The Dark Triad

This is one submission of many to follow that will be focusing on personality traits—such as narcissism and psychopathy—of people that when involved in romantic relationships with can be abusive and dominating as well as exhibit reckless and impulsive behavior that wreaks havoc on you and the relationship.

The machiavellian, the narcissist, and the psychopath are commonly known as the dark triad by psychologists.  And there is a very good reason for this especially if you are the victim of one of them.  But strip these words of their ostracizing power which means to rid them of their connotations, and they all have one theme in common which means to maximize personal gain, almost always at the cost of another, and then to feel justified in doing so.

Now although these labels have become stigmas for most of us – unless of course, you are OJ Simpson, Elliot Spitzer (former NY governor) or Jeff Skilling (former CEO of Enron) and so forth – I think it’s nevertheless important to realize that we all show characteristics of these traits given the right situation, but those that experience them often and do so with greater severity can be diagnosed as having one of these personality traits as an actual disorder (see notes).  Yes, these are measurable personality traits that are heritable, so, for example, the tendency to want to exploit others varies from one individual to another.

But, on the other hand, these traits through a biologist’s perspective are not necessarily disorders since their frequency of occurrence in the population is much too high but are instead adaptations that helped us to survive and reproduce.  Yes, the Machiavellian, the narcissist, and the psychopath are all here because they outmaneuvered others in this jockeying for position in this game we call life.  Now that is an unsettling fact for someone as meek and mild as I am.

The focus thus far has been on personality while ignoring the situation at play.  Social psychologists, however, know all too well that behavior is a function of not only your personality but also the very perceived social value that you hold relative to another person.  So, for instance, when I will describe the relationship that I was in, from an outsider someone could clearly see that there was a power imbalance – to be defined later – between the two of us.  If these discrepancies in social standings are great enough, then the lower-ranked member is at a higher risk of being exploited.

To briefly go over the triad’s differences which can be remembered in short as narcissism is about grandiosity and is an addiction to feeling “special” or “important”, Machiavellianism is about deception and manipulation and psychopathy is about callousness and bold behavior.  Although not thorough enough at least this gives an introduction to their essence.

Notes:

The dark triad is a category that loosely refers to someone that shows signs (subclinical symptoms) of narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism but may not necessarily have an NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) or ASPD (antisocial personality disorder).  To clarify, all three of the dark triad are personality traits and if extreme enough are classified by the DSM as disorders while Machiavellianism is simply a personality trait.

Some may inquiry why the sociopath is excluded.  This word, which denotes a personality trait and not a disorder although can be classified as ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder) if criteria are met, is sometimes used synonymously with psychopathy and other times there’s a distinction.  The big distinction is that a sociopath becomes a sociopath because of learned behavior while a psychopath has genetic dispositions or traits that incline them to be callous and bold.

References:

[1]  Buss, David M. The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex. Free Press.

[2] Kole, Pamela. The Psychology of Abusive Relationships: How to Understand Your Abuser, Empower Yourself, and Take Your Life Back.

[3]. Lancer, Darlene.  “Beware of the Malevolent Dark Triad.” Psychologytoday.com.

[4]. Lancer, Darlene.  “How to know if you are a victim of gaslighting.” Psychologytoday.com.

[5] Marmot, Michael. The Status Syndrome. Henry Holt and Co..

[6] McBride, Karyl. “How does a narcissist think.” Psychologytoday.com.

[7] The Self-Conscious Emotions. Guilford Publications.

[8] Subordination and Defeat: An Evolutionary Approach To Mood Disorders and Their Therapy. Taylor and Francis.

 

Why I’m Not an Ideologue

I choose not to be associated with any political ideology—neither libertarianism, liberalism nor conservatism—as I believe that it reinforces deep-seated tribal instincts that affect our stance and decision making on issues of importance.  It does so by imposing constraints on our ability to form good conclusions (motivated reasoning) and fosters conformity (groupthink).  Ideologies allow us to evaluate what’s right and wrong, give a cultural identity, and allows us to turn ideas into action.  So I see the value of an ideology and not adhering to one probably makes me politically impotent, but I won’t compromise critical thinking skills just to be politically viable.  Some may argue, all belief systems within a culture are in a sense just principles, which escapes no one, and so your worldview is really just an ideology too.  I agree with this retort, but here I’m talking about ideologies that have dogmatic assertions, well-defined agendas, and consist of ingroup members that uphold these things at any cost.  Moreover, although principles and ideals are important, I believe they should oftentimes be subordinated to pragmatism – the idea that you do what works.

To the wider point, by distancing myself from groups, for example, not identifying myself with a conservative pundit on TV, I avoid abuse of ideas such as groupthink, which is a highly dysfunctional way of solving problems and making decisions as a result of, often unconscious, ingroup influences.  Wikipedia does a nice job of summarizing, see below.  A good example of this is when the Bush administration believed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  Other effects are demonization of outgroup members and collective confirmation bias or preferential treatment towards the group’s theory as new evidence appears.

In an ingroup situation, like conservatism, there’s an effort to undermine dissenting and controversial viewpoints, indoctrinate members, isolate from other groups, possess a bias towards the group’s principles and ideas, all in an effort to maintain conformity and harmony.  The results are that the ingroup overrates its abilities and underrates its opponents and consequently have an inflated sense of certainty that the right decision has been made. [8]

Becoming the victim of indoctrination, a facet of groupthink and an uncritical way of obtaining information, shouldn’t be surprising to anyone as we all see how one can inherit a religion or political persuasion, often unquestionably.  We also know how easily novices, particularly when young, can be influenced to believe in persuasive people’s viewpoints, especially from those who are revered.  How we become indoctrinated, on the other hand, is complex and numerous pathways probably exist.  Although I believe that those that are well versed in logic, critical thinking and are informed in the field of inquiry are less prone, I think much is unavoidable.  I believe this to be the case because the belief formation process—whether or not to accept or reject a claim—is easily corrupted by emotional appeal, psychological biases end evolutionary forces.  To illustrate emotional appeal, we can become a part of an ideology out of pure preference or sentiment without any analysis; for example, “I like liberals because they seem more compassionate to those in need.”  This path is actually probably the more frequent of avenues we take versus sitting down and evaluating every claim and position a group proposes.  This is unfortunate but understandable as assessing arguments from economics, history and political science is very time-consuming.  One of the reasons why we are ideologues is that it serves as a shorthand to being politically relevant but at a cost.

I recall how easily I was indoctrinated by conservative talk show radio – in a matter of months I was parroting all of their arguments and principles – and liberals were the subject of my caricatures and demonization.  Likewise, when I went through a period where I identified myself as a liberal, reading exclusively the New York Times and the Huffington Post, I showed much prejudice towards conservatives.  So conforming to an ideology not only comes at the cost of possible indoctrination, but it also creates stark ingroup and outgroup members.  And this has real consequences as it can evoke tribal instincts to have contempt towards the outsider and affinity towards the insider.  This chasm between groups creates defensive behavior when people are challenged on their viewpoints which inevitably leads to obstinance and bigotry – our amygdala probably hijacks our prefrontal cortex.  In fact, you can think of conservatism, liberalism, and libertarianism to be of different tribes with their own languages.  As The Three Languages of Politics by libertarian Arnold Kling puts it:

Humans evolved to send and receive signals that enable us to recognize people we can trust. One of the most powerful signals is that the person speaks our language. If someone can speak like a native, then almost always he or she is a native, and natives tend to treat each other better than they treat strangers.  The language that resonates with one tribe does not connect with the others. As a result, political discussions do not lead to agreement. Instead, most political commentary serves to increase polarization. The points that people make do not open the minds of people on the other side. They serve to close the minds of the people on one’s own side. [3]


If you haven’t realized it already, most of us actually get our beliefs first and then look for evidence to support it, not the other way around.  This is known as motivated reasoning, where we focus on what we want the cause to be.  But these beliefs (causes) come from being indoctrinated within an ingroup in the first place.  It’s no coincidence that a majority of liberals believe many people are oppressed by society, that is, after all, an inherited tenet, but this may or may not be true as a general rule.  Some Liberals, as conservatives, will hunt for evidence that conforms to their belief—society causes apparent oppression—without ever considering alternative causes.  Liberals and conservatives have other heuristics and causes by which to assess the political landscape, but they are finite.  The real world, however, is much more nuanced and complex, creating the need to look at many other causes.  But ideologies restrict you from doing just that since you are stuck with inherited principles, e.g., big government is always bad, to work with.  The following quote by libertarian Arnold Kling reinforces the points on obstinance and motivational reasoning.

If people were open-minded, you would think that the more information they had, the more they would tend to come to agreement on issues. Surprisingly, political scientists and psychologists have found the opposite. More polarization exists among well-informed voters than among poorly informed voters. Moreover, when you give politically engaged voters on opposite sides an identical piece of new information, each side comes away believing more strongly in its original point of view. That phenomenon has been called “motivated reasoning.” When we engage in motivated reasoning, we are like lawyers arguing a case. We muster evidence to justify or reinforce our preconceived opinions. We welcome new facts or opinions that support our views, while we carefully scrutinize and dispute any evidence that appears contradictory. With motivated reasoning, when we explain phenomena, we focus on what we want the cause to be. The philosopher Robert Nozick jokingly referred to this as “normative sociology.”  For example, what accounts for the high incarceration rates of young African American males? A progressive would look to racism in our justice system and society as the cause. A conservative would look to high crime rates as the cause. And a libertarian would look to drug laws as the cause. [3]

References

[1] Greene, Joshua. Moral Tribes. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[2] Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[3] Kling, Arnold. The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides . Cato Institute. Kindle Edition.

[4] Lakoff, George. Moral Politics. University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

[5] Lakoff, George. The Political Mind. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[6] Lakoff, George. Your Brain’s Politics. Societas. Kindle Edition.

[7] Westen, Drew. The Political Brain. PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition.

Hell, Christianity’s Most Damnable Doctrine

And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.  [Revelation 20]

This is the second death, the lake of fire; and if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown in the lake of fire.  [Revelation 20]

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them. [John 3]

Those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. [2 Thessalonians]

This title is borrowed from a chapter in a book I reference often titled “The End of Christianity”, edited by John Loftus.  And this piece is of the same spirit and done in commemoration.  The first set of quotes shows how Christianity paints a ghastly image of judgment and hell that can reverberate in your soul (metaphor!), while the quote below aptly explains how I feel about hell.

