blue added).

Given that the resurrection cannot be explained naturally (as agreed by almost every major scholar), then it is obvious (specially given the religious context in which it ocurred, IF it did) that the most plausible explanation is that it was a miracle caused by a supernatural (divine) intervention.

3-In point 2, I asked why a "Christian" like Crossan is bothered by the fact that Jesus' Resurrection, if true, would entail a supernaturalistic intervention. After all, if the Christian God exists, then it is perfectly possible that he intervenes in the world. Why couldn't he? (Just imagine Richard Dawkins or Keith Augustine complaining that the non-existence of inmaterial souls or an afterlife is unacceptable because it seems to support too much the truth of materialistic naturalism as a worldview. Do you imagine any of these hard-core atheists complaining about the non-existence of an afterlife for that reason? Obviously not, they're more than happy to embrace such anti-survivalist position, precisely because it supports the truth of their materialistic worldview. Likewise, if Crossan is a Christian, why is he bothered by the omnipotence of his Christian God which could enable him to intervene in the world?)

The astute reader is likely to guess the answer. Crossan is an atheist (masked as a Christian in order to give the impression that, contrary to traditional Christians, he is not motivated by ideology or "faith" but by objectivity, science and the respect for facts alone. This is a studied strategy, which falls apart when you explore the matter in more detail with a critical eye).

The irrefutable evidence for Crossan' atheism (misleadingly and astutely masked with the phraseology of Christianity) is available in the book "Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (p.50-51) in which Crossan debated William Lane Craig. In the exchange, and fully knowing Crossan's misleading position (Crossan claims that the statament "God exists" is a statement of faith), Craig pressed him hard to give an explicit answer to the question of God's objective existence. This was what happened (please note carefully Crossan' sophistical evasions and distractions):

Craig: But if the existence of God is a statement of faith, not a statement of fact, that means that God’s existence is simply an interpretive construct that a particular human mind—a believer—puts into the universe.

Crossan: …I would say what you’re trying to do is imagine the world without us. Now unfortunately, I can’t do that. If you were to ask me (which is just what you did) to abstract from faith how God would be if no human beings existed, that’s like asking me, “Would I be annoyed if I hadn’t been conceived?” I really don’t know how to answer that question.

Craig: Sure you do!

Crossan: Wait a minute! We know God only as God has revealed God to us; that’s all we could ever know in any religion.

Craig: During the Jurassic age, when there were no human beings, did God exist?

Crossan: Meaningless question.

Craig: But surely that’s not a meaningless question. It’s a factual question. Was there a being who was the Creator and Sustainer of the universe during the period of time when no human beings existed? It seems to me that in your view you’d have to say no.

Crossan: Well, I would probably prefer to say no because what you’re doing is trying to put yourself in the position of God and ask, “How is God apart from revelation? How is God apart from faith?” I don’t know if you can do that. You can do it, I suppose, but I don’t know if it really has any point.

Bingo!. Crossan doesn't believe in an objective, mind-independent entity named God. In a pretty literal sense, Crossan is an ATHEIST. When I read that passage some time ago, I fully and suddenly understood why some Jesus Seminar' members call themselves "Christians", but deny Jesus' Resurrection (which is essential to Christianity). The whole atheistic project of the Jesus Seminar group was now fully understable and clear to me.

Craig summarizes Crossan's position (after their debate) in this short video:

I consider the duplicity and misleading use of language of some members of the Jesus Seminar as a example of charlatanism, intentional misdirection and intellectual dishonesty. Hence, I don't trust them.

4-The atheistic project of the Jesus Seminar is, basically, to make Jesus palatable to a increasingly secular society (which is highly hostile to Evangelical Christianity) in which religious pluralism seems to be the rule.

Religious pluralism is the view that "there are several ways to God". It is opposed to Christian exclusivism which says that Jesus is the ONLY way to God.

As said, the Jesus Seminar project seeks to portrait a Jesus who is not the only son of God (because it would imply an exclusivity contrary to religious pluralism) but a social reformer or spiritual teacher, "among others". The Christian exclusivism about Jesus becomes (in the hands of the Jesus Seminar) a Jesus compatible with religious pluralism.

And precisely, given that Crossan (and other Jesus Seminar members) fully realizes that Jesus' Resurrection is clearly connected with a supernatural (divine) intervention, he also realizes that if the resurrection is true, then Christian exclusivism is also true (and this is contrary to the religious pluralistic project of the group).

This rejection of Christian exclusivism in favour of religious pluralism is evident in the same book mentioned above, in which Crossan complains that Jesus' Resurrection "privileges Christianity as the only true or 'full' revelation of God, the 'only way'" (p.218-219 n18. Emphasis in blue added.)

Note carefully Crossan's connection between the factuality of the resurrection and Christian exclusivism regarding salvation. I submit this connection is a very plausible one. But Crossan employs this connection as a complain against Christianity (and hence, as an implicit theological assumption against the resurrection).

By the way, my answer to Crossan's complain is SO WHAT? It is a prerrogative of God to decide the means of salvation. Perhaps we can find unpalatable or wrong the view that just one way is the unique way for salvation. But this is our problem, not God's problem. You cannot determine what God has done simply appealing to your feelings and expectatives or to what you consider palatable.

I myself confess that the view that Jesus is the "only way" has bothered me a lot in the past. That he's THE way (not just one way among others) was an idea that I considered unpalatable, bigoted and unjust (moreover, in that time I was completely ignorant of the evidence for Jesus' resurrection). But I learnt that what is true or false cannot be decided by the test of "palatibility". If you have follow the evidence wherever it leads and draw from this the logical implications, even if the latter are fully unpalatable for you or somehow hurts your feelings or destroy your expectatives.

As far I've studied the matter, the vast majority of New Testament scholars agree that, if Jesus' Resurrection is true, then God is likely to be the cause of that event (this is why you won't get atheist New Testament scholars defending the historicity of Jesus' Resurrection). Also, they seem to agree (with Crossan) that if the resurrection is exclusive of Jesus, then the thesis of the "only way" defended by Christians is likely to be true too. I entirely agree with them about these two points.

5-Many people seem to be sympathetic to religious pluralism because they cannot accept that God has provided just "one way" to him. They cannot accept that good people in other religions cannot be saved. I myself agreed with this position for a long time. Currently, I don't agree with it anymore, because I cannot determine in advanced what God's means of salvation are. It is God's decision, not mine. Therefore, I have to be open to exclusivism and cannot reject it a priori. It is a matter that has to be decided on the basis of the evidence.

If God's means are exclusivistic, let it be. If they're pluralistic, let it be. We have to follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of our desires or expectations.

The question is, if Jesus' Resurrection turns out to be true (i.e. historical), does it support exclusivism or pluralism regarding his teachings? Like Crossan, Borg and most New Testament scholars that I've read, it seems to support exclusivism, because the resurrection is an unique event, of argueable supernatural origin (Crossan's words), which seems to give a special support to Jesus' person and teachings. Hence, it puts Jesus wholly apart (in a different category) of other "spiritual teachers", "social reformers", "gurus" and so forth.

6-People who, for whatever reasons, have religious pluralist beliefs, will buy largely into the Jesus Seminar's historical reconstruction of Jesus. The reason is that they cannot accept (and are very hostile to) Christian exclusivism, and hence they will resonate with the Jesus Seminar's pluralistic portrait of Jesus as "one teacher among others", as another teacher who is nothing special nor exclusive regarding salvation, as someone with interesting ideas and insights for spiritual evolution or even salvation, but not the exclusive or "only" way to God.

I submit that the Jesus Seminar's members who reject Jesus' Resurrection are consistent, because the historicity and factuality Jesus' Resurrection doesn't fit with the purely naturalistic and pluralistic portrait of Jesus that they have previously created. They use a Christian language about the resurrection, but deny its actual literal meaning (preferring to speculate misleadingly about metaphors). As more evidence of this see Marcus Borg's speculations about "meaning" and metaphors and other verbal sleight of hand in his debate about the resurrection with William Lane Craig.

They don't believe in God nor in Jesus' Resurrection (the two basic theses of Christianity), therefore they're not theists nor Christians. They're atheists masked as Christians in order to push forward a social atheistic and anti-Christian agenda in the name of Christianity.

Note that it has nothing to do with theism or Christianity being true. Even if atheism were true, the Jesus Seminar's agenda is dishonest and misleading, and as such deserve to receive proper exposing and debunking. (By the way, it doesn't imply that all the members of the Jesus Seminar are charlatans; some of the have made interesting contributions to the discussion, but overall I think their hidden atheistic agenda makes them unreliable).

7-The argument from Jesus' Resurrection to exclusivism is this (this is not a deductive argument, just a series of cumulative steps leading to the exclusivistic conclusion. I'm assuming, for the argument's sake, that Jesus' Resurrection is historical in order to press the point about exclusivism). When examining the following argument, try to think if each step is the most plausible one (not just think in logically possible alternatives, because we're interested in what is most plausibly true, i.e. most plausible than the alternatives, not in mere logically possible speculations or imaginary scenarios. Remember how pseudoskeptics try to explain away the evidence for psi appealing to logically possible scenarios which only exists in the pseudoskeptic's materialistic imagination):

a-If Jesus' Resurrection is literally true, then it is from a supernatural origin (since no natural explanation nor physical law can account for this unique event). In fact, natural laws are general (they rule a indefinite number of similar phenomena), but Jesus' Resurrection, if true, is an unique event. No natural laws exist to account for an unique, isolate event.

Theoretical physicist and theist John Polkinghorne comments "Whatever we can say about cloudy unpreditability, we surely can't suppose that it was through a clever exploitation of chaos theory that Jesus was raised from the dead, never to die again. If this happened (as I believe it did), it was a miraculous act of great power. "(Quarks, Chaos and Christianity, p. 97)

b-A supernatural origin of Jesus' Resurrection would imply the direct intervention of God, because God (the God of which Jesus spoke, his abba or father) is the first candidate, in the religious context of Jesus' life, to performance a miracle like that.

c-If God intervened directly in the resurrection, then his purpose was to validate Jesus' teachings about the God's Kingdom as special and unique among any other spiritual doctrines (in which God hasn't intervened or at least their intervention is less clear). This fact implies that all the atheistic spiritual doctrines are essentially false (since they deny God's existence and hence God's Kingdom) and the theistic doctrines, not validated by God himself (e.g. with a miracle) are unreliable.

d-If God validated Jesus' teachings, then these teachings are true (because a perfectly rational and good God cannot lie nor validate falsehoods, specially regarding spiritual salvation).

e-Jesus' resurrection is a historical fact.

f-Whatever doctrine is incompatible with Jesus' true teachings has to be false (this exploits religious pluralism is its broadest version).

g-Therefore, religious pluralism is false.

h-Hence, Christian exclusivism is true.

All the above steps can be resisted in a number of ways by the religious pluralist. But I think each step above is, given the religious context of Jesus' life, his teachings about God's Kingdom, the way in which natural laws operate and the putative fact of the resurrection, that each step is more plausible than the alternatives (and all the stepts taken together provide a good cumulative case for exclusivisim over pluralism. The key step is the historicity of Jesus's Resurrection).

This is why I submit that Jesus' identity depends, largely on the fact of the resurrection. If it ocurred, then the view of Jesus as the Son of God, cannot be ruled out. In fact, it seems very plausible and this is why exclusivism seems to be supported. Hence, that his teachings are exclusivistic, not pluralistic, cannot be ruled out a priori either (as Crossan and Borg concede). No social reformer, spiritual teacher or cynic philosopher has ever been vindicated in his teachings by a phenomenon like the resurrection. Hence, the resurrection doesn't seem to be the kind of validation that one would expect of the teachings of a mere social reformer, philosopher or "one among others" spiritual teacher.

8-Finally, a word about Jesus as the "Son of God". Skeptical critics doubt or deny that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. However, there is a passage in which many scholars, including some skeptical ones, consider as a true saying of Jesus: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13:32)

Note that Jesus says "The Son", implying that it is just one, not many.

Many scholars consider that this is a true Jesus' saying because Jesus is admitting ignorance regarding the Second Coming (and a God cannot be ignorant, he's omniscient). Hence, according to the principle of embarrassment, this is not the kind of saying that you would fabricate about a man to whom you are ascribing divinity or deity in order to convince other people to believe and worship Him.

Moreover, according to some Biblical scholars, in greek exists a figure of speech known as anabasis, which consists in an step by step increasing in stress inside of a passage. In the above passage, Jesus seems to be making a gradation in levels:

-No one ("normal human beings") knows

-Not even the angels in Heaven (angels, being a little bit superior than human beings)

-Nor the Son (the son, not a son nor some sons, implying that just one has that status and, moreover, that he is in a superior level than angels)

-Only the Father (abba) = God, which has a superior status than everybody else.

This clearly places Jesus as "Son of God" in a category above humans and angels (hence, in a superior position regarding any other spiritual teacher, social reformer, cynic philosopher, etc.). He is claiming to be the Son of God in a uniquely divine sense.

Another important reference is found in the Gospel of Mark (12:1-12) and is referred as the parable of the wicked tenants of the vineyard, which most scholars, even skeptics, consider as a true saying of Jesus. Jesus tells the parable of the owner of a vineyard who rented it to some vinegrowers. He sent a slave to receive some of the produce. But they refused to listen to the slave, beat him, and sent him away. One by one as the owner sent additional slaves, they refused to listen and either beat or killed them. He had one left to send, a SON. But the tenants killed him too and threw him out of the vineyard. In this parable, the vineyard symbolizes Israel, the owner of the vineyard is God, the tenants are the Jewish religious leaders, and the servants are the prophets send by God.

This parable clearly shows a Jesus who see himself as God's only son, different and above all the others prophets. Therefore, contrary to the misleading naturalistic and pluralistic portrait of Jesus made by some liberal scholars, it seems that Jesus perceived himself not as a mere human prophets, social reformer or spiritual teacher "among others", but as God's ultimate menssager. This exclusivity of Jesus' identity, authority and teaching reaches its maximum in a last unique event: the resurrection.

This is why I agree that when in (Luke 22: 70) is written "And they all said, 'Are You the Son of God, then?' And He said to them, 'Yes, I am.'" (Luke 22:70), we're reading a probable actual saying of Jesus (in spite that this specific Luke's passage is not seen by most scholars as historially evidenced).

In conclusion, I find these arguments convicing, and the portrait the Jesus Seminar and other liberal scholars regarding Jesus, as misleading, false and unjustified. I do think Jesus regarded himself as the Son of God. (If Jesus is actually the Son of God, or was deluded into that belief, is another problem. But if the resurrection is true, then the conclusion that he's the Son of God seems to be likely given Jesus' own self-perception).

9-Regarding pressupositions, I think everybody have them. The question is if the presupposition is justified or not. For me, a naturalistic pressuposition like the Jesus Seminar' is unwarranted and, given that I think naturalism is false, I think that presupposition is false too (and misleading and question-begging in the context of the Historical Jesus, since the divinity of Jesus and his resurrection is part of what precisely is at stake and deserve to be investigated and determined).

As consequence, I don't believe in the historical reconstruction of Jesus made by the Jesus Seminar and other liberal scholars. It doesn't mean that I agree with all the theses about Jesus defended by traditional Christians; I only accept, currently, that they are right in 1)Defending the view that Jesus regarded himself as the son of God; 2)Christian exclusivism and 3)That such a views are likely to be true IF Jesus' resurrection is an historical fact.

10-The Jesus Seminar's views are very influential and well-received in popular press and media. And purely speculative books about Jesus like Dan Brown's become popular best-sellers.

I submit the ultimate explanation of this social phenomenon is mainly an hostility to or animus against the traditional Christian exclusivism and the divine view of Jesus plus a solid ignorance of Christian theology, history and philosophy.

This animus has cultural roots in Western countries, and has been caused by the efficacy of atheistic propagandists plus the irrationality, dogmatism and anti-intellectualism of many Christian pastors, churchmen and ideologues.

You can easily discover this animus asking the critic if God's existence and Jesus' resurrection were proved to be true (the two basic or core beliefs of Christianity), it would provide evidence for Christianity. You'll discover that some of them will say NO, and resist whatever evidence supports Christianity.

I call this the "ultimate defense against Christianity", because virtually nothing (not even the putative evidence in favour of this religion's two basic beliefs) would count in its favor.

Happy new year 2012 to all my readers!

Sivarama Swami vs Dr Stephen Law debate on the topic Does God Exist?

2011-12-28T02:44:00.000-08:00

Most debates in universities about God's existence face atheist scholars against Christian scholars. The above debate is an interesting exception.

According to wikipedia, Sivarama Swami is "a Vaishnava guru and a religious leader for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)", hence he's not a Christian philosopher or theologian. You can visit Sivarama Swami's website here.

Sivarama Swami is faced against atheist philosopher Stephen Law (who recently debated, and in my opinion was defeated, by William Lane Craig).

Contrary to popular opinions, Christian theology has been mainly rationalistic and argumentative regarding its core doctrines. Christian scholars present a straighforward rational case both for God's existence and Jesus' Resurrection based on scientific, historical and philosophical evidence and argumentation.

In contrast with that Christian approach, we find a lot of Eastern and Asian philosophical systems which are irrationalistic (or rather, a-rationalistic) in the sense that for them "reason" is part of the illusion of existence, or is the wrong tool to spiritual liberation and evolution. Reason cannot grasp correctly the mysteries of life, which stands beyond logic, rationality or science. Mystical experiences, subjective insights into our own minds, meditation, etc. provide (for these thinkers) the actual path to discover the "truth".

I remember reading the book of a Zen master who argued that the Christian attempt to prove God's existence through reason is impossible, because God (if exists) is far beyond of our capabilities of understanding (a similar approach is seen in some leading members of the Jesus Seminar, for example in Marcus Borg, who based on his own personal mystical experiences, appeals to metaphors, meaning and words each time he's confronted with rational arguments for God's or historical arguments for Jesus' Resurrection. Hear Borg's poor performance and evasive and misleading arguments in his debate with William Lane Craig here).

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some Eastern and Asian thinkers/philosophers/spiritual masters tend to avoid public debates with Western thinkers. They're not interested in winning arguments or convincing people through the use of logic and reason.

For the record: all Christians concede that God is beyond our capabilities of understanding in the sense that we cannot grap fully what God's infinite power is through our finite and fallible minds. Always will exist a gap between our knowledge and God' infinite knowledge, power and perfect nature. But it doesn't mean that some properties of God cannot be known and understood. So, the Zen master's conclusion (in the book that I read) is actually a non-sequitur.

I mention all of this because the above video is one of the few cases in which you'll watch a non-Christian religious thinker debating with an atheist philosopher.

Enjoy.

