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
I finished reading the Craig article, TY. I obviously can’t respond to each point due to it’s length, but my general impression after reading is that it largely consists of Craig doing 3 things repeatedly across what he claims are “facts”:
1) He makes arguments that the gospels are internally consistent and viable within the historical context.
As far as evidence goes, this is seems to be the bulk of it. Although some may argue to the contrary on these regards, I don’t feel an personal impetus. Just be wary that so much of the evidence he presents is really just clearing the ground for that his claimed facts and the resurrection are possible.
2) He suggests that no natural theory could explain these occurrences well enough.
Craig is either being entirely unimaginative or sticking his fingers in his ear when he hears other explanations. Plenty of non-miraculous explanations have been put forth by other experts, and naively we each know how perfectly natural things like confirmation bias, lies, hallucinations, superstition, and any number of similar human errors has and does build impressive stories that gain an impressive number of followers even in conditions adverse to those stories (even if we don’t have a fully understanding of how each came to be!). And these are not at all that uncommon or impressive! Yet Craig oddly seems to give miracles a free pass when it comes to skepticism and demand of the normal a higher standard. Quite skewed.
3) He cites individual authority figures to bolster the idea that his “facts” are consensus.
When I saw his quotes, I finally couldn’t help but wonder if Craig was indeed being disingenuous. Rather than showing evidence (polls, literature reviews, meta-analysis, tabulated comparisons, etc.) that the majority of experts agree to his terms, he just cherry picks individuals who agree with him and quote-mines them. If he’s going to be so bold as to claim these are universally accepted “facts,” he best be able to back that up. The disagreeing voices are out there after all. Moreover, we should be careful about relying too much on consensus anyways. For after all, who are the experts? On hot-button issues like this, who you count in your consensus (vested-interests, credentials, employed methodologies, etc.) is worth considering (and that goes for both sides).
Overall, it almost seems Craig feels all he has to do is give the appearance that the resurrection story was reasonable (and that this reasonableness is consensus, whether it really is or not), and if it was, then it actually happened (if not in actual argument, then at least in terms of where he focuses). There’s a big gap between being possible and it actually happening though, and on this later part he doesn’t bear fruit. He addresses this some in his points of a good historical theory at the end but almost entirely hand-waves in the plausibility of the actual miraculous part and hand-waves away the plausibility of the natural explanations. If he was going to be lengthy and maintain a high rigor of evidence, this would have been the part to do so (also).
I recognize I’ve talked quite generally about all of this. I’m left with little choice when discussing quite a gargantuan article as that. If there’s something you feel I should deal with specifically, I can, though that’s about as good as I can respond to the whole. Also, I might discourage citing beefy articles for the same reason in the future (personally) for that same reason (as my reading eyes pant in tiredness hah).
Going back to my point through all of this though– sure, the resurrection story is possible (Craig argues this well enough at least), but it’s a darned fancy story, and I’d need some darned convincing reasoning to buy into it and build a whole life/worldview around it.
Josh, you said on May 30, 2015 at 4.54 p.m: “This is not to say that Craig is lying, but he is at least cherry-picking the expert opinion he’s willing to consider. I’ll read the article you mentioned though, as maybe he provides more evidence that I’d expect. In the meantime, I might suggest you read: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/08/why-craigs-case-for-the-resurrection-is-dishonest/. The author goes a bit further to say that Craig is outright dishonest and intentionally so. I’d rather not presume another’s intentions, but the rest of the article I’d say I probably agree with. It’s worth noting as well that, even if such things could claim fact status, there are competing, non-miraculous explanations which are viable.”
So I read the article and I’ll have a few comments. Josh and readers, please bear with me in this long response, more than 50% of which are statements made by the individuals I cite; better than paraphrasing.
First off, I agree with you on avoiding to impugn the motives of the writers: Christian and Non-Christian. But I think it is legitimate to look into their fruit-picking “best practices” and the thoroughness of their scholarly research. The Patheos article mentions Bart Ehrman numerous times, and from Goggling, it seems he’s the most authoritative and popular writer against Christianity’s claims of miracles. So picking (no pun intended) on Ehrman is not unreasonable in this case. By the way, Craig was not wrong to say that Ehrman supported the Joseph of Arimethea story, and for Patheos to accuse Craig of dishonest representation of peoples’ views is a textbook example of ad hominem logic. I found this exchange between Ehrman and someone who goes by the name kibo. http://ehrmanblog.org/was-jesus-given-a-decent-burial-by-joseph-of-arimathea-for-members/
——————————–
kibo32 October 31, 2012
Dear Dr. Ehrman,
if i well remember you explicitely told Craig during your debate in 2006 that you don’t think it’s possible to know whether his first two “facts”(the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea and the empty tomb) are true and judging by this post i’ve just read you never changed that idea. So unless Craig has pretty much forgot everything you said to him during that debate he’s purposely falsifying your views on the matter. That is quite a severe act if dishonesty.
