Don Page is one of the world’s leading experts on theoretical gravitational physics and cosmology, as well as a previous guest-blogger around these parts. (There are more world experts in theoretical physics than there are people who have guest-blogged for me, so the latter category is arguably a greater honor.) He is also, somewhat unusually among cosmologists, an Evangelical Christian, and interested in the relationship between cosmology and religious belief.
Longtime readers may have noticed that I’m not very religious myself. But I’m always willing to engage with people with whom I disagree, if the conversation is substantive and proceeds in good faith. I may disagree with Don, but I’m always interested in what he has to say.
Recently Don watched the debate I had with William Lane Craig on “God and Cosmology.” I think these remarks from a devoted Christian who understands the cosmology very well will be of interest to people on either side of the debate.
Open letter to Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig:
I just ran across your debate at the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum, and greatly enjoyed listening to it. Since my own views are often a combination of one or the others of yours (though they also often differ from both of yours), I thought I would give some comments.
I tend to be skeptical of philosophical arguments for the existence of God, since I do not believe there are any that start with assumptions universally accepted. My own attempt at what I call the Optimal Argument for God (one, two, three, four), certainly makes assumptions that only a small fraction of people, and perhaps even only a small fraction of theists, believe in, such as my assumption that the world is the best possible. You know that well, Sean, from my provocative seminar at Caltech in November on “Cosmological Ontology and Epistemology” that included this argument at the end.
I mainly think philosophical arguments might be useful for motivating someone to think about theism in a new way and perhaps raise the prior probability someone might assign to theism. I do think that if one assigns theism not too low a prior probability, the historical evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus can lead to a posterior probability for theism (and for Jesus being the Son of God) being quite high. But if one thinks a priori that theism is extremely improbable, then the historical evidence for the Resurrection would be discounted and not lead to a high posterior probability for theism.
I tend to favor a Bayesian approach in which one assigns prior probabilities based on simplicity and then weights these by the likelihoods (the probabilities that different theories assign to our observations) to get, when the product is normalized by dividing by the sum of the products for all theories, the posterior probabilities for the theories. Of course, this is an idealized approach, since we don’t yet have _any_ plausible complete theory for the universe to calculate the conditional probability, given the theory, of any realistic observation.
For me, when I consider evidence from cosmology and physics, I find it remarkable that it seems consistent with all we know that the ultimate theory might be extremely simple and yet lead to sentient experiences such as ours. A Bayesian analysis with Occam’s razor to assign simpler theories higher prior probabilities would favor simpler theories, but the observations we do make preclude the simplest possible theories (such as the theory that nothing concrete exists, or the theory that all logically possible sentient experiences occur with equal probability, which would presumably make ours have zero probability in this theory if there are indeed an infinite number of logically possible sentient experiences). So it seems mysterious why the best theory of the universe (which we don’t have yet) may be extremely simple but yet not maximally simple. I don’t see that naturalism would explain this, though it could well accept it as a brute fact.
One might think that adding the hypothesis that the world (all that exists) includes God would make the theory for the entire world more complex, but it is not obvious that is the case, since it might be that God is even simpler than the universe, so that one would get a simpler explanation starting with God than starting with just the universe. But I agree with your point, Sean, that theism is not very well defined, since for a complete theory of a world that includes God, one would need to specify the nature of God.
For example, I have postulated that God loves mathematical elegance, as well as loving to create sentient beings, so something like this might explain both why the laws of physics, and the quantum state of the universe, and the rules for getting from those to the probabilities of observations, seem much simpler than they might have been, and why there are sentient experiences with a rather high degree of order. However, I admit there is a lot of logically possible variation on what God’s nature could be, so that it seems to me that at least we humans have to take that nature as a brute fact, analogous to the way naturalists would have to take the laws of physics and other aspects of the natural universe as brute facts. I don’t think either theism or naturalism solves this problem, so it seems to me rather a matter of faith which makes more progress toward solving it. That is, theism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of God (e.g., when would He prefer to maintain elegant laws of physics, and when would He prefer to cure someone from cancer in a truly miraculous way that changes the laws of physics), and naturalism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of the universe (e.g., what are the dynamical laws of physics, what are the boundary conditions, what are the rules for getting probabilities, etc.).
In view of these beliefs of mine, I am not convinced that most philosophical arguments for the existence of God are very persuasive. In particular, I am highly skeptical of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which I shall quote here from one of your slides, Bill:
- If the universe began to exist, then there is a transcendent cause
which brought the universe into existence. - The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, there is a transcendent cause which brought the
universe into existence.
I do not believe that the first premise is metaphysically necessary, and I am also not at all sure that our universe had a beginning. (I do believe that the first premise is true in the actual world, since I do believe that God exists as a transcendent cause which brought the universe into existence, but I do not see that this premise is true in all logically possible worlds.)
