Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Origins of Religious Belief
Scholars have long recognized that all societies and cultures develop various customs, practices, and rituals that are usually described as religion. Defining “religion” has always been a difficult and controversial task. Jared Diamond provided sixteen definitions from various notables as diverse as Michael Shermer and Karl Marx in his book, The World Until Yesterday. For example Daniel Dennett defines religion as, “Social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.” William James described religious experience as “feeling at home in the universe.”
Diamond also identified five components of religion including belief in supernaturalism, shared membership in a social movement, visible and costly proofs of commitment, practical rules for behavior, and the belief that supernatural beings can be induced to intervene in worldly life. (In this essay I will use “God” to represent any supernatural deity or deities.) Observing how these five components of religion influenced and benefitted societies in the past provides an excellent way to understand the role of religion in today’s world and in the future.
Reasonable people can disagree on the definition, but the bigger question is, “Why does religion exist at all?” Evolutionary biologists correctly note that religion is a very costly feature in any society. The expense of building churches, temples, and mosques and providing the support for religious leaders is great. The argument is that these resources could be invested in other systems such as education, agricultural, industrial, transportation, and military giving atheistic societies a competitive advantage resulting in the decline or elimination of religious societies. Since this has not happened, religion must provide some evolutionary survival advantage. Many scholars suggest that religion can be thought of as a sort of "scaffolding" which was useful in certain stages of evolution, but is no longer needed in modern developed societies. In this sense religion is similar to junk DNA or the human appendix, useful at one time but no longer required.
Michael Shermer, a science historian and a trained experimental psychologist developed the concepts of patternicity and agency to explain the origin of religion. The human brain is organized to find meaningful patterns in meaningless background noise. An example of patternicity was the ability of the Paleolithic hominids to distinguish shadows on the savanna from hungry predators hiding in the tall grass. Those lacking this ability were removed from the gene pool whereas those with this ability lived long enough to produce offspring with the same ability.
Agency is the human tendency to attribute some cause to everything observed or perceived. In fact the “law” of first cause is one of the most convincing arguments ever given for the existence of God. If everything has a cause and you work backwards through all the causes, you will eventually reach the first cause and that will be God. Even Bertrand Russell, one of the world’s greatest thinkers accepted the argument of first cause earlier in his life.
Jared Diamond proposed the following seven functions of religion: explanation, defusing anxiety, providing comfort, organization and obedience, codes of behavior toward strangers, justifying war, and badges of commitment. Considering these functions against the backdrop of societies evolving through the stages of bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and modern western states provides a prism for understanding the role religion played in the past and what its future might be.
As recently as ten thousand years ago almost everything our ancestors encountered during their lives was a mystery. Yet they had a natural tendency to look for a cause for such things as accidents, weather, scarcity of game, births, and deaths. Michael Shermer calls this agency, attributing a cause for anything that happens. At some early time the idea of God (or Gods) evolved into the agency of choice. Over time as human knowledge and education increased the need for Gods as an explanation decreased. Today, science answers most of the questions previously answered by God.
Small-scale societies are characterized by high levels of anxiety given the various dangers and hardships they face every day. This includes threats posed by wild animals or rival tribes, starvation, infectious diseases, and the dangers of birthing. Religion provided a means of defusing the anxiety caused when people felt like they did not have any control over the situation. Practicing some ritual or custom was preferable too not doing anything in the face of adversity and uncertainty. Religion was also useful for providing comfort in times of grief such as the injury, illness, or death of a member of the group.
Modern societies have reduced the anxiety levels associated with starvation, infectious diseases, animal attacks, and threatening neighbors compared to small-scale societies. Of course, modern societies have not eliminated stress and anxiety. The question becomes, is religion the only way or the best way to deal with anxiety?
The arrival of the chiefdom societies demonstrates the versatility of religion. Chiefs faced increased responsibility for maintaining peace among larger numbers of individuals living in close proximity with others, many who may be strangers. Religion offered a tool for organizing diverse and unrelated individuals into a cohesive group based on a common core of beliefs and customs. This provided a way to induce obedience and establish codes of behavior toward strangers within the group based on some shared belief system that previously depended on being related by blood. In the absence of any legal mechanism of enforcement, the concept of a powerful God capable of punishment and reward would have been a very useful tool for chiefs to use to enforce group rules and customs. The idea of God was also extremely useful to the chief for justifying war. People certain in the knowledge that their beliefs are correct are easily provoked against those with different or opposing dogmas. Blaise Pascal made this point over three-hundred years ago when he said, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
Loyalty to the group is very important to survival especially in time of conflict with outside groups. Badges of commitments are a way for members to demonstrate their allegiance to the group or society. For example emblems and logos are common among sports fans as a way of demonstrating their support for their team. In more serious matters societies need more convincing ways for group members to display loyalty to their society. Since religious observations are expensive in terms of time and money, they provide an excellent badge of commitment. They can include acts such as spending many hours attending religious services, donating a required portion of one’s income, donning some manner of dress, or even making annual religious pilgrimages to some holy site. Doing these things demonstrates to the group one can be trusted.
Afrol News recently reported (April 13, 2013) that archaeologists have discovered evidence of religious worship in the remote region of Botswana. “Here, our ancestors performed advanced rituals, worshiping the python some 70,000 years ago.” Obviously, no one knows exactly how religion got started thousands of years ago, but I think based on everything we do know that it could have easily happened as follows: (The names “Igor” and “Troken” are of my own making.)
Thousands (perhaps as many as 100,000) of years ago there was a small tribe of our ancestors living in a cave. As with most people they were just trying to survive as best they could. To this end each day the strongest and most able of the adult men left each day to hunt. If the animals moved on they would move and look for another cave. When lightning struck a tree and started a fire, they realized that it was useful for cooking meat and heating the cave. There was one fellow, named Troken who lacked hunting skills and was just a hindrance to their hunting activities. They decided to leave Troken behind to tend the fire and make sure it did not burn out. Troken was very happy to remain in the warm cave with the women and children avoiding the hard labor and dangers of hunting.
After some time, Troken became more proficient as the “keeper of the flame” and to pass his extra time he started experimenting with drawing symbols on the walls of the cave. To his surprise, the hunters were interested and in awe of his results. Eventually, Troken convinced the others that his symbols had mystical powers that only he understood and controlled. On the days when the hunters were successful he would take credit claiming that he was the one who empowered them. If they returned without any game, he would make up some new symbols. He even added various grunts and other sounds to invoke his magic. If someone got sick or injured, he would invoke new chants and symbols to heal them. If they died, he would blame it on bad or evil symbols.
In a short period of time Troken became the most powerful person in the tribe. While the others were out in the cold walking for miles hunting, he was in the cave molesting the women and children (sound familiar?) and working on his chants and cave renditions. At some point, Troken selected one of the young boys as an apprentice to help with the more mundane aspects of his mystical duties. Troken promised Igor that if anything ever happened to him he would take over. Troken did not believe that this would ever happen, because by now he actually believed in his own powers.
One day Troken died and Igor took over. Troken’s death had a profound effect on all the tribe members. To cope with this, Igor expended on Troken’s work and devised an elaborate ritual. He covered him with grass and sticks and surrounded him by food. He then had everyone groan out some new sounds as they danced all around. He eventually hid his body in a deep cave, and informed the others that Troken left on some mysterious journey that they were not to know about. In time Troken became the great god Troken to all the people.
Igor following Troken’s example and took on an understudy and the two of them continued to improve on Troken’s magic. Igor noticed some time around the middle of year that the days began to become shorter and that a certain time about six months later, they started getting longer again. He then did a series of paintings on the cave wall depicting the total loss of the sun and resulting darkness. This terrified the others, so he developed a secret ritual that he would perform at the end of each year to prevent the sun from disappearing. The effect on the others was beyond his wildest expectations. From this day on he enjoyed total power and authority.
Igor demanded that his subjects bow and cater to his every whim or desire no matter how bizarre, barbaric, or byzantine. He took over the entire cave forcing the others to find other refuge. Subjects were required to bring him the first choice of food, clothing, and trinkets of interest. Anyone who displeased him in any way was blamed for any misfortunate that might occur and were then killed as a sacrificed to the great god Troken. Igor and thousands of his successors held total power and domination over all the others.
Over time various technological developments occurred such as agriculture which allow the tribe to remain in one place. This resulted in “territory imperative.” Troken had given them exclusive rights to this land. As other tribes settled in adjacent areas, physical contacts were made. Priest Igor learned that these people had a different set of symbols and magic. He immediately ordered his warrior to kill them in the name of Troken. Troken was the only true god and these others must be destroyed except for the women and children who were made slaves. Priest Igor was satisfied and remained confident and secure in his growing kingdom.
Today religious belief is diverse and declining. According to Wikipedia, Christianity is the largest religion commanding 33% of the world’s population followed by Islam (19.6%), Hinduism (13.4%), Chinese folk religions (6.4%), and Buddhism (5.9%). Less that 1% of the world’s people are Jewish while it estimated that at 20% are nonbelievers.
What is the future of religion? The seven functions of religion suggest a possibility. Education, science, and the accumulation of knowledge has replaced religion’s role of explanation for most people in the world. I think that this trend will continue. Governments have taken over the role of organization and obedience, codes of behavior, and justifying war through the institutions of laws, courts, and law enforcement. Of course this is not as true in countries with theocratic governments. However, the trend is moving toward democratic societies and if this trend continues, religion will decline further. Defusing anxiety and providing comfort will remain the only attractive force for religious belief. Levels of anxiety will always fluctuate with economic conditions, international disputes, and natural disasters. Birth control has lowered the worldwide birth rates from 22 births per 1,000 people to 19 births per 1,000 people in the years from 2000 to 2012. This has resulted in an increased standard of living and the lowering of anxiety. Increasing educational opportunities and globalization are also reducing anxiety worldwide. If all these trends continue, providing comfort may be the last thing that religion has to offer.
Providing comfort especially during times of illness or the death of loved ones has always been a service that religion provided. However secularism is beginning to compete with religion in giving comfort and could easily take over this function. Secularists can accelerate the process of removing religion’s last justification by competing on the grounds of morality and ethics. For example we can replace the “Golden Rule,” which is essentially a self-serving idea of gaining favor by giving favor with the idea that each of us is responsible for the happiness of the people around us. If everyone in the world did just one small “good” deed every day without expecting some reward, what a difference that could make. It can be a simple act of removing a nail from the road or giving a smile to a stranger. We can also share with others the beauty of science and knowledge and the joy of discovery. Above all we need to provide a good education to every child in the world including religious education. Professor Daniel Dennett has long advocated the teaching of all major religions in schools. His hypothesis is the more people know about the various religious doctrines, the more likely they will choose rational human secularism.
Religious belief worldwide is on the decline and with the advancement of science, education, and secularism, religion seems destined for the dust pile of outdated ideas along with Jack in the Beanstalk as relics of mankind’s intellectual infancy. In the words of Denis Diderot, “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
1. The World Until Yesterday: What We Can Learn from Traditional Societies? (2012) by Jared Diamond
2. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (2002) by Michael Shermer
3. Blog: Why Religion? (August 31, 2012) by Needlefish Chronicles
Friday, April 5, 2013
Edgar Cayce
Thomas Jefferson Cayce was born in Beverly, KY just seven miles outside Hopkinsville on May 16, 1829. He was a successful farmer growing dark tobacco used in chewing tobacco and cigars. Tom liked to drink and had a reputation as a “water witch” or dowser and was often called on by his neighbors to locate water on their property. Tom was a very religious man and allegedly possessed various psychic abilities including psychokinetic powers. It was said that he could make a broom dance and move a table only using his mind.
The Hopkinsville area was noted for the presence of psychics. “Blind Mary,” a blind black medium was a respected clairvoyant who was often consulted by local businessmen before they made any important decisions. A favorite story repeated in the area concerned a black slave who was raped and murdered on a farm outside of Hopkinsville. Local people claim that her face appeared in a tree that had grown out of her grave.
Thomas Jefferson Cayce married his cousin Sarah Thomas in 1851. Marrying close relatives was not that unusual in the Kentucky at the time. Their son Leslie Burr Cayce was born on July 3, 1853. Leslie married Carrie Elizabeth Major on June 10, 1874. Leslie was an incompetent farmer and a drunk who spent most of his time chasing women and various get-rich-quick schemes. In spite of his short comings as a husband and provider, he and Carrie produced four children and remained together until his death in 1937. Their second child (the first died shortly after birth), Edgar Cayce was born on March 18, 1877 in Beverly, KY.
Edgar proved to be an unusual child right from the start. He spent his first three months screaming and crying constantly until a slave named Patsy Cayce realized that his problem was due to a condition she called “milk breast.” She remedied it by piercing his nipples with a needle releasing a milky white substance thus ending his discomfort and incessant crying. After learning to crawl Edgar became hyperactive moving around faster than anyone could keep an eye on him. During a blinding rain storm he crawled out on the porch and fell off into a large puddle where he remained until Carrie realizes he was missing and rescued him.
At age three Edgar tried to climb over a fence and fell headfirst onto a board with a protruding nail that penetrated his head into his brain cavity. The family pulled the nail out and treated his wound with turpentine. He did not seem to suffer any lasting effects. Not much later he fell into a pond while trying to catch fish with his hands. He would have drowned without the efforts of a former slave who pulled him out and resuscitated him. His mishaps continued and at age eight he was running with a sharp stick in his hands. He tripped and fell ramming the stick through one testicle. He recovered after one year of bed confinement and recuperation. As a young adult he was sleeping on a couch when a cinder from the fireplace set the bedding materials on fire severely burning him. Over the years fire would play a prominent role in his life. He lost two offices and two homes to fire. (It is amazing that he did not acquire the nickname of "Lucky.")
His family, relatives, and neighbors all realized that Edgar was far from a normal child. Many people thought that he was insane. His maternal Grandmother suffered bouts of insanity and had to be locked up in an upstairs bedroom. Edgar would never play with other children preferring the company of eight imaginary friends. He gave them all names and would regularly regale his parents with long and complicated stories about their activities.
