12/26/08

Is the Bible Skeptical About Miracles? - Moses as Skeptical Scientist

FYI: this post has been moved here.
Share |

TwitThis

Posted by Ken
Labels: , , , ,

11 comments:

  1. Masked MarauderDecember 30, 2008 at 12:19 PM

    Now, what would you do if God told you, very clearly, to go and do something?
    Where's the evidence that the voice in his head was from "God"? A more reasonable conclusion would be that the simultaneous visual and auditory hallucinations had a common etiology, perhaps an hallucinogenic mushroom found its way into his shepherd's pie, or he was having a stroke, or...

    There are/were any number of naturalistic possibilities. Immediately jumping to the conclusion that something strange must necessarily be magic is the antithesis science.

    To Moses' credit there was no science at that time and it is easy to pardon his credulity. That excuse is not available today.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Masked MarauderDecember 30, 2008 at 11:03 PM

    I think you confuse delusions with hallucinations sometimes. The Moses yarn describes hallucination. Being gulled by legerdemain is delusion.

    I saw David Copperfield disappear the Statue of Liberty on national TV one time. Hundreds of people on the site as well as millions of us others watching the show on TV all saw it happen. It was a masterful performance.

    But what has the studied craft of a modern illusionist to do with the ancient accounts of those unhinging of Moses?

    ReplyDelete
  3. KenDecember 31, 2008 at 9:27 PM

    MaskedMarauder;
    Thanks for the comment.

    Moses was exercising skeptical experimental science.

    From your statement that Moses was “Immediately jumping to the conclusion that something strange must necessarily be magic” makes me think that you are not at all aware of the story in question.

    Immediately jumping to the conclusion was precisely the very opposite of what Moses did.

    aDios,
    Mariano

    ReplyDelete
  4. Masked MarauderJanuary 1, 2009 at 8:39 AM

    Mariano,
    Immediately jumping to the conclusion was precisely the very opposite of what Moses did.

    First, approaching an allegedly burning bush is not an experiment, its plain old curiosity.

    Second, according to your own account:
    “When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses! Moses!…I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:4, 6).

    He heard a voice in his head and he believed what it said immediately, without hesitation. Bada bing! Bada boom! Where is there any intercalary step of rational analysis?

    The only doubt expressed by Moses was whether or not he was the right guy for the job, not whether the voice was what it said it was.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Masked MarauderJanuary 1, 2009 at 1:00 PM

    Dear MM, thank you for proving my point.

    I don't follow your logic here.

    Demanding proof in such situation is an act of hypocrisy.

    According to your account Moses did not demand proof. A voice in his head said 'I am God' and he said 'OK!'. It is impossible to be more credulous. How is accepting any stray notion that pops into your head skeptical or scientific?

    ReplyDelete
  6. KenJanuary 1, 2009 at 9:18 PM

    MaskedMarauder;
    Thanks for following up on this.

    I hope that you will pardon me for being so forward but I must state that it appears that your MO is the typical pseudo-skeptical atheism MO of simply jumping to conclusions.
    The true skeptic would read the text, the complete text, and not come to conclusions based on partial info such as that which I provided for the sake of brevity (nor that provided by searching online for “Moses and burning bush and internet infidels” or some such thing).

    Moses’ first reaction is to examine the phenomenon.

    Next, he not only sees a bush burning but not being consumed but he sees the Angel of the LORD.

    Next, God tells him to go to speak with Pharaoh.
    Moses questions this.

    Next, Moses asks who he should say is sending him.
    And God tells him the Tertragramaton.

    The God predicts what it to come, “I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land…”
    “you shall say to him [Pharaoh]…let us go…But I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go…”

    More predictions follow.
    More doubts and question from Moses, more miraculous confirmations by God, etc., etc., etc. This goes on for days and so intercalary events are peppered thought.

    aDios,
    Mariano

    ReplyDelete
  7. Masked MarauderJanuary 2, 2009 at 11:26 AM

    tremor: Pope v Copperfield : I was refering to miracles approved by Catholic Church, not Copperfield's tricks.
    What's the difference?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Masked MarauderJanuary 2, 2009 at 11:47 AM

    Mariano:Moses’ first reaction is to examine the phenomenon.

    Next, he not only sees a bush burning but not being consumed but he sees the Angel of the LORD.

    This is where it goes off the rails. Who said the apparition was an Angel of the LORD? Accepting raw perception at face value is gullible, not skeptical. It is very much anti-scientific.

    I don't look at anything that happens after this point because nothing after this point has weight. Unless it can be established that the voices he heard corresponded to something more or less objectively "real" in a conventional sense then nothing he did thereafter tested anything. There was no experiment, he didn't follow god's orders, ... he just did stuff for undetermined reasons.

    Did Joan of Arc whip the English because God did it, or because she was a good strategist, or because her dementia made her a charismatic leader inspiring the soldiers to heroic heights, or because....?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Masked MarauderJanuary 2, 2009 at 3:20 PM

    tremor: What's the difference?
    In your h[e]ad? None, see my second post.

    The one about the fleece? Same thing. He goes to sleep and finds a wet sheepskin in the morning. Where's the evidence that the water was dew? How do you know a war mongering confederate didn't pour a bowl of water on the fleece while he was sleeping to dupe him into starting a war he wouldn't otherwise wage? Etc.

    If I wanted to trick some gullible and superstitious pacifist into starting a war that I wanted and he didn't, that's exactly the sort of stunt I'd pull.

    If he was really skeptical he would have stayed awake all night watching the fleece like a hawk.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Masked MarauderJanuary 5, 2009 at 6:23 PM

    tremor: "For agnostics/atheists any claimed miracle is either: ...

    You've over simplified the situation again, but, that aside, what other reasonable alternatives are there? Science isn't religion. We can't just stare at the ceiling for an hour and will ourselves to conflate credulity with reason.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Masked MarauderJanuary 6, 2009 at 12:09 PM

    tremor:I've just noticed that I've misspelled your nick dozens of times yet you didn't complain.
    Typos are trivial and not worth fussing about.

    what other reasonable alternatives are there?
    That people usually tell the truth.
    People rarely know the truth with certainty. Errors, deliberate or not, are common, not rare.

    Still, I'm surprised to hear you making a statistical argument for matters usually accorded absolute categorical certainty, especially when we know that the probability of deliberately misleading people, especially in politics, religion, real estate and other high-stakes games, is well above zero. Even so, you dismiss without excuse the probability that Moses was mistaken. An honest recitation of an erroneous perception may be a true account, with respect to intentions, but it is still wrong. How do you distinguish between these alternative? You don't. You blindly accept the Party Line, verbatim, with no reservations. You wouldn't buy a used car on those terms, why buy a world view on them? That is not a reasonable thing to do.

    Note: by reasonable you mean what you're likely to believe as it fits your worldview.
    No, the conventional definition is OK with me: the ability to think logically regarded as a basis for knowledge, as distinct from experience or emotions
    By definition miracles are arbitrary contradictions of everything we've come to reasonably expect from nature. There is nothing from which they can be logically inferred or deduced. Nothing reasonable can be said about them because they are constitutively not reasonable.

    Science is not omnipotent and won't tell if Moses really met God or he hallucinated.
    Neither did Moses. My larger point is that Moses didn't even try to sort it out. He heard a voice say 'I am an angel of the LORD' and Moses said 'OK!' That is plain credulity, not reasonable or skeptical behavior.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)