I agree with you, Sean, that we learn our ideas of causation from the lawfulness of nature and from the directionality of the second law of thermodynamics that lead to the commonsense view that causes precede their effects (or occur at the same time, if Bill insists). But then we have learned that the laws of physics are CPT invariant (essentially the same in each direction of time), so in a fundamental sense the future determines the past just as much as the past determines the future. I agree that just from our experience of the one-way causation we observe within the universe, which is just a merely effective description and not fundamental, we cannot logically derive the conclusion that the entire universe has a cause, since the effective unidirectional causation we commonly experience is something just within the universe and need not be extrapolated to a putative cause for the universe as a whole.
However, since to me the totality of data, including the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus, is most simply explained by postulating that there is a God who is the Creator of the universe, I do believe by faith that God is indeed the cause of the universe (and indeed the ultimate Cause and Determiner of everything concrete, that is, everything not logically necessary, other than Himself—and I do believe, like Richard Swinburne, that God is concrete and not logically necessary, the ultimate brute fact). I have a hunch that God created a universe with apparent unidirectional causation in order to give His creatures some dim picture of the true causation that He has in relation to the universe He has created. But I do not see any metaphysical necessity in this.
(I have a similar hunch that God created us with the illusion of libertarian free will as a picture of the true freedom that He has, though it might be that if God does only what is best and if there is a unique best, one could object that even God does not have libertarian free will, but in any case I would believe that it would be better for God to do what is best than to have any putative libertarian free will, for which I see little value. Yet another hunch I have is that it is actually sentient experiences rather than created individual `persons’ that are fundamental, but God created our experiences to include beliefs that we are individual persons to give us a dim image of Him as the one true Person, or Persons in the Trinitarian perspective. However, this would take us too far afield from my points here.)
On the issue of whether our universe had a beginning, besides not believing that this is at all relevant to the issue of whether or not God exists, I agreed almost entirely with Sean’s points rather than yours, Bill, on this issue. We simply do not know whether or not our universe had a beginning, but there are certainly models, such as Sean’s with Jennifer Chen (hep-th/0410270 and gr-qc/0505037), that do not have a beginning. I myself have also favored a bounce model in which there is something like a quantum superposition of semiclassical spacetimes (though I don’t really think quantum theory gives probabilities for histories, just for sentient experiences), in most of which the universe contracts from past infinite time and then has a bounce to expand forever. In as much as these spacetimes are approximately classical throughout, there is a time in each that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity.
In this model, as in Sean’s, the coarse-grained entropy has a minimum at or near the time when the spatial volume is minimized (at the bounce), so that entropy increases in both directions away from the bounce. At times well away from the bounce, there is a strong arrow of time, so that in those regions if one defines the direction of time as the direction in which entropy increases, it is rather as if there are two expanding universes both coming out from the bounce. But it is erroneous to say that the bounce is a true beginning of time, since the structure of spacetime there (at least if there is an approximately classical spacetime there) has timelike curves going from a proper time of minus infinity through the bounce (say at proper time zero) and then to proper time of plus infinity. That is, there are worldlines that go through the bounce and have no beginning there, so it seems rather artificial to say the universe began at the bounce that is in the middle just because it happens to be when the entropy is minimized. I think Sean made this point very well in the debate.
In other words, in this model there is a time coordinate t on the spacetime (say the proper time t of a suitable collection of worldlines, such as timelike geodesics that are orthogonal to the extremal hypersurface of minimal spatial volume at the bounce, where one sets 
) that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity with no beginning (and no end). Well away from the bounce, there is a different thermodynamic time 
(increasing with increasing entropy) that for 
increases with 
but for 
decreases with (so there becomes more positive as becomes more negative). For example, if one said that is only defined for 
, say, one might have something like
the positive square root of one less than the square of . This thermodynamic time only has real values when the absolute value of the coordinate time , that is, 
, is no smaller than 1, and then increases with .
One might say that begins (at 
) at 
(for one universe that has growing as decreases from -1 to minus infinity) and at 
(for another universe that has growing as increases from +1 to plus infinity). But since the spacetime exists for all real , with respect to that time arising from general relativity there is no beginning and no end of this universe.
Bill, I think you also objected to a model like this by saying that it violates the second law (presumably in the sense that the coarse-grained entropy does not increase monotonically with for all real ). But if we exist for 
(or for 
; there would be no change to the overall behavior if were replaced with 
, since the laws are CPT invariant), then we would be in a region where the second law is observed to hold, with coarse-grained entropy increasing with 
(or with 
if ). A viable bounce model would have it so that it would be very difficult or impossible for us directly to observe the bounce region where the second law does not apply, so our observations would be in accord with the second law even though it does not apply for the entire universe. I think I objected to both of your probability estimates for various things regarding fine tuning. Probabilities depend on the theory or model, so without a definite model, one cannot claim that the probability for some feature like fine tuning is small. It was correct to list me among the people believing in fine tuning in the sense that I do believe that there are parameters that naively are far different from what one might expect (such as the cosmological constant), but I agreed with the sentiment of the woman questioner that there are not really probabilities in the absence of a model. Bill, you referred to using some “non-standard” probabilities, as if there is just one standard. But there isn’t. As Sean noted, there are models giving high probabilities for Boltzmann brain observations (which I think count strongly against such models) and other models giving low probabilities for them (which on this regard fits our ordered observations statistically). We don’t yet know the best model for avoiding Boltzmann brain domination (and, Sean, you know that I am skeptical of your recent ingenious model), though just because I am skeptical of this particular model does not imply that I believe that the problem is insoluble or gives evidence against a multiverse; in any case it seems also to be a problem that needs to be dealt with even in just single-universe models.