What if I’m wrong, and what if this Christian thing is right?  … I get to the pearly gates and find out that I’m wrong.  “Say, well gentleman, I was mistaken.”  Is God going to be a peevish theology professor and say “too bad you bastard you are going to fry”?  If that’s God, then that’s a God not worth worshiping.  I’m going to hell in someone’s dogma anyway, Nation of Islam or Johavos Witness for example.  [Robert Price]

Introduction

Some ask me why I have an obsession with Christianity.  I let them know that it’s because I have the drive to abolish falsehoods that haunt humanity, and Christianity is no exception.  But what has perturbed me as of late is Christianity’s haunting doctrine of hell.  Being judged and condemned to an eternity of punishment if you don’t follow the rules, that you may not have agreed to in the first place, is inherently totalitarian and doesn’t seem to be a fair system, to say the least.  This doctrine has affected members of my family—as they age, they seem to become more and more fearful of God’s judgment, or they become inordinately concerned with getting in his special favor.  We should not be living in unnecessary fear.  Some may argue that if it wasn’t for the potential wrath of God that man would sin egregiously and profusely.  They may have an argument because I’ve seen what fear can do to us homo sapiens, but I’d prefer that people rely on themselves, others, and punitive institutions to remain accountable for their actions and words.

I would like to shed some light on this doctrine of hell and figure out if there is any merit to it because as an agnostic I’m committing a grave sin.  But this is all very confusing since some liberal Protestants say I’m forgiven and will receive God’s grace regardless, while Catholics’ Catechism (book of doctrines), on the other hand, clearly states it’s a mortal sin (if not forgiven before death by repenting, I’m punishable to eternal hell).  Pope Francis in 2013, by contrast, said Jesus’ redemption is for all, even atheists, justified by a passage in the Gospel of Mark, but later rebuffed by the Vatican.  To be fair, in their attempt to be just, Catholicism even has legal jargon to explain what’s a mortal sin: it has to be grave in matters, committed with full knowledge, and have deliberate consent.  Still, these contradictions don’t surprise me as the Gospels and Epistles each have their own unique theology, and if you cherry-pick, which all denominations do, then the end result is this rainbow of doctrine you see.

Play with our Emotions

Before I start on the particulars of hell, I thought the following quote by Michael Shermer sums up the possible evolution of monotheistic faiths and how religion can manipulate our emotions, especially playing upon fear.

Religion is a social institution to create and promote myths, to encourage conformity and altruism, and to signal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of a community.  Around five thousand to seven thousand years ago, as bands and tribes began to coalesce into chiefdoms and states, government and religion co-evolved as social institutions to codify moral behaviors into ethical principles and legal rules, and God became the ultimate enforcer of the rules.  In the small populations of hunter-gatherer bands and tribes with a few dozen to a couple of hundred members, informal means of behavior control and social cohesion could be employed by capitalizing on the moral emotions, such as shaming someone through guilt for violating a social norm, or even excommunicating violators from the group. But when populations grew into the tens and hundreds of thousands, and eventually into millions of people, such informal means of enforcing the rules of society broke down because free riders and norm violators could more readily get away with cheating in large groups; something more formal was needed. This is one vital role that religion plays, such that even if violators think that they got away with a violation, believing that there is an invisible intentional agent who sees all and knows all and judges all can be a powerful deterrent of sin.

Pervasiveness of Hell

The concept of an afterlife, in general, is present in some way or another in most religions, with hell, in particular, being present in most modern religions with the exception of early Judaism and early Hinduism.  I don’t know the inter-dependencies of these religions, but it’s fascinating to note that most have some form of what we would call “hell”.  The best attempt I’ve seen at explaining the pervasiveness of belief in an afterlife is by Michael Shermer in his book titled, “The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.”  To touch only on the religions with an influence on Christianity, Judaism, for example, like the notion of their heaven, has an ambiguous version of hell.  There is Sheol, where the spirits of the dead go, and Gehinnom, which is a dump that was constantly burning to which became a place for sinners – not until much later does hell become a place of actual punishment.  What’s unique about Judaism in contrast to Christianity’s concept of hell is that the punishment is temporary, not eternal.  In Greek mythology, there is an underworld, also known as Hades, containing a component known as Tartarus, which is the place where torment and suffering take place.  So Tartarus is to hell as Hades is to Sheol.  Christianity recycles these words and usage can be a bit different, but the point is that hell is referenced frequently and vehemently, in fact over twenty times in the New Testament.  It was a vivid belief back then, and it still thrives today in most denominations.

The Necessary Ingredient, Soul. 

As a confession, I do not accept Scripture as divinely inspired by the holy spirit nor as it being inerrant.  In fact, the more I study the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament the more I view it as a very human book indeed.  A descriptive analysis of what hell is to most Christian denominations includes a very unpleasant place of fire and torture, unlivable but yet mostly ongoing, and has an element of punishment for committing grave sins.  The details across denominations of how one goes to hell vary so much, which is typical, that it boggles the mind how anyone can conclusively agree with one over the other.  Besides, like most religious truths, this is all based on a priori reasoning or top-down deductive logic.  This is where one’s conclusions are based on-premises, in a more or less closed system, derived on reason alone—that is, there is zero empirical evidence for hell.  Not that truths can’t be ascertained deductively, like mathematics or syllogistical reasoning, but if the premises are false, then your conclusions and rationale are nothing more than fairytales.

To get back to how one gets to hell, we must first understand the concept of the soul.  For brevity, we’ll look at just how key denominations view the soul and see how it’s integral to the understanding of hell.  For starters, the concept of mind-body dualism and the immortality of the soul is completely foreign to the Bible; the immortality and separation of the soul from the body is a Greek phenomenon, espoused by Socrates and Aristotle.  Moreover, the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) uses the word soul (nephesh) to mean “life” or “vital breath”, and there is no equivalent English version of the word soul in Hebrew.  Moreover, the Jews believed in a whole-body resurrection not an ascension of the soul.  However, the Hebrew bible does say that the soul—a vague concept of life itself—can die and does go to Sheol upon death, regardless of status with God.  Also, some have argued that the bible has a notion of duality, see Luke 16:19–31 on Lazarus, 1 Samuel 28, and Luke 23:43.  Regarding the New Testament, it is a little more complicated and uses the Greek word psuche, which means “life”, while the word spirit is used interchangeably.  The apostle Paul generally describes death as “sleep” awaiting the final resurrection.  Although much is spoken about eternal life, nowhere is there a teaching of the immortality of the soul or of that of an explicit duality existing between mind and body.  These concepts were introduced by the Greeks and incorporated into church doctrine by the church fathers Origen of Alexandra and Augustine of Hippo and by the philosopher Thomas Aquinas.

How does it work?

So if you are a biblical inerrantist, then there may be some challenges to accepting the Greek’s version of the soul, for, conceptually, it is not found in the bible at all.  And yet it is one of the more popular beliefs of Christianity.  Changes to scripture or needs to establish doctrine are usually made to overcome common objections or to solve theological problems.  Although I can only widely speculate as for the need for immortality and duality of the soul, it is possible that it allows for immediate judgment, i.e., suffering, or exaltation, of the individual upon death since bodies don’t rise from the dead, which was the common expectation of the time.  Moreover, since the second coming has yet to come (and never will come), where universal resurrections would occur, this duration of time can pose a problem as the body does decay and disappear, so raising an immaterial, immortal soul would be a solution to that problem.  A universal resurrection is when all the dead from past to present get resurrected by Christ at the last judgment: see John Chapter 5:28-29.  And eschatology, so we know the theological discipline, is the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind [Webster’s Dictionary].

I’d say there are two broad categories that sum up how the soul interacts with hell.   For Catholics and Greek Orthodox, they believe that during the general resurrection and last judgment – when the second coming of Jesus Christ occurs to raise and judge all – those who are not worthy will be permanently separated from God and, of course, eternally punished for their sins.  One’s soul dies after committing a mortal sin (grave) and is separated from God if they don’t repent beforehand, but the venial (slight) sins get purified in purgatory, which is supposedly a less severe form of a transient hell.  And those lucky ones without any mortal sins go to heaven.  Also, all this occurs at the last judgment, where the soul is reunited with the body, but, confusingly, this does not necessarily mean that those that die don’t get judged immediately as well, in what’s known as the particular judgment—double judgment?  Most Protestants, on the other hand, believe in conditional immortality – that is, the soul does not live until the resurrection of the dead or second coming of Christ – so the soul dies with the body at death.  This doctrine is more specifically known as Christian mortalism, and can be found as far back as the Protestant Reformation with Martin Luther and as recent as with N.T. Wright from the Anglican church.

A Damnable Doctrine

So far we’ve read about how Christianity sends horrific messages that we will be damned to an eternity of hell if we do not believe in him, obey the gospels or commit grave sins without repenting.  I argued that it seems rather totalitarian to have to accept these terms without consent.  But of course, some will argue that any decent parent would punish their children for misdeeds without the child’s consent.  And this is the part that I just can’t accept—complete submission to an authority that I have doubt exists.  And, even if God did exist, I don’t understand this obsession with submission and worship.  I suppose if God did create all that exists and is the very nature of existence itself, then reverence for him would be appropriate but not necessarily submission.  Regardless, the real crux of the issue is how can a merciful God punish sinners.  Again, the analogy of a good parent could challenge that, but, wait a minute, this punishment is for eternity.  And this is not in accordance with the Gospel of Matthew’s teachings on the Sermon on the Mount.  For example, Matthew Chapter 5:38, one of the six antitheses, talks about how the Hebrew Law promotes peace and justice in a community by “taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” although he takes it a step further and suggests that one should suffer the wrong by not retaliating at all, by turning the other cheek.  So, first, Matthew agrees with the Code of Hammurabi, which is about the punishment fitting the crime, but then builds upon it with a radical conclusion of non-violence.  So if he believes in the Hebrew Law of justice, how could Jesus also agree that being damned to eternity is just; that is, how could any crime ever warrant an eternity in hell if God is merciful.  We know he’s just, but he’s also merciful and benevolent.

To compound on matters, Matthew discusses in the parable of sheep and goats, Matthew 25:26, that those that are charitable to others will inhabit the Kingdom of Heaven.  The Kingdom of Heaven (God) has various interpretations by theologians and secular scholars, but it suffices to say for now that it is a desirable place if one is in God’s good favor.  So Jesus’ parable is commanding you to be compassionate, and I, therefore, have great respect for it; however, it ends poorly by saying, “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”  The parable is essentially saying those that do not follow suit in charitable acts are damned to eternal punishment.  Now perhaps this is hyperbole for effect, but this is not the way Christianity takes it.  So in taking it how Christians take it, this does not sound, once again, like a just and merciful God.  Some may say that’s just God’s prerogative and leave it at that.  I, however, when trying to square it aware with theological attributes ascribed to him, e.g., righteousness, love, merciful, and so forth, have a difficult time taking the claim seriously.  If the religion is taken seriously, by contrast, these claims of eternal hell frighten people and may possibly even work as recruitment or retaining mechanism for the more than two billion worshippers.  I, on the other hand, believe that people should be committing good deeds for the sake of the actin it of itself, not for a reward such as the Kingdom of Heaven.

