Imagine no religion

Imagine yourself being attended to in the ER: your blood pressure has dropped to a dangerously low level, your white blood cell count has shot through the roof, you want to say something but you're too weak to even move your lips. You slip in and out of consciousness, though at one point you distinctly hear wailing around you (sounds like your wife or daughter) and you're able to make out what looks a priest at the foot of your bed. That last bit makes your heart race, if only your body had enough strength to make it race in the first place. You would've heard the EEG go monotone but you'd already blacked out a full minute before they started CPR ... to no avail.

A week after the funeral your family finally receives the autopsy report. You succumbed to a most virulent form of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). How did you get the superbug? Well, speculation among the hospital staff has it that you probably got infected when you had your coronary bypass surgery a few weeks ago. You see ever since they started accepting female Muslims the number of surgery-related infections such as MRSA has gone up by over 400%. Does that mean these females are carriers of MRSA? Well, not exactly. The fact of the matter is that these Muslim women vehemently oppose the standard hygienic practice of scrubbing their hands and arms before entering the operating room and handling patients. Specifically, these women did not wash and scrub their forearms to rid themselves of various pathogens nor did they follow the standard practice of having bare forearms when performing and assisting in surgery. It's quite possible that one of those women had inadvertently infected you.

Now merely a psyche--a soul--being ferried by Charon across the River Styx you see your family filing a malpractice suit against the hospital. But you nearly dash across the water when you hear the judge dismiss the suit on grounds that the Muslim women were merely exercising their religious rights. The fact that it was against their religion to expose their forearms during the scrub and in the surgical theater is more than enough reason to exonerate these women and the hospital. In this age of political correctness and appeasement, religious sensibilities trumps science, rationality and patient welfare. If medical practices and procedures conflict with religion then we must respect the latter and cross our fingers the pathogens respect and spare the lives of the patients. Could you have avoided the fatal infection had you insisted on a surgical team sans Muslim women? Certainly not, for that would've definitely been construed as religious intolerance and prejudice, an offense which could very well have landed you in court!

The above is fictional, but look at how we may be inching toward such a scenario:

Medics in hospitals in at least three major English cities have refused to follow the regulations aimed at helping tackle superbugs because of their faith, it has been revealed. Women medical students at Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool objected to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands and removing arm coverings in theatre, claiming it is regarded as immodest. Similar concerns were raised at Leicester University -and Sheffield University reported a case of a Muslim medic refusing to "scrub" because it left her forearms exposed.... [T]he Islamic Medical Association insisted that covering all the body in public, except the face and hands, was a basic tenet of Islam. It said: "No practising Muslim woman - doctor, medical student, nurse or patient - should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow." The new Department of Health guidance was introduced this month in a bid to restrict the spread of potentially fatal infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficle. [link]

If religionists could have it their way, Jehovah's Witnesses would ban all blood transfusions and organ transplants, Muslims would forbid all women from exposing, scrubbing, and disinfecting their forearms, and Christian Scientists (who believe that only prayer can cure) would shut the pharmaceutical industry down, close down all medical schools, and force all doctors to switch careers.

We must not bow down to religion. Irrational beliefs, beliefs that have no foundation in reality do not deserve respect. They deserve unceasing criticism and derision.

Appeasement of Muslims, immigrant or otherwise, is not the way to go. People, whatever their creed may be, must submit to the will of secularism. No ifs, no buts. No special privileges, no special treatment.



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Note: The various symptoms and other circumstances that accompany MRSA infection are just made up. The symptoms and course of the disease may not be so.

4ever trying to rip us off

"4G Antioxidants" is one of the latest food supplements to hit the market. The 4Gs refer to substances contained in each capsule of the product: gingko biloba, grape seed, ginseng, and garlic.

To promote their product there's a health show on radio (more of an infomercial really) that's sponsored by 4G. The hosts of the show, unsurprisingly, constantly plug 4G and recommend it to their audience. The format and objectives of the show are not unlike those of a weekly program on the same radio station where the doctor who co-hosts incessantly, indefatigably, unrestrainedly, unscrupulously tells his listeners and callers week after week to take the products imported by HNC, namely, Liveraide, Fitrum, and My Marvel Taheebo Tea. Now tell me this doctor is not on HNC's payroll.

There's also a 4G tv ad you can vew online. In it you see and hear a young and popular airhead, I mean, actress bubblingly endorsing the product (in other words, reading the script and singing praises in return for an irresistibly handsome wad of lucre). The whole ad is little more than marketing drivel. It claims that 4G "helps protect our bodies from the harmful effects of oxidation and free radicals" thereby preventing disease, strengthening our body, and making us "4ever looking young and 4ever feeling healthy." In other words, we're being sold snake oil. I probably wouldn't have written this entry if not for one claim therein that I simply cannot let pass without unbridled censure.

According to the makers of 4G its product is "all natural so it's proven safe and effective." In that case, since hemlock, ricin, botulin, E. coli, guano, tapeworms, death cap mushroom, among others, are all natural, by 4G's logic they must be safe and effective. To prove this I'd like the board of directors of 4G to take the above, singly or as a cocktail, and show the world once and for all how natural = safe + effective.

I don't know whether to cry or blow my top (perhaps both). How can the mere fact that something is "all natural" lead anyone to conclude it being safe and effective? This is flagrant bad logic. This is flat-out falsehood. It's flim flam. It's a con job! The statement exists simply because the makers/sellers of 4G want to bamboozle the public into believing that their product is "proven safe and effective," giving the silliest of reasons simply to make a sentence.

I see a potential legal case to be made here too. Does the Bureau of Food and Drugs allow ads to claim their product "proven safe and effective" without robust scientific evidence? I should hope not. But then again I am hardly delusional about the ethical integrity of any government agency.

As for the whole antioxidants brouhaha, Dr. Steven Novella has just recently written a piece that addresses the issue of just what the current state of scientific evidence is on this matter. Hop on over to the highly recommended Science-Based Medicine blog and read his Antioxidant Hype and Reality. In one sentence: The jury is still out; there is still much research, studying and testing to be done. Novella's advice: "When it comes to the marketing hype for antioxidant products I can make a clear recommendation--healthy skepticism." I think we can extend that recommendation to all "food supplements" including vitamins. As the late astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan might have said, when it comes to medical hype make sure your baloney detector is switched on and kept on.

Don't toss your brain out

About a week ago, in the comment section of one of my blog entries, a woman shared her story:

My husband, a patient with kidney disease, has recently attended Father Suarez's healing mass. I am a skeptic myself, but if he is healed, I will happily throw clear thinking out the window.

As I implied in my curt, if not seemingly cryptic, reply to her, the logic is fallacious. Her implied reasoning as to why she would throw out skepticism and critical thinking is as follows.

Her husband H attended event E
Some unspecified time later H's renal disease is cured
Therefore E was the cause of H's healing.

Unfortunately, she has failed to take into account the other events her husband had gone through besides Suarez's healing mass. Was he taking medication? Was he on a certain special diet? What other treatments was he undergoing? We're also not told whether the particular renal disorder is such that no natural/spontaneous remission is possible or has ever been documented.

Presupposing that H's kidneys do become disease-free, which of the various events in H's life actually caused it? Without investigation we won't know. And even with investigation we might not know with certitude.

Non causa pro causa. This is the false cause fallacy--an error in causal reasoning. In particular, the woman above commits the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Just because two events are temporally proximal to one another does not warrant the conclusion that one caused the other. For any particular X there are many events that are temporally proximal to it. We can't just pick and choose which one is the cause.

It's quite revealing when she said that she would "happily throw clear thinking out the window." That she would toss her brain out only indicates that she wasn't thinking clearly in the first place. While I commend her for being skeptical, she has quite some studying to do in the area of causal reasoning.

On the other hand, she seems to be implying that if her husband doesn't get well, she'll remain a skeptic or won't believe in the powers of Suarez. Well, good for her, because indeed the lack of cure would mean that none of the events in H's life--including attendance of the Suarez healing mass--led to healing. If the claim of the proponents of a certain treatment X is that X leads to cure, and if X fails to lead to a cure, then such lack of cure falsifies the claim. Thus, the continued presence of renal disease falsifies the claim of miracle healing powers.

In practice of course there are various reasons--licit or illicit--that can be churned out to explain why X failed. Perhaps for X to be efficacious we need twice the dosage we had given our subjects, or perhaps it is efficacious only for those whose disease has not progressed beyond a certain point, etc.

However, in the case of miracles, it boggles the mind how there can exist any constraint that can hamper a supposedly omnipotent and omnibenevolent being from supernaturally curing its own creation. In fact an all-powerful being could most easily restore lost limbs, split conjoined twins, make normal those born with Down syndrome and other genetic disorders. If one is all-powerful and all-loving and dispenses miracles, how can it be that the majority suffer from disease and so many die from horrible diseases? Yet the fact is clear. Lourdes has a dismal record of miracles and Suarez isn't some medical Midas who cures everyone he touches (the number of testimonials is less than the number of those who've attended the healing services). Furthermore, in the case of Suarez, there has yet to be a single officially declared miracle^{1, 2}. Moderator of the Companions of the Cross Fr. Scott McCaig admits that. “[God] doesn’t heal everybody and I don’t understand why necessarily.” Martin Rovers, professor of human sciences at Saint Paul University in Canada, offers an explanation:

[Miraculous healing is] a gift and it happens at a time that we’ll never know. It happens to the saint and to the sinner and it happens to the strong and the lowly. The word that people use for that – that’s just mystery.”

Unfortunately, thinking up a reason doesn't mean that the offered explanation is true. And Rovers' explanation is hardly satisfactory--the implicit premise therein that a deity exists and the Christian one at that is not even known to be true (McCaig makes this unwarranted assumption as well). That it involves positing an entity not yet known to be true/real means it's not a parsimonious explanation. And that it assumes miracles to be true makes it doubly unparsimonious (as we have seen it is fallacious to jump to the conclusion that a miracle has taken place on the basis of inexplicability). More importantly, however, Rovers' hypothesis is an illicit ad hoc explanation. It is untestable and unfalsifiable; it can never be known to be true or false. In short it will forever remain in the realm of pure speculation. And that is why it can be relied upon as a psychological crutch by believers. Its nonfalsifiability perpetuates the delusion that miraculous healing is factual.

