A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain | Hacker News Reader

A defense of Christianity helped unlock the secrets of the brain

nautil.us

It took me some looking to find Price's writing mentioned in the article. Warning - it's long - will probably take a half hour to read. Good stuff though.

https://books.google.com/books?id=g2M3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA361&lpg=...

Thanks for finding this. Very enjoyable read, even in spite of its flaws of reasoning.

Clickbait title.

A great deal of science is rooted in the works of individuals who held a variety of religious beliefs, and in many of those cases, their works were directly motivated by those beliefs.

So the fact that Bayes came up with his theorem because of a desire to justify a belief in the resurrection of Christ is, I suppose, somewhat interesting, but not so much so that it needed to be the headline of the story.

The fact that Bayes' work, which is more popular and possibly relevant than ever, answers a serious philosophical challenges to claims about the nature of reality (a consequence of any claims of divinity) is a mere historical accident worthy of overlooking?

I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality.

I.e., either Bayes' theory has implications (not argument-ending proof) regarding the claims of the divinity of Jesus, or it is not relevant at all today.

The value of Bayes' work is somewhat orthogonal to his use of it to prove the truth of the Resurrection.

It was valuable to show that Hume's approach was flawed but limited value to prove the truth per se. To apply probabilities to the events you'd have to make an awful lot of assumptions about the accuracy of the, non-eye witness, reporting. However, it was an excellent approach for such an evaluation.

As to the Fulton Sheen quote. I's a bit unfair. I mean, if you're going to be picky about it you can lose the lunatic option: someone who claims to be God is either God or a liar, by definition. But you can be a liar by deliberate act, by diminished faculty or by being mistaken. And plenty of great teachers have been mistaken about important things.

And of course, in both the Bayes and Fulton cases, there is the implicit assumption that what was recorded about Jesus had no systemic bias i.e. any errors while recording what He said and did were mistakes, not deliberate misrepresentations. Given the strong requirement to show that He fulfilled scripture, this is a highly dubious assumption.

See my reply above regarding the second paragraph - it's a good question.

Regarding the final paragraph and implicit assumptions regarding the veracity of the content of the four canonical gospel accounts, I am not sure attributing it to "simple" assumption (i.e., the colloquial assumption where one just thinks something is true without examination) is reasonable given the education of both men and the body of work done over several centuries on examining epistemologically and historically the veracity of the gospels. See for example the intense work of John Henry Newman, 19th century Oxford scholar and intense defender of the historical reliability of the canonical gospel narratives.

Just be careful appealing to the imprecise, several century long corpus of work on the subject. By appealing to the works of the devout, people are apt to raise the equally hasty generalization described by Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

It seems to me that the most useful definition of "lie" is one where it does not include un-truths due to diminished faculty or simply being mistaken. I would not call Newton a "liar" because he wasn't aware of relativity...

Indeed. But one can't have it both ways. You either use your definition and call out ignorance/mistaken explicitly or you define lying as covering all unthruths.

Fulton Sheen cheats by pretending to use your definition but subsuming more than deliberately lying under the liar banner. Very sneak these philosophers.

You may be operating on a deeper level than me here, but it seems like that Fulton Sheen quote just claims that being mistaken or ignorant about whether or not you are God makes you "a lunatic". Whether you use that terminology or just replace it with "incorrect about stuff", it still seems distinct from being "a liar".

(I think we're in agreement that being mistaken about things is not incompatible with being a "great teacher", as I say in another comment here.)

Lying requires the intent to deceive. "Diminished faculty" or a disorder of mental faculties would fall under the normal definition of insanity, whatever the cause of that insanity. The claims Jesus made are too radical and too consistent to be described as mere mistakes.

Well, no, most of his claims were quite common in the time, not much is radical. Also most of those we only know 2nd or third hand and we know it's been heavily redacted on the way. If radical claims are a reason to consider someone divine, Buddha has much better cards.

