by VorJack
Atheism and skepticism are siblings. They’ve been close at least since Paul Kurtz founded both CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism. But like all siblings they don’t always get along, and they frequently to go off in their own direction. But every now and then there’s a reunion, such as when Joe Nickell debunks another religious relic.
The latest attempt to bring them back together is Chris Hallquist’s book UFOs, Ghosts and a Rising God. By relating modern stories of the supernatural to the ancient legends surrounding Jesus, Hallquist hopes to show how debunking the one leads to dismissing the second.
Outsider Test
Pullquote: “Many of those who have written on the array of recent pseudosciences have tried to describe exactly what makes a pseudoscience. [...] Among these characteristics are characteristic fallacies shared to a remarkable extent by the arguments of Christian apologists.” (p.32)
Hallquist is veteran of the atheosphere, as his blog The Uncredible Hallq has been around for years. Up until now, his most famous work (for our purposes) has been his lengthy rebuttal to William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith.
UFOs, Ghosts and a Rising God is a work for general audiences, though people with at least a passing familiarity with apologetics and counter-apologetics will get the most out of it. Despite Hallquist’s background in philosophy, most of the arguments hinge on questions of historiography: how do we determine what happened in the past?
Hallquist focuses on this historical question while examining the evidence for the miracles of Jesus, the post-resurrection appearances, the empty tomb and so forth. Because it is a book for general audiences, Hallquist takes the time to explain the dating of the gospels and something of the intellectual climate it which early Christianity came to be.
This might make it sound like a typical work of counter-apologetics, but not many works of that type start with a history of debunking. From Alexander of Abonoteichus to the Amityville Horror, Hallquist covers some of the highlights of the skeptical attempts to dismantle superstition. Once this is out of the way, he explains some of the method and common fallacies involved in the use of historical evidence.
With this foundation, Hallquist is able to marry counter-apologetic to skepticism. After considering the arguments for the historicity of a biblical event, Hallquist compares it to a more contemporary supernatural event. One of the most developed example is the case of D.D. Home. According to the story, Home was able to levitate himself up to the ceiling in front of three witnesses.
Hallquist is able to dig up sources, some near contemporary, reporting on the stories of the witnesses. Contrast that with the anonymous and late information provided for us by the Gospels and you see the problem. However, even if you were to believe that the Gospels were early and contained eyewitness testimony, you still have a problem: if you apply the same historical standards to the story of D.D. Home as you do the Gospels, you will likely find yourself having to accept that a man in 19th century Connecticut was hovering in the rafters.
Hallquist is giving us a variation of what John Loftus calls the Outsider Test for Faith: Can you approach the beliefs of your faith tradition with the same skepticism as you approach other people’s beliefs? As Hallquist points out, many evangelicals are quick to dismiss New Age beliefs as fraud, but are never willing to turn the same skepticism on their own sacred stories.
Believing at All Cost
Pullquote: “… I suspect that religions simply cannot flourish when too much will be known about their origins.” (p.66-67)
One of the most interesting results of the this comparison is indirect. Many apologists speak of the reception of the early Jesus stories and insist that the first believers must have been skeptical, and would therefor have sought out evidence. But an examination of various charlatans and hoaxes shows that people will frequently accept a belief without much skepticism, then hold on for to it no matter what. Consider a medium who is caught using her feet to manipulate objects during a seance. Her followers insist that while she may cheat sometimes, there are other times when her powers are real and genuine. So it falls to the skeptics to tell the apologists that their view of human reason is inflated.
Throughout the book, Hallquist maintains a balance between skepticism and counter-apologetics. On the plus side, this keeps the book short and readable, as it never bogs down in detail. On the minus side, it means that the book never gets the chance to really come to grips with the examples it uses.
Perhaps this is intentional. The book does end with a call to investigate for ourselves and an extensive bibliography; all right and proper for an Outsider Test. But I can’t help feeling that a series of close case studies that compares, for example, Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus with the stories of alien abductees would make for a really interesting book. Let’s look at all the evidence and apply the same tools to both. What happens when we take the apologetic arguments for the first and apply it to the second? Can the apologists live with the results?