Finally, calling something mystery or Mystery does nothing to add to our understanding. "Mystery" merely is a stand-in and placeholder for "we don't know." It would be more to the point and in fact more intellectually and epistemologically honest if Suarez, McCaig, Rovers, et al. came out and said, "We don't know whether the supernatural exists. We don't know whether deities exist. We don't know whether the particular god we believe in exists. We don't know whether there in fact are miracles. And so the biggest mystery is whether any of our beliefs has any basis in reality, whether any of the things we believe in are true."

The emperor really has no clothes

Last week I sent the same email to all three addresses provided in the Suarez healing ministry contact page. I wrote:

The website of Fr. Fernando Suarez (http://www.fatherfernando.com/) has a number of articles purporting miraculous healings. The same website has also published quite a number of testimonials claiming the same.

Given all the anecdotal material, I would just like to inquire whether there have been investigations of the claims of miraculous healings by Suarez. If so, may I please have the names of the medical experts involved, their contact information, and what their findings have been thus far. Any other pertinent information as to evidence for miracles would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Thus far, I've received replies from the ministry's U.S. and Canadian offices. US contact person Manny Abalos told me he knows of no investigation. On the other hand, Mary Sheridan of Canada, Suarez's secretary, didn't answer my question directly but instead quoted a couple of parts of the Statement of Clarification the Companions of the Cross issued last February 6, the relevant one being the part about how only the bishop and medical experts can determine whether a miracle has occurred. She also bounced back what I had already said in my email--that testimonials were being published in their website.

From these responses, it appears Suarez and Companions of the Cross don't really have anything except lurid claims. Sure, they've got reams of testimonials and anecdotes, and unwavering belief, but they don't even have a single medical investigation which they confess is essential.

To believe wholeheartedly without evidence is to be deluded. I'll bet not a few in this healing mania are irredeemably so, beginning with that strutting naked emperor Fernando Suarez.

In many pre-scientific societies shamans play the role of doctor. Among other things they are said to harness or channel spirits and supernatural forces to cure the sick among their tribe. Suarez is a modern-day, city-dwelling shaman. The trouble is shamanic bunkum imported into the 21st century, into the cities, and into the Internet is still shamanic nonsense. While we can't fault Stone Age shamans and their tribe for not knowing any better, given their circumstances Suarez and his cohorts can only be seen, if not judged, as freaking imbeciles.

Why reported miracle healings should be taken not with a grain but with a sack of salt

To those who believe in the powers of Fr. Fernando Suarez and cannot imagine how the healings can be anything other than genuine, and to those who think that witnessing a healing firsthand is sufficient evidence, the following account will hopefully bring some needed illumination. It is from a 50-year old woman who had stomach cancer that had metastasized (spread) to her liver and spine.

At the service, as soon as she [the faith healer] said, "Someone with cancer is being cured," I knew she meant me. I could just feel this burning sensation all over my body and I was convinced the Holy Spirit was at work. I went right up on the stage and when she asked me about the brace [to support her spine] I just took it right off, though I hadn't had it off for over four months, I had so much back pain. I was sure I was cured. That night I said a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord and [the faith healer] and went to bed, happier than I'd been in a long time. At four o'clock the next morning I woke up with a horrible pain in my back. It was so bad I broke out in a cold sweat. I didn't dare move. [Hines, p.332]

What did the doctors find? X-rays revealed that one of the bones of her back had collapsed--because she had removed her brace and ran across the stage as directed by the faith healer. Was this woman really healed of her cancer? Two months after the "miracle" she died from the very thing she was supposed to have been miraculously cured of [Hines, p.332].

This case is an exemplar and affords a number of lessons.

1. Faith healing as with other types of quackery cannot be claimed to be harmless. This woman broke her back believing she was already healed. Some people stop taking their medications believing they've received a miracle cure. People have died because they resorted to faith healing instead of evidence-based medicine [Randi, p.293-296]

2. Testimonials are not evidence; they're just claims. This terminally-ill woman believed she was cured of her cancer. People in the audience believed she had been cured. She wasn't. She died.

3. Belief in the treatment--whether faith healing, one's preferred snake oil, psychic surgery, herbs from the 10th mountain of the Himalayas, or whatnot--creates the setting for perceived cure. Notice how the woman above felt a "burning sensation" all over her. Her excitement over believing she'd been singled out for a miracle cure had probably triggered the release of endorphins. Endorphins can mask pain. [Hines, p.333]

4. Many take reports of miracles at face value. There is no effort to look beyond tabloid reporting. People rarely, if ever, ask "What have I not been told?" "What was the diagnosis before the miracle and after the miracle?" "How is the person doing 1 week, 1 month, 1 year after the miracle?" People focus on the fleeting spectacle and fail to look at the whole picture.

5. Some people even arrogantly believe they have the knowhow and expertise to rule out trickery and any and all natural explanations/causes: "But I saw the miracle with my own eyes!" Well, imagine you had been one of the thousands in the audience and witnessed this woman take off her braces and run across the stage. Would you have concluded that a miracle had taken place because you had seen it with your own eyes? Even if you're an oncologist, how could you possibly know that the cancer was gone without doing sonograms, MRIs, blood exams, or whatever diagnostic tests are required and without doing follow ups over a period of time?


Now read the following. It's a supposed healing by Suarez circa 2006.

An usher brings Suarez to the front pew to see a dark-haired woman in a wheelchair. Suarez prays with the woman, who’s in her 40s. He helps her stand up and the woman falls limp. Two men help lay the woman on the floor. After a few minutes, the woman gets up and makes her way to the pulpit. “I have for years had pain in my legs, cancer has torn them apart,” the woman tells the crowd. “Now I don’t feel pain right now, so I praise the Lord.”

The pain was gone--at that moment. We are given a snapshot. What we don't have is the movie providing us a detailed intro to her condition and a time-lapse account by which we can follow her condition through to the present. I cannot but wonder if and when the pain returned and how she faced and resolved the cognitive dissonance--the belief that she'd been healed and the fact that the pain had returned and things were as they had been before the miracle.


In the 70s Dr. William A. Nolen followed up a number of cases of claimed miracle healings by faith healers. He found no evidence for them [Hines, p.333]. In the late 80s James Randi investigated various faith healers including Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Ernest Angley, W.V. Grant, Peter Popoff, and Fr. Ralph DeOrio. While he was able to uncover the tricks and deceptions of faith healing, he found no evidence whatsoever of miracle healings.

This book is an account of my earnest efforts to discover one example of faith-healing that can stand examination. I have found none [Randi, p.268].

I have tried to obtain from all possible sources direct, examinable evidence that faith-healing occurs. My standards are simple. I need a case that involves a living person, healed of an otherwise non-self-terminating disease who recovered from that disease as a result of a faith healer's actions and can produce before-and-after evidence to establish that fact. I have failed in any and all cases I have investigated to obtain a response that satisfies these simple requirements [Randi, p. 287-288].

The healing claims of Benny Hinn have been investigated. They too have been shown to hold no water.

Suarez is just one of the latest in a long list of people who've claimed to possess (or to channel) supernatural powers of healing. There is yet to be solid evidence for this. Given the paltry track record of his predecessors, given that anecdotes and testimonials are hardly good evidence, and given the fact that it is fallacious to equate inexplicable with miraculous, to believe in Suarez is to surrender to a delusion. Instead, we ought to confront the claims with utmost skepticism.



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References:

Terence Hines. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, 2nd ed. Prometheus Books. 2003.
James Randi. The Faith Healers. Prometheus Books. 1987.

The Suarez marketing machinery

Healing priest Fr. Fernando Suarez belongs to the community of priests known as Companions of the Cross. On February 6, 2008, prompted by "questions and concerns," it issued a "Statement of Clarification Regarding the Healing Ministry of Fr. Fernando Suarez." Among other things, we find the following very interesting caveat.

We delight that the Lord continues to bring consolation to the sick and suffering through prayers for healing. However, we leave it entirely to the competent authorities to confirm or deny claims of miraculous healing. It is the local Bishop, in consultation with medical experts, who makes such a determination.[emphases added]

The Companions of the Cross are now neither confirming nor denying that there have been miraculous healings, notwithstanding its unabashed publication of testimonials (that webpage even has a form allowing people to conveniently send in their stories), and notwithstanding its promotion of Suarez as a healer (in that page Fr. Shannon even avers, "I can personally attest to the authenticity of the many healings which have taken place through Fr. Fernando's ministry"). In its Statement of Clarification Suarez's group is admitting that, in reality, they don't know if any of the healing claims have substance. They don't know whether miracles have in fact taken place (it stands to reason that if one or more miracles have in fact been officially certified by the Church the website would be advertizing it/them like crazy, given how they currently have no qualms in posting all the testimonials and anecdotal material).

The question is, Are they making this most important fact clear to the public or not? I don't think so. On the contrary. Judging from the contents of the Suarez healing ministry site (apart from the Clarification) they've been making it appear that he does have powers of healing and that there have been miracle healings.

It is a general principle that if the only evidence for any touted cure (be that Chinese herbs, triceratops horns, beetle juice, psychic surgery, ... or faith healing) are anecdotes and testimonials, then there is simply no good reason to believe that it works. Only scientific and medical studies can determine the efficacy of a substance or treatment. The Companions of the Cross know this. They say so in their Clarification. And yet they continue to promote Suarez as having healing powers.

Caveat emptor.

The incredible dearth of miracle healings

The shrine at Lourdes, France is perhaps the most famous site the Catholic Church has officially recognized as having had miraculous healings. Since 1860 a total of around 200 million have visited.

There are three interesting facts about Lourdes (or any other miracle healing phenomenon for that matter) which taken together make claims of miracles unreliable and, as we shall we see, ultimately illogical and untenable.

