Popular Art and Religion: Carrie Newcomer

I've mostly been writing about reasons I can't connect to traditional religious beliefs as I knew them growing up. But part of the point of this blog is that religion, in some forms, is very attractive to me. One manifestation of this is that religion informs a lot of my favorite popular art - especially popular song. Normally I gravitate to the darker side of that - Bob Dylan croaking out songs about the coming apocalypse (such as "Ain't Talkin'" on his recent Modern Times album) or Leonard Cohen and his songs about mystics and alienation from God (as in his song "Lover, Lover, Lover" my favorite version of which is on the Field Commander Cohen - Live 1979 album). But an album that I come to over and over again to lift my spirits, after dealing with issues surrounding neglected and abused children (which is what I do for a living), is an almost pollyannish piece of work by singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer called The Gathering of Spirits.

"Pollyannish" has a negative connotation these days, but I don't mean it negatively with Carrie Newcomer. She was raised in a Quaker tradition and she brings their liberal sense of spirituality to her songs. This particular album I find magical for some reason and it just makes me feel happy to hear it. Part of it may be that following the 9/11 terrorist attack April and I went to see a concert of hers. It was just a few days after and we weren't sure if she would even be able to make it, but she did. And she had written a lovely song about it called "I Heard an Owl" - it moved the audience quite a bit and it was a special night. I don't know if the song is really great or whether it was just the moment, but it is included on this 2002 album and is a favorite of mine.

A few songs on it seem to be about the Quakers or "Society of Friends", particularly the title song "The Gathering of Spirits." (Alison Krauss sings backup on the song too.) It is a gentle celebration of life which she calls "a gathering of spirits ... [and] a festival of friends." It is a song that just lightens your spirit - or at least it lightens mine. In one of my favorite verses in the song she sings (in a rich alto folk voice):

East of Eden
But there's heaven in our midst
And we're really never all that far
From those we love and miss
Wade out in the water
There's a glory all around
And the wisest say there's a 1000 ways
To kneel and kiss the ground

Lots of religious imagery but nothing I (as a skeptic or secularist) can't connect to in that. What I get out of it is the type of faith I can relate to that I think Paul Tillich writes about in his Dynamics of Faith. Namely about the experience of an "ultimate concern." This has nothing to do with whether a particular first century Jewish fellow performed miracles or not. It is about being fully human - the important things in life (the ones we love and miss) the glory all around us in this life and the reverence we should have for it all (kneeling and kissing the ground). It is not the words that make this and other songs work on the album. But she sings so effortlessly and so humanly that you feel she is addressing her "ultimate concern" even before you know exactly what it is she is singing about. None of it needs to be taken literally to touch us.

There are albums and artists that I like more in the comfort of my house, or while driving down the highway on my commute. But I have to admit that when I am stressed out about a trial coming up and just want to feel better - this is the album I turn to more often than just about anything else. It also doesn't hurt that it includes a great song involving Arthurian mythology (which I am very into) called "The Fisher King." If you are ever looking for a "feel good" album which feel spiritual but not dumbed down, give this one a try.

Skeptical Religion Part Three: The Problem of Exclusivism

In these posts about my personal journey in skeptical religion, I have written previously about why I bother pursuing it, and my attitude towards miracles. My problems with miracles leads me to my next problem with traditional religion as I encountered it growing up: exclusivism. I encountered it as part of the traditional (relatively conservative) Christianity of my smallish Illinois community, but exclusivism certainly isn't exclusive to Christianity. It is, however, the form of exclusivist religion that folk attempted to impose on me and so it is the one I will emphasize.

Growing up I remember being told that you could only "go to heaven" if you were "saved" by Jesus. If you didn't believe in Jesus (even if you were from a culture in which children were raised in a completely different faith and may not have even been introduced to Christianity) you were doomed to eternal suffering. Early on I decided that this simply cannot be. It just seemed so obviously wrong, so inherently unfair, that I could not believe that any reasonable God (let alone a perfectly loving one) could possibly make belief in a particular tradition (be it Christian, Jewish, Islamic, etc.) a condition of eternal reward or punishment. Freedom of belief and expression was heavily imprinted on me for some reason and the idea that a loving and fair God would punish folk (for eternity no less!) based on expressing that freedom was (and is) just crazy to me.

