Blood and Water From Jesus' side

Bradly Bowen is at it again. Another in his multi-volume continuing crusade to prove that he can out argue  famous Christian apologist  Peter Kreeft. Kreeft makes mention of the fact that John's observation that  blood and water from the side of  Christ and that this is an indication that Jesus must have been dead. Kreeft makes of this the observation that to indicate  that Jesus' lungs had collapsed.[1] This one point constitutes the argumemt I make in this essay, That the blood and water do indicate that Jesus died. For reason  too complex to go into  Kreeft is wrong  about the specific cause since if his lungs collapsed he could not cry out. Nevertheless the water and blood form Jesus' side are indicative of his being dead.

Bowen is defending the swoon theory the idea that Jesus did not die thus faked the resurrection. This is the substance of all of his assertions that Kreeft's arguments are invalid. Yet when I try to argue the swoon theory he repairs to the notion that  he is only concerned not with the swoon theory but only with proving Kreeft is a bad debater. Why? Presumably he has ultimate intentions relating to the  issues of apologetic and is using this to hide behind. Otherwise why would it matter?

In any case I don;t care,I will just use the augments as a reference to defend the resurrection and I don't care weather Bowen answers me or not. He has three general answers to the blood and water argument:

(1) The soldier would have to have thrust the spear into Jesus heart in order to get the liquid that looked like water.but there is no indication he did that.

(2) He denies the historicity of the fourth Gospel because that allows him to call into Question   the blood and water.

(3) Other gospels fail to corroborate the wound in the side.

My answers 

(1) The soldier would have to have thrust the spear into Jesus heart in order to get the liquid that looked like water.but there is no indication he did that.

The blood and and water might be indicative of several different causes all related to heart and causing death,

To confirm that a victim was dead, the Romans inflicted a spear wound through the right side of the heart. The medical significance of the blood and water has been a matter of debate. One theory (Bergsma) states that Jesus died of a massive myocardial infarction, in which the heart ruptured which may have resulted from His falling while carrying the cross. Davis suggested that Jesus' heart was surrounded by fluid in the pericardium, which caused pericardial tamponade. Another theory that I have often heard is that in a sick man (Our Lord was badly beaten) after death the blood will separate into clot and serum. We do know that death of the cross occurs from exhaustion and inability to support the weight of the body and to breathe. Once the legs have collapsed, the arms hold the body up and breathing becomes far harder. Some have suggested that that exhaustion along with the immobilization of the arms breathe will lead to the build up of pulmonary oedema and pleural effusion, with perhaps pericardial effusion too. So a spear to the heart will bring forth blood and water which is diagnostic of death. But in fact none of this is certain. I have asked three (21st Century) cardiologists what they know about death from crucifixion and none have been able to help me. While cadaveric experiments were possible in the 20th Century, there is no recent experience of crucifixion itself. 

The stated order of "blood and water" may not necessarily indicate the order of appearance, but rather the relative prominence of each fluid. In this case, a spear through the right side of the heart would allow the pleural fluid (fluid built up in the lungs) to escape first, followed by a flow of blood from the wall of the right ventricle.  The important fact is that the medical evidence supports that Jesus did die a physical death. Even more importantly, St John was absolutely clear that blood and water meant death.[2]

The water-like liquid was not lemon-aid it has to have something to do with the heart since people don't just bleed water all the time. It is unlikely they would make up this idea without knowing it's importance and  they would not have known it. No reason to think they made it up, they were reporting what they saw without understanding it. We can rule out asphyxiation if he did call out, So that narrows down the causes, “'"And immediately there came out blood and water." Thus there was an escape of watery fluid from the sac surrounding the heart and the blood of the interior of the heart. This is rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that Jesus died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium. "[3] "Because of the increasing physiological demands on Jesus’ heart, and the advanced state of Haemopericardium, Jesus probably eventually sustained Cardiac Rupture. His heart literally burst. This was probably the cause of His death."[4]   

The most medically reliable source I have found on the subject is a study (bu Mathew Maslen and Piers Mitchell) published originally by the Royal Society of Medicine then e by the National Institute of Health.[5] They conclude that there were several means by which  a Crucifixion victim, could have died."The Postulated causes include cardiovascular, respiratory, metabolic, and psychological pathology."[6] The  methodology of one study (Zugibe) the article discusses  included live modern subjects but of course they tied rater than nailed them. 

The study discusses the general state of crucifixion victims: Flavius Josephus (37-c.100CE) wrote of the hundreds of Jewish prisoners crucified at Jerusalem in 70 CE, during an uprising against the Romans.

`They were first whipped and then tormented with all sorts of tortures, before they died, and were crucified before the wall of the city... the soldiers, out of wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught to the crosses in different postures, by way of jest.' [7]

This gives us an indication that Jesus would have been in very bad shape just going into the crucifixion, That explains why he  died sooner than usual. I am assuming they tortured Jesus more than most. The study is inconclusive in establishing exactly how he died but they do not disprove the notion that the water would be a sign he was dead, any of the causes they discuss could produce a water-like liquid. This means the issues revolves around how much of the Gospel narrative can we assume? 

As for this first objection we can logically infer the nature of the spear thrust Since the author had no idea of the medical realities and thus no reason for making it up. The spear thrust had to go to the heart to produce the fluid. No reason   for making up the fluid because he would not have known what it meant. 


(2) He denies the historicity of the fourth Gospel because that allows him to call into Question   the blood and water.

It also calls into question the swoon theory since the swoon theory is predicated upon the idea that Jesus died too early. Without that assumption there is no reason to make a swoon theory; it's the only real indication that he may not have been dead. There is another reason to accept the fourth Gospel in this debate that reason is very special Bowen himself.