1. The number of sick people who've gone to Lourdes is much larger than the number who claim to have been healed. Since 1858 an estimated 2 million have made the pilgrimage. The number of claimed miracles on the other hand hovers at around 6,000 [Hines, p.348]. The ratio of claimed healings to the number of sick is therefore 6,000 / 2,000,000 = 0.003 or a third of a percent. This translates to 3 positive testimonials for every 1,000. This is a very small number. Assuming for a moment that those who claim to have been healed were in fact cured, the rate of failure of Lourdes is a staggering 99.7%. As a way of assimilating this, ask yourself if you would enthusiastically spend some USD3,000.00 (an off-the-top-of-my-head estimate of the cost of a Lourdes pilgrimage) to undergo a medical treatment that advertised a success rate of 0.3%.


2. If a third of percent doesn't dissuade you, the truth is the figure is much worse. You see, testimonials are not accepted at face value by the Church, for very good reasons. All claims are first scrutinized and investigated by the Lourdes Medical Bureau "to rule out trickery, acting, illusion, a possible hysterical or delirious pathology." When a claim passes the preliminary screening the case is handed over to the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL) which is composed of Catholic doctors from various European countries. It is CMIL that determines whether a case of healing is in fact medically inexplicable. However, the final say as to whether the said case is a miracle or not rests upon the Church. [Hines, p.348] So how many claims has the Church certified as miracles? A mere 67. Thus, out of the 6,000 claims only 67 have been able to pass through the eye of the needle. If we now take this as the definitive number of miracles, the success rate of Lourdes is in fact 67 / 2,000,000 = 0.00335%. In other words Lourdes has a failure rate of 99.996665%. (I didn't even dare round it off to 2 decimal places!)

Imagine the following: 30,000 people with a certain disease have been invited to try a drug. You are one of them. You're told that only one of the 30,000 will benefit from the drug, and that to become part of the program you need to pay a fee of USD3,000.00. And no, you don't get a refund if you're amongst the 29,999 who go home still sick. Those are the odds at Lourdes: 1 in 30,000.


3. If you think it can't get any worse than that, you better pop an antacid. Among those who've been miraculously healed in Lourdes is a young woman who had Budd-Chiari syndrome, a condition wherein the veins of the liver become blocked. In 1963 she was certified as having had a miraculous healing. There's a slight problem though. She eventually died of Budd-Chiari seven years later. What happened to the miracle? CMIL admitted that "when they reached their decision [that the woman had had a miracle cure] they were insufficiently aware of the natural history of Budd-Chiari syndrome and the possibility of natural remission." [Hines, p. 349-350] Bottom line: the determination of miracles is hardly foolproof and error-free.

CMIL is quite cognizant of the fact that medical and scientific knowledge advances such that what is currently inexplicable may not be so in the future, as implied in their of use of qualifiers/caveats as "in the present state of scientific knowledge." Rev. Peter Gumpel is "an official at the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, which investigates reports of miracles by candidates for sainthood." He echoes the CMIL's understanding of the cumulative and progressive nature of scientific understanding, admitting that,

What seems like a miracle now may not be one in a hundred years. Such are the advances of science. Declarations of miracles are not infallible teachings.

We simply don't know all there is to know about the human body and disease, even as we have made great strides.

The mere fact that we currently don't understand X or cannot explain X does not at all imply that it's a miracle. It would be fallacious to say it is.

We can't explain X.
We conclude that X is supernatural.
But this implies that we know what X is.

The contradiction is easy to see if we make explicit the fact that we don't yet know and understand everything about the natural world.

We are not omniscient.
We cannot explain X
Therefore, X is supernatural.
This implies that we have ruled out all natural explanations.
But this means we are omniscient.

Since the premise that we are not omniscient is evidently true then it must be that our inference "X is supernatural" is unwarranted. Just to further show why it is unwarranted: Given an X which eludes explanation, rather than pointing to the supernatural we can just as well say that X is extraterrestrial in nature, that an advanced and very benevolent civilization has caused the cure. The supernatural is just one hypothesis among hypotheses. Our inability to explain something is not evidence for our favored hypothesis. Rather, our inability to explain merely expresses our ignorance of the explanation.

So why does the Church make the unwarranted conclusion? Why does the Church not stop at what is indubitably and medically accepted as true--that X is currently inexplicable, that given our present understanding the healing cannot yet be explained? Whatever its reason, and given CMIL's lucidity on the matter and Gumpel's admission, the certification and declaration of any unexplained cure or remission as miraculous--i.e., that it is supernatural in nature--is an act of hubris.


In conclusion, even with 67 certified miracles, these are not known to be in fact miracles, but rather simply declared as such. The Church arrives at its conclusion via a version of an argumentum ad ignorantiam whereby they take the current lack of natural explanations as license to call the event supernatural. This as we have seen is overtly fallacious. If, as Gumpel rightly says, a hundred years from now medical science is able to explain any or all of these 67 cases then they will lose their "miracleness," which is just saying that they were not miracles in the first place.



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References:

Terence Hines. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, 2nd ed. Prometheus Books. 2003.

Clear thinking: the contagious powers of Suarez

Montemaria, Batangas is the site where Fr. Fernando Suarez is planning to build a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of the Poor. Among the more impressive structures in the planned 5-hectare shrine will be a statue of Our Lady as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

Fr. Nap Baltazar is one of the true believer in the powers of Suarez. During his first ever visit to to Montemaria, and among other things he did there, Baltazar gathered a few stones from the area and gave one to each of the four who accompanied him on the trip. The very next day he received a call from one of them. The "frantic, weeping parishioner" told Baltazar that "he [had] rubbed the stone on his shoulders, which he had not been able to move for years. And now, he said, he could move his shoulders and even lift his arm."

Clearly, this man believed the Montemaria stone had some healing powers else he wouldn't have rubbed it on the affected shoulder. Can the stone really have magical powers? Not impossible but it is highly improbable (give me evidence of stones that have been scientifically shown to have such therapeutic powers). Instead of pebbles with some yet to be explained healing properties, there are simpler candidate explanations for the "healing." What did this man do with the stone? Along with some oil or lubricant I presume, he massaged his shoulders. It is more probable that the massage and not the Montemaria stone per se that loosened up his shoulders enough to give him (temporary) mobility of his arm. Furthermore, this man had a prior (strong?) belief in the supernatural curative powers of the stone. This psychological inclination of his could have pushed his threshold of pain a few notches up, thus enabling him to lift his arm. But whether the effect has been permanent or not we are not told. Whether his ailment is merely psychosomatic to begin with or is caused by some degenerative disease (such as arthritis), whether he could not in fact move his shoulders and lift his arm before the massage, we don't know.

After news of the above event spread, "more reports of healing flooded the parish—cancer cells disappearing, pain vanishing instantly, chemotherapy schedules cancelled, dead kidneys revived." Cancer cells vanishing? Dead kidneys revived? These are very incredible claims, although, for starters, what a "dead kidney" is exactly isn't clear. But more importantly, what we have here are mere hearsay. We don't know if the claims are true, or how much they've been blown out of proportion, whether or not doctors and lab tests were involved in reaching the diagnoses.

What is very misleading in the article is that it implies the stones were the cause of these various remissions and cures. But what is the probability that the patients were not receiving some form of medical treatment before they tried the stones and during the period they were using them? Whatever medication they were taking and treatment they had undergone or were undergoing need to be taken into account. This is more or less obvious since medicines and medical treatments are known to lead to what we colloquially describe as healing. Thus, it stands to reason that one would and should put more confidence in treatments by the MDs as being the cause of relief and healing, rather than on a piece of nondescript stone that the patient had rubbed on his/her body.

If we've been on medication for three months and we rub Himalayan sand all over ourselves because we've heard through the grapevine that it's effective, and if on the fourth month our doctor gives us a clean bill of health, was it the sand that licked our condition? Post hoc ergo propter hoc. We can't just willy nilly assign causation to what we want to believe is the cause.

What piques my interest is that after this one person had come to believe the stone has healing powers and had reported a healing of sorts, others clambered on board the bandwagon and began submitting their own testimonials. The psychology is fascinating.

Now, I'd like to turn to what would be a most revealing experiment. I really wish there are medical researchers, scientists, skeptics who would test these stones. How would we go about it? [1] First we'll have to procure a batch of genuine Montemaria stones, preferably either from Baltazar or from the exact site(s) where he obtained his. Then we would gather a bunch of similarly looking and sized stones from some place not at all related in any way to Suarez. Let's say we import a box of pebbles from Mongolia. Without informing any of the participants that there are non-Montemaria stones in our cache, we would then randomly assign all these stones to about a hundred or more subjects, say, the parishioners of Baltazar (people who believe in the healing powers of the Montemaria stones and who are suffering from some ailment). We'd then sit back and wait for a certain time period to elapse. At the end of the period if we find that the percentages of those who report healing are around the same for both groups (those provided with Montemaria stones vs those with Mongolian stones), we conclude that the Montemaria stones have no special powers and that it was the placebo effect and other factors that gave rise to the claimed healings. The healing powers attributed to the stones, and for that matter to Suarez, are quite testable. And they should be tested, unless the faithful are averse to disillusionment and would rather remain ignorant of the truth.

So now it's not only Fr. Suarez who possesses the miracle healing touch, even stones from a place where the planned shrine will be built have caught it. But hold on. It not just stones, for in lieu of them, mere stampitas will do:

[A] doctor who was healed of cancer had stampitas of St. Francis of Assisi printed and distributed to parishioners. An ailing woman eventually reported that because the healing stones were hard to come by, she put a stampita on her belly and found that her pains had disappeared by the next morning.

And now even electronic media have been imbued with the same magical healing powers.

Lolit Esguerra writes: “I prayed with Father Suarez his Youtube healing prayer and the pain in my shoulders, which no medicine could remove, disappeared.” The Lord’s healing is becoming global through the Internet. He heals by touch, by cellular phone, or by land line. Too old to go to church, 87-year-old Rosella Purugganan said all her pains vanished after she heard Suarez’s healing Mass on television.

Since computers, television, telephones, cell phones send data via electricity, microwave, and light, it must be that the "healing code" or software if you will gets encoded in the analog and digital electrical signals and thereafter gets transmitted electromagnetically via copper cables, fiber optics, antennas, satellites, cell sites, .... Fascinating, don't you think?