Bart Ehrman November 1, 2012
Well, I guess he’s jumping back to a view I held earlier. But you’re right, it’s probably not fair to present that as “my view.” Well, I guess he’s jumping back to a view I held earlier. But you’re right, it’s probably not fair to present that as “my view.”
kibo32 October 31, 2012
To be fair, your opinion was a bit hard to understand from that quote of yours which Craig posted, so, if it’s not of too disturb, could you tell me if in 2003 (when you gave that famous lecture for the Teaching Company which Craig cites from) you accepted the historical reliability of the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea and the empty tomb and LATER you changed your mind, or if you have been having the same idea all along and Craig just misrepresented you?
Bart Ehrman November 1, 2012
Yes, I changed my mind. I think good scholars should do that! I wonder if Craig ever has.
—————————————
So there! Craig was referring to the Ehrman of pre-2003. The Bart Ehrman of post-2003 has changed his views on the subject of Jesus’ burial, so the onus on him to support the revision is now greater. It would be nice to know what new evidence he found to change his view so radically on this subject.
I drilled down deeper in Google – what would the world do without Google — and I stumbled on a review of his recent book, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. New York: Harper One, 2014, by Greg Monette, whose bio reads: “He is a Ph.D. candidate in biblical studies at the University of Bristol. He is the Canadian Marketing Representative for Logos Bible Software and the author of The Wrong Jesus. He is also a speaker who specializes in New Testament history and the origins of Christianity.” http://gregmonette.com/blog/post/how-bart-ehrman-gets-jesus-burial-wrong-part-1 Monette from all accounts is a qualified blogger in his field. He gives a very detailed critique of the book and has this to say in the opening paragraphs of Part 2 of his blog post.
“In my previous post I discussed some of the problems found within the pages of Bart Ehrman’s latest book (How Jesus Became God) concerning the burial (or lack-there-of according to Ehrman) of Jesus. That was just the tip of the iceberg. In this post we will probe a little deeper.
“Ehrman can easily be accused of “cherry-picking” in order to make his case. When I first picked the book up off the shelf at Chapters Bookstore I did what I was trained to do; I thumbed through the bibliography and index at the back of the book to see who he had read in connection to Jewish burial practices and the burial of Jesus. I was shocked to discover that Ehrman does not engage with the scholarly (or popular) works of any experts in the field. One would have expected Ehrman to have read and shown awareness of the works of Eric Meyers, professor at Duke just down the road from where Ehrman teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Nor does Ehrman show any knowledge of the works of Byron McCane, Craig A. Evans, Rachel Hachlili (who wrote the Bible on Second Temple Jewish funerary practices), John Cook, or Shimon Gibson, just to name a few. Probably most surprising of all is that he does not once draw from the work of Jodi Magness, one of the world’s leading archaeologists and experts on Jewish burial in the time of Jesus–who Bart Ehrman hired to teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Consider the words of professor Magness: “Today many scholars believe that since crucifixion was a sadistic and humiliating form of corporal punishment reserved by the Romans for the lower classes (including slaves), Jesus “died a criminal’s death on the tree of shame.” John Dominic Crossan [and now Bart Ehrman], for example, argues that Jesus would not have been buried at all, but would have been eaten by dogs. In my opinion, the notion that Jesus was unburied or buried in disgrace is based on a misunderstanding of the archaeological evidence and of Jewish law….I believe that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ burial are largely consistent with the archeological evidence…the Gospel accounts describing Jesus’ removal from the cross and burial are consistent with archaeological evidence and with Jewish law” (Jodi Magness “Jesus’ Tomb–What Did It Look Like?” in H. Shanks (ed.), Where Christianity Was Born (Washington, D.C.: BAS, 2006), 220-21, 24).
One could only wished for Ehrman’s sake that he knocked on professor Magness’ door down the hall from his own at the University of North Carolina. His book would have greatly benefited from it.” End of quotation.