Lawrence Krauss Does a Striptease for William Lane Craig

2011-12-27T11:54:00.000-08:00

Have fun.

December and Christmas: Time to reflect, share, love, enjoy and think

2011-12-22T16:57:00.000-08:00

For me, December in general and Christmas in particular are times to to do many positive things. Among them:

-To reflect about life' important questions like the meaning of life, the existence/non-existence of God, the existence/non-existence of an afterlife and so forth.

-To share useful things with people, specially the ones who are less afortunate than you. You can share food, toys for children, objects that you don't use anymore, etc. with poor people who need them. For them, these objects can be very valuable and useful.

-Enjoy the positive things of your life, like the lucky of having people who loves you and whom you love too, and having them alive to share with them these happy moments. Remember that, at least in this life, you don't have these people around forever.

-I like to eat good and very sophisticated food (sorry, it is one of my weakness), enjoy good movies, read good books which contribute to my intellectual, emotional and spiritual evolution.

-Giving thanks to all the people (including God, in you believe in Him) for all the good things of your life.

Merry Christmas!

History Channel Documentary - The Real Face of Jesus from the Turin Shroud

2011-12-21T18:20:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post: Shroud Of Turin, Jesus' Proposed Burial Cloth, Is Authentic, Italian Study Suggests

2011-12-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

See more here.

Agnostic New Testament scholar and historian Bart Ehrman humilliates The Infidel Guy about the existence of Jesus

2011-12-20T23:35:00.000-08:00

No competent New Testament scholar or scientific historian denies the historical existence of Jesus. However, some people like the atheist ideologues and propagandists Richard Carrier and Jesus Seminar "scholar" Robert M. Price have defended or believed the view that Jesus didn't exist (the so-called Jesus Myth Hypothesis).

For example, in this article in infidel.org, Richard Carrier wrote "Jesus might have existed after all. But until a better historicist theory is advanced, I have to conclude it is at least somewhat more probable that Jesus didn't exist than that he did. I say this even despite myself, as I have long been an opponent of ahistoricity."

Carrier is academically trained as an historian; and that an historian like him consider that Jesus' non-existence is more probable than his existence, is actually solid evidence of Carrier's professional incompetence in his own field of academic training. As agnostic historian and New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman comments in the above audio, no serious scholar or historian believes in the non-existence of Jesus; the historical evidence for Jesus's existence is stronger than the evidence for many of the ancient historical people who everybody agree have existed. As consequence of this evidence, this Jesus Myth view is overwhelmingly rejected by New Testament scholars and historians (atheist, agnostic, jewish, liberal, conservative Christians, etc.) alike.

As consequence, implied by Ehrman's own argument, people like Carrier or Price are not and cannot be serious nor competent scholars. They're propagandists for atheism, and their propaganda includes the suppression or intentional distortion of the historical evidence for Jesus' existence in order to support their emotional and ideological hostility towards Christianity.

In the above audio, you can hear The Infidel Guy (who's not a trained historian, but untrained atheist believer) being humilliated and refuted by Bart Ehrman about the existence of Jesus and the falsehood of the Jesus Myth Hypothesis.

You have to understand that many radical, hard-core atheists are irrational, in the sense that their cognitive faculties don't work properly in order to discover the truth or evaluate the evidence. Wishful thinking is one of their main traits. Another one is their overall stupidity. The above audio is a fine example of this.

They are not reliable as sources of information, because their intellectual faculties are seriously distortioned and damaged by atheistic prejudices, dogmas, spiritual/emotional impairments and ideological commitments.

Faces of Belmez: The greatest paranormal phenomenon in the history of parapsychology?

2011-12-20T13:28:00.000-08:00

A friend from Spain informs me that the so-called Belmez's faces (apparently, from a paranormal origin) have been around for 40 years, and there is not a clear explanation of the phenomenon. For some, they're a fraud. But other researchers think that at least some of them are real.

Some of these parapsychologists consider that this phenomenon is the greatest paranormal phenomenon of the history of parapsychology.

Peter Millican, and how atheists misrepresent Alexander Vilenkin

2011-12-18T07:48:00.000-08:00

Prof.Peter Millican

In England, William Lane Craig debated with prestigious Oxford scholar and atheist philosopher Peter Millican.

I've read some of professor Millican's material, and I consider him a serious and intellectually brilliant philosopher (Millican is a Hume scholar, and I've learnt interesting interpretations about Hume reading Millican's comments). However, in his debate with Craig, Millican committed an astonishing and typical atheist mistake: he misrepresented Alexander Vilenkin's words in order to refute Craig's contention that the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem proves an absolute and ultimate beginning of the universe.

Being a experienced debater and fully knowing that atheists misrepresent Vilenkin's words (I don't think Millican's misrepresentation was intentional), Craig easily refuted Millican's contention reading Vilenkin's full words in full context:

Clearly, Millican was mislead by some atheist about what Vilenkin's actual view is.

It's astonishing that even serious, brilliant philosophers like Millican may commit that kind of mistake in public. Sadly, it shows that professor Millican was more interested to refute Craig's contention than in objectively evaluating if Craig's argument is correct or not.

Again, atheists are forced to employ of misrepresentations and straw men in order to give plausibility and support their atheist case.

This is another reason why they're beaten in public debates.

Voting Results on debate between William Lane Craig and Peter Williams vs Andrew Copson and Arif Ahmed

2011-12-18T07:32:00.000-08:00

In the facebook page of the Cambridge Union Society, you can read "On the Motion - "This House Believes God is Not a Delusion": Ayes 243, Abstentions 129, Noes 229: The motion passes by 14 votes." in favor of Craig/Williams vs atheists Copson and Ahmed.

It's interesting and even astonishing that in a so prestigious scholarly debating society like the Cambridge Union (not precisely a friend of Christianity), Christian philosophers William Lane Craig and Peter Williams have beaten atheists Andrew Copson and Arif Ahmed.

According to my information, that debate was a little bit weird, in the sense (in contrast with most scholarly debates) that it was allowed to the public to interrupt the speaker's speech and raised objections and comments in any moment. Obviously, this doesn't help to clarify the speakers' points, and tends to create confusion.

This is not an ideal condition for a rigurous debate. In any case, even in these less than perfect conditions, the atheist speakers lost in their own "home".

This is further evidence of the extreme intellectual weakness of the atheist case.

The great debate: Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox

2011-12-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

[DEBATE] Deus, Um Delírio: O Debate - Richard Dawkins & John Lennox from Deus em Debate on Vimeo.

In my opinion, Lennox clearly destroyed Dawkins in this debate pretty easily. In fact, some people suspect that Dawkins' coward refusal to debate William Lane Craig was caused, in part, by the beating that Lennox provided to him. Dawkins realized that, if Lennox destroyed him in public, Craig (who's a more experienced debater) would sweept the floor with him.

Currently, Dawkins has received a new debating challenge from Patrick Coffin, to debate with Christian philosopher Edward Feser (the author of Aquinas and the The Last: Superstition: a Refutation of the New Atheism). This challenge will prove again Dawkins' cowardice, because he WON'T accept.

And if he accepts, then we will enjoy a new intellectual beating of Dawkins.

The Rage Against God: Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, explains his conversion from atheism to theism

2011-12-16T20:02:00.000-08:00

Journalist and writer Peter Hitchens, the brother of the late Christopther Hitchens, was (like Christopher) an atheist. However, his life experiences, intellectual reflections and other reasons motivated his conversion to Christian theism.

In his very interesting book, The Rage Against God, Peter explains the reasons of his conversion and provides interesting insights about contemporary atheism.

Please read this article by Peter regarding his book.

The new atheist Christopher Hitchens dies of cancer at 62

2011-12-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens, one of the so-called "New Atheists", lost his battle against cancer. He died at 62.

Hitchens said, even after his disease, that he didn't believe in the afterlife. But if the afterlife exists (as I think it does), then I think that by now he could have changed his opinion.

Hitchens was a seasoned polemicist and a harsh critic of religions. But in my opinion, he wasn't a sophisticated thinker. Just watch his performance in his debate with William Lane Craig in 2009 (in which Hitchens was badly beaten):

Debate - Does God Exist - Christopher Hitchens Vs William Lane Craig from Iglesia Bautista Nueva Esperanza on Vimeo.

Anyway, let's hope he will be in a better place now. QEP.

New videos of people telling their Near Death Experiences

2011-12-16T08:19:00.000-08:00

A tribute to Masakatsu Funaki: The world's greatest real Catch Wrestler and Submission Fighter

2011-12-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

Despite of the fact that my blog doesn't deal with sports, I think that as a practitioner and long time fan of mixed martial arts, I must share some words about a man who has been a great inspiration to me. This man is Masakatsu Funaki, a seasoned martial artist and real (not fake) Catch Wrestler.

In United States, "Catch Wrestling" is commonly conflated with "pro-Wrestling" (the fake wrestling shows which features people like Hulk Hogan, the Undertaker and so forth). In Japan, "pro-wrestling" has been considered not so much as a fake, because people there tends to think that japanese pro-wrestlers are real fighters.

The truth is this: Many japanese pro-wrestlers are real trained figthers, but the pro-wrestling shows are mostly fake (like in U.S.). Funaki even participated a lot in these "fake" wrestling shows, and currently he's a "pro-wrestler". However, he is an actual, real figther. (Note the contrast with pro wrestlers in the United States: Almost all of them are not actual figthers, only showmen).

In order to create an actual, real wrestling event, in 1993 Masakatsu Funaki created (together with some other fighters) the organization of Pancrase, the first organization promoting mixed martial arts. The fights of Pancrase weren't "pro-wrestling shows" with fake fights and predetermined winners, but actual fights with few rules (e.g. don't strike with closed fists in the face, just with open hands) among martial artists from different styles.

In the above video, you can watch some of Funaki's real fights in Pancrase. He was a kind of a king of hand to hand fighting, a master of submission holds. With six different black belts (or their equivalent) in several arts, Funaki was a fighting machine.

I remember watching in situ some of Funaki's greastest fights and even talking with some of the wrestlers of Pancrase. I even trained, in seminars in Japan and United States, with some of them. They were absolutely amazing.

One of the fights that I never will forget is Funaki's fight with the great jiu-jitsu master Rickson Gracie. It was in the year 2000. I was present in that stadium to watch the fight and the bets were largely favourable to Funaki. I thought Funaki would beat Rickson, but I wasn't sure (Rickson was the best jiu-jitsu expert in the world). This fight was watched by 40000 persons there and 70000 through cable around the world!:

If you watch the fight carefully, you'll notice that it was on a par during most of the fight. Only at the end, Rickson's worldclass expertise in ground fighting gave him an edge. I never thought this fight would end like this, because Funaki is one of the greatest ground fighters and submission experts.

Funaki said before that fight that he would knock Rickson out in 3 minutes, and I thought it was possible because Funaki's strikes and kicks are extremely powerful. Rickson, smartly, avoid Funaki's punches and closed the distance creating a grappling situation. But even in that situation, Funaki could beat Rickson, I thought, since Funaki's grappling skills are of the best that I've ever seen.

I'll never forget that fight.

Some fans of mixed martial arts will dispute my claim that Funaki is the greastest living Catch Wrestler. They will say that Sakuraba was better and mention as evidence the fight between Sakuraba and Funaki in 2007 (which Sakuraba won):

Perhaps they're right, perhaps not. (The above fight was in 2007 and Funaki was past his prime. In any case, I happily concede that Sakuraba is one of the best figthers in the world).

But I think they at least will agree that he was one of the 3 top Japanese catch wrestlers and submission figthers of all the time. And certainly, he's one of the finest martial artists of the world.

Discovery Channel Documentary: The Shroud of Turin - New Evidence

2011-12-12T11:49:00.000-08:00

Patrick Coffin's open invitation and the cowardice of Richard Dawkins: Is Dawkins afraid of Edward Feser too?

2011-12-06T16:56:00.000-08:00

All the world already knows that Richard Dawkins is an intellectual coward. He used not less than 12 excuses for not debating William lane Craig:

Now, Patrick Coffin, the host of the Catholic Answers Live radio program, has published an open invitation to Richard Dawkins to debate Christian philosopher Edward Feser (the author of the book The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism).

An Open Invitation to Richard Dawkins

Dear Dr. Dawkins: Last week, on November 28, 2011, we devoted an hour on Catholic Answers Live to “Deconstructing Atheism,” with philosopher Edward Feser, author of The Last Superstition and other philosophical works. I invited you, albeit last minute, to call the show and you replied that it was too late in the UK but that you would deputize an American representative from your foundation, Sean Faircloth, who did call in the show. Dr. Feser and I tried to steer Mr. Faircloth back to the central question of whether God exists, and extract from him an answer as to why you refuse to debate William Lane Craig, the Christian philosopher and apologist. Mr. Faircloth had no answer, although he did exhibit above average question-dodging. What a disappointment. After the show aired, you emailed me to complain that Feser and I misrepresented the truth, that you indeed did debate William Lane Craig on national Mexican television in 2010, and that you hoped I would make an on-air correction to set the record straight.

Firstly, to put it charitably, it is a stretch indeed to call the Cuidad de Las Ideas event in Mexico a “debate with William Lane Craig” since there were six panelists, including you and Craig, on the question of whether the universe has a purpose. I watched the whole thing on YouTube, and there was no direct Q&A interaction between you and Bill Craig (who, by the way, blogged at the time that you told him to his face that you did not consider it a debate with him).

Second, I read with interest your essay in The Guardian titled, “Why I Refuse to Debate William Lane Craig.” I am no logician, Dr. Dawkins, but I do know that these propositions cannot both be true. I also note your willingness to confront lightweights like Rev. Ted Haggard, actor Kirk Cameron, or non-philosophers who happen to be English archbishops. I hereby invite you to set the record straight and debate Dr. Edward Feser on whether or not God exists. I know your dismissive line about the CV, and perhaps you’ll play that card here. But I hope not. Edward Feser is also not a professional debater (neither is Craig, but that’s another matter) but a philosophy professor. He’s not asking for a debate. I pitched the idea, and he accepted. As you know, even fellow atheists such as Oxford’s own David Came are recognizing a pattern of ducking substantial one-on-one debates when he sees one. We all see it. One atheist commenter on your website called on his fellow atheists to “inundate” our phone system as a protest against Catholic Answers Live. This is intellectual discourse? I posted an invitation there for any atheist to call and voice his or her arguments. None have taken me up on my offer. This is known as chicken hawk behavior, or: courage in speech, cowardice in deed. The Dawkins-Feser debate would be taped and released thereafter.

Either way, you would be free to upload the debate on your website both as proof of your victory and as the occasion to make your critics fall silent. Finally, because you live in the UK, we would be happy to accommodate you with a reasonable time of day. We would go with our preference. I believe the world is ready for an updated version of the famous 1948 BBC debate between Bertrand Russell and Fred Copleston, SJ. Please let me know. This is a sincere invitation.

Patrick Coffin
Host Catholic Answers Live radio program
www.catholic.com/radio

Having read most of Edward Feser's books, I know he's an intellectually honest, serious, erudite and rigurous thinker; in contrast with Dawkins, who's at most an intellectual lightweight and an inconsistent thinker. (Dawkins' main virtue is that his books are very readable, this is true. But people familiar with intellectually sophisticated thinkers would instantaneously recognize that Dawkins is not a great thinker. He's more like a sophist. See this post as evidence for this conclusion).

As consequence, I'm pretty sure that Feser would destroy Dawkins very easily in a debate about God's existence.

I predict that this debate won't happen, because Dawkins (if he knows who Feser is) won't accept the challenge. Dawkins will chicken away again.

But if (and this is a big IF) that debate happens, for sure Dawkins will be intellectually humilliated.

Gerd Lüdemann vs William Lane Craig second debate on Jesus' Resurrection

2011-12-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

The Possibility of Resurrection from Veritas [1] on Vimeo.

Brent Leung publishes a new AIDS Documentary entitled The Emperor's New Virus?: An Analysis of the Evidence for the Existence of HIV

2011-12-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

The Emperor's New Virus?: An Analysis of the Evidence for the Existence of HIV from houseofnumbers on Vimeo.

In this documentary, Leung interviews the leading AIDS experts like Robert Gallo, Barre-Sinousi, David Baltimore or Luc Montagnier; and the leading AIDS critics or skeptics (more precisely, they're critics of the theory which connects HIV with AIDS, not of AIDS itself) like The Perth Group, etc.

Dr.Roger Leir and the Scientific Study of putative Alien Implants

2011-12-04T14:18:00.001-08:00

Dr. Roger K. Leir presents physical evidence of implants by putative alien beings

2011-12-04T14:10:00.000-08:00

A brief review of A Sceptic's Guide To Atheism by Peter S. Williams

2011-12-01T16:56:00.000-08:00

Peter S. Williams is a Christian philosopher who is very familiar with the contemporary atheistic literature, specially with the so-called "New Atheism" kind of literature.

His book A Sceptic's Guide To Atheism (which can be bought in Amazon.co.uk, not Amazon.com) is a decisive confutation of the new atheism. Nuanced, balanced, erudite and charitable, Williams explores each of the best new atheistic arguments for atheism and against theism, and shows them seriously flawed (fallacious, resting on unjustified or even false assumptions, inconsistent, etc.).

A major virtue of Williams' book is that his arguments don't assume the truth of Christian theism. Even though Williams is a Christian, the premises of most of his arguments against atheism can be, and in fact are, largely accepted by agnostics and even atheists themselves. This gives Williams a crucial dialectical adventage: his critics will have to reject premises which, for most part, they accept themselves when arguing for other topics. They will tend to be caught in the uncomfortable position of having to reject arguments that, in the critics' own standards, are based on very plausible premises (which would expose the critic's wishful thinking and intellectual dishonesty).

Another interesting aspect of Williams' book is his explanation of what "faith" actually means in Christian theism, and how the new atheists constantly misrespresent the concept, and how they themselves concede that some of their positions are based on faith.

For example, Williams quotes Dawkins saying that faith is "blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence" (p.63). However, Dawkins himself has conceded that some aspects of his hard-core belief in the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection is based on faith: "There cannot have been intermediate states that were not beneficial... If you can't think in one, then it's your problem, not natural selection's problem. Natural seleccion- well, I suppose that it is a matter of faith in my part" (p.64)

Why exactly is Dawkins' faith superior or better than the faith of religious believers that he condemns and castigates? Epistemologically, if "faith" is defined in terms' of Dawkins' own definition, his act of faith regarding natural selection is so irrational as the faith of religious believers.

Evolution by natural selection, on Dawkins' own concession, is not just a scientific hypothesis supported by evidence, but something that has to be true as a matter of faith on his part. (This kind of fanatical irrationalism can explain Dawkins' dogmatic, bigoted and intolerant censorship of the publication of agnostic journalist Richard Milton's critical article about Darwinism).