So the doctrine arguably doesn’t always coincide with scripture’s message, with a merciful and just God, and is totalitarian in its structure.  However, there have been arguments proposed to counteract these objections, e.g., free will.  Free will is the ability to freely choose between different courses of action.  I think free will should be viewed on a continuum—with some behaviors and thoughts giving the person more freedom to choose over others—say the instinct to eat, on one extreme, versus the decision to go for a car ride or stay home, on the other extreme.  I’d say it’s even more convoluted than that since genes, emotions, influences, and so forth, make it even more difficult to really ever have a truly free decision.  This is not to say that we shouldn’t be taking responsibility for our actions, for who else is going to?  Many believe that God has given us this free will, and therefore we have the ability to choose him or to exclude him.  As C.S. Lewis has said, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.'”  I’d argue that why would God give us this freedom of our ultimate destiny in the first place if he knew we were susceptible to the wrong choices.  The counterargument is that there had to be free will, so someone could choose to love him, and you can’t love someone if you don’t have that choice to do so.  But I’ve always wondered why God has this obsession with wanting you to love him in the first place?  Why can’t he just let go and be free?

Some theologians say that God can’t determine someone’s actions ahead of time, which contradicts omniscience by the way, because of free will and that he can’t interfere with someone’s will as it would no longer be free will. That’s a simplistic black and white reading of human behavior.  As I discussed, free will is complex, and it’s not an all or nothing concept.  Moreover, if everything God creates is good, he wants good for everything he’s created, he’s omnipotent and omniscient, then why couldn’t he interfere occasionally to assist with good decisions and create a change in the hearts of atheists?  If he didn’t make the person aware of it, this would still keep the integrity of free will intact, as theologians define it.  The bottom line is that theologians don’t want to part ways with scripture; they must accept the passages that contain eternal damnation references because of the inerrancy criteria. They are then forced to come up with an explanation that will also be compatible with God’s attributes.  This flimsy explanation is free will.  Free will appears to be a convenient tool that theologians use to rationalize suffering and why some go to hell—it is nothing more than an oversimplified abstraction of human behavior used to their advantage.  It’s fraught with semantic problems and doesn’t portray the reality of decision making.  And, also, it’s not necessary since you can love someone without making a choice; it happens all the time, unconsciously.  Lastly, there’s one more argument often put forth and that is the mystical – esoteric or transcending human knowledge—explanation.  So some will claim that it’s beyond our understanding, which is possible, but I’d propose that the more probable explanation is that, like free will, this is a cop-out or rationalization.  It’s time we put the concept of hell as a destination to rest.

References

[1] Harris, Sam. Free Will. Free Press.

[2] Horn, Trent. Why We’re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love. Catholic Answers Press.

[3] Loftus, John. The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails.

[4] Loftus, John. Christianity in the Light of Science. Prometheus.

[5] Mele, Alfred R. Free. Oxford University Press.

[6] Miles, James B. The Free Will Delusion: How We Settled for the Illusion of Morality.

[7] Musolino, Julien. The Soul Fallacy. Prometheus.

[8] Shermer, Michael. The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. Henry Holt and Co.

Miracles and Probability III

Background

We discussed the challenges of accepting a miracle as true because it contradicts how we know the world works. We then proceeded to ask the question: well, what happens if we have good evidence for the miracle? The solution to that problem was to translate our hypothesis, evidence, and background knowledge into terms of degrees of certainty and inputting that into our logically valid formula developed by Thomas Bayes. We could always resort to informal argumentation, but using Bayes’ theorem gives us special insight by breaking the problem down into components – hypothesis, prior knowledge, new evidence, etc. — and preventing us from falling victim to confirmation bias. This bias is reduced because we are given the opportunity to consider alternate hypotheses in the theorem, which are often ignored through “armchair” arguments. In this post, we will try to show that extraordinary claims do indeed require extraordinary evidence. The hypothesis we will be testing is whether or not Jesus was raised from the dead by a supernatural agent. The formula will be given again below for reference.

P(h|e,b) = P(h|b) * P(e|h,b) / [ ( P(h|b) * P(e|h,b) ) + P(~h|b) * P(e|~h,b)]

P(h|e,b) = probability that the hypothesis is true: Epistemic probability or Posterior probability
P(e|h,b) = how expected the evidence is if our explanation is true: Explanatory probability or Consequent probability
P(e|~h,b) = how expected the evidence is if our explanation is false
P(h|b) = how typical our explanation (hypothesis) is: Prior probability or Intrinsic probability
P(~h|b) = how atypical our explanation is: (1 – prior probability)

It’s helpful to see this formula in terms of an argument to the best explanation, which is often used by historians, especially apologists. It is a type of abductive reasoning. You can think of prior probability as being how plausible your hypothesis is when combined with ad hocness. Plausibility has to do with how typical our explanation is – that is, how much is it in accord with how we know the world works (background knowledge).  If you try to develop excuses (ad hoc) for your evidence in order to make it fit your hypothesis, then you lower the prior probability, P(h|b).  The other components in ABE, or argument to the best explanation, are the ones that affect the probability of the evidence explaining the hypothesis, P(e|h,b) and P(e|~h,b). The first one is explanatory power which asks if the hypothesis has a higher probability of being true than competing hypotheses, and it should account for the facts without forcing it. Increasing your explanatory power will increase P(e|h,b). Explanatory scope, on the other hand, is about explaining a wider range of evidence better than the competing hypotheses. Increasing explanatory scope lowers P(e|~h,b) relative to competing hypotheses, and if ~h has a greater scope, then P(e|h,b) drops. Lastly, explanatory fitness can’t contradict any well-established beliefs, and it functions like explanatory power in terms of probabilities affected.

Getting back to priors, an example of ad hocness could be making the assumption that at least one person can defy gravity and fly into the sky without using any special technology [Matthew Ferguson]. We would have to make this assumption or excuse in order to make the hypothesis that Jesus was raised, by natural means, into the sky plausible. Now of course if we said, b, our background knowledge includes the assumptions of metaphysical theism, then God can do anything, and it wouldn’t be ad hoc. However, if we accept that premise, then we are at the mercy of God’s will and whims. And I have yet to be convinced that a theistic God or any other god is at work behind the scenes. Even if you have the hypothesis that God interferes in everyday life, you can’t derive any reliable predictions from it. God is not like a subatomic particle that we can’t see because, as in the case of the particle, we can make predictions as to how it behaves but not so with God. We are at a loss when it comes to modeling God, for God is knowable and incomprehensible at the same time. Moreover, as theistic Christianity defines him, he’s a philosophical construct, not a scientific one. But, to be fair, we didn’t even assume naturalism in our reference class. We actually relaxed our constraints and claimed that we’ll consider all cases of god raising purported persons from the dead.

Quality of Evidence

Now, before we continue, it’s worthwhile to acknowledge that we will all interpret evidence in different ways based on our presuppositions or how skeptical we are or are not. For example, if we assume miracles are impossible to begin with, then we will underestimate the likelihood of P(h|b) and P(h|b,e). Likewise, if we assume that miracles occur all the time, then we will overestimate the likelihood of P(h|b) and P(h|b,e). We did see how we could reduce these biases in the determination of P(h|b) by keeping the reference class as narrow as possible and by being conservative on our estimates. But how do we reduce the chances of inaccurately predicting P(e|h,b)? To be candid, at this point of my investigation, I have yet to find a systematic way of determining the probability of consequent probabilities. And thus there will be an amount of subjectivity involved, which is true in general of epistemic probabilities, which come as ‘degrees of belief’ when assessing the uncertainty of a particular situation [wikipedia]. The best way to minimize bias would be to be as charitable as possible when ascertaining our probabilities.  We will be relying chiefly on Matthew Ferguson’s analysis of the evidence in addition to Richard Carrier’s, while contrasting it against Mike Licona’s and William Lane Craig’s.

Here’s the evidence we have for the fantastical claim that Jesus rose from the dead by God. Why is this claim essential to the Christian faith? Well, because the apostle Paul aptly declared, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14).

  • Jesus was crucified.
  • Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in a tomb.
  • An empty tomb was found by the women.
  • Postmortem appearances to Peter, Paul, James, apostles, disciples, and the “500”.
  • The disciples, James and St. Paul’s belief in the resurrection.

It’s important that we consider the quality of the evidence. The above evidence comes from the Gospels, written forty to fifty years after Jesus’ death, and the Epistles, written twenty years after Jesus’ death, all contained within the New Testament.  So, first, we have evidence decades after the fact. Keep in mind also that the above claims are not necessarily facts. After all, some of these are elements in stories contained in hagiographies (i.e. the Gospels) that are mainly used as propaganda to promote a theology or movement. We have already concluded that the genre of the Gospels are legendary biographies, meaning that the author’s chief objective was to proselytize a message about Jesus Christ and not to teach us history.  The sources also don’t have independent attestation since I consider the Gospels as dependent on one another, with the exception of, maybe, John; the Gospels may or may not have had access to the Epistles, but we will grant independency.  But it’s not until the second century do we get extra-biblical (outside of the bible) evidence of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  Moreover, the Gospels are all anonymous, surely not based on eyewitness testimony, and are most likely a combination of literary creations and oral tradition.  And, lastly, although we don’t know with certainty, it’s a reasonable assumption to make that superstition and the belief of gods, demons and spirits were more accepted by the population than would be now, probably because the Bronze age did not have the luxury of experiencing the Enlightenment era. The following paragraph underscores the type of evidence we have, by Matthew Ferguson.

Instead, our knowledge for many historical events in the ancient world relies solely on the reports found in ancient texts. Ancient texts, however, cannot be scrutinized as thoroughly as the evidence studied in forensic science, and thus using ancient texts as a form of evidence for knowing about the past is often far more speculative and less certain (especially when such texts are highly literary or symbolic in their composition). Frequently, the ancient sources that a historian consults will be biased, vague, misinformed, speculative, or simply outright liars (see Bart Ehrman’s Forged: Writing in the Name of God).