The claims in question are those that are radical, specifically those involving claims of divinity, and thus not claims, if true, that can be known through unaided reason alone (i.e., the subject of divine revelation). That these claims are known through second or third hand accounts is neither here nor there. The Jesus that we know is the Jesus in those accounts so unless there's another reliable source you're leaning on (there isn't), there's little sense in talking about the "real Jesus" outside of the gospels (the most charitable reading of your use of the word "redacted" I can muster is that you mean the non-canonical gospels that were omitted from the bible, but again, those are irrelevant for reasons given elsewhere). Buddha did not make claims about being God/the son of God (which is to be expected given the Buddhist attitude toward theism) and thus the comparison in this regard is meaningless.

> I am reminded of Fulton Sheen's comments on Jesus - a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality.

That always sounded like an unimaginative argument. Another possibility is that his followers exaggerated his words and deeds after his death.

But his followers were all willing to die because they believed Jesus rose from the dead and they saw it. Seems unreasonable that they would die for something they know is a lie.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_Christian_martyrs

> But his followers were all willing to die because they believed Jesus rose from the dead and they saw it.

There is very little objective reason to believe that to be the case. There are (themselves mostly unsubstantiated) stories that a number of the inner circle of contemporaries, some of whom are also identified as witnesses of the resurrection, died for the faith, which is both considerably less than "all of his followers", and considerably less established as objective historical fact rather than part of the same system of mythology.

It's certainly a fact that a little later, a lot of people who could not have been witnesses to the resurrection at the time it is held to have happened died for the faith (whether willing or not), but they obviously don't support the argument you are making.

You can't rest a claim that one element of myth is objective fact on the argument that other elements of the same myth -- with no more objective support -- seem more likely if the first element is true.

>You can't rest a claim

Well that's the right idea, though. Taking it a few steps further, what would be more likely, that the vatican is a power hungry institution like any other, or that a pope is chosen by god himself, sometimes two of opposing believe at the same time even.

Who said they died because of their belief in the Resurrection?

I think it is highly likely that His followers believed strongly that He was the Messiah and His message had divine provenance.

It's much less clear which parts of, what became, the accepted view they considered worth dying for.

Maybe they believed in the truth of the Resurrection. Maybe they weren't aware of the claims (ok that's unlikely). Maybe they were aware and decided that it was good for the message (much more believable). Maybe they thought that it wasn't that important to the overall mission either way.

I don't know the answer, of course, but it's perfectly plausible that they didn't believe in the Resurrection and still fulfilled their mission. Plenty of people have died for what they believe is right without needing to have a mentor rise from the dead.

That's only relevant for martyrs who knew him in life, saw him 'die', and come back.

Everyone else died from a story making every single person on that list irrelevant.

ed: There is a very long list of people who where assumed to be dead before 'coming back' so even people who where 'there' don't mean much. It's not like someone was beheaded and the head grew back.

Lots of Muslims blow themselves up, believing in 77 virgins and stuff like that. Is that proof of those virgins or merely their belief?

I appreciate the list of martyrs but it is hardly unique to Christianity.

A suicide bomber really believes in what they are dying for and that is the point. With the disciples the fact that they were eye witnesses to the central point of their religion is unique. Either they saw Jesus rise from the dead or they were lying. If they were lying, then why would they be willing to die for a lie? Just doesn't add up in my book.

The disciples are characters in the Resurrection story. That their lives (and deaths) are accurately recorded history is also an open question, as was pointed out above [0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13221199

That doesn't list a lot of people who would have known him. Not hard to imagine people being committed to a cause while the lore is still being built.

Lots of people die for lots of different reasons. That they die doesn't validate their beliefs.

I think lucozade's reply (just below yours) gets closer to why Sheen's argument matters at all (admitting that it is more of a, "Hey, have you thought about it this way?" than a serious argument, the latter of which Sheen also focused on) - whether we transfer the content to Jesus' followers or not, we still these condensed narratives containing historical claims as well as general teaching, and the claims are extraordinary, whether we attribute them directly to Jesus or to the followers. If the account in the gospel of Luke regarding the annunciation of Jesus' conception is false, then the rest of Luke's testimony about the words and deeds of Jesus is suspect.