A few years ago I had a 1x1 debate with Bowen on historical Jesus. He used Richard Bauckham  as a major soruice supportimg verious arguentsheade in that deate.[8]
Bowen

Schoedel is not the only scholar who accepts the view of Eusebius. A N.T. scholar who has looked carefully into this issue has also concluded that Papias did not have direct contact with John the apostle. Richard Bauckham has examined this issue and provided a careful translation of the passage from Eusebius that quotes from the preface of Papias’ book:[9]

Bowen:Bauckham provides this footnote about the translation of this passage:

again "Based on Bauckham’s translation and interpretation of this passage, Papias implies that there are several layers between him and Jesus (click on the image below for a clearer view of the chart):
Chain of Tradition"

Bauckham accepts  the historicity of the fourth Gospel as one might gather from the title of his book:   Jesus and the Eye witnesses. Bowen respects his scholarship. As I said in that debate: 

Hinman: Bauckham is one of my favorite scholars, I read his book (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) a long time ago I own a copy. Don't have access to it now but I used Google books. The problem for Bradley's view is that while Bauckham does think that there were two Johns it's far from saying that Papias did not have direct access to an eye witness to Jesus. His book is called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and he believes that EJ is one of the eyewitnesses. Not only that but Baukham believes that Elder John wrote the Gospel of John.[pp 420-425][10]

Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses argues for the historicity of John based upon the notion that it is replete with eye witnesses:

He starts with what all scholars, liberal or conservative, acknowledge: the canonical Gospels were not written hundreds of years after the events they portray. Even the Gospel of John, which most think was written in the 90s A.D., fits within a relatively long life span of an eyewitness. “The Gospels were written within living memory of the events they recount” (7).From that premise, Bauckham argues that the eyewitnesses would have functioned as guarantors of the stories about Jesus that were circulating within the Christian communities. If someone had incorrectly told a story about Jesus, the eyewitnesses would have been present in the community to set the record straight. ..... Bauckham points out that Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:6 encourages the Corinthians to go and ask the eyewitnesses about what they saw. Paul assumes the accessibility of the eyewitnesses. In fact, “one reason the Gospels were written was to maintain this accessibility and function of the eyewitnesses beyond their lifetimes” (308).[11]

3) Other gospels fail to corroborate the wound in the side.

We don't have a second gospel that includes the wound in the side but we do have the next best thing: The historicity of the Gospel of John has been greatly enhanced. Bauckham's book has greatly increased the acceptance of  John as an authentic historical source:

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is to a great extent based on a close reading of the Papias traditions found in Eusebius and elsewhere. Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis, in Turkey, and was one of those bridging figures in Christian history who lived during the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century A.D. and thus had occasional contact with eyewitnesses to events in the New Testament and with those who had heard the eyewitnesses. Though Papias was a literate man, like so many in his oral culture he preferred the viva voce, the living voice, of oral testimony.Bauckham believes very much in the importance of eyewitness testimony, including that of Papias, which suggests that there was a close connection between various of the canonical Gospels and eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus, with Mark connected to Peter, and John connected to at least John the Elder (otherwise known as John of Patmos, the author of Revelation but not of the other Johannine documents), whom Papias himself met and discoursed with.[12]

Bowen is throwing atheist assertions about the insufficiency of the Biblical text and that is not a valid debate position. He has still given me no reason to assume Jesus survived the crucifixion, the odds are quite small that he would have survived. The blood and water are indications that he was dead.If these liquid's were seen (whatever the water-like liquid was) than we can be sure he was dead. Can we trust that story to be historically  accurate? It is not a certainty but there is good reason to trust.

Several exchanges between Bowen and Myself on this topic, on Secular  outpost: the comment section of Secular outpost ("Defending the Swoon Theory--part 10: The Blood and water Objection." The Secular Outpost (August 25 2019))

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/08/25/defending-the-swoon-theory-part-10-the-blood-and-water-objection/#comment-4599147085

Notes

[1] Peter Kreeft referenced in Bradley  Bowen, "Defending the Swoon Theory--part 10: The Blood and water Objection." The Secular Outpost (August 25 2019)
 https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/08/25/defending-the-swoon-theory-part-10-the-blood-and-water-objection/
Bowen refereces Kreeft from Handbook of Christian Apologetics, .183

[2] Adrian Treloar FRCP, "Blood and Water," Catholic Medical Quarterly Volume 63(1) (February  2013)

http://www.cmq.org.uk/CMQ/2013/Feb/Crucifixion.html

[3] Dr. C. Truman Davis "A Physician's Analyzes The Crucifixion."  Baptized.org

http://www.bebaptized.org/Crucifixion.htm
From New Wine Magazine, April 1982.Originally published in Arizona Medicine, March 1965 Arizona Medical Association.Davis is a graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. He is a practicing ophthalmologist, 

[4] Ibid,

[5] Matthew W Maslen and Piers D Mitchell, "Medical theories on the cause of death in crucifixion," PMC, US National Library of Medicine ,National Institutes of Health, April, 2006

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420788/

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] "Bowen-Hinman debate: Papias" no date listed

http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2016/08/photo-authorbauckhamzpstjbww5ohpng.html

[9] Bowen, Ibid

[10] Hinman, Ibid

[11] Dan Waldschmidtm ""Jesus and the eye witnesses"  Review: Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary 2015

https://www.wls.wels.net/review-jesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/

[12] Ben Witherington III, nook review: "Jesus and The Eyewitnesses," Bible History Daily, published by the Biblical Archaeological society. (December 31, 2011)

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/reviews/jesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/

Resurrection ala Moltmann: Historical or History Making

Jurgen Moltmann April 8, 1926 (age 92 years), Hamburg, Germany




In this essay I am evoking Motmann's concept of the Resurrection as history making to make the point that Bowen's attack on all of Christian apologetic is just ignorant of the options a Christian apologist has to put in play. Let it be understood from the outset I believe in the historicity of the resurrection and I will defend it. But some great theologians have other approaches as well. Bowen's attack in so far as it only see  evangelicals as Christian is ignorant, This is why I clouded other views with which I disagree. But Moltmann is not one of them. Moltmann believes in the historical resurrection.