Perhaps Dawkins would defend his faith saying that, at least it is not so bad or evil as the faith of religious fundamentalists.

The problem with this response is that, epistemologically, Dawkins' faith is so irrational like the ones of religious fundamentalists (even if it is conceded that his faith is morally superior than the ones of religious fundamentalists). Moreover, in Dawkins' own worldview, the "evil and the good" are not objective properties of the world; therefore, there is not objective way to say that Dawkins' faith is morally superior or inferior than other faiths. It's just faith (as defined by Dawkins), and hence irrational. PERIOD.

Conclusive evidence of the moral poverty of Dawkins's atheistic worldview is seen in these videos:

Therefore, Dawkins cannot consistently appeal to ethics in a attempt to justify morally his irrationality.

In any case, the new atheists' rhetoric about "faith" is irrelevant to William's Christian theism, since he shows that in Christianity, "faith" is not a blind belief unsupported by evidence or contrary to it, but a commitment to what we have reason to believe that it is true (e.g. a commitment to believe that Jesus' teachings about God's Kingdom are true based on the historical evidence for his resurrection). As consequence, in Christian theism, "faith" is not something opposed to reason, but something which is a consequence of it.

According to Williams, a lot of Biblical passages support this view, for example:

-Samuel said "I am going to confront you with evidence before the Lord" (1 Samuel 12:7)

-Jesus said "At least believe in the evidence of miracles" (John 14:11)

-God to humans "Let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18)

-Paul to Christians "stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults" (1 Corinthians 14:20)

-Christians are encouraged to "always be prepared to give an asnwer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have" (1 Peter 3:15)

And many other passages.

I submit that most people (Christian and non-Christian alike), specially many non-Christian theists that I've known (some spiritualists, some mystics, etc.), have been largely mislead by the rhetoric of atheists regarding the proper meaning of "faith" in Christian theology. I include myself in the group of people who was at one time fooled by such propaganda (see the first part of my autobiographical post).

The works of serious Christian philosophers (like Edward Feser, Alvin Plantinga, etc.), including some of Williams' articles and also his book, have convinced me that "faith", properly understood in its Christian sense, is not an irrational or blind belief, but a belief based on the deliverances of reason (if such deliverances are false or flawed in a particular case is another discussion... right now we're not examining the truth of Christian theism, but the epistemological status of "faith" properly understood).

Serious atheists, like first-rate philosopher Brand Blanshard, have argued that Christian theology has been mainly rationalistic (in the sense of offering reason and evidence, from history and natural theology, to support the truth of the Christian faith). This point is intentionally suppressed or misrepresented by the new atheists and other atheistic charlatans.

Hence, providing a much needed clarification and evidence for what "faith" actually means in Christian theism is another great contribution of Williams' book.

In summary, Williams, rigurously and systematically, provide conclusive evidence (like the ones mentioned above) to show that:

-The new atheists contradict themselves in fundamental points.

-They crudely misrepresent the best arguments for God's existence (a point noted by every serious philosopher, even atheistic ones, who have read the new atheistic books), and their objections are largely irrelevant to the theistic arguments when properly formulated.

-They misrepresent the concept of "faith" (as understood in Christian theology) but themselves fail prey to leaps of faith (as misdefined by atheists), as evidenced by Dawkins' quotation above.

-Their worldview (given their purely mechanistic assumptions) cannot ground properly the existence of an objective normativity (including moral normativity). A point which tends to be conceded by many leading atheists (see evidence here).

A criticism that I'd mention against Williams' book is that he doesn't deal with more sophisticated atheists like Quentin Smith, who knows better than the "new atheist" cranks and are harder to refute.

In any case, since most people are familiar with the new atheists and want to know responses to them specifically, I think Williams' omission is largely justified.

Also, I think Williams could add an appendix in which the main philosophical and scientific arguments for God's existence (e.g. the kalam argument, design arguments, the moral argument, the argument from consciousness, the quantum mechanics arguments, etc.) be discussed in the context of the most common objections against them. Even though Williams discusses some of these arguments, it is done more in the context of the new atheists' crude critiques and misrepresentations of them; but other (more plausible and serious) criticisms are available in the technical literature and perhaps dealing with them in an appendix would be helpful.

Also, as an argument against atheism (in its materialistic, metaphysical naturalist version which is the most plausible one), Williams could use the evidence from near-death experiences, which strongly suggest that mind-body dualism is true (the best up-to-date scholarly evidence, and philosophical discussion, of NDEs is available in philosopher Chris Carter's recent book Science and the Near Death Experience). An appendix discussing this matter would prove to be very useful and informative for his readers.

Williams' book is, without a doubt, one of the best up-to-date critical resources about contemporary new atheism.

I strongly recommend this book for all the seekers for the truth, regardless of their theological (or anti-theological) persuasions.

Eben Alexander III and the near-death experience of a neurosurgeon

2011-12-01T15:10:00.000-08:00

See this full interview with Dr. Eben Alexander III here.

Visit Dr.Alexander's website.

Agnostic philosopher of religion Anthony Kenny comments about the book The Last Superstition: a Refutation of the New Atheism

2011-12-01T10:00:00.001-08:00

Sir Anthony Kenny, a prominent philosopher of religion (known for his criticisms of Thomas Aquinas' arguments for God's existence) wrote the following comment about philosopher Edward Feser's book The Last Superstition: A refutation of the New Atheism:

[Feser] has the rare and enviable gift of making philosophical argument compulsively readable... The publisher's blurb tells us that this book has been widely hailed as the strongest argument ever made against the New Atheists. Having read and reviewed quite a number of other similar books, I concur with this judgment

Having read Feser's book, I agree with Kenny's opinion. I'd add that, in order to understand Aquinas' thinking in detail, you should get Feser's book titled Aquinas. It was published after The Last Superstition, and it is even more detailed and scholarly than the TLS.

One aspect that I liked a lot of The Last Superstition is that Feser castigates, sometimes with harsh words, the ignorance, incompetence, irrationality and overall stupidity of the "new atheists".

I'm convinced that people like the "new atheists" are charlatans and they deserve to receive intellectual punishment like the ones that Feser provides in his book.

Interview with researcher of psychic phenomena Guy Lyon Playfair

2011-11-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

This is an interview with writer and researcher of psychic phenomena Guy Lyon Playfair. I thank Guy for accepting this interview. Enjoy.

1-Guy, tell us something about your background.

I was born in India, brought up in England, and emigrated to Brazil after a couple of years working for a property developer, which I felt was not where I really wanted to be. I spent fourteen years there mostly working as a freelance journalist, with a four-year period in the press section of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was a great learning experience.

2-Why did you get interested in parapsychology and psychic phenomena?

My mother was a member of the Society for Psychical Research, so I grew up reading the SPR Journal along with my comics and jazz magazines, and was aware of the subject since I was about ten or so and accepted it as part of life.

3-Have you had any personal, first-hand experience with some actual paranormal or afterlife phenomenon?

Yes indeed, several. I've described most of them in my various books. My Brazilian experiences are in my first book The Flying Cow, which has just been updated and reissued, as has This House is Haunted, which is all about the Enfield poltergeist case of 1977-78. And all kinds of odd things happened when I was working with Uri Geller as I described in The Geller Effect.

4-What is your opinion of Allan Kardec and the movement based upon his teachings?

Very favourable. I was very lucky to meet Hernani Guimarães Andrade, the pioneer of psychical research in Brazil, who let me work with the institute he founded. He was a Spiritist as well as a trained scientist, and a first rate field researcher who did a great job recording the cases that he investigated, notably of poltergeists and cases of the reincarnation type. He taught me everything I know about psi research and I am eternally grateful to him for that. I'm not a card-carrying Spiritist but a very sympathetic observer greatly impressed by the charitable work Brazilian Spiritists do.

5-You have written an excellent book about Chico Xavier, who was the most famous and respected medium in Brazil. However, some Brazilian psi researchers like Vitor Moura Visoni have recently argued that Xavier was a fraud on the grounds that 1)Xavier never accepted scientific controls; 2)His guide never actually existed (according to the findings of Brazilian researcher José Carlos Ferreira Fernandes); 3)There is much evidence of cold reading; and more importantly 4)Xavier's books have passages copied of others famous books. What do you think of these criticisms?

Not very much. It is generally known that 'spirit guides' are not identifiable real people, and anybody who knows anything about mediumship will know that a trance medium has no conscious control over what comes through. As for Chico being a 'fraud', all I can say is that since he donated 100% of his royalties for something like 450 books to charitable causes, we need a few more 'frauds' like him.

6-According to your research, and leaving aside cases of tricks, is there good evidence to think that "psychic surgery" is an actual paranormal phenomenon?

Undeniably, by definition. 'Paranormal' merely means inexplicable in terms of presently understood science, and there is abundant evidence that 'psychic surgeons' have been seen to do things that await explanation. I collected a good deal of evidence from witnesses and had a couple of operations myself, so have no doubts that we have a genuine mystery here. There are many frauds, especially in the Philippines, but their tricks are quite easy to spot.

7-What do you think of psychic surgeon Zé Arigó? Was he a real psychic surgeon?

Well, the president of Brazil (Kubitschek) evidently thought so, since he pardoned him after he had been jailed for illegal practice of medicine. So did Andrija Puharich, a qualified doctor who spent a lot of time with him as you can read in John G. Fuller's excellent book Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife. I include some interesting eye-witness testimony from doctors who had seen him in action in The Flying Cow.

8-Uri Geller is a controversial figure among psychics. Skeptics consider him as the paradigm of "psychic fraud" and among psi researchers the opinion seems to be divided. According to your research, is Geller an actual psychic? Does he posses actual paranormal skills?

I've been in touch with Uri since 1973 and first met him when he came to live in England in 1985. We are still in regular touch and I consider him a good friend. I think I know him better than any of his detractors do, and think he has been much misunderstood. A lot of the opposition to him is just based on jealousy. As for his skills, I'm still waiting for a normal explanation of how he managed to bend a chrome vanadium spanner (which I still have) as I described in Fortean Times (issue 250, 2009). His critics have gone all quiet about that.

9-It has been said that Geller had contact with alien beings. What is your opinion about this aspect of Geller's life?

I have questioned him about this and his reply is that it all happened (if it did) while he was hypnotised by Puharich and he doesn't have any conscious memories of this stuff.

10-What is your opinion about William Crookes' research with Florence Cook? Do you think the evidence supports the hypothesis that Cook was a fraud?

I don't really have anything to add to the volumes that have already been written about this. She was certainly caught faking, like Otilia Diogo in Brazil, but that is no proof that she was always a faker.

11-In alternative medicine exists the so-called "energetic medicines", or therapies which use "paranormal energies" (chi, prana, ki, etc) in order to produce healings. Have you researched these kinds of alternative therapies. Do they use actual paranormal energies which work independently of the placebo effect or suggestion?

This is not something I am qualified to comment on. I regularly use alternative therapies, especially herbal, and have found them often better than chemicals. I am especially interested in hypnosis, which I think should be used far more often that it is these days. In my book If This Be Magic (also recently reissued) I give many examples of what it can do when used properly.

I also had experience of non-medical healing when I had a slipped disc which made me unable to write with my right hand. I tried numerous therapies without success, and a single session with Matthew Manning produced an immediate cure. An orthopedic surgeon who was a friend of mine told me it would take two years for the ulnar nerve to recover, and after examining me before and after my session with Matthew said he had no medical explanation.

12-In Brazil and other countries, one hears stories of voodoo, black magic and similar methods of provoking spiritual or physical damage in others at a distance through paranormal means. Do you think something paranormal is operating in these cases? Is there some evidence supporting the paranormal effectiveness of these methods of "damaging at a distance"?

I've written about this in The Flying Cow. We found evidence for black magic practices on several of the poltergeist cases that Hernani's institute researched. Yet I have never come across any such evidence on any of the British cases I have investigated.

13-Do you think that, overall, the case for survival of consciousness is convincing? According to your studies, do you think the evidence for reincarnation is good?

These are different questions and it's important to distinguish between them. Survival of consciousness I consider proved beyond any reasonable doubt. The word reincarnation implies the permanent return of a whole personality, and I don't think the evidence generally supports that, although there are cases where it does seem possible, when there are birthmarks and behaviour patterns as well as memories. I'm thinking of people like Jenny Cockell, Om Sety and most recently James Leininger in which identifiable people do seem to have returned to earth, but such cases are very rare. On the whole, though, I think that what people call reincarnation is more like temporary transfer of fragments of memory, etc.

There is still much to do in establishing just what 'reincarnates'. Luckily we have a huge database of cases thanks to those who recorded the evidence, from Gabriel Delanne (whose father was a colleague of Kardec) and Albert de Rochas to Ian Stevenson, Erlendur Haraldsson, Antonia Mills and Hernani Guimarães Andrade.

14-Professional skeptics argue that the evidence of neuroscience clearly shows an extremely close dependence of the mind on the brain. So the idea of "survival of consciousness" is, at best, highly implausible; and at worst, physically impossible. What do you think of this common skeptical argument?

It may be implausible, but the evidence suggests it does happen. We should always base our beliefs on evidence, not what we are told we ought to believe, especially by sceptics who haven't done their homework or scientists who think they have all the answers. It was considered implausible once for meteorites to fall from the sky or for continents to drift, but now both are accepted as quite normal. In 1894 Albert Michelson, a future Nobel laureate, was saying that 'the more important laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered', and 'the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote'. That was before Planck's quantum and Einstein's relativity theories, and the discovery of x-rays, radiation, sonar and radio among may other things that must have seemed implausible in 1894. Don't forget Arthur C. Clarke's Law: 'When a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong'.

15-Do you agree with the filter/transmission hypothesis defended by writers and researchers like William James, Frederic Myers and Chris Carter to explain the mind-body connection and account for the evidence for survival?

I agree with everything Myers and James wrote, and Carter has done an excellent job in clarifying the present situation - he is also one of the best critics of the professional sceptics.

16-What do you think of the Super-ESP or Super-Psi hypothesis? Do you consider it a viable alternative to the survival hypothesis?

No, at least not until it can either be proved or disproved. Hypotheses are of no use unless they lead to testable theories.

17-Let's talk about the so-called "organized skepticism". You have written about professional skeptics a lot and perhaps our readers would like to know which is your current opinion about professional skeptics and debunkers. Do you think their overall contribution to parapsychology has been constructive and positive?

Certainly not, with rare exceptions, notably the late Marcello Truzzi who was a good friend of mine. I've said all I have to say about the others on www.skepticalinvestigations.org

18-My blog is largely dedicated to refute organized skeptics' misdirections and fallacies, and mainly expose their philosophical foundations. Do you think it is a good strategy against organized skepticism to stress a constant critical examination of them (their books, articles, lectures, "researches", etc?

I think it is usually a waste of time. People who have made up their minds don't want to be confused by facts and evidence.

19-Which is the best strategy for parapsychologists in dealing with professional skeptics? Professional skeptics seem to have so much energy and time available to debunk parapsychology, afterlife research, ufology or spirituality. Which is the main motivation behind organized skepticism that could explain that behaviour?

There are certainly many things that deserve to be debunked, and I'm always ready to do some debunking myself, as in my article 'The return of Katharine Bates' (Journal of the SPR, July 2005) where I found a highly probable normal explanation for what was claimed to be a book of past-life recall. However, there is no justification for claiming, as many do, that anything still unexplained must be imaginary or fraudulent. That's just bad science. I really don't have much time for worrying about the professional sceptics.

20-Do you think that if a guy like D.D. Home would live at the present and were consistently tested by professional debunkers like Richard Wiseman, Susan Blackmore, Chris French or Ray Hyman, he could convince them that actual paranormal powers do exist?

Well, for a start he wouldn't be consistently tested by any of those except maybe Chris French who is a relatively moderate sceptic and a very well-informed one. It's interesting that Peter Lamont, a parapsychologist from Edinburgh who is also a fairly sceptical magician, wrote the best book to date on Home (The First Psychic) in which he could not find any convincing evidence that Home's abilities were other than genuine. He would be the right one to do the testing.

21-What do you think about other "fringe" topics, like UFOs and alien abductions? Do you think the evidence for the alien hypothesis (in order to account for some cases of UFOs and abduction experiences) is reasonably good or at least worthy of serious scholarly consideration?

I don't have any experience in this area, but any human experience deserves consideration. As it happens, I had a lunch date with John Mack for the day after he was tragically killed by a drunk driver in London. I would have asked him the same questions, and I am sure he would have said yes.

22-Do you believe in God? Do you think there is good scientific evidence for a transcendent creator/designer of the universe?

Ah, an easy question at last! I find it hard to imagine how such a vast thing as the universe just happened to come into being by chance. I accept that there are things, as the noted philosopher Donald Rumsfeld once said, 'we know that we don't know' and also things 'that we don't know that we don't know'. So for me the origin of the universe is an 'unknown unknown'.

23-Which is your opinion about Jesus of Nazareth and the historical evidence commonly mentioned for his putative Resurrection (like the empty tomb and his post-mortem appearences)?

I think too much trouble in this world is caused by people's religious opinions, which can't all be right, so I prefer to keep mine to myself.

24-What books on science, parapsychology and the afterlife would you like to recommend to the readers of this interview?

The basic text has to be Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death by Frederic Myers (1903). For a highly readable and comprehensive history of psychical research and parapsychology up to 1939, I recommend Natural and Supernatural and Science and Parascience by Brian Inglis.

Two excellent recent surveys are Parapsychology. The Controversial Science by Richard Broughton, who is the current president of the SPR, and The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin. As for the afterlife, my first choice would be Is There an Afterlife? by my late friend David Fontana.

25-Do you want to add something else to end the interview? What are you working on now?

(a) Yes. I think that parapsychology has become really very boring whereas psychical research used to be really exciting when people like Myers, Gurney, Crookes, Lodge, Hyslop, James, W.F.Prince and others were out in the field chasing after the evidence. That's what I have always tried to do, and luckily I'm not the only one. The latest SPR Proceedings (October 2011) contains articles by two experienced researchers, Antonia Mills and Erlendur Haraldsson, who are still prepared to go out and find new evidence for old cases, which both have done very impressively.

(b) Most recently I have been collecting evidence for telepathy between identical twins, which has never been properly studied. Thanks to my colleagues Adrian Parker and Göran Brusewitz in Sweden, it has now begun to be studied at university level. I hope to report developments in the 3rd edition of my book Twin Telepathy, due out in 2012, which will include the very interesting results of some laboratory experiments that I helped set up. So wait for that - the first two editions are already out of date!