Methodology

So how do we approach the analysis of the evidence – what’s our methodology? Do we take the authors’ – that are often anonymous – word for it, for example, when they say that Jesus Christ’s empty tomb was discovered by women, or do we take the skeptical stance since we don’t know who the authors were, the authors had an agenda, and no extra-biblical corroboration exists near the event? The assumptions and skepticism one exercises affect the outcome, so this is very important. So important that it (skepticism) drives Matthew Ferguson and Richard Carrier to conclude that the resurrection is very improbable while Mike Licona and William Lane Craig conclude that it’s very probable because they take the evidence at face value. Given the kind of evidence we have described in the previous paragraphs and knowing human nature and the era of that period in history, I find no reason other than to approach the evidence with skepticism, giving credence to evidence that is independently corroborated by disinterested sources and discounting that which is not.  This may not seem fair since we really don’t have any disinterested sources and the absence of evidence is not evidence for absence.  However, this presumption – that of taking a skeptical stance – is one that most reasonable people would adhere to if they were assessing others’ faith. It’s also important to acknowledge, justifying my stance, that we have better evidence for other supernatural events; for example, the Salem Witch Trials, and we don’t accept those as true.  As another good example, see Why the Resurrection is Unbelievable by Richard Carrier, where he discusses if we don’t believe Herodotus’ accounts why would we believe the Gospels or Paul’s account?  Before we get into the analysis of the evidence, I believe this excerpt by Richard Carrier in “Proving History” illustrates that we always have to be mindful of our background knowledge since P(e|h,b) is conditioned on that:

     The smell test is a common methodological principle in the study of legend, myth and hagiography.  This tests can be most simply states as if it sounds unbelievable, it probably is.”  When we hear tales of talking dogs and flying wizards, we don’t take them seriously, even for a moment.  We immediately rule them out as fabrications.  We usually don’t investigate.  We don’t wait until we can find evidence against the claim.  We know right from the start the tale is bogus.  Yet the only basis for this judgment is the smell test.  Is that test valid?
     It is certainly ubiquitously accepted by historians in every field.  It is suspiciously only rejected by religious believers, and then only when it’s applied to amazing claims they prefer to believe.  They ground this rejection in the claim that we shouldn’t be biased against the supernatural, and God can do anything.  Yet if they honestly believed in those principles they would be compelled to concede the miracle claims of every religion because “you shouldn’t be biased against the supernatural, and God can do anything.”  This includes all the pagan miracles (incredible apparitions of goddesses, mass resurrections of cooked fish, wondrous healing, and teleportation), Muslim miracles (splitting moons, wailing trees, flights to outer space), Buddhist miracles (bilocation, levitation, creating golden ladders with a mere thought), and indeed every and any amazing claim whatever.  Tales “proving” reincaration?  We can’t reject them – because God can do anything.  Ghosts confirming to the living that heaven is run by a Chinese magnate and his staff?  We can’t rule it out.  That would be bias against the supernatural.
     Honestly living that way would be impossible.  You would believe everything you read … In other words, our bias against the supernatural is warranted, just as our bias against the honesty of politics warranted: we’ve caught them being dishonest so many times it would be foolish to impolitely trust anyone in politics.  Likewise, amazing tales: we’ve caught them being fabricated so many times it would be foolish to implicitly trust any of them.
     The smell test thus represents an intuitive recognition of the low prior probability of the events described (i.e., P(h|b) << 0.5); the ease with which the evidence could be fabricated (i.e., P(e|h,b) is always high, unless we have sufficient evidence to the contrary), in fact often the ease with which such an even if real would produce or entail much better evidence (i.e., P(e|h,b) is often low); how typically miracle claims are deliberately positioned in places and times  where a reliable verification is impossible, which fact alone makes them all inherently suspicious; and sometimes the similarity of a  medical story to other tales told in the same time and culture is additionally suspect, like the odd frequency with which gods in the ancient West rose from the dead, transformed water into wine, or resurrected dead fish, oddities that curiously never occur anymore, and which are so culturally specific as to suggest more obvious origins in storytelling.

References

[1] Boyd, Gregory A.. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition . Baker Book Group.

[2] Byas, Jared. Genesis for Normal People (Study Guide Edition): A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible . Patheos Press.

[3] Carrier, Richard. Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed.

[4] Carrier, Richard. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press.

[5] Carrier, Richard. Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith. Philosophy Press.

[6] Copan, Paul. That’s Just Your Interpretation. Baker Publishing Group.

[7] Harrison, Guy. Simple Questions for Every Christian. Prometheus Books.

[8] Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism . Penguin Publishing Group.

[9] Loftus, John W.. God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions. Baker Publishing Group.

[10] Loftus, John W. The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True . Prometheus Books.

[11] Michael R. Licona. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.

[12] Bruno A. Olshausen. Probabilistic Models of the Brain: Perception and Neural Function (Neural Information Processing). A Bradford Book.

[13] Price, Robert M.. Evolving out of Eden. Tellectual Press.

[14] Robert M. Price. Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?.

[15] Templeton, Charles. Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith . McClelland & Stewart.

[16] Thomson, J. Anderson. Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith . BookMasters.

[17] Unwin, Dr Stephen D.. The Probability of God. The Crown Publishing Group.

[18] John H. Walton. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.

Miracles and Probability II

In the previous post, we focused on how you can use the principle of analogy to conclude that if something contradicts what you already know (what we will call background knowledge), then, unsurprisingly, in all likelihood it is false.  We saw the limitations of this principle, however, especially when generalized to mean rare and new events, not just miracles.  So we need some other tool or insight to allow us to conclude that if something rare and new occurs that we don’t necessarily rule it out, assuming we have good evidence.  To illustrate, we can see all the background knowledge that we have as all the accepted truths in the world, and identify a miracle occurring in the Gospels as our hypotheses.  We can then assign a degree of certainty (probability) to our belief that the miracles are true, given our background knowledge; this is known as the prior probability.  Now, we were essentially arguing in the last post that the prior probability of miracles is low because our background knowledge consists of truths that contradict it.  But what if, say, as Mike Licona and others claim, that we have good evidence for a miracle, for example, the resurrection.  We need to find a way to incorporate that “good evidence” into our argument.  After all, we can’t a priori rule out miracles because we can never be one hundred percent certain that the supernatural doesn’t exist.

Bayes’ Theorem

The solution to this problem is Bayes’ theorem.  The theorem’s conclusion takes into account our background knowledge, and the evidence we have for the hypothesis we make.  Whereas before we were jumping to the conclusion that the probability of a miracle is low based on our prior knowledge of how the world works, we will now take into account the actual evidence of the miracle.  Quantitatively speaking, the theorem makes us express our premises in terms of degrees as opposed to absolutes by forcing us to numerically label them as probabilities.  This is important because most claims in life, especially about historical events, can only be discussed in terms of probabilities, with us often saying things like “most likely” or “more likely”, for example.  So, those that object to doing math in history, think again, because every day we already speak in terms of probabilities.  Moreover, the theorem forces you to think of an alternative hypothesis, reducing confirmation bias.  This formalized and systematic approach to viewing your hypothesis allows for clarity unrivaled by other methods.  I offer two quotes below that explain its history and importance.

In simple terms, Bayes’s Theorem is a logical formula that deals with cases of empirical ambiguity, calculating how confident we can be in any particular conclusion, given what we know at the time.  The theorem was discovered in the late eighteenth century and has since been formally proved, mathematically and logically, so we now know its conclusions are always necessarily true if its premises are true (probabilities).  [Richard Carrier]

Bayes’s theorem is at the heart of everything from genetics to Google, from health insurance to hedge funds. It is a central relationship for thinking concretely about uncertainty, and–given quantitative data, which is sadly not always a given–for using mathematics as a tool for thinking clearly about the world. [Chris Wiggins, Scientific American]

It’s probably best to jump into the formula because the mathematical relationship between the premises reveals a lot about the theorem’s mechanics.  We are trying to find how likely or unlikely (probability) our hypothesis is.  A hypothesis we’ve been working with is whether or not miracles occurred as purported in the Gospels.  So our question is how probable is it that miracles occur in the Gospels relative to the evidence and background knowledge we have, P(h|e,b), which is the posterior or epistemic probability.  The prior probability itself is how typical our explanation (hypothesis) is, P(h|b), or how plausible it is, relative to our background knowledge.  And, finally, the evidence that we have for the miracles occurring, e, can be best thought of as how expected the evidence is if our explanation (hypothesis) is true, P(e|h,b), often called consequent or explanatory probability.  In summary, we have a prior probability, P(h|b), that when it takes into account new evidence, P(e|h,b), the posterior probability, P(h|e,b), gets updated. Two forms of the equation are given, one that takes into account one hypothesis and antithesis hypothesis, while the other takes into account multiple hypotheses.  Equation, 2, can be thought of as the probability or the ratio of your hypothesis (h1) to the competitor’s hypotheses (h2, h3, … ), again, reducing our confirmation bias.  The prior probabilities must sum to one while the expected probabilities don’t.  Please see below for more detail.

1)  P(h|e,b) =  P(h|b) * P(e|h,b) / [ ( P(h|b) * P(e|h,b) ) + P(~h|b) * P(e |~h,b)]

2)  P(h1|e,b) =  P(h1|b) * P(e|h1,b) / [ [P(h1|b) * P(e|h1,b)] + [P(h2|b) * P(e|h2,b)] + [P(h3|b) * P(e|h3,b)]  + …]

P(h|e,b) = probability that the hypothesis is true; Epistemic probability or Posterior probability
P(e|h,b) = how expected the evidence is if our explanation is true; Expected probability or Explanatory probability
P(e|~h,b) = how expected the evidence is if our explanation is false

P(h|b) = how typical our explanation (hypothesis) is; Prior probability or Intrinsic probability
P(~h|b) = how atypical our explanation is; (1 – prior probability)

Prior Probability

Calculating our prior probability is one of great importance because it can mean the difference between a probable event and an improbable event.  A prior is derived from all known information about your hypothesis.  This leads us to the concept of reference classes.  A reference class can be thought of as a category of claims that all address a similar scenario.  This information can be used (referenced) to assist us in finding how typical our explanation is; in other words, it estimates our priors. As an example from “Proving History” by Richard Carrier, a hypothesis you may promote to explain the evidence in the Gospels, empty tomb, etc., is that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by a supernatural agent.  How do you derive a prior probability based on your background knowledge?  Well, what you can do is look for similar scenarios that were believed to have occurred in the past.  For instance, Romulus, Asclepius, Zalmoxis, Inanna, Lazarus, many Saints in Matthew or the Moabite of 2 Kings have all been purported to have been raised from the dead by a supernatural agent.  So our reference class is all persons purported to be raised from the dead by a supernatural agent.  We have at least ten of them from antiquity and probably more.  Since prior probability is only based on background knowledge and not conditioned on the evidence, we can assume that each one of the persons claimed to have been raised by a supernatural agent is equivalent.  That is, there’s no more reason to believe one story over the other since all equally contradict our background knowledge.  If that is the case, then classical probability theory says we can divide the sample space into equivalent pieces such that they sum to one.  So the prior probability would be 1/10 or 0.1 that Jesus Christ rose from the dead by a supernatural agent.