Sean, at one point your referred to some naive estimate of the very low probability of the flatness of the universe, but then you said that we now know the probability of flatness is very near unity. This is indeed true, as Stephen Hawking and I showed long ago (“How Probable Is Inflation?” Nuclear Physics B298, 789-809, 1988) when we used the canonical measure for classical universes, but one could get other probabilities by using other measures from other models.
In summary, I think the evidence from fine tuning is ambiguous, since the probabilities depend on the models. Whether or not the universe had a beginning also is ambiguous, and furthermore I don’t see that it has any relevance to the question of whether or not God exists, since the first premise of the Kalam cosmological argument is highly dubious metaphysically, depending on contingent intuitions we have developed from living in a universe with relatively simple laws of physics and with a strong thermodynamic arrow of time.
Nevertheless, in view of all the evidence, including both the elegance of the laws of physics, the existence of orderly sentient experiences, and the historical evidence, I do believe that God exists and think the world is actually simpler if it contains God than it would have been without God. So I do not agree with you, Sean, that naturalism is simpler than theism, though I can appreciate how you might view it that way.
Best wishes,
Don
Josh
I am also reminded of a recent film about the Emperor of Japan and McArthur at the end of WW2. The cult of emperor was such that the Japanese were unwilling to dismantle the concept of divinity for the emperor or assign any moral responsibility to him for WW2.
The mercy and acceptance of God in Christ happens in the context of reality. That is, you realize and acknowledge you need it because your sins and failings are real. It is about dignity granted despite your failures and shortcomings, rather than a futile attempt to conserve it.
John Polkinghorne (eminent theoretical Physicist-Mathematician turned Anglican priest) states the problem best: “Who wants to take absolutely seriously the possibility of religious belief in a scientific age?” (See: Religion in an Age of Science.)
The inquirer starts out with the question “How” but the “Why” also needs to be sorted out. And so compartmentalised thinking will not do if the desire is to have a total understanding of reality. The methods and tools of inquiry in science and religion are certainly different; the 650 Post Comments (last count) attest to that. In religion, both evidence and reasonableness derived from probability form the basis of inquiry. But despite the differences in methodologies, the goal is the same: the search for truth and meaning. Science informs religion (e.g., the sun doesn’t orbit the earth) and vice versa (e.g., universe from “some-thing “rather than “no-thing”).
Who said, “Far from corrupting the scientific process, I think science usually works better when people explore a variety of intuitions and options.”?
Don, I suspect we’ve moved past diminishing returns on the curve to the point where its fist derivative is now negative, so it’s fitting you should close the debate with a wrap-up. What are your thoughts on this?
Thanks again. I enjoyed the discussion.
@TY:
“A person who believes in reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul might be offended. I’d prefer “I”ll stop beating a (dead) tree stump.”
Sorry! Even this statement is not allowed! According to some reincarnationists, trees, rocks, everything is included in reincarnation!!
Simon said,
Yes. I am telling you that regardless of what you may believe that you do not understand even the basics of the modern TOE. It is not my intent to derogate or shame you. As I have said it is a very common thing. But since you are using your misunderstandings about Evolution, and science in general, to justify your religious beliefs it seems a relevant thing to point out.
This is a major misunderstanding. It is one of the key arguments of religiously motivated critics of evolution from AIG to the Discovery Institute to Ken Ham. It is right up there with “If humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?” And it is dead wrong. It is so obviously wrong that one is left to wonder if the likes of the DI’s representatives really misunderstand this, or if they are cynically using it because it works for their purposes.
Evolution by Natural Selection is not a process governed by chance. Natural Selection. It says it right there in the name. It is a process of selection, the opposite of chance. The only chance in the process is in the generation of variables (for example mutations) that introduces changes to the genome that then are subjected to the process of testing that is called Natural Selection.
That is so wrong it is slanderous. When you say something that is so inaccurate you do yourself a disfavor. You will likely say something about how that is what you believe based on your due diligent research. Yes, you are not the only person wrong about that. You can find some very learned people that believe it as well, or at least say it.
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is. Of course it can be used in cosmology.
That is wrong too, but it is like a self fulfilling prophecy. It always saddens me to see a person denying themselves the nearly intolerable beauty and awesomeness of the reality in which we find ourselves as revealed, in glimpses, by the processes which, when formalized, we call science, because of a strong prior commitment to a much less grand mythology.
But, no. I won’t be changing your mind about your core beliefs, and you certainly won’t be converting me to Christianity. Only extraordinary evidence could do that. So, goodbye Simon. I wish you well.
Prof. Charles Read replied saying he did not know that Newton had stopped investigating the maths of the Solar System during his academic career.