However, this can’t really be considered a criticism of UFOs, Ghosts and a Rising God. Its brevity and the evenness of its writing make it an excellent book for general audiences. Its core argument makes it a useful work for an internet counter-apologist to have on the shelf. It’s a solid work that makes me look forward to future works from this veteran of the atheosphere.
“Can you approach the beliefs of your faith tradition with the same skepticism as you approach other people’s beliefs? As Hallquist points out, many evangelicals are quick to dismiss New Age beliefs as fraud, but are never willing to turn the same skepticism on their own sacred stories.”
I don’t think that atheists and other skeptics/nonbelievers do this enough either. For a long time, I just kind of took for granted that an evidence-based belief system where earlier observations are used to make predictions about what will be observed in the future was the “good” or “correct” way; however, I realized that not everyone feels that way. I took an epistemology class and the professor (who, I admit, seemed to be a bit disdainful of science, probably due to departmental issues the school was having) did a study of the scientific method and where it triumphs, but also where he thought it fell short. And while I didn’t agree with everything he said, I thought he at least raised some interesting questions; however, when I tried to share some of the questions he raised with other atheists/skeptics, they kind of gave me the hypocritical “Christian responding to New Agers” deal and just dismissed them as irrelevant or stupid without giving any serious consideration to what I was saying.
“I don’t think that atheists and other skeptics/nonbelievers do this enough either. …”
What are you talking about?
This comment would be a lot more useful if you provide examples of where he thought the scientific method was less useful.
I suppose that would have helped. It’s been a couple semesters since I took the class, so I’m a bit fuzzy, but the one point that I remember clearly was about the correlation of observed events to unobserved events. His point was that the scientific method is uses observed events to make predictions about events that have yet to be observed (e.g. unobserved events). So for example, let’s say that in all observed instances of x, x=y. After studying a sufficient number of instances where x=y, we would draw the conclusion that all x’s equal y, even the instances of x that we don’t observe. However, his question was how can we be confident about all of those unobserved instances of x? Because by definition, those instances are unknown to us. And that also lead to the question, just because something can be used to make accurate predictions about future events or instances that have yet to be observed, why is this seen as an indicator of the truth of this “something” that we have observed?
Albeit, I think that these skeptical questions have a lot to do with how we are defining things like “truth” and “knowledge”, I just have become frustrated that a lot of atheists refuse to engage these questions on a meaningful level.
Thomas Kuhn did this in ‘The Structure of Scientific revolutions’. One his key observations is that the majority of scientists are not as willing to abandon disproved theories than anyone else is, and that what really happens is generational change. The proponents of the old theory retire and are gradually replaced by proponents of a new theory, and so scientific consensus shifts without anyone having actually changed their belief.
Essentially he tried to show that Science in practice is has all the politics and social dynamics as every other human organization. Science in practice is not like science in theory. And some of his critics definitely reacted by saying that all this is beside the point as the theory of how science is supposed to work is still the one true way.
One of his other key points is that science is a creative exercise as much as one of discovery. One of his examples being lasers. They are studied and well understood. However He points out that we created them, as far as we know there are no natural lasers waiting to be discovered, without human intervention such a thing did not exist.
And finally he raises some interesting issues about what happens when we start working on things that we cannot directly perceive and instead are relying on instruments to translate into what we can. There is an interesting case study about how if you get a dozen physicists together you might end up getting a dozen incompatible definitions of what an electron actually is. End result being that once we move pass what we can perceive directly what we have is models, and its entirely possible that there are other models which are just as accurate and useful but do not posit the existence of electrons at all. Developing these models however would require starting physics from scratch and doing it all again (by now that probably means millions of man hours of effort) and as such is just not worth doing.
My pet peeve about skeptics: lumping all unexplained phenomenon into the same category. As if UFOs, ghosts, and religion were the same phenomenon.
Wait, how are they different?
Visitors from another star system come here to mess with us, motivations are fuzzy, believers argue about what it all means, no evidence ever given.
Visitors from beyond the grave come here to mess with us, motivations are fuzzy, believers argue about what it all means, no evidence ever given.