At the age of four, Edgar witnessed the death of his beloved Grandfather Tom who died in a horse-riding accident. This was obviously a very traumatic event in his life and one from which he never fully recovered. He started school in Beverly in 1884 and was described by his teacher as dull and backward. It seemed that he was incapable of learning anything until 1890 when an angel appeared to him and revealed that he could memorize his school books simply by sleeping on them. Not surprisingly he suddenly became the top student in his school. In spite of his academic success he quit high school at the age of 16 and went to work on his Grandmother’s farm until she died in August 1893.
In January of 1894 his family moved to Hopkinsville where Edgar found a job working in a bookstore where he met Gertrude Evans. They became engaged on March 14, 1897 but did not marry until June 17, 1903. In 1901 he met Stanley Hart, a well-known hypnotist. Hart was putting on a show and saw Edgar in the audience and invited him up on stage thinking that he was an excellent subject, but he was in fact unable to hypnotize him. Eventually Edgar realized that he could simply lay down on his back and put himself in a trance. While in a trance, a “reader” would ask him questions on any subject. The reader or a transcriber would then record Edgar’s answers. After coming out of the trance, Edgar did not have any memory of what he had said.
In 1900 Edgar became a traveling salesman. He sold life insurance, books, and stationery, and during this time suffered the first of many episodes of nearly losing his voice. During these times his voice was reduced to a faint whisper. Edgar sought medical assistance from an osteopath with the unfortunate name of Dr. Quackenboss who was unable to determine the cause or treatment for his condition. He then went to see Al Layne, an alleged osteopath seeking relief from his affliction. The lost of his voice posed a serious threat to his career as a salesman. On March 31, 1901 with Layne as a reader, Edgar performed his first psychic reading and diagnosed his own condition and proscribed a treatment of “increase the circulation to the affected parts.” Layne carried out his instructions by performing various manipulations and restored his voice. Edgar then took a job at a Bowling Green bookstore.
In August 1902 Layne called him back to Hopkinsville to perform a reading for six-year-old Aime Dietrich who was thought to be mentally retarded as result of suffering diphtheria as an infant. Layne guided Edgar into a trance where he diagnosed the problem as a damaged spine the result of an injury she incurred prior to having diphtheria. He proscribed osteopathic adjustments to her spine which Layne carried out. Within three weeks Aime became a normal bright little girl. From this point on Edgar would perform many readings for Layne’s patients.
In another case Tommy House, the three-month-old son of Dr. Thomas House was suffering from severe convulsions resulting from his premature birth. According to his doctors, Tommy was near death due to malnutrition and lack of sleep. Cayce was summoned to the home and without examining the child lay down and went into a trance so deep that physicians present thought that he was in a coma. They jammed a knife under one of his fingernails in an attempt to bring him out of the trance but he did not even flinch. He then began to speak in a deep voice and reported all of Tommy’s vital signs such as temperature and blood pressure. He diagnosed Tommy’s condition as epilepsy and prescribed a dose of belladonna followed by a wrapping of a hot poultice made from the bark of a peach tree. The doctors present agreed with the diagnosis but said that the treatment was tantamount to murder. In the end Mrs. House made the decision to carry out Edgar’s instructions. After the treatment was administered, Tommy fell into a peaceful sleep and when he awoke he was breathing normally and never suffered convolutions again.
Edgar would go on to perform many medical readings calling for unusual treatments. Once he prescribed “oil of smoke,” oil that was filtered through the smoke of burning wood. When his wife Gertrude was struck down with tuberculosis, he called for her to breathe the “fumes of apple brandy from a charred oak keg” and she was cured. Another time he cured a case of skin cancer with injections made from the skin of a rabbit. In another case he called for a tea prepared from cherry bark taken from the north side of the tree to treat a friend who had lost his voice. The solution was prepared and administered and his friend regained his voice. In January 1914 his son Hugh Lynn severely burns his eyes while playing in the studio with flash powder. Edgar performed a reading and his eye sight was restored. By 1910 he was so famous that The New York Times' publishes a long article on his psychic powers.
In 1904 Edgar opened a photographic studio with Frank Potter in Bowling Green , KY. By all accounts he was an excellent photographer and won numbers of prizes for his work but was a poor businessman. He also had penchant for travel always looking for better opportunities. Over the years Edgar moved many times. He moved to Anniston, AL and then to Selma where he established photography studios where he usually let a partner operate them while he continued to conduct “readings.”
He eventually gave readings on the “life histories” of his subjects. When he conducting a life reading on himself, he discovered that he was living in his eighth reincarnation. Previous he had been a British soldier and once was Xenon (a defender of Troy). He also lived in France during the time of Richelieu, and was the high priest Ra Ta in Egypt. He also claimed to have been Lucius of Cyrene, the actual author of the Gospel of Luke (not the physician Luke). His reading for his oldest son revealed that Hugh Lynn had been Jesus’ apostle Andrew in an earlier incarnation.
In 1923 Edgar hired Gladys Davis, an eighteen-year-old attractive girl as a stenographer to record his readings. They became very close and she remained with him until he died. When he did a life reading on Gladys, it was revealed that she had been the second daughter of Louis XIV in one incarnation and at age seventeen was seduced by the Duke of York who became King James II of England. As a result she became pregnant and gave birth to Edgar Cayce in his fifth incarnation. Later readings put Edgar in communication with the “source” who advised that Edgar and Gladys were meant to be together in their present incarnation but would have to wait until their next incarnation to be reunited. Although they agreed to abstain from any carnal relations, their relationship was a subject of much gossip and speculation. At age fifty-five Gladys was treated for uterine cancer and her attending doctor indicated that she was a virgin.
Edgar even used readings to search for oil and in the 1920's he was a partner in a number of oil ventures in Texas. A group of investors would form a corporation and include Edgar as a part owner and would then use his readings to determine where to drill. Edgar would travel around selling the stock in the company until they had sufficient funds to purchase the required equipment for drilling. They never found oil and always went bankrupt.
He was also involved in several treasure hunting ventures. One was in Bimini where a reading revealed the location of a vault containing more than 120,000 gold and silver coins. Again Edgar was part of a group of investors who spent $10,000 trying to locate the vault. He even went in person to the site in January 1929 to assist in the search. In the end they failed to find any treasure. A later reading provided the location of Blackbeard’s buried treasure at a site near Virginia Beach, VA called “White Hill.” Considerable expense was devoted to finding the treasure without any success.
In 1924 David Kahn introduced Edgar to Morton and Edwin Blumenthal. The brothers were wealthy New York City stockbrokers. In September Edgar did a reading for Morton’s various medical issues. Morton was very pleased with the results and the brothers began to provide him financial support. The Cayce family moved to Virginia Beach in September 1925 and with financial support from the Blumenthal brothers started the Association of National Investigators (ANI). The plan was to build a hospital where patients could stay and receive medical readings and then receive treatments administered by resident doctors in accordance with Edgar's instructions. At the same he picked stocks for Morton and Edwin which reportedly generated very handsome profits making them millionaires.
In 1927 Morton and Edwin provided the money to purchased five parcels of land in Virginia Beach for the hospital and construction began in June of 1928 and was completed and opened on February 11, 1929. At first things went well but by September 1930 the hospital was in serious financial trouble having accumulated debts close to $80,000. At the same time Blumenthal brothers were losing money in the falling stock market and could no longer afford to support Cayce or the hospital. It closed on February 28, 1931 and the property was taken over by creditors. The ANI was reorganized as the Association of Research and Enlightenment (ARE). Although Edgar Cayce died in January 1945, the ARE is still in operation even today.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. In the case of Cayce, claims of his psychic abilities including predictions and healing results are mostly anecdotal. Supporting evidence is scant and his psychic powers were never scrutinized by any competent independent observer. Supporters ignore all his failures including his unsuccessful oil drilling ventures, failed treasure-hunting episodes, and the bankruptcy of the Blumenthal brothers. They had purchased stocks based on Edgar’s stock market readings. The price of these stocks advanced during the boom years of the 1920's as did most stocks during this period. His readings never indicated the crash was coming and his clients never sold out and they eventually lost all their money.
Cayce maintained that the “five human races” were created separately and simultaneously but on different parts of the earth, a claim destroyed by Charles Darwin and molecular biology. He performed countless “life history” readings for numerous people and in every case they were famous well-known historical figures in their previous lives. Surely at least someone would have lived an ordinary existence in a former life such as a cook, stone mason, or bar maid.
In the case of his medical readings and prescribed treatments, they could be easily tested today. For example, epilepsy could be treated with a “dose of belladonna followed by a wrapping of a hot poultice made from the bark of a peach tree.” What rational person would volunteer for such a treatment for epilepsy? And what medical professional would treat tuberculosis with “fumes of apple brandy from a charred oak keg?” These procedures must be dismissed as dangerous quackery inflicted on desperate superstitious and ignorant people. Keep in mind that the standard model of medicine at the time was the homeopathic model. Many of Cayce’s trance-induced diagnoses were common homeopathic treatments and enjoy some success even in modern times.
Edgar Cayce life as a psychic was very predictable given his background. He was raised in a small Kentucky town where most of his family and neighbors were uneducated and superstitious and where encounters with the “spirit” world were common place. Intermarriage with close relatives and mental illness ran in his family. His father was an alcoholic. As a child he suffered a number of serious accidents including falling on a nail that penetrated into his brain.
The Edgar Cayce story says more about the people who believe it than it does about him. Con artists and mystics always have the ability to select vulnerable people who want to believe and are susceptible to various illusions and delusions. Not surprisingly Edgar practiced astrology, a completely proven hoax. But, even today millions believe in astrology and use it to make all their important decisions. Ronald and Nancy Reagan are notable examples.
Michael Shermer’s wonderful book, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time goes a long way in explaining the phenomenon of people’s belief in tales like the ones attributed to Edgar Cayce, Joseph Smith, and L. Ron Hubbard. In the future the field of neuroscience will provide even better explanations for these irrational beliefs.
Sources:
1. Edgar Cayce, An American Prophet (2000) by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick
2. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (1997) by Michael Shermer
The Hopkinsville area was noted for the presence of psychics. “Blind Mary,” a blind black medium was a respected clairvoyant who was often consulted by local businessmen before they made any important decisions. A favorite story repeated in the area concerned a black slave who was raped and murdered on a farm outside of Hopkinsville. Local people claim that her face appeared in a tree that had grown out of her grave.
Thomas Jefferson Cayce married his cousin Sarah Thomas in 1851. Marrying close relatives was not that unusual in the Kentucky at the time. Their son Leslie Burr Cayce was born on July 3, 1853. Leslie married Carrie Elizabeth Major on June 10, 1874. Leslie was an incompetent farmer and a drunk who spent most of his time chasing women and various get-rich-quick schemes. In spite of his short comings as a husband and provider, he and Carrie produced four children and remained together until his death in 1937. Their second child (the first died shortly after birth), Edgar Cayce was born on March 18, 1877 in Beverly, KY.
Edgar proved to be an unusual child right from the start. He spent his first three months screaming and crying constantly until a slave named Patsy Cayce realized that his problem was due to a condition she called “milk breast.” She remedied it by piercing his nipples with a needle releasing a milky white substance thus ending his discomfort and incessant crying. After learning to crawl Edgar became hyperactive moving around faster than anyone could keep an eye on him. During a blinding rain storm he crawled out on the porch and fell off into a large puddle where he remained until Carrie realizes he was missing and rescued him.
At age three Edgar tried to climb over a fence and fell headfirst onto a board with a protruding nail that penetrated his head into his brain cavity. The family pulled the nail out and treated his wound with turpentine. He did not seem to suffer any lasting effects. Not much later he fell into a pond while trying to catch fish with his hands. He would have drowned without the efforts of a former slave who pulled him out and resuscitated him. His mishaps continued and at age eight he was running with a sharp stick in his hands. He tripped and fell ramming the stick through one testicle. He recovered after one year of bed confinement and recuperation. As a young adult he was sleeping on a couch when a cinder from the fireplace set the bedding materials on fire severely burning him. Over the years fire would play a prominent role in his life. He lost two offices and two homes to fire. (It is amazing that he did not acquire the nickname of "Lucky.")
His family, relatives, and neighbors all realized that Edgar was far from a normal child. Many people thought that he was insane. His maternal Grandmother suffered bouts of insanity and had to be locked up in an upstairs bedroom. Edgar would never play with other children preferring the company of eight imaginary friends. He gave them all names and would regularly regale his parents with long and complicated stories about their activities.
At the age of four, Edgar witnessed the death of his beloved Grandfather Tom who died in a horse-riding accident. This was obviously a very traumatic event in his life and one from which he never fully recovered. He started school in Beverly in 1884 and was described by his teacher as dull and backward. It seemed that he was incapable of learning anything until 1890 when an angel appeared to him and revealed that he could memorize his school books simply by sleeping on them. Not surprisingly he suddenly became the top student in his school. In spite of his academic success he quit high school at the age of 16 and went to work on his Grandmother’s farm until she died in August 1893.
In January of 1894 his family moved to Hopkinsville where Edgar found a job working in a bookstore where he met Gertrude Evans. They became engaged on March 14, 1897 but did not marry until June 17, 1903. In 1901 he met Stanley Hart, a well-known hypnotist. Hart was putting on a show and saw Edgar in the audience and invited him up on stage thinking that he was an excellent subject, but he was in fact unable to hypnotize him. Eventually Edgar realized that he could simply lay down on his back and put himself in a trance. While in a trance, a “reader” would ask him questions on any subject. The reader or a transcriber would then record Edgar’s answers. After coming out of the trance, Edgar did not have any memory of what he had said.
In 1900 Edgar became a traveling salesman. He sold life insurance, books, and stationery, and during this time suffered the first of many episodes of nearly losing his voice. During these times his voice was reduced to a faint whisper. Edgar sought medical assistance from an osteopath with the unfortunate name of Dr. Quackenboss who was unable to determine the cause or treatment for his condition. He then went to see Al Layne, an alleged osteopath seeking relief from his affliction. The lost of his voice posed a serious threat to his career as a salesman. On March 31, 1901 with Layne as a reader, Edgar performed his first psychic reading and diagnosed his own condition and proscribed a treatment of “increase the circulation to the affected parts.” Layne carried out his instructions by performing various manipulations and restored his voice. Edgar then took a job at a Bowling Green bookstore.