If we are looking for movement of worldview to one side or the other with theism, I don’t think we have made substantial progress for the moment, as TY anticipated a while ago. Maybe we have softened the ground just a little to allow some re-examination of perspectives in some cases.
darrelle, if still tuned in.
I think you may be unaware of the reductionist argument being considered as a backdrop to this blog. If one believes in complete deterministic reductionism, if ‘God does not play dice’, God there being taken as a perhaps metaphorical device, then there is no such thing as genuine consciousness or genuine choice, or genuine will to survive. It is all the outcome of foundational physics plus starting conditions.
John Lennon’s report card (see the tweet on the right) is an outcome of Sean’s GR/QFT equation in his latest post, plus boundary conditions.
With EBNS we have to apply a conscious motive (survival) early in the evolutionary process to explain it. Survival is purported to work both as a driver and a selection factor in EBNS. A selection factor because other organisms survival drive is a selection factor for an organism under consideration.
Now you can take science in contextual chunks, and talk about conscious attributes and survival instinct within EBNS, but be aware that there is no logical reason to do so in the deterministic reductionist paradigm. Really it would be in the maths, and for an individual creature within a population, statistical, AKA chance.
darrelle
”” It cannot be used much in cosmology.”
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is. Of course it can be used in cosmology.”
Controlled conditions, as I said, not science in general. Controlled conditions are hard to achieve and experimental Big Bangs tricky to trigger. I have done a few in the kitchen but they did not go well and my wife immediately reduced my research budget. Back to reality, I once briefly spoke with a (Christian) researcher working with Leicester University who was working on extremely high pressure devices to investigate stellar plasmas, so I used the word ‘much’.
“”It cannot capture anything except the mundane where human conduct is concerned.”
That is wrong too, but it is like a self fulfilling prophecy. It always saddens me to see a person denying themselves the nearly intolerable beauty and awesomeness of the reality in which we find ourselves as revealed, in glimpses, by the processes which, when formalized, we call science, because of a strong prior commitment to a much less grand mythology.”
I am talking about controlled circumstances for observing human behaviour. I am in awe of the creation. I am an amateur astronomer, you can see my old equipment reviews on cloudynights.com if you search for my name. I think you misunderstood me. I am also a keen photographer, again, you can look for me on flickr. I am committed to the scientific method when pursued in a realistic way as intended. I see its discoveries as an insight into the creativity and magnificence of God.
Further e-mail from Prof. Charles Read, though I think JimV dropped out.
“OK Simon, tell them this:
A while ago, a certain Jewish rabbi was arguing with a lot of others, and he came up with the statement:
“Truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM..”
(so much more interesting than if he had merely said I WAS..). And from that time on, (some of) those who paid attention to this guy gradually became more and more interested in beginnings and ends, infinities and infinitesimals, what happens in the limit etc.
And from that background, Mr. Newton (not yet Sir) came along with his own mathematical ideas about infinities and infinitesimals, beginnings and ends, limits etc. And from that you get the whole of physics and engineering and calculus and…. pretty much the whole scientific effort. Until you get fascinated by the infinite you won’t quite get it….
God Bless,
Charles.
(My note: Interestingly, I believe QFT/QED needs renormalization to real world observations to get rid of infinities, or am I wrong/out of date?)
Simon, see what I mean? We need more campfires (to facilitate star gazing) as much as more comfortable park benches under apple trees for quiet contemplation. It is written that Mr Newton (not yet Sir) spent quite a bit of quality time under his apple tree on the farm, and during those breaks, quite a few apples fell on his head and got him thinking seriously about gravitational force.
Thank you for Prof. Charles Read’s reply. It does sum up the discovery of calculus and gets you thinking about the ONE Mathematician who made it.
TY
Next time I am in the UK you can come and star gaze with me if you like. I try and get to a big meet up at Kelling Heath if I can. Though we don’t get Omega Centauri or Eta Carina, or a good view of Sagittarius or the Helix Nebula. Cape Town or Australia work for those.
Thanks Simon. God willing.
It wasn’t long until you lost me.
“I do think that if one assigns theism not too low a prior probability, the historical evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus can lead to a posterior probability for theism (and for Jesus being the Son of God) being quite high.””
Correct me if I’m wrong, what this sounds like is
If you agree that the god concept is highly probable then the god I choose to believe (Jesus) is highly probable.
There is just no evidence that the god I imagine tomorrow is less or more probable than the Jesus one.
Dear ConversionTube (April 30, 2015 at 1:24 pm), I mostly agree with your fourth paragraph but would have expressed it myself as follows:
If you agree that the God concept is not highly improbable, then the God I am led to believe (Jesus) is highly probable.
However, I do not understand your last paragraph, “There is just no evidence that the god I imagine tomorrow is less or more probable than the Jesus one.” I don’t know what god you might imagine tomorrow, but I highly doubt that there would be nearly so much historical evidence for it as there is for Jesus as the Son of God. What other person lived as outstanding a life as He did, said indirectly and directly that He was the Son of God, and was reported to have been resurrected, a report that has been accepted by billions of humans?