Visitors from “higher spiritual plane” come here to mess with us, motivations are fuzzy, believers argue about what it all means, no evidence ever given.
Yeah… they’re TOTALLY different.
Yeah. But that’s the low hanging fruit.
How? Every single religion can be boiled down to that one.
The ONLY one that can’t might be ancestor worship, but that falls under ‘ghosts’, so I got it covered.
A tangential case might be made for Buddhism, but that one is still a guy interacting with some nebulous “out there” and returning with ideas without evidence.
But Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism are exactly what I described.
That’s what I mean. The visitor from beyond paradigm. From space, from the grave, from heaven. It’s not that phenomenons themselves have the same cause -the mysterious visitor- it’s that the same hypothesis has been supposed as the explanation for diverse phenomena.
I’m going to guess it’s evolutionarily wired into our brains. We look for causes and motivations in things, it helped us identify predators and sexual rivals in the past. So when weird things happen, we look for anthropomorphic sources.
Is that what he is doing?
I thought the author was just using them because he thought they were important in explaining our perception of “unexplained things”. Not so much that they are the same, but that we perceive them in similar ways, and so he is trying to use this connection to portray an idea.
However I am quite open to correction.
Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. Not quite clear from the title though.
There are actually a number of psychological phenomena at play in each of these examples, at least some of which clearly overlap. I haven’t seen anybody claim they are exactly the same, but they have the same general idea–specifically, that they result from cognitive and observational illusions combined, basically, with stubbornness.
“that they result from cognitive and observational illusions combined, basically, with stubbornness.”
That’s the premise I’m talking about. It’s something imaginary. God did it? No the imagination did it.
Just because it has, essentially, proved to be imaginary in one case (religion) doesn’t, necessarily, mean its due to the imagination in the others. I think that’s what I’m trying to say.
With regard to what, specifically? It sounds like this book intends to debunk bunk worth debunking, not random questionable phenomena.
To be clear, there is not a shred of valid evidence of the existence of ghosts (whatever that even means) or of extraterrestrial life coming to Earth, and in both cases there have been numerous psychological studies on sightings and such, especially on UFO abductions. People aren’t just throwing out ideas at random.
They need debunking only because of the initial bunking. The false explanation. Having once gotten rid of the bunk, that’s only half the job. You have to find the true explanation for the phenomenon in question; ghosts, UFOs, whathaveyou. True there have been psychological studies discrediting UFO abductees. On the otherhand there have been numerous credible UFO sightings. Didn’t the president of some banana republic in North America claim to have seen a UFO? Assuming any explanation beforehand (the imagination did it) is as bad (almost) as being superstitious.
One point: I’m not sure what you mean by “a case study of Paul’s experience.” Our only decent sources for the details of the experience are Paul’s letters, and they aren’t a lot to go on. When it comes to Biblical scholarship, I think the most we can do is say some general things about what is and is not likely to have happened. We’re not in a position to do many of the kinds of analyses people would like to do, because we just don’t have the data.
As a Christian, I don’t dismiss New Age beliefs. In fact, for a time, I embraced them.
I’ve been where you guys are at… seeking the truth, whatever it turns out empirically to be, granted that the only thing that could convince you of the supernatural would be first-hand experience by which to “measure” its legitimacy.
As a result, I must warn you of a tragic pattern that I’ve observed, at the boundary between the seemingly scientific and “the unknown.”
Curious, technically-minded individuals are already vulnerable, especially those who’ve relaxed their stance on ‘religion’ as they know it.
Just for shear curiosity, some of them end up “studying” things that are not adequately explained by science. They will learn about metaphysical theories and pseudo-scientific things like “Technical Remote Viewing” (by any other name) or the myriad of “out-of-body” techniques (in 10 easy steps!), just to see if it really works. Before they know it, they’re not only knee-deep in new age teachings, they’ve actually had paranormal experiences to reinforce them.
The problem is that these teachings often work, but in an illusory way. They in fact have a dangerous spiritual aspect to them, and having been burned by it I can tell you it’s a deception. Usually without knowing it, its proponents overtly teach the same principles found in the depths of occult literature, and the practices of even modern witches. Different rituals perhaps, but the same ends and the same deceptive means.