For a last word - if you are interested in psychical research, have a look at the SPR web site www.spr.ac.uk - and maybe think about joining us. You'll be very welcome.

New Book: You are NOT your brain by Jeffrey Schwartz

2011-11-27T14:59:00.000-08:00

Michael Shermer and his book Why People Believe in Weird Things? (like in Shermer's own fallacious arguments)

2011-11-25T06:58:00.001-08:00

Shermer thinking hard about weird things (like how a vedic astrologer kicked Shermer's butt in his own debunking TV show)

In his highly influential (among pseudoskeptics and some "educated readers of science") book defending pseudoskepticism, Why people believe in weird things, professional pseudoskeptic Michael Shermer wrote:

Other popular ideas of our time that have little to no scientific support include dowsing, the Bermuda Triangle, poltergeists, biorhythms, creationism, levitation, psychokinesis, astrology, ghosts, psychic detectives, UFOs, remote viewing, Kirlian auras, emotions in plants, life after death, monsters, graphology, crypto-zoology, clairvoyance, mediums, pyramid power, faith healing, Big Foot, psychic prospecting, haunted houses, perpetual motion machines, antigravity locations, and, amusingly, astrological birth control. Belief in these phenomena is not limited to a quirky handful on the lunatic fringe. It is more pervasive than most of us like to think, and this is curious considering how far science has come since the Middle Ages. Shouldn't we know by now that ghosts cannot exist unless the laws of science are faulty or incomplete? (p.27. Emphasis in blue added).

It is very interesting and "amusing" that Shermer includes astrology among the "ideas" that little to no scientific support, since that Shermer's own scientific test of an astrologer provided positive empirical evidence for the astrologer's claim (kicking Shermer's butt in the process and making look him like a fool):

But let that pass. I'm more interested in Shermer's argument against ghosts. Shermer says Shouldn't we know by now that ghosts cannot exist unless the laws of science are faulty or incomplete?

Exactly which scientific laws (assumed by Shermer to be perfect and complete) exclude the existence of ghosts?

Shermer says "Do ghosts exist? Do scientific laws exist? Is there no difference between ghosts and scientific laws? Of course there is, and most scientists believe in scientific laws but not ghosts... Ghosts can be considered nonfactual because they have never been confirmed to any extent.... Ghosts never exist apart from their description by believers." (p. 58. Emphasis in blue added)

The above is an excellent example of atheistic-skeptical stupidity, imbecility and lack of logical thinking.

How the hell the premise (assumed for the argument's sake) that ghosts' existence "have never been confirmed to any extent" implies the conclusion that they "can be considered nonfactual"? Do the lack of scientific confirmation of any entity implies the entity's nonfactuality?

Just consider microbes. Before the creation of microscopes, microbes's existence wasn't scientifically confirmed. Do that imply that microbes were "nonfactual" before the creation of microscopes and their scientific confirmation? Obviously not.

Shermer's basic fallacy is to conflate an epistemological matter (scientific confirmation of the existence of an entity X) with an ontological one (the actual existence or non-existence of some entity X).

In fact, Shemer's argument seems to be "If an entity's existence is confirmed, then it exists. Hence, if it is not confirmed, then it doesn't exist". Even the most inept and incompetent student of logic would know that such an argument is actually a formal fallacy (the fallacy of denying the antecedent).

Another way to see Shermer's intellectual incompetence is realizing that he's conflating "scientific laws" with "scientific confirmation of facts". The latter doesn't imply the former.

For example, most parapsychologists consider that "psi" is a scientific fact. But they don't know exactly which are the "scientific laws of psi". The latter is still an open and controversial question.

Shermer assumes that, since ghosts have not been scientifically confirmed (in their existence), then ghosts are incompatible with currently known scientific laws. This is why he says: "Shouldn't we know by now that ghosts cannot exist unless the laws of science are faulty or incomplete?"

This is an obvious non-sequitur.

Finally, Shermer's argument rest on the very doubtul assumption that currently known scientific laws are perfect and complete. But as any student of philosophy and history of science would know, scientific theories (in which scientific laws are understood) are not perfect nor complete. Our grasping of reality is argueably fallible and progressive, not perfect and definitive (if it were the case, science couldn't progress anymore, which is false and this is conceded, inconsistently, by Shermer himself).

Shermer's amazingly strong and uncritical credulity regarding the perfection and completeness of currenty scientific theories and laws is astonishing. Is this the proper position of a true reasonable skeptic? Clearly not. Shermer (like most pseudoskeptics) is the paradigmatic anti-thesis of a true skeptic; he's a fine example of a hard-core ideologue: a scientific dogmatist and mainstream fundamentalist.

So far, we have assumed (just for the sake of the argument) that Shermer's assumption that ghosts haven't been scientifically confirmed is true. Personally, I think Shermer's assumption is false. There is evidence, anecdotal and scientific, that ghosts and other putative afterlife manifestations DO exist (see, just for mention one example, David Fontana's balanced and nuanced treatment of the topic in his book Is there an afterlife?")

In any case, even if ghosts don't exist, Shermer's arguments provide not justification at all to think they don't.

Shermer's arguments are of the worst kind that I've read in the pseudoskeptical literature. He's a good example of an intellectual lightweight who based on a very limited understand of science and philosophy, and a strongly prejudiced ideological position against parapsychology and other spiritual matters, has been strongly influential among pseudoskeptics and "educated scientific readers".

Only hard-core atheistic pseudoskeptics accept Shermer's arguments. And they deserve a "thinker" like that.

Atheist John W. Loftus says that Nothing = Balance of Energy and concedes the ultimate absurdity of atheism

2011-11-25T06:08:00.001-08:00

Once you have bought into the atheist mindset, even the most irrational and obviously absurd idea is accepted provided it is useful to reject the existence of God. I call this the ultimate atheistic irrationality.

The most egregious example of this is the common atheist conviction that something fundamental (=the law of gravity, the law of entropy, the quantum vaccum, etc.) is equivlent to "nothing". Therefore (so the irrational atheist reasons), if you can explain something in terms of such laws, quantum vacuum, etc. you have successful to explain something from "nothing".

Only mentally retarded, intellectually deficient, stupid and inept people would conflate nothing (=non-being) with some fundamental (and hence, something actually existing) reality. This is why only hard-core atheists buy into this idea. Normal people (even ignorant ones) wouldn't be so irrational.

As philosopher Edward Feser recently wrote in a post entitled "What part of "nothing" you don't understand?": "You might as well say: “Let me explain how this whole house is held up by nothing. Consider the floor, which is what I really mean by ‘nothing.’ Now, the rest of the house is held up by the floor. Thus, I’ve explained how the whole house is held up by nothing!” Well, no you haven’t. You’ve “explained” at most how part of the house is held up by another part, but you’ve left unexplained how the floor itself is held up, and thus (since the floor is itself part of the house) you haven’t really explained at all how the house as a whole is held up, either by “nothing” or by anything else. Furthermore, you’ve made what is really just sheer muddleheadedness sound profound by using “nothing” in an eccentric way.

The “scientific” “explanations” of the origin of the universe from “nothing” one keeps hearing in recent years are really no less stupid than this “explanation” of the house. They aren’t serious physics, they aren’t serious philosophy, they aren’t serious anything except seriously bad arguments, textbook instances of the fallacy of equivocation."

In the case of Loftus, the fallacy of equivocation regarding "nothing" is committed when he conflates this term with the concept "balance of energy". But how the hell of the balance of something actually existing (namely, energy = the fundamental property of matter) is equivalent to "nothing" in the relevant, ontological sense of "non-being"?

Again, I'm being 100% serious, honest and sincere in my opinion that only people with strong intellectual deficiences and serious cognitive impairments can be so blind as to not realize the obvious fallacy of that position.

This is another reason why I'm convinced that, as a rule, hard-core atheists are irrational (I've recently called this position Jime's Iron Law, inspired in Shermer's Last Law).

Moreover, I'm also convinced that people like that are charlatans and deserve to receive public exposing and intellectual pounding.

A similar irrationalistic position is defended by atheist apologist Peter Atkins:

This evidence provides interesting insights into the psychology of contemporary atheists.

National Geographic documentary: The Truth Behind UFOs

2011-11-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

Lynne McTaggart on Ryke Geerd Hamer theory of cancer

2011-11-20T08:43:00.000-08:00

Lynne McTaggart

Dr.Ryke Geerd Hamer

Noetic scientist Lynne McTaggart has written several excellent books about parapsychological matters (e.g. the Intention Experiment or The Field) and one of her lastest book is entitled The Cancer Handbook, which is about cancer and the most effective therapies to treat it.

McTaggart comments about the controversial physician Ryke Geerd Hamer's theory about cancer. It seems to me that McTaggart unintentionally gives a misleading introduction to Hamer's theory (which is highly complex and very easy to misunderstand).

She begins saying that "Unlike most other practitioners, the work of the German cancer specialist Dr.Ryke Geerd Hamer concentrates almost exclusively on the causes of cancer" (p. 129)

This is a common misunderstanding and is demostrably false. It is true that Hamer's work began examining only cases of cancer, but since 1987 (see the first edition of his book Vermächtnis einer Neuen Medizin) Hamer's theoy embraces all the diseases known in medicine (except some congenital diseases, diseases by insufficience of nutrients, diseases by wounds, radiation and intoxications).

His lastest researches focuses on dental diseases (odontology) and mental diseases (psychiatry). (Unfortunately, the literature about it exists only in German, and it is not easy to get). For a recent explanation of Hamer's discoveries on mental illnesses by an independent author, see Björn Eybl's book Die seelischen Ursachen der Krankheiten: Nach den 5 biologischen Naturgesetzen, entdeckt von Dr. med. Mag. theol. Ryke Geerd Hamer.

McTaggart continues "Once the cause is recognized and faced, the cure will follow, he argues, as the body's own remarkable self-healing processes are freeded to come into play"

This is another misleading explanation of Hamer's view. It is not enough that the cause (the biological conflict) is "recognized and faced", but that such a biological conflict has to be SOLVED definitively (and in many cases it is very hard to get).

McTaggart: "In the case of breast cancer, the shock or trauma would have occured two to four months prior to the clinical detection of the cancer if the woman is right-handed"

This is another misleading statement which, taken literally, is false. According to Hamer, the laterality (the property of being right-handed or left-handed) is irrelevant regarding the TIME in which the cancer is clinically detected. Laterality only plays a role in the connection between the conflict and the organ which is affected, not regarding the time of the clinical detection of it.

By the way, McTaggart doesn't differentiate between glandular breast cancer (which can be detected just a few months after the conflict) and intraductal mammary carcinoma (which only could be detected after the solution of the conflict... a conflict which could last for years). Both cancer are clinically different (as any oncolologist could attest) and, from the point of view of Hamer's theory, conflictually different too (in addition to being qualitatively different in terms of the phases in which each tumour grows).

For more on breast cancer according to Hamer's theory, see these videos in youtube.

McTaggart makes other comments about Hamer's theory, but I think the above ones are the most wrong or misleading.

Some months ago, I interviewed a follower of Hamer's theory which you can read here.

For an introduction to Hamer's basic ideas on the origin of cancer and other diseases, watch this extensive documentary (press the "CC" bottom in the video below to activate the English subtitles):

Spiritualism, Jesus' Resurrection and the etheric body hypothesis

2011-11-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

I've commented before that currently I'm studying intensively the best literature (in English and German) for and against the case for Jesus' Resurrection. In addition to books on atheism, philosophy, parasychology, and UFOs, my library is becoming increasingly filled with books, papers, videos and audios on New Testament scholarship and biblical criticism (something that 15 years ago was unthinkable for me).

I've been astonished by what appear to be the fact that most people (Christians and non-Christians) who has studied the evidence for and against the resurrection of Jesus in a more or less unbiased manner (specially, without naturalistic-atheistic prejudices), comes to the conclusion that at least something paranormal (or even supernatural) happened in that case.

For example, in my interview with Michael Prescott, when asked about Jesus and his putative Resurrection, Michael commented: "I do think he was a real historical figure and that the gospels provide at least a generally reliable overview of his ministry, though undoubtedly with omissions and embellishments. As for the resurrection, I do believe that Jesus' followers witnessed his reappearance after his death. I think what they were probably seeing is what spiritualists today would call the etheric body, which can have physical attributes and yet do things that an ordinary earthly body can't do, like vanish at will. I suspect that Jesus chose his disciples in large part because they had latent psychic abilities of their own, which might have helped them to perceive the etheric body"

Michael, who is not himself a Christian, has a good command of the relevant literature and his conclusion is not only that the gospels provide at least a generally realiable overview of his ministry, but in addition that one of the facts mentioned as evidence for Jesus' Resurrection (namely, Jesus' apparitions after his death) was historical and hence explainable in terms of the "Etheric body hypothesis" (not the hypothesis of Jesus' literal resurrection).

Robert Perry, another author who is not himself a Christian, when asked about Jesus' Resurrection, comments: "I think the evidence for it is surprisingly good, and should not be dismissed on the grounds that such a thing is impossible. I have found value in the arguments of conservative scholars on this, whose work I otherwise disagree with. I have especially been influenced by the testimony of Paul in this regard, who within a few years of Jesus’ death spoke with those who were there and witnessed the risen Jesus. And I have also been heavily influenced by the Shroud of Turin, the evidence for which is actually quite remarkable, notwithstanding the (now discredited) 1988 carbon dating"

Robert is convinced by the evidence that Jesus' Resurrection was a real historical event. In addition, he brings to the debate the consideration of the Shroud of Turin as part of the evidence. I admit that previously I've considered the Shroud of Turin a fraud. Currently, however, I'm more open to the view that it could be real, but I'm still agnostic about it. This is still a topic which I haven't researched in depth.

I mentioned Michael and Robert because they're people familiar with parapsychology, afterlife research and the literature for and against Jesus' Resurrection, and they are convinced by the evidence that it was a real event, or that something real (from a paranormal origin) is the cause of it (like in Michael's case).

The Etheric Body Hypothesis of Jesus' Resurrection:

I must confess that I was sympathetic for this hypothesis, according to which the Resurrection was actually the vision of Jesus' etheric body by his disciples.

Also, I think this hypothesis is widely shared by spiritualists, since they tend to interpret the putative resurrection of Jesus in terms of known in spiritualistic circles (namely, in terms of etheric bodies and mediumship materializations).

Currently, I don't find this hypothesis convincing anymore. The main reason is that I think this hypothesis (in comparison with the hypothesis of Jesus' Resurrection) lack explanatory scope, because it only accounts for the vision by the disciples of Jesus after his death, but it doesn't account:

1-For the empty tomb

2-If Robert is right, for the Shroud of Turin

Let's stick just to point 1, the empty tomb (point 2 is even more controversial).

My current assesment of the literature suggests that the empty tomb is accepted as a probable historical fact by most New Testament scholars, Christians and non-Christians alike (by "most scholars", I'm simply suggesting more than 50% of them. I doesn't require to be an overwhelming majority).

Just consider what agnostic New Testament scholar and critic of the resurrection Bart Ehrman (in his work/lecutres The Teaching Company 2003, lecture 4) has to say about the empty tomb:

We also have solid traditions to indicate that women found this tomb empty three days later. This is attested in all of our gospel sources, early and late, and so it appears to be a historical datum. As so I think we can say that after Jesus’ death, with some (probably with some) certainty, that he was buried, possibly by this fellow, Joseph of Arimathea, and that three days later he appeared not to have been in his tomb" (emphasis in blue added).

Ehrman considers that with "probably some certainty" we can assert the historiticity of the empty tomb. This is everything what a historian needs (since a 100% certainty about historical events is almost never available for a historian).

If we follow Erhman in this sense, then whatever hypothesis we use to explain the historical data relevant to assess Jesus' Resurrection has to account for the empty tomb. The resurrection hypothesis accounts for it, for the visions of the disiciples (and other individuals) and by the origin of the Christian belief.

But the "etheric body hypothesis" accounts only for the visions of the disciples and, possibly, for the origin of the Christian belief, but not for the empty tomb (the etheric body is different than the physical body) and hence the defender of the etheric body hypothesis has to add another ad hoc hypothesis (not supported by independent historical evidence) to account for the empty tomb (e.g. to say that the corse was stolen) which implicitly concedes that its explanatory scope is inferior to the resurrection hypothesis. Or, alternatively, he has to deny the empty tomb (and in this case, he has to provide arguments for this view and show why Erhman's conclusion, shared by most scholars, is false).

There are scholars who have made tried hard to argue against the empty tomb. For example, in his amazingly erudite book Resurrecting Jesus , Dale Allison examines several arguments for the empty tomb and find them wanting. However, he admits that at least a respectably case could be made for the empty tomb but, he adds, also a respectable case could be made against it (Allison mentions just 2 arguments against it, which I found largely unconvincing).

I was even more convinced of the empty tomb, as a probable historical fact, after reading Allison's argumentation (that a amazingly erudite intellectual and sophisticated scholar like Allison cannot refute this evidence actually tends to reinforce the evidence for the empty tomb).

In conclusion, I do share with Erhman and Robert Perry that "the evidence argues for an empty tomb" as the most probable historical conclusion.

This is why I cannot accept the etheric body hypothesis, unless the evidence for it (and against the empty tomb) were stronger. And I think this evidence doesn't exist.

This is why I think, in this point, that the hypothesis of Jesus' Resurrection only could be rejected on a priori philosophical grounds, namely, appealing (like Erhman) to Hume's arguments against miracles (an argument which also has been used by "skeptics" against paranormal and afterlife claims).

But Hume's argument is unconvincing, and this is why I accept the best evidence for afterlife and other paranormal claims. Therefore, on the same grounds, I have to be open to Jesus' Resurrection if the evidence for it (as it appears) is reasonably good (better than the alternatives).

For a non-technical critique of Hume's argument against miracles from a point of view of parapsychology, see Chris Carter's chapter in his book "Parapsychology and the Skeptics" (now entitled Science and Psychic Phenomena). For a more technical critique, see agnostic philosopher of science John Erhman's book "Hume's Abject Failure" (this was the book that William Lane Craig mentioned in his debate with Bart Erhman, which destroyed Bart totally. Bart Erhman simply hadn't any technical reply at all and ineptly misrepresented Craig's argument against Hume as a "mathematical argument for God's existence" which obviously was not the case. Craig made use of the contemporary Bayesian calculus of probabilities in order to show that the improbability of a miracle is partially determined by the improbability of God's existence. Bart Erhman main reply was that a historian, qua historian, cannot claim that a miracle has happened, which is a red herring since the topic of the debate wasn't "Can a historian in his function as historian to explain a historical event in miraculous terms?" Rather, the topic was about if the hypothesis Jesus' Resurrection is the best explanation of the evidence or not, regardless of whatever are the historian's methodological contrains).