Additionally, the great majority of Jesus' teaching depends on a context that admits unabashedly of a supreme Creator to Whom we owe, well, everything. Thus Jesus' teaching that lusting after a woman internally is tantamount to adultery only makes sense in the given Judeo-Christian context. So, even if we ignore claims of divinity and the origin of those claims, it's difficult to find a coherent moral message absent some claim regarding the existence of an ultimate Creator.

While I agree that it is impossible to take Jesus seriously without also taking seriously his claim to divinity, I do not understand the example you've given concerning adultery. Not everything that Jesus taught was a matter of revelation. Much of it can be arrived at with the use of unaided reason. In this case, adultery and lust are moral concerns that do not require an appeal to Jesus' authority. It is entirely possible for a non-Christian to come to the same conclusion just as it is possible to consider many moral questions without appealing to God. Whether something is good for human beings depends on human nature. God comes in when we wish to account for the existence of human nature (or anything at all) in the first place. Typically, those who base morality on arbitrary divine command hold to a mechanistic metaphysics that permits no other basis for morality.

> a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality.

I don't really get this. Someone who thinks they are God and isn't (the "lunatic" part) can still have important insights and a knack for showing them to others. Someone who knows they are not God but claims to be (the "liar" part) can be using their lies to spread valuable insights more broadly. I would definitely prefer to learn from someone unencumbered by either issue, but they don't seem fundamentally incompatible with being a "great teacher".

People rarely apply the trilemma to other religious figures, like the Budda.

Sheen's comments were never convincing to me because myths can very quickly spring up around a strong personality, so while a few of the earliest disciples may have been either liars, lunatics or followers of God, that is not even necessarily true of the gospel writers.

Or another way of putting it: if the gospels are truly 4 witnesses accurately reporting what they saw, then Sheen's arguments hold true, but considering that it's likely that Mark was not written down until at least 30 years after the events described in it, it would take the presumtion of divine intervention for that to be the case even assuming that the authors were completely honest.

Did Fulton Sheen say that first or was it CS Lewis?

I say that because I've read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis's_trilemma which sounds familiar.

I wouldn't be surprised if Sheen picked it up from Lewis, as the former certainly admired the latter!

This entire discussion reminds me of Richard Carrier's book Proving History, where he uses Bayes Theorem to "prove" Jesus didn't exist. On the other hand, there's also William Lane Craig, who uses it to "prove" that Jesus was resurrected! I agree that Bayes Theorem is relevant to the study of history, but it is slightly funny to see atheists and apologists alike take it far beyond its original scope.

I think Sheen's trilemma - Jesus is either liar, lunatic, or God - doesn't take into account the complexity of early Christian beliefs. "God" is a pretty slippery concept. Was Jesus just an ordinary human, who God adopted as his son because of his righteousness - either at his birth, baptism, or resurrection? Was he some sort of angel who God sent to prepare for the apocalypse? Maybe he was God himself, who came down in human form. Perhaps he was so divine that he wasn't human at all. Or, maybe he had nothing to do with the God of Judaism, and was something completely different. There were many, many different interpretations of Jesus, which were reflected in early Christian churches and the New Testament. Which of these interpretations is "right" would I suppose depend on your personal theology and beliefs.

It seems more likely to me that Bayes work is applicable today because it has practical application and was misapplied to the whole religion thing. Some people are emotionally invested and come up with post-hoc rationalizations and sometimes those post-hoc rationalizations have useful stuff like Bayes theorem.

We don't need to seriously look at discrepancies in history where written records were scant and what does exist clearly claims the impossible. We discount most of these out hand, because they are preposterous, even the ones with much better documentation.

Why cling to this one? We wouldn't be having this conversation if it were a theory Aristotle came up with to defend Zeus or some ancient Indian philosopher in defense of some Hindu god. We have this conversation because in the Western world christianity is given a special level of credibility and defensive taboo that other fairy tales are not privy to. Let's just drop the pretense, we all know better by now or we are religious people.

You can be a liar (or a lunatic) and still be a great teacher.

You're logic is correct, but it's not the great teacher part that is in question. The part that is always in question is about whether or not he is really God.