In August 1902 Layne called him back to Hopkinsville to perform a reading for six-year-old Aime Dietrich who was thought to be mentally retarded as result of suffering diphtheria as an infant. Layne guided Edgar into a trance where he diagnosed the problem as a damaged spine the result of an injury she incurred prior to having diphtheria. He proscribed osteopathic adjustments to her spine which Layne carried out. Within three weeks Aime became a normal bright little girl. From this point on Edgar would perform many readings for Layne’s patients.
In another case Tommy House, the three-month-old son of Dr. Thomas House was suffering from severe convulsions resulting from his premature birth. According to his doctors, Tommy was near death due to malnutrition and lack of sleep. Cayce was summoned to the home and without examining the child lay down and went into a trance so deep that physicians present thought that he was in a coma. They jammed a knife under one of his fingernails in an attempt to bring him out of the trance but he did not even flinch. He then began to speak in a deep voice and reported all of Tommy’s vital signs such as temperature and blood pressure. He diagnosed Tommy’s condition as epilepsy and prescribed a dose of belladonna followed by a wrapping of a hot poultice made from the bark of a peach tree. The doctors present agreed with the diagnosis but said that the treatment was tantamount to murder. In the end Mrs. House made the decision to carry out Edgar’s instructions. After the treatment was administered, Tommy fell into a peaceful sleep and when he awoke he was breathing normally and never suffered convolutions again.
Edgar would go on to perform many medical readings calling for unusual treatments. Once he prescribed “oil of smoke,” oil that was filtered through the smoke of burning wood. When his wife Gertrude was struck down with tuberculosis, he called for her to breathe the “fumes of apple brandy from a charred oak keg” and she was cured. Another time he cured a case of skin cancer with injections made from the skin of a rabbit. In another case he called for a tea prepared from cherry bark taken from the north side of the tree to treat a friend who had lost his voice. The solution was prepared and administered and his friend regained his voice. In January 1914 his son Hugh Lynn severely burns his eyes while playing in the studio with flash powder. Edgar performed a reading and his eye sight was restored. By 1910 he was so famous that The New York Times' publishes a long article on his psychic powers.
In 1904 Edgar opened a photographic studio with Frank Potter in Bowling Green , KY. By all accounts he was an excellent photographer and won numbers of prizes for his work but was a poor businessman. He also had penchant for travel always looking for better opportunities. Over the years Edgar moved many times. He moved to Anniston, AL and then to Selma where he established photography studios where he usually let a partner operate them while he continued to conduct “readings.”
He eventually gave readings on the “life histories” of his subjects. When he conducting a life reading on himself, he discovered that he was living in his eighth reincarnation. Previous he had been a British soldier and once was Xenon (a defender of Troy). He also lived in France during the time of Richelieu, and was the high priest Ra Ta in Egypt. He also claimed to have been Lucius of Cyrene, the actual author of the Gospel of Luke (not the physician Luke). His reading for his oldest son revealed that Hugh Lynn had been Jesus’ apostle Andrew in an earlier incarnation.
In 1923 Edgar hired Gladys Davis, an eighteen-year-old attractive girl as a stenographer to record his readings. They became very close and she remained with him until he died. When he did a life reading on Gladys, it was revealed that she had been the second daughter of Louis XIV in one incarnation and at age seventeen was seduced by the Duke of York who became King James II of England. As a result she became pregnant and gave birth to Edgar Cayce in his fifth incarnation. Later readings put Edgar in communication with the “source” who advised that Edgar and Gladys were meant to be together in their present incarnation but would have to wait until their next incarnation to be reunited. Although they agreed to abstain from any carnal relations, their relationship was a subject of much gossip and speculation. At age fifty-five Gladys was treated for uterine cancer and her attending doctor indicated that she was a virgin.
Edgar even used readings to search for oil and in the 1920's he was a partner in a number of oil ventures in Texas. A group of investors would form a corporation and include Edgar as a part owner and would then use his readings to determine where to drill. Edgar would travel around selling the stock in the company until they had sufficient funds to purchase the required equipment for drilling. They never found oil and always went bankrupt.
He was also involved in several treasure hunting ventures. One was in Bimini where a reading revealed the location of a vault containing more than 120,000 gold and silver coins. Again Edgar was part of a group of investors who spent $10,000 trying to locate the vault. He even went in person to the site in January 1929 to assist in the search. In the end they failed to find any treasure. A later reading provided the location of Blackbeard’s buried treasure at a site near Virginia Beach, VA called “White Hill.” Considerable expense was devoted to finding the treasure without any success.
In 1924 David Kahn introduced Edgar to Morton and Edwin Blumenthal. The brothers were wealthy New York City stockbrokers. In September Edgar did a reading for Morton’s various medical issues. Morton was very pleased with the results and the brothers began to provide him financial support. The Cayce family moved to Virginia Beach in September 1925 and with financial support from the Blumenthal brothers started the Association of National Investigators (ANI). The plan was to build a hospital where patients could stay and receive medical readings and then receive treatments administered by resident doctors in accordance with Edgar's instructions. At the same he picked stocks for Morton and Edwin which reportedly generated very handsome profits making them millionaires.
In 1927 Morton and Edwin provided the money to purchased five parcels of land in Virginia Beach for the hospital and construction began in June of 1928 and was completed and opened on February 11, 1929. At first things went well but by September 1930 the hospital was in serious financial trouble having accumulated debts close to $80,000. At the same time Blumenthal brothers were losing money in the falling stock market and could no longer afford to support Cayce or the hospital. It closed on February 28, 1931 and the property was taken over by creditors. The ANI was reorganized as the Association of Research and Enlightenment (ARE). Although Edgar Cayce died in January 1945, the ARE is still in operation even today.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. In the case of Cayce, claims of his psychic abilities including predictions and healing results are mostly anecdotal. Supporting evidence is scant and his psychic powers were never scrutinized by any competent independent observer. Supporters ignore all his failures including his unsuccessful oil drilling ventures, failed treasure-hunting episodes, and the bankruptcy of the Blumenthal brothers. They had purchased stocks based on Edgar’s stock market readings. The price of these stocks advanced during the boom years of the 1920's as did most stocks during this period. His readings never indicated the crash was coming and his clients never sold out and they eventually lost all their money.
Cayce maintained that the “five human races” were created separately and simultaneously but on different parts of the earth, a claim destroyed by Charles Darwin and molecular biology. He performed countless “life history” readings for numerous people and in every case they were famous well-known historical figures in their previous lives. Surely at least someone would have lived an ordinary existence in a former life such as a cook, stone mason, or bar maid.
In the case of his medical readings and prescribed treatments, they could be easily tested today. For example, epilepsy could be treated with a “dose of belladonna followed by a wrapping of a hot poultice made from the bark of a peach tree.” What rational person would volunteer for such a treatment for epilepsy? And what medical professional would treat tuberculosis with “fumes of apple brandy from a charred oak keg?” These procedures must be dismissed as dangerous quackery inflicted on desperate superstitious and ignorant people. Keep in mind that the standard model of medicine at the time was the homeopathic model. Many of Cayce’s trance-induced diagnoses were common homeopathic treatments and enjoy some success even in modern times.
Edgar Cayce life as a psychic was very predictable given his background. He was raised in a small Kentucky town where most of his family and neighbors were uneducated and superstitious and where encounters with the “spirit” world were common place. Intermarriage with close relatives and mental illness ran in his family. His father was an alcoholic. As a child he suffered a number of serious accidents including falling on a nail that penetrated into his brain.
The Edgar Cayce story says more about the people who believe it than it does about him. Con artists and mystics always have the ability to select vulnerable people who want to believe and are susceptible to various illusions and delusions. Not surprisingly Edgar practiced astrology, a completely proven hoax. But, even today millions believe in astrology and use it to make all their important decisions. Ronald and Nancy Reagan are notable examples.
Michael Shermer’s wonderful book, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time goes a long way in explaining the phenomenon of people’s belief in tales like the ones attributed to Edgar Cayce, Joseph Smith, and L. Ron Hubbard. In the future the field of neuroscience will provide even better explanations for these irrational beliefs.
Sources:
1. Edgar Cayce, An American Prophet (2000) by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick
2. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (1997) by Michael Shermer
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Proof of Heaven
Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon suffered a grand mal seizure in 2008 and was in a coma for seven days. After he regained consciousness, he claimed to have a clear memory of everything that he experienced while unconscious. His son advised him to write down a detailed account immediately while his memory was still fresh. He wanted to tell his story before he could be influenced by what others might think, especially the medical authorities. The result was his book, Proof of Heaven, A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife published in 2012.
Dr. Alexander described his first memory while in a coma as “Darkness, but a visible darkness–like being submerged in mud yet able to see through it.” He called it the “Realm of the Earthworm’s Eye View.” The “realm” smelled like feces, blood, and vomit and he was continuously rubbing against worm like creatures. Just as all seemed lost, he encountered a pure white light along with beautiful music and colors.
Although he had lost all perception of time, at some point he encountered a beautiful girl with “deep blue eyes” and “Golden-brown tresses” who would serve as his guide. For the “trip” they rode on the wing of a butterfly surrounded by millions of other amazing colorful butterflies. She spoke to him without using any words and gave him a message in three parts. First, “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.” Second, “You have nothing to fear.” And last, “There is nothing you can do wrong.” She also “told” him (again without any words) that eventually he would go back.
The format of the book was to alternate between the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the hospital where his body was residing and “heaven” where his spirit was visiting. This technique worked well and painted a vivid contrast between the world of science and medical technology that was keeping his body alive with the spirit world. This made the book very readable.
In the ICU doctors, nurses, and staff were struggling against an extremely dangerous threat to Eben’s life. It was determined that he was suffering from bacterial meningitis normally a death sentence with a 97% fatality rate. Doctors were totally baffled as to how he acquired the disease. Normally it is always the result of an injury to the spinal cord or some surgery that allowed the bacterial (E. coli) to enter the spinal fluid and attack the brain. The doctors called his situation “N of 1,” indicating his was the only case like this in history.
He was placed on a breathing ventilator, an IV of four of the most effective anti-bacterial drugs available, and numerous electronic monitoring devices. The only other thing that could be done was to wait and pray that the drugs would kill the E. coli bacteria before they destroyed his brain. Family members and friends maintained an around-the-clock bedside vigil holding his hand, imploring him to wake up, and reassuring him that he would he would recover. For every hour he remained in a coma his chance of survival was reduced dramatically.
After seven days the doctors gave up all hope and held a conference with his family and recommended suspension of all medical interventions. They warned that even if he came out of the coma, he would most likely be in a permanent vegetative state. Everyone was reluctantly in agreement except for Sylvia White. She was a longtime friend of his wife Holly and insisted on trying to revive him one more time. She went into his room and put her hand on his arm and was gently stroking it when his eyes opened. His first words were, “Thank you.” Dr. Alexander went on to make a complete mental and physical recovery.
Eben described his coma experiences as “The Core,” an encounter with the Divine. He makes more than thirty references to God or the Creator. At one point he calls him “Om” describing him as “a divine breeze,” a “higher vibration,” and a “dazzling darkness brimming with light.” He admits that he never actually saw God, and that God did not speak to him in words. Dr. Alexander realized that skeptics would use science and reason to explain his experiences as natural and not divine. He developed arguments to counter these anticipated attempts to explain what happened to him in a scientific way.
Eben uses two core arguments. First, consciousness is separate and independent from the brain (an old idea of duality). Second, once the neocortex of his brain was damaged, it would be impossible for him to experience what he recalled while in a coma. Since bacterial meningitis had destroyed his neocortex, his coma experiences had to take place in his conscious mind outside of his body and brain. In short he had a divine experience in Heaven with God.
I must remind the reader that Dr. Alexander is a neurosurgeon and not a neuroscientist. A neurosurgeon is to a neuroscientist what an automobile mechanic is to an automotive engineer. One does not need to understand all the technical details of how a combustion engine functions to repair it. The same is true about neurosurgeons. They do not need to understand all the technical details of neuroscience in order to operate and make “repairs.” This is not to suggest that neurosurgeons are not highly educated and skilled physicians who save the lives of thousands of patients every day. But it is to say that they spend most of their effort perfecting their surgical skills for operating on the brain. Neuroscientists in contrast spend all their time studying and researching how the brain functions. Most neuroscientists dispute Alexander’s claim that his experience was supernatural and proved the existence of God and heaven.
Even if you accept his premise that once the neocortex of his brain was damaged it would have been impossible for him to have had the experiences he had while in a coma, his conclusion that it was the result of a divine event does not follow. Since he did not have any concept of time while in a coma, his “divine” experience could have occurred before his neocortex was destroyed and obviously would be available for recall along with all his other memories. After all, he did make a full recovery without any lost of memory including his medical knowledge.
The reading list at the back of the book is very predictive of the book’s direction. For an example, consider the following titles: The Physics of Angels, The Mind of God, The Fingerprints of God, Evidence of Afterlife, and We Do Not Die Alone: Jesus Is Coming to Get Me in a White Pickup Truck. It is easy to see what audience Dr. Alexander had in mind for his book.
He employed all the usual tricks used by people attempting to protect faith from the constant and deadly attack from science. One example is to use as many Einstein quotes as possible in an attempt to give credibility by association rather than by solid scientific facts and logical arguments. Remember Einstein was a self-proclaimed deist and not a person of faith. And, of course he played the “Quantum Mechanics” card. I must remind the reader that quantum mechanics only applies to the micro (very small) world and no one has ever been able to demonstrate a quantum effect with any object larger than a “Buckyball,” a man-made item consisting of only forty atoms of carbon. Anytime Quantum Theory is used to explain some supernatural event, you can be certain that the advocate is going way out on the proverbially limb of improbability.
Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicists held the chair of the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1979 to 2009, a position once held by Isaac Newton. He is the author of many best-selling books and observed that references to God increases the sales of a book whereas the inclusion of mathematical equations decreases sales. Dr. Alexander applied the Hawking rule quite well. He invoked God and the Creator more than thirty times, and did not employ a single equation in his book. He even modified a well-known notation from “N = 1” to “N of 1.” Proof of Heaven was ranked #1 on a recent New York Times best-selling list. His publisher even managed to get the book on the front page of Newsweek Magazine in October 2012. The book will undoubtedly be a big money maker.