In arguing with Bradly Bowen of the secular outpost over his defense of the "swoon theory" he expands his attack on Christian apologetics to encompass all Christian apologists:"By the way, this is a LITMUS TEST for any Christian philosopher or apologist, and it is a test that virtually EVERY Christian philosopher and apologist FAILS."[1] By  philosopher I include theologians.
This led to the following exchange:

Brad:
"The widely used apologetic argument based on the alleged resurrection of Jesus is intended to show that Jesus was divine and that his death provides a way of salvation and for obtaining eternal life to any human being who believes that Jesus is divine, and that Jesus died for our sins and that God raised Jesus from the dead. My interest in the question "Did Jesus rise from the dead?" has to do with evaluation of this widely used apologetic argument." 

Joe: so it is more than just get Kreeft? It is about apologetic after all. 

Brad:I couldn't care less about whether the story of the resurrection "works as a powerful symbol". 

Joe: Yes I figured as much. but you don't care about its truth content either, why do you think that apologetically argument is the key to truth? Without the theological content the argument is meaningless.If the symbolism school is right then the arguments are unnecessary and waste our time,

Brad: The fact that some story "works as a powerful symbol" tells us NOTHING about whether the story is historical or factually TRUE. Even if the story of the resurrection of Jesus "works as a powerful symbol" it could still be JUST A FICTIONAL story, and therefore it would FAIL to provide factual information about what actually happened to Jesus, and whether there was actually a miracle connected with the death of Jesus. 

Joe what if the story is fictional (I don;t believe that but for argument;s  sake)  the story is fiction but the thing it communicates is true wouldn't you want to know that truth? why would we need a historical event if it points to something beyond itself?

Brad: Thus Tillich's theological musings about the resurrection are IRRELEVANT, at least in terms of figuring out whether the story of Jesus' resurrection is FACTUAL or FICTIONAL. 

Joe Why do you call them "musings" when you don;t know what they are ? why would the truth of the event be reliant if a rater truth is there beyond it?Hey you are railing against how lame Christian thinkers are but you are ignorant of the major thinkers,[2]

Bowen's arrogance and ignorance in attacking all  Christian apologetic leads to my desire to expose the fact that there is a whole wing of Christian apologists he doesn't even understand and knows  nothing about. Toward this end I discuss Jurgen Moltmann's approach to the historicity of the resurrection.

Historians have argued that a view like that of the resurrection of Christ can't be understood as a historical event, thus can't be proved by historical evidence because history is intrinsically naturalistic. Historians must make naturalistic assumptions thus a miracle can't play a role in history. The first thing to notice about this argument is that far from contradicting what I've said, it supports my position in that I argue that atheist's only have ideological objections to the resurrection. There's no historically based disproof. If untrained non-historian apologists mistakenly argue "this is historical" the atheists objections are not based upon disproving the historically based evidence they are only based upon ideological assumptions. Evoking the rules of history is also ideological assumption.[3]

Eschatology in Theology of Hope. 

In his great ground breaking work, Theology of Hope (1964) [4] Jurgen Moltmann re-positions eschatology transforming it from a lose appendix (last things) to a dynamic aspect of the Hegelian understanding of history. The Hegelian aspect is not important, what is important is that "the last things," the eschatological element  becomes: the horizon of hope; the point from which we take our focus of history not the past where we have been but the future where we are headed. The Resurrection  is a focal point or a "strange attracter"as it were for the point to which history moves, the consummation of creator and creation. That is not a Moltmonnian phrase, but put it in Moltmann;s terms, "eschatology means the doctrine of Christian Hope which embraces both the object hoped for and the hope inspired ny it...the medium of Christian faith as such..."[5]

The History Making Concept.

 He argues, the rules of history exclude the miraculous. This is because historians, as heirs to the enlightenment, automatically exclude the supernatural. For this reason the resurrection cannot be seen as historical, a priori, for the rules of making history are set by an ideology of metaphysical assumptions which dogmatically excludes anything miraculous. History must be predicated upon the assumption of a coherent natural world, therefore, the supernatural cannot be part of history.[6]  Yet he felt it was important to make a place for the resurrection in modern thought. So he argued for changing the rules. Rather than calling the resurrection "historical" he calls it "history making." The belief itself has shaped the outline of historical event. This is apart from the question of its truth content, the fact of belief in it made history what it is. This introduces the concept of understanding the belief as history making thus the evidence that supports the belief is also history making. His solution: change the rules. We wont call it "historical" but "history making."

"The resurrection of Christ does not mean a possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence, and for history. Only when the world can be understood as contingent creation out of the freedom of God...does the rising of Christ become intelligible as nova create [new creation]. ...it is necessary to expose the profound irrationality of the rational cosmos of the tech scientific world..."[7] 

"The resurrection of Christ is without prattle in the history known to us. But it can be for that very reason regarded as a 'history making event' in the light of which all other history is illumined, called into question and transformed." [8]

Skeptics are too quick to argue that the resurrection is not historical fact.  In modernity we have gained an anti-supernatural bias, and so the believer is forced to ask rhetorical questions like "did Jesus raise form the dead?" and then to answer them rhetorically.  Moltmann changes the rules. Rather than ask if the resurrection is "historical" he merely argues that it doesn't have to be, it is history making. We change the rules of the debate because predicated upon the preaching of the resurrection is one of the most profound developments of world history; the growth of the Christian faith which has shaped the entire Western tradition. We view the Resurrection of Christ as history making because the belief in it did change history, the doctrine of it has made history, and belief today shapes the basis of all Christian doctrine. We put aside the hypocritical skepticism of naturalistic circular arguments and allow ourselves to accept the verdict of a history that has been made by faith in the event, in light of the fact that there is enough there to base faith upon. (see Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 1968).

