The Questioning Christian

Voices in their heads

From The Atlantic, January/February 2009, at 21:

Lots of people hear voices in their heads—but only some are bothered by them. One group of voice-hearers in a recent study, who considered themselves psychics or mediums, said they found the voices “benevolent” and were more likely to engage with them than resist them. Members of a second group, who had sought psychiatric help, found the voices “malevolent and omnipotent,” and suffered more stress and anxiety. Hearing voices may not be as problematic as what the voices are saying.

Remembering the inauguration, when you weren't even there

From Gail Collins's column in today's NY Times:

Watch the inauguration on television and hope that as time passes, you’ll come to believe that you were actually there. Memory experts say that this sort of thing happens all the time, and the number of Americans who think they were at Woodstock, or watched the Red Sox win the World Series or marched on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. is far, far greater than the number of actual attendees.

“I almost feel like I was there for the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, given how many times I’ve seen it on TV,” said John Mueller of Ohio State University. “And the number of people who saw that plane floating in the Hudson is probably already a lot higher than is possible.”

See also:

• Doonesbury on "Memory Refinement"

JFK the speed-reader: One way that stories can mutate

Those of us of a certain age will remember the widely-believed 'fact' that President Kennedy could read at 1,200 words per minute. Slate reports on how that tall tale came into being.  (Hat tip: Paul Graham.)

Christian exclusivism is fading away; no surprises there

Christian exclusivism was bound to fade away over time, and to the chagrin of evangelicals like Albert Mohler, apparently it's doing just that, according to a new Pew survey. (Hat tip: The Lead and TitusOneNine.)  Exclusivism's fade-out shouldn't surprise anyone.  My own conjecture is that it's happening for two main reasons.

First, society is increasingly recognizing the dangers of accepting factual assertions purely on the say-so of some authority figure. This 'argument from authority,' however, seems to be the only way exclusivists ever present their case.

Exclusivists never point to specific non-Christian people who can be confirmed to be missing from heaven (let alone demonstrating that the reason they're missing is that they didn't accept Jesus as their savior). When asked if, say, Gandhi is in heaven, generally they'll hedge and (properly) say that the question is above their paygrade. 

Neither do exclusivists offer evidence that any particular born-again Christians have successfully made it to heaven, and that their success is attributable to their belief in Jesus.

About the only thing the exclusivists ever do is cite the speculations of people who lived centuries ago. But they never offer a satisfying explanation why those particular ancients were in a better position to know than their non-believing contemporaries — or for that matter, why they were in a better position than we are today.

Second, the exclusivist claim simply doesn't jibe with common experience; that's certainly not dispositive, but it's definitely a fact that ought to be faced. Most of us are acquainted with non-Christians who are leading lives as exemplary and as blessed as anyone in the ranks of the born-again. On the other side of the coin, most of us know committed Christians whose lives are difficult and painful. And of course no one actually knows what happens after this life. We can hope and even conjecture that eternal happiness awaits us when we die. But anyone claiming to know for sure is operating on 'information' that isn't available to the rest of us, and painful experience has taught us that such 'information' isn't to be relied on, at least not when making big bets.

Bottom line:  It's simply not credible for Christian exclusivists to claim that accepting Jesus is even a guaranteed path to eternal happiness, let alone that it's the only path.  Unless exclusivists can come up with plausible support for their claim, they will end up in the same position as the odd millennialist who proclaims that The End Is Near.

Sure, some die-hard exclusivists will continue to insist that things really, really are that way. Most of the world, though, will smile indulgently and politely refrain from saying what they really think, which is that the die-hards are ... different.

A question for Christian exclusivists

Since it’s exam time for the young people in my household, here’s an essay question for those who claim that “all those who are saved [are] redeemed only through Christ”:  And you know this, how?

Warning 1:  Any answer based on an appeal to the authority of others, whether of today or of ancient times, will get a zero grade unless it offers support for the authority’s claim of knowledge, in terms that would be taken seriously by an intellectually-honest skeptic who isn’t already persuaded of the conclusion. 

Warning 2:  An answer that cites an ancient scriptural prediction, which by its terms was supposed to have been fulfilled thousands of years ago, must explain — again, in terms that would be taken seriously by our intellectually-honest skeptic — why reasonable people should not shrug their shoulders and dismiss the prediction as mistaken.

Warning 3:  An answer that posits an explanation for reported phenomena (e.g., post-mortem ‘appearances’) must explore known possible alternatives and explain why the posited explanation is the compelling one.

(Copied from a comment I posted at TitusOneNine.)

Political differences may lie in different fear responses

From the Boston Globe:

... researchers found a strong correlation between subjects' political attitudes and their physiological responses to threat. People who showed more "blink startle" and perspiration after a threatening stimulus tended to cluster on the right politically. They advocated capital punishment, school prayer, and defense spending, and they supported the Iraq war.

In contrast, liberals - who supported "less protectionist" policies such as gun control, open immigration, and increased foreign aid - showed significantly less physical response to the threatening stimuli. ... And the degree to which a person was startled by threatening stimuli indicated how much he or she advocated policies that protect society from external and internal threats such as wars and crime. [¶ ¶]

When researchers compared subjects' physical responses with their political opinions, they found a striking correlation. "It was clear," Hibbing said, "that some individuals have certain central-nervous-system reactions in the part of the brain involved in fear - there's a genetic basis for this - and this brain activity underlies both their startle response and their political views."