Dr. Sam Harris, a well-respected neuroscientist had the following to say about the book, “The evidence he provides for his claim (Proof of Heaven) is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science.” Harris points out that “Alexander makes no reference to functional data that might have been acquired by fMRI, PET, or EEG,” and could have been used to support his case. Dr. Mark Cohen, a pioneer in the field of neuroimaging said the following about Alexander’s experience, “This poetic interpretation of his experience is not supported by evidence of any kind.” My conclusion is that Dr. Alexander would have been better served by appealing to the power of faith leaving science to the scientists. I found his arguments for a divine experience weaker than the chicken soup made from the shadow of a starving chicken. In the words of Dorothy Parker, “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It is to be thrown with great force.”
Sources:
1. Proof of Heaven, A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (2012) by Dr. Eben Alexander
2. Blog, This Must be Heaven by Sam Harris
3. Bog: Epistemology, What is truth? by Needlefish Chronicles
Dr. Alexander described his first memory while in a coma as “Darkness, but a visible darkness–like being submerged in mud yet able to see through it.” He called it the “Realm of the Earthworm’s Eye View.” The “realm” smelled like feces, blood, and vomit and he was continuously rubbing against worm like creatures. Just as all seemed lost, he encountered a pure white light along with beautiful music and colors.
Although he had lost all perception of time, at some point he encountered a beautiful girl with “deep blue eyes” and “Golden-brown tresses” who would serve as his guide. For the “trip” they rode on the wing of a butterfly surrounded by millions of other amazing colorful butterflies. She spoke to him without using any words and gave him a message in three parts. First, “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.” Second, “You have nothing to fear.” And last, “There is nothing you can do wrong.” She also “told” him (again without any words) that eventually he would go back.
The format of the book was to alternate between the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the hospital where his body was residing and “heaven” where his spirit was visiting. This technique worked well and painted a vivid contrast between the world of science and medical technology that was keeping his body alive with the spirit world. This made the book very readable.
In the ICU doctors, nurses, and staff were struggling against an extremely dangerous threat to Eben’s life. It was determined that he was suffering from bacterial meningitis normally a death sentence with a 97% fatality rate. Doctors were totally baffled as to how he acquired the disease. Normally it is always the result of an injury to the spinal cord or some surgery that allowed the bacterial (E. coli) to enter the spinal fluid and attack the brain. The doctors called his situation “N of 1,” indicating his was the only case like this in history.
He was placed on a breathing ventilator, an IV of four of the most effective anti-bacterial drugs available, and numerous electronic monitoring devices. The only other thing that could be done was to wait and pray that the drugs would kill the E. coli bacteria before they destroyed his brain. Family members and friends maintained an around-the-clock bedside vigil holding his hand, imploring him to wake up, and reassuring him that he would he would recover. For every hour he remained in a coma his chance of survival was reduced dramatically.
After seven days the doctors gave up all hope and held a conference with his family and recommended suspension of all medical interventions. They warned that even if he came out of the coma, he would most likely be in a permanent vegetative state. Everyone was reluctantly in agreement except for Sylvia White. She was a longtime friend of his wife Holly and insisted on trying to revive him one more time. She went into his room and put her hand on his arm and was gently stroking it when his eyes opened. His first words were, “Thank you.” Dr. Alexander went on to make a complete mental and physical recovery.
Eben described his coma experiences as “The Core,” an encounter with the Divine. He makes more than thirty references to God or the Creator. At one point he calls him “Om” describing him as “a divine breeze,” a “higher vibration,” and a “dazzling darkness brimming with light.” He admits that he never actually saw God, and that God did not speak to him in words. Dr. Alexander realized that skeptics would use science and reason to explain his experiences as natural and not divine. He developed arguments to counter these anticipated attempts to explain what happened to him in a scientific way.
Eben uses two core arguments. First, consciousness is separate and independent from the brain (an old idea of duality). Second, once the neocortex of his brain was damaged, it would be impossible for him to experience what he recalled while in a coma. Since bacterial meningitis had destroyed his neocortex, his coma experiences had to take place in his conscious mind outside of his body and brain. In short he had a divine experience in Heaven with God.
I must remind the reader that Dr. Alexander is a neurosurgeon and not a neuroscientist. A neurosurgeon is to a neuroscientist what an automobile mechanic is to an automotive engineer. One does not need to understand all the technical details of how a combustion engine functions to repair it. The same is true about neurosurgeons. They do not need to understand all the technical details of neuroscience in order to operate and make “repairs.” This is not to suggest that neurosurgeons are not highly educated and skilled physicians who save the lives of thousands of patients every day. But it is to say that they spend most of their effort perfecting their surgical skills for operating on the brain. Neuroscientists in contrast spend all their time studying and researching how the brain functions. Most neuroscientists dispute Alexander’s claim that his experience was supernatural and proved the existence of God and heaven.
Even if you accept his premise that once the neocortex of his brain was damaged it would have been impossible for him to have had the experiences he had while in a coma, his conclusion that it was the result of a divine event does not follow. Since he did not have any concept of time while in a coma, his “divine” experience could have occurred before his neocortex was destroyed and obviously would be available for recall along with all his other memories. After all, he did make a full recovery without any lost of memory including his medical knowledge.
The reading list at the back of the book is very predictive of the book’s direction. For an example, consider the following titles: The Physics of Angels, The Mind of God, The Fingerprints of God, Evidence of Afterlife, and We Do Not Die Alone: Jesus Is Coming to Get Me in a White Pickup Truck. It is easy to see what audience Dr. Alexander had in mind for his book.
He employed all the usual tricks used by people attempting to protect faith from the constant and deadly attack from science. One example is to use as many Einstein quotes as possible in an attempt to give credibility by association rather than by solid scientific facts and logical arguments. Remember Einstein was a self-proclaimed deist and not a person of faith. And, of course he played the “Quantum Mechanics” card. I must remind the reader that quantum mechanics only applies to the micro (very small) world and no one has ever been able to demonstrate a quantum effect with any object larger than a “Buckyball,” a man-made item consisting of only forty atoms of carbon. Anytime Quantum Theory is used to explain some supernatural event, you can be certain that the advocate is going way out on the proverbially limb of improbability.
Stephen Hawking, a theoretical physicists held the chair of the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1979 to 2009, a position once held by Isaac Newton. He is the author of many best-selling books and observed that references to God increases the sales of a book whereas the inclusion of mathematical equations decreases sales. Dr. Alexander applied the Hawking rule quite well. He invoked God and the Creator more than thirty times, and did not employ a single equation in his book. He even modified a well-known notation from “N = 1” to “N of 1.” Proof of Heaven was ranked #1 on a recent New York Times best-selling list. His publisher even managed to get the book on the front page of Newsweek Magazine in October 2012. The book will undoubtedly be a big money maker.
Dr. Sam Harris, a well-respected neuroscientist had the following to say about the book, “The evidence he provides for his claim (Proof of Heaven) is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science.” Harris points out that “Alexander makes no reference to functional data that might have been acquired by fMRI, PET, or EEG,” and could have been used to support his case. Dr. Mark Cohen, a pioneer in the field of neuroimaging said the following about Alexander’s experience, “This poetic interpretation of his experience is not supported by evidence of any kind.” My conclusion is that Dr. Alexander would have been better served by appealing to the power of faith leaving science to the scientists. I found his arguments for a divine experience weaker than the chicken soup made from the shadow of a starving chicken. In the words of Dorothy Parker, “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It is to be thrown with great force.”
Sources:
1. Proof of Heaven, A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (2012) by Dr. Eben Alexander
2. Blog, This Must be Heaven by Sam Harris
3. Bog: Epistemology, What is truth? by Needlefish Chronicles
Saturday, February 16, 2013
The Passover Plot
The virgin birth of Christ and his crucifixion and resurrection constitutes the core of Christian doctrine and its acceptance is mandatory for all Christians. Seventy-three percent of all Americans claim to be Christians and accept Christian doctrine without question. There is however considerable historical evidence indicating that key elements of the story including the crucifixion are not true.
Hugh J. Schonfield, a distinguished and respected biblical scholar presented the following historical facts concerning Roman crucifixion laws, customs, and procedures in his 1965 book, The Passover Plot:
1. It had to be for a crime against Rome and was normally political in nature.
2. It was conducted publicly with large crowds of people in attendance.
3. It was against the law to remove a crucifixion victim from the cross for burial.
4. It was not the Romans’ custom to spare any prisoner’s life on the Passover.
5. It takes two to seven days for to die by crucifixion.
6. When vinegar is given to a weakened and dehydrated person such as someone being crucified, it “revives” them or gives them a short increase in energy or vitality.
7. The final step in the crucifixion procedure was to break the legs of the condemned person.
How does the New Testament’s story of the crucifixion of Christ compare to the above stated procedure? First, there is not any indication that Jesus violated any Roman law that could result in a sentence of crucifixion. And if the Jews wanted him dead, they could have charged him with heresy and he would have been stoned to death. Second, most scholars believe that he was crucified at Gethsemane, a private garden owned by Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple. Third, Pontius Pilate released Jesus’s body to Joseph of Arimathea. Fourth, as stated, the Romans never had a custom of sparing anyone’s life on the Passover. Fifth, Jesus was only on the cross two hours. Sixth, when asked for something to drink and was allegedly given vinegar and after he drank it, he “gave up the ghost,” instead of experiencing the normal and expected temporary revival or burst of energy. Seventh, they did not break Jesus’s legs at the end as was the Roman custom at that time.
The conclusion is obvious that Jesus was not crucified in the normal manner. Many Bible scholars and historians believe that his crucifixion was a hoax. Instead of giving Christ vinegar on the cross he was given belladonna which knocked him out making him appear dead. Afterwards, Joseph of Arimathea persuaded Pilate to release Jesus’ body to him for internment in his private tomb. Later it was an easy matter to stage his resurrection.
According to Michael Baigent in his book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Father Berenger Saunier discovered an ancient parchment document in 1891 at Rennes-le-Chateau, France hidden in the altar at his church. It indicated that Christ did not die on the cross but in fact lived to be at least 80 years of age, married, and fathered children thus leaving behind descendants. In 2012 Karen Leigh King, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Harvard Divinity School deciphered a papyrus fragment written in Coptic which reads “Jesus said to them, 'My wife...” Her finding was taken seriously enough by the Vatican to declare it a fake.
In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd discovered ancient writings in what was then Jordan (the Dead Sea Scrolls) causing Christian apologists and defenders even more problems concerning the historical veracity of the King James’ version of the New Testament. In 1958, the “missing” fragment of the Gospel of Mark was found which contradicted John’s version of the raising of Lazarus from the dead essentially saying that it did not happen. Mark also failed to make any reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Apparently the resurrection was added to Mark’s Gospel by editors back in the fourth century. It should be noted that the Vatican has controlled the excavation, interpretation, and publishing of any resulting work concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In 1960, Pope John XXIII issued an apostolic letter titled “the precious blood of Jesus” that altered the basic tenet of Catholicism concerning the redemption and salvation of man. In this letter, Pope John XXIII stated that redemption is the result of the shedding of Jesus’s blood and is not dependent on his death and resurrection. If the Pope had proof that Jesus did not die on the cross, then he could use his authority as the final arbitrator of theological issues relating to faith and morals to simply change the doctrine to adapt to any historical record threatening church doctrine. This is the concept of the “infallibility” which claims that the Pope has divine guidance concerning matters of faith and morals and cannot be in error. One does not need to accept this notion to realize that Pope John XXIII did not change basic Catholic doctrine casually. At the very least it suggests that he had good reason to believe that Jesus did not die on the cross.
In light of all of this plus variously contradictions and differences in the four Gospels’ accounts of the resurrection, the conclusion is inevitable and that is the crucifixion of Jesus was a hoax. The Vatican obliviously knows this, otherwise Pope John XXIII would not have published his apostolic letter “the precious blood of Jesus.”
There is also considerable evidence available that Christ was not “crucified” on a cross. According to the Anglican theologian Bullinger, the word “cross” was translated from the Greek word “stauros” which never implied two pieces of wood placed across each other at any angle. The word “stauros” is best translated as a stake or pole. Many years ago my next-door neighbors, a Jewish family of five including three children nearing their teenage years vacationed to Russia where they spend one month taking in many historical sites including a number of old Russian Orthodox Churches such as the one located in St. Petersburg. The father related the reaction of his young children when they first witnessed the large depictions of Jesus on the Cross that adorned the church walls. They were shocked and horrified at the brutality and ugliness being portrayed. George Carlin asked the question, “If Christ had been killed in an electric chair, would Christians wear a replica of an electric chair around their neck today?”
Sources:
1. The Passover Plot (1965) by Hugh J. Schonfield
2. Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln
3. The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991) by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
4. The Crucifixion Hoax (Blog) by Abdullah Smith
5. The Gospel Truth (Blog) by Needlefish Chronicles
Hugh J. Schonfield, a distinguished and respected biblical scholar presented the following historical facts concerning Roman crucifixion laws, customs, and procedures in his 1965 book, The Passover Plot:
1. It had to be for a crime against Rome and was normally political in nature.
2. It was conducted publicly with large crowds of people in attendance.
3. It was against the law to remove a crucifixion victim from the cross for burial.
4. It was not the Romans’ custom to spare any prisoner’s life on the Passover.
5. It takes two to seven days for to die by crucifixion.
6. When vinegar is given to a weakened and dehydrated person such as someone being crucified, it “revives” them or gives them a short increase in energy or vitality.
7. The final step in the crucifixion procedure was to break the legs of the condemned person.
How does the New Testament’s story of the crucifixion of Christ compare to the above stated procedure? First, there is not any indication that Jesus violated any Roman law that could result in a sentence of crucifixion. And if the Jews wanted him dead, they could have charged him with heresy and he would have been stoned to death. Second, most scholars believe that he was crucified at Gethsemane, a private garden owned by Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple. Third, Pontius Pilate released Jesus’s body to Joseph of Arimathea. Fourth, as stated, the Romans never had a custom of sparing anyone’s life on the Passover. Fifth, Jesus was only on the cross two hours. Sixth, when asked for something to drink and was allegedly given vinegar and after he drank it, he “gave up the ghost,” instead of experiencing the normal and expected temporary revival or burst of energy. Seventh, they did not break Jesus’s legs at the end as was the Roman custom at that time.
