(This is not me)
Before I begin this post, I'd like to thank the many e-mails that I've received since my lastest post on Jesus. Sorry if I haven't replied to all of them, I don't enjoy of so much time as I'd desire. (I haven't replied to many other mails which arrived to me several weeks or even months ago, for the same reason, so sorry again).
In this post, I'll comment on the preliminary results of an informal psychological experiment which I've performed in my blog (with the help of some of my readers). Obviously, I didn't informed any of my readers of this experiment, because they were the subjects of it.
The purpose of this very informal experiment was to test the hypothesis "Human beings tend to be pseudoskeptical of theories, ideas or conclusions that they disagree with".
So (if my hypothesis is true) pseudoskepticism in general is a consequence of how the human mind works (pseudoskepticism of the paranormal is just a species of this).
My motivation to perform this experiment is my almost obsessive interest in discovering the nature of human disagreement and, specially, understanding the psychology of hard-core atheists and pseudoskeptics. In order to avoid bias against mterialistic pseudoskeptics, I performed an experiment with paranormalists, survivalists, spiritualists and mystics who read my blog.
An adventage of addressing so many topics in my blog and interviewing a number of different people, is that you can discover how human psychology works from a wider perspective. In fact, my motivation for addressing so many topics is precisely to learn to understand a given situation from a broad range of possible perspectives (not limited to my own's perspective alone).
However, this particular investigative methodology (which I use intentionally) runs contrary to how the mind works.
The mind seems to be designed to explay away phenomena or evidence that it finds unpalatable or incoherent with other beliefs, desires and expectations. It sees as natural and "obvious" ideas that fit previous beliefs, and as silly, ridiculous or implausible ideas that runs contrary to one's prejudices.
Evidence for this is the use of unproven assumptions which are added to the actual evidence in order to avoid certain conclusions, and make the evidence fits the person's previous beliefs about how the world works.
Before of commenting on my experiment, I'd like to point out a preliminary point:
As most of my readers are sympathetic to the paranormal and the afterlife, I'll mention just one example from pseudoskepticism in order to show how the human mind works. This example has the adventage that most of my readers will agree with me here:
-Regarding the SAIC experiments on remote viewing, Ray Hyman conceded that "The SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research. In addition, I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present."
So far, so good. Which is the correct scientific conclusion from an experiment like that? That the results support the psi hypothesis. It is the correct conclusion given the specific evidence of the case. Any unbiased person will accept that evidence (at least provisionally) and the conclusion.
However, in order to protect his skeptical position, Hyman is forced to ADD to the current specific data an unproven assumption based on a sheer possibility: "Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility--especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered"
Note that Hyman 's argument is literally true, but (applied as an objection to the specific SAIC experiments) it is flawed because it is a SHEER SPECULATION. It's a pure generality which is not proved in the speicific case. No actual and specific evidence is provided to support the idea that, in the specific case, a "potential flaw" exists.
Now, the readers sympathetic to parapsychology will agree with me that Hyman is using a dishonest trick and double standard in order to avoid the acceptation of the evidence for psi.
However, materialists and skeptics will consider Hyman's position "pretty reasonable" because after all (so they will argue) parapsychology and psychic research has a long and known history of incompetence performing experiments, frauds, delusions and deceptions (as has been conceded, for example, by George Hansen in this article). So, presuming a potential flaw not discovered yet is reasonable.
Now (you'll ask) why people sympathetic to parapsychology tend to agree that Hyman is wrong, and "skeptics" tend to agree that he's right? Try to reflect hard on this please.
The answer is that the belief "Hyman is wrong" fits the paranormalist's strong belief that remote vieweing exists. Hence, he's prone to accept conclusions that support his previous beliefs. On the contrary, for the skeptic, that "Hyman is wrong" is likely to be false, because Hyman's anti-psi position supports the skeptic's strong belief that remote viewing doesn't exist. Hence, the skeptic is prone to accept conclusions against the existence of the paranormal.
The asture reader will discover a lot of how the human mind works examining the above simple example carefully.
What most readers won't consider is that exactly the same applies to all the human beings (including themselves).
