Contra Stenger

Here is a paper from arxiv by Dr Luke Barnes of the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich entitled 'The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life'. This focuses on the manifold errors of one Dr Victor J. Stenger. It is probably the best & most detailed discussion of the problem I have yet seen and is well worth a look; as is the blog he contributes to with 3 other cosmologists entitled 'Letters to Nature'.

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P'd off

Just when you think the ‘Jesus Myth’ controversy couldn't get any more surreal, out pops a paper from Stephen Law, a philosopher at theUniversity of London entitled “Evidence, miracles, and the existence of Jesus“ in which he concludes that the historical Jesus did not exist.  He does this by laying out two principles – P1 that if you get a series of extraordinary claims (i.e miracle stories without extraordinary evidence you have good reason to be skeptical and P2:

Where testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good independent evidence of their truth.

I'm a little confused with how this works as a foundational principle for ancient history. For instance, of the Emperor Vespasian, the Roman historian Tacitus writes:

Among the lower classes at Alexandria was a blind man whom everybody knew as such. One day this fellow threw himself at Vespasian's feet, imploring him with groans to heal his blindness. He had been told to make this request by Serapis, the favourite god of a nation much addicted to strange beliefs… A second petitioner, who suffered from a withered hand, pleaded his case too, also on the advice of Serapis: would Caesar tread upon him with the imperial foot? At first Vespasian laughed at them and refused. When the two insisted, he hesitated. .. With a smiling expression and surrounded by an expectant crowd of bystanders, he did what was asked. Instantly the cripple recovered the use of his hand and the light of day dawned again upon his blind companion. Both these incidents are still vouched for by eye-witnesses, though there is now nothing to be gained by lying.

Does this mean we should deny the existence of Vespasian? Should we also deny the existence of Augustus because (according to Suetonius) he was sired by Apollo in the form of a snake. Now of course there is – by most standards – good independent evidence for both these historical figures – but as we have seen with the myther controversy, all of it can be dismissed as interpolations using the same methodology. Many other figures from history have miraculous occurrences sprinkled through our sources for them and could similarly be dismissed as fabricated.

Law concludes:

‘Our two prima facie plausible principles – P1 and P2 – combine with certain plausible empirical claims to deliver a conclusion very few Biblical scholars are willing to accept….

4. (P2) Where testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good independent evidence of their truth.

5. The New Testament documents weave together a narrative about Jesus that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims.

6. There is no good independent evidence for even the mundane claims about Jesus (such as that he existed)

7. Therefore (from 3, 4, 5, and 6), there’s good reason to be sceptical about whether Jesus existed.

. . . So, our empirical premises – 2, 5 and 6, – have some prima facie plausibility. I suggest 2 and 5 have a great deal of plausibility, and 6 is at the very least debatable’

I think at this stage I have to present my own set of principles:

1) The Gavin Menzies principle – history and the methodology of historical research should be the art of historians who are properly qualified in their fields. Philosophers, English professors and retired submarine commanders can popularise, but beyond that should STFU (especially if they are 'introducing a new paradigm') .

2) The Egregious Jargon principle – history should remain free of the type of meaningless twaddle I have witness over the past few weeks – this would include Bayes probability theorem, obscure Marxist terminology, postmodern waffle, p’s q’s I’s brackets and other the other assorted excel formulas that seem to be creeping in. 

3)The James the Just principle – People that don't exist don't tend to have flesh and blood brothers (whose existence is multiply attested). 

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The Jesus Wars

Those among us who remember the old Richard Dawkins forum will recall the ‘What can we possibly infer about the historical Jesus?’ thread; a near thousand page epic which outlived the demise of its host and gained a new lease of on the – inaptly named – rational skepticism discussion site. The exchange featured an assortment of ‘cut n paste’ cranks, goggle-geniuses and their hangers-on being given a vigorous and sustained intellectual beating by a Tasmanian Devil (the author of Armarium Magnum and historyversusthedavincicode.com). The general thrust of the thread was one side arguing that the historical Jesus never existed and that the Gospels describe an essentially fictitious person. This has never been a very popular theory in academia. In his ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ for example, the historian Maurice Casey remarks:

‘This view is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. This is not merely worse than the American Jesus Seminar, it is no better than Christian fundamentalism. It simply has different prejudices. Most of its proponents are also extraordinarily incompetent.’

Despite its perceived shortcomings the Christ Myth theory appears to have found widespread popularity on the Internet and among the New Atheist movement. As a result the New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman has authored a book entitled ‘Did Jesus Exist?’, answering very much in the affirmative.