Josh, where have all the scholars gone? All the “who’s who” on the subject absent in Ehrman’s bibliography. I think a lot of popular writers or so-called scholars on Jesus’ entombment can benefit from the likes of Professor Magness. The inertia is easy to explain: if my hypothesis is that Jesus’ body was devoured by dogs, or some other farfetched theory that Jesus’ body was carried away to the Mongolian desert and buried two score and ten feet deep in the sands, why would I take the trouble of knocking on their doors? Here is a comment by Magness Jesus’ burial. http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=640
Josh
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/08/why-craigs-case-for-the-resurrection-is-dishonest/
Is nearly all second hand stuff, i.e. if the author actually read the gospels and thought for himself, it doesn’t show.
TY,
I can’t help but feel you’re playing a game of “Gotcha!” rather than attempting to suggest the best reasons why one should buy into the miraculous parts of the Jesus story.
I don’t necessarily endorse Bart Ehrman, nor do I necessarily disagree with him, as I can’t do either since I haven’t explored much of his stuff in detail. Nor do I depend on him in any way, as he is far from the only critic of a miraculous resurrection story. He is mentioned second-hand in a blog I only found quickly as to summarize some of the concerns I had with Craig’s way of going about it. And the only reason I discussed Craig specifically is because you offered his views in place of your own. If anything, I would much rather address the claims and the evidence rather than placing wooden soldiers (our own cherry-picked experts) before us to do our “battling.”
The “why” one should move from a stance of neutrality to a stance of buying in and committing to the big claims purported is what’s important here, and is ironically what’s discussed least.
Simon,
“Josh
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/08/why-craigs-case-for-the-resurrection-is-dishonest/
Is nearly all second hand stuff, i.e. if the author actually read the gospels and thought for himself, it doesn’t show.”
You are being dismissive and presumptuous here. This is poor taste for an otherwise healthy conversation.
So Paul made up the resurrection and his own spiritual experiences? Why exactly would he do that? The patheos guy doesn’t really seem to quote any of the new testament, does he?
Simon,
There’s a difference between dismissing something out-of-hand without substantiation and arguing against it for specific reasons.
Your new comment:
“So Paul made up the resurrection and his own spiritual experiences? Why exactly would he do that? The patheos guy doesn’t really seem to quote any of the new testament, does he?”
is making an actual argument, and I’m fine with that. I think it’d be worth you acknowledging, for the sake of confidence in a healthy discussion, that your preceding comment was dismissive before I respond.
Josh. referring to your comment on May 31, 2015 at 9:01 a.m. Just back from church and now reading my e-mails. I very sorry if I conveyed that impressi0n of “gotcha”. I don’t play that childish game and it goes against my standards of discussion. I prefer a Socratic dialogue, but let’s face it, this is the nature of a blog. You find this type of behaviour with theists also and those who take the Bible literally, word for word. So again, emphatically, no gotcha.
The reason I picked on Ehrman is that are many so-called scholars (and you find them in the theistic camp also) who get off the hook too easily while they collect their millions from the book publishers. No need telling you that the “Jesus Industry” is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and everyone wants a piece of it, so they write and publish anything sensational, well timed around Easter and Christmas. Hadn’t you referred to me the Patheos link, high chances I would not have known that Ehrman changed his view 180 degrees on Jesus’ entombment; and also high chances that I might not have stumbled on Greg Monette’e review of Ehrman’ latest book. Now that I’ve read that review, and I know the man’s flip-flops, it’s now unlikely I would use my scarce time (right now I’m planning my courses for next semester staring in September) to read Ehrman’s book and gain any fresh insights.
Even though I’m a Christian, I don’t “buy” anything I see in a so-called theistic and Christian websites. Sometimes I wonder if all these scholars (Christians, agnostics, and atheists) are trying to make a buck.
Thanks for your comments. Be critical and questioning of what you read and hear — no need telling a person like you that! — but don’t let skepticism (for skepticism sake) get in the way of true inspiration, enlightenment, and belief because we are, at our very core, spiritual beings.
TY,
That sounded like a pretty responsible and genuine comment in return. I might mention that I would not distance myself from reading an author just because they “flip flop” on ideas though (and probably wouldn’t even semantically cast it as “flip flopping”). To me, changing one’s mind, unless in undue frequency, is a huge sign of maturity and rigor (though I acknowledge I haven’t investigated the specific case you were mentioning). Granted, that’s totally tangential to the conversation, but I thought it worth noting.