The doctrine furnishes the basis for hope, when grasped in faith, that offers a much more profound answer to any of questions about life and death than any form of skepticism or pride in confusion ever could. Rather than merely declare a rules change, I will argue that this rules change is warranted based upon the evidence. In other words, not that the resurrection can be "proven" in the same sense that any other aspect of historical research can be proven, but that the resurrection evidence is credible enough that one can feel confident in asserting its truth as a tenet of faith. The actual case can never be proven, or disproved, but the evidence allows one to believe with impunity.

In keeping with my policy of enlightening the reader about my sources, I must point out that I do lean heavily upon two major evangelical sources here: F.F. Bruce, and William Lane Craig. Bruce is, however, one of the most highly respected Evangelical scholars, even among the liberal camp, and Craig is renown as a highly credible and effective apologist. The other sources such as D. E. H. Whiteley, Stephen Neil, Gaalyah Cornfeld, and Luke Timothy Johnson are basically liberal or moderate.A few major liberal theologians, such as Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg have defended faith in the resurrection.


Historical Verdict Reversed

As William Lane Craig puts it:

The real case for skepticism of the resurrection of Christ was actually developed by 19th century liberal theology, and though they don't know it, the objections of most Internet skeptics today are echoes of those arguments. But in the postwar era even major liberal theologians began to defend the resurrection. Ernst Kasemann, student of Bultmann, at Marburg in 1953 argued that Bultmann's skepticism toward the historical Jesus was biased and Kasemann re-opened a new Quest for the historical Jesus. The great modern liberal theologian Wolfheart Paennberg argued for the resurrection of Jesus. Hans Grass argued that the resurrection cannot be dismissed as mere myth, and Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen defended the historical credibility of Jesus empty tomb....Equally startling is the declaration of one of the world's leading Jewish theologians Pinchas Lapid, that he is convinced on the basis of the evidence that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. Lapide twits New Testament critics like Bultmann and Marxsen for their unjustified skepticism and concludes that he believes on the basis of the evidence that the God of Israel raised Jesus from the dead.

According to Jakob Kremer, "By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements concerning the empty tomb" and he furnishes a list, to which his own name may be added, of twenty-eight prominent scholars in support. I can think of at least sixteen more names that he failed to mention. Thus, it is today widely recognized that the empty tomb of Jesus is a simple historical fact. As D. H. van Daalen has pointed out, "It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions." But assumptions may simply have to be changed in light of historical facts.[9]

Before the apologist can even posit the turth of the resurrection, his truth is refuted by the very nature of historical "facts" as modern thought construes them; supernatural events cannot be part of history. But Moltmann turns this around on the nature of modern thought by arguing that before modern thought can posit a naturalistic history, the content of history is already shaped by supernatural claims.

In response to the issue that history must make naturalistic assumptions, thus miracles must be excluded.

My answer summed up in the following points

(1) Gospels are historical artifact that ques us in to a historically validated set of readings that can be understood as even older artifacts.

(2) these artifacts testify to the early nature of the empty tomb as a belief of the community.

(3) community contained eye witnesses. so this fact would have been screened out if it as false.

(4) It was spread about from an early time thus we can infer form it that the eye witnesses to the situation approved.

(5)not proof but it is a good reason to assume it's valid as a belief.It has historical verisimilitude.

The standard I set my arguments:The Resurrection was a history making event. Whatever truly happened, the actual events which are make by the claims of witnesses and faith in the veracity of those witnesses, the upshot of it all is that the historical probabilities suggest the likelihood of an event, and that event shaped the nature of history itself. The faith claims cannot be historical claims, but they don't have to be. The faith itself is justified, it cannot be ruled out by history, but instead lies at the base of modern history in some form. We can suggest throughout the strength of the evidence that those actual events were the very events attested to in the Gospels. We cannot prove this claim with absolute certainty, but the warrant provided by the evidence itself is strong enough to make the historical nature of the religious hope valid. Some religious hopes are just ruled out by the facts. For example, the idea that the Native Americans are part of the 10 lost tribes of Israel; this can be dispelled by genetics as well as dentistry. The Resurrection, on the other hand, can be accepted as likely Given the suspension of ideological objections of Naturalism.

Sources

[1] Bradley  Bowen, "Defending the Swoon Theory--part 10: The Blood and water Objection." comment section,  The Secular Outpost (August 25 2019)

 https://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2019/08/25/defending-the-swoon-theory-part-10-the-blood-and-water-objection/

[2] Ibid

[3] J.L.Hinman, "Good Reasons for the Resurrection," Metacrock's Blog (May 29,2018)

http://metacrock.blogspot.com/2018/05/good-reasons-for-resurrection.html

(accessed June4, 2018)

[4] Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: on The Ground and Implication of Christian Escathology. Philedephia: Fortress Press, 1993.Trans James W. Leitch. Original Publication Publican in German,Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1965.

Born: April 8, 1926 (age 92 years), Hamburg, Germany

Education: University of Göttingen, University of Tübingen

Influenced by: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ernst Bloch, Ernest Bloch

Main interests: Eschatology, Liberation 

[5] Ibid 15-17

[6] Ibid 176

[7] Ibid 179

[8] Ibid 180

[9]  William Lane Craig, "Contemporary Scholarship and The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ," Truth, 1 (1985): 89-95. 

What is and what is not Deism

Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648)

This essay deals primarily with what is called "English Deism," I will simply  call it "Deism" because it seems this is  what most people mean when they use that term. Many times in my apologetics I argue that God need only allow the laws of nature that he created to play out he need not intervene as much a we think he should. Skeptics often try to negate this argument by calling it "Deism," The purpose of this essay is to show that my view is not Deism,

The basic hall marks of Deism are two things: (1)  the notion that reason is the only proper basis of knowledge, and (2) that God is not involved in the world.[1] This philosophy tends to be very anti supernatural. The great heyday of  Deism was the enlightenment as it reflects the major interests of that time. Major names include John Toland, Shaftesbury, Anthony Collins. Lord Herbert of Cherbury to name a few.Deism arose in England during the seventeenth century and is fully embodied in the works of  Lord Herbert of Cherbury (d.1648). 