I just wanted to alert readers that a comment that I tried to post April 26, 2015 at 9:22 pm has now appeared, delayed, I am guessing, because of spacetime limitations on comments that presumably Sean has now bumped up. Since it appears in the order in which it was submitted, it might not be noticed by many of you looking at only the bottom comments that have appeared since you last looked.
My comment that now appears many comments above this one was mainly an email from Aron Wall to me in response to the to a comment of JimV (April 24, 2015 at 6:32 pm) on other miracles in the Bible and on the Atonement. I won’t repeat here the email I copied in my April 26, 2015 at 9:22 pm comment that you can find above, which I would encourage everyone to read, but I shall repeat here the hyperlink to Aron Wall’s blog on whether the atonement makes ethical sense.
Starting with Richard’s comment (April 26, 2015 at 11:21 am) that “I do hope that some of the theists here may be inspired to skip Sunday school someday and take a hike in the wilderness instead, to experience the fascination of nature without the filter of theism,” there have been several comments on the value of experiencing nature. Having grown up in small villages in Alaska (where my parents taught elementary school), and now with living within a few hours drive of the Canadian Rockies (see the first slide of my talks on The Optimal Argument for the Existence of God and Cosmological Ontology and Epistemology, taken from the top of Mt. Temple), I greatly appreciate wilderness, especially mountains, and see the glory of God reflected in them.
I remember many years ago in the Colorado Rockies standing in awe at a beautiful scene of a lake and partially snow-covered mountains and wondering why we have evolved to appreciate such wild beauty, which does not seem to serve much survival purpose. To me it seems that either it is an accidental side effect of natural selection, or else it is a gift God built into His creation of us (even if, as I personally believe, this creation is by biological evolution from laws of nature God chose and used to create us).
I could not resist making Comment 666, since 666 is the number of the Beast of Revelation in the last book of the Bible, given in Revelation 13:18 as a man’s number (quite possibly that of the Roman Emperor Nero, since the Greek version of his name and title transliterates into Hebrew letters that yield a numerical value of 666; the Latin version of Nero Caesar transliterated into Hebrew yields 616, which is a variant in some early Greek texts of the Bible, according to the Wikipedia articles on Number of the beast and The beast (Revelation).
TY (April 27, 2015 at 7:00 am) suggested that I should give a wrap-up on the debate (though I am willing to go on if others are), so let me summarize my thoughts as follows:
I have greatly enjoyed this discussion and learned many ideas from the very many comments. As Proverbs 17:17 (New International Version) says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” I certainly have felt sharpened by the comments. I am sorry that I have not had time to respond to all that I should have. I also hope that I have not offended any of those to whose comments I have responded, often in disagreement, and I apologize to anyone I might have offended.
The discussion has increased my belief that a large part of the difference between naturalistic and theistic views can be traced back to different prior probabilities assigned (at least implicitly) to naturalism and to theism. As I originally wrote in my guest blog, “I do think that if one assigns theism not too low a prior probability, the historical evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus can lead to a posterior probability for theism (and for Jesus being the Son of God) being quite high. But if one thinks a priori that theism is extremely improbable, then the historical evidence for the Resurrection would be discounted and not lead to a high posterior probability for theism.”
We have indeed seen many comments discounting the historical evidence for the Resurrection. I can understand how this evidence would be discounted if one thinks it a priori much more probable that a naturalistic explanation is correct for the historical documents reporting claims of witnessing a risen Jesus Christ, rather than a theistic explanation that God does indeed exist and did resurrect Jesus as was claimed.
On the other hand, if one thinks that it is a priori plausible that God exists and might resurrect someone who claimed to be His Son, then the historical evidence seems to point strongly toward the hypothesis that God does indeed exist and did resurrect Jesus Christ, confirming His claim to be the Son of God. Perhaps one of the best recent summaries of this evidence is The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach by Michael R. Licona.
I wish I had gotten further into this book before responding to comments to my guest blog, but from what I have read so far, it is a thoroughly scholarly work. Licona’s book has received excellent reviews, such as the following one at the Amazon site given above for the book attributed to Richard B. Hays, George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament and dean, Duke Divinity School:
“Licona has tackled his subject energetically, with near-obsessive thoroughness. He concludes that if one approaches the sources without an a priori commitment to the impossibility of resurrection, the ‘Resurrection Hypothesis’ is the interpretation that most adequately accounts for the evidence. Thus, the book boldly challenges the naturalistic presuppositions of post-Enlightenment historical criticism. At the very least, Licona has shown that the usual naturalistic explanations of the resurrection tradition are, on the whole, weak, speculative and often tendentious. I am not aware of any scholar who has previously offered such a thorough and fair-minded account of the historiographical prolegomena to the resurrection question. Furthermore, Licona’s discussion of the ‘bedrock’ historical evidence is appropriately nuanced and carefully modulated, not claiming more than can be supported by the consensus findings of qualified scholars. This lends credibility to his conclusions. Licona has presented a fair and vigorous case for his position. No doubt many readers will be unconvinced by his arguments, but no one can accuse him of naiveté or of ignoring counterarguments. This study spans fields that are too rarely brought into conversation: New Testament studies and historiographical theory. Licona is to be commended for this undertaking and for producing a study that has both wide range and significant depth.”
