The End of Christianity (60 page)

Read The End of Christianity Online

Authors: John W. Loftus

Tags: #Religion, #Atheism

32
. Note that P(e|b) in this case equals 1 for both
h
(
DESIGN
) and ~
h
(
CHANCE
) because P(~e|b) = 0 for both
h
and ~h (i.e., you can only ever observe instances of survival, as otherwise you will be dead). On why this matters, see following note.

33
. These scenarios differ from the poker analogy, in which less amazing out-comes
can
be observed (unlike with the strange bullet machine or the universe: see previous note), thus the previously stipulated rate of amazing hands being rigged of 1 in 1,000 entails a prior probability of rigged hands equal to 1 in 100,000,000, when “amazing hand” is defined as having a probability of 1 in 100,000 absent design. By analogy, if 1 in 4 life-bearing universes (and no lifeless universes) are designed, and all others are the products of chance, then if fine-tuning had a probability of 1 in 100,000 absent design, then the prior probability of
design
is necessarily equal to 1 in 400,000 universes (of course if the probability of fine-tuning is less, then this prior probability is likewise less, in direct proportion). Since most of those 400,000 universes are lifeless (and thus we would never have observed ourselves being in one),
that
prior probability is not applicable to our calculation—instead, the only relevant prior probability is the original 1 in 4 (because our only applicable reference class is life-bearing universes, since our probability of seeing any of the others is zero).

34
. P(NID|
OBSERVED UNIVERSE
.b) = [P(NID|b) × P(
OBSERVED UNIVERSE
| NID.b)] / [P(NID|b) × P(
OBSERVED UNIVERSE
|NID.b)] + [P(~NID|b) × P(
OBSERVED UNIVERSE
|~NID.b)] = [0.25 × 0.5] / [0.25 × 0.5] + [0.75 × 1.0] = 0.125 / (0.125 + 0.75) = 0.125 / 0.875 = 0.143 (rounded) = 14.3 percent, which is less than 15 percent.

35
. In addition to the summary provided in Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 135–57 (and the next chapter by Victor Stenger, “Life after Death: Examining the Evidence”), see: V. S. Ramachandran,
A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers
(New York: Pi Press, 2004),
Encyclopedia of the Human Brain
(San Diego: Academic, 2002), and
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
(New York: William Morrow, 1998); Stanislas Dehaene,
Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention
(New York: Viking, 2009) and
The Number Sense
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Gary Marcus,
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008); David Linden,
The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God
(London: Belknap, 2008); Cordelia Fine,
A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); Keith Devlin,
The Math Instinct: Why You're a Mathematical Genius (Along with Lobsters, Birds, Cats, and Dogs)
(New York: Thunder's Mouth, 2005); Gerald Edelman,
Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); Steven Johnson,
Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
(New York: Scribner, 2004); Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee,
On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines
(New York: Owl, 2005); Christ of Koch,
The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach
(Denver: Roberts, 2004); Susan Blackmore,
Consciousness: An Introduction
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Joseph Ledoux,
Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are
(New York: Viking, 2002); John Ratey,
A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention and the Four Theaters of the Brain
(New York: Pantheon, 2001); Bernard Baars and James Newman, eds.,
Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003); Gerald Woerlee,
Mortal Minds: A Biology of the Soul and the Dying Experience
(Utrecht: De Tijdstroom, 2003); Frederick Schiffer,
Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology
(New York: Free Press, 1998); Oliver Sacks,
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales
(New York: Summit, 1985). I could go on.

36
. For summary of this and other evidence, see Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 150–60.

37
. In other words, P(
OUR BRAIN-BASED MlND
|~NID.b) = 1 (= 100 percent), whereas P(
OUR BRAIN-BASED MIND
|NID.b) ~ 0.5.