It has been defined:

belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe. The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind.[2]

again: "Deism is a form of Monotheism in which it is believed that one God exists, but that this God does not intervene in the world, or interfere with human life and the laws of the universe. It posits a non-interventionist creator who permits the universe to run itself according to natural laws." [3]


A major example of how I have been accessed of deism comes from a badly thought out attack by the atheist "pixie,"  He was making thoughtless accusations about God such as:

"

Pix: "So tell me why God chooses to inflict disability and cancer on innocent children."[4]

I argued that God does not decide who will get what disease that process is pretty much random as atheists and naturalistic imagine it to be. After come discussion in this vain he responded with passages which he asserted say that God decides our very  physical characteristics individually: 

Joe: that does not say God gave me brown hair rather than blond. or God chose I would be 5.8. The inmost being is the spirit not the body, God could have done this by creating the laws that govern genetics,

Pixie: It says exactly that. Compare the Psalm with these verses:

Jeremiah 1:5 I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.

Isaiah 44:24 Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer,who formed you from the womb:[5]

After some discussion that these passages do not say God chose the physical characteristics of the prophet and no passage says God gives children cancer. He does allow them to get it no argument there but he does not actively distribute diseases. Thus says the Lord of hosts, "Little Andy didn't eat his peas gotta give him cancer." At that point he asserts that the view that such things are just random is deism and be consistent with a Christian view:

Pixie: The Biblical view is that God created each of us in the womb. The deist view is that god set everything in motion, then let the universe unfurl. "God could have done this by creating the laws that govern genetics" is deism.[6]

Pixie is assuming that since Deism sees God as removed and the universe allowed to run on it's own than any theology which sees God as allowing the universe to run interdependently is Diesm, But Deism rejected all intervention of God most especially miracles. My theology says God created the universe to run by natural law but he is far from disinterested.

First,  I do believe that there may be times when God does intervene.That does not mean that God must prop up every aspect of nature. Secondly I think God is more involved in the supernatural aspects of reality, Far from meaning that he doesn't care it means he cares very deeply about the most important thing,  our eternal destiny, God is concomitantly trying to steer us toward the realization of his love. But that must be a free will decision That is the antithesis of Deism, It shares only one thing in common with Deism, God allows the physical universe to run on its own, but even that I don't claim is absolute.

This view is antithetical to Deism in three ways:

(1) God's attitude, caring

(2) It places God's involvement i the world center stage

(3) It roots God's inclement in the world in the Supernatural

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NOTES

[1] "English Deism," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:a peer Reviewed Academic Resource.James Fieser and Bradley Dowden  ed.(no date)

https://www.iep.utm.edu/deismeng/#H5

[2]"Deism." The Basics of Philosophy, no date
https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_deism.html



[3] Pixie, Comment Section"Does the Existence of the Ice Age Make God Less Likely?"  Cadre Comets Blog (Aug 22,2019)
http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2019/08/does-existence-of-ice-age-make-god-less.html?showComment=1566764659532#c8438267048910568772   [accessed aug 27. 2019]

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

Can Science Disprove The Soul?

In “Can a Machine have a Soul?” Bill Lauritzen claims to have disproved the soul.[1]He’s considering the issue of weather or not transferring human consciousness into a machine would give the machine a soul? His solution is to disprove that humans have souls then there’s no soul to worry about. In my view the soul is a symbol and it’s the spirit that lives on after death. So there’s no question of proving of disproving the soul since there is no question of proving or disproving symbols. For the sake of this issue I’ll use his terminology. He assumes the soul is the thing that lives. After all, he would make the same argument against the spirit. That argument is made by the bogus method of merely assuming what he thinks human ancestors must have thought about after life and what they based it on. Basing it on something we knows is false such as an literalized analogy between smoke as the afterlife of fire, and breath sustaining life.Being like smoke, therefore,  the smoke form the flame breath must live on as soul. That’s his conjecture. Of course he assumes this is the only reason to think there might be a soul and thus he’s swept it out of the way with modern doubt! That really is his only answer. He asserts that it was the attempt to explain oxygen. He’s using as breath in that sense. It’s really breath that he means.[2]

            To reinforce it all he goes through a mock play where two cavemen hash things out and this is supposed to be actual proof. It’s nothing more than detailed speculation. His little play is nothing more than taking us through the steps one might go through to arrive at the conclusion of after life after having witnessed death: He sees the blood, he reasons from past experience, that's when people lose a lot of this stuff they stop living. He sees the blood evaporate. He understands that it’s going from a liquid to gaseous state (would he understand that)? So he puts it all together and reasons. Of course it’s really a modern person “reasoning” his way to answers he already knows. Is that proof that this actually was what happened? No it’s totally theoretical.  He even shows a series of pictures of a goat dying and rotting away to reinforce how one might come to the conclusion that there is some mysterious thing in the air that makes us live (like he would really know evaporation puts gas in the air).[3] “So early humans thought there were ghosts and spirits living in the air. They didn’t want a ghost angry with them, so they would kill and burn animals,  even humans in some cases, in other words they would make a sacrifice, to feed these ghosts and spirits. Sacrafice as the root word sacer, meaning sacred.”[4] I don’t think I’ve heard of sacrifice being a meal for ghosts. That’s a conjecture and perhaps not a good one. It really is a minor point.

            Then he goes on a long tirade about how science discovered oxygen to show that science is so much better than religious thinking. Of course since he made the whole thing up and its’ conjecture and he’s stepping over a bunch of steps that took thousands of years it’s a rather meaningless point. Of course he totally ignores the fact that modern science was created by Christians and one of the chief discoverers of oxygen was Robert Boyle who was a devout Christian and who did science as form of Christian apologetics. I say one because the actual discovery was a complex process involving several people. Joseph Priestly was another of those and he actually discovered it but Boyle paved the way.[5] Both men were Christians. [6]. [7] It’s absurd to compare primitive thinking to modern and try to pass that off as proof that science is better than religion. We have modern thinkers who are both scientific and religious, and modern science owes a great debt to religious thinkers such as Newton and Boyle, and even Priestly. In fact part of his rendition of the discovery of oxygen includes a lot about Robert Boyle, he never does actually indicate that was a Christian, so it appears as a rebuke to religious thinking.