This seems to have gone down like a lead balloon among the dawkinsia and his views have been criticized by, among others, Richard Carrier, Ophelia Benson, Jerry Coyne, Eric McDonald and P Z Meyers (who proclaimed ‘Carrier cold-cocks Ehrman’, ‘It’s simply bad history to invent rationalizations for an undocumented mystery figure from the distant past’- which, as a principle sounds like it would invalidate most of the field of Ancient History). Some of these, like Ophelia's are fairly mild critiques which take Ehrman to task for making statements that are too unqualified. The weirdest comes from Jerry Coyne who attacks Ehrman for being greedy for putting his blog behind a paywall (it's for charity stoopid!). The most vehement and hard hitting attacks have come from Richard Carrier - both here and here. Ehrman has begun to respond on his blog here and in his latest posting has linked to a rant by historian of religion and humanist advocate Robert Joseph Hoffman. Hoffman writes that:

This little rant (and it is a rant, I acknowledge and I do not apologize for it: somebody’s got to do it) will be followed next week by three essay-length responses to Richard C. Carrier’s ideas: The first by me, the second by Professor Maurice Casey of the University of Nottingham, and the third by Stephanie Fisher a specialist in Q-studies. We will attempt to show an impetuous amateur not only where he goes wrong, but why he should buy a map before starting his journey. Other replies will follow in course, and we invite Carrier, his fans, and anyone else interested in this discussion to respond to it at any stage along the way.


I have to say I am glad to see academics using the Internet to reach out to the general public and engage in debates like this. The fact is that that with the growth of the world wide web there has been a democratization of information. As a result, the type of fringe theories that would previously have been confined to obscure sections of the bookstore or self published works flogged at public events are now easily available and can  proliferate with astonishing speed. In an environment like this we need much more input from the real experts. The alternative is a public forum dominated by amateur crank-pots. 


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A Tribute to the Perfect Reader

When authors send their books out into the world, we leave them to fend for themselves. True, there will hopefully be some reviews. But these a strange beasts, often driven by an agenda and not necessarily based on a close reading of the book in question. What authors can rarely do is sit down beside one of their readers while she consumes their work thoroughly and attentively. This is especially the case for me since none of my family have been particularly interested in what I write about.

But I have been lucky enough on one occasion to silently follow a reader through my book. She was called Janet. Stuck in hospital at the beginning of last year, she brought a pile of books and wrote about what she thought of them each day on Librarything. For those that don't know, this is something like Facebook for bibliophiles.

A Google Alert let me know that Janet was working her way through God's Philosophers so I dropped by to eavesdrop. You can read her thoughts here. It is fascinating to follow her through the book and also very instructive for me to see where I had failed to explain something as well as I would like or had come across of defensive. I am very grateful to Janet for giving me an unparalleled insight into what it felt like for an intelligent layperson to read my book. I dropped her an email to say thank you.

At the start of this year, another Google Alert warned me that I was being talked about on Librarything again. This time, there was very sad news. It turned out that Janet had been in hospital for treatment for leukaemia and it had claimed her life in January. A group of her friends online had decided to engage in a group-read of God's Philosophers in her memory. Their discussion was also very instructive for me, and I have let it run its course before mentioning anything here. But I did want to say thank you to Janet. May she rest in peace.

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Ex nihilo ... something something

Lawrence Krauss has recently published A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing wherein he seeks to explain the origin of the universe in purely physicalist, specifically quantum physicalist, terms. Bill Vallicella has berated Krauss for his nonsensical metaphysical musings wrapped up in the garb of scence before and will soon begin reading Universe from Nothing (he will check it out from a library, not wanting to grant it the dignity of actually purchasing it). But he also points to this interesting critique in the New York Times of Krauss's book from which I quote liberally:

What on earth, then, can Krauss have been thinking? Well, there is, as it happens, an interesting difference between relativistic quantum field theories and every previous serious candidate for a fundamental physical theory of the world. Every previous such theory counted material particles among the concrete, fundamental, eternally persisting elementary physical stuff of the world — and relativistic quantum field theories, interestingly and emphatically and unprecedentedly, do not. According to relativistic quantum field theories, particles are to be understood, rather, as specific arrangements of the fields. Certain ­arrangements of the fields, for instance, correspond to there being 14 particles in the universe, and certain other arrangements correspond to there being 276 particles, and certain other arrangements correspond to there being an infinite number of particles, and certain other arrangements correspond to there being no particles at all. And those last arrangements are referred to, in the jargon of quantum field theories, for obvious reasons, as “vacuum” states. Krauss seems to be thinking that these vacuum states amount to the relativistic-­quantum-field-theoretical version of there not being any physical stuff at all. And he has an argument — or thinks he does — that the laws of relativistic quantum field theories entail that vacuum states are unstable. And that, in a nutshell, is the account he proposes of why there should be something rather than nothing.