38
. P(NID|
OUR BRAIN-BASED MIND
.b) = [P(NID|b) × P(
OUR BRAIN-BASED MIND
|NID.b)] / [P(NID|b) × P(
OUR BRAIN-BASED MiND
|NID.b)] + [P(~NID|b) × P(
OUR BRAIN-BASED MIND
|~NID.b)] = [0.25 × 0.5] / [0.25 × 0.5] + [0.75 × 1.0] = 0.125 / (0.125 + 0.75) = 0.125 / 0.875 = 0.143 (rounded) = 14.3 percent, which is less than 15 percent. On whether such naturally evolved brains can be expected to be able to reason, see following discussion of the argument from intelligibility (and with it note 47).

39
. Contrary to the argument in J. P. Moreland, “The Argument from Consciousness,” in
The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology
, ed. W. L. Craig and J. P. Moreland (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 282–343.

40
. In which case, P(
QUALlA
|~NID.b) = 1.

41
. See Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 146–48, esp. with Allin Cottrell's “Sniffing the Camembert: On the Conceivability of Zombies,”
Journal of Consciousness Studies
6.1 (1999): 4–12. Moreland illogically considers scientific naturalism the only alternative to NID as if Taoism and other godless supernaturalisms were impossible, but even on scientific naturalism alone we do not know what P(
QUALIA
| ~NID.b) is.

42
. See note 46 (and references in note 35).

43
. In other words, P(
QUALlA
|~NID.b) = 0.5.

44
. In other words, either P(NID &
QUALlA
|b) = 0.25 × 0.5 = 0.125 (to account for the prior probability of other gods existing instead of the one particular kind of God we are presuming) or P(
QUALlA
|NID.b) = 0.5 (since we don't have confirmed knowledge of god's nature or desires in this respect) and 0.25 (our generic prior probability) × 0.5 = 0.125.

45
. P(NID|
QUALIA
.b) = [P(NID|b) × P(
QUALIA
|NID.b)] / [P(NID|b) × P(
QUALIA
|NID.b)] + [P(~NID|b) × P(
QUALIA
|~NID.b)] = at best either {[0.25 × 0.5] / [0.25 × 0.5] + [0.75 × 0.5] = 0.125 / (0.125 + 0.375) = 0.125 / 0.5 = 0.25} or {[0.125 × 1] / [0.125 × 1] + [0.75 × 0.5] = 0.125 / (0.125 + 0.375) = 0.125 / 0.5 = 0.25}, hence the same either way (which is simply the prior probability of NID).

46
. See Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 349–66. Also: Paul Bloom,
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2010); Daniel Levitin,
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
(New York: Dutton, 2006) and Oliver Sacks,
Musicophilia
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007); Rachel Herz,
The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell
(New York: William Morrow, 2007); Robert Provine,
Laughter: A Scientific Investigation
(New York: Viking, 2000); Stephen Palmer,
Vision Science: Photons to Phenomenology
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999); and the relevant sections of the
Skeptical Inquirer
30, no. 6 (November–December 2006).

47
. See Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 177–208, along with Richard Carrier, “Critical Review of Victor Reppert's Defense of the Argument from Reason,”
Secular Web
, 2004, at
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/reppert.html
, as well as “Our Mathematical Universe” (October 5, 2007) at
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/10/our-mathematical-universe.html
, and “Fundamental Flaws in Mark Steiner's Challenge to Naturalism in
The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem
,”
Secular Web
, 2003, at
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/steiner.html
. These together constitute a refutation of Victor Reppert, “The Argument from Reason,” in Craig and Moreland,
The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology
, 344–90 (as well as refuting the related claim that the “applicability” of mathematics in describing the universe entails NID—languages are designed
by us
to be applicable to the universe, not the other way around).

48
. Therefore, in other words, P(
ACTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY
|~NID.b) = 1 but P(
ACTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY
|NID.b) < 0.50.