Know this: It’s not advanced human abilities they offer, it’s supernatural alright, but it’s demonic. It’s not just a way of thinking they’ve imparted, it’s a doctrine, and it’s a doorway. They speak of ‘energies’ entering your body, when in fact they are the same malignant ‘entities’ cast out by Jesus.
“Oh you Christians see demons everywhere, get real.”
This is not some doctrinal interpretation passed along by fundies. This is blatantly obvious to any Christian involved in deliverance ministry. These ‘entities’ are forced to leave, sometimes manifesting in the person just to cuss you out. I’ve seen it in person, that’s all the evidence I need. Regular people just don’t act like they’re possessed, and anyone that thinks they do so (and commonly) is probably harboring their own special belief system.
These beings are not afraid of any shaman, bhudda, new age christ consiousness, allah, muhammed, medicine man, witch, healer or ghost hunter (they can’t all be right, right?). When a believer wallops them with spoken power and authority in the name and the blood of Jesus of Nazareth and commands them out, they usually spew hate and vitriol, but then come out. “For our battle is not against flesh and blood…” I grieve for those that never do get set free, as they’ve been “given over” and don’t even know it. Mysticism is a dark, fearful, sometimes painful and even perverted condition (just ask what out-of-body is good for), but it requires a complete surrender of will and ideology in order to “work.” If that doesn’t sound like “selling your soul,” what does?
Don’t get me started on “aliens,” but even “experiencers” whose lives have been haunted and ruined have found that same freedom in Christ. Subjective and fanciful as it all sounds, it’s all part of the weird reality that people find themselves facing. All of the philosophy and psychiatry in the world doesn’t have any non-bunk answers for them, and just says “you’re crazy.” So why is it that experiencers all start spouting the same theosophical diatribe, saying that our ‘space brothers’ are here to help…
People are being freed from these dark deceptions every day, and lives (like mine) are dramatically changed. Interviews and testimonies of otherwise ordinary real people attest to this, and some even end up doing the same for others.
Whether or not you are “seeking a sign,” eventually you ARE going to run into something you can’t explain, and when you do, I want you to be able to look to the church for answers, and not fall straight into the trap.
That being said, I have to apologize on behalf of the textbook-church you’ve known (along with the heretical and the ritualistic), and introduce you to the “fringe” that is on the front lines, getting their hands dirty tackling the supernatural as it comes. You know, like Jesus did.
Back to the topic, when you’re actively involved in this type of ministry, is it any wonder that there is “faith beyond reason?” I’m a fan of biblical scholarship, but I’m not fond of squabbling over what may or may not have happened and certainly not trying to resolve it by comparing ideologies from a philosophical standpoint… In this bigger picture, it just doesn’t matter. We feel this way because faith in Christ matters more. Because it works.
Whether or not you are “seeking a sign,” eventually you ARE going to run into something you can’t explain, and when you do, I want you to be able to look to the church for answers, and not fall straight into the trap.
Hm. Or, when I run into something I can’t explain I could say to myself “hey, that’s a mystery. Is there any reasonable way I could find out how that works? Maybe I could asks experts in the area. Maybe I could do research. Maybe I could use a dash of logic and a propensity to test ideas to see what works.”
I dunno. Call me crazy.
@Elemenope
You could, and many will. If you had read what I was saying, that’s exactly the danger. There are areas of the “fringe” that are becoming testable, repeatable, explorable, and that’s part of the sales pitch that drags you under.
I realize I can’t convince you guys of the reality of this stuff in a couple blog comments on an athiest website, and I’m sticking my neck out like a fool to say anything at all here, but my point is this:
If you ever end up in that scenario, I want you to remember what I told you before you jump in to any first-hand ‘research,’ because once they’ve got you, you’re blinded to the deception. I didn’t know how bad it was until I was set free myself.
Right now this is crazy talk to you (if I were you guys I’d be ROFLMAO), but remember it. One day something going to give and this will suddenly sound a whole lot less crazy.
“and I’m sticking my neck out like a fool”
Well as they say practice makes perfect … do carry on.
“Regular people just don’t act like they’re possessed, and anyone that thinks they do so (and commonly) is probably harboring their own special belief system.”