Let's to analyze again Hyman's mistake: it consists in using a unproven assumption to explain away the force of the evidence for psi. He's not denying the evidence as such, rather he's adding a unproven assumption (a potential undiscoveried flaw) in order to avoid the psi-favourable conclusion. Note that Hyman's assumption is not false in general; but it hasn't been proven in the specific case. Regarding the specific case, it is sheer speculation. It doesn't constitute specific evidence IN the particular case.
I agree with the paranormalists (and against the pseudoskeptic) that Hyman is wrong.
In this post, I'll comment on the preliminary results of an informal psychological experiment which I've performed in my blog (with the help of some of my readers). Obviously, I didn't informed any of my readers of this experiment, because they were the subjects of it.
The purpose of this very informal experiment was to test the hypothesis "Human beings tend to be pseudoskeptical of theories, ideas or conclusions that they disagree with".
So (if my hypothesis is true) pseudoskepticism in general is a consequence of how the human mind works (pseudoskepticism of the paranormal is just a species of this).
My motivation to perform this experiment is my almost obsessive interest in discovering the nature of human disagreement and, specially, understanding the psychology of hard-core atheists and pseudoskeptics. In order to avoid bias against mterialistic pseudoskeptics, I performed an experiment with paranormalists, survivalists, spiritualists and mystics who read my blog.
An adventage of addressing so many topics in my blog and interviewing a number of different people, is that you can discover how human psychology works from a wider perspective. In fact, my motivation for addressing so many topics is precisely to learn to understand a given situation from a broad range of possible perspectives (not limited to my own's perspective alone).
However, this particular investigative methodology (which I use intentionally) runs contrary to how the mind works.
The mind seems to be designed to explay away phenomena or evidence that it finds unpalatable or incoherent with other beliefs, desires and expectations. It sees as natural and "obvious" ideas that fit previous beliefs, and as silly, ridiculous or implausible ideas that runs contrary to one's prejudices.
Evidence for this is the use of unproven assumptions which are added to the actual evidence in order to avoid certain conclusions, and make the evidence fits the person's previous beliefs about how the world works.
Before of commenting on my experiment, I'd like to point out a preliminary point:
As most of my readers are sympathetic to the paranormal and the afterlife, I'll mention just one example from pseudoskepticism in order to show how the human mind works. This example has the adventage that most of my readers will agree with me here:
-Regarding the SAIC experiments on remote viewing, Ray Hyman conceded that "The SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research. In addition, I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present."
So far, so good. Which is the correct scientific conclusion from an experiment like that? That the results support the psi hypothesis. It is the correct conclusion given the specific evidence of the case. Any unbiased person will accept that evidence (at least provisionally) and the conclusion.
However, in order to protect his skeptical position, Hyman is forced to ADD to the current specific data an unproven assumption based on a sheer possibility: "Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility--especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered"
Note that Hyman 's argument is literally true, but (applied as an objection to the specific SAIC experiments) it is flawed because it is a SHEER SPECULATION. It's a pure generality which is not proved in the speicific case. No actual and specific evidence is provided to support the idea that, in the specific case, a "potential flaw" exists.
Now, the readers sympathetic to parapsychology will agree with me that Hyman is using a dishonest trick and double standard in order to avoid the acceptation of the evidence for psi.
However, materialists and skeptics will consider Hyman's position "pretty reasonable" because after all (so they will argue) parapsychology and psychic research has a long and known history of incompetence performing experiments, frauds, delusions and deceptions (as has been conceded, for example, by George Hansen in this article). So, presuming a potential flaw not discovered yet is reasonable.
Now (you'll ask) why people sympathetic to parapsychology tend to agree that Hyman is wrong, and "skeptics" tend to agree that he's right? Try to reflect hard on this please.
The answer is that the belief "Hyman is wrong" fits the paranormalist's strong belief that remote vieweing exists. Hence, he's prone to accept conclusions that support his previous beliefs. On the contrary, for the skeptic, that "Hyman is wrong" is likely to be false, because Hyman's anti-psi position supports the skeptic's strong belief that remote viewing doesn't exist. Hence, the skeptic is prone to accept conclusions against the existence of the paranormal.
The asture reader will discover a lot of how the human mind works examining the above simple example carefully.
What most readers won't consider is that exactly the same applies to all the human beings (including themselves).