Is it far-fetched then to say that in time there will be those who will claim that photos of Suarez, pictures of the shrine, water, leaves and bark from around Montemaria, and practically anything that has some connection with Suarez have exhibited healing properties? Can we dub this as "potency by mere association"?

There are many questions that need to be asked and there are various candidate naturalistic explanations for the claimed events and healings. Ignoring these leads to very muddled thinking as is in the case of those who've hastily concluded that they've actually been healed, and by magical means. I am so pained that such a profusion of delusions has been engendered by a single man.


---

Notes:

1. There are of course other experiments that can be designed/performed and variations of the one I suggest to determine whether the Montemaria stones are unique or not in eliciting (claims of) healings and how they compare to other objects in eliciting the same.

Clear thinking: Suarez and the signs

Reading the following news article brought to mind pre-scientific animistic tribes. It reports a collection of supposed signs and omens that followers have seen in connection with Fr. Fernando Suarez's activities. Signs and omens? The anachronism was jarring at first but ultimately comical.

So what are the said signs that accompanied Suarez's plans and activities? The article begins with the following:

Last Christmas eve, the security guard at Montemaria in Batangas saw from afar a bright glow on the makeshift altar-stage. He thought the electricity had been installed. But then, he thought, why now in the middle of the night, on the eve of Christmas? When he went out to check, the light was gone. The guard sent a text message reporting the incident to Paz Monteclaro of the Mary Mother of the Poor Foundation (MMPF), which supports Fr. Fernando Suarez, the now famous healer of the blind, deaf, mute and lame. Both Suarez and the MMPF wondered: Was this mysterious light, which came at the time of the birth of Jesus, perhaps n omen of His coming to this remote hillside?

If in the middle of the night if I see a light where there's supposed to be none my first reaction would be fear. Why? Because among the members of Homo sapiens are those commonly referred to as thieves. Paranormal concerns are way way down my list of possibilities. Now if I had been the security guard I would've reported what I'd seen before checking out the premises, since presumably I'd been hired to protect property from being stolen/vandalized/trespassed upon by someone.

So consider the following possible explanations:

* Thieves had been on the prowl for possible valuables such as chalices.
* The guard had experienced a hallucination
* The guard had glasses on and had seen on the lens a reflection of a light source behind him
* Someone had lit a candle within the vicinity of the said altar
* Mischievous teens illuminated the altar, perhaps with a flashlight.
* He had mistaken a firefly much closer for a light in the altar located much further away.
* The guard had had a couple of shots or was drowsy from being lulled by the crickets and saw a light but in a different area altogether.
* Sparklers or a type of fireworks had been used in the area (there are those in the Philippines who celebrate Christmas by setting off fireworks and firecrackers)
* There had been a ball lightning lasting several seconds in the vicinity of the altar.
* Orbiting high above the Earth, a cloaked flying saucer had directed a high-powered laser beam (operating in the visible spectrum) at the altar.
* Loki, the trickster god, had zapped the guard's optic nerves and made him see a light (when none in fact existed)

There are a number of mundane explanations (each of which can potentially be ruled out given more details about the event). There are also less parsimonious and less probable explanations such as ball lightning. And then there are any number of wacky (though strictly speaking not impossible or falsifiable) explanations as the last two above illustrate.

As for the light being a sign from Yahweh or Christ, it sits right next to the Loki hypothesis.

We are told then told of the other signs.

During the groundbreaking and blessing of the altar-stage in January 2007, just as Suarez was beginning his homily, the calm was broken by a violent wind. When others, including a bishop, spoke, everything became calm once more.... Just as Suarez began sprinkling holy water on the altar-stage, an eerie drizzle of fine raindrops descended on the 500-odd people attending the ceremony. It was as if the heavens were joining him in blessing the place.

I don't know how the weather is over in Montemaria, Batangas, but where I am--some hundred or so kilometers from Batangas--some types of rain are preceded by high winds.

We need to ask: During the week/month when the fine drizzle was said to have occurred, had there also been other instances when such fine drizzle did occur, regardless of whether there was a mass or prayer service? Is this meteorological event unique? Has it never occurred at all in this area? Given that it's already happened twice (the second in October 2007 during a Mass celebrated by a different priest), it's a good bet drizzling of the type reported is normal for the area. Similar questions can be asked of the so-called violent gust of wind. Perhaps local weatherpersons and records can shed light on this.

To add to the list of portents from the heavens, even clouds apparently were communicating something:

Some of those present reported an odd, circular cloud hovering above them.... Suarez himself said he saw a cloud in the form of a hand.

Looking for faces in the clouds would normally be just an entertaining past time activity. But throw in a religious setting and it becomes quasi-divination, akin to reading tea leaves and animal entrails. So when one fluff of water vapor turns out to resemble a human hand (even if only for a few seconds/minutes before shapeshifting into something else) it is enlisted as yet another sign. I am actually surprised why they didn't continue to look for more shapes to add to their collection of omens since it is rather easy to do.

My own omen from heaven: On a bright sunny day several years ago while waiting for the light to turn green I gazed up and watched the white cumulus clouds as they slowly crossed the sky. One caught my eye and upon closer inspection it turned out to be in the shape of a robed and hooded woman. Ah! the Virgin Mary I chuckled to myself. If only I had a camera. But even before the traffic light changed color she had gradually changed and shape shifted into Dick Tracy, who not long thereafter transformed into something my unenviable faculties of imagination and creativity could no longer apprehend and interpret.

While Suarez may not have come across the term pareidolia, I hope he doesn't tell us he's not heard of the childhood game of looking for shapes in the clouds. Gazing upwards, perceiving a simulacrum in the clouds, and then interpreting it as a sign from heaven is, frankly, plain superstition.

Finally, in the collection of signs, there are the stones from Montemaria collected by Fr. Nap Baltazar which purportedly have healing powers and have cured those with diabetes and cancer. (I'll have more to say about these healing pebbles in a later post.)

The problem with Suarez and his band of believers is that they so dearly want to believe that all this supernatural healing stuff is real, that he/they have somehow been been blessed or even specially chosen by their deity, and that Montemaria is the place that's been prophesied to be the next miracle healing shrine of the world, so much so that they're highlighting trivial phenomena and making a big fuss out of them. I suspect this is a simple case of selective attention and confirmation bias of sorts. It's an overzealous attentiveness to or even search for eerie, synchronistic events and coincidences to bolster the significance of Montemaria and Suarez's supposed superpowers (perhaps not unlike the frantic search for miracles when Catholics embark on a quest to have some beloved and popular individual of theirs canonized).

Clear thinking: Suarez and the dead

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. After this, therefore because of this. I've dealt with this fallacy several times before but it's such a common pitfall in causal reasoning that even priests--supposedly trained in philosophy--fall into the trap.

If I click my heels three times and it starts raining, did my Dorothy act magically cause the floodgates of heaven to burst open? If my alarm clock rings and the sun rises did my clock cause the sunrise? (Interestingly, there was a tribe that believed that if it didn't perform its pre-dawn ritual the sun would fail to rise and mankind would be doomed.) What if I pop a tablet of paracetamol (acetaminophen) and my headache disappears minutes later? Did the pill cause my headache to up and go?

Patently, heel-clicking and alarm clocks don't cause rain and sunrises. But even in the pill example, it would be fallacious to claim with absolute certitude that the drug licked the headache. At best--given that we know from clinical trials that paracetamol is efficacious--we can say that it probably did. Why the lack of surety? Because for all we know the headache was on its way out even before the pill started having any effect. Depending on their etiology, some headaches are self-limiting and transitory (and need not be medicated).

I hinted above that supposedly well-educated people such as Catholic priests are hardly very smart people. Well, given that they really honestly believe that invisible and undetectable superheroes and supervillains exist in some realm outside the universe and that pieces of bread they chant over magically turn into the dermal and muscle tissue of a 2,000-year old Middle Eastern male, I think we have enough evidence to say they're not very smart at all.

Now there's this bloke by the name of Fr. Fernando Suarez who claims to have, unwittingly, raised someone from the dead [1].

The Canadian woman was declared dead by doctors at the Ottawa Civic Hospital some eight hours before Father Fernando Suarez arrived. With doctors present and ready to harvest her organs, the Filipino-Canadian priest who was then a seminarian, prayed over her. She opened her eyes and lived. Suarez was stunned. “Let me out of here,” was all he could say. The woman is now well, Suarez says, and has resumed her normal life.

Are you convinced that Suarez and his prayers caused the "resurrection"? If so then the following is yet another option for bringing your loved ones back if and when medical science fails.

Years ago one of the local dailies reported that a woman who'd already been sent to the morgue came back from the dead. While her supposedly lifeless body was being prepared, a mortician or some other person took the opportunity to sate his carnal cravings. But much to his consternation the deceased suddenly had life breathed back into her. The report says the family of the "resurrected" filed no criminal charges since this necrophiliac of sorts had somehow been responsible for bringing their loved one back to life.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because event A preceded event B, does not imply that A caused B.

Can we outright dismiss Suarez and necrocoitus as causing resuscitation of cadavers? No. Can we test whether they are causative? Yes!

Going back to our rain example, what if I go to different parts of the world and whenever I click my heels it begins pouring within a couple of seconds? What if this happens even in deserts during seasons when no rain is expected? Well, then there would be some reason to suspect a casual link. I say some reason to suspect because we'd still need to perform formal experiments to rule out chance and various other confounding factors.

Now apply that to Fr. Suarez and his Lazarus act. And for that matter to necrocoitus. If Suarez in fact possesses powers to bring the dead back to life then all we have to do is to have Suarez pray over several dozen or hundred corpses (properly scrutinized and diagnosed as really lifeless) and start counting how many of them come back to life. Likewise with intercourse with cadavers, if anyone cares to do that test.

It is quite conspicuous that Suarez has not reported any other such miracle. Are we to assume this is the first and only corpse he's prayed over? One single episode is not enough to establish a causal link. You would need to be able to replicate the results many times to attain some confidence. Suarez has jumped the gun and already reached a conclusion.

I wonder if Suarez has ever considered coincidence as an explanation. If not then he shouldn't consider it either vis-a-vis necrocoitus. Perhaps he should include that in his act (as added insurance).