Take that same analogy and replace "great teacher" with "great person". If Jesus told people that he is God, and convinced them to put their trust in him, but he happens to be wrong about being God (regardless of whether that's an intentional lie or an honest delusion), then it really isn't fair to say that he's a "great person". It would be more accurate to characterize his morality in leading people astray similar to the likes of Hitler and L. Ron Hubbard.

I'm saying that whether or not he was a great teacher is independent of whether or he was god. He can be a great teacher and still not be god.

Are people saying he's a great person because he's god; god because he's a great person; or independently both god and a great person? I'm arguing that they don't necessarily have to have a causal relationship and neither implies the other. (Ok ok maybe being god implies you are also a great person... but the other around way is not true)

I get what you're saying; that these characteristics are not mutually necessary. And I agree with you.

As for the other question, I suppose you could separate those characteristics as well. For a moment, let's ignore the Bible and focus on an abstract concept of "God". It is possible to be good, and not be God. It is also possible to be God, and not be good. And in that case, we don't have to redefine the word "good" to mean (a bad) God, just because he is "God". So yes, ultimately these are independent concepts that are not mutually necessary.

> "Are people saying he's a great person because he's god"?

Jesus is described in the Bible as being a man that lived a sinless life. That's where the "good person" description comes from. He was tempted just the same as any of us are, and he could have given into any of those temptations. According to the Bible that didn't happen, but if it did, it leads right back to your original point: he could have theoretically been God and simultaneously not have been good. The problem with that (not the problem with your logic, but the problem with him being an impure God) is he would no longer be an innocent sacrifice and his whole mission falls apart.

And even if not, to say that a man is a god does stretch the limit of rationality too.

a man that claimed to be God is either a liar, a lunatic, or God; to say such a man is a great teacher but not God stretches the limit of rationality.

Ridiculous.

The latter is certainly not implied by the former. It presupposes that a person can't be both a liar (either deliberate or unintentional) or lunatic and a great teacher, a conclusion that has no basis whatsoever. It's a emotional statement, not a logical one.

Frankly, I'm astounded anyone would put that forward as a defensible claim... though I'm sure it's a very compelling "argument" to someone predisposed to the conclusion.

Jesus Christ never claimed to be God but the Son of God, one single verse was taken completely out of context, but if you're familiar with his teaching it clearly emphasised his subordination to God.

Bible book of John chapter 14 verse 28 latter part: the father is greater than I am

The vast majority of mainstream Christian is corrupt. This is important to note cause much debate about the merits of Christianity are based on teachings & behavior that are not Christian

He's "truly God and truly Man". The Chalcedonian Definition is a good summary of orthodox thought on the issue:

Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the Self-same of a rational soul and body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead, the Self-same co-essential with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in the last days, the Self-same, for us and for our salvation (born) of Mary the Virgin Theotokos [God-bearer] as to the Manhood; One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis; not as though He were parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as from the beginning the prophets have taught concerning Him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself hath taught us, and as the Symbol of the Fathers hath handed down to us.

In case anyone's wondering, I suspect that the "one single verse [...] taken completely out of context" is John 10:30, "I and the Father are one". To the best of my knowledge, this is the only place in the Bible where Jesus seems to directly claim to actually be God rather than doing his work, representing/channeling his authority, making allusions to prophecy, etc.. The context can be read as suggesting that he was saying they are intimately linked and united in purpose rather than literally being the same entity; of course, the vast majority of Christians are Trinitarians and thus reject that interpretation.

This doesn't contradict Trinitarian theology, by the way—Jesus and God being one falls into "three in one and one in three".

It's perhaps also worth noting that trinitarianism is so fundamental to mainstream orthodox Christianity that mainstream orthodox Christians consider it deeply heretical to reject the Trinity. This was a major result of some of the early ecumenical counsels. They put together the Nicene Creed (and by virtue of being a "creed", not a "catechism", disagreement with it is heretical by definition) that defines the three persons of the Trinity, including "Jesus Christ…eternally begotten of the Father; God from God, Light from Light; true God from true God; begotten, not made; of one being with the father"

Small quibble: Jesus did not claim to be God; he claimed to be the son of God. Slightly off topic, but I think this clarification is useful especially for people who have not read the bible

It's not clickbait; this is the angle the article took to present the material. Whether or not it is novel or particularly good may be up for debate, but it's not clickbait.

