Randal Rauser's Blog, page 164

Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense: A review

J. Steve Miller and Cherie K. Miller, Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense: A Practical Text for Critical and Creative Thinking. Wisdom Creek Academic, 2015.

There may be no skill more basic to human flourishing than the ability to reason well. It’s a skill that encompasses knowledge, wisdom, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence. And it seems to be in perilously short supply in our world that is so often dominated by sharp binary oppositions, brash personalities, quick conclusions, and “debate” that rarely moves deeper than bumper sticker sloganeering.

So what does it mean to reason well? In our day many people seek guidance from the so-called “skeptic” movement as found in books like Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (Henry Holt, 1997, 2002). While Shermer does offer a lot of good advice on critically evaluating fringe positions ranging from alien abductions to Holocaust denial, he never turns the skeptical eye onto his own beliefs. Indeed, he adopts the crude binary opposition of the uncritical fundamentalist as he distinguishes “spiritualists, religionists, New Agers, and psychics” from “materialists, atheists, scientists, and skeptics” and opines confidently that only the latter truly care about truth (7). Sadly, like so many so-called “skeptics”, Shermer never pauses to apply his skills of critical thinking to his own crude binary oppositions and the core secular dogmatisms that they protect.

A real guide to good reasoning

Steve Miller and Cherie Miller’s new book Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense transcends such crude binary oppositions as it offers a guide to critical thinking that has a self-awareness and situatedness that is simply absent in the lesser works of so-called skeptics like Shermer. This is a holistic manual that offers a genuine guide for critical thinking in our day. The Millers are Christians and so it shouldn’t surprise you that the book is not hostile to Christianity in a way that Shermer’s book is. Indeed, they devote chapters to illumining the bad reasoning of atheists like Richard Dawkins (chapter 10 on weak and invalid arguments) and Bertrand Russell (chapter 25 on emotional intelligence). Moreover, they occasionally make points that are supportive of a Christian worldview,

But the Millers strive to be fair in their treatment of topics. For example, on page 71 they illustrate how preference can affect reasoning. To make their point they note that William Lane Craig hoped that God does exist while Thomas Nagel hoped that he doesn’t. The lesson is that Christian reasoning (like that of Craig) is as open to influence by desire as that of the atheist. No group is exempt from critical analysis Throughout the book the Millers make an effort to be fair to all sides so as to ensure that no set of beliefs is being protected from critical introspection. For example, they critique Christians who are committed to traditional hymnody (77, 81).

The same objectivity is evident when they touch on politics and social issues. For example, while they provide examples that critique progressive political positions, they also provide examples that impugn conservatives as with these two examples of the fallacy of false dilemma:

Example: “You either support Israelis in Palestine or you’re an anti-Semite.”

Example: “Are you for George Bush or are you for the terrorists?” (161)

The result is that a person could read Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense and not know what the Millers’ own religious or political views are. And this is as it should be, because it indicates that no views have been exempted from critical introspection.

Eight Reasons People Believe Nonsense

Cherie and Steve Miller provide eight answers to explain why people believe “nonsense”: Section 1: They’re attitudes make them vulnerable; Section 2: They’re comfortable with existing beliefs; Section 3: They fail to recognize weak and invalid arguments; Section 4: They jump to conclusions; Section 5: They misunderstand statistics; Section 6: They botch history; Section 7: They misinterpret literature; Section 8: They fail to harness their passions.

These eight sections are divided into 25 chapters and together they cover a dizzying range of topics. Steve Miller (the voice in the book) punctuates the analysis with an endless number of illustrations, many of them richly drawn from biographies of well known people like Warren Buffet, Bertrand Russell, Steve Jobs, and Benjamin Franklin. And Led Zeppelin, Martin Luther, Ozzy Osbourne, and The Beatles. And countless others besides. Miller is extremely well read and is uniquely equipped to garner wisdom from a wide number of disparate sources in business, theology, history, politics, culture, and psychology, all to the end of equipping the reader to reason well.

Perhaps I can provide one example of the incisive analysis in the book. To that end, consider how the Millers follow up a relatively conventional chapter on logical fallacies (chapter 11) with chapter 12 that addresses what Steve Miller calls “The Fallacy Fallacy”. The concern of this chapter is to warn against the temptation of the “internet troll” who has a superficial grasp of fallacies that is only sufficient to label others with a smarmy self-satisfaction. This is how he puts it:

“I often read comments on blog posts or articles or Facebook discussions which accuse the writer of committing a specific logical fallacy and thus declaring the argument thoroughly debunked, typically with an air of arrogant finality. While the debunker may feel quite smug, intelligent participants consider him quite sophomoric. In reality, he’s typically failed to even remotely understand the argument, much less apply the fallacy in a way that’s relevant to the discussion.

“Surely this fallacy deserves a proper name and should be listed with other fallacies. Thus I’ll define ‘The Fallacy Fallacy’ as ‘Improperly connecting a fallacy with an argument, so that the argument is errantly presumed to be debunked.'” (172)

This is a brilliantly perceptive observation, one which is made not from the ivory tower but rather from the muddy trenches of real world exchanges in the blogosphere. And I heartily concur with Miller that the “Fallacy Fallacy” is distressingly common. (In my experience, the argumentum ad populum and ad hominem are the fallacies most frequently invoked under fallacious pretenses.)