So how did these two dead people come back to life? That would be a most intriguing question, if we actually were certain that the two women were in fact dead to begin with. But the most parsimonious explanation is that they weren't; that their status had been misdiagnosed. They had been pronounced and presumed dead when in fact they weren't. We'd first have to rule this mundane hypothesis before even entertaining fanciful notions of resurrections (or for that matter, aliens out in space zapping the dead with their Miracle Life Ray).

And this is a rule of thumb that's not at all ingrained in the religious or believers in the paranormal: Occam's Razor. Entities should not be multiplied without necessity. In short, keep things simple. And simple here means don't assume or include new phenomena in your explanation/hypothesis, phenomena that are not known to be true/real, phenomena that have not been tested/confirmed to be so. Thus, supernatural and paranormal explanations and those that involve extraterrestrials are not parsimonious because they assume the existence of entities which are known to be true. The misdiagnosis explanation, on the other hand, is simpler than these. We know that misdiagnosis happens all the time. And misdiagnosis of death is something that has occurred in the past. Quite common before our lifetime, it still is with us even in this age of hi tech medical instruments and equipment (just a couple of examples: woman wrongly diagnosed as dead, misdiagnosis of death shocks rural town). There is even what is known as "return of spontaneous circulation" (ROSC) or the Lazarus phenomenon whereby blood circulation of a presumably dead patient spontaneously returns even after resuscitation efforts have ceased. While currently lacking a scientific explanation, we know that this phenomenon exists.

It is rather unfortunate that Suarez ostensibly lacks skepticism and the critical thinking skills necessary to put the various events in his life in perspective. Simple tests would be enough to falsify the belief that he has supernatural powers. But as in the case of faith healer Benny Hinn, despite an investigation that has already falsified his claims of being able to heal, he still continues to delude (and dupe) the multitudes who come to his services, and likewise the diseased, disabled, and desperate still flock to him like innocent little children mesmerized by the Pied Piper's performance. I'm afraid the same will be true of Suarez. The quick, the easy, the free, and the magical are far more enticing than the tested and the true. When it comes to winning the hearts of people, science must hand the game over to quackery. It is only when objective results become the criterion does science win hands down. The bottom line is what really works, not what we believe or want to believe works.


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Notes:

1. I have doubts about Suarez's mental condition (something I hope to expound on in case I am goaded enough to pursue further critiques). I certainly don't put too much stock on anecdotes by him about himself including this one. I don't know if he's subject to delusions of grandeur, I don't know how much he's into self-aggrandizement, I don't know which parts of his stories are true/false, I don't know if there are confabulations, I don't know how much of it is hyperbole.

The real story of God, Abraham and Isaac

And God called out, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. And God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering on the mountain."

So Abraham gathered wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac, and he took the fire and the knife in his hand; and the two of them went to the mountain. Isaac said to Abraham, "My father." And he replied, "What is it, my son?" And he said, "Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" And Abraham said, "God will provide, my son."

When they came to the place that God had told him about, Abraham built the altar and arranged the wood. Then he bound Isaac and placed him on the altar. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. Then the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham! Stop! Stop!" But Abraham's dagger had already dug into his son. And so the Lord swoop down from heaven and knocked Abraham to the ground with the force of a gale.

As Abraham lay in the dust the Lord berated him: "Why?! Why in heaven's name were you trying to kill your son, your only son, whom you love?!" And Abraham replied, "But my Lord, you asked me to! It was your will and I was fulfilling it."

And the Lord roared, "You desert idiot! I wasn't after your loyalty; I was testing whether you had the brains to distinguish between what's crazy and what's not! Woe to you for you have failed miserably. Any father who actually went out to kill his own child just because some higher-up told him to ought to be locked up for life! And anyone who employs the Nuremberg Defense is nothing but a groveling, irresponsible, unthinking, pass-the-buck moron! You're a sick man, Abraham. Very, very sick in the head, indeed.

---

And Abraham is supposed to be the father of the three "great" monotheisms?

Novelist Salman Rushdie contrasts the Abraham story with one he grew up as child, that of the Muslim emperor Barbur (1483 - 1530 CE) and his son Hamuyan. It is said that when Hamuyan fell gravely ill, Barbur prayed and cried to Allah to take him instead of his son. Soon thereafter Barbur fell ill and as his condition worsened his son recovered. Barbur eventually died. His son lived.

A father's sacrifice that his son may live is worlds apart from the Genesis myth of a father who will without question take his son's life. To say that the Abraham story is perverse is an understatement. It boggles the mind to find an ethicist who will give a thumbs up to (attempted) filicide. On the other hand, Barbur's ultimate self-giving is what any parent in his right mind would do. It is something we "know" is good and right.

Anyone who still says the bible is a perfect book of morals is as unthinking and ethically blind as Abraham.

I was wrong ... but still I was right

Just got wind of this via Unscrewing the Inscrutable. Here's the latest failed prophecy - cognitive dissonance case. Back in 2004 a lady by the name of Shelby Corbitt published a book simply entitled 2007. It details a prophecy she allegedly received via a dream back in 1986. According to that revelation the Rapture was to occur in September 2007.

It's 2008. Yep, it was a dud. And Shelby knows all too well. In her website, in huge type, she writes:

I SAID :

THE RAPTURE OF THE CHURCH IS GOING TO HAPPEN, THIS YEAR
2007!!

I WAS WRONG!!!

Just to head off any possible misunderstanding, cognitive dissonance does not mean denial of the situation. One precisely experiences dissonance because one is unable to deny the disconfirming evidence. In this particular case Shelby very much knows and acknowledges that the Rapture did not occur in 2007 as she predicted. The dissonance stems from the fact that she believes she got a prophecy from her deity and from the undeniable fact that it did not come to pass.

Now Shelby can reduce the dissonance by either admitting she did not receive a prophecy--that she was mistaken in interpreting it as such--or she can stick to her belief that she had received a revelation and churn out hypotheses to explain away the failed prophecy.

Her admission of error is laudable. But what in fact is she admitting? That she was wrong in interpreting the dream as a prophecy? The following statements from Shelby tell us that she merely is stating an incontrovertible fact--that the Rapture did not take place as predicted. But she still believes she had been given a prophecy.

I STILL BELIEVE THE PROPHETIC DREAM I HAD WAS FROM GOD. I HAVE TOLD THE DREAM JUST AS GOD GAVE IT TO ME. THE ONLY THING I CAN THINK OF IS THAT I RELEASED THE DREAM AT THE WRONG TIME AND GOT THE BOOK PUBLISHED TOO EARLY. MAYBE THE DREAM HAD SOME KIND OF SYMBOLIC MEANING INSTEAD OF A LITERAL MEANING THAT I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIGURE OUT YET. I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE WRONG AND WHY THE PROPHECY FAILED. I PROMISE ALL OF YOU THAT I DID NOT INTENTIONALLY MEAN TO HURT OR MISLEAD ANYBODY. I PROMISE I DID NOT MAKE UP THE DREAM. I KNOW MANY OF YOU ARE VERY DISAPPOINTED, BUT I ASSURE YOU NO ONE IS AS DISAPPOINTED AS I AM. PLEASE FORGIVE ME IF I HAVE SHAKENED ANYONE'S FAITH WITH THIS PROPHECY. I KNEW I WAS GOING TO GET MUCH OPPOSITION TO THE PROPHECY SO I WAS PREPARED FOR IT AND WAS DETERMINED NO ONE WOULD CHANGE MY MIND. THE CRITICISM REALLY DID NOT BOTHER ME ANY. I STILL BELIEVE IN A RAPTURE OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD BEFORE THE TRIBULATION BEGINS. I STILL BELIEVE IT HAS TO BE SOON BECAUSE OF ALL THE WARS AND FIGHTING AROUND THE WORLD AND THE HATEFULLNESS AGAINST ISRAEL, GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE!! I STILL BELIEVE THE RAPTURE OF THE CHURCH WILL BE IN MY LIFETIME AND IT WILL HAPPEN THE WAY GOD SHOWED ME IN THE DREAM. I STILL BELIEVE GOD WILL SEND A VERBAL VOICE TO WARN THE NATION BEFORE HE COMES BACK. MY TIMING WAS WRONG AND FOR THAT I DO APOLOGIZE. I SHOULD NOT HAVE RELEASED THE PROPHECY WHEN I DID.

(Her use of all caps is quite disturbing. When I see all caps I see crank.)

You can clearly see that even with total failure of the prophecy she does not for a moment doubt that she had a revelation from some supernatural entity. Her core belief is untouched. What she has done is to offer a host of rationalizations (wrong timing, symbolic instead of literal meanings, etc.). The one thing she won't consider is that the dream was simply a dream and nothing more. What she won't entertain is that she's been under the spell of a delusion for the past 21 years.

Back in the 1950s psychologist Leon Festinger infiltrated and studied a group of believers led by a Marian Keech. This group believed that the world was about to end. But for those who were part of their group a spaceship would arrive and fly them off to safety. In anticipation of this event, the die-hard believers among them quit their jobs and sold their property. When the appointed time came and went and no destruction occurred and no aliens arrived, what do you think Mrs. Keech and her group did? Abandon their belief in doomsday and aliens altogether and admitted delusion? As dissonance theory predicts, they kept their core belief intact and rationalized away the failed prophecy. After mulling the situation for a few moments Mrs. Keech came out saying that she had received a new vision: that because of the faith of their small band of believers, the end of world had been averted. Hallelujah, their group had saved the world! Reinvigorated, her followers went out to the streets and proselytized with a renewed zeal. [Mistakes Were Made, p. 12-13]

According to Shelby "I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE WRONG AND WHY THE PROPHECY FAILED." Oh, don't worry Shelby, you'll think of something. Dissonance theory prophesies just that. You've been at it for 21 years and made your prediction public via your book and website. You're just too heavily invested to quit. You're not going to admit delusion anytime soon. Probably not in your lifetime.

Cognitive dissonance and self-justification

Just finished reading Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (Harcourt 2007) written by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. I highly recommend it. You can also listen to an interview on Point of Inquiry where Tavris discusses this book.