The conclusion is obvious that Jesus was not crucified in the normal manner. Many Bible scholars and historians believe that his crucifixion was a hoax. Instead of giving Christ vinegar on the cross he was given belladonna which knocked him out making him appear dead. Afterwards, Joseph of Arimathea persuaded Pilate to release Jesus’ body to him for internment in his private tomb. Later it was an easy matter to stage his resurrection.
According to Michael Baigent in his book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Father Berenger Saunier discovered an ancient parchment document in 1891 at Rennes-le-Chateau, France hidden in the altar at his church. It indicated that Christ did not die on the cross but in fact lived to be at least 80 years of age, married, and fathered children thus leaving behind descendants. In 2012 Karen Leigh King, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Harvard Divinity School deciphered a papyrus fragment written in Coptic which reads “Jesus said to them, 'My wife...” Her finding was taken seriously enough by the Vatican to declare it a fake.
In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd discovered ancient writings in what was then Jordan (the Dead Sea Scrolls) causing Christian apologists and defenders even more problems concerning the historical veracity of the King James’ version of the New Testament. In 1958, the “missing” fragment of the Gospel of Mark was found which contradicted John’s version of the raising of Lazarus from the dead essentially saying that it did not happen. Mark also failed to make any reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Apparently the resurrection was added to Mark’s Gospel by editors back in the fourth century. It should be noted that the Vatican has controlled the excavation, interpretation, and publishing of any resulting work concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In 1960, Pope John XXIII issued an apostolic letter titled “the precious blood of Jesus” that altered the basic tenet of Catholicism concerning the redemption and salvation of man. In this letter, Pope John XXIII stated that redemption is the result of the shedding of Jesus’s blood and is not dependent on his death and resurrection. If the Pope had proof that Jesus did not die on the cross, then he could use his authority as the final arbitrator of theological issues relating to faith and morals to simply change the doctrine to adapt to any historical record threatening church doctrine. This is the concept of the “infallibility” which claims that the Pope has divine guidance concerning matters of faith and morals and cannot be in error. One does not need to accept this notion to realize that Pope John XXIII did not change basic Catholic doctrine casually. At the very least it suggests that he had good reason to believe that Jesus did not die on the cross.
In light of all of this plus variously contradictions and differences in the four Gospels’ accounts of the resurrection, the conclusion is inevitable and that is the crucifixion of Jesus was a hoax. The Vatican obliviously knows this, otherwise Pope John XXIII would not have published his apostolic letter “the precious blood of Jesus.”
There is also considerable evidence available that Christ was not “crucified” on a cross. According to the Anglican theologian Bullinger, the word “cross” was translated from the Greek word “stauros” which never implied two pieces of wood placed across each other at any angle. The word “stauros” is best translated as a stake or pole. Many years ago my next-door neighbors, a Jewish family of five including three children nearing their teenage years vacationed to Russia where they spend one month taking in many historical sites including a number of old Russian Orthodox Churches such as the one located in St. Petersburg. The father related the reaction of his young children when they first witnessed the large depictions of Jesus on the Cross that adorned the church walls. They were shocked and horrified at the brutality and ugliness being portrayed. George Carlin asked the question, “If Christ had been killed in an electric chair, would Christians wear a replica of an electric chair around their neck today?”
Sources:
1. The Passover Plot (1965) by Hugh J. Schonfield
2. Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln
3. The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991) by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
4. The Crucifixion Hoax (Blog) by Abdullah Smith
5. The Gospel Truth (Blog) by Needlefish Chronicles
Monday, January 28, 2013
The Gospel Truth
Note: All dates in this Blog are CE “common eras” which are equivalent to AD.
The New Testament is the result of the efforts of fourth century politicians, church leaders, and editors all with vested interests to protect and advance. To understand what happened, it is necessary to carefully review its history. After Jesus “departed” the historical scene, various writings appeared some 30 to 75 years after the fact and were attributed to various people. Prior to that the New Testament history was oral, passed on from one person to another. After these oral histories were recorded, thousands of handwritten copies existed in various languages. These writings were translated from Greek to Latin and eventually to German, English and other languages. In all language translations, original intentions and meanings can be distorted or loss. For example when the Hebrew word “messiah” was translated to Greek it became “christos” or in English, Christ. Another example is the Hebrew word “almah” meaning a young unmarried woman was translated to the Greek word “parthenos” for virgin.
Some time in and around the year 36 early “Christians” were divided into two major factions with separate objectives. The first group was primarily political interested in maintaining the “right to the throne,” claiming that Jesus was the Messiah and a descendant of the House of David. The second, the “message” group was interested in establishing a religion and church based on the life of Christ as a deity. This second group was eventually dominated by Saul of Tarsus (5 - 67) who was also known as the Apostle Paul, the most influential early Christian.
The King James’ version of the New Testament is for the most part the result of a political process more than a theological or historical one. Early Christian word of mouth accounts were eventually reduced to writing by those without any first hand knowledge about the events they were writing about. Please keep in mind that Paul was born after Christ died and obviously never met him. Yet he wrote thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, which is about 32% of the text. It is important to also remember that for the most part the disciples were illiterate, ignorant fishermen who spoke Aramaic. Therefore it is not surprising that there is an honest historical dispute over who wrote what. If all of this is not enough to question New Testament’s veracity, the Emperor Diocletian destroyed almost all of the “original” written sources in the year 303.
By the year 325 (almost three-hundred years after his death) the issue of the nature of Christ was so much in doubt that the Council of Nicaea had to decide the matter by a vote. In the same year the Roman Emperor Constantine, a pagan follower of Sol Invictus (the sun God), “embraced” Christianity for political reasons as a means of consolidating his power by bringing Christians into the fold in an attempt to unify the Roman Empire. Constantine himself was not baptized until shortly before his death causing many Bible scholars to seriously doubt the sincerity of his conversion to Christianity. Interestingly, he changed Jesus’s birth date from January 8 to December 25 (the birth date of Sol Invictus) Remember that on average December 25 is the first day of winter to have more daylight than the day before and of course was an important issue to sun worshipers. It is ironic that every Christmas, Christians cry out to put Christ back into Christmas without realizing that it was Sol Invictus not Christ that had been ousted.
When in the year 331 Constantine ordered and financed the publishing of the New Testament, Christian leaders such as Bishop Athanasius and Saint Augustine were presented with the perfect opportunity to rewrite history to fit their agenda, and they took full advantage of their chance. As a result many texts were omitted, modified, or outright changed. Athanasius compiled a list of what material was to be included in the New Testament in the year 367. Excluded as not being canonical was the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Judas. Some scholars, based on references in ancient texts, believe that there were as many as twelve other gospels that have been lost or destroyed. The Council of Hippo and Saint Augustine approved Athanasius’ work in 393 resulting in the King James Bible.
The matter would have probably been settled except for the fact that Diocletian’s efforts to rid the world of all the early Church writings were not entirely successful. Apparently monks at various remote monasteries disobeyed orders to surrender their treasured holy writings and instead hid them in various ways. In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd discovered ancient writings in what was then Jordan called the Dead Sea Scrolls. This caused Christian apologists and defenders even more problems concerning the historical veracity of the King James Bible.
In 1958 the “missing” fragment of the Gospel of Mark was found which contradicts John’s version of the raising of Lazarus from the dead essentially saying that it did not happen. Mark also failed to make any reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Apparently the resurrection was added to Mark’s Gospel by editors back in the fourth century. It should be noted that the Vatican has controlled the excavation, interpretation, and publishing of any resulting work concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Since the Bible (the Old and New Testament) is presented as the history of the Jewish people and the life and death of Christ, it is only natural that it would command the interest of historians. They, of course, brought the tools and procedures of their profession with them. These tools included various means of determining the accuracy of any historical record. Historians distinguish between primary and secondary sources. A primary source is one where the author personally witnessed the events under consideration. A secondary source is one who did not personally witness an event but is relying on someone else claiming personal knowledge. In the legal world, secondary sources are called “hear say” and with a few careful exceptions are not allowed.
Sources can also be classified as known, unknown, or anonymous. Of course the most reliable sources are known primary sources. In the case of the King James Bible the authorship of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is in serious dispute. Most scholars believe that all the Gospels are based on Mark and most likely were not written by him. These unknown writers relied on oral histories that had been circulating in the area for many years. There is little or no evidence that the authors of the Gospels were known or primary sources of the information.
The degree that different accounts of any historical event are in agreement is very important to historians in determining their accuracy. In the case of the four Gospels there are sufficient factual differences to cause suspicion about their authenticity. For example, Mark did not report any appearances of the raised Jesus whereas the others provide three different accounts of Jesus' appearances after his resurrection. John 7:42 says that Christ was from the town of Bethlehem but Luke 1:26 cites Nazareth as his birth place. There are enough significant differences between the four Gospels to seriously question their value as reliable historical evidence.
Objectivity is another important consideration when evaluating historical writings. It is unreasonable to think that the authors of the New Testament would be objective. With this in mind historians are very interested in what secular historians wrote concerning the same period of time. In fact, they said very little and what is more significant is what they did not report. For example, Matthew 27:52 describes a mass resurrection of many saints at the same time as the resurrection of Christ. In his words, “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” By anyone’s standards the resurrection of many long dead persons would be a most newsworthy story that would get passed along and eventually find its way into the records of historians of the time. However, this extraordinary event was not mentioned by any historian of the time.
The credibility of the King James’ version of the New Testament would be greatly enhanced if the writings of the leading historians of the time referenced events mentioned in the Gospels. However, support for the Gospels’ narrative of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is both scant and oblique in the writings of contemporary secular historians.
Christian apologists are fond of citing the works of Flavius Josephus in support of the historical accuracy of the Bible. Flavius was a first century Jewish-Roman historian who even fought against the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War. He was the leader of Jewish forces in Galilee until surrendering in 67 to Roman forces. His two most important writings were, The Jewish War (75) and Antiquities of the Jews (94). The Jewish War is his account of the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation from the years 66 to 70 whereas the Antiquities of the Jews recounts the persecution of the Jews by the Romans. According to John Remsburg, as quoted by Kenneth Harding, modern versions of the Antiquities of the Jews contains the following passage:
"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
Josephus was a renowned Jewish historian, a native of Judea, and a contemporary of the Apostles. He was also a prolific chronicler of persons and events of the first seventy years of the Christian era. It is strange that in his first book, The Jewish War written in the year 75, there is not any mention of Christ but the Antiquities of the Jews (a twenty-volume tone) written almost twenty years later “contains” the definitive passage cited above supporting the Gospels. The passage cited is obviously Christian in tone. It is also extremely brief in contrast to Josephus’ voluminous and exhaustive style. In one case he devoted almost forty chapters to the life of just one king. He wrote pages on petty robbers and obscure leaders of the time, but who could believe that he only wrote one paragraph about Christ? According to Kenneth Harding and other scholars it is a blatant Christian forgery that was added to the Antiquities of the Jews many years later.
New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, a James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of four New York Times bestsellers, concurs saying that there are not any reliable historical accounts of the life and resurrection of Christ. Thomas Paine, one of the heroes of the American Revolution, wrote “the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which parts to believe or whether any.”
Of course the underlying “truths” of any document does not rest entirely on the judgements of historians and scholars. One can read and enjoy Shakespeare and gain valuable insights on human nature without actually knowing who he or she actually was. Christianity like all religions can be evaluated based on two criteria: Are they true and are they beneficial? In the words of Matthew 7:20 “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” Questions about the usefulness or morality of the fruits of the tree of Christianity is a subject for another time.
From the earliest days of the Christian church there has always been two ways of reading the Bible, literally and allegorically. Saint Jerome suggested a literal interpretation for the illiterate masses and an allegorical one for more advanced minds. Evangelical Christians (especially in the United States) insist that the Bible is literally true. They are so strong and dogmatic in their belief that they devote enormous time and expense in denying evolution and insisting on teaching Creationism (as spelled out in Genesis) in schools as an alternative to evolution. They apparently have forgotten the words of Augustine who said “it would be hard to convince rational men to follow a religion that denied things one could see for oneself.”
Voltaire once said that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Later Karl Marx claimed that “Man makes religion, religion does not make man.” For me the conclusion is inevitable; all the evidence and reason strongly suggest that Christianity like all religions is man made.
Sources:
1. The Rocks Don’t Lie (2012) by David Montgomery
2. A History of God (1993) by Karen Armstrong
3. The Evolution of God (2009) by Robert Wright
4. The Gnostic Gospels (1979) by Elaine Pagels
5. The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991) by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
6. Do Any First Century Historians Mention the Jesus of Christianity? by Kenneth Harding (2002)
The New Testament is the result of the efforts of fourth century politicians, church leaders, and editors all with vested interests to protect and advance. To understand what happened, it is necessary to carefully review its history. After Jesus “departed” the historical scene, various writings appeared some 30 to 75 years after the fact and were attributed to various people. Prior to that the New Testament history was oral, passed on from one person to another. After these oral histories were recorded, thousands of handwritten copies existed in various languages. These writings were translated from Greek to Latin and eventually to German, English and other languages. In all language translations, original intentions and meanings can be distorted or loss. For example when the Hebrew word “messiah” was translated to Greek it became “christos” or in English, Christ. Another example is the Hebrew word “almah” meaning a young unmarried woman was translated to the Greek word “parthenos” for virgin.
Some time in and around the year 36 early “Christians” were divided into two major factions with separate objectives. The first group was primarily political interested in maintaining the “right to the throne,” claiming that Jesus was the Messiah and a descendant of the House of David. The second, the “message” group was interested in establishing a religion and church based on the life of Christ as a deity. This second group was eventually dominated by Saul of Tarsus (5 - 67) who was also known as the Apostle Paul, the most influential early Christian.
The King James’ version of the New Testament is for the most part the result of a political process more than a theological or historical one. Early Christian word of mouth accounts were eventually reduced to writing by those without any first hand knowledge about the events they were writing about. Please keep in mind that Paul was born after Christ died and obviously never met him. Yet he wrote thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, which is about 32% of the text. It is important to also remember that for the most part the disciples were illiterate, ignorant fishermen who spoke Aramaic. Therefore it is not surprising that there is an honest historical dispute over who wrote what. If all of this is not enough to question New Testament’s veracity, the Emperor Diocletian destroyed almost all of the “original” written sources in the year 303.
