Demons of stupidity

I know one of my readers is gonna hate me for it, but today I am gonna do a post on exorcisms. Exorcisms, while rightly frowned upon by Psychologists, are maintaining their popularity amongst the masses. Hell, even some Religious intellectuals like philosopher JP Moreland and Biblical scholar Clint Arnold claim that not only are exorcisms real, but that they can prove them. Believers will usually state that, although most exorcisms are frauds or psychiatric- a small few are genuine. According to Moreland, genuine exorcisms are ones in which the possessed has Clairvoyance, can levitate, can toss objects with their mind or exhibits other supernatural powers. In other words- the only real exorcisms are the ones where the possessed act like the girl from The Exorcist.

Honestly- I'm amazed at how arrogant some of these demon believers are. To say that they are certain of it should entail some pretty strong evidence. But that's not what we get. We get testimony. Oddly enough, no one ever thinks to enter an exorcism with a video camera. I remember reading an article from Joe Nickell in which, during one exorcism that was filmed, four priests were holding down a small girl claiming that, if they let go, she would've levitated! It makes me wonder why they let go of very good evidence when they had the chance to use it, doesn't it? Of course, these could be cases of mass hysteria, in which the small group of people become extremely excited and misinterpret mundane events into supernatural ones. This is well documented and, surprise surprise, scientifically verifiable through experiments!

Of course, Moreland is correct in that some very smart people not only believe in exorcisms, but also claim to have seen the supernatural side-effects of them personally. What he doesn't do, however, is give a comprehensive list of psychologists that believe in them. You see, Moreland seems to believe that anyone that's gone to college can be a credible witness to a supernatural event. He is wrong. And to make matters worse, the above study was actually done on college students who would, by his criteria, be credible witness'!

Now, I'd expect psychologists to take claims of exorcisms less seriously than, well, a Philosopher like Moreland or a historian like Clint, since they are aware of the limitations of human memory- and the capacity for invention, exaggeration, etc; Non-surprisingly, even a simple visit to Wikipedia reveals that:

"Demonic possession is not a valid psychiatric or medical diagnosis recognized by either the DSM-IV or the ICD-10."

So professional Psychologists say no. Now, I'll grant supporters that maybe, just maybe, these Psychologists just haven't seen the evidence. I don't know. What I do know, however, is that emphasis on cases that defy the psychological explanations should be given. I have read some of 3 Crucial Questions about Spiritual Warfare and Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian mind, Renovate the Soul Restore the Spirit's power, so I know what kind of cases they make. They'll claim the demon could see into the exorcists past- but they don't like to share how accurate or vague the claim was. They will also say that objects flew, yet not even bother with corroboratory testimony to ensure the witness' saw the same thing. Overall- they just don't demonstrate a strong understanding of the Psychology necessary to deem something a miracle.

Now to conclude, I just want to point out that exorcisms are not exclusive to Christianity. According to that Wikipedia entry I quoted earlier, they occur in many of the world Religions- especially in Africa, where they are healed by Shamans. Most reasonable exorcist apologists, however, avoid this by stating that 99% of exorcisms are "true" exorcisms, while the rest are fantasies. All I ask is to go 1% further.

JP Moreland's angel encounter

As many skeptics are probably aware, JP Moreland has recently claimed to have had an angelic encounter. Although never actually saw the angles (and still hasn't, page 157), he has a little story about how he now "knows" they are real. According to his book and this report, he claims that an old woman at his church saw 3 angels around him. At first, he thought the woman was crazy. 8-10 months later, however, Moreland experienced a tragedy of some sort and decided to pray not only for the angels to protect him, but for God to verify the angels' existence to him. Less than a week later, a student claimed to have seen 3 angels hovering around Moreland in, apparently, the exact same manner described by the woman (pages 155-156). Hallelujah!

Now- what could've happened? Well, I'm sure even Moreland would agree that it could have been a very large coincidence. However- I think that, if we properly scrutinize the story, the coincidence in the end will not be that impressive. we'll begin by breaking the miracle claim into 3 separate parts- the Old woman, the prayer, and finally, the Student.

First off, lets keep in mind that he thought the old woman was crazy. Why was that, a skeptic will rightly ask? Could it be, perhaps, because the old woman was slightly crazy? It's not like it's hard to tell the difference between a crazy person from a sane person- they just don't look right. Also, we don't have evidence that the angels were in a sophisticated position- one that could not otherwise be guessed. According to the book, one angel stood by each of his sides, and another behind him. This position doesn't sound that complicated. In fact, it's really the only photogenic way three angels could huddle around someone! The only thing that seems strange is that the angel behind him was taller than him. Then again, it would look kinda funny if the angel behind him were shorter than him- since you wouldn't be able to see him! Plus, Moreland appears to be fairly  average height, at least according to this video (The first few seconds). Therefore, I doubt the backmost being taller is really that implausible to guess.