Let's to analyze again Hyman's mistake: it consists in using a unproven assumption to explain away the force of the evidence for psi. He's not denying the evidence as such, rather he's adding a unproven assumption (a potential undiscoveried flaw) in order to avoid the psi-favourable conclusion. Note that Hyman's assumption is not false in general; but it hasn't been proven in the specific case. Regarding the specific case, it is sheer speculation. It doesn't constitute specific evidence IN the particular case.
I agree with the paranormalists (and against the pseudoskeptic) that Hyman is wrong.
THE EXPERIMENT:
In order to test my hypothesis and fully cognizant that most of my readers are sympthatetic to spiritualism, mystics, New Age and parapsychology, and that most of them are strongly anti-Christians, I decided to use the evidence for Jesus' Resurrection (which I've been studying a lot since some time ago) in my experiment.
As consequence, I've written a series of posts sympathetic to the possibility (even probability) of Jesus' Resurrection and its putative divine origin in order to discover the common reaction of my anti-Christian readers. (By the way, everything that I've written about Jesus represent my true opinion and views about him, so I haven't been lying in my conclusions and I stand to them).
What I discovered was that, in general, they commit the same miskates and tend to use the same or very similar tactics than the pseudoskeptics, in order to avoid conclusions that they don't like (specially a conclusion favourable to Christianity).
In particular:
1-Ignorance of the literature and of the relevant evidence and scholarly arguments:
Many of my readers admitted openly that they have not studied the best literature about this matter. However (like seen in pseudoskeptics) they feel competent to judge (and dismiss) a complex scholarly topic appealing only to their personal opinions, tastes, beliefs and prejudices.
You have realized how many popular and online pseudoskeptics don't even know the best evidence for psi, and repeat confidently the same falsehoods and stereotypes (like "all the psi experiments are flawed", "there is no replication of psi experiments", "The only positive evidence for psi came from parapsychologists who are strong psi believers", "No skeptic has ever found positive evidence for psi" and so forth).
Exactly the same kind of demostrably false and ill-informed arguments that I've found in some of my readers ("The empty tomb is only believed by Christian scholars", "Liberal scholars are interested in facts and evidence alone, not in ideology", "Christian scholars just believe by faith and are not interested in facts" and so forth).
Any unbiased study of the literature would expose the falsehood of these ideas.
2-Red herrings and irrelevances:
In the case of parapsychology, you will remember that many online pseudoskeptics argue "If psychics were real, then they would be millionarie using psi powers to win the lotery". Or "If psi exists, then why no one of them has won the Randi's challenge?" and so forth. The implication is that psi doesn't exist.
Any rational person, even a skeptic, would see that the above are not serious objections to the existence of psi.
In the case of some of my readers, I received similar red herrings and irrelevances. For example "Christianity has done a lot of evil, look at the Inquisition" or "If Jesus' resurrection is real, then where is he now?" or "The trinity is absurd, thinking about 3 persons in a same being is incoherent".
Obviously, all of this is irrelevant regarding the historical factuality or non-factuality of Jesus' Resurrection. You don't need to know "where is he now" in order to conclude, if the evidence is good, that the resurrection probably happened. Likewise, the evils caused by some Christians in the history is not a reason to think that Jesus' resurrection didn't ocurred.
And the coherence or incoherence of the trinity cannot prevent us to study the evidence and, eventually, if it is good, to conclude in favour of Jesus' resurrection (By the way, regardless of whether the doctrine of Trinity is true or false, I don't think it is incoherent when properly formulated. Read this post by Christian philosopher Edward Feser about it).
3-Straw men, caricatures and unsympathetic formulation of the position being criticized:
You're familiar with pseudoskeptics misrepresenting the position being defended by the psi or survival proponent. Remember the pseudoskeptic's misrepresentation of the "filter hypothesis" to explain the mind-body connection, which the pseudoskeptic subtly misrepresents as a one-way connection (from the soul to the brain), when the survivalist constantly stresses that his position is a two-way (soul affecting the brain, like in the placebo effect; and brain affecting the soul, like neurological diseases or brain intoxications).
In the case of the hypothesis of Jesus' resurrection, the argument is misrepresented (grotesquely in my opinion) as a defense of the Bible, or as apology of the Church's beliefs, or creationism regarding biology. I was astonished to see some of my readers arguing like that.
They reveal a astonishing unability to understand even the most basic arguments (a trait which I thought, apparently wrongly, was exclusive of hard-core atheistic pseudoskeptics).