So what of it?

Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense is full of trenchant analysis like this. For example, chapter 20 begins by recounting the biography of a ne’er do well named “Bartle Niesient” who seems to be lazy and obtuse. Then we learn that this person is in fact Albert Einstein. It turns out that the lazy and obtuse ne’er do well is, in fact, one of history’s great geniuses. What’s the lesson here? Miller observes that we tend to define “smart” and “genius” across a spectrum of abilities and aptitudes. But Einstein was woefully limited in certain areas, as are most geniuses. The lesson is that we ought to define “smart” and “genius” with respect to particular areas rather than generally. (In other words, if Einstein doesn’t quality as a genius relative to the traditional definition, then so much the worse for the traditional definition.) And this in turn should revolutionize the way we think about education itself. (See the discussion in chapter 20.) This is a fascinating chapter brimming with wisdom and insight.

The same might be said of the book generally. Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense is a tour-de-force comprised of eight sections, twenty-five chapters, eight (count ’em, eight) appendices, and 400+pages, all directed to the end of inculcating in the reader the ability to reason well. In this compulsively readable work Steve Miller and Cherie Miller offer an invaluable tour of critical thinking and life wisdom. Countless fascinating anecdotes keep the reader turning the pages, and every story has a lesson to teach, an insight to bestow. Why Brilliant People Believe Nonsense is an ideal handbook for good reasoning and wise living in the twenty-first century.

If you benefited from this review, please consider upvoting it at Amazon.com.

Thanks to Steve Miller for a review copy of this book.

Why would an atheist respect the Calvinist God?

When I posted my review of Austin Fischer’s Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed a few days ago RonH posted a comment noting that Fischer had debated James White last year on “Unbelievable”. I’m not sure how I missed that one, but I just listened to it. Interestingly, near the end of the program, Justin Brierley observes that many atheists worry about Calvinism. He says:

“Now I speak to quite a few atheists and skeptics on this program as you know, James, uh, because we do a lot of those discussions. And a lot of them say, ‘Well, of all the brands of Christianity that are out there, it’s the Calvinism that worries me the most because of the, the nature of the God…”

White then cuts in:

“Funny, ’cause I’ve had atheists actually say just the opposite, saying the only one they actually respected…”

Brierley then replies:

“It’s interesting ’cause in a sense, you do get that as well.”

Here’s the question: what’s the sense in which an atheist would respect the God of Calvinism over conceptions of the deity as omnibenevolent and a respecter of libertarian free will?

To find an answer, consider, for a moment the poor reception my book Is the Atheist My Neighbor? has received among atheists. As I’ve noted in the past, I sent out a dozen review copies to atheist bloggers who had requested a copy for review, and not one reviewed it. I’ve also been insulted by atheists  through twitter and email (none of whom read the book). So why would atheists be collectively opposed to a book written by a Christian that defends atheism?

While there are probably several independent explanations for this response, in my experience a significant factor is that many atheists do not want improved relations with Christians. They prefer Christians to treat them with prejudicial dismissiveness and even arrogance. They want Christians to keep proof-texting Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1 against them and all other disbelievers.

And why would they prefer this state of heightened opposition and mutual antipathy? Because it makes it easier to dismiss Christianity in toto.

I’ve seen the same phenomenon at play when atheists talk about Islam. I’ve seen many atheists attempt to impugn Islam simpliciter with the sins of ISIS buttressed by the claim that militants are the real Muslims because they’re taking the Qur’an seriously.

I suspect the same reasoning is operative in the case of Calvinism. Thus, many atheists may state their preference for the Calvinist conception of God precisely because this picture is so stark and disturbing to the uninitiated that it serves to drive people away from Christianity.

If this is true, then the fact that an atheist purports to “respect” the God of Calvinism is hardly a feather in the cap of the Calvinist.

79. Bringing the Gospel to the poorest nation on earth

What does it mean to proclaim the Gospel? What’s that supposed to look like? Many evangelical Christians tend to think of evangelistic proclamation as proselytizing, a declaration of a set of truth claims about Jesus. While Gospel proclamation obviously includes words, this is surely only part of the message. As Ronald Sider noted some years ago in his 1993 book One-Sided Christianity, the Gospel is a reality that ought to affect our entire lives. Anything less is hopelessly one-sided.

Roger and Mira Chen and their children in Niger.

Now here’s a question: what does a robust and holistic conception of the Gospel look like in the face of poverty? I mean extreme poverty, the kind where folks face bare subsistence conditions with no social safety net or government infrastructure.

That brings me to Niger, the poorest country on earth. And as a Muslim nation with only 1 percent Christian, the challenges are multiplied. Despite these challenges, Dr. Roger Chen and his family have been serving in Niger as missionaries for the last four years.

Roger has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MCS from Taylor Seminary and he has brought these skills to bear in pursuit of a holistic ministry.

So join our discussion as we wrestle with what it means to bring the Gospel to the poorest nation on earth.