49
. P(NID|
ACTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY
.b) = [P(NID|b) × P(
ACTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY
|NID.b)] / [P(NID|b) × P(
ACTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY
|NID.b)] + [P(~NID|b) × P(
ACTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY
|~NID.b)] = [0.25 × 0.5] / [0.25 × 0.5] + [0.75 × 1.0] = 0.125 / (0.125 + 0.75) = 0.125 / 0.875 = 0.143 (rounded) = 14.3 percent, which is less than 15 percent.

50
. I needn't prove how making excuses for why the evidence doesn't conform to expectation on NiD makes no mathematical difference to this conclusion: any such tactic halves the prior probability or more (thus losing all the ground the excuse was supposed to gain). At best, all the excuses in the world can only ever get P(e|NID.b) up to 100 percent, which leaves every conclusion at 25 percent—still not enough to make NID probable. Collins demonstrates these points himself: cf. “The Teleological Argument,” 206 (Groodal example) and 209–11 (ad hoc theory enhancement).

CHAPTER 13

1
. Dinesh D'Souza,
What's So Great about Christianity
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2007).

2
. Dinesh D'Souza,
Life After Death: The Evidence
(Washington, DC: Regenery, 2009).

3
. Ibid., 18.

4
. Ibid., 17.

5
. Ibid., 22–23.

6
. See scholarship and examples cited in Paul Tobin, “The Bible and Modern Scholarship,” in
The Christian Delusion
, ed. John Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), 148–80; and Hector Avalos, “Why Biblical Studies Must End,”
chapter 4
in the present book.

7
. D'Souza,
Life After Death
, 24.

8
. Francis Crick,
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul
(New York: Scribner Maxwell Macmillan International, 1994), 258.

9
. D'Souza,
Life After Death
, 24.

10
. Ibid.

11
. Victor J. Stenger,
Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World beyond the Senses
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), 150–59.

12
. D'Souza,
Life After Death
, 25.

13
. Ibid., 27.

14
. Ibid., 37–38.

15
. Ibid., 18,36.

16
. Alan F. Segal,
Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West
(New York: Doubleday, 2004).

17
. D'Souza,
Life After Death
, 42.

18
. Most experts agree the pagan Zoroastrians introduced this idea to the Jews. See Segal,
Life After Death
, 173–203; and discussion and sources in Richard Carrier,
Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn't Need a Miracle to Succeed
(Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2009), 85–86, 90–99.

19
. D'Souza,
Life After Death
, 46.

20
. Ibid., 47–48.

21
. Ibid., 48.

22
. Ibid., 51.

23
. Ibid., 50–51.

24
. Ibid., 51.

25
. Ibid.

26
. See my discussion of ancient Eastern thinking in Victor Stenger,
The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2009), 201–10.

27
. See: J. M. Bering, “The Folk Psychology of Souls,”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
29 (2006): 453–98; Paul Bloom,
Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human
(New York: Basic, 2004), 189–229.

28
. Stenger,
Physics and Psychics;
and Victor Stenger,
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), 276–305.

29
. It's also probably unacceptable in any science: Tom Siegfried, “Odds Are, It's Wrong: Science Fails to Face the Shortcomings of Statistics,”
Science News
177, no. 7 (March 27, 2010): 26–29.

30
. Dean I. Radin,
The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena
(New York: HarperEdge, 1997).

31
. I.J. Good, “Where Has the Billion Trillion Gone?”
Nature
389, no. 6653 (1997): 806–807; Douglas M. Stokes, “The Shrinking Filedrawer: On the Validity of Statistical Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology,”
Skeptical Inquirer
35, no. 3 (2001): 22–25.

32
. Morey Bernstein,
The Search for Bridey Murphy
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956).

33
. Terence Hines,
Pseudoscience and the Paranormal: A Critical Examination of the Evidence
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988); Martin Gardner,
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
(New York: Dover, 1957); James Alcock, “Psychology and Near-Death Experiences,”
Skeptical Inquirer
3, no. 3 (1978): 25–41.

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