Moving on, lets look at part two of the miracle- the prayer. Now, it does seem somewhat odd that Moreland would think of the angels in his prayer- after all, he did say that he was experiencing a hard time. And remember, the first part of his prayer was for the angels to help him. Only later did he decide he wanted proof. In addition, keep in mind that Moreland only prayed that God would verify the angels' existence. He never instructed God in how this would happen. Moreland could've accepted anything as evidence for angels, as he never set up any limits.

Finally, we get to the icing on the cake. Why that student say 3 angels as opposed to two or four is beyond me. However, we must keep in mind that the old woman told Moreland of her vision 8-10 months ago, remember? For all we know, she could have seen two or five angels, and Moreland ended up changing the numbers in his head. She could have also said something ambigous, like "a few". Same thing for the details. Ten months is a lot of time to change the details- and he never mentions anything about going back and verifying what the old woman saw. He let 8-10 months pass, and thought very little of the experience, admitting that he "wasn't even sure if it was real". The details, like the angels height or even numbers could have been retrofitted. We do have precedent for this sort of thing happening- and 8-10 months is a hell of a lot of time.

I admit, this is all speculation, of course. What I do know, however, is that sane people regularly experience hallucinations. They typically occur when the person is tired or stressed out- conditions not uncommon in a university classroom. However- even sane people can and do experience hallucinations of strange things they don't even understand. Now, keep in mind that most hallucinations are of faces or humans. We all have an innate ability to detect patterns- and the most common ones tend to be faces. This is why we see faces in toast and why we see other people when we hallucinate (I will add a relevant link later). Interestingly enough, the angels all looked like regular people. Also, at least in the case of the student, the vision only lasted 5-10 minutes. Now, if we consider how bad human memory is, we can probably say the vision was closer to 5 minutes. Sound like a Hallucination to you? It does to me. Also, curiously enough, in this video, he claims that the vision from the student was "10-15 minutes", as opposed to the original "5-10 minutes". We can clearly see him changing the numbers.

So, I would like to conclude by saying that this case is an interesting one. It is the only angel case I have seen in which different people see the same entity(s) at different times. It is also rather strange that the student's angel appearance occurred at such a similar time to Moreland's prayer. According to Moreland, the student's vision occurred a few days prior to his sending the email to Moreland, which happened less than a week after the prayer. This means that, if Moreland can be taken at his word, the student saw the angels 2-4 days after the prayer. Although the angels's and their details don't impress me at all, it's the timing of the second prayer that makes me feel bad about dismissing the case entirely. Of course, I find it very strange that Moreland doesn't give out any numbers at all. All he says is "less than a week later", and "a few days earlier". I don't know why he wouldn't just give us hard numbers as opposed to estimates. It could be because, although he knows when he got the email, he forgot when he made the prayer request. If this is true, than the students email could've occurred much later, and, once again, Moreland was just retrofitting his memories to suit his expectations. It seems possible to me. According to Morelands "Closer to the truth" interview, the visit with the angel happened "2 years ago". Therefore, the miracles would have happened at least a year prior to the filming of that episode. I don't know when the episode was released, but I think it would be safe to say that the reports of his "miracle" came in about a year after they occurred- more than enough time to polish them off for apologetic purposes.

By the way, sorry for not doing a post on the OT. I was going to post a link to the  documentary "Unearthing the bible", but found that the video was removed from YouTube. I'll try to get a copy of it at the library.

Kevin Brown's miracle claim

For the last few weeks, I've been looking for impressive miracle claims. Events that, if true, would totally shatter my deeply held world-view. I looked all over the Internet- I honestly have. But so many of the stories are just lame. The vast majority of them are miraculous healings that could easily  be explained by spontaneous remissions. There are some nature miracles- but they are far and few. For the most part, I haven't seen a single miracle that CANNOT be explained naturally. Now, I am agnostic as to whether the best explanation for the combined sum of miracles leans toward Atheism or not- but I think it can at least explain them all away. Well, all except one...