And I think your right to be very critical of all experts on this topic for this reasons we’ve both recognized. This is much of why I’d rather deal with the claims and evidence directly.
I do feel it worth noting though that I can’t tell whether or not you are trying to do this. You’re dancing around actually engaging in providing those supports or not, so I don’t know whether or not to call you on that you haven’t provided the support to cause one to move from neutrality to active belief in the supernatural version of the story, or to presume you’re not intending to.
Josh, I don’t quite follow this comment: “I do feel it worth noting though that I can’t tell whether or not you are trying to do this. You’re dancing around actually engaging in providing those supports or not, so I don’t know whether or not to call you on that you haven’t provided the support to cause one to move from neutrality to active belief in the supernatural version of the story, or to presume you’re not intending to.” If I can be of any support to anyone who is neutral but genuinely wants to take a firm stance in the supernatural, by that I mean God, yes, and I’ll do it at a heartbeat.
TY,
Basically we started to actually dive into whether the supernatural version of Jesus’s story was true or not, but then you kind of pulled back from following through with engagement on it. The contention was that atheists just don’t feel they have a good reason to buy into the impressive claim, and said reasons have yet to be seen in this discussion. I was addressing whether you were intending to attempt to provide those reasons or not.
Josh, I now understand your comment. And thanks for this opening to declare my faith; indeed, my reasons for “buying in” to the “impressive claims”.
My answer to you will not be satisfactory because it’s an answer that comes from my heart, my soul, my personal experience, and my journey of faith with God. You will hear in what follows no such words as priors, conditional probability, metaphysics, contingent, necessary, no word ending in “ology”. Sorry to disappoint.
When I was a young boy I saw in a dramatic way how prayer changes life. We had a next-door neighbor, a chap in the late twenties, who was cured of a disease, coughing up blood, and then through prayer a miracle occurred. He was released from hospital within a short time. That marked the start of his spiritual journey for sure, but it had the effect of starting mine as well. His life thereafter was a 180 degree change, from an abuser of alcohol and his wife, he became a practicing Christian. And then as I grew to my teens, I would listen to my maternal uncles tell me how they as young men abused alcohol, but through prayer, repentance, and the grace of God, they were “born again”, a phrase from today’s Gospel reading of John (John 3: 1-21) for Trinity Sunday.
In my university days I was never what one would call a churchy type. In fact, I didn’t go to any church, but I always prayed and relied on God for guidance, the wisdom to make the right decisions. And when I disobeyed, knowing where he was leading me but also knowing I was not following, I say the consequences and learned my lessons! I’m a better person for that.
Now in my adult years, I’ve seen people in my church get up from their seats and give witness to how God’s power is working in their lives. In my own adult life, I see God guiding me. For me, God is not some abstract figure high up in the clouds. He’s everywhere, right here as I’m replying to you, and I approach God not as some oracle but as a person, a confidante, and so we have a real dialogue, which means we speak to each other. This would make the Naturalist grin.
I’ve never seen the lame walk, the deaf recover hearing, the blind recover sight, water turned into wine, the dead raised from their death beds, but I’ve seen through all the suffering and pain the afflicted and bereaved gather up the courage and the inner strength to face each day with hope.
There are many things that my finite mind will never understand about a God who is infinite. And I accept that limitation but it’s no reason for disbelieve or bitterness. The same as in physics, from all I can tell from my communications with a few eminent physicists. There are natural phenomena that defy logic, for which no clear definition or explanation exists, but I don’t disbelieve science. I admire science, maths, music, art, and so on, for their unique beauty, and I see God’s hand in all.
Am I deeply saddened when I see natural disasters and tragedies? You bet I am. Do these events shake my faith in God? You bet they do. But do I lose belief in God? Absolutely not. There are many other counteracting reasons for belief, and even in these disasters, I see love and compassion from those who answer the cries for help.
I was reading Aron Wall’s post the other day, Flesh and Spirit III: Easter Sermon on May 17, 2015. It was an Easter Sermon that starts with:
Rejoice! Christ is risen!
For those who want to read the rest: http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/flesh-and-spirit-iii-easter-sermon/ It’s inspiring and it’s a message of faith, hope, and love in the midst of brokenness and imperfections.
So Josh, that’s my answer. I won’t comment back out of respect for Don Page’s post and Sean Carroll for using his resources (a free lunch for me, but not for him).