            He then takes a long detour though a discussion of things that really could be just left out of the issue. These are matters of brain size vs the kind of diet we have its suitability for hunter gatherer society. It really has nothing to with the issues. He discusses alchemy and how the understanding of blood evaporation and smoke might contribute to correlations between the basic elements and alchemical knowledge. It’s not relevant but I surmise that he includes it to indicate how wonderfully predictive his theories are. He can predict the nature of alchemy with it, of course we already know how it turns out so it’s not as though he’s predicting the unknown. Realizing he has strayed from the topic he springs back to summarize the issue on the soul:

Getting back to the original question: can a machine have a soul? Of course, there may be some mysterious energy we know nothing about. However, if we apply Occam’s razor, I think we can see that we have a simple theory that covers all the facts: the “soul” and “spirit” are convenient terms invented by early humans who knew nothing about atomic theory. The “soul” and spirit probably do not exist except perhaps in this ordinary sense, “a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.”[8]

The reference to atomic theory pertains to the reality about atoms and molecules and a modern understanding of what happens with evaporation. He says we have a simple theory that covers the facts. The problem here is he doesn’t know the facts. He has not given us any facts. He has literally just concocted a speculative idea with no empirical proof to back it up. He’s merely assuming correlations are cause and that he’s exhausted the facts merely because he’s brought out a few facts that back his view. Since he doesn’t value religion he doesn’t even try to understand what really went into understanding the soul or the spirit. He offers just enough facts to explain it away and then claims he has the facts. Moreover, notice that he puts his theory in terms of probability, and not in terms empirical proof. It can’t be a real disproof if it’s just a probability. There are other aspects of the spirit that he had failed to come to terms with. Basically, he has made the assumption that all knowledge is scientific so therefore the soul was invented to explain scientific questions, the physical workings of the world. It’s more likely the soul was a means of explaining religious and spiritual truth not physical truth. We don’t’ know what all that entails.

            It’s probably related to the need to explain mystical experience, or the sense of the numinous. It’s bound to be related to spiritual needs, that would relate to the special sense that engenders concepts such the Holy. First of all we know that those aspects of the sacred that issue forth in mystical experience, the sense of the numinous, are used  with complex psychological issues. 

Atheists and skeptics reduce everything they critique and then lose the phenomena in the reduction. Thus, they only see the explanatory aspects of ancient religion and never try to think beyond the simple assumption that people were doing this to explain things. This is the “Og no like noise in sky” Idea. Stupid primitive people without science try to explain simple things they don’t understand so they make up religion. That is all the skeptic can see. But those who are aware of the mystical consciousness can see more. I am sure the skeptics will argue that they are reading it in. All I can do is to assert that if the reader will read Maslow and if the reader is aware of Maslow’s acuity as a scholar, one will place a great deal of confidence in the notion that Maslow was discovering and not reading in. Maslow   interpreted everyday psychology as laced with the trace of the supernatural, because for him “supernatural” just meant a deeper level of consciousness about ordinary things. His views of human psychology were laced with Jungian notions of archetypes. He equated the archetypes with “supernatural.” In speaking of the relationship between men and women and their relation to the psychological archetypes, he finds that the same symbols are always used for the same meanings. This comes out in psychological studies across the board. He marks archetypical thinking, as B and D. B analysis has to do with the higher, ideal, abstract, D has to do with the earthy human aspects of our existence; the practical the earthy. These are roughly equivalent to St. Augustine’s terms: height and depth. An example of what he’s talking about is the male tendency to seek two of womanhood, the goddess and the witch (or rhymes with “witch”). Maslow says that psychology tells us that we need a bit of both. A woman put on a pedestal and seen only as a goddess is unapproachable and cannot be pleased. A woman seen only as the ‘other’ can’t be respected and won’t make a good partner. Of course this goes vice versa for the way women view men: the “good guy” vs. “the outlaw,” the rebel, the “bad boy.” Materialists are going to find that this point is trivial and just a part of daily living, and that’s the point. The reason ancients have a tendency to sacralize these kinds of ordinary relationships is because they sense a connection between them and the transcendent. That is the sense of the numinous. The same symbols turn up again and again, according to Malow, in all kinds of psychological study. Psychologically there is a link between the use of certain symbols in mythology and religion, and the transcendent.

            He makes this connection himself. in speaking of the dichotomy of most religious life between the “mystical” or ‘inner.’ ‘Personal’ to the organizational (he doesn’t use the phrase but the “doctrinal”) “The profoundly and authentically religious person integrates these trends easily and automatically. The forms, rituals, ceremonials, and verbal formulae in which he was reared remain for him experientially rooted, symbolically meaningful, archetypal, unitive.”[9] He is revealing a link between the rituals of the primitives, mythology, and religious experience (especially “peak experience” or Mystical consciousness). That link is in the archetypes, the psychological symbols that ground us in a sense of what life is about and give us a connection with these concepts of height and depth, or the ideal and practical. In appendix I. “An example of B analysis,” He states:

This can also be seen operationally in terms of the Jungian archetypes which can be recovered in several ways. I have managed to get it in good introspectors simply by asking them directly to free associate to a particular symbol. The psychoanalytic literature, of course, has many such reports. Practically every deep case history will report such symbolic, archaic ways of viewing the woman, both in her good aspects and her bad aspects. (Both the Jungians and the Kleinians recognize the great and good mother and the witch mother as basic archetypes.) Another way of getting at this is through the artificial dream that is suggested under hypnosis. It can also probably be investigated by spontaneous drawings, as the art therapists have pointed out. Still another possibility is the George Klein technique of two cards very rapidly succeeding each other so that symbolism can be studied. Any person who has been psychoanalyzed can fairly easily fall into such symbolic or metaphorical thinking in his dreams or free associations or fantasies or reveries.[10]

He is relating this to the mythological symbols of the grate mother, the goddess, the witch, the demon, and one might also think of Lilith or for men the Shy Father, vs. the demon the trickster. The link between mythological symbols and mystical consciousness is further born out by another psychologist, David Lukoff who made the link between the high incidence rate in the general population found by the Greely study and the use of archetypes. Lukoff framed schizophrenic delusions as private mythology.