One of my favorite Christian bloggers Kevin Brown (AKA Diglotting) made a rather large claim in the comments sections of one of this posts. He claimed that only himself, but his entire family witnessed a supernatural entity on not only once, but several occasions. When I first read it, I immediately responded by saying that perhaps, in the future, a naturalistic explanation will be discovered. A few days later, however, I just couldn't keep it on the back of my head. I knew that this claim was different than the other ones. For one thing, he is an eye-witness- rarely do paranormal investigators and skeptics get the privilege of speaking directly to the ones who were involved. Secondly, I know that Kevin isn't a primitive, superstitious African tribal prone to hallucinating due to lack of food and clean water. Thirdly, there isn't much of a reason to lie.

All these factors made me want to investigate the claim further. I mean, I only have my immortal soul at stake, right? So, I commented on Kevin's post under the alias of "Darwinfish" in order to get some information out of him. Yes- I know the employment of alternate accounts is seen as dishonest in the bloggerspere, but cut me some slack, will you? I wanted to know the truth- even if it meant getting dirty and forcing it out of him. And so, I didn't want to stain my reputation with what I was planning to do to extract information.

Anyways, I waited for a few days; He didn't respond. Frustrated, I sent him two other comments, just to make sure he got the first one. Again, I got no response. Finally, I sent him a longer comment, accusing him of withholding valuable information that, according to him, could save my soul. At this point, I was extremely offended. How dare he let someone suffer for an eternity due to their ignorance. What kind of messed up, holier than thou attitude is that? Anyways, this time he deleted my comment, as well as every comment made under my alias of "Darwinfish".

Even when I pointed out the consequences of his actions, he still chose to ignore me. What the hell. At this point I am debating in my head whether he really did see a "supernatural entity". Did he make it up? Did he exaggerate his story so that he'd have something to fire at Papalinton, who he was debating in the comments section? I don't know- and I doubt I ever will. But this unproductive attitude isn't uncommon amongst miracle believers.

One middle aged woman claimed that her mother in laws arm miraculously grew one and a half inches longer right in front of her eyes. However, when one commenter suggested that she report the event to a skeptical investigator, she stated that she "didn't want to test God". Really? If God doesn't want us to be convinced by his miracles, why the hell does he permit them? The New Testament puts heavy emphasis on Jesus' faith healings, so I see no reason why Jesus would all of a sudden change his mind. To me, a better explanation is that people like her just don't want to challenge their beliefs. They'd rather believe in a miracle than admit to being mistaken. In the case of the woman, I found this video from Randi, explaining how faith healers do the elongated limbs trick.

Now, this whole preference to supernatural explanations seems innocent at first- I mean, I'm sure that old woman is enjoying thinking she's been healed out of what is obviously a sham. However, when you consider how many people like may change their minds- you realise it's a cruel, cruel thing they are doing. They are maintaining their comfort at the potential expense of other peoples eternal suffering. This attitude insults, degrades and belittles my worth as a human being.

So Kevin, if you are, by some miraculous coincidence reading this post, I am not accusing you of putting your feel-good beliefs before of my eternal soul. All I am saying is that it looks an awful lot like that from this perspective. Also, I don't really care if you find out that "Darwinfish" was me this whole time. Why should I? I just wanted answers. Your the one possibly sending me to hell. Something tells me I'm not visiting your blog anytime soon. And finally, thank you to the anonymous gent who asked me to blog thru the Old Testament. I would love to crack open the history books and look at a few of the sillier parts of the Bible in greater detail.

HT James McGrath for the picture


UPDATE

The information in this post is now outdated. Read this for more. I will keep this post up to serve as a lesson on how powerful coincidences can be.

Resurrection Sundays: Concluding thoughts

As promised, here is this weeks "Resurrection Sundays" post. It will be a special post since, in addition to being quite late, it will also be my last one. Don't get me wrong- I will always post on the Resurrection. However, it will be the last one with the name "Ressurection Sundays", and the last one to be posted strictly on a Sunday. I had fun making this little series, I really did- but now it's Christmas season, and I have Christmas shopping and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim playing to do. So until further notice, Resurrection Sundays are on hiatus. However- as a little Christmas gift, I will put a poll on the side of my blog, allowing you to suggest to me what topic I should post on next.

Now for the post. To begin, I would like to state that, throughout my posts, I have never claimed to have "debunked the Resurrection". I have never even claimed to be infallible- after all, there is only one pope. However, I do think that I have sufficiently demonstrated why the Resurrection cannot be proven on historical grounds. Alternate scenarios cannot be ruled out. We know that many people can come to hold a false belief. We also know that tombs can become emptied in non-miraculous ways, and that stories of empty tombs have been invented. Long story short, there are alternative explainations that, at minimum, explain away the Resurrection without appeal to the divine.