I figured this was the position of traditional Christians because they grew up with that as a belief and everyone around them was a Christian anyway (it is easy not to worry too much about the eternal suffering of a bunch of folk on the other side of the world). I never imagined in my college days that there could be academics who could argue for exclusivism in a serious way. Imagine my surprise, years later, when I read an essay in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity by William Lane Craig called " 'No Other Name' A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ." I won't discuss the essay in any detail, but some of the statements in the Conclusion section are amazing. One particular favorite passage:

Since Jesus and his work are historical in character, many persons as a result of historical and geographical accident will not be sufficiently well-informed concerning him and thus unable to respond to him in faith. Such persons who are not sufficiently well-informed about Christ's person and work will be judged on the basis of their response to general revelation and the light that they do have. Perhaps some will be saved through such a response; but on the basis of Scripture we must say that such "anonymous Christians" are relatively rare. Those who are judged and condemned on the basis of their failure to respond to the light of general revelation cannot legitimately complain of the unfairness for their not receiving the light of special revelation, since such persons would not have responded to special revelation had they received it. For God in His providence has so arranged the world that anyone who would receive Christ has the opportunity to do so.

What an amazing statement. I bring this up not to say that all Christians think like Craig, but only to say that some (obviously) do and I simply cannot go there. My discussion of the resurrection and miracles was not to argue that they cannot happen, but simply to say that I think it is reasonable not to accept that miracles happen and that I have not yet been presented with any argument that convinces me it is unreasonable to believe that miracles don't happen. A tradition that would condemn me for holding a perfectly reasonable position (whether it is right or wrong) seems, to me, absurd.

Craig, the Resurrection Debate, and Miracles

Okay, I've been playing with this post way too long now - time to just hit the "publish" button! I previously mentioned a debate between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig about whether the miracle of the resurrection happened. Ehrman basically said that the resurrection is unlikely to have happened based on our knowledge of how the world works today. He says “Historians cannot establish miracle as the most probable occurrence because miracles, by their very nature are the least probable occurrence.” Craig says that Ehrman is just presenting a “warmed over” version of Hume’s well-known argument against miracles in which he memorably said, “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless… its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.”

1. Craig’s presentation of Baye’s Rule

Craig argues that Ehrman and Hume are confusing two different probabilities. The heart of Craig’s argument is a form of Baye’s Rule that he presents for the probability that the resurrection happened. Craig defines the following variables:

Pr(X) = probability of X

Pr(R/B) = the probability of the resurrection given our general knowledge of the world (our Background knowledge)

Pr(E/B&R) = the probability of the specific evidence we see for the resurrection existing given our general knowledge of the world and assuming the resurrection happened.

Pr(~R/B) = the probability that that resurrection did not happen, given our general knowledge of the world.

Pr(E/B&~R) = the probability of the specific evidence we see for the resurrection existing given our general knowledge of the world and assuming the resurrection did not happen.

Pr(R/B&E) = the probability of the resurrection having happened given our general knowledge of the world and the specific evidence for it.

He then applies Baye’s Rule and gives us an expression for Pr(R/B&E):

Pr(R/B&E) = Pr(R/B) Pr(E/B&R) / (Pr(R/B) Pr(E/B&R) + Pr(~R/B) Pr(E/B&~R)).

2. Looking at this equation in another way.

I will assume this relation is correct and that no term in it is zero. Then it can also be expressed (after dividing both numerator and denominator on the right side of the equation by the product Pr(R/B) Pr(E/B&R)) as:

Pr(R/B&E) = 1/ {1 + ( [Pr(~R/B) Pr(E/B&~R)] / [Pr(R/B) Pr(E/B&R)])}

So it really all depends on that ratio: [Pr(~R/B) Pr(E/B&~R)] / [Pr(R/B) Pr(E/B&R)]. If it is nearly zero, the probably of the resurrection becomes about 1 (very likely). If it is very large, the probability of the resurrection becomes nearly zero.