Therefore, I would encourage anyone who thinks it at least conceivable that there might be a God who would resurrect Jesus to read The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach to learn more what the historical evidence is for the Resurrection and hence for Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God.
Speaking for myself, the further rationalizations by (Dr.?) Wells and Dr. Page are not convincing.
Dr. Wells likens the Crucifixion to a guilty person breaking a window and an innocent person paying the fine. It seems to me this is acceptable, when it is, because the guilty person is not guilty of anything serious and the innocent person does not suffer greatly. Presumably (on my part) if the guilty person continues to break windows his benefactor will stop paying his fine when it becomes onerous or when the benefactor realizes that he is enabling bad behavior.
That Jephthah was an idiot is what a skeptic like myself would think, but apparently this was not thought by the religious leaders of the time, who wrote Jephthah’s story in their Bible without condemning it as idiocy or doing anything to stop it. Even the man’s family acted as though the sacrifice was mandated by Jephthah’s vow. It would have been a good, instructive moral tale if the priests had said, “God doesn’t want this, you idiot. Don’t do it!” but that is not how the story goes, to this reader. There is implied condemnation of the rashness of the vow, but not the keeping of the vow once made.
That animal sacrifice was not desired by Jehovah and that it stopped due to Jesus’s sacrifice is not what Judaism says, as I learned by a few minutes of Googling. They say sacrifices were pleasing to their Lord and mandated by the Torah but had to be carried out by the High Priests in the Temple (skeptics like myself can imagine how this practice evolved so as to put more wealth and power in the hands of the High Priests), and so had to cease when the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE; and when the (true) messiah appears he will restore the Temple and the sacrifices will resume, per Malachi 3:4.
That neural changes occur when someone accepts Jesus’s sacrifice might be a testable hypothesis. In my anecdotal experience it does not seem to be the case, as I have seen good Christians (in their own opinion and that of the community) succumb to road rage. There are also the cases of Roman Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals – men who dedicated their whole lives to their God – who in seeking God’s counsel apparently thought they were told to stonewall; move the priest to another parish; and threaten the witnesses with excommunication if they talked to secular authorities.
Other Christians who have commented on this post have shown what seems to me a similar disregard for easily-obtainable counter-information, claiming for example that Newton was “the ONE scientist who developed calculus” without bothering to google “development of calculus”. Another was quoted as saying he was not aware that Newton ever stopped doing calculations on the solar system, which was doubly unresponsive to the specific issue of orbit stability, inasmuch as I am also unaware that he has stopped beating his wife. (Google says Newton published his opinion of solar system instability in 1705 and thereafter revised his Principia in 1713 and 1726 without including any more work or opinions on the matter.) The same person is quoted as claiming the mystical statement “I am what I am” (Jehovah and Popeye) was necessary to spark examination of the concept of infinity without apparently having heard of the ancient Greeks such as Democritus and Zeno. (Or Archimedes, whose geometric method of exhaustion, taking the limit of polynomials with sides of infinitesimal length to calculate the areas of circles and parabolas, was the precursor to calculus and in fact used by Newton in his Principia.)
(Digression: the number one reference I found on solar system stability ends with the idea that stability – like everything else in nature – evolved! Unstable planets were ejected, fell into the sun, or smashed each other into asteroids, leaving only the stable ones.)
I have also been guilty sometimes of not delving deeply enough before giving my opinion. My point is not that Christians are perfidious (on average I would admit they behave somewhat better than non-believers, or try to) but that when defending their faith many are not very strict about the injunction not to bear false witness and can behave as well or badly as atheists of similar cultural backgrounds and educations, despite whatever neural changes have occurred.
One last example: as has been mentioned in previous comments, it is accepted by most that a reference to Jesus in Josephus’s historical writings is a forgery. It seems to me that a fair and objective judge could say that one act could create a reasonable doubt in a metaphorical juror’s mind as to what other false information might have been handed down by early Christians, and thereby cause that juror to render a verdict of “not proven” with respect to the Resurrection story.
@JimV:
Strangely, although I am theist (of Hindu persuasion), I tend to agree with some of your thoughts!! Although, I have said some of these things before, they could have been lost in these 667 comments. So excuse me for repeating. I personally have nothing but respect for Christian ideas of love and compassion. But A Hindu would have a very hard time believing that omnipotent God would suffer and that some body will suffer for somebody else’s sins. According to Hindu belief in Karma, you and only you will pay for your actions, not your spouse, children,parents or anyone else in the universe. According to the theory of reincarnation, you will have multiple chances to correct your behavior.So in that sense, theory of Karma is not cruel, but rather compassionate. Even in a basketball game, you have multiple shots, not just one shot!