As mentioned beforehand, we have precedent for claims of visionary experiences from multiple people. Hell, according to this article, angels have been seen and experiences not only Christians, but by Jews and Muslims as well. Although these angel cases are totally anonymous and of extremely poor evidential value, they can still be tell us alot about how easily people will accept unsubstantiated stories. Skeptics have usually argued that these cases arise due to the witness' altering their memories subconciously. Often, when these cases are scrutinized-it is revealed that only one person actually saw the entity, while the others, in a state of hysteria, just went along with it. In faith communities, especially conservative Christian ones, miracle claims are quite celebrated, and it becomes almost a contest of who has the better miracle story. Does this sound like the early Christian church to you? Add some end of the world prophecies to the mix, and I think it does!

Also, when it comes to the empty tomb, it could've been made up. Why not? According to Dale Allison, we have precedent for stories of empty tombs being discovered back in the day. Even if it can be proven improbable- it will always remain a possibility. Of course- the tomb could have been emptied naturalistically as well. For instance, what if the Jews were to have entered the tomb and stole Jesus' remains. Perhaps they didn't parade the corpse around the streets, as they merely wanted to deny Jesus a proper burial- perhaps in protest of Joseph of Aremathea's descision to let him be buried. Going even  further, what if this is the controversy Matt 28:11-15 alludes to? Now, I'm not saying this is what happened- but I am saying that a scenario like this is certainly possible- and perhaps even probable. As Allison maintains througout his excellent book and article on the Resurrection, there are many ways in which a tomb can be emptied naturalistically.

Finally, to conclude this post, I want to remind apologists that the sources we do have come only from believers. We haven't a shred of evidence that any non-Christian living at Jesus' time thought of him as being "unique". To them, he was the same as any other false messiah. He helaed a few people and was eventually killed. I have always felt that this is the very best argument against the divinity of Christ (and by extention, the Resurrection). Jesus' life was just simply unremarkable. He held common false beliefs at the time; he performed the same type of Psychosomatic healings other Pagans and false messiahs did; legends arose around him after he died; etc.

Overall, I think that the case for the Resurrection is strong. However, I also think that the evidence for alien encounters and angels are strong too. In all of these cases, we have groups of people claiming to have seen the same thing. However- angels are often affiliated with New age beliefs incompatible with Christianity, and Aliens are just hard to fit into a world where Theism is true. All these strange phenomena just don't seem to lead anywhere and, as I have argued before, all seem to be incompatible. And that's it for Resurrection Sundays! I hope that you all enjoyed these little posts as much as I have.

Resurrection Sundays: Night of the living saints

There is one argument against the historicity of the empty tomb that I have always found extremely persuasive. I call it the argument from Matthew 27:52-53. That's right, the passage that got Licona sacked; The passage in which many zombies raise from their graves and terrorize Jerusalem. Now, the idea behind this argument is simple: since stories like this made it into the Gospels, we should be skeptical of other stories in the Gospels too- particularly the stories of the empty tomb being discovered, especially since stories of empty tombs being discovered weren't uncommon in the ancient world.

Now, most reasonable Christians will admit that Matthew 27: 52-53 was an invention of the early church. Even the most conservative Christians will commonly admit that this passage is "tricky". NT Wright, for instance, admits it in his tome on the subject:

"Some stories are so odd that they may just have happened. This may be one of them, but in historical terms there is no way of finding out"

So, as a heads up to people who think that this event actually happened, keep in mind NT Wright can't even affirm it with any confidence. Now, although most learned Christians will agree with me on the historicity of this passage, some have always been impervious to new ideas. One of these people is Jason Engwer from the infamous Triablogue. He has written several posts such as this one arguing not only in favor of the historicity of Matthew 27: 2-53, but against skeptics using it as evidence against the empty tomb.

After reading it, I was amazed. It seemed to me that most of his "arguments" were geared towards how the event in question was merely possible- not probable. The only positive argument he used was that, apparently, a few other hostorical sources may be alluding to this event (Ignatius, Letter To The Magnesians, 9; Quadratus, in Eusebius, Church History, 4:3). I am not familiar with any of these sources, so I will have to look into them in the future. Anyways, other than that, the rest are just mere possibility arguments.

For example, he argues that the resurrected saints may have not been recognised when they entered Jerusalem. Perhaps they looked just like regular people, as opposed to decaying zombies. Perhaps they had clothes on, as opposed to being naked. Perhaps they entered Jerusalem in small numbers, in order to remain inconspicuous. If we grant the inerranist this much, it seems very possible that, if this event occurred, only one known Gospel would record it. But a possibility is not the same as a probablity.