 “This method derives from the discipline of comparative mythology but goes beyond to decipher the psychological truths embodied in the symbol-laden stories. Campbell’s (1949) study The Hero With a Thousand Faces is the premier example of this method. Lukoff (1985) treated the account of a psychotic episode as a symbol-laden personal myth and attempted to uncover themes that parallel the structure and content of classic mystical experiences.”[11]

Other studies, such as Buckley and Galanter (1979) have observed individuals in the midst of mystical experience when exposed to religious ceremonies.[12] Some might see this as undermining my own argument because skeptics do argue that religious experience is a form of mental illness. But there is a distinction between some mentally ill people having religious experiences and saying that mystical experience is mental illness. Many studies disprove this assertion (see chapter on “studies”). But as Lukoff shows, this does not mean that some mentally ill people can’t have mystical experiences.

Maslow talks about the psychological necessity of being able to maintain a transformative symbology. He is not merely saying that we should do this, but that this is what we do; it is universal and through many different techniques and psychological schools of thought he shows that this has been gleaned over and over again. What Jung called the Archetypes are universal symbols of transformation, which we understand in the unconscious[13] , and we must be able to hold them in proper relation to the mundane (the Sacred and the Profane) in order to enjoy healthy growth, or we stagnate and become pathological. It is crucial to human psychology to maintain this balance. Far from merely being stupid and not understanding science, striving to explain a pre-Newtonian world, the primitives understood this balance and held it better than we do. Religious belief is crucial to our psychological well being, and this fact, far more than the need for social order or the need for to explain thunder, explains the origins of religion.

As Maslow says:

“For practically all primitives, these matters that I have spoken about are seen in a more pious, sacred way, as Eliade has stressed, i.e., as rituals, ceremonies, and mysteries. The ceremony of puberty, which we make nothing of, is extremely important for most primitive cultures. When the girl menstruates for the first time and becomes a woman, it is truly a great event and a great ceremony; and it is truly, in the profound and naturalistic and human sense, a great religious moment in the life not only of the girl herself but also of the whole tribe. She steps into the realm of those who can carry on life and those who can produce life; so also for the boy’s puberty; so also for the ceremonies of death, of old age, of marriage, of the mysteries of women, the mysteries of men. I think that an examination of primitive or preliterate cultures would show that they often manage the unitive life better than we do, at least as far as relations between the sexes are concerned and also as between adults and children. They combine better than we do the B and the D, as Eliade has pointed out. He defined primitive cultures as different from industrial cultures because they have kept their sense of the sacred about the basic biological things of life.

“We must remember, after all, that all these happenings are, in truth, mysteries. Even though they happen a million times, they are still mysteries. If we lose our sense of the mysterious, or the numinous, if we lose our sense of awe, of humility, of being struck dumb, if we lose our sense of good fortune, then we have lost a very real and basic human capacity and are diminished thereby.”

“Now that may be taken as a frank admission of a naturalistic psychological origin, except that it involves a universal symbology, which is not explicable through merely naturalistic means. How is it that all humans come to hold these same archetypical symbols? The “primitives” viewed and understood a sense of transformation, which gave them integration into the universe. This is crucial for human development. They sensed a power in the numinous, that is the origin of religion.”[14]

Ceremonies and rituals about ordinary things such as puberty, sex, marriage, birth, death, these are attempts at mediating the Ultimate transforromative experiences that all religions take to the resolution of what they identify as the human problematic. Pre historic man says “I see a connection between my place in the universe, and this sense that I get when I reflect upon nature as a whole. I sense that I am one small part in a great unity, and I sense this in everything in life, falling in love, having children, death., I have a place in the universe in relation to whatever that is I sense beyond the stars…” The skeptic reduces this to “Og like girls, but girls make Og nervous.” So he makes rituals about sex and relationships to ward off the evil spirits that make him nervous. But it’s clear, while pre-historic man probably wasn’t an existentialist and perhaps wasn’t that sophisticated about it all, he did sense a connection between life and the numinous. Of course this doesn’t mean that the primitive humans had any special insight into relationships that we need to follow.  This is strong evidence that people have always had a sense of the numinous as far back as we know. This is an indication of some form of this sense because it clearly shows a connection between ordinary aspects of life and the transcendent. It also means that the typical skeptical explanation for the origin of religion is just losing the phenomena, taking out the real indications of a form of consciousness and reducing what they find to nothing more than a simplistic explanation for things.

While it is true that these experiences and their psycho-social uses have probably evolved over time, it is equally true that they were probably being put to the same uses all along because we can see the relationships between religious symbols, spiritual concepts, and psycho-social aspects. It makes more sense to think they were used in that way all along. The concept of the soul is not just a simple way of saying "what keeps me living? O it's some ghost in the machine" but rather why do I feel this strange sense of importance of life and the world when I stare at the stars all night? Then to explain mystical experience they come up with the realization that consciousness probably transcends the material world. From that it's easy to think it lives on after life. Then if they associate it with the wind in the trees and blood and breath and life, that's scientifically mistaken but it's not completely off track. It does at least link the feelings of mystical experience with the reality and meaning of the world and the after life.