How to tell if somebody is demon possessed: points 3-5

It’s time for me to wrap up this strange little series in which I discuss the criteria Father Thomas outlines for diagnosing an instance of demon possession. In this final article I’m going to summarize and evaluate points 3, 4, and 5.

3. New Language

We begin with the third point which involves the demoniac suddenly speaking in other languages (a phenomenon that is called xenoglossia). Father Thomas observes:

“Another sign would be being able to speak in a language they have no competency in. This would usually occur either in a deliverance prayer or a formal exorcism.”

This certainly would be an extraordinary sign, all the more so if the language were off the beaten path … like Latin or Akkadian. Of course, there is always the danger that unfamiliar babble might be mistaken for a language, so for this sign to have veridical force, it would have to be documented by a speaker of the language or a trained linguist. But if that documentation was made, and it was established that this individual did not already know the language, then this would be potentially powerful evidence of supernatural activity.

4. Inordinate strength

The fourth sign of possession is the demonstration of great strength. As Father Thomas puts it,

“The person possessing inordinate strength—that will often come out in an exorcism in cases where the demons are very violent.”

At first blush, this would seem like a potentially helpful criterion. However, a closer look presents a serious problem since the phenomenon of people exhibiting so-called “hysterical strength” under great duress is well-documented and is attributed to a rush of adrenaline. Robert Dearnley writes:

“Normally the body sets limits on the proportion of muscle fibres that can voluntarily contract at once. Extreme stress can cause the body to raise these limits, allowing greater exertion at the cost of possible injury. This is the basis of the ‘hysterical strength’ effect that notoriously allows mothers to lift cars if their child is trapped underneath, or allows psychotics the strength to overcome several nursing attendants.” (“Live Wire,” in Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze and 114 Other Questions, ed. Mick O’Hare (New Scientist, 2006),  12-13.

Overcome several nursing attendants … or one might add, several priests. Given the fact that hysterical strength is a well documented and relatively well understood natural phenomenon, the manifestation of great strength would not seem to be a useful criterion for identifying instances of demonic possession.

5. Extreme facial and vocal changes

Finally, Father Thomas refers to changes in the appearance of the face and voice:

“The person can have very extreme facial contortions and a change in the voice. Sometimes their whole body language, including their face, can take on the look of a reptile or a snake, and I’ve had that happen a number of times.”

Let’s begin with facial contortions. Here I would simply issue a caution that the face can contort in all sorts of ways without requiring appeal to supernatural agency. Consider this unsettling video of a man who is attempting to gain the world record for bulging his eyes out of their sockets.

I’ll say this: if I saw an alleged demonic with their eyes bulging in this extreme manner, I might be inclined to attribute it to supernatural factors as well. But clearly that wouldn’t be sufficient.

What about changes in voice?

In this humorous clip Jim Gaffigan demonstrates how easy it is to make a very scary sounding demon voice. One can only imagine the range of vocalizations a psychotic person could make whilst under extreme distress. Consequently, I’d be very nervous about anybody rendering a diagnosis of demonic possession based simply on voice change.

Incidentally, this fascinating video demonstrates the technique of polyphonic overtone singing wherein a single individual sings two different harmonious notes simultaneously:

I’m mentioning this case because I have also heard people in the past refer to polyphonic vocalization as evidence of demon possession. But if human beings naturally possess a potential to produce two vocalizations simultaneously then this is not necessarily evidence of demonic possession.

Conclusion

In conclusion, of the five hallmarks of possession that Father Thomas identifies, only two — supernatural knowledge and supernatural language ability — seem potentially useful as a means to identify genuine demonic activity. The other criteria can all be plausibly explained by purely natural causes alone. And thus, while demonic activity could be manifest in the aversion to holy things, the acquisition of great strength, and extreme facial contortions and voice change, these signs are not sufficient to warrant inferring supernatural demonic agency over-against mundane psychological and psychosomatic causes.

That said, this is certainly not all Father Thomas says about possession and exorcism. The interested reader would do well to read (or listen to) the entire interview and draw your own conclusions.

On Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: A Review of God’s Story

Mark Roncace, God’s Story: The Bible Epic from Abraham to Exile (Pittsburgh, PA: Hartline Literary Agency, 2015).

You might think you know the old German fairy tales told by the Brothers Grimm in their 1812 collection Children’s and Household Tales: Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, and so on. But if you read those stories in their original form, you will find that your popular reminiscences have been, more often than not, based on the sanitized retellings of our modern age. As my daughter says, these popular stories have been “Disneyfied”.

Take Cinderella as an example. For generations the 1950 Disney movie has been the standard. How very different is the original telling by the Brothers Grimm. Did you know, for example, that in the original both step-daughters manage to fit the glass slipper onto their foot? However, each only does so only by mutilating her foot: the first amputates her big toe whilst the other crushes her heel. In each case, the prince is only made aware of their deception when he notices blood squirting from the shoe. And that’s only one of the many differences between the “Grimm” original and the sunny and sanitized Disney retelling.

The fact is that the Brothers Grimm fairy tales are very different from their popular retellings. The originals are frequently brutally violent, sardonically ironic, and inexplicably cruel. And it is not long before the contemporary reader is forced to confront the reality that these so-called “children’s” stories were the product of a culture with very different sensibilities from our own.