Josh
I was dismissive of the details of the patheos article as it is all second-hand waffle and invariably therefore a waste of time. The bottom line for TY and myself, and presumably Don, is, read or hear the gospel, the word of the God who made you, and take your only real chance, repent, and be saved. You have had plenty of personal testimony here from both TY and myself. If you don’t believe us on that, why are you still questioning us?
I remain curious about the platonic truth issue, but for me it is in no way a deal breaker for my faith, more a curiosity. Christ is God, and he is indeed risen, and I will hang my life on it as he keeps me faithful.
This is primarily a physics blog which has opened itself at Sean’s discretion to faith discussions, and I remain interested in Don’s opinions, if he has had further thoughts or inputs, on the ontological relationship between maths and God, and a few other issues. At Don’s discretion I would like to continue with this in some setting or other.
Josh, I forgot to say that now that I replied to your specific question and directly on the “why”, I ask you again a question a put to you in a previous comment (May 26, 2015 at 11:48 am):
How would you categorize your own beliefs? How do you rationalise that score?.
1. Strong Theist: I do not question the existence of God, I KNOW he exists.
2. De-facto Theist: I cannot know for certain but I strongly believe in God and I live my life on the assumption that he is there.
3. Weak Theist: I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.
4. Pure Agnostic: God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.
5. Weak Atheist: I do not know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be skeptical.
6. De-facto Atheist: I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable and I live my life under the assumption that he is not there.
7. Strong Atheist: I am 100% sure that there is no God.
Thanks for the “where” and the “why” in your reply.
Sorry Josh, you did answer the question on May 26:
“As for answering your question of Dawkin’s scale, it would depend entirely on what god we’re talking about. If I took the scale at face-value, I’d probably register somewhere between a 6 and 6.9 or so against the Christian god (though really you’d need to even define which “Christian” god it is as there’s such differing dogma). If we broadened it to any god at all, my numbers would lower but I don’t know how much. Granted this scale stuff is all my quick, uncritical answer.”
Thanks.
TY,
I’m perhaps a little different from some atheists in that I think personal experience can and must count when it comes to belief in god or not. However, I feel we should be extremely skeptical of our personal experiences as our self is the easiest one to fool. That said, I can not dismiss your personal testimony out of hand, but I also can not find it convincing (in the same sense that I would find it hard for anything based mostly on anecdote to be convincing).
This is something I’m trying to get at with Don too– how does one have an argument for Christianity that is convincing to others? For instance, Don uses Bayesian inference as a large support for his belief, but the way he does it has him picking both his priors and his likelihoods, robbing it of the objective power it might otherwise have. Nonetheless, subjectively, he himself might can come to belief in this way, but I don’t see how it can be convincing to others.
The odd part of this thought-venture is that it doesn’t have to be! One could just as rationally say that god is not objectively true or convincing and must eventually be believed preferentially (on faith). If that’s the case, then the conversation would end there as you can’t argue with faith (other than to say one shouldn’t originate beliefs on it).
Simon,
“I was dismissive of the details of the patheos article as it is all second-hand waffle and invariably therefore a waste of time.”
This is a bit tantamount to still just dismissing the article generally without argumentation but I’ll move on. Let me plug in your previous question into this comment.
“The bottom line for TY and myself, and presumably Don, is, read or hear the gospel, the word of the God who made you, and take your only real chance, repent, and be saved. You have had plenty of personal testimony here from both TY and myself. If you don’t believe us on that, why are you still questioning us?.”
I don’t understand what you mean here. We’ve all been questioning each other left and right up and down for some time now. If you mean to say “Why isn’t personal testimony sufficient?”, then my answer would be that one isn’t convinced just on personal anecdote for the many reasons I imagine you’d suspect.
As for your previous question:
“So Paul made up the resurrection and his own spiritual experiences? Why exactly would he do that? The patheos guy doesn’t really seem to quote any of the new testament, does he?”
Paul wouldn’t have had to make up the resurrection as he reasonably could have heard about it. That’s not to put it past him though. What I would argue he most likely made up was the Jesus encounter on the way to Damascus, intentionally or unintentionally, which could have been hallucination or even outright lie—these kind of things, unsurprisingly, having happened frequently enough throughout history. As for the patheos article, I’m not sure why he should have quoted any of the new testament stuff, but like I mentioned to TY, I don’t really feel compelled to defend the article in details but rather the general that Craig’s claims were over-reaching.