3. Reasonable Assumptions

Now comes the real problem. I am very suspect about assigning numbers to something like “the probability of the resurrection having happened given our general knowledge of the world.” How in the world would one calculate that? But since that is the game we are playing, can we say anything reasonable about it? It seems to me that one would have to grant that given just In fact Craig seems to acknowledge this in the debate. His argument is that Ehrman confuses Pr(R/B), which he agrees may be a small number, with Pr(R/B&E), which Craig says is not necessarily small just because Pr(R/B) is small.) Pr(R/B) is the probability of a miraculous event happening given our general knowledge of the world. our general knowledge of the world the resurrection (or any miracle) seems highly unlikely.

Almost by definition a miracle would have to have a low probability given our general knowledge of the world because otherwise it wouldn’t be miraculous. For example, think about the probability that any major league hitter will end his season this year with a normal number of at bats and a greater than .500 average. It is extremely unlikely – no one has ever done it. But if someone did it, would it be considered miraculous? No, clearly not. Very improbable is still not improbable enough to designate something a miracle. That would mean, at the least, that Pr(R/B) would be very small and the Pr(~R/B) would be nearly 1. So we are really dealing with a small number (lets call Pr(~R/B) = ε, where ε is a very small number). We may not know what it is, but I think it reasonable to assume it is very small.

4. The Crucial Ratio (A Guess?)

So the crucial ratio is actually = [Pr(E/B&~R)] / [ε (Pr(E/B&R)] or

[Pr(E/B&~R) / Pr(E/B&R)] times 1/ ε.

Now since ε is a very small number, 1/ ε is a very large number. So, for this product to be small (making the probability of the resurrection close to 1) the ratio Pr(E/B&~R)/ Pr(E/B&R) (let’s call this number Cr for “Crucial ratio”) must be very small.

Remembering what these represent, what this is essentially saying is that the probability of the specific evidence for the resurrection existing as we see it now if the resurrection actually didn’t happen must be small compared to the probability of the evidence as we see if the resurrection did. How small? Small enough for Cr to overwhelm the largeness of 1/ ε. How large is 1/ ε? Here we get into the problem of assigning numbers to probabilities in ways. Remember that 1/ ε is essentially the ratio of the probability that that resurrection did not happen, given our general knowledge of the world and the probability of the resurrection given our general knowledge of the world. Just given our general knowledge of the world, one would have to say that is very small, but how small? We have billions of examples of cases where people have died and not been resurrected. We have no cases (excluding for the moment the one we are considering) where it has been definitively observed to happen. In addition it violates many of our well-understood principles of biology. I would think then that 1/ ε would have to be very large – but is it large like 10000000 or large like 100000000000000000000000000? Who knows?

5. Estimating Cr compared to 1/ ε

But what about Cr? Again, I have no idea how one would estimate such a thing. But the important question is, Is it small compared to 1/ ε? Cr represents the ratio of how likely it is for the specific evidence we see for the resurrection (or in a more general case, any miracle) to exist if the resurrection /miracle didn't occur and the probability of the specific evidence existing if it did.

I think Ehrman and Hume’s point would be that whatever this ratio is, if the evidence it is relating to is a few eyewitness accounts, it is highly unlikely to be small enough to make Cr times 1/ ε small. Why not? If E amounts to eyewitness accounts then we know that the eyewitnesses could be (1) lying, (2) mistaken, (3) fooled, (4) misinterpreting what they see, etc. And what is on the other side? 1/ ε is based on our background information of the way the world works, essentially. And what is that based on other than reason applied to the collective observations of humanity over the centuries? That simply has to overwhelm an eyewitness account, no matter how reliable.

Say a fellow swears that he saw a guru levitate, and you feel he is an honest guy and you know no reason that he would lie. You may estimate that the probability of him saying it if it didn't happen is less than the probability of him saying it if it did - at least then you would have a motive for him to make the statement, namely that it is a true statement. If that case Cr would be less than one. But how much less than one? Certainly not enormously less than one. Because people we think are honest, can still lie. People who actually are honest are sometimes mistaken, etc.

On the other hand, the evidence that gravity cannot be overcome in such a way is so overwhelming that, though I don’t know exactly what Cr would be for such a case, and I don’t know how we would calculate 1/ ε, I have to imagine that the product of the two would be very large anyway and the probability given by Baye’s Rule would have to be very small. For most anything that we would normally define as a “miracle” I would think this would have to be true, including the resurrection.