I've mentioned purely evidential reasons to think that the spiritualistic "etheric body hypothesis" is inferior than the resurrection hypothesis.

But there is another reason why I think it is the case. In the context of Jesus' teachings and religious social enviroment (which was prepared in advance by the Jewish history and the persistent interventions of "Yahve" in the Old Testament), the resurrection seems to be a kind of validation of his moral and doctrinary claims about God's Kingdom. Put simplistically, it is as if he was saying "Look, as I told you in advance, I've been resurrected, therefore believe in what I taught you and trust me. I cannot give you more details but I hope you trust me based on the resurrection as the ultimate proof that I've given to you.".

Now, if Jesus' putative "resurrection" wasn't a resurrection at all but simply the expression of his etheric body as seen by the disciples, then I see no reason why such an event would validate Jesus' teachings in particular. After all, spiritualists have given evidence that the etheric body exists, and not "God's Kingdom" is needed to believe in this (in fact some spiritualists are atheists and hence for them the God's Kingdom has to be literally false).

I simply see no comparison between Jesus' Resurrection (and its spiritual and even theological implications) with what spiritualists, by purely empirical means, have discoveried.

I suspect that Jesus was talking about something even more profound (and hard to understand to our minds) that the spiritualistic findings of the existence of an afterlife and related matters (e.g. "spirits", "etheric bodies", mediumship communications, etc.).

My conclusion is that if Jesus' Resurrection was real, then we have in presence of an exceptional and special historical event with astonishing implications, a lot more important and trascendental than whatever the afterlife research has shown or could show.

Michael Shermer's Last Law: UFOs, God and the extraordinary faith of atheists

2011-11-17T08:32:00.001-08:00

Shermer looking at an UFO

In Scientific American, atheist and "skeptic" Michael Shermer explained what he modestly calls Shermer's Last Law. This law states: "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God"

Expanding on this, Shermer says: "God is typically described by Western religions as omniscient and omnipotent. Because we are far from possessing these traits, how can we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely from an ETI who merely has them copiously relative to us? We can't. But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful than we are, then by definition the deity would be an ETI!"

This is an amazingly inept argument typical of Shermer and other atheists like him. God having the attributes of "omniscience and omnipotence" has nothing to do with us (i.e. it is not measured nor defined by their relations with our finitude).

Shemer asks "How can we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely from an ETI who merely has them copiously relative to us".

Answer: Appealing to other attributes of God like inmateriality. Are these aliens material? Then, by definition, they're not God (whatever be the alien's advanced technology).

Or eternity: Have these aliens existed eternally in their current state, or do they began to exist and have evolved by natural selection? If the latter, then by definition they're not God (regardless of the aliens' advanced technology), because God is by definition an ontologically necessary (and hence eternal) being not subject to natural selection nor other contingent, material processes.

Or their creative powers: Are these aliens the "cause" of the universe's beginning of existence out of nothing, or are they an evolutionary effect of the universe's material evolution under the pressure of natural selection? If the latter, then the aliens are not God.

That Shermer's argument is plain stupid is revealed by his misconstruction of the concept of God: "But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful than we are, then by definition the deity would be an ETI"

Bravo!!!! What amazing display of philosophical knowledge and logical thinking! Obviously, if I define God like that, then "by definition" the deity would be an ETI.

The problem is that not sophisticated theist in the history of thought has ever been so stupid as to defend the concept of God on that grounds that God's knowledge and power is simply "relatively" superior than us.

Shermer is typically superficial when he discusses whatever matter. The same sloppy arguments can be seen in his discussions about ufology, parapsychology, afterlife research or ingelligent design or any other topic. Among professional skeptics, I think Shermer is clearly the most inept. He's an intellectual lightweight.

By the way, we can criticize the formulation of Shermer's Last Law on the following grounds:

1-If Shermer's law is true, then atheists should deny (not only doubt) the existence of advanced aliens, since whatever reason they have against God's existence is a reason to deny advanced aliens too. However, a hard-core atheist like Richard Dawkins has reportdly said that "he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet."

Let aside the fact that (for dialectical purposes alone) we can reply to Dawkins' "alien creationist hypothesis" with his own style of argument: "Dawkins, your alien hypothesis doesn't explain anything because the aliens in question remain themselves unexplained". But obviously we're not so stupid to argue like that (see more on Dawkisian arguments here).

The point is that Dawkins is open to the alien hypothesis instead of the God hypothesis, which implies the former is distinguishable from the latter (therefore, for Dawkins, Shermer's Law has to be false).

2-If Shermer's Last Law is true, then an eventual contact with ETI would imply the empirical destruction of atheism (since, in Shermer's idyosincratic definition, such ETI would be relatively superior than us in terms of knowledge and power, and hence by Shermer's own definition would be a DEITY. And the existence of a deity implies the falsehood of atheism).

Is this the reason why pseudoskeptics also attack ufology?

3-Shermer's Last Law has other implications. For example, it provides atheists with a reason to reject whatever evidence is presented for God's existence, since they could argue that it is caused by ETI.

If God appeared to the entire world tomorrow with undeniable and irrefutable evidence, Shermer would argue that such evidence is insufficient because it is indistinguishable from the evidence provided by an advanced alien. Therefore, according to Shermer’s Last Law, God could never (even in principle) give enough evidence for an atheist to conclude that God exists.

This is the ultimate protection for atheism. It is like arguing that Jesus' Resurrection (if it is an actual historical fact) doesn't provide evidence for Christianity, or that actual physical and direct voice mediumship (if veridical) doesn't provide evidence for survival of consciousness. No unbiased researcher would accept these conclusions.

When you see a person arguing like that, you'll know for sure that her idyosincratic and prima facie implausible position is strongly determined by what they reject. It is a matter of the WILL. In the case of atheists, what they reject is the existence of God, therefore they use whatever reason is at their disposal to protect their atheistic worldview from falsification.

In a way similar to Shermer's law, atheist philosopher J.J.Smart (who, contrary to Shermer, is an intellectual heavyweight) comments: Someone who has naturalistic preconceptions will always in fact find some naturalistic explanation more plausible than a supernatural one... Suppose that I woke up in the night and saw the stars arranged in shapes that spelt out the Apostle's Creed. I would know that astronomically it is impossible that stars should have changed their position. I don't know what I would think. Perhaps I would think that I was dreaming or that I had gone mad. What if everyone else seemed to me to be telling me that the same had happened? Then I might not only think that I had gone mad-- I would probably go mad" (J.J.C. Smart in his contribution to the book Atheism and Theism, pp.50-51. Emphasis in blue added)

Smart concedes that he prefers to think himself has gone mad instead of accepting hard empirical evidence for God's existence. This is the FAITH OF AN ATHEIST (at least Smart is honest enough to recognize it).

Another example of this is atheist Quentin Smith, who prefers a non-explanation whatsoever instead of an explanation based on God. Commenting on the origin of the universe, Smith writes: "The fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing... We should instead acknowledge our foundation in nothingness and feel awe at the marvellous fact that we have a chance to participate briefly in this incredible sunburst that interrupts without reason the reign of non-being ." (Theism, Atheism and the Big Bang Comsology. P.135. emphasis in blue added)

Note that having for reasons the "no reason at all" and "coming from the reign of non-being" is sufficiently comfortable to an atheist when confronted with the origin of the universe. Smith prefers a "no reason at all" as a reason to hold his atheism.

This is an example of the extraordinarily strong faith of an atheist. (Even the most dogmatic religious believer would provide a reason for his beliefs: he will say that "God did it. Period." This could be dogmatic and childish but it is at least intelligible as a reason. But compare that dogmatic reason with Smith's "no reason at all" and "coming from nothing". Seriously I ask you: What position requires of more faith?)

Do you think seriously and honestly that people like intellectual lightweight Shermer, and heavyweights Smith and Smart are honestly open enough to accept even the best evidence for God's existence?

Think about this please, because it will give you amazing insights about the psychology of atheists and pseudoskeptics.

Inspired by Shermer's Law, I'd want (modestly too) postulate what I'd call Jime's Iron Law. It states: "As a rule, hard-core atheists are irrational, suffer of severe wishfull thinking and have a cognitive impairment which prevents them to think logically in general and specifically about God, parapsychology, afterlife research and other topics which tends to destroy atheism. As consequence, they will always prefer a non-explanation at all over an explanation in terms of paranormal, spiritual and/or supernatural forces or entities (even if the evidence for the latter is very strong)"

I'll have to develop Jime's Iron Law (sounds good, isn't?) in more detail in future posts.

Budd Hopkins - Alien Abduction Lecture - 7th July 2004

2011-11-11T19:43:00.000-08:00

Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics by Chris Carter (foreword by Rupert Sheldrake)

2011-11-10T00:50:00.000-08:00

The new edition of Chris Carter's excellent book "Parapsychology and the Skeptics" will be available in March 15, 2012 with a new title "Science and the Psychic Phenomena: the Fall of the House of Skeptics".

This book is a must read for any person interested in the science of parapsychology and psychic research and how "professional skeptics" (=materialistic pseudoskeptics or materialistic ideologues) behave in order to suppress the scientific evidence which refutes materialism.

Stay tuned for more information on the new edition of this book.

Is God a Delusion? The Debate That Never Was: William Lane Craig vs Richard Dawkins? Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford (October 25, 2011)

2011-11-08T07:12:00.000-08:00

Richard Dawkins was invited by the Oxford student Christian Union to defend his book The God Delusion in public debate with William Lane Craig. The invitation remained open until the last minute. However, Dawkins refused the challenge and his chair remained empty. Craig then gave a lecture to a capacity audience on the weaknesses of the central arguments of the book and responded to a panel of skeptical academics. The event, which was chaired by atheist Prof. Peter Millican, was part of The Reasonable Faith Tour 2011 sponsored by UCCF, Damaris & Premier Christian Radio.

Debunking the UFO Debunkers - Stanton Friedman lecture

2011-11-08T00:59:00.000-08:00

Nuclear Physicist-Lecturer Stanton T. Friedman received his BSc. and MSc. Degrees in physics from the University of Chicago in 1955 and 1956. He was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist by such companies as GE, GM, Westinghouse, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics, and McDonnell Douglas working in such highly advanced, classified, eventually cancelled programs as nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and various compact nuclear powerplants for space and terrestrial applications.

He became interested in UFOs in 1958, and since 1967 has lectured about them at more than 600 colleges and 100 professional groups in 50 U.S. states, 10 Canadian provinces and 18 other countries in addition to various nuclear consulting efforts. He has published more than 90 UFO papers and has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV programs including on Larry King in 2007 and twice in 2008, and many documentaries. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell Incident and co-authored Crash at Corona: The Definitive Study of the Roswell Incident. TOP SECRET/MAJIC, his controversial book about the Majestic 12 group, established in 1947 to deal with alien technology, was published in 1996 and went through 6 printings. An expanded new edition was published in 2005. Stan was presented with a Lifetime UFO Achievement Award in Leeds, England, in 2002, by UFO Magazine of the UK. He is co-author with Kathleen Marden (Betty Hill’s niece) of a book in 2007: Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. The City of Fredericton, New Brunswick, declared August 27, 2007, Stanton Friedman Day. His book Flying Saucers and Science was published in June 2008 and is in its 3rd printing. His newest book, also co-authored with Kathleen Marden, is Science Was Wrong released in June 2010.

A brief comment about atheist Stephen Law's "the evil god challenge".

2011-11-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

Atheist philosopher Stephen Law has written some technical and non-technical articles defending the so-called "evil god challenge", according to which the amount of good that we observe in the world is conclusive evidence that an "evil god" doesn't exist. The challenge (for theists) would be to explain why, in a similar fashion, the amount of evil that we see in the world is not conclusive evidence against the existence of a "good God".

Note that Law is not arguing for the existence of the evil god. He's simply saying that the reasons we have to reject the existence of the evil god are, mutatis mutandis, the same reasons we have to reject the existence of a good God. Therefore, the challenge to theists would be to explain why they accept the existence of a good God but reject the existence of an evil god.

In order to avoid misrepresentations of Dr.Law's argument, let's quote his own summary of the challenge: I simply take the evil god hypothesis (without arguing for it at all) and ask - is this god not pretty conclusively ruled out on the basis of the good we see? And if the answer is "yes", then I ask: "So why should we consider belief in a good god significantly more reasonable than this empirically ridiculous belief? That's the challenge I'm asking theists to meet.

Several problems affect Dr.Law's argument:

1-As Willian Lane Craig argued in his debate with Dr.Law, his challenge assumes that theists infer the "goodness" of God on the basis of an inductive survey of the good in the world. Therefore, the existence of the good would provide evidence for a good God. (Likewise, the existence of evil would provide evidence against the same good God).

But this is not the case. According to classical theism, God is by definition the most perfect being and this includes moral perfection. It implies that the notion of an "evil god" is incoherent, a contradictio in abjecto (similar to a "good Satan" or a "happy hell").

2-Dr.Law's argument assumes that the evil God hypothesis predicts a world without the amount of good we observe. Therefore, the evidence for the existence of the amount of good we observe is "conclusive evidence" against the existence of evil God hypothesis.

In the same inducitve way, the evidence for the evil that we observe is conclusive evidence against the hypothesis that God is good (because this hypothesis predicts, according to Dr.Law's implicit assumption, a world without the amount of evil that we actually observe. Therefore, the observation of such an evil is conclusive evidence against the hypothesis of a good God).

Note that Dr.Law's argument assumes that both hypotheses (the evil God and the good God) are empirically equivalent in regards to the existence of evils and goods in the world so whatever empirical reason you can pose against the evil God could be used to refute the good God too.

Again, it shows that Dr.Law's argument depends crucially on the assumption that the "goodness" of God is inferred by induction. Given that the world is morally ambiguous (it includes many evils and goods), induction cannot decide in favor of the evil God above the good God, or viceversa, and the evidence could be used both to refute the former as the latter.

3-As mentioned above, theists don't consider that the property of "goodness" is something that we infer by induction and observation of the world. Rather, God is good because metaphysically he is the most perfect being. (We could express this as a conditional: IF God exists, then he IS good. In the same way, if Satan exists, then he's BAD. If triangles exists, they have 3 angles and so forth.)

Talking of a "evil God" is so incoherent as talking of a "good Satan" or a "Christian atheist". Law arbitrarily misuses (or misunderstands) what theists conceived as "God".

Instead of talking of a "evil God", Law should talk of an "evil designer" (this is a logically coherent concept). And in this case, I agree that by observation of the world (and inductive inference from this) alone, it is not possible to discern if the designer of the world is an "evil designer" or if it is God (because the world is morally ambiguous).

4-At most, Dr.Law's challenge suggests the dificulty of using induction to discern an "evil designer" from God as the designer of the world. But his argument doesn't prove that God is in a metaphysical par with such an evil designer and therefore that the evidence for the evil is conclusive evidence against God in the same way that the existence of the good is conclusive evidence against an evil designer.

We could summarize Dr.Law's challenge in this way: "On inductive grounds, the morally ambiguous evidence that we observe in the world renders the hypothesis "An evil God exists" empirically on a par with the hypothesis "A good God exists", because the the good we observe refutes the former and the evil we observe refutes the latter".

The implication (and ultimate motivation of Dr.Law's argument) is that whatever argument we use to accept (or reject) the existence of a good God is, mutatis mutandis, a reason we could use to accept (or reject) the evidence for an evil God. He wants to create a stalemate regarding the hypothesis of God's existence, forcing theists to accept that the evidence for an evil God is so good (or so bad) as the hypothesis of a good God. Empirically they're on a par.

This is the "Dr.Law's challenge" for theists.

An again: the essential flaw of Dr.Law (mentioned by Craig in his debate and which Dr.Law couldn't refute) is that his entire challenge is based on the assumption that the moral properties of God are inferred on purely empirical-inductive survey of the evidence in the world and that given the evidence is morally ambiguous, both hypotheses (the evil God and the good God) are on a par.

Dr.Law strongly denies this. When I posed these arguments to him in Edward Feser's blog, Dr.Law replied: "Again no. I don't suppose the moral properties of god are inferred on empirical-inductive grounds. Obviously.

But I do assume that we can reasonably rule out SOME God hypotheses on empirical grounds. As indeed, does everyone, until that is, the penny drops... when suddenly they get hyper-skeptical like Craig did on the night.

Which is your prerogative too. But you'd better have a justification for that radical and highly counter-intutive degree of skepticism (that what we observe can gives us no clue AT ALL about the moral properties of god/s - good, bad or otherwise). Craig didn't. "

Note that he denies the contention that the moral properties of god are inferred by induction based on observation. But then he contradicts himself when he later concedes "But you'd better have a justification for that radical and highly counter-intutive degree of skepticism (that what we observe can gives us no clue AT ALL about the moral properties of god/s - good, bad or otherwise"

Then, are the moral properties of God based on observation (and hence, inferred by induction) or not? Which is Dr.Law's actual position?

In other words, he denies that the moral properties are inferred by induction of the observable world, but then suggest that our skepticism about the moral properties of God are unjustified because intuitively we recognize that the observation of the world (and the inductive inference based on it) DOES tell us something about the moral properties (good, bad or whatever) of God.

But our skepticism about the implications (to the moral properties of the designer) based on the moral evidence provided by the world is justified because the world is MORALLY AMBIGUOUS. The moral evidence is simply insufficient to settle the question about the moral properties of the designer (this is why theists in general don't appeal to this evidence to argue for God's moral properties. Rather, they defend different versions of the moral argumen showing that the existence of an objective, human mind-independent moral order, and hence of the evil as the antithesis and violation of that order, proves that God exists). You get a lot of good in this world, and a lot of evil too. How the hell, on pure inductive grounds, are you going to infer God's moral properties in a world with such a ambiguous evidence?

In other words, the evidence of the world actually tell us one thing, namely: that no rational conclusion about God's moral properties is possible based on such an ambiguous evidence. This is why theists don't infer God's "goodness" on purely inductive grounds, because on inductive grounds the only reasonable conclusion about the moral properties of God is skepticism. The skepticism about this point is a consequence of the ambiguity of the evidence, not an arbitrary assumption by the theist.

Let's consider an analogy:

Suppose that you're testing a parapsychological claim (let's say telepathy). And you get 100 technically correct and competently done studies, 50 of which gave positive evidence for telepathy and 50 of which gave negative evidence. Are justified in inferring that "telepahty exists" or "telepathy doesn't exist" based on such an evidence? Obviously not, the evidence is ambiguous, it includes positive and negative support alike, and from this evidence the only reasonable position is agnosticism/skepticism: we don't know, based on such studies, if telepathy exists or not.