When confronted with evidence contrary to one's belief the gut reaction of those who've already invested their hearts and minds in the belief and/or who stand to experience humiliation/embarrassment if they are mistaken, is to justify their belief. They resort to an arsenal of excuses and psychological tricks to defend their belief:

They downplay or dismiss contrary evidence. This is the famous confirmation bias, wherein the person only looks for or at the evidence that supports his/her position, while turning a blind eye to or being hypercritical of those that don't. In one experiment, for instance, a report detailing the pros and cons of capital punishment was given to a group of subjects. It was found that those in favor of capital punishment emphasized the evidence that supported their position. Likewise for those who were not in favor. And both sides downplayed anything in the report that did not support their view. In the end, regardless of the fact that the report contained disconfirming evidence, instead of being overcome with doubt, both camps came out even more convinced of their position! [p.19-20] Confirmation bias is at work whenever our beliefs are challenged. And the more one is entrenched in one's beliefs the more it is employed

The believer may even do mental gymnastics and use the lack of any favorable evidence to convince others/themselves they're correct. During World War 2, when Pres. Roosevelt ordered Japanese-Americans to be detained in camps, General John DeWitt admitted there was no evidence whatsoever that any Japanese-American was sabotaging the war effort against Japan. But DeWitt rationalized, "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place is disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken." [p.20] So guilt is guilt and innocence is guilt. You can imagine the megaton justification necessary to convince themselves that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan and killing and irradiating hundreds of thousands of men, women and children was right and necessary.

And from an entry some time ago, after one of the latest doomsday prophecy failed, the leader of the religious sect House of Yahweh issued this statement:

We previously thought it (the world) would end on the night of September 12th [2006] but it failed to happen. We have given it the next 100 days. Within that period, he says, we're foreseeing powerful nuclear weapons which will strike the world and bring it to an end."

When after a year the vaunted nuclear war was still nowhere in sight, the sect offered the following nonsense: "What actually happened is that a ‘nuclear baby’ was conceived on September 12, 2006." People who have heavily invested themselves in a belief and who have publicly professed their belief are very unlikely to ever drop the belief even when faced with indubitable, incontrovertible disconfirming evidence. Psychologist Leon Festinger's dissonance theory is daily supported by the likes of House of Yahweh.

But why do people dig their heels in? Tavris and Aronson note that most people have a positive self-image of themselves. They consider themselves morally upright people. They see themselves as smart people. They may not think of themselves as geniuses, but they certainly don't consider themselves stupid. Thus, when they do something really bad or stupid, their reaction is not to admit that they have committed a bad or stupid thing, since that contradicts their self-image. Instead, in order to reduce or eliminate the dissonance between how they see themselves and what they have done, they resort to self-justification. They justify their actions such that they are able to convince themselves what they have done isn't really that bad or that stupid. In fact they may go to the extent of convincing themselves they actually did good. In order to get away with this, they may even blame others (the victim of their misdeed for example as in DeWitt's case). We fool ourselves in order that we may live with ourselves. Self-justification is a psychological survival mechanism. But like technology its self-preservation function cuts both ways. It cannot discern when it is warranted and when its use leads to false beliefs and unethical behavior.

In the case of theism, there is simply no evidence that any of the thousand deities of the world exist, there is good scientific evidence that prayers don't work, there is no evidence of souls, there is no evidence for virgin births, no evidence for miracles, no evidence that a realm other than the universe we live in exists. Worse, claims by different religions clash with each other, meaning they cannot all be true simultaneously.

The dogmas of the Catholic Church as enshrined in the Creed are pure fantasy. Ask any theologian how they know any of the declarations therein is true, and he will give you the runaround. He will not be able to give you any evidence whatsoever of its truth. He will not be able to provide means by which you can test its veracity/validity nor provide objective tests/studies that have been conducted. In the end and in so many words, these men ask you to believe because they say so, or because it has been believed in by men before. But then why not believe in Hinduism since those are the very same reasons Hindus believe? Or in Islam? Or in any other theistic religion?

Dissonance theory predicts that those who have invested money, time, effort, etc. in their beliefs will not suddenly deconvert when confronted with rational arguments and evidence. On the contrary. Dissonance theory predicts they will believe even more. Why? Because of their self-image. They unconsciously tell themselves: "I'm not a stupid guy. I can't possibly have wasted 10,20,30,40 years of my life in some delusion. I can't possibly have duped my children by teaching them a bunch of fairy tales. I can't possibly be wrong after having stood in front of hundreds of people and declared my belief. I can't possibly be that gullible to have fallen for flimflam and claptrap. I simply am not that stupid!" And so in order not to fall into a really major depression and face humiliation by admitting that they have been irrational and wrong, they resort to justifications.

Intellectual integrity is a most precious commodity. You will find it in science. Indeed it is sine qua non to progress in science. But you will not find it in theism, for faith is the antithesis of intellectual integrity.

Drinks are on the house!

According to Mark 16:18 the resurrected Jesus said that among other things those who believe in him will be able to drink deadly poison and will live to amaze the unbelievers and have the last laugh. Wow! Now that's a very testable claim if I ever came across one.

Well, for starters here's a list of poisons I'd like the Pope, Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, Ted Haggard, Eli Soriano, Manalo, Cardinal Rosales, ... to guzzle. Any of the three will do. (I'm a reasonable and compassionate sadist. I think it would be overkill to have these toadies of Jeebus bloat themselves with three glassfuls in just one sitting.)

* a glass of concentrated sulfuric acid
* a teaspoon of potassium cyanide in a glass of water
* a teaspoon of VX nerve agent in a glass of whatever liquid it dissolves in or is miscible with.

Yes, they can of course have their favorite biscuit, cookie, cupcake, sandwich, puto, or bibingka to go along with their chosen cooler.

Even assuming it's ethical, only the most deluded of Christians would even try their luck. No preacher, pastor, priest, or pope would dare (unless they're a closet pedophile or homosexual under threat of exposure). And you can bet that anyone who does will end up in the Guinness Book of Records as the most pathetic, idiotic, deluded Xian that ever lived.

Now wouldn't it peachy if all Xians would test their faith? They really really really believe in the bible? They really really really believe Jesus Christ is their lord and savior? Well then, prove it and drink the cocktail. Bottoms up, loonies!

And since all Xians who do take a shot of the above will expire (pretty quickly, and I imagine quite horribly) I guess that means either of the following:

1. No Xian in fact believes or believes enough in Jeebus. (Tsk, tsk, ye people of little faith)
2. Jeebus was a liar. (Lesson: don't ever listen to walking, talking corpses)
3. Mark screwed up the dictation. Jeebus said poissons--French for fish--and not poison. (Hey, the dude knows his fishes. He did clone and multiply them, remember? And surely the risen Christ was a master of speaking in tongues, right?)
4. Mark had been booted out of the proto-Christian sect he was so enamoured of and this was his way of getting back at the org, making sure every Xian schmuck down the line pays for the atrocity against him with their life.
5. The bible isn't inerrant and isn't the word of some invisible sky abba (Naaaah! Impossible! Scratch this option.)

Making sure your god has little chance of being true

Here's Sam Harris' speech last September at the Atheist Alliance International convention in Washington DC.

I found myself wildly agreeing with a good number of things he touched upon, although I think his suggestion to stop calling ourselves atheists is a pipe dream, even as I agree with his reasons. Moreover, I was happy that he clarified and explained his continuing interest in spirituality and meditation. He has made some valid points. Be that as it may I still have my reservations. Meditation I can still buy (cautiously), but until someone can tell me what spiritual/spirituality really is, for me it'll remain in the bunk department.

I'm ecstatic that Harris pointed out a mathematical fact which I had also used in an online debate with a Christian (a Calvinist I believe) last year. It has to do with probabilities for claims. Simply put, the more you specify the particulars of an event, i.e., the more details you enumerate, the less probable that event is.

Let me illustrate. Let's say we're told that a coin has been flipped. The probability that it lands heads is, of course, 50%. But the probability that it lands heads and that the coin flipped is an American coin must of course be less than 50%. This is because in the set of all possible coins there are non Americans ones and so the probability that a coin is American is less than 100%. Multiplying that with 50% yields a value less than 50%.

If we specify more details we will drive the probability further down: The probability that a coin lands heads and is an American coin and is a quarter must be smaller still than the former probability. Hence, the more specifics we enumerate the smaller the probability. (This is one reason why those wishing to go into the psychic trade should provide their audience very general claims and mention as few details as possible.)

So Harris rightly tells us:

[T]he Mormons think Jesus is going to return to earth and administer his Thousand years of Peace, at least part of the time, from the state of Missouri. Why does this make Mormonism less likely to be true than Christianity? Because whatever probability you assign to Jesus’ coming back, you have to assign a lesser probability to his coming back and keeping a summer home in Jackson County, Missouri.

Now compare these two claims:

1. One or more deities exist.

2. There is only one god and he's omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent and omnibenevolent and composed of three (duh!) persons and he murdered the first-borns of Egypt and flooded the entire earth and incarnated and was born of a virgin and performed miracles and resurrected and will come back to earth and judge humans and commanded A and B and C and D and ... and had done Q and R and S and T and ..., et cetera.

Are you grimacing and wondering why Christians seem to enjoy whittling the probability down to an infinitesimal value?

Harris v. Warren

Learned of the following "debate" featured in Newsweek via Skeptico. Sam Harris took on Rick Warren? Perhaps a tad unfair. Warren is too easy a mark (as you will find out below).


* Warren:

I see the fingerprints of God everywhere. I see them in culture. I see them in law. I see them in literature. I see them in nature. I see them in my own life. Trying to understand where God came from is like an ant trying to understand the Internet. Even the most brilliant scientist would agree that we only know a fraction of a percent of the knowledge of the universe.

He claims to see the fingerprints of a deity. Question is, How does he know he's seeing the "fingerprints"? Warren has implicit assumptions of why he considers these fingerprints. But the mere fact he has those presumptions doesn't mean they're true, or that they warrant a conclusion that the deity Warren has in mind in fact exists.

Shouldn't the fact that we know so little about the universe make Warren stop making claims whose truth/facticity he has no evidence for? Isn't it intellectually arrogant for him to declare God is this and that when he doesn't know any of them to be true?