Josh, I’ll make a comment on “I’m perhaps a little different from some atheists in that I think personal experience can and must count when it comes to belief in god or not. However, I feel we should be extremely skeptical of our personal experiences as our self is the easiest one to fool. That said, I can not dismiss your personal testimony out of hand, but I also can not find it convincing (in the same sense that I would find it hard for anything based mostly on anecdote to be convincing).” June 1, 2015 at 6:51 am
Just think back on the first day when Christianity was launched, the Day of Pentecost as we call it in Church history. Put your yourself in the mind of any of the 12 disciples, and later St. Paul. They preached the gospel of Jesus from personal experience, inspired and energized through the Holy Spirit. You and me are no different from the crowds and small groups of listeners. Just as today, way back then there were skeptical people (6.9 and 7 on the Dawkins scale). So Josh, as I said before, it doesn’t take “a lot of leg-work”.
One of the most famous sayings attributed to Abraham Lincoln is about deception, and he is thought to have said: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
If the Christian message were all lies, hearsay; if the Christian message was based on a fictional figure in Jesus, if the Christian message was invented by a cunning breakaway sect of Judaism, whose members were skilled in making up stories, name dropping (like Joseph of Arimethea), and co-coordinating their deception, starting from Day 1, then it must be the most successful movement in history, in the art and science of propaganda, to have endured the many centuries up to today. MBA programmes would do well to offer Sales and Marketing 101 based on Christianity’s best practices and strategy. You’d have the most successful corporation today and for the foreseeable fuitre. And what does this say about the intelligence of the millions around the world who go to church Sunday after Sunday, or just stay at home, pray by themselves and with their families in the privacy of their family rooms, huts, tents, hammocks, and igloos?
Post-script:
This quotation yanks us back to what is evidence and what is credible history. There are various versions around and attributable to honest Abe, but I believe he did articulate that central theme on mass deception, which overrides any disagreement on the wording and syntax.
TY,
I think we both know that whether or not a majority of the public believes an idea is a poor gauge of that idea’s truth.
Nonetheless, if I were to work on such a metric, we’d be left sorely dissapointed. You mention the quote:
“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
but miss the irony that Jesus was/is not even fooling a majority.
Currently Christianity has a little less than a third of the world’s adherents, but that’s not very interesting. What’s more interesting is that the culture that lived and walked with Jesus and would have actually gotten to see his miracles (the Jews) was not “fooled” (at least in large). Moreover, independent (outsider) mentions of Jesus are scant, and external and credible acknowledgement of any supernatural powers is nonexistent. The supernatural nature of Jesus simply was not an obvious truth. It does not appear that the witnessing of miracles was the cause for such converts then, but rather the work of Christians in Rome. Simply put, it seems Jesus specifically “fooled” a very few people very very well (who then went on to make him popular); meanwhile the bulk majority seemed to have found him a charlatan and demanded he be killed. Like I said, this is a poor metric.
Moreover, you seem to be speaking completely without acknowledgement of the many other popular beliefs and religions. For instance, you say:
“…then it must be the most successful movement in history, in the art and science of propaganda, to have endured the many centuries up to today.”
but this makes little sense in light of the other, extremely successful movements in history that you personally would disagree with. This is why I mention that Christianity is less than a third of the world. Apparently all of these other historical movements (of which there are many beyond just the scope of religion– political ideas for instance) must be true due to their success also. Again, we see this is a poor metric.
Two other things I wanted to respond to:
“So Josh, as I said before, it doesn’t take “a lot of leg-work”.
I don’t understand why you maintain this. It’s almost as if you’re just refusing the burden of evidence unnecessarily. That’s at least what I mean by “leg work.” You have a claim (Jesus rose from the dead and did miracles). It is an impressive claim. Impressive claims put the onus on the person making them to provide the evidence or “leg work.” Now that I’ve rephrased, do you accept this?
Also:
“And what does this say about the intelligence of the millions around the world who go to church Sunday after Sunday…?”
What does it say about the ardent adherents of other religions, these billions which comprise the majority of the population of the planet? I think we all have our own personal answers to this.
Josh, I think Don Page answered the question in various ways, directly or inferentially, in earlier posts that I was scrolling through. And I gave you my answer from personal experience. Simon Packer gave us many examples also from personal experience, and we did not collude. So we have 3 Christians and I Hindu giving reasons for their theistic beliefs. In Christianity, we accept miracles (which is consonant with out belief in a personal God) and we went through a list of them. From what I’ve read Hindus too believe in miracles and one of the traditions of Hinduism is that it “refuses to close the door on surprises”, things that defy the laws of nature.