Note that in this case your skepticism about the claim "telepathy exists" is not a purely arbitrary assumption, but a consquence of the existence of ambiguous and conflicting evidence supporting the claim.

Likewise, the the world is morally ambiguous (it includes good and evil), how the hell are you going to infer God's moral properties from this alone? Unless you assume that a good God must necessarily create a physical world in which the amount of good be superior than evil, then the ambiguous evidence would provide evidence against such a God.

But in theism, our lives are not limited to this one (the life on Earth is just a infinitesimal part of our overall existence, which extends beyond this life to the afterlife). Therefore, even if the amount of evil in this world were superior than the amount of good, it could be the case that in the afterlife the amount of good were infinitely superior to any finite evil that we experienced in this finite physical life.

This is why I agree with Craig that Law has the burden of proof regarding the claim that God cannot have any morally permisible reasons to enable the evil in this finite world. As far I know, no atheist philosopher has provided such reasons.

So, the skepticism regarding the designer's moral properties inferred by induction and observation alone is not arbitrary nor counter-intuitive, but that it is based on the fact that the finite world that we observe is morally ambiguous, so no inductive survey of the world can settle the questions about the moral properties of the designer.

Therefore, that God is good is not a matter of induction, but it is essential to the concept of God as the most perfect being. Hence, if such a being exists, then he IS good.

Hear the recent Craig vs Law debate here:

Why is there something rather than nothing? Intellectual genius Richard Dawkins responds the fundamental question of philosophy!

2011-11-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

To be fair, you have to realize that Richard Dawkins is not a philosopher, he's a zoologist. So, Dawkins' response is completely out of his intellectual training and expertise.

What is astonishing to me is that Dawkins has not been able to recognize the fallacy of his answer (It suggests either intellectual dishonesty or simply stupidity on his part, or both). He seems to believe that has gotten a knock-down argument against the existence of God (or God as an explanatory hypothesis).

Oxford Atheist philosopher Daniel Came (being academically trained in philosophy) comments on Dawkins' main argument (which he repeats in the above video in a modified version in order to response the fundamental question of philosophy):

Dawkins maintains that we're not justified in inferring a designer as the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe because then a new problem surfaces: who designed the designer? This argument is as old as the hills and as any reasonably competent first-year undergraduate could point out is patently invalid. For an explanation to be successful we do not need an explanation of the explanation. One might as well say that evolution by natural selection explains nothing because it does nothing to explain why there were living organisms on earth in the first place; or that the big bang fails to explain the cosmic background radiation because the big bang is itself inexplicable.

As Came's realizes, if Dawkins' argument were correct, then:

-Natural selection explains nothing because it doesn't explain why there were living organisms on earth in the first place.

-The big bang theory explains nothing because the big bang itself doesn't have any explanation.

I'd add the following couple of examples:

1-In 1983/84, when HIV was discoveried and the HIV theory of AIDS was formulated, the origin of HIV was unknown and hence unexplained. Therefore, the HIV theory of AIDS explains nothing! Or to use Dawkins' phraseology and stupid way of thinking: "Even if HIV were postulated to exist, it doesn't explains absolutely anything because you left without an explanation of HIV itself." (Is it a good scientific or philosophical objection to the HIV theory of AIDS? Do you need an explanation of HIV itself in order to conclude, if the evidence is good, that HIV is the "probable cause of AIDS" as Robert Gallo declared in 1984? Obviously not. Only atheists like Dawkins and his "fans" would accept such an intellectually ridiculous and spurious objection, what tell us something about the psychology of atheists and their intellectual powers).

2-After his debate with John Lennox, Dawkins was interviewed and asked about the origin of life on Earth. Dawkins reportedly said that "he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet."

Now, using Dawkins' own assumptions in his argument against God, we could say "Dawkins, your alien creationist hypothesis doesn't explain absolutely anything because the aliens in question remain themselves unexplained"

Reflecting hard and in a charitable way about Dawkins' argument, I've concluded that Dawkins is stupid in the literal sense of the word (stupid = very dull in mind). He's simply incapable of sophisticated intellectual thinking and even of recognizing obvious fallacies. He's stupid. (And by extension, I assume until proved wrong that most of Dawkins' "fans" are stupid too, because it is irrational and stupid to be an intellectual fan of an intellectually stupid person).

I've found a similar stupidity in other atheists (remember the "What caused God" objection posed by some of them against the cosmological argument), and this "atheistic stupidity pattern" strongly suggest something about the psychology of hard-core atheists. This why currently I'm convinced that hard-core atheists have a kind of intellectual and cognitive impairment, which makes them incapable of thinking rationally.

Their intelligence only reach to the most superficial level on difficult topics.

I'll comment more on the psychology of atheists in future posts.

Richard Dawkins supports infanticide of innocent babies with incurable diseases

2011-11-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

Euan Squires and the quantum mechanics arguments for God's existence

2011-11-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

The late agnostic physicist Euan Equires wrote in his book "The Mystery of the Quantum World" two posible arguments for God's existence based on quantum mechanics (or more exactly, two technical ways in which God could play a role in quantum mechanics. A more formal argument in this line, and reply to potential objections, would require a more detailed philosophical-conceptual analysis, which I'd develop in future posts).

Squires' first scientific argument is this:

Quantum theory offers at least two possible roles for a ‘God’, where we use this term for a being that is non-physical, nonhuman, in some sense superhuman, and is conscious. The first role is to make the ‘choices’ that are required whenever a measurement is made that selects from a quantum system one of the possible outcomes. Such a God would remove the indeterminacy from the world by taking upon himself those decisions that are not forced by the rules of physics. Although expressed in nontraditional terms, this is reasonably in accordance with the accepted role of a God. He would be very active in all aspects of the world, and would be totally omnipotent within the prescribed limits. Prediction of his behaviour from the laws of physics would be impossible (note that we are not permitting any hidden variables in this chapter), although from both the theological and the scientific viewpoint we would want to believe that there were reasons for at least some of the choices; otherwise we would be back with random behaviour and the God would not have played any part. It is interesting to note that this role might even permit ‘miracles’, if we were to regard these as events so highly unlikely that they would be effectively impossible without very specific, and unusual, ‘divine’ choice. For example, according to quantum theory, there must be a small, but non-zero, probability that if I run into a wall, then I will pass right through it. This is a special case of the potential barrier experiment and the wavefunction on the left-hand side, corresponding to transmission, is never quite zero. Then, however small the probability for transmission might be, a God would be able to select it as the outcome, if he so chose. (pp.66-67)

According to this first argument:

1)God could intervene making the choices required each time a measurement is done in order to select an specific outcome (note that, as Squires realize, this would refute the indeterminism which is thought to be esssential to QM, at least in the standard orthodox interpretation. I think the refutation of indeterminism in this level is reasonable because, if God exists, his creation couldn't be dependent on wholly random phenomena in the quantum level).

2)God's essential attribute of omnipotence would be preserved (so, making full justice to the classical concept of God). Other attributes like non-physicality, consciousness, superhuman, etc. are preserved too. (Note that no one of God's attributes implied in this argument conflicts with the classical attributes that theology posits as belonging to God).

Rather, these attributes strongly suggest that we're not dealing with an human-like form of consciousness, but with consciousness with superlative attributes which have been typically reserved to God as the ultimate perfect being.

3)Even miracles would be possible, again vindicating the classical concept of God who intervenes, by his own decisions, in events in this world.

I think this argument could be developed in detail and in a logically rigurous way.

Squires' second argument (which is largely independent of the first one) is this:

The second possible role for a God to play in quantum theory is more relevant to our principal topic. God might be the conscious observer who is responsible for the reduction of wavefunctions. Whether, in addtion, he also decides the outcome of his observations, as in the above paragraph, or whether this is left to chance is not important here. What is important is the fact that God must be selective-he must not reduce all wavefunctions automatically, otherwise we meet the same problem that we met when discussing modifications to the Schrodinger equation in $3.7: the reduction that is required depends on the observation that we are going to make. If, for example, a reduction to figure 16 is made, then there will be no possibility of interference, whereas a human observer might decide to do the interference experiment. It is therefore necessary that the God who reduces wavefunctions, and so allows things to happen in the early universe, in particular things that might be required in order for other conscious observers to exist, should know about these other observers and should know what they intend to measure. God must in some way be linked to human consciousness. (pp.67-68. Emphasis in blue added)

This argument is, in my view, stronger than the first one. But Squires doesn't formulate it in its strongest version. In my opinon, the possible theistic implications of Squires' second argument are more obvious when we asked for the reduction of wavefunctions of the universe as a whole (and hence, previous to the existence of human or extraterrestial (conscious) beings).

We could argue like this:

1-Concious observation is needed to the reduction of the wavefunctions in the origin of the universe.

2-Human (and alien, if they exist) concious observers are posterior to the origin of the Universe (i.e. the concrete physical world existed before the emergence of human or alien consciousness)

3-Therefore, human (and alien) conscious observers are not the cause of the reduction of the wavefunctions in the origin of the universe (the latter is previous to the emergence of human and alien beings).

This implies that a nonhuman, non-physical consciousness is the cause of the reduction of the wavefunction of the whole universe.

It points out to a being which is:

1-Non-physical (since it is the cause of the physical world). Note that if this being were physical (embodied), then we are confronted again with the problem of which conscious observation produced the reduction of the wavefunctions necessary to the existence of his physical body.

2-Timeless (since it is the cause of the universe, and hence of physical time). Being "timeless", it is argueably eternal, since eternity has been classically understood as either 1)Existing in each point of time; or 2)Existing independently of time (i.e. as trascendent regarding to the physical time).

3-Spaceless (since it is the cause of the universe, and hence of the physical space)

4-Conscious (otherwise, not reduction of the wavefunction would be possible).

5-Intentional (since such consciousness cannot reduce all the wavefunctions simultaneously, but only some of them selectively which implies concrete intentions. If conciousness without intention were sufficient to collapse the wave function, then the selectivity mentioned by Squieres would be inexplicable. This point seems to refute some of the versions of "universal consciousness" who see it as purely impersonal consciousness, "all are one" and other argueably unintelligible slogans common in some mystical, Hegelian, Wilberian, and new age circles).

6-Personal (given point 5), since essential to a person is the property of having ends, desires, purposes and intentions (all of the which implies selectivity regarding specific ends or purposes). It is not a purely undifferentiated or impersonal consciousness (whatever it means), but a personal consciousness. We are dealing with a non-physical being which is a person with concrete purposes and intentions.

All the above properties seem to be much like the personal God as understood in classical theism. Again, crucial to the argument is the implication that it is not mere "consciousness" in any undifferentiated, impersonal, collectivistic or mystical sense, but argueably a "personal consciousness". And this cannot be human consciousness, since the concrete universe that we're trying to explain preceded the emergence of humans and other conscious beings (e.g. intelligent physical aliens, if they exist).

It could be replied that perhaps multiple spirits or souls existed before the origin of the universe; and they were responsible for the creation of the universe (this is the view of L.Ron Hubbard and some others) but who argue for this polytheistic view has the burden of proof that it is the case, and moreover Occkam's Razor suggests that positing ONE personal being (instead of an arbitrary number of particular beings) as the responsible for the origin of the physical world is more parsimonious than positing many gods or god-like entities.

So, it seems we have two plausible and very good scientific arguments for God's existence based on quantum mechanics, being the second one far better than the first one.

Atheist philosopher (a sophisticated defender of atheism) Quentin Smith comments:

According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the wave function needs to be collapsed by something outside the system being measured. The wave function of the universe, accordingly, needs to be collapsed by something outside the universe. Now most versions of the Copenhagen Interpretation regard the observer (often explicitly identified with consciousness) as what collapses the wave function. In this respect, the cosmological application of the Copenhagen Interpretation may reasonably be thought to posit God (or a disembodied person who has superhuman attributes) outside the universe. Indeed, it seems to be the best scientific argument for God which is present in the twentieth century science. (Theism, Atheism and the Big Bang Cosmology, p. 325. Emphasis in blue added)

So, if the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM (which sees consciousness as that which collapses the wave function) is true, then we have a purely scientific argument for the existence of God.

In order to deny this conclusion, atheists would have to challenge the Copenhagen Interpretation (an interpretation which they endorse when criticizing the causal principle "whatever begins to exist has a cause", because they falsely think that indeterminism posed by that interpretation implies non-causality regarding the origin of contingent substances. But this endorsement open the door to a new and independent argument for God's existence, so atheists seem to be caught in a kind of dilemma in this point).

Truth-seekers will follow the evidence whenever it leads; hard-core atheists and naturalistic ideologues will follow the evidence except when it refutes atheism (in this case, they become highly skeptical of current scientific theories... as an example, see atheist philosopher Peter Millican's skeptical arguments on contemporary scientific cosmology in his recent debate with William Lane Craig).

In future posts I hope to develop even more these arguments and consider what kind of objections (and replies to the objections) could be posed against them.

Nori Muster's review of the book Modern Religions: An Experimental Analysis and Exposé by Elliot Benjamin

2011-11-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

Elliot Benjamin, Ph.D., describes his experiences in a variety of new age spiritual organizations, most of which are psychology-based groups. He describes each group and offers his ratings based on three academic scales in use since the 1970s: the Anthony Typology, the Wilber Integral Model, and the Bonewits Cult Danger Scale. He then places the groups on a spectrum that ranges from favorable and benign to high cult danger. The first hundred pages of the book familiarize the reader with the scales and Dr. Benjamin’s method of rating.

Developing a reliable rating method is useful, since it emphasizes the differences between groups, and would prevent journalists and casual researchers from lumping all new age spiritual organizations in the same category of danger. Along with the more notorious groups such as Scientology and Avatar, Dr. Benjamin rates about a dozen groups that he considers benign. This may help researchers who study group dynamics to recognize what makes a group dangerous. It may also inform religious leaders who want to fall on the favorable-benign side of the spectrum.

Researchers will find plentiful information on lesser known groups. Since many of the groups described in the book are small, or not considered dangerous, until now they may have been ignored in the cultic studies literature. Hopefully, the information on benign groups will put some people’s minds at ease. As the director of Steamboats.com, a website dedicated to historic preservation, I once received a letter from a concerned mother questioning her son’s employment as a deckhand on the Delta Queen Steamboat. I assured her that it was most likely a positive experience for her son that would look good on his resumé.

Dr. Benjamin’s descriptions may bring similar peace of mind to friends and relatives of people who dabble in the benign groups he covers.

A Closer Look at the Rating Scales

The Anthony Typology, developed by Dick Anthony, analyzes a group on the scope of its beliefs, whether it is charismatic, and whether it is antagonistic toward the outside world. The Wilber Integral Model, developed by Ken Wilber, rates a group according to how controlling it is, and whether its philosophy has a rational or traditional basis. The Bonewits scale, developed by Isaac Bonewits, assigns a number between one (low danger) and ten (high danger) on fifteen traits, such as the leader’s(s’) claim of wisdom, the amount of wisdom attributed (blind followers), and rigidity of dogma. Bonewits rates on how much a group is interested in money and political power; as well as the common hallmarks of a dangerous cult: sexual abuse, censorship, endorsement of violence, paranoia, lack of sense of humor about itself, internal control of members, and surrender of will. The ratings are added up and divided by fifteen to come up with an average cult danger rating.

Dr. Benjamin describes each group, then rates each on the three scales, and follows with his rationalization for why he rated each group as he did. He admits that his ratings are purely subjective, based on his experiences. Individual researchers will certainly disagree with some of Dr. Benjamin’s ratings, and certainly the groups themselves will disagree if they have a bad rating.

One of the weaknesses of rating organizations is that it is difficult to see what is going on behind the scenes. A researcher would have to stumble into the inner circle of any group to find out what is really going on. Therefore, there is a danger of falsely giving a group a benign rating. Even a homeowners association or bridge club may have the potential to inflict extreme emotional, financial, or other abuses, which a casual observer may not notice. Also, it must be kept in mind that groups can change. They may reform themselves or turn sinister, based on who is in the group, and whether the system is ripe for abuse, or ready for healing. In addition, once a group has been stained by sexual or other violent forms of abuse, it may have a difficult time getting its reputation back. Therefore high ratings on the Sexual Manipulation and Endorsement of Violence scales need to be more heavily weighted to get an accurate picture of a group’s overall danger rating.

Another note is that it would be a mistake to apply the Bonewits scale to political groups, as Dr. Benjamin has in essays outside of this volume. All political groups would score high on several of the scales, such as Wisdom Claimed, Wisdom Credited, and Dogma; and certainly they would score high on the Wealth and Political Power scales. Since these five scales would be elevated, it would be unfair to compare the average of a political group’s rating to the average of a new age spiritual organization. To obtain a more accurate rating of political organizations, a researcher would need to remove those five items, and add five items to rate the group’s integrity. Does the group lie for political gain? This would say more about whether a political group is dangerous than if they want wealth. Needing money is built into the game of politics these days.

A Closer Look at the Author

In chapters two and three, Dr. Benjamin presents a collection of essays he wrote at the time he was going through his group encounters. The essays are presented in two sections, first the late 1990s and early 2000s; then the 1970s.

Dr. Benjamin took about fifteen years off in between to earn his Ph.D. in mathematics and establish himself as a college professor with a specialization in pure mathematics. He describes his academic pursuits as part of his spiritual search, since he spent years working on pure mathematics for several hours each morning as a meditation.

Dr. Benjamin’s essays in chapters two and three read like journal entries, written in the moment. Many of these entries begin when he is enamored with a new group he is exploring, then in a subsequent entry, he denounces the group and explains what he dislikes about it. He seems to have a cast iron stomach for unusual group experiences. Many ex-cult members and researchers may experience the gack factor (feeing repulsed) by some of Dr. Benjamin’s realizations as a naïve follower.

As an ex-member of an Eastern guru group, I have avoided all new age religious organizations except a very few. The Philosophical Research Society, founded by Manly Hall in 1934, was a short walk from where I lived in Los Angeles in the early 2000s. I attended many lectures, workshops, and even a tai chi class there with no adverse reactions. However, once in the late 1990s, I attended a house party put on by members of a group Dr. Benjamin would rate as mild. At one point, they got everyone’s attention to do a group meditation. Everyone joined hands in a circle in the living room. This was an unbearable trigger for me and I waited out in the front yard until the ceremony was over. In my experience, I would have found most of the situations Dr. Benjamin lived through as undesirable for myself.

Dr. Benjamin describes his deepest and most conflicted affiliation in chapter four: Encounters with Scientology. In a series of his characteristic journal-like essays, he reveals little-known details about the group, such as how they get people to join and what goes on in an auditing session. As a researcher, I never knew much about Scientology before, but the book has given me a substantial education on the group’s inner workings. Since Scientology is a highly secretive group, I believe this is one of the book’s greatest contributions.

