Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists

Here’s the link to this article by Sean M. Carroll.

(2003)

[This essay was originally presented as a talk at the “God and Physical Cosmology: Russian-Anglo American Conference on Cosmology and Theology” at Notre Dame in January/February 2003 and subsequently published in Faith and Philosophy 22(5), pp. 622-640, in 2005.]

Abstract

Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge. If we believe that the methods of science can be used to discriminate between fundamental pictures of reality, we are led to a strictly materialist conception of the universe. While the details of modern cosmology are not a necessary part of this argument, they provide interesting clues as to how an ultimate picture may be constructed.

1. Introduction

2. Worldviews

3. Theory Choice

4. Cosmology and Belief

5. Conclusions

1. Introduction

One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing the workings of the world is no longer thought to be in conflict with faith in God. I would like to argue against this trend, in favor of a more old-fashioned point of view that is still more characteristic of most scientists, who tend to disbelieve in any religious component to the workings of the universe.

The title “Why cosmologists are atheists” was chosen not because I am primarily interested in delving into the sociology and psychology of contemporary scientists, but simply to bring attention to the fact that I am presenting a common and venerable point of view, not advancing a new and insightful line of reasoning. Essentially I will be defending a position that has come down to us from the Enlightenment, and which has been sharpened along the way by various advances in scientific understanding. In particular, I will discuss what impact modern cosmology has on our understanding of these truly fundamental questions.

The past few hundred years have witnessed a significant degree of tension between science and religion. Since very early on, religion has provided a certain way of making sense of the world–a reason why things are the way they are. In modern times, scientific explorations have provided their own pictures of how the world works, ones which rarely confirm the preexisting religious pictures. Roughly speaking, science has worked to apparently undermine religious belief by calling into question the crucial explanatory aspects of that belief; it follows that other aspects (moral, spiritual, cultural) lose the warrants for their validity. I will argue that this disagreement is not a priori necessary, but nevertheless does arise as a consequence of the scientific method.

It is important from the outset to distinguish between two related but ultimately distinct concepts: a picture of how the world works, and a methodology for deciding between competing pictures. The pictures of interest in this paper may be labeled “materialism” and “theism.” Materialism asserts that a complete description of nature consists of an understanding of the structures of which it is comprised together with the patterns which those structures follow, while theism insists on the need for a conscious God who somehow rises above those patterns[1]. Science is most often associated with a materialist view, but the essence of science lies as much in a methodology of reaching the truth as in any view of what form that truth might ultimately take. In particular, the scientific method is an empirical one, in contrast to appeals to pure reason or to revelation. For the purposes of this paper I will assume the validity of the scientific method, and simply ask what sorts of conclusions we are led to by its application.

Within this framework, there are two possible roads to reconciliation between science and religion. One is to claim that science and religion are not incompatible because they speak to completely distinct sets of questions, and hence never come into conflict. The other is to assert that thinking scientifically does not lead to rejection of theism, but in fact that religious belief can be justified in the same way that any scientific theory might be. I will argue that neither strategy succeeds: science and religion do speak to some of the same questions, and when they do they get different answers. In particular, I wish to argue that religious belief necessarily entails certain statements about how the universe works, that these statements can be judged as scientific hypotheses, and that as such they should be rejected in favor of alternative ways of understanding the universe.

Probably nothing that I say will be anything you have not heard elsewhere. My goals here are simply to describe what I think a typical scientist has in mind when confronted with the question of science vs. religion, even if the scientists themselves have not thought through these issues in any detail.

2. Worldviews

One of the most difficult tasks in discussing the relationship between science and religion is to define the terminology in ways that are acceptable to everyone listening. In fact, it is likely impossible; especially when it comes to religion, the terminology is used in incompatible ways by different people. I will therefore try to be as clear as possible about the definitions I am using. In this section I want to carefully describe what I mean by the two competing worldviews, materialism and theism, without yet addressing how to choose between them.