4-Falsehoods:
You'll recall the cases of pseudoskeptics arguing that "No skeptic has ever gotten positive evidence for psi", "psi hasn't be replicated" . Any person familiar with the literature would know that these claims are false.
In the case of Jesus, a few of my readers argued that Jesus probably didn't exist. Others say that perhaps Jesus existed but that the evidence for his existence was very weak, almost non-existent.
Any person who has studied something of history knows that these claims are false.
5-Egregious double standards:
Skeptics complain that most parapsychologists are believers in psi and survival researchers are believers in the afterlife, implying that they're biased. Therefore (skeptics will argue), that "most" parapsychologists and survivalists accept the evidence for psi and afterlife is not surprising.
For example, Martin Gardner wrote: "How can the public know that for fifty years skeptical psychologists have been trying their best to replicate classic psi experiments, and with notable unsuccess? It is this fact more than any other that has led to parapsychology's perpetual stagnation. Positive evidence keeps coming from a tiny group of enthusiasts, while negative evidence keeps coming from a much larger group of skeptics." (The whys of a philosophical scrivener)
The implication is that "enthusiasts" (i.e psi researchers) get positive results because they're biased for the psi hypothesis.
Or skeptic of survival Keith Augustine regarding NDE researchers: "Many near-death researchers interpret NDEs as evidence for survival of bodily death. Because many people would like to know that there is an afterlife rather than simply take the notion on faith, the study of NDEs tends to attract researchers who already believe that they provide evidence for survival. NDEs are a natural lure to survivalists, since they offer the prospect of bolstering belief in survival and of offering hints about what exactly is going to happen to us when we die." (Near-Death Experiences with Hallucinatory Features, in the Journal of NDE studies, p.28-29)
The implication is that NDE researchers, in general, tend to be biased towards the survivalist hypothesis of NDE, and this is why many of them think that "something interesting" (for survival) can be found in NDEs. (And as Keith argues in other paper: "that those (NDE) researchers willing to devote substantial amounts of time and energy to conduct large-scale studies of NDEs tend to be predisposed to dismiss psychophysiological explanations of them."(Psychophysiological and Cultural Correlates Undermining a Survivalist Interpretation of Near-Death Experiences’’ Defended, Journal of NDE studies, p.170)
Now, survivalists will reject Gardner and Keith's suggestions as misleading and irrelevant. The survivalist will say that the fact that most psi researchers or NDEs researchers are sympathetic with the psi and survival hypotheses is not reason to consider them unreliable scholars. I agree with the survivalist here.
However, when it comes to New Testament scholarship and the discussion about Jesus' resurrection, the same anti-Christian survivalists will appeal to an argument similar to Keith and Gardner, namely, that "only the Christian scholars accept the evidence for Jesus' Resurrection" (implying that this conclusion is caused by the bias or prejudices of Christians).
In other words, the survivalist doesn't consider that the possible bias (mentioned by Keith and Gardner) are a problem for the field of parapsychology and NDE studies (because the survivalist agrees in advanced with psi and survival-favorable conclusions) but he will consider this bias a very serious problem (which casts doubts on the scholar's objectivity) when discussing a topic to which he disagrees with (e.g. Jesus' Resurrection).
6-Unproven assumptions and Hymanian sheer speculations:
For example, essential to the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is the historical evidence of an empty tomb. This is part of what need to be explained by any correct hypothesis regarding the events around Jesus' putative resurrection.
Confronted with this fact (accepted by most New Testament scholars), my anti-Christian readers' responses were more or less like these:
-It's an invention, a legend, a myth, not something real.
As expected, they cannot support this speculation with any concrete historical evidence which overturns the evidence for the empty tomb historicity. It's sheer speculation and wishful thinking.
-"Perhaps" the body of Jesus was stolen or dissapeared by other reasons. After all, this is not impossible.
As expected, not specific historical evidence was provided to support this "stolen body" hypothesis of Jesus' body, just a mere speculative possibility has been posed. Again, think in Hyman's "possibility" of potential flaws regarding the SAIC experiment, even thought he couldn't find any...