The church has long done to the stories of the Bible what Disney did to the tales of the Brothers Grimm. They’ve been cleaned up and sanitized for a general audience. This kind of selective reading appears to be informed by prior theological and bibliological assumptions (e.g. divine perfection; biblical inerrancy; plenary inspiration). It is exacerbated by the shifting sensibilities of our modern age. To cap it off, the text is hopelessly hobbled by the insertion of chapters and verses which present endless interruptions into the narratival flow. (Imagine how difficult it would be to read your favorite novel if every sentence or two were numbered.)

The result is that Christians have handed over the biblical narrative with all its violence, shock, and unique power and exchanged it for a collection of insipidly palatable, preachable pericopes.

Enter Mark Roncace, a Professor of Religion at Wingate University and author of Raw Revelation: The Bible They Never Tell You About. (I reviewed Raw Revelation here and previously interviewed Mark on the podcast here.) In his new book God’s Story: The Bible Epic from Abraham to Exile, Roncace wants to acquaint the contemporary reader with the shock and power of the biblical narrative while focusing in particular on the history of Israel beginning with Abraham (Genesis 12) and culminating in the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians (2 Kings 25; 2 Chronicles 36). God’s Story reproduces the biblical narrative that tells the history of Israel shorn of material that interrupts the flow of narrative like law, genealogies, and those insufferable chapter and verse designations. Mark then edits the result with some modest literary embellishment to animate the characters and stitch together the resulting narrative into a seamless whole.

The first reaction I had was compulsive readability. This book is a page turner and even well worn narratives take on a new depth and vibrancy in this form.

The second reaction I had was shock and distaste. Mark’s approach to the narrative frees us from those palatable, preachable pericopes, but that doesn’t make it easy reading. In fact, the content is frequently shocking. I can’t begin to count how many people were stabbed in the belly, beheaded, dismembered, sacrificed, burnt, raped, and massacred.

The violence shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. After all, I’ve frequently written and lectured on the topic (and I’m currently writing a book on it). Despite all this, there was an undeniable force in reading the entire narrative from Genesis to 2 Kings over a couple days (a feat made easy by this edition).

My third reaction was surprise at the sheer power of the narrative. When I completed a university degree in literature twenty years ago, I studied many founding classics of the western canon including Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Beowulf, and so on. Having read God’s Story, I have a new sense that as a work of literary power, the narrative of Israel surpasses them all.

Like all great narratives, that of God’s Story has memorable characters. But when you read the narrative your reaction to those characters might surprise you. I was surprised, for example, over how the commander of David’s army, Joab, emerged as a fascinating persona in the narrative. (His speech rebuking David for showing such grief over Absalom’s death is riveting, for example.)

As for David himself, as a literary character in the narrative, to be honest I found him to be repellent. (A couple years ago a colleague of mine read through 1 and 2 Samuel and then observed to me that David seemed to be a “petty warlord”. That seems an apt summary.) Early in his career David murders two hundred  Philistines so that he can give their foreskins to Saul for the hand of Michal in marriage. (And we worry that David murdered Uriah?!) Fast-forward several decades and David ends his career a wizened old man in bed with a young virgin (Abishag) to keep him warm. (Imagine how awful it would be for a young lady — in all likelihood a teenager — to be forced to cozy up in bed beside a seventy year old man. The very thought makes my skin crawl.)

And what about God? As a character in the narrative, he is above all unpredictable: frequently violent, occasionally kind and gentle, and often terrifying. God shows care and concern for barren Hannah and poor Naboth. But he also emerges without warning and attempts to kill Moses in the desert, an act only prevented by Zipporah’s desperate circumcision of her son. And when he is angered at Israel, he strikes out with a pestilence that kills 70,000 people. God is a character not to be trifled with.

As the story goes, when the English Renaissance humanist Thomas Linacre first read the Gospels in their original Greek he observed, “Either this is not the gospel, or we are not Christians.” Something similar might be said after reading God’s Story. Mark Roncace has given us a raw and powerful retelling of the biblical narrative which places the story of Israel in its rightful place alongside the greatest narratives of the western canon. Having confronted the shock and power of the narrative, the task is now for Christians to interpret and apply it in light of theological belief and liturgical practice.

Thanks to Mark Roncace for a review copy of this book.

If you liked this review, please consider upvoting it at Amazon.com.

How to tell if somebody is demon possessed: 2. hidden knowledge

In this article I’m continuing my modest series reflecting on exorcist and priest Father Gary Thomas’ criteria for distinguishing a genuine instance of demonic possession. In his Catholic Answers interview, Father Thomas describes the second criterion as follows:

A knowledge of hidden things can be a sign. So people who know something they have no reason to know, either about me or a situation or to predict the future.

Stated as such, this is a very broad category and consequently the putative instances of knowledge could range from being of very high to very low veridical value. The demoniac who barks at the priest, “You have had doubts about your calling!” may have said something true. However, it is so vague and general that it is of no veridical value in confirming a genuine demonic manifestation. But now consider a demoniac who taunts the exorcist with this highly specific bit of information: “You stole your brother’s chocolate bar when you were five years old and you never told anybody. But I know! Thief!” If true, that would be a word of knowledge with some veridical value.