* Harris makes a most important point. If you look at the "good book" what you see is hardly all good. In fact a non trivial portion of it is ethically abhorrent. Thus, Harris points out:

[T]here are sections of the Bible which are the sheerest barbarism, yet profess to prescribe a divinely mandated morality—where do I start? Books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Exodus and First and Second Kings and Second Samuel—half of the kings and prophets of Israel would be taken to The Hague and prosecuted for crimes against humanity if these events took place in our own time.

One of my favorite examples is the murderous rampage of the Xian deity in Egypt. Why for goodness sake would a just and all-loving deity murder even a single Egyptian child? Where is the justice and the love there? Being all-powerful, why didn't he just change the Pharaoh's heart? Why did he, instead, harden the king's heart? Do I hear "Mystery" being offered as the excuse yet again?


* Warren makes no bones about where he stands on evolution. He doesn't believe it. Period. Never mind that the evidence from molecular biology, paleontology, biochemistry, geology, ... all support the theory of evolution, and that there has been no disconfirming evidence to undermine it. Warren doesn't give a hoot about evidence. He doesn't listen to evidence-based arguments. He only believes what he wants to believe in. Between reality and delusion, he's already made up his mind.

More from Warren:

I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man's nose? If you believe in God, you don't have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it's fine with me.

Well, yes. If you believe that there exists an entity that can do real magic (not just tricks) and is above the laws of nature then it follows you can certainly believe that just about anything is possible. The problem is that reality isn't determined by what we believe in. There's belief and then there's what real. Unless you test your belief against reality, you can't know if what you believe in is true or not.

Warren believes in the claims of a book. As long as it's written in this particular book, he will believe it. And it trumps any other claim or argument or even evidence. But why this specific book? Why not the Quran or the Vedas or the Tao Te Ching or some other very ancient and traditionally accepted holy/sacred text? Or for that matter why not some relatively more contemporary book that isn't that particularly well known? What is Warren's basis for believing this particular anthology and reading it literally? Can he please tell us his criteria for choosing this over others.


* Warren claims to have a direct line to his deity: "I talk to God every day. He talks to me." Asked by Harris what he means, Warren clarifies:

One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, "God, I need you to help me with this," as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, "I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case." Now, if that happened once in my life I'd say, "That is a coincidence." If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

As Skeptico rightly notes, this is confirmation bias. Warren offers us anecdotal evidence that confirms his claim. But he doesn't provide us the outcomes for all the events/prayers in his life. Is Warren implying that such "coincidence" has happened thousands of times? If so why the "if." I don't see a declaration that it's happened that many times. Nor do I see any declaration of how many times prayer has bombed out in his life.

The interviewer asks Warren,

There must have been times in your ministry when you've prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.... So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.

Disconfirming evidence is hard to take the first time around. But Xianity has been through it for centuries and has already addressed the cognitive dissonance by a variety of means. In Warren's case he takes the low road and snatches an off the rack ad hoc explanation--one that's truly vacuous and inane yet is somehow mindlessly parroted by not a few Xians:

God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait.

How does Warren know that's in fact the case? He doesn't (and if he does it would be surprising if he didn't resort to circular reasoning). The above "explanation" is just a claim, one that rationalizes negative outcomes of prayers. If after making an entreaty a person gets what he wants, then we conclude that God said yes. If he doesn't then God must've said no. And if he gets it a year after then God had him wait. Can you predict the outcome of a prayer given this "hypothesis"? No, you can't.

To see how completely inane Warren's rationalization is let's see if it cannot be used to support a belief in any other deity/entity:

Person A: Ok, you say that you bumped into the right person at the time you badly needed the kind of services this individual was hawking and to top it off s/he offered it pro bono. But just a month ago your daughter died even after you, your family, and your congregation prayed day and night for over a month. So, how do you explain that?

Person B: Well, you see the Committee of Advanced and INvisible Extraterrestrials (CAINE) sometimes gives us what we ask for and sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it gives it some time in the future.

Well, that explains why we sometimes get what we need, why some entreaties don't get answered, and why we occasionally receive something later rather than sooner. Given that every possible outcome of our supplications to CAINE has been explained, we can now confidently believe that CAINE is real. Now replace CAINE with any other entity you care to imagine and proceed to perform the same muddled reasoning.

What this shows is that we can offer a hypothesis that explains a phenomenon, but the mere fact that we've explained something doesn't mean that the explanation is the correct one. In science being able to produce hypotheses and explanations is half the story. We need to test the hypotheses. And they must be falsifiable, i.e., there must be some result which if it occurs will show that the hypothesis is wrong. Warren's claim about God answering prayer is neither testable nor falsifiable.

But prayer per se is testable. Praying is a human activity, thus it is an empirical phenomenon. And the claimed outcome of entreaties is empirical as well. Thus we can set up experiments to test prayer. We can for instance do a test whereby a control group does not pray and where the experimental group prays for X . If there are significantly more occurrences of X with the experimental group than with the control, then we can say that prayer has efficacy. Of course such experiments have been performed and the results have sent theologians and religionists into their defensive let-the-ad-hocs-gush-out mode. Given that I wonder whether they will also come to rescue of other supernaturalists when controlled experiments show us that prayers to Zeus, Allah, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, Odin,... also have the same dismal results. If Xians believe that they are warranted in resorting to ad hoc explanations (which are neither testable nor falsifiable) then will they also allow nonXian supernaturalists to likewise make their claims undisprovable?

Moreover, when an explanation can explain everything, then it doesn't provide us anything useful. Thus, "Aphrodite did it" can be used to explain anything. Why did the centurion cross the street? Because Aphrodite caused him to. Why didn't he cross the next street? Because Aphrodite caused him not to. Why did the Roman civilization fall? Because Aphrodite made it so. Why are atheists books coming out in droves and hitting the top of the charts? Because Aphrodite made it so. Why does Warren keep committing logical fallacies? Go blame Aphrodite for that as well.


* Warren brings on what I find an irrelevant issue. So what if atheists are angry or sober? The question remains: Is the claimed deity real? Are the arguments for this entity robust enough? Are the arguments against it too weak? Warren can dredge the vices of atheists and launch a smear campaign, and none of that will be evidence for the existence of his claimed entity.

Do emotions have any bearing? Apparently it does in woowoo circles. "Spiritual highs" are sought after. The example that crosses my mind is director of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins. While hiking in the mountains he came across a frozen waterfall. The experience must've awed him. I probably would've been too. But for Collins that was enough for him to accept Jesus into his life and become a true-blue Xian. Well, the non sequitur is simply awe - ful. I see a terrific and moving (uh, frozen?) scene. Ergo, supernatural claims by _____ (fill it with your culture's dominant religion or your minority group's religion or whatever) are true. In electrical work and electronics short circuits not infrequently have disastrous results. Likewise in thinking, it seems.


* Harris raises a couple of very important points:

We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world, and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations, and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.

As we said earlier, confirmation bias is a mortal sin. Objectivity demands that we look at all the evidence, not just those that tickle our fancy and support our claim.

If a severed human limb could grow back "miraculously" Xians would have a slightly stronger case. Slightly, because a miracle can never be proved. And that's because you need positive evidence to do so. The (current) lack of a naturalistic explanation for human limb regeneration is not automatic evidence for a supposed supernatural event (a miracle), and that's of course because for now the things that we know for certain exist are all naturalistic phenomena. Admittedly supernaturalists are in a bind here. There is no evidence for the supernatural, and the lack of natural explanations can't be used to prove that an inexplicable event is supernatural. It's a no-win situation for supers until humans can gain omniscience of the natural world. Only then can an inexplicable event ever be heralded as supernatural--if we know everything natural, and know all the explanations for any and all events in the universe, then once something inexplicable comes up then it follows that that phenomenon must be outside the natural world that we are omniscient of.


* Harris pounds Warren with yet another empirical coup de grace.

[T]here are many testimonials about miracles, every bit as amazing as the miracles of Jesus, in other literature of the world's religions. Even contemporary miracles. There are millions of people who believe that Sathya Sai Baba, the south Indian guru, was born of a virgin, has raised the dead and materializes objects. I mean, you can watch some of his miracles on YouTube. Prepare to be underwhelmed. He's a stage magician. As a Christian, you can say Sathya Sai Baba's miracle stories are not interesting, let's not pay attention to them, but if you set them within the prescientific religious milieu of the first-century Roman Empire, suddenly miracle stories become especially compelling.

Warren believes in his sacred text absolutely. Here Harris tells us there is evidence that so called miracles may not be what they are claimed to be. Thus, the fact that we have evidence that some "miracle workers" are mere scammers means that Warren must first rule out the possibility that the miracle stories in the bible weren't just scams. And there are even more ordinary possibilities that must be ruled out: storyteller's license and the ancient biographical device of encomium. Biblical scholar Robert Funk explains the encomium:

The hellenistic biography or encomium, following the model of Aristoxenus, a student of Aristotle, consisted of five elements: a miraculous or unusual birth; revealing childhood episode (or episodes); a summary of wise teachings; wondrous deeds; a martyrdom or noble death. This form of biography was more suitable for philosophers and religious heroes like Socrates and Jesus. The New Testament gospels encompass precisely these five elements and are thus examples of hellenistic biography. (Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium, Harper San Francisco, 1996, p. 282)

* Warren manages to produce a short circuit and leaps from morality to deity, claiming that without God there can be no morality. What exactly does he mean? That God created morality or injected moral reasoning into our system? Is that a testable/falsifiable claim? Can he produce evidence for it? Or does Warren mean that if there is no God then we don't have any reason to be moral? Would Warren then start raping and pillaging should he stop believing in the existence of a deity or should there be conclusive proof that there is no deity? Here's a thought experiment:

1. Would you judge a student to be praiseworthy if she doesn't cheat on her exams?

2. Would you judge the same student to be less, more, or just as praiseworthy if he doesn't cheat when there is a teacher around but does cheat when no teacher is around? Why?

3. Between a student who doesn't cheat only when there is a teacher around and a student who does not cheat regardless of the presence of a teacher, which one would you consider to be more praiseworthy? Why?