Note that, for the unbiased reader, these unproven speculations reveal the critic's emotional need to explain the known evidence in terms of a hypothesis different than the resurrection, because he doesn't believe in the latter (like Hyman doesn't believe in remote viewing). The critic's beliefs push him into purely speculative scenarios in order to explain the evidence in a way which is compatible with their beliefs and block a conclusion which they disagree with (i.e. Jesus' Resurrection).
Another interesting sheer speculation (which is particularly unlikely) was this:
-Jesus could have come to life again like in cases of NDEs and this would explain both his empty tomb and why the disciples saw him after his "dead".
Note that this speculation is unlikely if we taken into account the fact that the Romans were professional and experienced killers using the brutal method of the crucifixion. The evidence shows that Jesus was brutally tortured in his whole to death, not simply dead clinically due to some infarction or accident.
Moreover, in contrast with NDEers who came to life again and then died again (as the late Pam Reynolds), there is not evidence that Jesus died again (which is consistent with the hypothesis that the resurrection body is the same body transformed to make it fit for inmortality).
The latter fact (the non-existence of evidence for Jesus' second death) cannot be explained by the hypothesis that Jesus' first death was purely clinical and that he came to life again like in cases of NDEs.
That such a implausible hypothesis like that be posed as a living alternative reveals the critic's strong hostility towards the resurrection hypothesis.
Regarding my claim that, if Jesus resurrected, it was plausibly caused by God (as most scholars agree and how is plausible given the religiously charged context in which Jesus lived and the content of his theistic teachings), I received these speculations:
-Jesus "could" be a yogui with amazing paranormal powers.
Again, there is not good historical evidence at all that Jesus was a yogui. It is sheer speculation. Moreover, there is not evidence that yoguis can produce a resurrection body fitted to inmortality using their putative powers.
It's sheer speculation which is added to the known evidence in order to block and exclude in advanced the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead.
-Jesus was an expert in unknown meditation methods which enabled him to do that.
Again, there is not persuasive historical evidence that Jesus was an expert in meditation methods, nor that such methods, if exist and are mastered, would enable the practitioner to create a resurrection body fitted to inmortality.
In fact, meditation methods which are available in most Eastern practiques and philosophies are part of a system in which the human being has several bodies (the etheric body, the astral body, and so forth) and in no one of them (as far I know) posed that the same physical body will be resurrected after death. But even if one of these text posed something like that, there is not evidence that Jesus was an expert in that specific method, or that that method actually produces such a result.
Speculation is added to speculation to speculation to speculation in order to block a conclusion favourable to God as the cause of the (putatuve) resurrection of Jesus.
-Jesus was a practitioner and advanced student of Buddhism and it "could" explain his resurrection.
Again, there is not solid historical evidence that Jesus was a practitioner of it. Sheer speculation and unproven assumption. Moreover, Buddhism is in general atheistic and hence incompatible with the historically evidenced fact that Jesus's teachings were explicitly theistic, i.e. about God's kingdom.
The motivation behind these speculations is to avoid the conclusion that God raised Jesus from the dead. Now (you can ask) why some people try to avoid this conclusion with unproven assumptions and speculations? Why do they are not even open to this possibility, even if they (claim) to believe in God? After all, if God exists, he could create a resurrection body. Is not God supposed to be omnipotent and more spiritually powerful than any other creature?
I can understand that atheists and pantheists don't consider this as a living possibility, because for them God doesn't exist, and hence cannot raise Jesus (or anybody, for that matter). But that self-proclaimed "theists" try to avoid this possibility, appealing to wholly unproven assumptions and speculations + speculations + speculations?
I discoveried that the motivation for avoiding this theistic explanation of Jesus' Resurrection is either atheism or religious pluralism. Most of my readers seem to be sympathetic to both. New Agers, mystics and some "spiritual seekers" seem to agree with one of them too. They don't believe that there is "one way" which is exclusively the truth regarding spirituality. They think a lot of methods (meditation, chi kung, yoga, Easter practiques of all kinds, etc.) are part of the same "way" to God (or to "pure consciousness", or similar). Or they simply think that "God" doesn't exist, so the hypothesis in question cannot get off the ground.
Note that I'm not saying that atheism or religious pluralism are false. I'm simply pointing out how these beliefs determine the use of pseudoskeptical tactics when confronted with evidence which doesn't seem to support these beliefs. This is my main argument.
In future posts, I'll discuss in more details the conclusions that I've gotten with my experiment.
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