A word of caution is in order. Psychics have certain well established techniques for drawing out highly specific information from individuals during so-called “cold readings”, information that may look to the average person as supernaturally derived. (For example, see this discussion from Psychology Today which focuses on psychics working in group settings.)

With that in mind, a psychologically disturbed person who is adept at reading natural cues could potentially elicit some seemingly highly specific information that might seem to be supernaturally derived.

Thus, while the “word of knowledge” could indeed be of value in identifying a true instance of possession, much will depend on the accuracy and specificity of the knowledge claim as well as the exclusion of natural accounts of its origin.

Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed: A Review

Austin Fischer. Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed: Black Holes, Love, and a Journey In and Out of Calvinism (Cascade, 2014).

The story of Young, Restless, and No Longer Reformed is a familiar one for many. In the foreword, Scot McKnight refers to his own journey into and then back out of Calvinism. The basic story (familiar to many) goes like this: a young, enthusiastic Christian is broadsided by the impressive edifice that is the Calvinist theological tradition. When first encountering its seemingly bizarre declarations (I don’t have free will? God elects some for hell?), the trigger response is incredulity and confusion. But the systematic sweep, robust constitution, austere landscape, and God-intoxicated focus has a way of breaking down objections. And once you’re in, you’re all in.

Some people remain in, but others like McKnight and our author, Austin Fischer, find that a closer look reveals hairline cracks in the edifice, cracks that eventually open up into yawning chasms of cognitive dissonance. Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed tells that story.

Although it’s not really a story. Rather, the book is more a collection of episodic theological reflections which are born out of and make passing reference to the author’s theological journey.

We begin in the introduction with a metaphor: the black hole. Think of an object that pulls in the light to itself and gives out nothing good in return. In other words, the fallen, human state. We are black holes. And Calvinism offers one way to shift the force of gravity away from ourselves and back onto God. However, having made that journey, Fischer is now persuaded that it is not a sustainable approach: “I believe we best say yes to God’s glory and sovereignty by saying no to Calvinism.” (2)

It starts out in chapter 1 on a blind date … with Calvinism. Fischer was a restless Christian in high school when he first read John Piper’s Desiring God and was confronted with that God-intoxicated vision that has captured the wonderment of countless readers. In the first chapter Fischer provides a quick overview of his initial attraction to Calvinism, the subsequent wrestling with its implications — “So you’re telling me that God has already determined everyone who will be in heaven and hell?” — and the journey to accepting significant mystery and the authority of scripture. As Fischer worked deeper into his new-found understanding of the faith, he resolved the tension by concluding that “human-centered theology” was “the culprit behind any and all rejections of Calvinism and its self-glorifying God.” (16)

The girl in the red coat from “Schindler’s List”

However, the resolution was only temporary and the cognitive dissonance would soon return perforce. In chapter 3 Fischer describes coming to wrestle with Calvinism and the problem of evil. From Auschwitz to eternal reprobation, Fischer struggled to make sense of how God could decree the moral horrors, sin and rebellion of history. But it’s one thing to consider these problems as abstract conundrums. It’s another thing entirely to consider the girl in the red coat from Schindler’s List, one of six million Jews — and countless children — marching to her death. And for what? God’s perfect glory and all-determining providence? Fischer reflects,

“it seemed Calvinism forced me to call things ‘good’ when they could only be considered the most morally repugnant atrocities imaginable, perpetrated by the Creator himself.” (26)

Fischer was still a Calvinist at this point … but the cognitive dissonance was getting worse. In short, set against the problem of evil generally and the problem of eternal damnation in particular, Calvinism appears to eviscerate any comprehensible notion of the love of God:

“If anyone except God did something this brutal and malicious, could you ever bring yourself to call him loving, just, or good? Of course not. And again, we must have the guts to stare this question in the face instead of singing ‘glory to God’ over the cries of the reprobate.” (33)

Fischer then plays a skeptical card: if God’s love can appear so fundamentally contrary to what we understand love to be, how do we know his “integrity and truthfulness” won’t likewise be fundamentally at odds with our lowly conceptions? And this opens a Pandora’s box of skeptical problems with our conception of God and how we relate to him.

Ignatius of Loyola famously declared his fidelity to the Catholic Church by proclaiming: “We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.” The Calvinist defers in like manner to the glorious divine decree. But not Fischer, who retorts: “I could not relate to a God whose white was my black. I could fear him, but I could never know him….” (35)

So are we left with a God we can fear but can never know? Fortunately, no. In John 14:9 Jesus proclaims, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” And that brings us to chapter 5 and what is quite literally the crux of the issue: the crucified God. Fischer writes:

“The God who would stoop so low as to be crucified and buried is the same God doing the eternal crucifying of countless souls for things he made sure they would do? The one who pierces the night air with the cry of godforsakenness on behalf of sinner ordains the godforsakenness of the reprobate?” (46)

On Fischer’s view, the crucifixion requires a revolution in our thinking. Jesus is not the MMA fighter of Mark Driscoll’s school boy, machismo dreams (43-4); rather, he’s the “mangled Lamb” revealed in Revelation 5 (49).