This then is the problem of some supernaturalists. If they consider the student who does not cheat regardless of the presence of a teacher as being more praiseworthy, i.e., better student, then they must also consider the person who is ethical regardless of the existence of a god to be more praiseworthy than someone who does good and refrains from doing bad things because s/he believes that an all-seeing and all-knowing being is around.

Vis-a-vis a person who believes in a cop in the sky, we cannot be certain of the reason why s/he does good and avoids evil. But vis-a -vis an individual who does not have a belief in supernatural entities we can be certain that s/he does not do good and avoids evil because of fear of the supernatural and/or of desire for supernatural rewards.


* Warren claims that

If life is just random chance, then nothing really does matter and there is no morality—it's survival of the fittest.

You have to hand it to him for squeezing three untenable claims in one sentence. Evolution is not just random chance, there are selective pressures. Nothing may matter ultimately (the universe and everything in it "dies") but that doesn't mean nothing matters now or in one's lifetime or in the lifetime of our children or ... Ethics/morality is not predicated on ultimate meaning or "mattering." Even among other animals (yes Virginia, homo sapiens are animals too) we see altruistic behavior, maternal love and care (and of course aggression and violence as well). Morality, part of it at least is genetic, evolutionary.

Warren continues:

For years, atheists have said there is no God, but they want to live like God exists. They want to live like their lives have meaning

Does Warren say there is no Zeus or does he say he say he doesn't believe in Zeus? What about Kali, fairies, Charon and the River Styx, ...? Atheism is a lack of belief in deities, any and all supernatural entities, including all the gods and goddesses and supernatural creatures that Warren likewise has no belief in or claims not to exist.

Here's a question for Warren: Would morality and meaning still exist or be possible if there's a god or gods but no afterlife? I will hazard a guess that for Warren, afterlife and God are pretty much inextricable from one another. Remove the afterlife from the equation and even if there is a god he will despair.

Meaning in the here and now is very much possible. I for one find it meaningful to point out the nuttiness in supernaturalism and irrationality of faith.


* Warren addresses Harris.

We both stand in a relationship of faith. You have faith that there is no God. In 1974, I spent the better part of a year living in Japan, and I studied all the world religions. All of the religions basically point toward truth. Buddha made this famous statement at the end of his life: "I'm still searching for the truth." Muhammad said, "I am a prophet of the truth." The Veda says, "Truth is elusive, it's like a butterfly, you've got to search for it." Then Jesus Christ comes along and says, "I am the truth." All of a sudden, that forces a decision.

As they say if atheism requires faith, then lack of belief in fairies, in the Loch Ness monster, in Roswell aliens, in Bigfoot, and all other things we don't believe in also requires faith. It's ludicrous.

It's strange that having studied all the religions and the various truth claims, Warren went for the most arrogant and the most incredible: He went for the hybristic character who arrogated truth unto himself, and who also claimed that he's a deity. Rather than reservation and skepticism he did the irrational thing and believed it. Incredible. If some person approached Warren and claimed to be God, I doubt he'd believe the person. If that person said, "You have so little faith my child," Warren would still not believe.

Strange too, that as an atheist I'm drawn in the opposite direction, to the Vedic and Buddhist claims about truth. Could these Eastern religions' humility and open ended searching in fact arouse anxiety in fundamentalists?

Warren tells Harris that the difference between the other prophets and gurus and Jesus is,

Jesus says, "I am the only way to God. I am the way to the Father." He is either lying or he's not.

False dichotomy. There are any number of possibilities. One is that the biblical author(s) invented that line (storyteller's license, propaganda, etc). And of course as C.S. Lewis said in his false trichotomy--lord, liar, or lunatic--this Jesus (if he is a historical character) may have the same mental stability as the above hypothetical person who approaches Warren claiming to be the creator of the universe.


* Battle of who's the more intellectually dishonest:

Harris: It is intellectually dishonest, frankly, to say that you are sure that Jesus was born of a virgin.

Warren: I say I accept that by faith. And I think it's intellectually dishonest for you to say you have proof that it didn't happen.

I doubt Harris is saying he has disproof of virgin birth. If he had he would've bulldozed Warren with it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Neither Warren nor anyone has evidence that a virgin birth--any virgin birth by any human--has transpired. Well, that's exactly the reason to disbelieve claims of virgin births. Another reason: this miraculous birth motif is among the features of hellenistic biography. Yet another reason: stories of virgin birth and deity-induced conceptions appear all over the world. The Aztec hero Quetzlcoatl is said to be born of the virgin Chimalman, to whom the god Onteotl had appeared in a dream. The Babylonian king Sargon (c. 2300 B.C.E.) is reputed to have been born of an ordinary woman and a mountain god. Zoroaster, the Persian prophet who lived in the 6th century B.C.E. is said to have been God-begotten and virgin born. Cuchulain, an Irish hero, is known as the son of the god Lugh and the human female Deichtne. Okuninushi of Japanese mythology is one of the numerous sons of the storm god Susanowo and by the mortal woman Kishinada. In Greek mythology we find the supreme god Zeus impregnating such women as Danaë resulting in the birth of Perseus; while the union of the god Apollo and Aria created Miletus.

If Warren believes in the biblical virgin birth story then what does he make of the other god-induced-conception and virgin-birth stories, particularly those that are older and contemporary to the New Testament version? To believe one but discount all others as mere mythology Warren will have to provide evidence that his isn't yet another mythic account. Faith--mere belief--just isn't going to cut it. Simply accepting a specific virgin birth story as true is not just intellectual indolence. It's stupidity.


* When Harris points out that certain claims (perhaps the virgin birth and supposed miracles by Jesus) are low probability events, Warren reacts,

A low probability? When there are 96 percent believers in the world?

Mr Warren, that's low probability, not low priority. This argumentum ad numerum is pretty silly. We don't find out what's true through a majority vote. The earth is not a sphere even if somehow 100% of all humans today were to believe that. (The earth is an oblate spheroid, having a larger diameter at the equator.)


* Warren then turns Pollyanna:

I look at the world and I say, "God likes variety." I say, "God likes beauty." I say, "God likes order," and the more we understand ecology, the more we understand how sensitive that order is.

Harris rudely yanks him back down to earth:

Then God also likes smallpox and tuberculosis.

Reminds me of those alternative meds fans who glibly claim that if it's natural it must be good. In that case they must really try ricin, snake venom, jellyfish stings, hemlock, and yes smallpox viruses and TB bacteria.


* Warren brings up slavery. When Harris tells him that in the bible Paul "supports slavery," Warren makes the following correction:

He allows it. He doesn't support it

Well thank you, Pastor. So you allow slavery, right? You don't? But it's biblical! And you believe the bible to be inerrant.

As Harris points out the bible doesn't condemn slavery at all. It doesn't say it's unethical, inhumane, ungodly, evil. It is in fact unbiblical for Xians to condemn slavery.

Father, forgive them for cherry picking.


* Above I conjectured that it may be that Warren conflates God and afterlife. Looks like he does:

If death is the end, shoot, I'm not going to waste another minute being altruistic.

It seems that even if his deity exists but then there is no afterlife Warren will become a rampaging, rabid, evil maniac.


* Asked how Warren can account for Harris' altruism, Warren replies,

You have common grace. Even in people who don't believe in God, there is a spark God has put in you that says, "There's got to be more to life than just make money and die."

Another ad hoc explanation. Warren, like New Agers and other woowoos are big on explanations but empty on evidence for those explanations. Give us evidence that in fact there is this "common grace," Warren! But since your claim is that there is a deity who planted it, then the more fundamental evidence we need is for the existence of this G - O - D entity. (I believe Pastor Sherlock has "fingerprint" evidence to show us)


* Warren:

Because we were made in God's image, we were made to last forever. That means I'm going to spend more time on that side of eternity than on this side. If I did not believe that there is a Judgment, if I believed Hitler would actually get away with everything he did, that would be a reason for great despair. The fact is, I do believe there will be a Judgment Day. God is not just a God of love. He is a God of justice. So death is a factor. On the other hand, even if there were no such thing as heaven, I would put my trust in Christ because I have found it a meaningful, satisfactory, significant way to live.

Ultimate punishment and reward seem to figure prominently in Warren's worldview. The problem is that he is like the kid who's a model student only when there a teacher's watching. I have qualms about the integrity of such persons.

If there is no heaven Warren would still live a meaningful life. Presuming "no heaven" here means no afterlife, it looks like meaning is still possible for Warren, but not morality (unless Warren fears that God, being omnipotent and mysterious, can suddenly--within eternity (oh the temporal knots!)--change his mind and resurrect Warren and beat the crap out of him).


* When the interviewer calls for a no-holds-barred, as-blunt-as-it-gets response, Warren tells us that,

The truth is, religion is mutually exclusive. The person who says, "Oh, I just believe them all," is an idiot because the religions flat-out contradict each other. You cannot believe in reincarnation and heaven at the same time.

I like Warren better when he throws out political correctness. We finally get some facts and not just claims.

So much for Warren's "all religions point to the truth."


* Harris spends some time explaining how there can be spirituality without spirit (soul). Frankly, this has been Harris' Achilles' heel. He tends to get namby pamby when the subject drifts into spirituality and meditation.


* Warren leaves us with these parting words:

I believe in both faith and reason. The more we learn about God, the more we understand how magnificent this universe is. There is no contradiction to it. When I look at history, I would disagree with Sam: Christianity has done far more good than bad. Altruism comes out of knowing there is more than this life, that there is a sovereign God, that I am not God. We're both betting. He's betting his life that he's right. I'm betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he's right, I've lost nothing. If I'm right, he's lost everything. I'm not willing to make that gamble.

Warren is surely into faith, but I say "delusion" is more accurate. But he's also into reason? Perhaps a proprietary brand. Not the generic reason I know of.

Altruism for Warren comes out of believing (not knowing!) there is more than just biological life, that a deity exists. But altruism for atheists of course doesn't/can't come from these things which they don't believe in. Should Warren again bring up "common grace" can he please move from mere belief/claim to some evidence so we can make some progress?

Unfortunately for Warren his wager has fails to take into account the theologies of other religions. He will lose something should he have believed in the wrong god and should the real deity had proscribed worshiping false gods.