Mystical experience is at the base of religion itself. "Mysticism is a manifestation of something which is at the root of all religions."[15] 

David Steindl-Rast,

The question we need to tackle is this: How does one get from mystic experience to an established religion? My one-word answer is: inevitably. What makes the process inevitable is that we do with our mystical experience what we do with every experience, that is, we try to understand it; we opt for or against it; we express our feelings with regard to it. Do this with your mystical experience and you have all the makings of a religion. This can be shown.

Moment by moment, as we experience this and that, our intellect keeps step; it interprets what we perceive. This is especially true when we have one of those deeply meaningful moments: our intellect swoops down upon that mystical experience and starts interpreting it. Religious doctrine begins at this point. There is no religion in the world that doesn't have its doctrine. And there is no religious doctrine that could not ultimately be traced back to its roots in mystical experience – that is, if one had time and patience enough, for those roots can be mighty long and entangled. Even if you said, "My private religion has no doctrine for I know that my deepest religious awareness cannot be put into words," that would be exactly what we are talking about: an intellectual interpretation of your experience. Your "doctrine" would be a piece of so-called negative (apophatic) theology, found in most religions.[16]

It makes sense that if every doctrine has it's roots in mystical experience that the doctrine of the soul does as well. Now it could easily be that the basic idea was invented by observing breath i the body and wind in the trees then backed up by these emotional experiences. That's ok it means there is no Casper the friendly Ghost-like entity in us waiting to get out. We do not need to hold to that view of the soul or the spirit. Spirit is mind, the word in Greek means mind, it's perfectly logical to understand consciousness as the aspect that lives on. A connection through mystical experience would be quite logical for the spirit. So the reality of consciousness as enduring connection with God and the infinite got mixed up with hoaky notions about wind in trees and evaporation and produced this idea of the ghost. That doesn't mean there is conscoiusness that survives death and unites us with God or not spirit that is reinvigorated when we give our lives to Christ.

This tendency to want to destroy ideas of religion through science is nothing more than the illusion of technique. This notion hearkens back to a book form the 70's by William Barrett.[17]Perhaps because science is misunderstood by many as thriving upon proof, and it is seen as the umpire of reality because its ability to prove empirically, (apologies to Karl Popper) the illusion of technique is created in the minds of those who misunderstand science in this way.  It is not the scientists who create the illusion but the needs of science groupies who expect it to ground their metaphysical needs that create the illusion. The tendency to reduce all knowledge to one thing enables the illusion to work. The illusion works in the way that reductionism works. If some aspect of reality can’t be gotten at by our methods then we assume it doesn’t exist, because that means it’s not something we can control. 

…"The illusion of technique," the modern dream of a single method that would apply in all areas of human concern. Such hegemony encourages thinking in terms of a "will to power," seeing things as 'manipulanda', that which awaits reshaping by humans. Barrett contrasts this with the "will to prayer," an attitude which, inspired by Platonic 'eros', seeks, not control, but active engagement leading to personal transformation.[i]

Thus the only knowledge there is, is in our control. In other words, the facts always support our view. So naturally our manipulation of the world is absolute and produces all the knowledge there is. If there seems to be anything beyond that we can reduce it and lose the phenomena and we explain it away. Religious experience is reduced to brain function, brain function is reduced to chemistry, chemistry has no room in it for transcendent sprits and thus they don’t’ exist. The illusion is backed by the fact that we can always manipulate more and more stuff and thus demonstrate our view of the world works.

---

sources
   

---

[1] Bill Lauritzen, Abstract, “Can a Machine Have a Soul,” Journal of Personal Cyberconscienceness. Vol. 8, Iss 1 (2013) 30-39, 30-31.

[2] Ibid.31

[3] Ibid. 32-33.

[4] Ibid. 33

[5] Zbigniew SZYDŁO, “Who Discovered Oxygen?” Proceedings of ECOpole, Vol. 1, No. 1/2 (2007)

Pdf http://tchie.uni.opole.pl/ecoproc07/key/Szydlo_07.pdf  accessed 4/7/14.

[6] Kevin de Berg, “The Enlightenment and Joseph Priestley’s Disenchantment with Science and Religion.” Christian Perspective on Science and Technology, ISCAST Online Journal, (2012) Vol. 8. http://www.iscast.org/journal/opinion/deBerg_K_2012-06_The_Enlightenment_&_Joseph_Priestley.pdf   accessed 4/7/14.

[7] Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and The English Revolution 1689-1720. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1976. Boyle’s Christianity and apologetics are discussed throughout  the work.

[8] Bill Lauritzen, Ibid. 38.

[9] Abraham H. Maslow  Religiooins, Values and Peak-Experiences, “preface” to the 1970 edition.

[10] Ibid, appendix I. “An Example of B Analysis.”

[11] David Lukoff “the Diagnosis of Mystical Experiences With Psychotic Features” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, (1985) 17, (2) 155-81 in Lukoff and Lu, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, (1988) 20, (2) 182.

[12] Ibid

[13] Abraham H. Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences
Appendix I. An Example of B-Analysis

---

 [14]subconscious?

[15] Frank Crossfiled Haphold, Mysticism: A Study and Anthology. New York:Penguin Books, 1979, 16
[16.]David Steindl-Rast. "The Mystical Core of Organized Religion," ReVision, Summer 1989 12(1):11-14. Used by the Council on Spiritual Practices with permission. 1989

 on line: http://csp.org/experience/docs/steindl-mystical.html  
accessed 4/8/14.
Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., is a monk of Mount Savior Monastery in the Finger Lake Region of New York State and a member of the board of the Council on Spiritual Practices. He holds a Ph.D. from the Psychological Institute at the University of Vienna and has practiced Zen with Buddhist masters. He is author of Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer and Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through the Hours of the Day. 
[17] William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: a Search for Meaning in A Technological Civilization.
New York:Anchor books, 1979. 

[18] Raymond D. Boisvert, “The Will to Power and the Will To Prayer: William Barrett’s The Illusion of Technique 30 years Latter.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy: A Quarterly Journal of History, Criticism, and Imagination.” 22, (1), 24-32.

Posted by Metacrock at 6:03 AM