As a young Calvinist, Fischer had believed that God’s love should be subverted to his glory (55). But slowly Fischer came to believe that God’s love, revealed in the cross, just is his glory. God’s glory was, and is “the sovereign, self-giving, suffering, crucified God of Jesus Christ.” (60) Period.

But then, what of free will? Fischer stresses that free will is not the foundation of his faith: the God revealed in Jesus Christ is (61, 98). A focus on the broader biblical narrative reveals that God’s sovereignty in creation is exercised not in terms of absolute control but rather an empowering of creatures to act for the sake of relationship (66-67). Free will may not be on the surface of the page, but Fischer opines that it “grounds and permeates the biblical narrative.” (67) Fischer argues that God’s relationship to creation be understood kenotically as he grants creation space to realize itself in freedom. In contrast to this, he provocatively charges Calvinism with perpetuating our sinful penchant to extend our own power rather than ceding it to others: “sounds like little black holes of self projecting a supermassive black hole of Self into the heavens.” (71)

So does this resolve all our problems and answer all our questions? Not quite. As Fischer warns in chapter 8, there are still “monsters in the basement”. Fischer uses this chapter to explore a deeper grasp of Arminianism. To begin with, he distinguishes between libertarian and compatibilist theories of free will (Arminians accept the former; Calvinists the latter). Next, he addresses some other important questions like the fact that on the Arminian view, God foreknew the reprobate would freely reject him. But if God foreknew our damnation, how is this an improvement on Calvinism? Fischer replies by appealing to Alvin Plantinga’s free-will defense and the related concept of transworld depravity (80-1).

By the time we get to chapter 9 Fischer begins to wrap things up. Here the lesson is epistemic humility as we all — Calvinists, Arminians, and everybody else — learn to “walk with a limp”, accepting that our belief systems all have strengths and weaknesses: “Faith, doubt, humility, and confidence–this is the stuff and substance of theology at its best. Swagger, smugness, and certainty–this is the stuff and substance of ideology at its worst.” (90)

In Chapter 10 Fischer goes back on the offensive by claiming that “one’s theology is not tenable unless it naturally produces disciples of the kingdom.” (96) However, Fischer charges that Calvinist theology (with its repudiation of free will) does not naturally produce disciples of the kingdom. The reason? Our choices are only meaningful if we could have done otherwise, a point that Fischer even extends to the atonement: “We find meaning in Jesus dying for us because we believe he did not have to.” (97) (While I disagree with Fischer at several points, this disagreement is worth flagging. Even if the cross is a necessary reflection of God’s goodness and love,  I do not see how that undermines the existential or semantic meaning of the event.)

Fischer concludes in chapter 11 by turning to address that most important of all Calvinist texts, Romans 9: “woe to us if we attempt to whitewash and de-Judaize Romans 9-11 so it’s easier for us to handle and ‘apply to our lives’.” (101) In Fischer’s view, to read Romans 9 as a proof-text for Calvinism is to fail to grapple with the sweep of Romans 9-11 which is really conveying a message about God’s plan to pursue a “partial, temporary hardening” (103, emphasis in original), not a “foreordained, unconditional decree of damnation” (103), and to do so for the sake of reaching all people so that God “may show mercy to all” (Romans 11:32).

Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed will appeal to many people. Fischer is an enjoyable writer with a knack for metaphor and honest candor. And I suspect many will find in his honest reflections permission to admit their own doubts and questions with Calvinism.

At the same time, I suspect this book will frustrate many more people because of what they take to be unfair and ultimately unsustainable critiques of Calvinist theology. And I have some sympathy with those frustrated readers. While Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed is barely more than one hundred pages, its brevity and loosely narratival structure cannot excuse it from presenting arguments that do not hold up under scrutiny.

To note just one problem, I am unpersuaded that Fischer’s appeals to libertarian freedom and transworld depravity are adequate to exonerate God from ordaining “the godforsaknness of the reprobate”. I’ll put it this way: In world 1, my daughter freely chooses Christ and is thereby elect. In world 2, my daughter freely rejects Christ and is thereby reprobate. How can I possibly understand the love of God if he elects to actualize world 2 rather than world 1? This question may be answerable, but it shows that Arminians don’t have things nearly as easy as the reader if this book might think.

In one sense, Fischer has prepared himself for such objections given his own forceful rejection of “certainty” in chapter 9. As he puts it: “one of the noblest, purest, and most Christian of theological confessions is the acknowledgement of our humanity instead of the concealment of it behind the flimsy charades of swagger and certainty.” (90) I share Fischer’s concern about “swagger” as I regularly find myself exhausted by the braggadocio of those who inhabit their system of belief bereft of humility and an awareness of their own situatedness and fallibility.