I agree. As someone who probably wouldn't normally have read an entire article on bayesian probability, the angle the author took to present the material kept me interested for the entire thing. Maybe you can call it article bait? I found this a great history lesson followed up by very interesting links to how the human brain might work. The title seemed completely relevant to me.

Clickbait or not, many of the great scientists and mathematicians of the past thought that the existence of a benevolent God meant that the universe might be understandable and that there may be elegant laws underpinning how the universe works.

To me its sort of a mystery why the universe is understandable at all -- e.g., the elegance and compactness of Maxwell's Equations for the complicated phenomenon of electromagnetism is one such example.

Agreed. You could pick a historical thinker at random and spin the same article making leaps into the future. Being self-identified as religious and influenced by God was the norm even well into Enlightenment. This sort of retrospective coronation is the positive version of "judging people without regard for their historical context." You could also pick any historical figure and say how their pro-slavery and anti-feminist thinking "helped unlocked the secrets of ____." But no one would praise or click that article on the face of it.

"Hume, the probability of people inaccurately claiming that they’d seen Jesus’ resurrection far outweighed the probability that the event had occurred in the first place."

Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed? What is the point of examining the claims of fictional characters about a fictional event?

> Is there any evidence that anyone mentioned in the bible actually ever existed?

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biblical_figures_ident...

That's a great question! There is lots of corroborating evidence regarding many people and events (not all people and all events, but further discussion would branch a bit further off topic). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_the_Bible

One of the most memorable I have read about is the recently found Tel Dan inscription: some writing on a 9th-century-B.C. stone slab about King David. Archaeologists say it is particularly strong because it was by an enemy. http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/...

I can't really accept the reference of already famous names as strong evidence they were part of any event or that the event described actually took place. On a daily basis I see completely made up stories about kings, queens, politicians, actors, actresses, socialites, etc.; and people believing those stories without any evidence; and people retelling those stories, adding their own flair. Often the subject of those stories let the inaccuracies continue or even fabricate it themselves. And that's just people and things that happen today, things that could likely be verified but just aren't because most people don't care to. Over thousands of years and various translations and interpretations, it is nearly impossible that any meaningfully accurate information made it this far, i doubt it even made it to the stone.

The same argument can be made regarding any person and any event in reasonably distant history. Still, mainstream historians believe that we know a lot about Caesar, for example.

That Templeton Foundation funding, though.

It would help your argument tremendously if you wrote a full sentence, preferably with a verb somewhere.

What?

Nautilus, the publisher, is funded by the John Templeton foundation which is a evangelical fundamentalist organization.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

But they don't seem to be fundamentalist in the same sense as the churches I grew up near as a kid, from reading their website: https://www.templeton.org/who-we-are/about-the-foundation/mi...

> The John Templeton Foundation serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality. We support research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will. We encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights.

> Our vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton's optimism about the possibility of acquiring “new spiritual information” and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. The Foundation's motto, "How little we know, how eager to learn," exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.

Maybe you should back up this claim. Just because they are a religious organization does not mean they are fundamentalist.

First line of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation. It is just important to understand the possible motivations for the article.

That seems to come from a single French article, in which the only reference to fundamentalism comes from the description of the founder.

It seems that since the core tenets of fundamentalism seem to be biblical literalism and anti-modernity, it doesn't accurately describe the Templeton foundation or its goals.

The founder and his wife did donate something on the order of a million dollars to causes opposing same-sex marriage, which definitely seems like a fundamentalist trait.

Is Barack Obama a fundamentalist for having opposed gay marriage in 2008, the same year that the Templetons made their donation?

.....Ok? It's still good content.

I didn't say it wasn't.

Please don't post drive-by dismissals here. If you have a criticism, make it substantively.

The implicit criticism here is pretty tenuous, given how many Nautilus articles have done well on HN.

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