It’s important to realize that we could have used a broader reference class and achieved a much lower probability.  For this fact and others, probabilities formed via Bayesian are classified as subjective, but they are not arbitrary since we have good reasons for our methodology.  To be conservative, we picked the narrowest reference class possible.  But we could have found other attributes in common and defined a more generic class.  For example, all of these claims of risen figures also have the attribute in common that they are supernatural, miraculous, or mythological.  If that’s a new class, then we know that there are hundreds of thousands of cases where people wrote, spoke, or claimed that a miracle was true when in fact it wasn’t.  That would give us a prior of 1/100,000 at least.  But as a heuristic, we will pick the narrowest reference class in order to produce the most conservative estimates.  This rule of thumb reduces the chance that our presuppositions or biases will influence the estimate. This is known as a fortiori estimate.  Getting back to reference classes, it’s worth noting that our background knowledge of all accepted truths is quite large – that is, there are a lot of truths that can contradict our belief in a miracle occurring.  For example, the fact that we are creative and inventive would make us believe that a lot of miracles are fabricated, that we are meaning-making machines and see agency in inanimate objects, that we make things up in order to influence others, that we could be honestly mistaken, that we can be credulous and so forth – all are apart of b and all are viable hypotheses that can explain the evidence.  If incorporated, these can have the effect of lowering the posterior probability, but creating reference classes for multiple hypotheses can be challenging albeit the principle is the same as in the single case.

Epistemic Probabilities

It’s significant enough to make the distinction between epistemic probabilities and physical probabilities.  Epistemic probabilities are beliefs that an event that happened is true versus someone making it up (or being mistaken), and physical probabilities are probabilities (relative frequencies) of events occurring.  An example might be what’s the probability of someone at random having a myocardial bridge in their heart, which is pretty small, the incidence of occurrence is 3%.  But the probability that you believe someone has a myocardial bridge can be quite high since it’s based or conditioned on the evidence at hand, say a recent angiogram.  Moreover, epistemic probabilities often measure events that occur just once, like historical claims, versus physical probabilities which are often statistical averages of repeated phenomena.  So you can’t empirically derive epistemic probabilities by repeating an experiment – say by taking the long term average of flipping a coin resulting in a relative frequency or probability of 0.5 – instead, you must rely on thought experiments by deriving a reference class.  The former method is known as the frequentist approach, while the latter method is known as the Bayesian approach.  It’s best to think of these methods as different approaches designed for different kinds of problems rather than as rivals.  Please see the quote below, emphasizing the fidelity of the Bayesian method.  The next post will discuss the consequent probability and eventually compute an epistemic probability of our hypothesis; we’ll stick with the miraculous hypothesis that Jesus was raised from the dead by a supernatural agent in order to explain a wide range of claims found in the Gospels and Epistles.

The specification of the prior is often the most subjective aspect of Bayesian probability theory, and it is one of the reasons statisticians held Bayesian inference in contempt. But closer examination of traditional statistical methods reveals that they all have their hidden assumptions and tricks built into them. Indeed, one of the advantages of Bayesian probability theory is that one’s assumptions are made up front, and any element of subjectivity in the reasoning process is directly exposed. [ Olshausen]

References

[1] Boyd, Gregory A.. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Book Group.

[2] Byas, Jared. Genesis for Normal People (Study Guide Edition): A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible. Patheos Press.

[3] Carrier, Richard. Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed.

[4] Carrier, Richard. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press.

[5] Carrier, Richard. Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith. Philosophy Press.

[6] Copan, Paul. That’s Just Your Interpretation. Baker Publishing Group.

[7] Harrison, Guy. Simple Questions for Every Christian. Prometheus Books.

[8] Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Penguin Publishing Group.

[9] Loftus, John W.. God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions. Baker Publishing Group.

[10] Loftus, John W. The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True. Prometheus Books.

[11] Michael R. Licona. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.

[12] Bruno A. Olshausen. Probabilistic Models of the Brain: Perception and Neural Function (Neural Information Processing). A Bradford Book.

[13] Price, Robert M.. Evolving out of Eden. Tellectual Press.

[14] Robert M. Price. Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?.

[15] Templeton, Charles. Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith. McClelland & Stewart.

[16] Thomson, J. Anderson. Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith. BookMasters.

[17] Unwin, Dr Stephen D.. The Probability of God. The Crown Publishing Group.

[18] John H. Walton. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.

Miracles and Probability I

We deem them myths not because of a bias that there can be no miracles, but because of the Principle of Analogy, the only alternative to which is believing everything in The National Inquirer.  If we do not use the standard of current-day experience to evaluate claims from the past, what other standard is there? And why should we believe that God or Nature used to be in the business of doing things that do not happen now? Isn’t God supposed to be the same yesterday, today, and forever? [Robert Price]

The principle of analogy, presented above, is really just a summary of David Hume’s argument involving the likelihood of miracle stories.  Hume’s argument says that since our uniform experience does not include miracles, it’s very unlikely that miracles have occurred in the past.  This is analogous reasoning.  It’s not that miracles are impossible; it’s just that we should remain agnostic towards them since it’s far more likely that a natural explanation is a cause.  Now the principle of analogy has its shortcomings, especially when generalized to mean rare events.  What if, for example, Einstein didn’t move forward with his theory of relativity because it contradicted his present-day uniform experience?  What if we observed a nuclear explosion and explained it as a conventional explosion just because we had no experience with nuclear physics?  Moreover, there are many quantum mechanical phenomena that appear to violate the laws of Newtonian physics.  Do we also outright reject these, at the time, very rare events just because they don’t agree with our current background knowledge?

The answer to the above questions is obviously no.  If the new observation, model, or prediction pans out empirically and is corroborated by other means, then we must accept it.  So it has been argued by many philosophers that Hume’s argument is circular, that the definition of miracle need not be a violation of natural law, and that Hume, in a Bayesian sense, does not take into account all the probabilities involved, to name just a few.  So the principle of analogy, in my view, is most useful as a heuristic—a guiding principle rather than a law.  It’s there to tell us that if a claim doesn’t square away well with what we already know as plausible (things measured against our background knowledge), then it’s probably false.  A caveat is that if something conflicts with our background knowledge, but, we have a suspicion that it’s true because of good evidence, then we must test it or observe many other instances to change the state of our current background knowledge.  Since Hume primarily had miracles (violations of natural law) in mind, we will investigate miracles further.

So, more specifically, how can we adjudicate the validity of miracle claims in the Gospels?  I argue here that a historian can’t say much of anything about them.  This is not born out of prejudice from metaphysical naturalism; in other words, I’m not saying this because a worldview doesn’t permit me to do so.  A historian can’t say much about it because the way in which we understand how the world works—today, yesterday, and tomorrow – is at odds with the way in which miracles occur.  This knowledge accumulated over the centuries is known as background knowledge, which comes from our scientific testing of claims and observations.  And miracles contradict our present-day background knowledge.  We will show in the next post thru Bayesian’s theorem that if things aren’t plausible (a technical term), then, not surprisingly, the probability of them occurring is low.  And in the case of miracles, there is, in my view, an insurmountable amount of contradictory evidence, presented as background knowledge, to overcome.

Our scientific knowledge base gives us a relatively reliable way of understanding how the world works – from predicting the speed of light to understanding complex human behavior—it has a pretty good track record.  It doesn’t have all the answers—for example, why are we here or why is there something rather than nothing—but it’s the best we’ve got to work worth.  Moreover, it’s important to understand that history is not the proper purview for establishing the kind of world we live in, for that should be reserved for the scientific community.  And, as of today, there are no peer-reviewed periodicals by forensic scientists or medical professionals confirming a single miracle.  That is not to say that one can’t or hasn’t occurred, but they just haven’t been able to stand up to scientific scrutiny.  A good example, one of many, is a large study in 2006 on whether or not prayer would assist one in recovering from major cardio surgery.  It was found that prayer had no effect on the experimental group, while in some cases the control group actually fared better.  So, as to another point, miracles are within the realm of experimental science—that is, they can be tested.

Some of our background knowledge includes not only our inability to observe and reproduce miracles in the scientific community but also our understanding of how human nature functions.  For example, we know that humans as a species are fairly creative and inventive, in addition to having a deep need for meaning-making.  In fact, humans have lots of faculties that collectively make them receptive to mythology, like a strong tendency to see agency (intentionality in the inanimate), to see design and purpose in the natural world (a river’s purpose is for us to fish in), and to detect patterns out of otherwise meaningless stuff (Marian apparitions).  In other words, we have a tendency, starting at a very early age, to connect-the-dots in order to explain why things happen.  These meaningful patterns we create become our beliefs and guide us to understand reality, regardless of their accuracy.  And these explanations can give us psychological comfort as a reward.

This above is a powerful way of explaining why people believe and create mythology but falls short in explaining the genesis of the Gospels.  On the contrary, I believe the Gospel writers invented literary miracles to highlight Jesus Christ’s role as Lord and savior that primarily functions as propaganda.  Lastly, we know that there has been plenty of mythology created in the past that is not believed now, see “Why is Jesus so special?”.  So why do we dismiss other mythology but not the mythology of the Gospels?  There are various explanations to this question, but argument by analogy says that since those were creative inventions, there is a likelihood that the Gospels’ mythology is as well.  In conclusion, our background knowledge thus far tells us that miracles aren’t plausible.  However, we noted early on that things can contradict our background knowledge and nevertheless be true if good evidence exists.  In the next post, we will gain insight into this problem with the aid of probability theory.  Probability theory says that there exists two probabilities, a prior probability—chances a miracle can occur in light of what we already know—and an explanatory probability—how expected the evidence is if the miracle is true.  As a hint, the explanatory probability is a miracle’s only hope.

References

[1] Boyd, Gregory A. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Book Group.

[2] Byas, Jared. Genesis for Normal People (Study Guide Edition): A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible. Patheos Press.

[3] Carrier, Richard. Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed.

[4] Carrier, Richard. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press.

[5] Carrier, Richard. Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith. Philosophy Press.

[6] Copan, Paul. That’s Just Your Interpretation. Baker Publishing Group.

[7] Harrison, Guy. Simple Questions for Every Christian. Prometheus Books.

[8] Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism . Penguin Publishing Group.

[9] Loftus, John W.. God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions. Baker Publishing Group.

[10] Loftus, John W. The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True . Prometheus Books.

[11] Michael R. Licona. The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.

[12] Bruno A. Olshausen. Probabilistic Models of the Brain: Perception and Neural Function (Neural Information Processing). A Bradford Book.

[13] Price, Robert M.. Evolving out of Eden. Tellectual Press.

[14] Robert M. Price. Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?.

[15] Templeton, Charles. Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith . McClelland & Stewart.

[16] Thomson, J. Anderson. Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith . BookMasters.