Eve LaPorte, Born to Party, Boston Globe, Nov. 2, 2008 (emphasis added; hat tip: Hacker News).

Jesus might not have really said it

From Tobias Haller:

Have you ever observed the extent to which people appear not to notice that so much of what the church is recorded to have gone through in Acts and the Epistles (I'm thinking of the debate on whether Gentiles should be part of the Church, and the discussion on eating meat offered to idols, or other unclean food) would not have been necessary if Jesus had actually said some of the things the Gospels record?

We know the Gospels post-date the Epistles in terms of time of composition, so were these passages in Jesus' teaching retrofitted? Or were they recollected?

Were the apostles not listening attentively when Jesus told them to baptize all nations, and not to worry about whether food was clean or unclean?

(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)

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Related posts:

• Serious Inconsistencies in the New Testament Writings: Six Reasons for Skepticism About the Traditionalist Account
• Hmm — "The Apostles' Teaching" Didn't Seem to Include a Divine Jesus ....
• Another Reason to Explore the Apostles' Early Teaching

Memory distortion reading notes

A recurring theme on this blog is the danger of relying too heavily on the accounts of events in in the New Testament. Even eyewitness testimony is less-than-optimally reliable, and time and retelling can distort any story. I'm copying this quote about memory distortion from a legal-journal article on stock-option backdating so that I'll be able to find it later. The context of the quote is the difficulty of determining in hindsight when a document was actually signed if there is reason for doubt about the stated signature date.

Countless studies reveal that human recollection even by the most forthright individual under the best possible circumstances is far from accurate.⁷⁶ Distortions in memory range from slight modifications of the actual event to the construction of memories of events that never occurred.⁷⁷ Both internal sources and external influences at the time of encoding and retrieval of memories affect the accuracy of recollection.⁷⁸ For instance, providing subsequent suggestions or new information can completely distort someone's original memory.⁷⁹ Considering that ideal circumstances rarely exist and that even a person with the best of intentions will likely resolve uncertainties in his or her favor in at least some cases,⁸⁰ the prospect of discerning an accurate set of "facts" is often dim.

Jeffrey L. Kwall & Stuart Duhl, Backdating, 63 The Business Lawyer 1153, 1166-67 (2008).

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Footnotes in original:

76. Daniel L. Schacter, Kenneth A. Norman & Wilma Koutstaal, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Constructive Memory, 49 Ann. Rev. of Psychol. 298 (1998) (noting that since 1932 psychological studies have indicated that memory is not an exact reproduction of events, rather it is a constructive process that can be distorted).

77. See Guiliana Mazzoni & Manila Vannucci, Hindsight Bias, The Misinformation Effect, and False Autobiographical Memories, 25 Soc. Cognition 203, 208-09 (2007).

78. See Valerie F. Reyna, Robyn Holliday & Tammy Marche, Explaining the Development of False Memories, 22 Developmental Rev. 436, 441-42 (2002).  See also Mazzoni & Vannuci, supra note 77, at 211 (stating that factors such as familiarity, plausibility, and memorability of an event as well as social variables can cause people to have biased recollections and false memories).

79. Mazzoni & Vannucci, supra note 77, at 205.

80. See Raymond S. Nickerson, Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises, 2  Rev. of Gen. Psychol. 175, 178 (1998).

Story-telling defeats truth - Scientific American

From Scientific American Weekly Review:

... we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. 

Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. 

So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.

Michael Shermer, How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results - Why subjective anecdotes often trump objective data, July 2008 (emphasis and extra paragraphing added).

And so it may also have been that reports of an empty tomb, and of post-mortem encounters with its occupant, quickly evolved into what has become one of humanity's most long-lasting belief systems.

Obama and Florida Jews: Still more proof (as if we needed it) that we humans regularly get it wrong

The presidential campaign is giving us fresh evidence that we humans tend to get our facts wrong, for example when under the influence of anxiety. (Regular readers know this human tendency has strongly influenced my view of some of the stories told in Scripture, especially in the New Testament.) Here's an excerpt from a NY Times story this week about Obama and the Florida Jewish community: 

Among many older Jews, and some younger ones, as well, he has become a conduit for Jewish anxiety about Israel, Iran, anti-Semitism and race.

Mr. Obama is Arab, Jack Sterns friends told him in Aventura. (He's not.)

He is a part of Chicago's large Palestinian community, suspects Mindy Chotiner of Delray. (Wrong again.)

Mr. Wright is the godfather of Mr. Obama's children, asserted Violet Darling in Boca Raton. (No, he's not.)

Al Qaeda is backing him, said Helena Lefkowicz of Fort Lauderdale (Incorrect.)

Michelle Obama has proven so hostile and argumentative that the campaign is keeping her silent, said Joyce Rozen of Pompano Beach. (Mrs. Obama campaigns frequently, drawing crowds in her own right.)

Mr. Obama might fill his administration with followers of Louis Farrakhan, worried Sherry Ziegler. (Extremely unlikely, given his denunciation of Mr. Farrakhan.)

Jodi Kantor, As Obama Heads to Florida, Many of Its Jews Have Doubts, NY Times, May 22, 2008