Chapter 12 Arguments from History and Miracles
Swinburne does lots of tedious analysis of why and how miracles would confirm theism—I largely agreed.
Incarnation It would be appropriate before concluding this chapter to illustrate in more detail the role of the founding miracle of Christianity, that religion among the major religions in which miracles have had the most important role. Christianity has claimed that there is one special event that God had reason to bring about, a particular intervention of himself into the world that he made, an incarnation. Suppose that the human race gets into a really bad mess. Suppose that people so abuse their freedom that they teach others evil and not good. They do not altogether know which actions are right and which are wrong, and they conceal from themselves even what they do know. They show little interest in where they came from (for example, whether they have a creator to whom thanks and service are appropriate), or in whether their existence has any point and their race any destiny. They do not care for their fellows, but live for self. Now the Christian view is roughly that such was the human condition at the outset of civilization; and that, but for various, especially Christian, influences from without, it still is. Now whether this Christian view is correct here is of course a matter for argument, which will turn both on issues of history and psychology and on moral issues; and once again there is no space to pursue these issues. However, few at the beginning of the twenty-first century would deny that this view has a certain plausibility. Suppose that this Christian view of the human condition is correct. What does God have reason for doing about it?
The prior probability of God doing Jesus miracles is very low. No Jew in the 5th century would have guessed God was sending down his son soon—it’s only a post hoc justification. So our prior can’t be very high.
There may be more than one thing that God has reason for doing about such a human condition; but one kind of response that God has reason to make is the following. He might conclude that things had gone so wrong that an atonement was needed; that the human race ought by sacrificial action to show its contrition to its creator. Yet he might also conclude that it was not within the capacity of a fallen race to make this kind of atonement; and that, if atonement was to be made, it would have to be made on behalf of the race by a human being preserved from the worst influences to which humanity was normally subject. But it would not be right of God to single out any ordinary human being to make such a sacrifice. God could insist on the sacrifice of none other but himself. So God has a reason to bring about an incarnation of some kind by himself becoming human in order to make an atonement. Once again, there are big Christian assumptions here which there is no space to discuss—for example, whether atonement of this kind is morally good, or whether it is better for people just to forget wrongdoing; and there is also a big philosophical assumption—that it is coherent to suppose that a God can become incarnate (perhaps there is some self-contradiction in supposing a God to become a human being), and there is not space to discuss that issue either. But, in order to continue the argument further, let us suppose that the Christian moral view of the propriety of atonement is correct, and that the concept of an incarnation is coherent. As well as concluding that an incarnation to make atonement would be a good thing, God might also conclude that the human race needed a new start with a supreme leader and inspirer to found a society in which his work would be continued. The leader would need to teach the race moral truths that it had only dimly perceived; perhaps, in virtue of his status, also to give it new moral laws, and to show it by example how to behave. Yet again, to preserve human freedom, the powers of the leader and of the society must not be too evident or too ‘supernatural’. And thirdly and most importantly, God might decide to impose on the human race a very considerable burden of evil for the sake of the very considerable good that it makes possible. In that case, as I argued in the last chapter, it would be not merely very good but obligatory for God to become incarnate to share the burden with us.
For these reasons, given the stated assumptions, if there is a God and if the human condition falls low, we may well expect there to appear on Earth a human being who lived a humble and sacrificial life and suffered the evil that humans do to other people (for example, by suffering an unjust death at their hands), who taught great moral and religious truths, who even suggested that he was God, and who founded a society to continue his work. He might manifest the divine compassion by healing, and the divine power by apparently violating natural laws in order to do so. He might show to people that his atonement availed and that it was possible for them in his new society to reform the world, by natural laws being violated in a supreme way by his resurrection from the dead. All of this, however, would be none too obvious in order that it might remain a genuine option for human beings to reject this claim of a divine incarnation. If we have evidence that things have happened like that, as in the Christian story of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and if we also have reason for believing the stated moral and other assumptions to be true, then that all confirms the claim that there is a God, for God has reason for bringing about such a state of affairs—namely, the good of humans. The analogy of the very good parent or very good spouse who makes a supreme sacrifice to save the lost child or spouse also suggests that some such thing is to be expected. Of course God may have reasons for not bringing about such a state. There may be alternative states of affairs that he has good reason to bring about instead. But there are certainly alternative states of affairs that he would appear to have overriding reason not to bring about—for example, the human race left eternally to make itself miserable through the original bad half-conscious choices of sinners in the centuries before Christ. Hence the occurrence of events of the type described is more probable if there is a God than if there is not, and so their occurrence would be evidence for his existence.
No!! No one would expect God to send down his son to be weirdly sacrificed toa atone for his sins. His son who is also him sord’ve and has been around forever as part of him, fully human and fully divine. Strangely, his son had limited historical evidence making him hard to discern from other historical figures and made numerous false or bizarre claims, while condemning handwashing as pompous and pretentious. The accounts of his life constantly contradict, as Pearce points out
“• What were the last words of Jesus? Three gospels give three
different versions.