Kashyap Vasavada may care to comment. I don’t want to give any impression we are using this blog to promote Christianity over Hinduism, Islam, etc. I respect the beliefs of Kashyap. Simon and Don feel the same way, I think.
I see what you mean by “leg work” and it’s a lot of legs showing, but while you looked at them, you’re unconvinced. That OK Josh, You’re a 6.9. So I think we are going in circles now.
I think we should move on…up to Don Page.
TY,
I can’t help but feel that you are hand-waving away a pretty serious critique of your arguments and instead just shifting the focus.
You were making a point akin to “Since so many people believe in the resurrection, it’s hard to see that the resurrection is false.” Good discussion would either have you stand by that after hearing a rebuttal (which I gave) by providing new argumentation, or to cede your point. Again, it’s like your dancing around actually getting involved in these subjects. You’re kind of teasing me into debate by offering arguments, but then rather than directly responding to the concerns I raise, you pull back to generalities, a different focus, or imply we should only concern ourselves with Don’s views.
I think the feeling of circles comes from not committing to the discussion in one way or another. If you want to only discuss Don’s views, fine, but then why engage me so much? If you want to engage me in discussion, why not actually respond directly to my arguments? If you’re not intending to defend the supernatural story of Jesus here, then why post comments where you begin to do so? If you want to say you’re not promoting Christianity over other religions, then why make specific arguments for Christianity? Don’t poke the bee-hive unless you want the bees hah!
So I’m afraid I’m left with not knowing how to navigate the lack of consistency here.
Re: “This ‘start with a null set’ thing starts by postulating an entity, a null set. It is really just a work round to hide the initial entity by making it a null set. But a null set is a set.”
I didn’t try to develop that example as a serious argument for anything, which would have taken much more work, just thought it was interesting in itself, and coincidental that I happened to read it soon after the “Universe from Nothing” kerfuffle (almost as if some god was trying to help me bolster my argument) (maybe Satan, although that would support polytheism rather than monotheism – unless the 3-in-1 is actually 4-in-1) . However, I am sure the mathematicians who came up with that framework for the integers did so in order to see what minimal starting postulates could be used to derive all the properties of the integers, rather than some kind of work-around to hide something from somebody. Also, if zero isn’t “nothing” it sure beats the heck out of whatever is next in line for the title. As for sets, they are conceptual containers or groupers of things, not real things in themselves . A universe with nothing in it is a pretty good approximation of “nothing”, as is a set which contains no elements – in my book. Show me a universe with nothing it it, or an empty set, put in on a balance-scale with nothing on the other side and have the balance tip, and I’ll stand corrected.
Josh’s point I can’t argue with and so must concede. I get confused about whether Dr. Page’s prior is due to the idea that the god-concept makes things simpler and therefore he can accept some miracles, or whether he thinks the miracles are historically verified and therefore the god-concept is necessary to explain them – I know he thinks it is at least possible that the god-concept by itself makes things simpler, with or without miracles,which violates my intuition (which is okay, it has been violated before, no need to pay for it with a calf). However, I expect Josh has it the right way around.
P.S. A better way to explain my point about null sets or null universes would be to give an example. Consider sets of people, i.e., groups of people. There is the British group, the French group, the group who plays chess, the Christian group, the Moslem group, the Mormon group, and so on. Now consider the Nothing group, the group of people that consists of no people. How is it distinguishable from nothing? If you can take a bunch of nothing, call it a group or a set, and thereby convert it into something, well then converting nothing into something is easy.
Acknowledgment: a better person than myself would have stopped responding here long ago.
JimV, I’ll stick to my opinion here. One of the paradoxes of our existence is that we create an abstract entity when we define something, even if we define an empty set, or a word to mean the absence of anything. We seem to be able to get no closer to absolute nothing than that.
Neither infinity or nothing can be directly experienced in our frame of existence.
So in other words, “nothing” itself is something (an abstract concept). So there is no “nothing”. So a universe which came from nothing actually came from something (which was nothing), so there should be no problem getting something from nothing. Happens all the time. However, if anything that seems to bolster my argument that a set of nothing and nothing are indistinguishable – both are abstract concepts which contain nothing. (Paging Monty Python.)