By the year 325 (almost three-hundred years after his death) the issue of the nature of Christ was so much in doubt that the Council of Nicaea had to decide the matter by a vote. In the same year the Roman Emperor Constantine, a pagan follower of Sol Invictus (the sun God), “embraced” Christianity for political reasons as a means of consolidating his power by bringing Christians into the fold in an attempt to unify the Roman Empire. Constantine himself was not baptized until shortly before his death causing many Bible scholars to seriously doubt the sincerity of his conversion to Christianity. Interestingly, he changed Jesus’s birth date from January 8 to December 25 (the birth date of Sol Invictus) Remember that on average December 25 is the first day of winter to have more daylight than the day before and of course was an important issue to sun worshipers. It is ironic that every Christmas, Christians cry out to put Christ back into Christmas without realizing that it was Sol Invictus not Christ that had been ousted.
When in the year 331 Constantine ordered and financed the publishing of the New Testament, Christian leaders such as Bishop Athanasius and Saint Augustine were presented with the perfect opportunity to rewrite history to fit their agenda, and they took full advantage of their chance. As a result many texts were omitted, modified, or outright changed. Athanasius compiled a list of what material was to be included in the New Testament in the year 367. Excluded as not being canonical was the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Judas. Some scholars, based on references in ancient texts, believe that there were as many as twelve other gospels that have been lost or destroyed. The Council of Hippo and Saint Augustine approved Athanasius’ work in 393 resulting in the King James Bible.
The matter would have probably been settled except for the fact that Diocletian’s efforts to rid the world of all the early Church writings were not entirely successful. Apparently monks at various remote monasteries disobeyed orders to surrender their treasured holy writings and instead hid them in various ways. In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd discovered ancient writings in what was then Jordan called the Dead Sea Scrolls. This caused Christian apologists and defenders even more problems concerning the historical veracity of the King James Bible.
In 1958 the “missing” fragment of the Gospel of Mark was found which contradicts John’s version of the raising of Lazarus from the dead essentially saying that it did not happen. Mark also failed to make any reference to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Apparently the resurrection was added to Mark’s Gospel by editors back in the fourth century. It should be noted that the Vatican has controlled the excavation, interpretation, and publishing of any resulting work concerning the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Since the Bible (the Old and New Testament) is presented as the history of the Jewish people and the life and death of Christ, it is only natural that it would command the interest of historians. They, of course, brought the tools and procedures of their profession with them. These tools included various means of determining the accuracy of any historical record. Historians distinguish between primary and secondary sources. A primary source is one where the author personally witnessed the events under consideration. A secondary source is one who did not personally witness an event but is relying on someone else claiming personal knowledge. In the legal world, secondary sources are called “hear say” and with a few careful exceptions are not allowed.
Sources can also be classified as known, unknown, or anonymous. Of course the most reliable sources are known primary sources. In the case of the King James Bible the authorship of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is in serious dispute. Most scholars believe that all the Gospels are based on Mark and most likely were not written by him. These unknown writers relied on oral histories that had been circulating in the area for many years. There is little or no evidence that the authors of the Gospels were known or primary sources of the information.
The degree that different accounts of any historical event are in agreement is very important to historians in determining their accuracy. In the case of the four Gospels there are sufficient factual differences to cause suspicion about their authenticity. For example, Mark did not report any appearances of the raised Jesus whereas the others provide three different accounts of Jesus' appearances after his resurrection. John 7:42 says that Christ was from the town of Bethlehem but Luke 1:26 cites Nazareth as his birth place. There are enough significant differences between the four Gospels to seriously question their value as reliable historical evidence.
Objectivity is another important consideration when evaluating historical writings. It is unreasonable to think that the authors of the New Testament would be objective. With this in mind historians are very interested in what secular historians wrote concerning the same period of time. In fact, they said very little and what is more significant is what they did not report. For example, Matthew 27:52 describes a mass resurrection of many saints at the same time as the resurrection of Christ. In his words, “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” By anyone’s standards the resurrection of many long dead persons would be a most newsworthy story that would get passed along and eventually find its way into the records of historians of the time. However, this extraordinary event was not mentioned by any historian of the time.
The credibility of the King James’ version of the New Testament would be greatly enhanced if the writings of the leading historians of the time referenced events mentioned in the Gospels. However, support for the Gospels’ narrative of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ is both scant and oblique in the writings of contemporary secular historians.
Christian apologists are fond of citing the works of Flavius Josephus in support of the historical accuracy of the Bible. Flavius was a first century Jewish-Roman historian who even fought against the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War. He was the leader of Jewish forces in Galilee until surrendering in 67 to Roman forces. His two most important writings were, The Jewish War (75) and Antiquities of the Jews (94). The Jewish War is his account of the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation from the years 66 to 70 whereas the Antiquities of the Jews recounts the persecution of the Jews by the Romans. According to John Remsburg, as quoted by Kenneth Harding, modern versions of the Antiquities of the Jews contains the following passage:
"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
Josephus was a renowned Jewish historian, a native of Judea, and a contemporary of the Apostles. He was also a prolific chronicler of persons and events of the first seventy years of the Christian era. It is strange that in his first book, The Jewish War written in the year 75, there is not any mention of Christ but the Antiquities of the Jews (a twenty-volume tone) written almost twenty years later “contains” the definitive passage cited above supporting the Gospels. The passage cited is obviously Christian in tone. It is also extremely brief in contrast to Josephus’ voluminous and exhaustive style. In one case he devoted almost forty chapters to the life of just one king. He wrote pages on petty robbers and obscure leaders of the time, but who could believe that he only wrote one paragraph about Christ? According to Kenneth Harding and other scholars it is a blatant Christian forgery that was added to the Antiquities of the Jews many years later.
New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, a James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of four New York Times bestsellers, concurs saying that there are not any reliable historical accounts of the life and resurrection of Christ. Thomas Paine, one of the heroes of the American Revolution, wrote “the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which parts to believe or whether any.”
Of course the underlying “truths” of any document does not rest entirely on the judgements of historians and scholars. One can read and enjoy Shakespeare and gain valuable insights on human nature without actually knowing who he or she actually was. Christianity like all religions can be evaluated based on two criteria: Are they true and are they beneficial? In the words of Matthew 7:20 “Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” Questions about the usefulness or morality of the fruits of the tree of Christianity is a subject for another time.
From the earliest days of the Christian church there has always been two ways of reading the Bible, literally and allegorically. Saint Jerome suggested a literal interpretation for the illiterate masses and an allegorical one for more advanced minds. Evangelical Christians (especially in the United States) insist that the Bible is literally true. They are so strong and dogmatic in their belief that they devote enormous time and expense in denying evolution and insisting on teaching Creationism (as spelled out in Genesis) in schools as an alternative to evolution. They apparently have forgotten the words of Augustine who said “it would be hard to convince rational men to follow a religion that denied things one could see for oneself.”
Voltaire once said that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” Later Karl Marx claimed that “Man makes religion, religion does not make man.” For me the conclusion is inevitable; all the evidence and reason strongly suggest that Christianity like all religions is man made.
Sources:
1. The Rocks Don’t Lie (2012) by David Montgomery
2. A History of God (1993) by Karen Armstrong
3. The Evolution of God (2009) by Robert Wright
4. The Gnostic Gospels (1979) by Elaine Pagels
5. The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception (1991) by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh
6. Do Any First Century Historians Mention the Jesus of Christianity? by Kenneth Harding (2002)
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Epistemology, What is truth?
“Truth” is a difficult word to define. According to the dictionary it is defined as “a statement proven to be acceptable or true.” This is an example of arguing in a circle by claiming truth is something that is true. To avoid the various pitfalls inherent in defining abstractions, the following classification system of truths will be employed:
Absolute truth
Scientific truth
Legal truth
Authoritative truth
Intuitive truth
Faith-based truth
Absolute truth is also called mathematical truth. The method for determining mathematical truth is to the start out with a conjecture and then demonstrate by a series of logical steps that the conjecture is true. Once a conjecture is proven, it becomes a theorem and can then be used to prove other conjectures. Thus a mathematical proof is series of steps relying on theorems, mathematical logic, and axioms to show that some conjecture is true. Every step in the series must be true. Each step is like a link in a chain; break one link in the chain and entire chain fails.
Axioms are mathematical propositions that have not been proven, but are accepted to be self-evident. It has always been offensive to some mathematicians to admit that some fundamental proposition vital to the field had to be thought of as self-evident rather than proven along with all the other theorems. David Hilbert (1862 - 1943), a German mathematician, took on the task of proving all the axioms (Hilbert’s program), but Kurt Godel (1906 - 1978), an Austrian-American logician, proved by his two incompleteness theorems that there are propositions that are true but cannot be proven. To this extent, one must concede that there is always some element of uncertainty even in mathematics. Anecdotally speaking, it can be argued that axioms must be true since they are the foundation of the house of proven mathematics and the house has not collapsed. In conclusion, once a theorem is proved, it is proved forever and is not subject to change.
A scientific truth is an idea or proposition that has been vetted through a process called the scientific method and found to be true. Stated differently, it is a proposed explanation for some observable facts. After it is proven true based on the evidence, it is promoted to theory. Scientific theory is a proven hypothesis. As such, it is the highest level of certainty that can be achieved by science. The theory of relativity and the theory of gravity are two well-known scientific theories. Sometimes a theory is called law, as in the law of gravity.
Unfortunately, the word “theory” has a different meaning when used by lay people. In everyday speech John might say, “I have a theory that Mary wants to date me.” In this sense it is a suspicion, a feeling, or at best some conjecture (or hope). If someone says the “evolution is only a theory,” this is equivalent to saying “Mary only won a gold medal at the Olympics.” If someone thinks that there is a higher award than the gold medal in the Olympics, then they are ignorant of the facts. If they are aware of the facts and still persist in claiming “Mary only won a gold medal,” they are being dishonest. To say that some scientific fact is only a theory is to say that it is only the highest level of truth obtainable in science, and indicates the author of the statement is either ignorant or dishonest. Still, even with the high level of confidence that scientific theories are held, there is almost always some degree of uncertainty. This is the major difference between science and dogma.
The process of proving any given hypothesis uses two logical methods, inductive logic and deductive logic. The inductive method is a “bottom up” method in as much as it starts at the bottom by making observations and/or conducting experiments. Deductive logic starts with existing theories and then deduces from them some hypothesis which is then proved or disproved by observations and experiments.
A hypothesis is a formally developed idea backed by supporting data with sufficient credibility to gain the attention of the accepted authorities in the field of inquiry and is now ready for vetting or peer review. A hypothesis must also make some predictions that can be independently verified by someone else. The results are written as a paper and then submitted to the editors of a technical publication devoted to the field of interest most closely related to the subject under consideration. All major fields of interest have many professional organizations such as the American Institute of Physics, which in turn publish a number of journals such as Applied Physics Review. At any rate, the first challenge for a hopeful hypothesis is acceptance for publication. The editors do not want to risk their standing in the field by publishing some idea that is then proven to be false or worse yet lacks any serious merit or consideration. These editors normally use a group of experts to critically review submissions and if they feel that the hypothesis has merit it is then published.
Now the hypothesis undergoes major vetting. Scientists and other experts around the world will read the paper and, of course, vigorously challenge both the methods, data, and conclusions. These people are by nature skeptical of anything new. There is also considerable ego and personal jealousy involved. The more radical the idea is the more it will be resisted. Radical in this context refers to what extent the idea is in opposition to some widely long-held truth. It has been said that one of the most important ingredients of scientific advancement is the death of older scientists.
Early natural philosophers (now called scientists) understood that sound is a wave propagated through the atmosphere by bouncing off the molecules of the gasses that make up air. This was easily demonstrated by securing a bell inside a glass jar, and then tightening the lid on the jar. Shake the jar and the bell rings. If all the air is removed from the jar, a vacuum is created. Now if the jar is shaken, the bell will not ring. It actually still “rings” but without the medium of air the sound of the bell cannot be propagated.
Given the way sound works, it seemed reasonable to conjecture that light (also a wave) must have some medium for light to propagate itself through the atmosphere and through space. After all, at night we can observe the light coming in from the stars. Air as a medium has to be eliminated since the atmosphere only extends up about sixty miles from the surface of earth. Luminiferous aether (or simply aether) was concocted out of the whole cloth of intuition to provide the medium thought necessary to propagate light. It was thought to be invisible, undetectable, and ubiquitous. This was the accepted unchallenged truth going all the way back to Newton and earlier.
Albert Michelson became interested in light in 1877 while teaching chemistry at the United States Naval Academy where he conducted experiments concerning the speed of light. He, of course, never questioned the existence of aether. In fact his objective was to prove its existence as a theory instead of just a useful conjecture. His idea was that as the earth moved through aether on it way around the sun, the speed of light would be faster when the earth was moving away from the sun and slower when moving toward the sun. He thought that aether constituted a head wind while the earth was moving toward sun and a tail wind while moving away from it.
His technique was to split a bean of light into two beans, one in the same direction of the earth’s movement and one in the opposite direction. His hypothesis was that light would move slower when encountering the aether head wind. He persuaded Alexander Bell to fund the construction of an interferometer, a device that could time the speed of light. To his total surprise and disappointment he proved that the speed of light was constant (186,282 miles per second) and that aether did not exist. In 1907 Albert Michelson and his assistant Edward Morley received the Nobel Prize in physics for their work. This episode demonstrates an important feature of science; scientists learn just as much from failure as they do from a success. After all, Michelson’s goal was to prove that aether exists but he was wrong and proved the opposite.
Truth, of course, is very important to the criminal justice system. The objective is to serve justice by punishing the guilty and exonerating the innocent. In a sense a trial is a play performed by judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and witnesses for an audience of jurors. The judge is responsible for ensuring that the trial is conducted according to the laws (rules). The prosecutor presents and argues the evidence including witnesses in an attempt to convince the jury that the defendant is guilty. Defense attorneys have the responsibility to challenge the evidence and witnesses and at their option present their own evidence and witnesses in an attempt to convince the jury that the defendant is not guilty. The jury is the sole determiner of the facts of the case. They decide what evidence is true or false, and which witnesses are telling the truth and which ones are not. There are two critical points that should be noted; first the defendant is assumed to be innocent and second, the prosecutor has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It should also be pointed out that a verdict of “Not Guilty” is not the same thing as innocent. In fact courts in England have a verdict of “Not Proven” instead of our “Not Guilty.”