[17] Unwin, Dr Stephen D.. The Probability of God. The Crown Publishing Group.

[18] John H. Walton. The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate.

Why Is Jesus so Special?

I’m often baffled when I get such a question as to why I don’t take Jesus Christ as a god and savior seriously.  My reasons why, I hope, are apparent when one considers other literature and evidence that involve belief in the supernatural.  I mean, after all, it would be nothing but special pleading for me to take one serious (Jesus Christ) and forget the rest (other gods).  For example, there are dying and rising sons (daughters) of gods that go through a passion (suffering) in order to obtain victory over death that have some elements similar to Jesus.  To expound upon those predating Christianity, Osiris from the mystery religions was a son of a deity and offered an afterlife for those baptized into his death and resurrection, Romulus, a Roman God, had his death and resurrection celebrated in annual passion plays and was born of a virgin, while Inanna, a Sumerian goddess, had a resurrection and escaped from the underworld [Richard Carrier].  Robert Price describes below how apologists, in the 2nd century, admitted to these parallels existing:

The early Church fathers understood [parallels] as a problem because they were already getting the same objections from pagans.  They said, “What you say about Jesus we’ve been saying about Dionysus and Hercules all the time.  ”What’s the big deal?  I mean they didn’t believe in them either anymore.  And so the Christian apologists (Justin Martyr) – the defenders of the faith – would say, “Well, yea, but this one is true. And you see Satan counterfeited it in advance because he knew this day would come.”Boy, I’ll tell you that tells you two things right there that even they didn’t even deny that these other Jesus like characters were before Jesus or they never would have resorted to something like that Satan knew it would happen and counterfeit it in advance?

There are many more mythical gods that were often transformed into historical figures although they may not predate Christianity, perhaps because the evidence simply did not survive or was destroyed by their competitor religion.  I’m using myth as in factually untrue stories that are historically improbable but symbolically meaningful [Richard Carrier].  Note, also, that I’m not insinuating that Christianity copied some of these themes out of whole cloth.  What I am saying, however, is that these ideas came from the same creative cognitive faculties that also produced the mythical motifs of Jesus Christ.  There’s no difference here.  And so why should we reject all the other mythological gods but accept this one?  In a similar vein, Gregory Boyd, a Christian apologist, proposes the following argument:

We know the Jesus story is about God visiting us and/or about a God who does something along the lines of dying and rising is not altogether unique. The history of religion and mythology is full of “incarnation-like” stories and “resurrection-like” stories. So, one could argue, if we assume that all these analogous “incarnations” and “resurrections” are mythological, we should similarly concede that the Christian version of these stories is mythological, its unique features notwithstanding.

The following list of mythological gods, some from the mystery religions, share some characteristics with Jesus.  For comparison, Jesus was born of a virgin, was a son of a god, was a divine judge, had a communal meal of bread and wine, was a savior, performed miracles, was crucified, resurrected, and ascended into heaven.  Now, for these, there is by no means a one-to-one parallel here, but they share some similar features nevertheless.  On the other hand, if you emphasize the differences, then you’d rightly conclude that these are quite different from Jesus.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that the human imagination and intellect are capable of creating etiologies – things that attempt to explain common mysteries – for example, what happens after death.  Mythology is nothing more than etiology expressed in dramatic ways, and may be used to comfort and satisfy human curiosity, while often being used as a tool for propaganda.  For instance, developing the virgin birth and performing miracles to show the greatness of the protagonist (e.g., Jesus Christ) is potentially propaganda.  All of the following gods were fabricated (adapted from Mike Licona), so why not Jesus Christ’s divine attributes as well?

  • Adonis (Syria) – ascended to heaven before death, resurrected on the 3rd day (later Christian interpretation)
  • Attis (Asia Minor) – virgin born
  • Baal – son of El a God, descends to the underworld, could have resurrected
  • Dionysus (Greece) – son of a God Zeus, a savior, descends to underworld, communal wine, rival of Christianity, could have resurrected
  • Hercules (Greece) – performed miracles, ascended to Mt Olympus and became a god
  • Hermes (Greece) – guides souls to underworld, son of Zeus, created miracles as an infant
  • Horus (Egypt) – son of Osiris and later son of Re, performed healing magic as a child
  • Krishna (India) – born of a virgin, performed miracles as a child, resurrected, ascended to heaven
  • Mithra (Persia) – a savior, divinity of light and salvation, communal bread and wine but was not considered the flesh and blood of God, ascends to heaven
  • Orpheus (Greece) – descends to underworld
  • Tammuz (Sumeria) – resurrection debated, descends to underworld
  • Zalmoxis () – death assured an afterlife (immortality of the soul), resurrection debated

In addition to mythological gods transformed into history, there were also people transformed into mythology or legend.  Once the mythology – dramatic stories and beliefs – have been created, then it can be set into historical reality, becoming legendary.  These characters all share common attributes or fit common themes known as the mythical hero archetype.  Jesus, as expressed in the Gospels, represents a lengthy mythical hero archetype quite well (not shown here).  The following is adapted from Robert Price and note that some gods are apt for this archetype as well, not just miracle workers.  There are many more attributes if curious, so please see the work of Alan Dundes for further details.

  • Persecuted as a child by a tyrant: Caesar Augustus, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Jesus Christ
  • Postmortem appearances: Romulus, Appolonius, Jesus Christ
  • Performed miracles:  Appolonius, Onus, Hanina Ben Dosa, Honi the Circle Drawer, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Asclepius, Mohammed, Jesus Christ
  • Passion narratives: Appolonius, Jesus Christ
  • Empty tomb stories: popular contemporary novels, Jesus Christ

Now that we’ve identified the fallacy of special pleading that some commit in which they are unwilling to apply the same set of standards when evaluating their own god as they would to the other gods, it’s time to create some arguments.  The argument I’m making is an inductive, analogical argument, so the more features the comparing god has in common with Jesus, then, obviously, the more likely Jesus is similar to the comparing god.  And the more similar Jesus is to the comparing god, then the stronger the inference drawn will be.  For example, some gods are sons of gods that are mythical, Jesus is a son of a god, and therefore the inference can be drawn that Jesus is mythical too.  [When I use mythical, I mean at the very least having mythical attributes but not necessarily the entire being.]  But this, like all inductive reasoning, is only in probabilistic terms, and the conclusion is not guaranteed.  Moreover, the argument is only as good as how strong the comparison is.  So just because we have one attribute in common – both sons of gods – that doesn’t necessarily justify us in saying that Jesus was also similar in a further respect.

But I think we can do better than this because any one god and Jesus has other features in common, namely that some of their features are divine or that they have the capacity to perform miracles, i.e., they have the ability to do something that goes beyond what nature can accomplish.  Knowledge that is accumulated over time is known as background knowledge, which comes from our scientific testing of claims, our observations and experiences.  And miracles and divine features contradict our present day background knowledge – that is, these features, such as miracles and divine qualities, don’t coincide with how we know the world operates.  So they have a low prior probability of occurring, and are therefore likely to be mythology.  So we have other features in common – performance of miracles and divine attributes – that strengthens our inference that Jesus’ supernatural attributes are probably mythological like the other gods and miracle workers from above.

The last argument I’m making is a causal one.  This essentially says that there had to be a cause for the development of what we’ve established as mythology.  One possible explanation: evolutionary psychologists believe that people are born with “meaning-making” faculty and resort to myth making as a consequence of wanting to explain why things are the way they are and also for reasons of propaganda.  So myth making is a human enterprise.  To be clear, I am not allowing a metaphysical bias, namely that of naturalism, to skew my conclusion; these supernatural features are clearly byproducts of the human mind.  Moreover, we don’t know how god functions, and, therefore, it won’t do us much good to speculate that he’s the cause.  It’s much more likely that the same creative forces that created the other gods also created Jesus.  And there’s no reason to believe that the minds that developed the aforementioned mythological gods were any different from the minds that developed the mythology surrounding Jesus. Jesus is engulfed by, plain and simple, mythology like the rest of them.

References

I used a mixture of sources, namely from the Christian apologist Mike Licona, the historian Richard Carrier and the agnostic-theologian Robert Price.  The information was collected from their very well researched and articulated, but often dichotomous, views on Christ’s analogies from other saviors and religions.  I apologize for not being more precise and thorough in documenting this.  But the ideas and arguments, as most of my writings, are original to me.

Gospels as Literary Creations

The Gospels are, it must be said with gratitude, works of art, the supreme fictions in our culture, narratives produced by enormously influential literary artists who put their art in the service of a theological vision. It is, of course, not uncommon to recognize literary artistry in the Gospels; there is perhaps no more beautiful short story than “The Prodigal Son,” no more moving sentence in all world literature than “I am with you always, until the end of time” (Matt. 28:20) – Randel Helms

A previous post argued that the gospels should have a qualifier to the consensus genre classification of Greco-roman biography, namely that they should be legendary biographies and not historical biographies.  The genre gives an indication of what to expect, so we should see a lot of legendary and mythological embellishment in the biography.  But this does not necessarily imply that all is fiction since there could be some historical content embedded in the narratives.  There are criteria that historians use to determine if the content is historical or not, but I don’t have much confidence in the results, as Richard Carrier has outlined that many arguments can be fallacious.  Besides, I tend to think that the Gospels are more literary than anything else, as this post will illustrate by drawing chiefly on Bart Ehrman’s analysis.

To put it plainly, the Gospel stories should be viewed as pieces of theological literature with little historical value.  What undermines their historicity is not so much the miracle stories and mythology—as most biographies of their time period contain—nor their favorable bias towards the subject matter, but rather their direct use of literary devices and editing to make theological and idiosyncratic points.  After all, if you start with one thing (Gospel of Mark) and change it to another thing (the other Gospels), how do you know which is correct?  This post will focus on how each author borrowed and changed content from the Gospel of Mark (or from oral tradition) to construct their own ideas and implications of the life and death of Jesus Christ, while a later post will explore the different literary devices used to craft such stories.

The Gospels are filled with symbolism—things that mean something beyond their literal meaning. If you miss this, then you miss the best parts of the story.  Metaphor is a type of symbolism that equates one thing to another, not using like or as.  Most pervasively though, the stories use allusion, which makes references to people or events outside of the Gospels, most commonly from the Old Testament.  Just as heavily, the Gospels are filled with allegory, which makes references to other stories outside of the Gospels by subtly recasting characters or retelling events.  Parables are the most common form of allegory found in the Gospels, and they teach moral or spiritual lessons.  Lastly, rhetorical devices that are meant to persuade are quite common, consisting of hyperbole, chreia, personification, amplification, irony, and incomplete syllogisms [3].