JimV writes on May 1, 2015 at 10:18 pm : “Other Christians who have commented on this post have shown what seems to me a similar disregard for easily-obtainable counter-information, claiming for example that Newton was “the ONE scientist who developed calculus” without bothering to google “development of calculus”.
That’s me Jim. I said on April 28, 2015 at 4:07 am: “Thank you for Prof. Charles Read’s reply. It does sum up the discovery of calculus and gets you thinking about the ONE Mathematician who made it.”
That ONE Mathematician (in bold and capital letters) is the ONE Mathematician you deny exists. I think I studied enough maths to know that both I. Newton and G.W. Leibniz shared the “Nobel” for calculus — long before Google. These men discovered it, but ONE Mathematician made it. See my similar comment on that ONE Mathematician on April 25, 2015 at 6:48 am.
I’m praying that you may believe in that ONE (Capital letters) whom you now deny exists. I previous comments I referred to the ONE as the ultimate or fundamental realty.
The Bible contains various passages where God is saying He has no need for animal sacrifice (see 1 Samuel 15:22; Jeremiah 6:20; Psalm 50: 9-13; Hebrews 10; Isaiah 1:11); however, the Bible also contains various passages where animal sacrifices were commanded by God. (Note: The use of “He” does not mean God is male. God is spirit.)
Is there a contradiction? No. God is not blood-thirsty, nor does he crave for a good summer’s bar-b-Que steak and the smell of burning fat from the grill. All God cares about is the person who is giving up a prized economic asset to have his sins cleansed. God desires that the individual experience forgiveness of sin. The animal served as a substitute for the sin which died, albeit temporarily, in place of the sinner. Now, it may be asked: why didn’t god ask for a sack of turnips instead of a “fattened bull? My guess is that it took much more resources (land for grazing, labour to watch the flock, wells for fresh water, etc) in order to raise livestock, so that the person or the household knew in a very tangible way the economic sacrifice measured by the relative costs.
God in not an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian, or a vegan, so He would have been just as pleased with the turnips or lettuce — provided the offerings were made sincerely. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrificial substitute, once for all time.
As Aron Wall writes in his reply to Don Page (see above on April 26, 2015 at 9:22 pm): “The animals were merely symbolic foreshadowing of this event, a teaching aid, and so God accepted them as an object lesson in order to teach about Jesus. For this reason, the sacrifices cease to be offered shortly after the death of Jesus.”
JimV, I agree that the evidence available could “cause that juror to render a verdict of `not proven’ with respect to the Resurrection story.” An analogy that occurred to me is the case of O. J. Simpson, who according to Wikipedia “was acquitted of the 1994 murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman after a lengthy and internationally publicized criminal trial, the People v. Simpson. In 1997, a civil court awarded a judgment against Simpson for their wrongful deaths.” The jurors in the first trial decided that the evidence was not sufficient beyond reasonable doubt to convict Simpson of murder, but the civil court decided there was enough evidence to hold him liable for wrongful death. Because of the variations in the prior probabilities, there indeed may not be enough evidence to prove the Resurrection beyond all reasonable doubt, but to me there is enough evidence to render it highly probable and to make it worth committing my life to the consequences of this event.
I read your last post Jim, and I do seek some sort of understanding.
You remind me very much of how my father was when I became a Christian 34 years ago. He seemed hostile and dismissive of my faith at every turn and unsure why I needed it. He was a gifted engineer and did pioneering work in the 70’s and 80’s on active suspensions, ABS and the precursors to modern sequential automatic transmissions. He died three years ago after progressive mental degeneration. He started attending church towards the end of his life and became confirmed in the Church of England. My mother said that at one point he had said ‘we do need Jesus, don’t we?’
I agree with Don on the whole with his thinking here on evidence. The evidence, of whatever form, needs to become sufficient for you to decide to build your life on. Abraham is called the father of faith (Romans 4v16), and Abraham was ‘fully persuaded’ by God’s faithfulness. Sarah his wife ‘judged Him faithful’. (Rom 4v21, Hebrews 11v11). There also needs to be some sort of heart longing (Hebrews 11v13-16), a sense that there must be more. Also a willingness to be found small before an infinite God, rather than big in one’s own sight (James 4v10, 1 Peter 5v6).
For me, there is ongoing evidence as there was for Abraham; a correlation between my heart cries, my questions, my requests, and the way God moves through, generally, quite natural and normal means. Plus the occasional physical miracle. Our own situation means we need God to come through practically on an ongoing basis. We also know an american family of six here in missions work whose fixed support is $300/month. Yet they frequently travel internationally and do not go short.
Despite all this, we go through doubt, sometimes agonizing doubt. I would say that it is all worth it, based on the fact that God and his love for me and others are worth discovering more and more. And like Peter, before Jesus, I ask myself ‘where else would I go?’. To a wonderful relationship with Darwinism? or Quantum Mechanics? To grim empty reality and my wonderful understanding of it? It just doesn’t appeal.
We can see creation as meaningless or as the beginnings of discovery of an infinite God who longs for us enough to become human and even to identify with our sin and brokeness.