Finding the truth in a civil legal case is similar to a criminal proceeding with two major differences. First, in a civil court case the defendant only has property, reputation, or money at risk rather than life or freedom as is the case in a criminal trial. Second, the standard for a verdict is by the preponderance of evidence. In other words, the evidence only has to slightly favor one side or the other for them to win.
Albert Einstein once famously said, “Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” This seems obvious and is accepted by most people, but in reality people are often convinced of the truth of some idea or concept based on some authority. Authority, of course, can be useful in judging the truth of something. This is especially true in cases where the matter in question is within the authority’s area of expertise. In many circumstances, laymen must rely on authorities in the field. The key point in Einstein’s quote concerns the word “blind.” The more consensuses there among the experts, the more confidence one can take in their conclusions.
Intuitive truth is a feeling that something is true. Although in many cases it may turn out to be true, intuition is not sufficiently reliable to be used without other supporting evidence. In science intuition is extremely useful in forming a hypothesis. Richard Feynman, an American Nobel Prize winner in physics, related an anecdote that may help explain why many people have more trust in intuition than is warranted. In college while he was working on a paper in the middle of the night, he suddenly had a terrible feeling that his grandmother died. A minute later his telephone rang. It was a wrong number! Feynman then pointed out that people only learn about and count the cases when intuition turns out to be true; they never remember or count the failures.
Mark Twain defined faith as believing something that you know is not true. Faith can also be described as accepting a hypothesis without requiring any evidence. Faith is similar to intuition and like authoritative truth is the least reliable of all the “truths.” The problem with intuition and faith is reasonable people can arrive at entirely contradictory conclusions without any way of resolving the conflict. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
The seven varieties of truth discussed in this essay lie on a continuum of reliability in which mathematical and scientific truths are the most reliable and intuition and faith the least. While this scale is very useful in determining the truth of any idea, the following considerations can provide invaluable assistance to the process:
Burden of proof
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence
Miracles
Probability
Vested Interest
The author or originator of any hypothesis has the burden of proving it. This burden cannot be shifted to the skeptics. Failure to prove an idea false does not make it true. Shifting the burden is a popular method of argument for many advocates. For example, supporters of Creationism versus Evolution (Darwinism) employ burden shifting by attempting to discredit evolution on some point and them claiming Creationism true by default. Even if evolution was proven wrong, this would not make Creationism true. The fact that Creationists expend more effort on discrediting evolution and very little effort supporting Creationism with evidence is a strong indication that their claims have little merit. It should be noted that Intelligent Design and Creationism are one and the same. Creationism was repackaged as Intelligent Design in a failed legal attempt to force it into public schools as an alternative to Evolution.
The idea that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence provides a useful metric for evaluating the truth or falsity. For example in 1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made an extraordinary claim that they had created energy through a process of cold fusion. Keeping in mind that our sun is powered by the “hot” fusion of hydrogen atoms in a process requiring tremendous heat and pressure, it would be a major accomplishment to produce energy through fusion of atoms without the great heat and pressure. After a brief period of excitement in the scientific world the evidence failed to convince and Pons and Fleischmann were discredited.
It is important to understand what constitutes a miracle. The natural universe is that part of the universe that can be explained by the four basic laws of physics: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. These four laws are also referred to as the four energy sources in the universe. The supernatural universe is simply that entity that lies outside of the natural universe and is explained by some supernatural force or deity. In this context a miracle is some event or occurrence that cannot be explained by the basic laws of physics at this time. Attributing the cause of some event to a supernatural cause when there is a possible natural explanation, is a common error in argument. Daniel Dennett has a beautiful way of demonstrating this idea. If he is debating someone and they play what he calls the “faith card,” he responds by saying “you are wrong.” When his opponent asks, “Why?,” he answers “because Lucille says so.” He then explains that Lucille is a friend of his and she is always right.” Relying of God to support an argument is equivalent to citing Lucille. They both are conversation killers and do not contribute anything useful to the discussion. Attributing some unknown phenomenon to a supernatural entity does not advance human knowledge but retards the process of searching for answers. Isaac Newton would not have discovered the law of gravity had he accepted a supernatural explanation and stopped investigating. The history of scientific advancements is filled with examples of natural explanations that were once explained simply using the “God argument.”
Some people confuse a low probability of some event occurring as a miracle when it occurs. For example the chances of winning the Powerball lottery are one in 175,223,510. By comparison the odds of being struck by lightning are one in 280,000. People are struck by lightning and win lotteries all the time, the result of the laws of probability.
In politics there is an axiom called the “Power of the Desk” which has been described as “where you stand depends on where you sit.” For example knowing that someone is the head of an oil company provides a strong indication of their position on the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels. It would be unreasonable to think that oil companies could be a source of objective data on climate change. Also, one should be skeptical of any conclusions coming out of “research” funded by them. The tobacco industry funded "research" to determine if smoking was a health hazard and if nicotine was addictive. Predictably their “scientific” studies indicated that smoking did not cause diseases and was not addictive! Similarly the advocates of teaching Creationism as an alternative to Evolution are supporters of fundamentalist religious groups that hold the Bible as the literal truth. They turn the scientific method upside down by started out with a dogma and then look for ways to support it.
Everyone at some level is searching for the truth in every aspect of their lives. Understanding the various ideas in this essay can be useful as we make decisions in our day-to-day lives, but in the end it is an idiosyncratic process. Perhaps being consistent in the methods used is as important as the conclusions reached. Also, I think it is useful to view “truth” as a journey and not as a destination. Or as Robert Browning said, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
Absolute truth
Scientific truth
Legal truth
Authoritative truth
Intuitive truth
Faith-based truth
Absolute truth is also called mathematical truth. The method for determining mathematical truth is to the start out with a conjecture and then demonstrate by a series of logical steps that the conjecture is true. Once a conjecture is proven, it becomes a theorem and can then be used to prove other conjectures. Thus a mathematical proof is series of steps relying on theorems, mathematical logic, and axioms to show that some conjecture is true. Every step in the series must be true. Each step is like a link in a chain; break one link in the chain and entire chain fails.
Axioms are mathematical propositions that have not been proven, but are accepted to be self-evident. It has always been offensive to some mathematicians to admit that some fundamental proposition vital to the field had to be thought of as self-evident rather than proven along with all the other theorems. David Hilbert (1862 - 1943), a German mathematician, took on the task of proving all the axioms (Hilbert’s program), but Kurt Godel (1906 - 1978), an Austrian-American logician, proved by his two incompleteness theorems that there are propositions that are true but cannot be proven. To this extent, one must concede that there is always some element of uncertainty even in mathematics. Anecdotally speaking, it can be argued that axioms must be true since they are the foundation of the house of proven mathematics and the house has not collapsed. In conclusion, once a theorem is proved, it is proved forever and is not subject to change.
A scientific truth is an idea or proposition that has been vetted through a process called the scientific method and found to be true. Stated differently, it is a proposed explanation for some observable facts. After it is proven true based on the evidence, it is promoted to theory. Scientific theory is a proven hypothesis. As such, it is the highest level of certainty that can be achieved by science. The theory of relativity and the theory of gravity are two well-known scientific theories. Sometimes a theory is called law, as in the law of gravity.
Unfortunately, the word “theory” has a different meaning when used by lay people. In everyday speech John might say, “I have a theory that Mary wants to date me.” In this sense it is a suspicion, a feeling, or at best some conjecture (or hope). If someone says the “evolution is only a theory,” this is equivalent to saying “Mary only won a gold medal at the Olympics.” If someone thinks that there is a higher award than the gold medal in the Olympics, then they are ignorant of the facts. If they are aware of the facts and still persist in claiming “Mary only won a gold medal,” they are being dishonest. To say that some scientific fact is only a theory is to say that it is only the highest level of truth obtainable in science, and indicates the author of the statement is either ignorant or dishonest. Still, even with the high level of confidence that scientific theories are held, there is almost always some degree of uncertainty. This is the major difference between science and dogma.
The process of proving any given hypothesis uses two logical methods, inductive logic and deductive logic. The inductive method is a “bottom up” method in as much as it starts at the bottom by making observations and/or conducting experiments. Deductive logic starts with existing theories and then deduces from them some hypothesis which is then proved or disproved by observations and experiments.
A hypothesis is a formally developed idea backed by supporting data with sufficient credibility to gain the attention of the accepted authorities in the field of inquiry and is now ready for vetting or peer review. A hypothesis must also make some predictions that can be independently verified by someone else. The results are written as a paper and then submitted to the editors of a technical publication devoted to the field of interest most closely related to the subject under consideration. All major fields of interest have many professional organizations such as the American Institute of Physics, which in turn publish a number of journals such as Applied Physics Review. At any rate, the first challenge for a hopeful hypothesis is acceptance for publication. The editors do not want to risk their standing in the field by publishing some idea that is then proven to be false or worse yet lacks any serious merit or consideration. These editors normally use a group of experts to critically review submissions and if they feel that the hypothesis has merit it is then published.
Now the hypothesis undergoes major vetting. Scientists and other experts around the world will read the paper and, of course, vigorously challenge both the methods, data, and conclusions. These people are by nature skeptical of anything new. There is also considerable ego and personal jealousy involved. The more radical the idea is the more it will be resisted. Radical in this context refers to what extent the idea is in opposition to some widely long-held truth. It has been said that one of the most important ingredients of scientific advancement is the death of older scientists.
Early natural philosophers (now called scientists) understood that sound is a wave propagated through the atmosphere by bouncing off the molecules of the gasses that make up air. This was easily demonstrated by securing a bell inside a glass jar, and then tightening the lid on the jar. Shake the jar and the bell rings. If all the air is removed from the jar, a vacuum is created. Now if the jar is shaken, the bell will not ring. It actually still “rings” but without the medium of air the sound of the bell cannot be propagated.
Given the way sound works, it seemed reasonable to conjecture that light (also a wave) must have some medium for light to propagate itself through the atmosphere and through space. After all, at night we can observe the light coming in from the stars. Air as a medium has to be eliminated since the atmosphere only extends up about sixty miles from the surface of earth. Luminiferous aether (or simply aether) was concocted out of the whole cloth of intuition to provide the medium thought necessary to propagate light. It was thought to be invisible, undetectable, and ubiquitous. This was the accepted unchallenged truth going all the way back to Newton and earlier.
Albert Michelson became interested in light in 1877 while teaching chemistry at the United States Naval Academy where he conducted experiments concerning the speed of light. He, of course, never questioned the existence of aether. In fact his objective was to prove its existence as a theory instead of just a useful conjecture. His idea was that as the earth moved through aether on it way around the sun, the speed of light would be faster when the earth was moving away from the sun and slower when moving toward the sun. He thought that aether constituted a head wind while the earth was moving toward sun and a tail wind while moving away from it.
His technique was to split a bean of light into two beans, one in the same direction of the earth’s movement and one in the opposite direction. His hypothesis was that light would move slower when encountering the aether head wind. He persuaded Alexander Bell to fund the construction of an interferometer, a device that could time the speed of light. To his total surprise and disappointment he proved that the speed of light was constant (186,282 miles per second) and that aether did not exist. In 1907 Albert Michelson and his assistant Edward Morley received the Nobel Prize in physics for their work. This episode demonstrates an important feature of science; scientists learn just as much from failure as they do from a success. After all, Michelson’s goal was to prove that aether exists but he was wrong and proved the opposite.
Truth, of course, is very important to the criminal justice system. The objective is to serve justice by punishing the guilty and exonerating the innocent. In a sense a trial is a play performed by judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and witnesses for an audience of jurors. The judge is responsible for ensuring that the trial is conducted according to the laws (rules). The prosecutor presents and argues the evidence including witnesses in an attempt to convince the jury that the defendant is guilty. Defense attorneys have the responsibility to challenge the evidence and witnesses and at their option present their own evidence and witnesses in an attempt to convince the jury that the defendant is not guilty. The jury is the sole determiner of the facts of the case. They decide what evidence is true or false, and which witnesses are telling the truth and which ones are not. There are two critical points that should be noted; first the defendant is assumed to be innocent and second, the prosecutor has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It should also be pointed out that a verdict of “Not Guilty” is not the same thing as innocent. In fact courts in England have a verdict of “Not Proven” instead of our “Not Guilty.”
Finding the truth in a civil legal case is similar to a criminal proceeding with two major differences. First, in a civil court case the defendant only has property, reputation, or money at risk rather than life or freedom as is the case in a criminal trial. Second, the standard for a verdict is by the preponderance of evidence. In other words, the evidence only has to slightly favor one side or the other for them to win.
Albert Einstein once famously said, “Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” This seems obvious and is accepted by most people, but in reality people are often convinced of the truth of some idea or concept based on some authority. Authority, of course, can be useful in judging the truth of something. This is especially true in cases where the matter in question is within the authority’s area of expertise. In many circumstances, laymen must rely on authorities in the field. The key point in Einstein’s quote concerns the word “blind.” The more consensuses there among the experts, the more confidence one can take in their conclusions.
Intuitive truth is a feeling that something is true. Although in many cases it may turn out to be true, intuition is not sufficiently reliable to be used without other supporting evidence. In science intuition is extremely useful in forming a hypothesis. Richard Feynman, an American Nobel Prize winner in physics, related an anecdote that may help explain why many people have more trust in intuition than is warranted. In college while he was working on a paper in the middle of the night, he suddenly had a terrible feeling that his grandmother died. A minute later his telephone rang. It was a wrong number! Feynman then pointed out that people only learn about and count the cases when intuition turns out to be true; they never remember or count the failures.