• Who buried Jesus? Matthew says that it was Joseph of
Arimathea. No, apparently it was the Jews and their rulers, all
strangers to Jesus (Acts).
• How many women came to the tomb Easter morning? Was it
one, as told in John? Two (Matthew)? Three (Mark)? Or more
(Luke)?
• Did an angel cause a great earthquake that rolled back the stone
in front of the tomb? Yes, according to Matthew. The other gospels
are silent on this extraordinary detail.
• Who did the women see at the tomb? One person (Matthew and
Mark) or two (Luke and John)?
• Was the tomb already open when they got there? Matthew says
no; the other three say yes.
• Did the women tell the disciples? Matthew and Luke make clear
that they did so immediately. But Mark says, “Trembling and
bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said
nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” And that’s where the
book ends, which makes it a mystery how Mark thinks that the
resurrection story ever got out.
• Did Mary Magdalene cry at the tomb? That makes sense—the
tomb was empty and Jesus’s body was gone. At least, that’s the
story according to John. But wait a minute—in Matthew’s account,
the women were “filled with joy.”
• Did Mary Magdalene recognize Jesus? Of course! She’d known
him for years. At least, Matthew says that she did. But John and
Luke make clear that she didn’t.
• Could Jesus’s followers touch him? John says no; the other
gospels say yes.
• Where did Jesus tell the disciples to meet him? In Galilee
(Matthew and Mark) or Jerusalem (Luke and Acts [and John])?
• Who saw Jesus resurrected? Paul says that a group of over 500
people saw him (1 Cor. 15:6). Sounds like crucial evidence, but
why don’t any of the gospels record it?
• Should the gospel be preached to everyone? In Matthew 28:19,
Jesus says to “teach all nations.” But hold on—in the same book he
says, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the
Samaritans” (Matt. 10:5). Which is it?”
There is clearly some historical evidence for all this, including the testimony of witnesses to the crucial event of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which, if it occurred, would be beyond reasonable doubt a violation of natural laws. There is no space in this book to discuss whether it is very good evidence, nor is there space to discuss the moral and metaphysical assumptions that are required if that event (if it happened) is in its turn to be evidence of the central doctrines of the Christian religion.6 My concern here has been merely to point out what sort of evidence is relevant to this issue and to point out that such evidence would also be evidence for the existence of God, would provide a good C-inductive argument for his existence. It is, of course, very unlikely that I or the reader would think that God was very likely to do the sort of thing described unless we had had some contact with the Christian tradition or some religious tradition with similarities to the Christian one, and had thus come to believe that the condition of the human race was poor, and that there was a need for atonement and example. But that is no reason for supposing that what we think is not true. Unless I had been brought up in the tradition of Western mathematics, I would be unlikely to believe that there is no greatest prime number; for I would not even have the concept of a prime number. But once I have derived from tradition the relevant concepts, I am in a position to assess the proof that there is no greatest prime number. Likewise, in order to come to believe the Christian (or any other) religious system, we need first to be taught what the system claims; only then are we in a position to assess whether or not it is true.
It’s very bad evidence…
Chapter 13 The Argument from Religious Experience
If there is a God, one might well expect him not merely to concern himself with the progress of the human race by providing opportunities for humans to do worthwhile things, or providing a revelation at a particular moment in history, or to concern himself with particular individuals by fulfilling their prayers; but also perhaps to show himself to and speak individually to at any rate some of the people whom he has made and who are capable of thinking about God and worshipping him. Certainly one would not expect too evident and public manifestations, for the reason that I gave in Chapter 11. If God’s existence and intentions became items of evident common knowledge, then our freedom to choose between good and evil would be vastly curtailed. However, one might expect certain private and occasional manifestations by God to some people, although perhaps not to everyone, again for the reason that I gave in Chapter 11. The argument from religious experience claims that this has often occurred; many have experienced God (or some supernatural thing connected with God) and hence know and can tell us of his existence.
Many don’t have religious experience which theism can’t explain
We know with certainty that most religious experiences must be wrong, because they diverge. It thus can’t be evidence because we know that it’s usually false. God must be popping around providing inconsistent revelation.
To quote Carrier once again, “We have evidence of divine communications going back tens of thousands of years (in shamanic cave art, the crafting of religious icons, ritual burials, and eventually shrines, temples, and actual writing, on stone and clay, then parchment, papyrus and paper). Theism without added excuses predicts that all communications from the divine would be consistently the same at all times in history and across all geographical regions, and presciently in line with the true facts of the world and human existence, right from the start. Atheism predicts, instead, that these communications will be pervasively inconsistent across time and space, and full of factual errors about the world and human existence, exactly matching the ignorance of the culture “experiencing the divine” at that time. And guess what? We observe exactly what atheism predicts; not at all what theism predicts. And again, adding excuses for that, only makes theism even more improbable.”
We can also give a very plausible naturalistic account of unreliable religious experience in a way we can’t for vision.
Well, thanks for reading everyone!