One of the most terrifying aspects of Dr. Benjamin’s experience was the amount of money he invested in the various groups he joined. His non-cult friends and family must have found themselves exasperated trying to prevent him from wasting yet more of his hard-earned money chasing the next great thing.
Dr. Benjamin repeats a similar pattern in each group: he becomes intrigued, gets involved, gets hoodwinked for a sum of money, becomes disenchanted, and leaves. He discusses the financial hardships of group involvement quite extensively, which will be informative for seekers who are considering a similar path.

Publishing this book is a milestone for Dr. Benjamin, since it is the culmination of his nearly forty years of writing about alternative spiritual organizations. In essence, Dr. B. is an unapologetic cult-hopper, revealing in chapter five his disappointment with the Jewish religion of his ancestors and the loss of his father at the age of two as factors that may have led him to search for meaning through new age group involvement. He also admits that he joined particular groups after falling in love with women involved in the groups.

After describing and rating all of his group experiences, the book seems to point to the need for a creative non-fiction rendering. It would be refreshing to read a memoir by

Dr. Benjamin that goes in chronological order, offering selected scenes from his journey. He has already told us what he really thinks. Now all that is left to do is to show us the worlds he has discovered sans any further analysis.

Links of interest:

-Elliot's book is available at www.lulu.com

-My subversive interview with Elliot.

-Elliot's articles in the Integral World website.

Richard Dawkins says that rape is morally arbitrary

2011-11-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

The transcript:

Justin Brierley: When you make a value judgement don't you immediately step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say that the reason this is good is that it's good. And you don't have any way to stand on that statement.

Richard Dawkins: My value judgement itself could come from my evolutionary past.

Justin Brierley: So therefore it's just as random in a sense as any product of evolution.

Richard Dawkins: You could say that, it doesn't in any case, nothing about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural.

Justin Brierley: Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six.

Richard Dawkins: You could say that, yeah.

End of the transcript.

Compare with naturalist and philosopher of biology Michael Ruse:

The position of the modern evolutionist is that humans have an awareness of morality because such awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. Michael Ruse, The Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics, in the Darwinian Paradigm (pp. 262-269. Emphasis in blue added.)

Or naturalist and philosopher of biology Alex Rosenberg: "One source of meaning on which many have relied is the intrinsic value, in particular the moral value, of human life. People have also sought moral rules, codes, principles which are supposed to distinguish us from merely biological critters whose lives lack (as much) meaning or value (as ours)... Scientism must reject all of these straws that people have grasped, and it’s not hard to show why. Science has to be nihilistic about ethics and morality. Alex Rosenberg, in his article "The Disenchanted Naturalistic Guide to Reality". Emphasis in blue added.

A Japanese among atheists, Christians, parapsychologists and spiritualists: A strange but fruitful journey (part 1)

2011-11-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

This is a modest attempt to put in paper (or in digital format) my life as a Japanese living and interacting among wholly different groups of people like atheists, Christians, Buddhists, parapsychologists, spiritualists, ideologues of every kind and other who claim to know the truth.

When I arrived to Canada and US many years ago, I was already very interested in phenomena like psi (precognition, telepathy, etc.) and in spirituality. Coming from a faimily sympathetic to systems like taoism, zen, buddhism and similar, I had a set of beliefs (not necessarily shared by all of these systems, since I had my own view of all of them and wasn't entirely convinced) that shaped my view:

1-Monotheistic religions are based entirely on faith, dogmatic authority and are seriously misguided.

2-There is probably no God (no "big daddy" in the sky, I favorite expression of mine which I now see as strongly ignorant and stupid) and if something like this exists is in the universe as a whole (see point 4).

3-Human beings have probably a soul which could survive death.

4-The "universe is consciousness" (another favorite expression of mine, which now I see as largely uninteligible and philosophically naive) and each of us is a finite part part of that universal consciousness.

I had a lot of other beliefs, but for the sake of this post, let's to stick to the above four. (This was the ideological baggage that I brought to America).

Now, first let me stress that I don't see any of the above beliefs as demostrably false. I'm even sympathetic to some of them (like the number 3), even though for different, more informed reasons.

What I found in America (specially in US) was a kind of cultural battle between Christians and secularists (evolution vs creationism, etc.). At first, I thought these battled was justified because Christians were basically religious dogmatists and bigots who weren't interested in scientific research and evidence.

But I very soon find that "secularists" had an ideological agenda which include suppression of any view which could suggest that materialism was false (including honest scientific research by atheists and agnostic researchers about phenomena like psi or the afrterlife). So I realized that they had an axe to grind against whatever view, opinion or research program which could destroy their beliefs.

I was shocked to discover their dishonesty and how they misrepresent the evidence of parapsychology, for example.

In this point, another thought appeared in my mind: The view about Christians being essentially ideologues and dogmatists who are enemies of scientific research and their only motivation was to predicate their ideology is true? I had bought that idea reading the books of atheists and secularists.

But my confidence in them fell apart. So, I began studying carefully the books of the best Christian philosophers, theologians, scientists and other scholars in order to see what they defend and believe. And in this point I was shocked again.

What I found (with some exceptions) was a rigurous, evidence-based support of their belief system. I found sophisticated philosophical and scientific arguments for God's existence and (for my absolute astonishment) for Jesus' Resurrection which I saw in that time as something beyond historical, rational evaluation and only believed "by wishful thinking and faith" (again, I bought the highly efficacious atheist propaganda!).

Also, I realized that Christian intellectuals had a desire to discuss and debate rationally their beliefs. This was another shock for me, since in the atheist books that I had read, Christians are portrayed as irrational individuals who knows next to nothing of logic, reason and the scientific method, are wholly credulous people and are afraid of discussing their beliefs (and my direct experience with some normal Christian people tended to confirmed this view). I realized that atheists were attacking the weakest Christians, not the better ones (exactly as Richard Dawkins has made recently).

I noted a certain pattern in the atheist argumentation against Christians which was very similar to their arguments against parapsychology. Stereotypes, facile (and long refuted) objections, misrepresentations and straw men, labels, attacking the weakest version of the argument, etc. were common in atheists in their "campaign" against religious and parapsychological believers.

I thought that perhaps I was buying too much in the popular atheist literature. So I began to studying intensively scholarly books and papers by the best defenders of metaphysical naturalism and materialistic atheism. My library had (and probably even HAS) more books defending atheism than books about any other topic. And I was astonished again.

I found that (otherwise serious and rigurous atheist thinkers) posed crude objections and obvious fallacies (repeating long and already refuted arguments) when arguing against the best Christian scholars. I couldn't understand this, since that if religion is false, then its falsehood should be easily shown, specially if religious believers are ignorant and stupid, and atheists are rational, smart and scientific.

Since I shared with atheists the view that religious believers were essentially irrational, ignorant and wishful thinkers (even thought I never had any strong emotion behind this opinion), all the above caused on me a profound and very strong cognitive dissonance. I simply couldn't believe what I was seeing. I never expected such a thing.

In this point I began to suspect that I had been subtly fooled or "taken in" by the atheistic literature that I had read. And I discovered that most non-Christian people in US were fooled into the atheistic-caused anti-religious stereotypes too.

I discovered too that most Christian pastors were anti-intellectual , dogmatists and tended to confirm the stereotypes created by atheists. So, I understood why people in US (who are likely to have more conctact with Christian pastors than with sophisticated Christian scholars) believed the atheistic propaganda.

But this excuse couldn't apply to me, since my anti-religious opinion wasn't based on the time in any experience with Christian pastors and other anti-intellectuals. I bought the atheistic propaganda almost entirely based on books and my own prejudices (+ some ocassional encounters with religious fundamentalists).

So, I concluded that secularism had largely won (with cheap shots and an astute aggresive anti-religious propaganda + the anti-intellectualism of Church pastors) the cultural battle, at least among "intellectually sophisticated" people.

At that time, I was more or less convinced that "spiritualists" had the right answers to a whole of topics which atheists had stigmatized as unscientific "religious fallacies".

And even though I still believe that spiritualists have important things to say, I found in spiritualism something that I had never expected...

I will tell you what it is in part 2.

The dangerous ideas of Richard Dawkins: Irrefutable proof that Dawkins' refusal to debate Craig is not only coward but intellectually dishonest

2011-10-31T13:01:00.001-07:00

In 2006, the magazine Edge published a series of articles with leading scientists and scholars on the question What's your dangerous idea?

Richard Dawkins was one of the "scholars" to whom such a question was asked. Let's copy here the entire article (in order to avoid misrepresentations of Dawkins' view). Please, read carefully the full article, specially the emphasis in blue added by me. (You can consult the original article in the Edge website here). I'll prove, with irrefutable evidence (in the context of Dawkins' excuses to avoid debating William Lane Craig) that Richard Dawkins is not only a COWARD but that, additionally, his refusal to debating Craig is based on reasons which Dawkins himself see as scientifically false.

People like Dawkins deserve to receive public intellectual punishment (i.e. sound refutations of his charlatanisms) and an evidence based debunking.

Let's all stop beating Basil's car

by Richard Dawkins

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give "satisfaction' to the victims of the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as "atonement' for "sin'. Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software. Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes? Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me). But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car? Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.

Jime's conclusions:

1)Dawkins claims that according to science human brains "are as surely governed by the laws of physics" and hence the concept of "retribution" is unscientific. Therefore, "punishment" makes no sense at all (Dawkins: "When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it.")

Such a view implies DETERMINISM (i.e. the view that human thinking and actions are wholly determined by physical laws, not freedom of the will is allowed).

True, naturalism implies such view on determinism, but wait a minute. Think about it: If determinism is true, then Dawkins' belief in determinism is ALSO determined by physical laws, not by reason or logic (which are no physical laws). Dawkins is a determinist because physical laws impose on him such a belief, not because such a belief is rationally justified over other non-jusitified beliefs.

So, as we never say that a computer is irrational when it malfunctions (because such computer is not guilty of the malfunctioning due to the deterministic physical laws which controls it), we cannot say that human beings (e.g. religious fundamentalists) are irrational when they have false beliefs or do dangerous actions. After all, like the computer, human beings are fully determined (by physical laws) in their functioning (reason and logic, not being physical laws, don't determine anything), and the concepts of rational or irrational makes no sense.

Moreover, on what grounds are you going to criticize religious people who believe in God, free will, the afterlife, spirits and indeterminism, if their beliefs are ALSO determined by the same physical laws which impose on Dawkins his deterministic view?

The same physical laws which makes Dawkins an automata without free will will be efficacious to make all the other people automata too. And the difference of beliefs of each person will be caused by physical laws, not by the person' fault, and hence you cannot complain that such people are irrational or guilty, since they have not responsability at all regarding the beliefs they hold.

2)Dawkins claims that "evil and good" are MENTAL CONSTRUCTS and USEFUL FICTIONS (i.e. they exist in our minds alone), and don't have any objective, mind-independent existence. In Dawkins word's: "Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it"

Note that Dawkins constrast such a mental constructs and fictions with the "truer analysis of what is going on in the world", which implies that such mental constructs and fictions are probably FALSE.

Again, this view is entailed by metaphysical naturalism and atheism, so Dawkins is (at least in this point) being consistent.

Now, if the "evil" is a mental construct which a scientific atheist should deny (on behalf of a more rational and true scientific analysis), then WHY THE HELL DID DAWKINS SAY THAT WLLIAM LANE CRAIG'S THEOLOGY IS EVIL? On that objective moral grounds is Dawkins going to criticize Craig if such a moral ground is a pure mental construct without any objective validity? Moreover, is Craig guilty of something "evil" when, according to Dawkins' beliefs, the evil doesn't exist and Craig is fully determined in his beliefs and actions by the same deterministic physical laws which determine Dawkins' beliefs and actions?

This is evidence which Dawkins doesn't take his worldview seriously. He denies the objective existence of the "evil", but then accusses others (specially religious believers) of being evil or of doing evil things.

He denies the justification of the concept of "retribution and punishment", but then castigates Craig when the latter defends a religious view that Dawkins finds unpalatable.

He criticizes (and uses as an excuse to refuse debating) Craig by his (alleged) justification of biblical genocide, but Dawkins himself claims that he is open to the persuasion that "killing people is right under certain circunstances" (so, supporting genocide).

Do you think the evidence mentioned here support the conclusion that Dawkins is a rational, logical and intellectually honest scholar?

I think the answer is obvious. As I said, in my opinion, people like Dawkins deserve to receive a public exposing and evidence-based intellectual punishment (=solid refutations of his views), and in this blog I'll contribute to this purpose.

I entirely agree with atheist Oxford philosopher Daniel Came who says that Dawkins's refusal to debate Craig is cynical and anti-intellectualist, and that people like Dawkins "seek to replace one form of irrationality with another."

As expected and predicted Richard Dawkins didn't appeared to debate William Lane Craig

2011-10-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

The above is a video by a Christian youtuber called (in youtube) Birdieupon. He made a good work putting together some of the pictures of the Oxford scholarly meeting to discuss Craig's lecture on Dawkins' book The God Delusion.

As the coward Richard Dawkins didn't showed up, Craig was confronted with a panel of 3 skeptical scholars (including atheist philosopher Daniel Came, who called Dawkins a coward and an anti-intellectual) who made critical comments of Craig's lecture, followed by Craig's response. It seems the session also included questions by the audience.

This kind of intellectual interaction is good and productive, because it enables to see the force and weaknesses of the arguments of each side.

High level intellectual debates like this are much appreciated by seekers for the truth (people like Richard Dawkins and many pseudoskeptical charlatans don't like that kind of debates, because the extreme weaknesses, superficiality and sophistical character of their case is fully exposed in front of the public).

Stay tuned for the video and audio of this interesting Oxford session.

Michael Shermer vs John Lennox debate on the existence of God

2011-10-30T08:44:00.001-07:00

I think Lennox won this debate against Shermer.

In my opinion, Shermer is too superficial as to be a serious intellectual opponent to debate any topic whatsoever. So, if you add the falsehood of atheism to an unsophisticated defense of it, you will get a debate like this.

In any case, don't be influenced by my opinion; just watch the debate, think hard about the arguments of both sides, and draw your own conclusions.

A.C.Grayling vs. William Lane Craig debate on the problem of evil against God's existence

2011-10-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

Joel Marks and the atheistic amoral manifesto: The moral poverty of materialistic atheism and metaphysical naturalism

2011-10-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

Joel Marks is Professor Emeritus (Philosophy) from the University of New Haven. His interest in bioethics stems from his work in philosophical ethics, mainly at the theoretical level.

In this blog, I've provided a lot of evidence that metaphysical naturalism and atheism don't provide any ontological foundation for objective moral values and, very plausibly, imply the non-existence of morality in any ontologically objective sense (only in a subjective sense, we could talk of morality given atheism).

In order to prove this point, I've provided as evidence the scientific and philosophical arguments of leading atheists themselves, including atheistic moral philosophers (i.e. people who specializes professionally, not superficially, in the topic of morality).

There are so much evidence and arguments (scientific, philosophical, anecdotal, logical, etc.) supporting this view that I've been tempted to created an entire blog entitled "The moral poverty of metaphysical naturalism, atheistic materialism and secular humanism", dealing exclusively with this topic. But I think this conclusion is accepted by most people (including most of the few intellectually honest atheists out there), so creating an entire blog to prove this point seems to be a waste of time. So, I've decided to continue to deal with this matter in a section of my blog.

In order to provide more evidence for this point, I'd suggest you to read carefully the arguments of moral philosopher and atheist Joel Marks. In an article entitled "The Amoral Manifesto I", Dr.Marks shows his intellectual honesty conceding that, if atheism is true, then morality doesn't exist in any ontologically objective sense (as opposed to pragmatical, instrumentalist, subjectivistic, etc. senses).

Dr.Marks concedes: "The long and the short of it is that I became convinced that atheism implies amorality; and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality. I call the premise of this argument ‘hard atheism’ because it is analogous to a thesis in philosophy known as ‘hard determinism.’ The latter holds that if metaphysical determinism is true, then there is no such thing as free will. Thus, a ‘soft determinist’ believes that, even if your reading of this column right now has followed by causal necessity from the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago, you can still meaningfully be said to have freely chosen to read it. Analogously, a ‘soft atheist’ would hold that one could be an atheist and still believe in morality. And indeed, the whole crop of ‘New Atheists’ (see Issue 78) are softies of this kind. So was I, until I experienced my shocking epiphany that the religious fundamentalists are correct: without God, there is no morality. But they are incorrect, I still believe, about there being a God. Hence, I believe, there is no morality." (emphiasis in blue added).

Read carefully Marks' piece and please, leave aside your prejudices. Try to examine his arguments, and try to see exactly which ones of his premises is false or implausible. Don't commit the intellectual mistake of simply disagreeing and positing another opinion. Try to reflect hard on why a believer in morality like Dr.Marks changed his opinion about the God-morality connection and now, in order to be a consistent atheist, he has to reject the existence of morality.

Again (and I'm being intentionally redundant) don't commit the mistake of positing your own opinions about morality as an alternative to Dr.Marks. Rather, think carefully about his arguments in the context of atheism and metaphysical naturalism (i.e. reflect on whether Dr.Marks' conclusions are plausible and fit better than the alternatives given the basic premises of metaphysical naturalism).

It is crucial that you don't interpret Dr.Marks' views outside of the context of atheism and metaphysical naturalism.

Don't leave that your sympathies with certain moral points of views colours your sober and rational assesment of Dr.Mark's argumentation.

Wholly independent of Dr.Mark's article, I'd like to suggest this cumulative case for the conclusion that atheism implies the non-existence of morality (think hard about each step):

1-Metaphysical naturalism says that everything which exists or is causally active in our world is physical (physicalism), and hence non-physical entities (like God) don't exist (or don't have any causal influence in our universe).

2-Science is the best method to research everything which exists, or at least, the physical world.

3-We should believe only what science has discoveried (and deny or be skeptical of what science has not discoveried yet or has not scientific basis), because science is the best method to find the truth.

4-Science has discoveried that the physical world has only physical properties (including chemical and biological ones).

5-Physical properties don't include objective moral properties (nor any other normative property, for that matter).

6-Therefore, people's beliefs in objective moral properties or entities is unscientific (without any scientific basis) and plausible false (because not moral properties can be deduced of any known physical properties derived of our best scientific laws).

The above is not a deductive argument, but a series of step leading to a conclusion (6). I submit that most atheists and naturalists would agree with steps 1-5, and hence would be rationally forced to concede point 6 as the most plausible conclusion.

Think hard about it.

In future posts, I'll develop Dr.Marks' arguments in more detail and give supporting evidence.