I see you’ve never heard of mental illness.
This was meant to be a reply to Recovering*
So I painted with broad strokes, but you went for the lowest common denominator. Come on. I’m well advised on mental illness and all of it’s shades and flavors. Perhaps you’re aware that “verbal placebos” rarely cure such things. Now, don’t dance circles around once sentence and ignore everything else I said
When these things manifest, they always have a name, a profound desire to stay, an explicit hatred of Christ, and most remarkably, they show spiteful *subjection* to His overiding, soveriegn authority. This “manifestation” happens often on command, sometimes to people with no history of mental illness, other times to “crazy” people whose lives are in tatters from what they’ve been put through. But once delivered, there is no recurrence. They are set free, their minds made right, they eventually get back to being a regular person and no longer a wreck. These are observable, repeatable facts and there are a great many testomies behind it. How can you simply relegate it all to brain disorders? Sure, drugs seem to subdue a person, but that doesn’t mean you’ve solved the problem.
Are you asking people to ask for help from Jesus when they are confronted with a demon?
I know spiritual war does seem really cool, and it can seem pretty real (hysteria and mental illness can do that, and I mean in the viewer and the possessed respectively), but don’t you think there could be some other way you could approach this that doesn’t make you sound like a Ghost Buster?
Sheesh. I just finished commenting on another thread that christianity and illiteracy go together.
You might not give in to calling Elemenope crazy. She’ll logic you down.
Opinions are like… well, you’ve got one too, and that’s all that that statement was.
‘Minds me of a right sim’lar scieeentiffic story, ‘n yup, ’twere true too. Hundreds of Proofs of God’s Existence #10:
MORAL ARGUMENT (II)
(1) In my younger days I was a cursing, drinking, smoking, gambling, child-molesting, thieving, murdering, bed-wetting bastard.
(2) That all changed once I became religious.
(3) Therefore, God exists.
Yep, that must be what you mean by a regular person and no longer a wreck.
It’s kinda like the bible: if’n you don’t believe it, why, just ask it! As Tim Minchin says,
“I know the Good Book’s good because the Good Book says it’s good
I know the Good Book knows it’s good because a really good book would….
‘Cos the Good Book is a book and it is good and it’s a book”
Minor recurring note: Elemenope is a *he*.
Carry on.
“Minor recurring note: Elemenope is a *he*.”
Well we only have your word for that don’t we!
I think Recovering should get with the 21st Century. Many cases of so-called ‘demonic possession’ are simply cases of schizophrenia, epilepsy and a whole variety of mental disorders.
As for the other posts:
“Whether or not you are “seeking a sign,” eventually you ARE going to run into something you can’t explain, and when you do, I want you to be able to look to the church for answers, and not fall straight into the trap.”
Yes, a lot of times we run into things that at first we feel we can’t explain them. But with rational thinking, we can realise that these things don’t have a supernatural basis but are either the result of coincidence, an undocumented natural event, an illusion, mirage, fraud, or possibly psychological effects on the brain can make you think you’ve seen something supernatural. And the trap is the Church.
“These are observable, repeatable facts and there are a great many testomies behind it. How can you simply relegate it all to brain disorders? Sure, drugs seem to subdue a person, but that doesn’t mean you’ve solved the problem.”
Actually it’s probably best to regulate to brain disorders as we could seek psychiatric help etc. ‘Demonic possession’ can simply be a case of dissociative identity disorder, attention seeking, schizophrenia or hysteria. It simply goes back to my aforementioned point of finding scientific reasons for strange occurrences.
I actually remembering seeing an exorcism once in the Caribbean. It made me wonder why on Earth if demonic possession does exist, why it varies from religion to religion. Surely, if Christianity was the true faith, then why can invoking the Prophet Mohammed’s name to a Muslim person ‘possessed’ achieve the same results? Why can a possessed Hindu be ‘cured’ by reciting mantra? If the power of Christ works, then why can nomadic pagan Shaman achieve the same result as a Pastor from the Pentecostal Church?