All that said, broadside swipes at certainty are unhelpful. To begin with, “certainty” can be psychological (i.e. certitude; lack of doubt) or it can be epistemic (i.e. incorrigibility; infallibility of belief). To reject all instances of psychological certitude is a misbegotten exercise at best. I am certain (i.e. I have no doubt) that there are minds other than my own. Should I doubt this? On a more somber note, I am also certain that rape and child torture are always wrong. Should I doubt this? If so, what exercises am I obliged to do to attempt to reduce my degree of conviction in the truth of these propositions?

As for epistemic certainty, beyond basic analytic and synthetic a priori truths there may not be much we are certain of. But surely we can have incorrigible beliefs about some truths, even if the range of those beliefs is too narrow to satisfy Cartesian angst.

So why am I quibbling over these issues? Distinctions like these are important to make because they qualify and nuance sweeping appeals to epistemic humility which can too easily serve as an escape route for a half-baked theology.

While there are weak points in Young, Restless, No Longer Reformed, in my view they are far outweighed by the book’s strengths. This is an enjoyable and breezy read with just the right amount of depth to stimulate further reflection. It provides a solid introduction to those who are beginning to grapple with the issues, a cathartic balm for those who have long chafed against the hard edges of the Calvinist system, and a provocative interlocutor for the Calvinist looking for a new sparring partner. Austin Fischer is a very promising young author and I will be looking forward to his next book.

Thanks to Cascade Books for providing a review copy of this book.

If you liked this review, please consider upvoting it at Amazon.com.

How to tell if somebody is demon possessed: 1. Do they have an aversion to holy things?

As I pointed out in “Demon-possessed or mentally ill?” Father Thomas lists several criteria which Catholic exorcists look for as a basis to warrant a diagnosis of demonic possession (or attachment). The operative principle here is Ockham’s Razor: the simplest explanation is to be preferred. In other words, if behavior can plausibly be explained by way of mental and/or physical illness alone, then one is not warranted in attributing that behavior to demonic activity.

And so the question is whether the criteria that exorcists like Father Thomas use as a guide to screen out merely mental and/or physical disorders are adequate to the task. So let’s take a look. In this article I’m going to focus on the first criterion that Father Thomas describes: an aversion to holy things. This is how he put it in the interview:

“One would be the rolling of the eyes, and that’s usually because of an aversion to the sacred. So if someone was to walk into a church or even the parish center—this has happened a number of times—walk into the parish center and they cannot stand to look at the crucifix. Or if they walk into a church and cannot stay or can only stay with great difficulty because of the presence of the Eucharist or a crucifix or another sacramental, or a statue of the Blessed Mother or something.”

Certainly, this kind of behavior is something one might expect in the instance of actual demon possession. But might one also reasonably expect this aversion on purely natural (e.g. psychosomatic) grounds? It would seem so.

A few years ago, my friend was out for lunch with a Muslim friend. After the Muslim had eaten his sandwich, my friend jokingly said, “You know, there’s pork in that meat.” To my friend’s horror, immediately the man vomited the food onto the table. So deeply ingrained in him was the Muslim prohibition of eating pork, that the response of his body was instantaneous and visceral: this was a poison that must be expunged.

If a person is familiar with Catholic culture and has consequently deeply imbibed a recognition of the holiness of particular practices, spaces, and implements, then when that individual believes him/herself to be possessed, he/she might react to those holy things with the same visceral violence that gripped that Muslim man due purely to psychological and/or psychosomatic factors.

For a particularly dramatic instance of the power of mind, consider the psychiatric category referred to as “voodoo death”, a diagnosis which is described as “the sudden occurrence of death associated with taboo-breaking or curse fear. It is based on the belief in witchcraft–the putative power to bring about misfortune, disability and even death through ‘spiritual’ mechanisms.” (Handbook of Cultural Psychiatry, 228.)

So-called voodoo death is not limited to voodoo. (Indeed, the term “psychogenic death” is far more accurate, if less dramatic.) The phenomenon can be observed across cultures as individuals succumb to a debilitating fear due to a perceived external threat, a fear that can become so all-encompassing that it results in death. (I am reminded of the classic Stephen King novel Thinner (originally published under the pseudonym “Richard Bachman”) in which an obese lawyer begins to starve — he’s unable to retain weight no matter how much he eats — as the apparent victim of a “gypsy curse”.)

Just as psychological and psychosomatic factors can bring about dire consequences resulting in death, so they can bring about recovery whether the healer in question is a traditional shaman, a new age guru, or a pastor or priest.

To conclude, it seems to me that the first criterion — aversion to holy things — is itself far too weak to be useful as a criterion for discerning true demonic possession from merely mental and/or physical disorders.

This is not to say that this first criterion is without merit. It could be substantially strengthened with the application of a scientific control that removed the possibility of psychological and/or psychosomatic factors. But how to do this? Admittedly, this is a substantial challenge given that Father Thomas notes exorcism should be carried out in a church with the priest and the presence of various holy things. Consequently, the subject will already be well aware that they are coming into direct confrontation with the putative holy things, a belief that could be sufficient to produce the aversive “possession” behaviors.

Here is one simple way that a priest might test for the presence of psychological and/or psychosomatic responses to holy things. The priest could sprinkle regular unblessed tap water on the person whilst conveying the impression that it is holy water. If the subject acts with the same aversion to regular water that he/she displays toward genuine holy water, this would provide some evidence that the ailment was mental and/or physical rather than demonic. However, if the individual acted with indifference toward the regular water but subsequently recoiled at the application of genuine holy water, this would provide some evidence of a genuine possession.