But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-­theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.

Krauss, mind you, has heard this kind of talk before, and it makes him crazy. A century ago, it seems to him, nobody would have made so much as a peep about referring to a stretch of space without any material particles in it as “nothing.” And now that he and his colleagues think they have a way of showing how everything there is could imaginably have emerged from a stretch of space like that, the nut cases are moving the goal posts. He complains that “some philosophers and many theologians define and redefine ‘nothing’ as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe,” and that “now, I am told by religious critics that I cannot refer to empty space as ‘nothing,’ but rather as a ‘quantum vacuum,’ to distinguish it from the philosopher’s or theologian’s idealized ‘nothing,’ ” and he does a good deal of railing about “the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some of modern philosophy.” But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right. Who cares what we would or would not have made a peep about a hundred years ago? We were wrong a hundred years ago. We know more now. And if what we formerly took for nothing turns out, on closer examination, to have the makings of protons and neutrons and tables and chairs and planets and solar systems and galaxies and universes in it, then it wasn’t nothing, and it couldn’t have been nothing, in the first place. And the history of science — if we understand it correctly — gives us no hint of how it might be possible to imagine otherwise.

Perhaps my ignorance of quantum physics allows me to feel greater awe at the mystery of particles popping into existence than the reviewer's fist when he rearranges his fingers, but I still get the point. I have often heard that physicists have five different definitions of "nothing". Krauss, if his critic is right, seems to be saying that we can have creation from nothing in one (trivial) sense, and if we insist on asking if we can have creation from nothing in a stronger (untrivial) sense, well just shut up.

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It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool

then open your mouth in front of a scholar with the cameras rolling and remove all doubt.



Update (17 March): The full video can be seen here. The other gentleman in the video (not the one who asks the question about Osiris) is Jason Danner and the venue is the University of Central Florida. To see earlier posts I've written comparing Jesus to pagan mythology, including Osiris, see here and here.

Update (22 March): Another post I've written on this topic that I neglected to link to is here. A post where I quote Ben Witherington on the uniqueness of the virgin birth is here, and is interesting in part for the comments.

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Skepticism and Agrippa's Trilemma

Most forms of global skepticism, skepticism about everything, are only hypothetical or methodological. We are not asked to actually withhold belief in everything, we are merely being told that for all we know we may be, e.g., brains in vats being stimulated to think there is an external world. The reason this is just hypothetical is that we are given no reason to think this is actually the case, it's just that the skeptical scenario takes away any reason we could have for thinking it is not the case. Any evidence we could have, any test we could construct to make sure that the world we experience really exists, is just as readily explained by the skeptical theory. (Of course, this is controversial: Hilary Putnam has argued, brilliantly, that on a linguistic-externalist view our words obtain their meaning by virtue of their relation to their object in the world. So our word "vat" means something because there are vats in the external world. But then in order for the brains-in-vats skeptical scenario to be correct, it has to be based on an actually experienced external world, which of course contradicts the scenario.)

In contrast, real skepticism gives you a positive reason for disbelieving, or at least withholding belief in, everything. Plantinga's skepticism is an example of this, but he provides an escape clause: one can always deny naturalism and avoid the skepticism. Perhaps the best example of real skepticism is Agrippa's Trilemma: the question asked is, how is any belief justified? and there are only three ultimate answers we can give. First, we could say that it's justified by another belief, which is justified by another belief, which is justified by another belief... and this chain goes on to infinity. So it's a case of infinite reference. Second, we could say the belief is justified by another belief, which is justified by another belief, which is justified by another belief ... which is justified by the first belief. This is a case of circular reference. Third, you could say the belief is justified by another belief which is justified by another belief ... and that belief requires no justification. This is a case of foundational reference, i.e., it refers to a belief that functions as a foundation.

So what's the problem with infinite reference? Generally, philosophers point to infinite regresses as refutations of positions, but what exactly is the problem with it here? Roughly, the first belief is alleged to derive its justification from another belief, which derives its justification from another, etc. In other words, each step in the chain only has derivative justification. But without some source outside the system to input justification into it, no step will have any. It's like some of the cosmological arguments: imagine you have an infinite number of freight cars connected to each other and ask how they are moving. The first is moving because it's being pulled by the one in front of it, which is being pulled by the one in front of it, etc. But if the chain of cars goes on to infinity then why are the cars moving at all rather than just standing still? It doesn't matter how many cars you add to the chain, without some source of motion, they're not going to move. The only philosopher I know of who defends infinitism is Peter Klein in his "Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons", Philosophical Perspectives 13 (1999): 297-325, "When Infinite Regresses Are Not Vicious", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (2003): 718-29, and elsewhere.