The essence of materialism is to model the world as a formal system, which is both unambiguous and complete as a description of reality. A materialist model may be said to consist of four elements. First, we model the world as some formal (mathematical) structure. (General relativity describes the world as a curved manifold with a Lorentzian metric, while quantum mechanics describes the world as a state in some Hilbert space. As a more trivial example, we could imagine a universe which consisted of nothing other than an infinitely long list of “bits” taking on the values 0 or 1.) Second, this structure exhibits patterns (the “laws of nature”), so that the amount of information needed to express the world is dramatically less than the structure would in principle allow. (In a world described by a string of bits, we might for example find that the bits were an infinitely repeated series of a single one followed by two zeroes: 100100100100…) Third, we need boundary conditions which specify the specific realization of the pattern. (The first bit in our list is a one.) Note that the distinction between the patterns and their boundary conditions is not perfectly well-defined; this is an issue which becomes relevant in cosmology, and we’ll discuss it more later. Finally, we need a way to relate this formal system to the world we see: an “interpretation.”

The reader might worry that we are glossing over very subtle and important issues in the philosophy of science; they would be correct, but needn’t worry. Philosophy of science becomes difficult when we attempt to describe the relationship of the formalism to the world (the interpretation), as well as how we invent and choose between theories. But the idea that we are trying, in principle, to model the world as a formal system is fairly uncontroversial.

The materialist thesis is simply: that’s all there is to the world. Once we figure out the correct formal structure, patterns, boundary conditions, and interpretation, we have obtained a complete description of reality. (Of course we don’t yet have the final answers as to what such a description is, but a materialist believes such a description does exist.) In particular, we should emphasize that there is no place in this view for common philosophical concepts such as “cause and effect” or “purpose.” From the perspective of modern science, events don’t have purposes or causes; they simply conform to the laws of nature. In particular, there is no need to invoke any mechanism to “sustain” a physical system or to keep it going; it would require an additional layer of complexity for a system to cease following its patterns than for it to simply continue to do so. Believing otherwise is a relic of a certain metaphysical way of thinking; these notions are useful in an informal way for human beings, but are not a part of the rigorous scientific description of the world. Of course scientists do talk about “causality,” but this is a description of the relationship between patterns and boundary conditions; it is a derived concept, not a fundamental one. If we know the state of a system at one time, and the laws governing its dynamics, we can calculate the state of the system at some later time. You might be tempted to say that the particular state at the first time “caused” the state to be what it was at the second time; but it would be just as correct to say that the second state caused the first. According to the materialist worldview, then, structures and patterns are all there are–we don’t need any ancillary notions.

Defining theism is more difficult than defining materialism, for the simple reason that theist belief takes many more forms that materialist belief, and the same words are often taken to mean utterly different things. I will partially avoid this difficulty by not attempting a comprehensive definition of religion, but simply taking belief in the existence of a being called “God” as a necessary component of being religious. (Already this choice excludes some modes of belief which are sometimes thought of as “religious.” For example, one could claim that “the laws of physics, and their working out in the world, are what I hold to be God.” I am not sure what the point of doing that would be, but in such a case nothing that I have to say would apply.)

The subtlety has therefore been transferred to the task of defining “God.” I will take it to mean some being who is not bound by the same patterns we perceive in the universe, who is by our standards extremely powerful (not necessarily omnipotent, although that would count), and in some way plays a crucial role in the universe (creating it, or keeping it going, etc.). By a “being” I mean to imply an entity which we would recognize as having consciousness–a “person” in some appropriately generalized sense (as opposed to a feature of reality, or some sort of feeling). A rather concrete God, in other words, not just an aspect of nature. This notion of God need not be interventionist or easy to spot, but has at least the capability of intervening in our world. Even if not necessarily omnipotent, the relevant feature of this conception is that God is not bound by the laws of physics. In particular, I don’t include some sort of superhero-God who is bound by such laws, but has figured out how to use them in ways that convey the impression of enormous power (even if it is hard to imagine ultimately distinguishing between these two possibilities). When I say that God is not bound by the laws of physics, I have in mind for example that God is not limited to moving more slowly than the speed of light, or that God could create an electron without also creating a corresponding positively charged particle. (We are not imagining that God can do the logically impossible, just violate the contingent patterns of reality that we could imagine having been different.) Of course these are meager powers compared to most conceptions of God, but I am taking them to be minimal criteria. There are various types of belief which are conventionally labeled as religious, but inconsistent with my definition of God; about these I have nothing to say in this paper.