My purpose is to show that, it is metaphysically necessary or at least metaphysically very plausible, that naturalistic atheism implies the non-existence of objective morality. Therefore, whatever reason you have to accept that objective moral values exist is a reason to think that atheism is false.

Rabbi Moshe Averick defends William Lane Craig against atheist Richard Dawkins and calls him a "chicken" for dodging a debate with Craig

2011-10-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Moshe Averick is an ordained Orthodox Rabbi who has taught theology, spirituality, and religious philosophy for nearly 30 years

Read Averick's article here.

Review of Alex Rosenberg's book An Atheist's Guide to Reality (part 1): The atheist mindset

2011-10-23T07:51:00.000-07:00

Prominent philosopher of science and biology, professor Alex Rosenberg has written an excelent book in defense of naturalistic atheism (his book is "excellent", not because his conclusions are true or plausible, but because they're consistent with the premises of metaphysical naturalism. So, if naturalism were true, I'm sure that Rosenberg's conclusions would be true too). In this sense, we have to praise Rosenberg's intellectual honesty and courage in following the implications of the premises of metaphysical naturalism wherever they lead.

In the part 1 of this review, I just want to do general remarks about Rosenberg's book, leaving a more in depth critical examination of his arguments for upcoming posts. The purpose of part 1 of this review is to sketch what I consider is one aspect the typical hard-core atheist mindset: arrogance + complex of intellectual superiority + solid ignorance of theism.

Like with so many others book by atheists, the first impression that you'll receive of Rosenberg's book is its "smater than you" arrogant tone with condescending and patronizing remarks about people who disagree with atheism.

Take for example this comment (in which he mentions the great questions of life like the existence of purpose in the Universe, or the existence of God or free will and so forth):

People who believe in religion are particularly adept at avoiding the answers. This is not a book for them. This is a book for those who want to face up to the real answers to these questions. It's a book for people who are comfortable with the truth about reality. This is a book for atheists. (preface viii)

I know of no religious believers who are adept at "avoiding the answers". Rather, they provide answers in terms of God's action on the world, in order to make sense of the origin and fine tuning of the universe, the origin of consciousness, the rationality of our minds, the existence of objective moral values, putative afterlife experiences (like NDEs) and so forth. They try to make sense of our human experience and the universe as a whole in terms of a spiritual cause which trascends the purely material universe.

So, Rosenberg's characterization of "people who believe in religion" is demostrably false, a crude caricature based on atheistic prejudices (which is unworthy of a serious scholar like Rosenberg).

Note that, from the beginning, not just atheism is assumed to be true, but that atheists are considered to be in a superior intellectual position than theists regarding the truth.

I wasnt's surprised by this at all because, according to my experience, most hard-core atheists are strongly deluded into the belief that they're intellectually superior than non-atheists. Their self-perception is one of intellectual superiority. This explains their typical arrogance.

For example, non-philosopher naturalist Richard Carrier wrote in his book "This book is only for sane, reasonable people" (Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, p. 287), almost implying that non-naturalists (or people who disagree with Carrier's book) are somehow insane or irrational.

Also, remember Daniel Dennett's silly attempt to use "brights" as a label for atheists.

(By the way: This is why I enjoy so much when William Lane Craig kicks their butts in public debates and universities. Craig proves that atheists' self-perception of intellectual superiority is a pure self-delusion, without any objective ground on the reality. Even though I don't agree with all of Craig's views, I agree with his refutations of atheists and his exposing of them as irrational people)

They seem to live in a dream world where the (extremely few in number) atheistic people are superior than anyone else. I consider this elitistic personality trait an almost essential aspect of the hard-core atheistic minset and an interesting area of scientific research by experimental psychology.

For my surprise (since I've read several books on philosophy of science, economics and biology by Rosenberg), his knowledge of philosophy of religion and theology seems to be very superficial. In his typical atheist-arrogant and condescending prose, Rosenberg says:

Knowing the truth makes it hard not to sound patronizing of the benighted souls under religion's spell. So from time to time, some of the tone of much of what follows may sound a little smug. I fear I have to plead guilty to this charge, with mitigation. So far I can see, belief in God is on a part with belief in Santa Claus (preface XII).

The modest implication that Rosenberg (and atheists) "know the truth" about complex matters (many of which are metaphysical and hence beyond science proper) reminds me of the treatises of medieval religious dogmatists.

Also, saying that belief in God is on a part with belief in Santa Claus is an offense to prominent ancient, modern and contemporary thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig and (former atheistic apologist) Antony Flew, in addition to being an a slap to the face of the above 90% of people in Earth who reject atheism and embrace belief in God. (This sectarian, elitistic mindset is a direct consequence of the deluded self-perception of "knowing the truth" and being intellectually superior to anyone else who disagree with atheism)

Consider two of Flew's reasons for conversion from atheism to a version of theism: "There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion." (emphasis in blue added).

Note that Flew's argument is not a God of the gaps argument in which he argues that God exists on the grounds of gaps in our knowledge. Rather, his argument is that our current knowledge provide EVIDENCE for the "intelligent source hypothesis" over the purely materialistic hypothesis.

Now, what the hell has to do Santa Claus with Flew's argument for God? Is Santa Claus a good candidate to explain the complex order of the universe and life?

Only a person with strong atheistic prejudices and extraordinary ignorance of philosophy of religion could claim that the "God hypothesis" is on a par with the "Santa Claus hypothesis" (and hence, that belief in the former is on a par with belief in the latter).

Reading that part of Rosenberg's book made me very dissapointed of him as a philosopher (because, as I've commented, his works in philosophy of science and other fields are very good).

Part 1 of this review only tried to give you a taste of what you will find in this book in terms of "tone" or prose.

In future posts, I expect to explain in detail why I think that Rosenberg's case is self-refuting.

Don't get me wrong. I urge my readers (atheists, agnostics or theists alike) to get a copy of Rosenberg's book and read it carefully.

You need to know which are the actual consequences of metaphysical naturalism, and I know of no other book which explains these consequences so consistently and rigurously as Rosenberg's.

And for the same reason, you need to know why sanity, morality, spirituality and rationality demands to refute and consistently debunk such doctrine.

Oxford historian Tim Stanley says that Richard Dawkins is either a fool or a coward for refusing to debate William Lane Craig

2011-10-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

Dr Tim Stanley is a research fellow in American History at Oxford University. He is currently working on a biography of Pat Buchanan.

In a recent article, Dr.Stanley says:

We are left with two possible conclusions from Richard Dawkin’s flimsy sick note. The first is that he doesn’t understand Christian apologetics, which is why he unintentionally misrepresents Craig’s piece. The most frustrating thing about the New Atheism is that it rarely debates theology on theology's own terms. It approaches metaphor and mysticism as if they were statements of fact to be tested in the laboratory. Worse still, it takes the crudest equations of faith (total submission to an angry sky god) and assumes that they apply to all its believers at all times equally. That most Christians living in the 21^st century don’t know who the Canaanites were and only go to church because it brings them an intangible inner peace, totally escapes these atheist pedants.

The second explanation is that Dawkins is a coward. He likes to pick fights either with dunces (like the deliciously silly and obviously gay Ted Haggard) or with incredibly nice old Christians with no fire in their belly (like Rowan Williams). Dawkins has gotten away with his illiterate, angry schtick for so many years because his opponents have been so woolly. This is a damning indictment not only of him, but of the clerical establishment of Great Britain. But this time, he understood that he was up against a pro. In America, evangelicals have to compete in a vibrant, competitive marketplace of different denominations. That breeds the very guile and theatricality that are so sorely lacking among the Anglican clergy. In Craig, Dawkins met his match. Like Jonah, he was confronted by the truth and he ran away.

It seems that Dawkins' cowardice (as evidenced by his refusal to debate God's existence with Craig) is being well known and widespread among Oxford scholars (both theists and atheists alike, see an example of the latter here).

Atheist philosopher Daniel Came says that Richard Dawkins's refusal to debate William Lane Craig is cynical and anti-intellectualist

2011-10-22T08:39:00.000-07:00

In this recent article, an atheist philosopher from Oxford named Daniel Came argues that Richard Dawkins' refusal to debate William Lane Craig is cynical and anti-intellectualist and adds that such position is typical of the so-called New Atheists.

Dr.Came comments:

Richard Dawkins is not alone in his refusal to debate with William Lane Craig. The vice-president of the British Humanist Association (BHA), AC Grayling has also flatly refused to debate Craig, stating that he would rather debate "the existence of fairies and water-nymphs".

Given that there isn't much in the way of serious argumentation in the New Atheists' dialectical arsenal, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Dawkins and Grayling aren't exactly queuing up to enter a public forum with an intellectually rigorous theist like Craig to have their views dissected and the inadequacy of their arguments exposed.

Came's article is a reply to Dawkins' recent article where he poses another silly excuse to avoid debating William Lane Craig.

I haven't read any professional paper or book by Dr.Came, but given his straightforward position regarding Dawkins' obvious cowardice, dishonesty and anti-intellectualism, I must assume that Came is an intellectually honest atheist. This kind of atheist is worthy of respect and admiration, even if you disagree with him (regarding their atheistic worldview).

Moreover, as a trained and competent philosopher, Came castigates Dawkins' fallacious arguments against theism. In Came's words: "Dawkins maintains that we're not justified in inferring a designer as the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe because then a new problem surfaces: who designed the designer? This argument is as old as the hills and as any reasonably competent first-year undergraduate could point out is patently invalid. For an explanation to be successful we do not need an explanation of the explanation. One might as well say that evolution by natural selection explains nothing because it does nothing to explain why there were living organisms on earth in the first place; or that the big bang fails to explain the cosmic background radiation because the big bang is itself inexplicable."

Note that Came's objection to Dawkins's argument is exactly the same objection that William Lane Craig has raised against Dawkins:

This is evidence of intellectual honesty and rigour by Came. (You can see that, contrary to the very common atheistic cranks, irrationalists and charlatans, there are a few atheists out there who are intellectually honest and competent thinkers, worthy of intellectual respect and admiration).

Just for the record (and as a personal addendum): In his article, Richard Dawkins says that he won't debate Craig because Craig is an "apologist for genocide". A smart (and hypocritcal, as we will see) excuse by Dawkins, indeed.

That excuse by Dawkins provides more evidence of his intellectual dishonesty, sophistry and personal cowardice (giving support to Dr.Came, who suggested in a previous article that Dawkins is a COWARD).

Consider the evidence:

Dawkins poses an apparently "moral reason" (the alleged defense of genocide by Craig) as a valid excuse to avoid debating Craig. However, the hypocrital and coward Dawkins himself is sympathetic ("quite open") to the persuasion that the murdering and killing of human beings is right. In this interview, Dawkins says: "Now, if you then ask me where I get my 'ought' statements from, that's a more difficult question. If I say something is wrong, like killing people, I don't find that nearly such a defensible statement as 'I am a distant cousin of an orangutan... The statement 'killing people is wrong', to me, is not of that character. I would be quite open to persuasion that killing people is right in some circumstances... I couldn't, ultimately, argue intellectually against somebody who did something I found obnoxious. I think I could finally only say, "Well, in this society you can't get away with it" and call the police... I realise this is very weak, and I've said I don't feel equipped to produce moral arguments in the way I feel equipped to produce arguments of a cosmological and biological kind" (Emphasis in blue added).

Now, on what moral grounds is Dawkins going to criticize Craig' (alleged) endorsement of genocide, if in Dawkins' own view the statement "killing people is wrong" or "genocide is wrong" or "killing people is right in some circunstances" cannot be defended rationally and intellectually?

Moreover, for Dawkins, "killing people" is not morally evil or bad because in his own opinion the evil doesn't exist objectively in this universe. In his work River Out Of Eden, Dawkins wrote: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." (p.155. Emphasis in blue added)

So, the "observable universe" (which includes the observable cases of murder, rape, genocide, terrorism, poverty, drug additcion, frauds, bigotry and persecution against atheists, etc.) is not, at the bottom, "evil" at all for Dawkins, then which is the rational and intellectual basis of Dawkins' moral complain against Craig? Is Craig being "evil" in Dawkins' view? Can Dawkins argue that Craig is defending something morally wrong and evil, and at the same time to claim that the evil doesn't exist in this universe?

The above suffices to prove that Dawkins is an intellectually incompetent, dishonest sophist and a straightforward coward atheist.

Consistent with his stupidity, incoherence and cowardice, Dawkins ask "Would you share a platform with him? I wouldn't, and I won't."

But Dawkins DID shared a plataform with Craig in Mexico some time ago, as you can watch in this video:

And as you can watch in that video, Dawkins' replies to Craig were ignorant, stupid and intellectually inept (which is typical of most atheists, according to my experience).

You can agree or disagree with Craig's arguments; but I think any rational person would easily see that Dawkins is an intellectual lightweight amateur in comparison with Craig (just compare the logical structure, rigour and coherence of the argumentation of both men).

Craig would destroy Dawkins very EASILY in a debate about God's existence. Dawkins knows it and this is the ACTUAL reason why Dawkins WON'T debate Craig. Ever.

William Lane Craig vs. Stephen Law debate on Does God Exist? at Westminster Central Hall, 17 October in front of an audience of over 1700 people

2011-10-18T09:23:00.001-07:00

This is Craig's most recent debate (17 October 2011) with an atheist philosopher from England named Stephen Law (who's a senior lecturer at Heythrop College in the University of London. He also edits the philosophical journal Think, which is published by the Royal Institute of Philosophy and aimed at the general public).

Examine carefully and sympathetically both sides of the debate, and draw your own conclusions asking yourselves "which is the most plausible argument?".

My own opinion is that, as expected, atheist Law couldn't reply correctly to Craig's arguments (specially the first and second arguments by Craig weren't responded by Law, and his replies to the other arguments were pretty weak, contrieved and ad hoc).

You can hear the public in the hall to give ocassional positive responses to Craig's refutations of Law's atheist claims, so I think that in general the public there also realized that Craig won the debate (let's see if the poll of this debate are published, in order to confirm or refute my perception),

Atheism is a dying ideology; and this is why a theist like Craig predictably destroys them in debates pretty easily.

It's needed to have a monumentally strong faith in atheism and hostility towards theism (and the obvious cognitive distortion and irrationality caused by such emotional commitment and the companion wishful thinking) in order to give more plausibility to atheism than theism (at least, regarding the case for atheism as presented by atheists like Stephen Law).

Richard Dawkins and the The Magic of Hypocrisy and Cowardice (Making Money Missing The William Lane Craig Bus)

2011-10-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

William Lane Craig's refutation of Richard Dawkins' arguments against the traditional arguments for God's existence:

BBC Oxford News- There's Probably No Richard Dawkins (Buses); On Dawkins's refusal to debate William Lane Craig

2011-10-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

Atheist Michael Tooley vs. Christian William Lane Craig debate on the topic Is God Real?

2011-10-15T18:30:00.000-07:00

I think this debate was another easy one-way victory for Craig. I'm astonished by the tremendous weakness of the philosophical and scientific case for atheism and the bad atheistic objections against the existence of God. (Keep in mind that Tooley is one of the more sophisticated contemporary atheistic philosophers!)

Enjoy.

Pseudoskeptics and hard-core materialistic atheists- Damaged by Hellfire preachers in early Childhood ?

2011-10-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

The author of that video has arrived a similar conclusion than mine: extreme pseudoskeptics and other hard-core atheistic irrationalists/charlatans have been emotionally and spiritually damaged during their childhood years by extremist/dogmatist people related to religion and related fields (spirituality, the paranormal, etc.).

A direct consequence of this inner damage are the following traits of personality:

1-Egocentrism (keep in mind that children have the tendency to be self-centered, their inmadurity prevents them to expand their awareness of the interests of people around them), So, adult atheists who have suffered religious abuse during their childhood have been stuck in that infantile personality, and this explains why they tend to be self-centered, egoistical, people. (This is why they tend to be dishonest, hostile, arrogant, condescending, supercilious, etc.).

2-Another consequence is a complex of (intellectual and moral) superiority. Their lack of emotional madurity push them (through a compensatory mechanism) to the delusion of superiority, even when they're intellectually inferior.

This particular aspects of hard-core atheists bothers me a lot. First, because many of them are demostrably irrational, intellectually retarded, inept and stupid (see solid evidence for this here, here and here).

Secondly, their atheistic worldview offers no ontological nor rational basis for morality (hence, the atheist's self-perception of moral superiority is a pure irrational delusion, incompatible with their own atheistic beliefs). Solid evidence for this is available here, here, here and here.

3-Another consequence of this is the atheist's tendency to use arguments, words and phrases related to cartoons and other games proper of children. For example, in serious discussions about the evidence for/against the paranormal, you're confronted with the atheist's constant references to Santa Claus, Peter Pan, Spaguetti Monsters and so forth. (If you understand the childish nature of the atheist's personality and its causes, then you won't be surprised by these kind of infantile comments. After all, little children cannot talk about serious topics in a serious way).

Also, in their own "scholarly" writtings and when defending their own (supposedly serious and science-based) position, they appeal to the same childish ideas and fantasies. An egregious example of this is Richard Carrier. In his book Sense and Goodness without God, you can read some of Carrier's fantasies which are mostly based on Star Trek (I'm not kidding you). Carrier explicitly concedes his inspiration in that movie when he writes that the "Secular Humanist Heaven" (Jime: What the hell is that?) is "a world rather like that in Star Trek: The Next Generation" (p. 405).

Another funny example of this are the criticisms of the members of the Center For Inquiry against Jesus of Nazareth. These atheist charlatans tried to ridicule the image of Jesus with paintings of Jesus with a long nose of.... PINOCCHO! (See the specific evidence for this here).

Try to imagine a bunch of adults doing something like that. What would you think of them? Would you trust them about serious, adult matters? Are they mature enough to discuss, seriously, complex topics like the existence of the paranormal, God, the afterlife, etc.? Obviously no. Their whole intellect just reach to discuss these matters in terms of Star Trek, Pinoccho, Santa Claus, Pink Elephants, etc.

They're like children in the body of an adult person, and you can imagine the consequence of this for the people who happens to be close to them.

Philosopher and Mathematician John C. Lennox replies to Stephen Hawking's atheistic book The Grand Design

2011-09-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

Leading British Atheists (Polly Toynbee, Richard Dawkins & A.C. Grayling) cowardly run from William Lane Craig

2011-09-10T02:22:00.000-07:00

Dawkins is not the only culprit in shying away from Craig's October 2011 UK Tour. He is but one of a Humanist Trinity who have all, in their own way, run away from William Lane Craig's willingness for open dialogue.

More on atheist cowardice regarding the debates with William Lane Craig, here, here and here.