In my opinion, this isn’t because demons or possessions actually exist. It’s again, down to the nature of this psychological phenomena. We’ve attributed primal supernatural elements to behavioural defects based on the fact that previously we couldn’t explain them; but now with a greater knowledge we can see that an ‘exorcist’ uses powers of suggestion and perhaps has a placebo effect on the ‘possessed’. Think about it: those who get possessed are almost always of strong religious faith. Here’s how it works:
-A highly religious person thinks that they’re possessed;
-They believe that the power of Christ/Allah/Random Indian God(s) etc will heal them;
-If you believe in something so strongly, then it might work. (The placebo effect you spoke of before)
If demonic possession was real, why don’t Atheists get possessed? Why don’t Agnostics get possessed? Surely, without God they’d be an easy target? The answer is: you have to believe in that stuff to actually fall victim to that psychological effect.
Also, part of the reason could be just a cry for attention. Going back to the exorcism I witnessed, this was on a highly religious island whereby the girl, who I knew well enough, acted out to receive some attention from her family, friends and community. I know very well she wasn’t possessed by anything. And I suspect that a large majority of these cases can be explained this way also.
“I think Recovering should get with the 21st Century”
Since the laws of quantum physics are unchanging, and are the premise for the underpinnings of the spiritual realm, thus the current is the eternal and the eternal the current. Truly in regards to his topic, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’. The struggle against good and evil, truth and falsehood, the natural and the supernatural is an ancient one, continues to this day. The ’21st Century’ reference assumes man has ‘evolved’ above it all, has scientific explanations for everything, is his own master but actually his understanding is only darkened, he has not ‘progressed’ apart from the Truth one iota and never will of his own accord though at times it may ‘appear’ that he does. Man is a powerful being, but he too is subject to the One who is ‘able to subdue all things unto Himself”. Mental illness is a reality, yet is only a manifestation, a consequence that stems from the imbalance, the condition of mankind abiding in the lie of self sufficiency (they wanted to be ‘like God’) and not the (whole) Truth for ‘ye are complete (whole) in Him’. Not all the prodigals have ‘come to their senses’ yet, have ‘risen up to go (back) to their Father’, have not awakened from the adamic dream which is really a nightmare of separation, of independence. So mankind continues to wallow in the sty, the pig pen of his muddied and distorted self image, but alas…’awake and Christ (your true, original self, a son of God) will shine on/in you’. The Psalmist said ‘I will be satisfied when I awake in His likeness’. That likeness, that image is whole, lacks nothing, allows no lingering dis-ease, harbors no foreign elements (demonic or otherwise) is in the original intent, is a paradise within for ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you’. A hell of our own making, we don’t have to live it.
Goodness, I should know, my own son is epilleptic. I never once thought that “its the devil.” While in some posession cases there are also identifiable traits of MPD and schizophrenia, a good deliverance councelor will go to great lengths to establish whether there is a real spiritual presence. They have established ways to tell, in part because nobody wants to even try to exorcize a demon that isn’t there – not just because it won’t work, but because then you would likely be doing harm. But when it’s there, there’s usually no question. They will manifest in response to prayer, when the victim couldn’t even tell they were being prayed for. Just to mess you up, they will blurt out your dirtiest little secrets that no human could possibly know, let alone the stranger in counselling, and with shocking precision. We also find them complicit in causing various mental disorders, which typically begin to heal once the person is delivered.
Consider for a moment the possibility that all of your 21st century genius has got you making excuses for these things? At the very least you should be esking, does this seem to help people, and if so, why? You seem to have begun that process, but you’ve jumped to conclusions before getting all the facts. You’d presume to say the same of me, but I’ve been on both sides of this debate before, and I finally know where I stand.
Also, if you think that pagan exorcism rituals have anything on Christ, the first couple chapters of Run Baby Run by Nicky Cruz put it in perspective quite nicely. He had to live with that stuff.
Anyhow, I have explained why I commented in the first place, and that’s where I’m going to drop it. I don’t expect you to agree right now, and you may well walk right into the trap as I warned you. If you find yourself there, remember there’s help. That’s all, thank you.
and
The irony… it overwhelms me…!
Uh, yeah.
People are shocking un-self aware, aren’t they?