What's the problem with circular reference? Essentially, it's the same problem: each step in the process is justified in virtue of its relation to the previous step, that is, it has derivative justification. Circling back to a step already referred to in the process does not somehow bring the needed justification into the picture. As Victor Reppert writes, "Circularity is the epistemic equivalent of counterfeiting" ("Eliminative Materialism, Cognitive Suicide, and Begging the Question", Metaphilosophy 23 [1992]: 386), since it gives the illusion of providing a source of justification without doing so. Nevertheless, circular reference is vastly more popular a position than infinite reference, in the form of coherentism. As far as I can tell it's still the minority view, but it's defended by many of the top philosophers around: Keith Lehrer, Nicholas Rescher, the early Laurence BonJour, Brand Blanshard, names could be multiplied. These are some of the smartest people of the last century, so coherentism cannot be dismissed without interacting with their writings.

(Another interesting claim that I've read about but have not read any actual proponents of is that a belief does not only derive justification from another belief but from the actual derivation process. So even if the beliefs themselves have no original justification, if you have enough steps involved, you will eventually build up enough justification that the beliefs will become justified. This could potentially rescue both infinite and circular reference.)

What's the problem with foundational reference? Historically, foundationalism has been the near-universal position among epistemologists, and as far as I can tell, is still the majority view today. Some beliefs simply don't need justification, or they carry their justification in themselves, they are self-justifying. The problem here is dogmatism. To say that some beliefs are the ground level, to say that some beliefs don't need to be justified by something else is to say that we don't need to question them, we don't need to verify them. But virtually every class of belief that has been proposed for this position has been challenged precisely because they can be. We need to have a reason for a belief and to continue believing in the absence of a reason is mere dogmatism. Again, most epistemologists would disagree with this, they would say that there are some foundational beliefs and that not having a reason for a belief does not make it irrational or unacceptable in this case. Some, such as Plantinga, seek to escape the charge of dogmatism by making these beliefs defeatable: they can be questioned, they can be challenged, they are just innocent until proven guilty.

So Agrippa's Trilemma says there are three options -- infinitism, coherentism, and foundationalism -- and none of these are acceptable. Therefore, we have a reason to reject each one, and therefore to reject the possibility of having any knowledge whatsoever. Thus, we are left with actual skepticism, not hypothetical or methdological skepticism. The only alternative is to do what virtually all epistemologists have done: accept one of three options.

(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)

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Heh

Click.

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Laws and "Laws"

Moral laws are often claimed to be laws only in a metaphorical sense since there are clear differences between them and laws of nature. Laws of nature allegedly brook no exceptions, but we can always (or nearly always) envision exceptions to moral laws, cases in which it would be allowed to ignore a particular prohibition. There is a moral law to tell the truth, but if we are hiding Jews from the Nazis we don't have to tell them about it (there's a disturbing case of this in The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom). The point is that moral laws are not absolute while physical laws are.

However, I think this is a misunderstanding. The exceptions to moral laws are cases where one moral law comes into conflict with another. The moral law that we should preserve life has more authority than the law that tells us to tell the truth, so we lie to the Nazi who asks us if we are hiding any Jews. But there are exact parallels with physical laws. The law of gravity dictates that the magnet will fall to the ground, unless the law of electromagnetism dictates that it will stick to the side of the refrigerator. The second law overrules the first in this case. This doesn't say anything against gravity. The law of gravity, when stated strictly, is defined in a vacuum, with no other forces in play -- that is, it is defined with all other things being equal (ceteris paribus). This is the same with moral laws. These laws are being described in a moral vacuum, where no other moral issues are in play. If the only moral thing at issue is whether to tell the truth or not, there is a moral law that says we should tell the truth, ceteris paribus. If other moral issues come into the picture, then they may interfere with it so that it will no longer be the case that we should tell the truth, in the same way that if other physical forces are in play, an object may no longer obey the law of gravity by falling towards the center of mass.

Of course, there's another way in which physical laws and moral laws are dissimilar: we can choose whether or not we obey moral laws but, for the most part, we cannot choose whether or not we obey physical laws. I say "for the most part" because I can choose to jump up and thereby thwart the law of gravity for a few moments, but if I jump off a cliff I can't choose to stop falling. Whether that means moral laws can only be considered "laws" in a metaphorical sense is something I leave to my readers. Perhaps it's the physical laws that are the metaphors.

(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)

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Skulduggery

Here's an interesting article on Piltdown Man as we approach its centennial.

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