JimV, it seems what bothering you about God is this thing about evidence and rightly so. In these 672 responses we offered or mentioned various arguments for God, some just cursorily. We in the theistic camp say that naturalism is inadequate to explain this universe and all there is in it, including the supernatural (mind, consciousness, whatever the labels), and the more plausible or reasonable hypothesis – no knock-down proofs – is God.
1. The cosmological argument of the deductive type (Thomas Aquinas, Kalam, Leibniz, etc);
2. The plausibility-type arguments and the one that Don Page argues;
3. The teleological argument (related to #2) that speaks to fine tuning;
4. The argument from consciousness, the human mind, and the Ultimate Mind (a.k.a God);
5. The moral argument of right and wrong; and evil; and
6. The argument from religious experience.
The recent comments from Simon and Don speak to the sixth. Yes Jim, don’t sneeze at #6 because it’s just as real as whooping cough. A fortnight ago I was in my regular choir practice (I’m tenor by the way) and a gentleman came into the church at 8 p.m ish, sat down in a pew, folded his arms and listened. He was well dressed, hair well combed. After the practice, he engaged me in a conversation and I could see in his eyes, the intensity, he was “broken”; he was in great (spiritual) need. And I was spot on in my guess. The first question that he asked me was: “How do you control anger?” That said it all. I said something to the effect that anger can destroy a person and dear relationships, wreck a home, etc. and I referred him to my pastor for prayer and advice. He may well need medical attention, but he will definitely need a religious experience to sustain him. That’s where God enters the picture.
Before I shut down the computer to get ready for 10 o’clock service, I leave this with you, Jim (and you know that from your Sunday School days): Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
There is no “proof” and we did not pretend to offer proof statements but we have touched on, at least, 6 reasons that GOD — the Fundamental Reality — exists, so #6 is where “the rubber hits the road”, to use turnpike language. Intellectual “gymnastics” take us (you, me, Simon, Don, Richard, and so on) only so far, and we need momentum from the personal God who never fails if we trust in Him, and open our hearts to Him.
Don,
You really think the difference in camps here sums to difference in prior probabilities of whether god exists or not?
That seems highly presumptuous and self-contradictory. It’s presumptuous in that so many atheists themselves don’t laud explicit naturalism as their initial claim (but rather build to naturalism, be it explicit or implicit). Rather, if they were to admit a prior, it would be a high degree of skepticism and a demand for evidence sufficient to require belief. Your suggestion would also be self-contradictory as it would admit your camp would be starting with its conclusion (it’s premise is that god exists).
Surely the difference in priors, if there are any, is the degree of skepticism employed and the extent of empirical evidence expected.
Dear Josh, let me explain more of what I mean when I say that I think that differences in prior probabilities play a major role (though not the only role) in the differences between naturalists and theists. I am not claiming that either side starts with unit prior for naturalism or theism, but that what priors one does start with (usually just implicitly) do have a large effect on what conclusions one ends up with. Of course, there is also the uncertainty as to what the likelihoods are (the conditional probabilities of one’s observation or data given the various hypotheses).
Let me consider the case of the data D of the historical records one has for the claims that Jesus’ apostles saw Him alive again after the Crucifixion. I don’t really know how to calculate precisely the conditional probabilities of this data D given either the hypothesis N of naturalism or T of theism, but it certainly seems to me that the probability of this data would be much higher if theism were true. For the sake of argument, let us say that that the conditional probability of the data D assuming naturalism N is P(D|N) = 0.000001, and that the conditional probability of the data D assuming theism T is P(D|T) = 0.001. (I admit that P(D|T) is low in comparison with unity, since even Jesus’ apostles were surprised by the Resurrection, though I also suspect that the probability P(D|N) of the data D assuming naturalism would actually be a lot smaller than the one part in a million I generously assumed above for the sake of argument.)
Now if the prior probability (logically prior to considering the data D) , though it need not be temporally prior) for naturalism is P(N) and for theism is P(T), then given the likelihoods postulated above, the posterior probabilities for naturalism and for theism (assuming they are the only options assigned nonzero prior probabilities) are
P(N|D) = P(N)P(D|N)/[P(N)P(D|N)+P(T)P(D|T)] = P(N)/[P(N)+1000P(T)],
P(T|D) = P(T)P(D|T)/[P(N)P(D|N)+P(T)P(D|T)] = 1000P(T)/[P(N)+1000P(T)].
Therefore, unless one assigned naturalism a prior probability at least 1000 times the prior probability of theism, one would end up with a higher posterior probability for theism. For example, if one assigned P(N) = 0.9 and P(T) = 0.1, one would get P(N|D) = 0.9/100.9 = 0.00892 and P(T|D) = 0.99108 (to five digits after the decimal place), giving a posterior probability 1000/9, or a bit over 111, times higher for theism as for naturalism. On the other hand, if one assigned P(N) = 0.9999 and P(T) = 0.0001, then one would get P(N|D) = 0.90908 and PT|D) = 0.09092, giving a posterior probability 9.999 times higher for naturalism than for theism.