Mark Twain defined faith as believing something that you know is not true. Faith can also be described as accepting a hypothesis without requiring any evidence. Faith is similar to intuition and like authoritative truth is the least reliable of all the “truths.” The problem with intuition and faith is reasonable people can arrive at entirely contradictory conclusions without any way of resolving the conflict. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
The seven varieties of truth discussed in this essay lie on a continuum of reliability in which mathematical and scientific truths are the most reliable and intuition and faith the least. While this scale is very useful in determining the truth of any idea, the following considerations can provide invaluable assistance to the process:
Burden of proof
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence
Miracles
Probability
Vested Interest
The author or originator of any hypothesis has the burden of proving it. This burden cannot be shifted to the skeptics. Failure to prove an idea false does not make it true. Shifting the burden is a popular method of argument for many advocates. For example, supporters of Creationism versus Evolution (Darwinism) employ burden shifting by attempting to discredit evolution on some point and them claiming Creationism true by default. Even if evolution was proven wrong, this would not make Creationism true. The fact that Creationists expend more effort on discrediting evolution and very little effort supporting Creationism with evidence is a strong indication that their claims have little merit. It should be noted that Intelligent Design and Creationism are one and the same. Creationism was repackaged as Intelligent Design in a failed legal attempt to force it into public schools as an alternative to Evolution.
The idea that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence provides a useful metric for evaluating the truth or falsity. For example in 1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made an extraordinary claim that they had created energy through a process of cold fusion. Keeping in mind that our sun is powered by the “hot” fusion of hydrogen atoms in a process requiring tremendous heat and pressure, it would be a major accomplishment to produce energy through fusion of atoms without the great heat and pressure. After a brief period of excitement in the scientific world the evidence failed to convince and Pons and Fleischmann were discredited.
It is important to understand what constitutes a miracle. The natural universe is that part of the universe that can be explained by the four basic laws of physics: gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. These four laws are also referred to as the four energy sources in the universe. The supernatural universe is simply that entity that lies outside of the natural universe and is explained by some supernatural force or deity. In this context a miracle is some event or occurrence that cannot be explained by the basic laws of physics at this time. Attributing the cause of some event to a supernatural cause when there is a possible natural explanation, is a common error in argument. Daniel Dennett has a beautiful way of demonstrating this idea. If he is debating someone and they play what he calls the “faith card,” he responds by saying “you are wrong.” When his opponent asks, “Why?,” he answers “because Lucille says so.” He then explains that Lucille is a friend of his and she is always right.” Relying of God to support an argument is equivalent to citing Lucille. They both are conversation killers and do not contribute anything useful to the discussion. Attributing some unknown phenomenon to a supernatural entity does not advance human knowledge but retards the process of searching for answers. Isaac Newton would not have discovered the law of gravity had he accepted a supernatural explanation and stopped investigating. The history of scientific advancements is filled with examples of natural explanations that were once explained simply using the “God argument.”
Some people confuse a low probability of some event occurring as a miracle when it occurs. For example the chances of winning the Powerball lottery are one in 175,223,510. By comparison the odds of being struck by lightning are one in 280,000. People are struck by lightning and win lotteries all the time, the result of the laws of probability.
In politics there is an axiom called the “Power of the Desk” which has been described as “where you stand depends on where you sit.” For example knowing that someone is the head of an oil company provides a strong indication of their position on the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels. It would be unreasonable to think that oil companies could be a source of objective data on climate change. Also, one should be skeptical of any conclusions coming out of “research” funded by them. The tobacco industry funded "research" to determine if smoking was a health hazard and if nicotine was addictive. Predictably their “scientific” studies indicated that smoking did not cause diseases and was not addictive! Similarly the advocates of teaching Creationism as an alternative to Evolution are supporters of fundamentalist religious groups that hold the Bible as the literal truth. They turn the scientific method upside down by started out with a dogma and then look for ways to support it.
Everyone at some level is searching for the truth in every aspect of their lives. Understanding the various ideas in this essay can be useful as we make decisions in our day-to-day lives, but in the end it is an idiosyncratic process. Perhaps being consistent in the methods used is as important as the conclusions reached. Also, I think it is useful to view “truth” as a journey and not as a destination. Or as Robert Browning said, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Baptists, The American Taliban
Discussing religion is always dangerous and filled with risks but as they say “fools rush in where angels dare to tread.” At the risk of appearing trite, I will begin at the beginning. I was born with a mental state that has been described as tabula rosa (blank slate). I have since modified this view and now believe that the human brain comes with pre-wired tendencies. For more on this subject please read Genome by Matt Ridley. At any rate, considering the human mind at birth (or even at conception) as a blank slate ready to record all life experiences is sufficient for my purposes here.
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my parents for sparing me from what Richard Dawkins calls child abuse, i.e., religious indoctrination. I cannot recall my parents ever mentioning the subject of religion. If they were philosophical thinkers, they did not share their epistemological conclusions with me. I was left happily to my own devices to discover my own inner world.
Of course no man or child is an island. I grew up in a small southern town where the water was filled with fluoride and the air with racism and Baptist dogma. They were everywhere and I thought that everyone in the world was Baptist until my older sister proved to be more than the public school system could handle and was dispatched to a private Catholic school. At about the same time I discovered my uncle was Jewish and my religious world was “complete.”
At public school most of my pals were Baptists and it was under their influence (and their parents) that I was recruited into attending Sunday school and church services. I was not much moved by the experience and was bored by the entire matter and began to look for any excuse to duck out on it. Of course, they did not give me up easily and dispatched church deacons and fellow students who had a way of making me feel guilty about my erratic attendance and questionable devotion to their religious views.
By the time I was a teenager my interest and enthusiasm was almost nil and probably would have died completely if I had not started dating a very pretty girl a fellow classmate from my high school. At the time I thought that church attendance was noblesse oblige and it was a major faux pas not to conform. I incorrectly assumed that my girl friend felt the same way. Today even after fifty-six years, she still rightfully blames me for getting her involved with the Baptists.
Once a year our Baptist Church brought in a visiting evangelist whose job was to inject enthusiasm and fear into those who might be wavering in their faith and to build up the church membership rolls. These charismatic performers and master manipulators vacillated between waxing poetic about the love of God and the threat of eternal damnation. They claimed that every time the holy spirit knocks on your heart and you reject the invitation to accept Christ, your heart turns a little harder until eventually it turns to stone at which point you would be lost forever without any chance for salvation. It was during one of these emotional sessions while the choir sang Will You Be Ready?, we went forward and accepted Christ and after being baptized became Baptists.
Around this same time my cousin was invited by one of her school friends to attend Sunday school and services at a local Congregationalist Church. Sometime later she decided to be baptized and become a member. The Congregationalists had higher ethical standards than the Baptists and required parental approval. Her father thought that she should defer important decisions like this until she was older and more mature and refused to give his permission. Years later while in graduate school she converted to Catholicism and married a Catholic. Today she is the mother of nine children and divorced.
After I enlisted in the Air Force, I discovered one benefit of being a Baptist when as part of my duties as an administrative clerk I had the duty of collecting biographical data from newly arriving airman at the base including their religious “preferences.” Things seem to be going well until the base chaplain who happened to be a Baptist called me to complain that he was meeting a number of Baptists who were actually Presbyterians or Episcopalians. It turned out that many Presbyterians and Episcopalians did not know how to spell their religion and simply wrote “Baptist” for their religious preference.
I remained a nominal Baptist until the Air Force sent me back to college to complete my undergraduate degree. It was there at age twenty-four that I discovered and read Ayn Rand and Bertram Russell and became an atheist. I wrote a letter to the Southern Baptist Convention tendering my resignation and found out you cannot resign. I was informed that the only way I could be removed from the Baptist rolls was to join another religion. Today I consider myself a “cured” Baptist.
Joining the Baptist Church was the most embarrassing thing that I ever did. In my defense I would like to reference the fact that the part of human brain responsible for critical thinking is not fully formed until around the age of twenty-five. Recently the president of the Southern Baptist Convention issued a declaration that wives should submit to their husbands on all matters of faith and family. Perhaps bronze-age thinking such as this prompted Kinky Friedman (one-time candidate for Governor of Texas) to remark that the problem with Baptists is they don’t hold them under water long enough.
According to Wikipedia in 2002, there were more than thirty-three million Baptists in North America of which sixteen million are Southern Baptist. Due to their literal interpretation of the Bible they are anti-science and very conservative. They deny evolution and global warming. They oppose guy rights and women’s rights and tend to hold racist views. Their history includes support for slavery and segregation of the schools. They also supported miscegenation laws and were anti-immigration.
The Baptists are the most vocal in their condemnation of other religions and their teachings’ especially Catholicism. It was not unusual to find Baptists in the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and some even served as the Grand Wizard. Their fundamentalist views has led many to describe them as well as the other evangelicals as the American Taliban. Baptist have among their ranks people such as Fred Phelps, Pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas who makes a practice of disrupting funerals of our fallen military heroes carrying signs declaring, “God hates Fags.”
I continued as a self-proclaimed atheist for many years until I embarked on a self-discovery program of reading, thinking, and writing as a way of clarifying my positions. I read books on theology, religion, physics, biology, and psychology. I found that I could not reconcile atheism with science. I learned that is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God. Atheists and theists are both willing to accept their position without any proof or evidence instead relying on appeals to authority and/or faith. Mark Twain defined faith as believing in things that you know are not true.
My conclusion is deism is the only position that I can reconcile with the sum total of my education (formal and informal) and experiences. Deism allows for the possibility that a supernatural force set in motion a process that created the universe and everything in it but is not involved in the day-to-day operations except through the application of the laws of physics. The “God” of deism does not monitor our behavior, perform miracles, answer prayers, provide for our salvation or modify the laws of nature in our favor.
Related Blog: Why Religion?
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my parents for sparing me from what Richard Dawkins calls child abuse, i.e., religious indoctrination. I cannot recall my parents ever mentioning the subject of religion. If they were philosophical thinkers, they did not share their epistemological conclusions with me. I was left happily to my own devices to discover my own inner world.
Of course no man or child is an island. I grew up in a small southern town where the water was filled with fluoride and the air with racism and Baptist dogma. They were everywhere and I thought that everyone in the world was Baptist until my older sister proved to be more than the public school system could handle and was dispatched to a private Catholic school. At about the same time I discovered my uncle was Jewish and my religious world was “complete.”
At public school most of my pals were Baptists and it was under their influence (and their parents) that I was recruited into attending Sunday school and church services. I was not much moved by the experience and was bored by the entire matter and began to look for any excuse to duck out on it. Of course, they did not give me up easily and dispatched church deacons and fellow students who had a way of making me feel guilty about my erratic attendance and questionable devotion to their religious views.
By the time I was a teenager my interest and enthusiasm was almost nil and probably would have died completely if I had not started dating a very pretty girl a fellow classmate from my high school. At the time I thought that church attendance was noblesse oblige and it was a major faux pas not to conform. I incorrectly assumed that my girl friend felt the same way. Today even after fifty-six years, she still rightfully blames me for getting her involved with the Baptists.
Once a year our Baptist Church brought in a visiting evangelist whose job was to inject enthusiasm and fear into those who might be wavering in their faith and to build up the church membership rolls. These charismatic performers and master manipulators vacillated between waxing poetic about the love of God and the threat of eternal damnation. They claimed that every time the holy spirit knocks on your heart and you reject the invitation to accept Christ, your heart turns a little harder until eventually it turns to stone at which point you would be lost forever without any chance for salvation. It was during one of these emotional sessions while the choir sang Will You Be Ready?, we went forward and accepted Christ and after being baptized became Baptists.
Around this same time my cousin was invited by one of her school friends to attend Sunday school and services at a local Congregationalist Church. Sometime later she decided to be baptized and become a member. The Congregationalists had higher ethical standards than the Baptists and required parental approval. Her father thought that she should defer important decisions like this until she was older and more mature and refused to give his permission. Years later while in graduate school she converted to Catholicism and married a Catholic. Today she is the mother of nine children and divorced.
After I enlisted in the Air Force, I discovered one benefit of being a Baptist when as part of my duties as an administrative clerk I had the duty of collecting biographical data from newly arriving airman at the base including their religious “preferences.” Things seem to be going well until the base chaplain who happened to be a Baptist called me to complain that he was meeting a number of Baptists who were actually Presbyterians or Episcopalians. It turned out that many Presbyterians and Episcopalians did not know how to spell their religion and simply wrote “Baptist” for their religious preference.
I remained a nominal Baptist until the Air Force sent me back to college to complete my undergraduate degree. It was there at age twenty-four that I discovered and read Ayn Rand and Bertram Russell and became an atheist. I wrote a letter to the Southern Baptist Convention tendering my resignation and found out you cannot resign. I was informed that the only way I could be removed from the Baptist rolls was to join another religion. Today I consider myself a “cured” Baptist.
Joining the Baptist Church was the most embarrassing thing that I ever did. In my defense I would like to reference the fact that the part of human brain responsible for critical thinking is not fully formed until around the age of twenty-five. Recently the president of the Southern Baptist Convention issued a declaration that wives should submit to their husbands on all matters of faith and family. Perhaps bronze-age thinking such as this prompted Kinky Friedman (one-time candidate for Governor of Texas) to remark that the problem with Baptists is they don’t hold them under water long enough.
According to Wikipedia in 2002, there were more than thirty-three million Baptists in North America of which sixteen million are Southern Baptist. Due to their literal interpretation of the Bible they are anti-science and very conservative. They deny evolution and global warming. They oppose guy rights and women’s rights and tend to hold racist views. Their history includes support for slavery and segregation of the schools. They also supported miscegenation laws and were anti-immigration.
The Baptists are the most vocal in their condemnation of other religions and their teachings’ especially Catholicism. It was not unusual to find Baptists in the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan and some even served as the Grand Wizard. Their fundamentalist views has led many to describe them as well as the other evangelicals as the American Taliban. Baptist have among their ranks people such as Fred Phelps, Pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas who makes a practice of disrupting funerals of our fallen military heroes carrying signs declaring, “God hates Fags.”
I continued as a self-proclaimed atheist for many years until I embarked on a self-discovery program of reading, thinking, and writing as a way of clarifying my positions. I read books on theology, religion, physics, biology, and psychology. I found that I could not reconcile atheism with science. I learned that is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God. Atheists and theists are both willing to accept their position without any proof or evidence instead relying on appeals to authority and/or faith. Mark Twain defined faith as believing in things that you know are not true.
My conclusion is deism is the only position that I can reconcile with the sum total of my education (formal and informal) and experiences. Deism allows for the possibility that a supernatural force set in motion a process that created the universe and everything in it but is not involved in the day-to-day operations except through the application of the laws of physics. The “God” of deism does not monitor our behavior, perform miracles, answer prayers, provide for our salvation or modify the laws of nature in our favor.
Related Blog: Why Religion?
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