6. No Error

We don’t have a way of getting any real numbers out of something like this. However, it seems plausible that Cr times 1/ ε is very large and that the probability of the Pr(R/B&E) is small. Certainly Craig’s argument doesn’t seem to me to provide much support for saying that Erhman made an “egregious error” or that Hume was far off with his reasoning. Craig may say that there is additional evidence for the resurrection and that Cr should be very small. I am unconvinced of that - anonymous accounts of other peoples experiences written a generation after the fact seems not terribly weighty to me. And "evidence" based on anonymous accounts of how people acted, based on their reported beliefs which may or may not have been obtained by first hand knowledge, doesn't really strike me as being much stronger. I may be missing something here (let me know if you think I am) but it still seems to me that Hume and Erhman are on firm ground here.

Happy Birthday Woody Guthrie!

The great American songwriter (and incredibly important influence on Bob Dylan) Woody Guthrie was born 96 years ago today (July 14th). Most famous for penning "This Land is Your Land" Woody also wrote a very interesting variant on the Jesus legend - Jesus as a working man's hero. The oral tradition was continuing even unto the 20th century!

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, "Give your money to the poor,"
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand
His followers true and brave
One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
Has laid Jesus Christ in His Grave

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff
He told them all the same
"Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,"
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what he did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

And the people held their breath when they heard about his death
Everybody wondered why
It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky

This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

Jesus Christ - lyric by Woody Guthrie.

Happy birthday Woody!

Skeptical Religion Part Two: The Problem of Miracles

I grew up in the Midwest and attended a middle of the road Methodist church for several pre-teen years. As I drifted from Christianity as a teenager my skepticism about miracles was an important element of my change. I won't pretend that there was some complex philosophical argument I came up with, or heard, it was just that I began to believe less and less that the miracles described in the Bible happened. Walking on water seems unlikely when you learn about conservation of mass and gravity. And don't get me started on basic biology and being raised from the dead! And in the Christian circles I was a part of in Illinois, although not everyone was fundamentalist, the miracle of the resurrection seemed to be a prerequisite for being a Christian. At some point I realized that I simply didn't believe the resurrection happened. People telling me that it had to have happened because "the Bible says so" just lead me to conclude that the Bible was a source of misinformation. And after I started saying that to folk... Well I was called evil and an atheist. I couldn't very well embrace being "evil" (my dad was a police officer after all) so an "atheist" it was!

I know believe that it is not necessary to believe in any particular miracle to be religious (or even a Christian, necessarily) but it is a barrier to being a particular kind of Christian. Namely, and a bit obviously, the kind that believes in literal miracles described in the Bible and who believes that belief in such miracles (especially the resurrection) is central to Christian practice and belief. Yes, there are many very sophisticated Christian thinkers that don't believe that, but I would wager that the vast majority of Christians in the United States do.

Why am I so skeptical about miracles? At one level I have to say it is a gut reaction. I have an emotional negative reaction to miracles being claimed to be "true." I'm not completely sure why, but there it is. Maybe I fell under the spell of rationalists at a young age (I read a lot of Isaac Asimov as a child). As a college student I encountered Hume's "Of Miracles" and felt that my general instincts were justified. I was reminded of all this when I saw (a few months ago) a transcript of a debate between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig about the miracle of the resurrection in which Craig argues that Ehrman makes an "egregious error" with a "warmed-over" version of Hume's argument. I am not convinced of the validity of Craig's point here and over the next few days I would like to post my understanding of what he is saying, why I don't buy it, and see if anyone else can explain to me where I (or Craig or both of us) go wrong in this discussion.

Recently

I haven't intentionally abandoned the blog, but the last couple of weeks have been very busy. I have had a trial that took up a lot of time and after the trial a few of our attorneys in the family law section of the District Attorney's Office went on a training while a few others were wrapped up in a long trial of their own leaving us very short staffed. So, to make a long excuse short, I haven't had the energy to blog here for a while, but I plan to get back to it soon. We did manage to make it to a fireworks display this weekend and it was, in fact, my son's first. We got to listen to the Houston Symphony Orchestra prior to and during the fireworks display and it was a great time. My son was all eyes and was very excited about it all. Here is a picture of him with April at the festival. I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable July 4th celebration.