To explain the tools of analysis, redaction is the process of editing, and redaction criticism is the study of how authors have created a story by editing another story.  As Bart Ehrman says, “If enough changes point in the same direction, we may be able to uncover the redactor’s principal concerns and emphases.”  Redaction criticism is very important to the study of the Gospels since both Matthew and Luke relied on the Gospel of Mark to create their story.  In fact, 80% of Mark is contained in the Gospel of Matthew. Remember that the Gospel of Mark was written first, roughly around 70 CE. The Gospel of John’s story uses sources that are more controversial; he may or may not have relied directly on Mark, Matthew, or Luke and instead may have used a mixture of oral tradition and written. As a side, the authors of the Gospels are all anonymous, and for brevity’s sake, I’ll be referring to them by their traditional names assigned to them by the Church.

As the first example of editing, in Mark, it starts out by having the heavens open up and a voice from above says, “You are my beloved Son”, while in Matthew it says “This is my beloved Son.”  The change may be grammatically slight, but it’s significant in meaning.  Matthew is trying to show that his identity of being the Son of God is not hidden to everyone as it is in the Gospel of Mark.  By saying this is my beloved Son, you know you have an audience (Pharisees and Sadducees).  As another example of this difference, there is the walking on water narrative.  In the Gospel of Mark, people do not understand the implications when Jesus walks on water and “their hearts were hardened”, while in Matthew, they react by falling down in worship, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God”.  Matthew deliberately made a change to Mark to make a different point.  Why did Matthew make this change? Matthew probably made this change to emphasize the culpability of the Jews, which works more dramatically in Matthew than in Mark since they were conscious of his identity all along.  Moreover, “in John, for example, as in Luke, three times Pilate tries to release Jesus by declaring him innocent (unlike in Mark).  And at the end, so, too, does the centurion (Roman soldier).  The Romans all agree on Jesus’ innocence.  Who then is guilty for his death? Not the Romans, but the Jewish authorities, or the Jewish people themselves” [1].

To mix things up, we can go to the end of the story of Mark, the crucifixion narrative. His dying words on the cross were “My God My God why hast thou forsaken me.”  This is a direct quote from Psalm 22 of the Hebrew scriptures.  This passage and others (35 and 69) were known as the Psalms of Lament (22, 35 and 69) – speaks of a righteous man who suffers at the hands of God’s enemies and becomes vindicated by God in the end [1].  Knowing that the author had in their hands a copy of the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), it’s hard to not think that the passion-crucifixion narrative was influenced by these passages, including Isaiah 52, the Songs of The Suffering Servant.  After all, there’s a direct quotation, and the beginning of the story says this is to follow in accordance with Scripture.  Whether or not the author wanted people to know that this was allegorical or something that Jesus actually said, we’ll never know for sure.  Now Luke changes the words completely by appealing to Psalms 31, “Into your hands I will commit my spirit.”  Again, this is a direct quotation out of the Septuagint in order to fulfill scripture.  Luke’s Jesus accepts his death and willingly gives himself over during the crucifixion.  By contrast, Mark’s Jesus is in agony and seems to be completely unaware of his purpose, which is an atonement for our sins.  Luke changes this to fit his formulation of Jesus.  Luke’s Jesus is a prophet that was rejected by God’s people; he preaches as a prophet, heals as a prophet and also dies as a prophet.  The greatest prophets from scripture, e.g., Elijah, Amos, Ezekiel, all were persecuted and sometimes even martyred by their own people [1].  Luke has placed his Jesus alongside these great prophets. “Luke emphasizes that Jesus dies as a righteous, blameless martyr of God.  As a prophet he knew that this had to happen” [1].  Right, prophets are visionaries, they can foresee the future. This explains why Jesus has complete confidence that his death will bring him in God’s special care as his final words were a prayer not a plea.

Towards the end of both Mark and Luke, the curtain in the holy Temple gets torn in half. The curtain tearing, however, happens at different times and for different reasons.  The Temple is where sacrifices were offered up to God, and the most sacred place in the Temple was the square room, “in whose darkness God’s presence was thought to dwell.” No one could enter this room unless it was the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) when the high priest would go behind the curtain into the presence of God to perform a sacrifice to atone the sins of the people [1].  Mark indicates that when Jesus died, the curtain separating the holiest of places from the outside world was torn in half [1].  This is symbolic in that the tear has opened up the holiest of places to the rest of the world; God is no longer separated by the curtain and all have access to him now.  The ultimate sacrifice has been made, voiding the necessity of all others. Jesus, the Son of God, has “given his life as a ransom for many” (Mark).  People now have direct access to God, who comes to them in the death of Jesus [1].  On the other hand, In Luke, the curtain is torn when Jesus was on the cross and when darkness comes upon the land.  The torn curtain is symbolic of the people rejecting God’s gift (Jesus) and shows God’s judgment upon them. The torn curtain accompanies the eerie darkness over the land as a sign of God’s judgment upon his people who have rejected his gift of “light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke).  What underscores this point of God’s wrath is when Jesus says to his enemies (Jewish authorities) that “this is your hour and the power of darkness” (Luke).

The centurion (commander in a Roman army) at the end of Mark says that “Truly this man was God’s Son.”  The centurion in Luke says, “Certainly this man was innocent.”  These two passages are clearly different.  We can try to reconcile them, but what is more likely the case is that the authors wanted to get across different messages.  Mark is portraying Jesus as the atonement for sin, so his phrase reconfirms that Jesus, the Son of God, had to die for our salvation.  By contrast, Luke wanted to emphasize that Jesus was truly innocent and whose death would not bring, in it of itself, salvation or forgiveness.  Jesus died because he was a prophet rejected by God’s people.  And the people need to repent of their sins and return to God, and then they will be forgiven and granted salvation.  So Mark’s theology regarding salvation (forgiveness for sin) is more of a “get out of jail free card”, while in Luke’s you have to work for it.

Lastly, but certainly not the last of the discrepancies, is the day that Jesus actually died.  This is a contradiction not easily reconciled, despite numerous attempts by apologists.   In the Gospel of Mark, the Passover Meal is the Last Supper.  Passover was the most significant event for Jews during Jesus’ time.  For this year, it started on Thursday evening and continued on to Friday day since Jews viewed the start of the day as the beginning of nightfall.  So Thursday evening was the beginning of Passover.  Thursday day was the Day of Preparation where people brought their lambs to be slaughtered for sacrifice for their sins, and the meal was prepared that afternoon to be eaten that evening, on Passover.  The Last Supper includes the ceremonial wine and bread, where Jesus says after breaking the bread and giving it to his disciples, “This is my body.”  This is symbolic of when his body is broken for the salvation of all.  Jesus then gave the cup of wine to his disciples and said, “This is my blood of the covenant, that is poured out for many” (Mark).  And this is symbolic of the blood that will be shed.  After the Last Supper, Jesus is later taken by the authorities and spends the night in jail, while being found guilty by Pontius Pilate the next day.  He dies on Friday at 9 AM on Passover Day.  In John’s Gospel, John the Baptist announces that “Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.”  This is the only Gospel in which a metaphor for a lamb is used for Jesus.  The Passover meal in John takes place on Friday evening.  Jesus’ Last Supper is not a Passover meal; it occurs on a Thursday, the evening before the Passover lambs are slaughtered.  After the meal, Jesus spends the night in jail and then Pontius Pilate announces that he will be crucified on the Day of Preparation at noon – the day the lambs are slaughtered, which is a Thursday [1].  Therefore, in Mark, Jesus dies on Friday Passover Day, and, in John, Jesus dies on the Day of Preparation, which is a Thursday.  So Jesus is the slaughtered lamb in the Gospel of John.

Looking at these differences, and there are a lot more to point out, one can conclude that either the writers based their stories on different sources of information or that they are literary creations.  I believe that since the changes made coincide with an author’s particular vision of Jesus Christ that they are most certainly fabrications, molded to fit a theme or to make a point.  One could argue, as most Christian apologists do, that the differences are historically compatible.  They could argue that using the centurion as an example, he was both innocent and also the Son of God, so there is no contradiction but rather one author chose to emphasize one point over the other.  However, Luke had the centurion say that “certainly this man is innocent” for a reason; Jesus was a prophet in which his people outright rejected him, and it’s structured this way to fit within Luke’s theology of guilt and repentance.  Moreover, it’s a climactic phrase for the centurion to say, and therefore has all the hallmarks of literary creation.  I don’t think anyone was recording what the centurion was saying and passed it on through oral tradition; it’s just part of the story.  This goes for all the modifications aforementioned.  In my view, the editing in it of itself makes it hard to know which is historical and which is not, but an even better argument is that the changes made are too integral to the author’s theme to be anything but literary creations.

Notes:

[1]  Ehrman, Bart D. (2009-02-20). Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them). HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

[2]  Helms, Randel. Gospel Fictions. Kindle Edition.

[3]  Witherington III, Ben.  (2009).  New Testament Rhetoric: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament.  Cascade Books.

Gospels as Legendary Biographies

Knowing what type of writings the Gospels are—for example, legendary versus historical—will help us to understand the writer’s intentions and guide our interpretation.  The one method that we have available to assess its type is by looking at its genre, which is an unspoken contract between the writer and the audience on what to expect.

Genre forms a kind of `contract’ or agreement, often unspoken or unwritten, or even unconscious, between an author and a reader, by which the author sets out to write according to a whole set of expectations and conventions, and we agree to read or to interpret the work using the same conventions, giving us an initial idea of what we might expect to find. [2]

This short piece will explain the various attempts at classifying the Gospels and argues that their genre is akin to that of legendary biographies but not historical ones.

From Folk to Greco-Roman 

At one point the Gospels were viewed as being “one of a kind” (sui generis) biographies since the subject lacked personal detail, such as personality, character development, and appearance.  In the 1920s, form criticism came to the forefront, and they saw the Gospels as a series of mini-stories but completely void of biographical and historical content.

This led them to conclude that the Gospels were folk literature, that is, pieces of oral tradition passed down and synthesized into narratives.  Ben Witherington, on the other hand, a modern New Testament scholar, saw it as the complete opposite:

The whole form critical approach to these Gospels is deeply flawed, for the Gospels do not amount to boiling up narratives from shards and bits of tradition and sayings of Jesus; on the contrary, Gospel writing was a matter of editing the material down in specific ways. [6]

The modern consensus amongst both secular and non-secular scholars was helped by Richard Burridge, who concludes that the genre of the Gospels should be one of ancient Greco-Roman biography by comparing them to other well established Greco-Roman writings in terms of their form, function, and content.