Jason's strategy, as well as the strategy of every conservative inneranist, is to prove that their position is just possible. Creationists will argue that the age of the earth might be wrong, since the age of the earth has "changed" as technology as progressed. Yet they give us little, if any evidence that we should favor their hypothesis over a better, simpler one.

So Jason, I concede that it's possible that the saints entered Jerusalem undetected. Hell, they could've been invisible and microscopic for all I know. But that doesn't mean they probably were. For one thing, the story only appears in one Gospel. Also, it is accompanied by claims of a great earthquake and eclipse, both of which there is even less evidence for. Arguing that the early Christians understood the Gospels as literal history is just pulling the buggy before the horse, for these passages should, if anything, challenge that assertion.

So, my readers shouldn't be surprised that I think this event never happened. How could I? Now, I acknowledge that it could've happened. After all, the zombie saints could have been microscopic or even disguised as regular Jewish peasants. They even could have disappeared milliseconds after they entered Jerusalem to avoid being seen. I can't prove that they didn't- but it's not my job to, either. This event never happened- and only the most fringe level conservative apologists would say otherwise.

Pitting incompatible Supernatural beliefs against each other, Part 2

Religions, other than Christianity, have made miracle claims. This fact is unavoidable. Even Christians acknowledge that miracle claims are often made from members of other Religions. Some examples of miracle claims in the names of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism can be found here, here and here. New agers have a substantial amount of miracle claims, so I wont bother linking to any. So, how do Christians deal with this diversity? Well- some of them just throw their arms in the air and claim agnosticism. During a discussion on miracles at Victor Repperts blog, one commenter claimed that miracles done in the name of other Religions can actually be proof for Christianity, since, apparently, God had no quips about deceiving people into the wrong faith. And of course, many Christians will just outright deny the validity of other Religions' miracle claims, and happily affirm their own.

Now, I am not a trained theologian, so I can't really conclusively comment on the success of any of these strategies. However, that doesn't mean I can't hold a inconclusive opinion. For one thing- how can we determine which Religion is correct if they all make similar claims? If every miracle ever documented were done for and by Christians, than that would be good evidence that Christianity is the true faith. However, what we see instead are many miracles being claimed by many religions. The only possible scenarios I see are that, either God allows miracles to happen that inevitably draw people away from Christianity, or that these things all have natural causes. Well... I guess one can argue that there exists an all loving, Universalist God that does miracles for everyone. But even this scenario doesn't seem to fit in with the Christian concept of hell and atonement, does it? In the end, it just seems intuitive that all these miracle stories are false.

Also, even if we granted that miracles occur in Christianity alone- one would have to ask why they even exist in the first place? What is the criteria in which someone is allowed to witness a miracle, and someone is denied that opportunity? Because it seems to me that the person who witnessed a miracle will have a better chance of being/remaining a Christian than the person who does not- giving them an unfair advantage. A Theist could claim that God works in mysterious ways, or that he rewards people who would've believed anyways, using his Omniscience. Answers like these are clearly sound- but that doesn't mean they are good. For one thing- they are both unfalsifiable, and cannot ever be tested or proven false.

Just to conclude, I wanted to mention NDE's again- since they are generally considered the best evidence for an afterlife. I have argued before that, since NDE's occur to members of other faiths, they are probably of naturalistic origin. Ed Babinski argues this at length during the conversation about miracles he had on Victor Repperts blog.

"Same with Near Death Experiences, the majority of which are positive, even for people who do not become orthodox Christians. In fact Mormons have a journal devoted to recording and studying the Near Death Experiences of Mormons (some of them saw Lincoln in the afterlife, and guess what, Lincoln converted and became a Mormon after he died), which sometimes are quite detailed and involve a trip to a very Mormon-looking heaven. Betty Eade wrote several books about her Mormon NDE that were on the bestseller lists about ten years or so ago. "

Surprisingly, many commenters agreed with him that Miracles can't be used as evidence for the existence of God! I chalk that up as a victory for Atheism.

HT to Russ, Ed Babinski and the many other anonymous commenters

I'm cleaning up some of my blog posts

I'm sure some readers noticed that some of my blog posts have been changed since they were first posted. I have learned a few new things from skeptics like CSICOP since my first post in September, so I figured I'd update my older posts to include them. Plus, I forgot to use spellcheck a few times. Recent posts to have been renovated include "Should we pay attention to miracle claims", "A very personal Poltergeist case" and the newly renamed "Christian entity encounters". I guess that's kinda like writing up a real post, right? Alright, I'll right up a real post tomorrow.