Demon-possessed or mentally ill?

Last week Catholic apologist Matt Fradd kindly sent me the following Catholic Answers interview, “What You Need to Know About Exorcism: The Devil, Evil Spirits, and Spiritual Warfare” in which Patrick Coffin interviews well known exorcist Father Gary Thomas. You can read the transcript of the interview here.

Demonic Possession and Veridical Evidence for Supernaturalism and Christianity

What most intrigued me about this interview (and what most intrigues me about demons and possession generally) is the prospect of identifying phenomena which would provide veridical evidence for supernaturalism (e.g. evidence for the existence of non-physical agency) and Christianity (i.e. evidence that malevolent non-physical agencies are subject to the authority of Jesus Christ as mediated through the priestly class of a Christian church).

As a result, I was particularly intrigued when Coffin turned in the interview to the putative phenomena that one would look for to justify the conclusion of demon possession. As Coffin put it, the question concerns “the classic signs of possession and how they’re distinguishable from mental illness”.

What about Mental Illness?

Needless to say, distinguishing demonic possession from mental illness is a hugely important question for reasons completely separate from the evidence for supernaturalism or Christianity. One cannot begin to fathom how much misery has been perpetuated in the world over the centuries by misbegotten diagnoses of demonic activity. For example, how many cases of epilepsy, dissociative personality disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome, or schizophrenia have been incorrectly attributed to malevolent spirit agencies?

I suspect that virtually every would-be exorcist today is aware of the need to begin with the simpler, brain-based diagnosis before turning to exorcism for a solution. Nonetheless, how many are really able to discern with confidence what is, and is not, a “natural” disorder? To the untrained eye, the Tourette’s patient who helplessly begins jerking and spouting obscenities and blasphemies in awkward social situations could certainly look possessed.

Mental health victims of exorcism

A decade ago a Romanian nun, Maricica Cornici, began hearing the voice of the devil telling her she was sinful. Initially she was treated for schizophrenia, but eventually a monk and some nuns decided the better course of action was an exorcism. Cornici died in the process. (See “Nun Dies After Convent Exorcism.”)

Sadly, there have been many mental health victims of exorcism over the years. In the 1970s German Catholic Anneliese Michel died as a result of exorcism. Her story was the basis for the Hollywood film The Exorcism of Emily Rose as well as the vastly superior and truly biographical German film Requiem (which I review here).

The protocol for a possession diagnosis

In 1999 the Catholic Church updated their 1614 directives for exorcism, a 90 page manual titled De Exorcismis. A 1999 article published in The Guardian describes how the update attempts to incorporate the advances in mental health care over the last four hundred years by ensuring that clinical diagnoses are exhaustively explored before the demonic is invoked:

Unlike its predecessor, De Exorcismis warns against confusing possession with mental illness. Among the signs of demonic possession are “speaking in unknown languages, discerning distant or hidden things, and displaying a physical strength that is at odds with the possessed person’s age or state of health”.

But the guide warns that these signs can all denote sickness rather than evil. It adds that exorcism should only be tried “after diligent inquiry and after having consulted experts in spiritual matters and, if felt appropriate, experts in medical and psychiatric science who have a sense of spiritual reality”. (source)

Are the criteria the Vatican offers in De Exorcismis adequate to ensure there are no false positives? And by implication, are they adequate to secure evidence supportive of supernaturalism and Christianity? I will be turning to those questions in a follow up article as I return to the Coffin-Thomas interview.

78. Hugh Ross on God, Science, and Reasons to Believe

Dr. Hugh Ross, President and Founder of “Reasons to Believe”

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke famously proposed three so-called laws that memorably capture the wonder of scientific advance. According to the third law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” If that’s true, science has made the world a truly magical place.

And it is true. Just think how an iPhone would appear to a medieval peasant. Music? Photographs? Videos? And the voice of loved ones from far away speaking? Magic indeed. Now try to imagine how the technology a thousand years hence will look to us today.

But if science has brought magic into the world, many people believe it has done so at the significant cost of removing an even deeper magic, that of souls, spirit beings, and above all, God. In short, the world has been disenchanted. The sea of faith and wonder once lapped at our shores. But now, as Matthew Arnold famously observed, we only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.

Well, so goes the popular narrative anyway. But what if it isn’t so? What if the advance of science, far from eclipsing God and disenchanting the world, is laying bear the existence and intentions of the creator himself?

That’s the perspective of Dr. Hugh Ross, founder of one of the most respected apologetics organizations in the world today, Reasons to Believe. Dr. Ross is a popular speaker and the author of many books including Why the Universe is the Way It Is (Baker, 2010), Navigating Genesis: A Scientist’s Journey Through Genesis 1-11 (RTB Press, 2014) and More than a Theory: Revealing a Testable Model for Creation (Baker, 2009).

In this episode of The Tentative Apologist Podcast we sit down with Dr. Ross for a wide ranging conversation on God, science, and reasons to believe.