A prose narrative recounting an individual’s life, often within a chronological framework, employing numerous subgenera (such as sayings, speeches, anecdotes and conflict stories) so as to reflect important aspects of his or her character, principally for purposes of instruction (to inform about what kind of person he or she was), or propaganda (to show his or her superiority to rivals). [4]

At first glance, this seems to be a fit for the Gospels but upon taking a closer look, we will see that it falls short.  The historian Matthew Ferguson, who is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Irvine, reminds us that fitting the Gospels into a genre isn’t as easy as we may think:   

The genre of Graeco-Roman biography was rather diverse in antiquity, with many variations in structure and content depending on the biographical subject being described. As such, the comparison of the NT Gospels with “Graeco-Roman biography” is no simple or straightforward matter, as ancient biographical scholars still debate how the genre can even be defined to begin with.

From Historical to Legendary

Matthew Ferguson concludes that the Gospels are more similar to prose novels and legendary biographies than to historical biographies.  This comes from the inference that historical pieces of work were much more analytically rigorous and the focus wasn’t just on the narration of events.

Ancient historical prose has a very distinct style, in which the historian often would discuss the methodology of his research, the sources he consulted, the differences between multiple traditions about a person or event, and his judgment as an inquirer into past affairs. History, derived from the Greek ἱστορία (“inquiry”), is not merely a narrative about past people, places, and events, but is an investigation that one conducts in the present in order to formulate a hypothesis of what probably took place in the past, based on the available evidence. [5]

In addition, analytical works such as historical biographies, even in times of antiquity, were much more critical towards their subject matter.  Novelistic biographies of antiquity include Homer, Alexander the Great, and Aesop, whereas writings by Plutarch, Arrian, and Suetonius are historical biographies.  The Gospels show resemblance in broad outline to the biographies of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Asclepius, and, the most uncanny, Apollonius of Tyana which were all about miracle-working “divine men”.

Rather than read as the unmitigated praise of a saint who can do no wrong, ancient historical works and historical biographies were far more critical of their subjects, whom they analyzed less one-dimensionally and more as complete persons. Even for a popular and well-liked emperor like Augustus, his biographer Suetonius in his Life of Augustus still did not hold back from describing Augustus’ acts of adultery and lavish behavior. Good historians are concerned with telling the past as it really is rather than just heaping praise upon individuals as propaganda. [5]

Gospels as Hagiographies

The Gospels were also written in the third-person by omniscient authors and did not try to chiefly convince us of the accuracy of their accounts but rather that Jesus was heroic and worthy of being our savior.  Moreover, all of the Gospels are anonymous, don’t cite their sources or methodologies, and utilize much myth-making, which is atypical of historical biographical material.

Two possible exceptions, one being the Gospel of Luke, where an attempt is made to establish legitimacy since sources were claimed to be passed down to the author.  But this passage doesn’t amount to much as it excludes the names of the sources and doesn’t bother to discuss their relevance to the events.  The Gospel of John is the other exception where John claims to have an eyewitness disciple but fails to mention a name.

As Morton Smith puts it, these are known as aretalogies because they are “a miracle story or a collection of miracle stories” whose primary purpose was “praise of and propaganda for the deity supposed to have done the deeds.”  Below Matthew Ferguson succinctly describes the nature of the Gospels quite well.

The Gospels, in contrast, are not historical biographies but hagiographies written in unquestioning praise of their messianic subject. As a good representation of the scholarly consensus about the aims of the Gospels, the Oxford Annotated Bible (pg. 1744) explains, “Neither the evangelists nor their first readers engaged in historical analysis. Their aim was to confirm Christian faith.” Such works, written for an audience of converts, are not chiefly concerned with being critical or investigative, but rather serve the religious agendas and ideologies of the communities that produced them.  [5]

References

[1] Boyd, Gregory A.; Eddy, Paul Rhodes. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Book Group – A.

[2] Burridge, Richard A.  Four Gospels, One Jesus?: A Symbolic Reading.

[3] Burridge, Richard A. What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography.

[4] Ehrman, Bart D.  The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.

[5] Ferguson, Matthew.  Κέλσος

[6] Witherington, Ben.  New Testament Rhetoric.

Which Tribe Do You Belong To?

Bias is a personal inclination, feeling or opinion—usually not reasoned out—that interferes with obtaining the truth.  As far as how we process information concerning ourselves and the world around us, psychologists have identified numerous cognitive biases, but none are more important than confirmation bias.  It essentially says that we confirm a hypothesis or belief about something by looking for evidence to support it and discarding that which does not support it.  This bias makes our beliefs and hypotheses very resistant to change.  A good example of a confirmation bias is if I was convinced that prayer will assist me in getting an interview, and I counted all the times that I got an interview with prayer but ignored the interviews I got without prayer.  In other words, as you may have heard before, we count the hits but ignore the misses.  The remedy is, in addition to proving our beliefs, that we should always be trying to falsify our beliefs, in this case proving that you’d get an interview without prayer.  Moreover, you need to be cautious of the correlation fallacy; that is, just because an interview was obtained when you prayed, it doesn’t mean the prayer caused the interview.  You must either look for other explanations (hypotheses) as to why you got that interview or admit falling prey to confirmation bias. [Once you take all that into consideration, and you are still convinced that prayer is the causal factor, see my discussion on Miracles and Probability I, II, and III.]

There is an even more hideous offender to the truth, specifically ingroup bias.  Once we are affiliated with a certain ideology, we then frequently inherit the beliefs and preferences of that ingroup.  And once we are in an ingroup, we often, unconsciously, argue in favor of that group’s positions.  In fact, the support of other member’s ideas in our ingroup can be so dysfunctional that a phenomenon known as groupthink can occur.  Groupthink is when uniformity in the group’s decisions is elevated at the cost of rational thinking.  Examples of groupthink are abounded—from the Bay of Pigs invasion to simple meetings at work.  To illustrate, think of a meeting at work where you had a good idea but failed to mention it because you know it wouldn’t be well received by influential others.  That is a classic example of how groups can be forced into making poor decisions, mainly by refusing anything that’s contrary to the group’s opinion, typically articulated by the higher ranking or more well-liked individuals.

Prior to being educated in the necessary fields, such as economics, history, and logic, I personally was affected by the conservative movement in the group.  I started my political career out by listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The result was disastrous. I became a staunch, conservative zealot.  I recall that the hate for liberals spewed by these pundits was contagious, and I used to call my teachers liberals with a contemptuous tone.  I reverberated a tribal instinct with an “us” against “them” mentality.  I inherited all of their assumptions, arguments, and preferences as well.  So, for example, I equated government and government intervention as bad, gun control as the government trying to take our guns away, Christians as founding our nation, unbridled pride as something to be cherished, protesting against war as wrong, protecting the environment as unnecessary, and, finally, welfare means doing a person harm and one should practice tough-love in its stead.

So what explains this?  For our ancestors, evolutionary psychologists believe that there were survival value in-group members demonstrating uniformity and favoritism while showing prejudice towards outsiders.  This conformity would allow for cohesion and cooperation in order to meet similar ends.  According to the logic of evolution, if a behavior occurs frequently enough in a high enough percentage of the population, then it’s a good candidate for being an adaptation.  If it’s an adaptation, then it’s probably hard-wired into our psychology.  So once we are in an ingroup, it comes quite natural for us to adopt their beliefs and fight for their cause, while shunning outsiders.  The consequences are clear, and we end up forming conclusions without any forethought.  We kind of just back into these beliefs as Michael Shermer says and then defend them at all costs.  I recall watching a debate with Dr. Richard Carrier and Michael Licona, and they were perplexed at how they arrived at different conclusions as to whether or not Jesus Christ rose from the dead.  I have often wondered how each ingroup they were associated with contributed to their conclusions.

Cognitive dissonance is an uneasy feeling that one gets when there is a contradiction between a deep-seated belief and another opposing belief.  It’s not a cognitive bias in it itself, but it nonetheless assists people in maintaining erroneous views.  I felt this dissonance myself when I was a diehard fan of evolutionary psychology.  To recall a specific incident, I was listening to a debate between Stephen Pinker and Steven Rose on whether or not the brain was designed as a general problem-solving tool or a domain-specific problem-solving tool.  I had so much invested into evolutionary psychology – countless hours of reading it and using it as an explanatory tool to understand the hardships of life – that I was vulnerable.  It was perfect, sacred, and infallible to me.  Because the tenet and pillar of evolutionary psychology is that the mind is a Swiss army knife that is filled with individual tools to solve specific problems at hand, I couldn’t imagine the mind being anything else.  Sounds frivolous, but I fought for days to resist thinking that it may be true.  Although I don’t know evolutionary psychology’s official stance today, ten years later I’ve conceded that it could be both, with the help of “Adapting Minds” by Buller.

A worldview is a framework of beliefs that allows us to make judgments and decisions about our environment.  So not only do beliefs function as cohesive and cooperative mechanisms in groups, but they also serve to pragmatically guide us throughout the day.  My system of beliefs and values that I had when I worshiped evolutionary psychology constituted a worldview.  This worldview allowed me to make sense out of a lot of things in life.  However, I was too emotionally entrenched in it, and it was perhaps acting as a distorter of truth by not allowing other more plausible explanations for phenomena.  I haven’t abandoned evolutionary psychology; I’m just no longer holding on to it so tightly.  I have since reassessed what’s worth holding on to and that so happens to be principles relating to relationships, civics, justice, etc.  Moreover, I try to now be independent as much as possible, rarely adhering to an ideology.  By not adhering to an ideology you are not as liable to be indoctrinated with inflexible assumptions and beliefs that don’t work for every problem.  For example, becoming a libertarian forces you to believe that government intervention will almost always result in an undesirable outcome, but this may not always be the case.  Problems need to be looked at individually, free from dogma.

So we see the disadvantages of affiliating with an ingroup and holding on to beliefs too strongly.  But it’s impossible to not have some sort of worldview.  As Michael Shermer expounds, we are meaning-making machines and demand an interpretive framework to understand the world and humans around us.  We can’t function without beliefs, assumptions, and values.  But that’s not to say that one group doesn’t hold a better set of heuristics that minimizes these biases over another.  I believe that a philosophical point of view to be found in free thought.  It’s less likely to be plagued by bias since its very nature is to be skeptical of it in the first place.  The following definition of it is most applicable.  Since free thought relies on empiricism like science does, then an assumption or hypothesis can be disputed and discarded.  By contrast, an ideology or religion has undisputed truths that would probably never be overturned.

Free thought — is a philosophical viewpoint which holds that positions regarding truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, revelation, or other dogma.  The cognitive application of freethought is known as “freethinking”, and practitioners of freethought are known as “freethinkers”.  Freethinkers are heavily committed to the use of scientific inquiry, and logic. The skeptical application of science implies freedom from the intellectually limiting effects of confirmation bias, cognitive bias, conventional wisdom, popular culture, prejudice, or sectarianism.