It should be clear that, by these definitions, materialism and theism are incompatible, essentially by definition. (The former says that everything follows the rules, the second says that God is an exception.) It does not immediately follow that “science” and “religion” are incompatible; we could follow the scientific method to conclude that a materialist description of the world was not as reasonable as a theist one. On the other hand, it does follow that science and religion do overlap in their spheres of interest. Religion has many aspects, including social and moral ones, apart from its role in describing the workings of the world; however, that role is a crucial one, and necessarily speaks to some of the same issues as science does. Suggestions that science and religion are simply disjoint activities[2] generally rely on a redefinition of “religion” as something closer to “moral philosophy.” Such a definition ignores crucial aspects of religious belief.

In judging between materialism and theism, we are faced with two possibilities. Either one or the other system is logically impossible, or we need to decide which of the two conceivable models better explains the world we experience. In my view, neither materialism nor theism is logically impossible, and I will proceed on the idea that we have to see which fits reality better. Of course arguments against materialism have been put forward which do not rely on specific observed features of our world, but instead on either pure reason or revelation; I won’t attempt to deal with such arguments here.

3. Theory Choice

Given this understanding of materialism and theism, how are we to decide which to believe? There is no right answer to this question, and sensible arguments can only be made after we agree on some basic elements of how we should go about choosing a theory of the world. For example, someone could insist on the primacy of revelation in understanding deep truths; in response, there is no logical argument which could prove such a person wrong. Instead, I would like to ask what conclusion we should reach by employing a more empirical technique of deciding between theories. In other words, we address the choice between materialism and theism as a scientist would address the choice between any two competing theories.

The basic scientific assumption is that there is exists a complete and coherent description of how the world works. (This need not be a purely materialist description, in the language of the previous section; simply a sensible description covering all phenomena.) Although we certainly don’t yet know what this description might be, science has been extremely successful at constructing provisional theories which accurately model some aspects of reality; this degree of success thus far convinces most scientists that there really is a comprehensive description to be found. This underlying assumption plays a crucial role in determining how scientists choose between competing theories which are more modest in their goals, attempting to model only some specific types of phenomena–in a nutshell, scientists choose those models which they feel are more likely to be consistent with the true underlying unified description.

We can make such a sweeping statement with some confidence, only because it avoids all the hard questions. In particular, how do we go about deciding whether a theory is more or less likely to be consistent with a single coherent description of nature? It is at this point that the judgment of the individual scientist necessarily plays a crucial role; the process is irreducibly nonalgorithmic. A number of criteria are employed, including fit to experiment, simplicity, and comprehensiveness. No one of these criteria is absolute, even fit to experiment; after all, experiments are sometimes wrong.

Let me give an example to illustrate the different criteria employed by scientists to judge theories. When we observe the dynamics of galaxies, we find that the apparent gravitational force exerted by the galaxy on particles orbiting far around it is inevitably much larger than we would expect by taking into account the combined mass of all the visible material in the galaxy. A straightforward and popular hypothesis to explain this observation is the idea of “dark matter,” the notion that most of the mass in galaxies is not in stars or gas, but rather in some new kind of particle which has not yet been observed directly, and which has an average mass density in the universe which is approximately five times greater than that of ordinary matter. But there is a competing idea: that our understanding of gravity (through Einstein’s general relativity) breaks down at the edges of galaxies, to be replaced by some new gravitational law. Such a law has actually been proposed by Milgrom, under the name of “Modified Newtonian Dynamics,” or MOND[3]. At this point we don’t know for certain whether the dark matter hypothesis or the MOND hypothesis is correct, but it is safe to say that the large majority of scientific experts come down in favor of dark matter. Why is that? On the one hand, there is a sense in which MOND is more compact and efficient: it has been demonstrated to accurately describe the observations of a wide set of galaxies, with only a single free parameter, while the dark matter idea is somewhat less predictive on this score. But there are two features working strongly in favor of dark matter. First, it makes detailed predictions for a wide class of phenomena, well outside the realm of individual galaxies: clusters of galaxies, gravitational lenses, large-scale structure, the cosmic microwave background, and more, while MOND is completely silent on these issues (there is no prediction to verify or disprove). The second (closely related) point is that MOND is not really a complete theory, or even a theory at all, but simply a suggested phenomenological relation that is supposed to hold for galaxies. Nobody understands how to make it part of a larger consistent framework. Therefore, despite the greater predictive power of MOND within its domain of validity, most scientists consider it to be a step backward, as it seems less likely to ultimately be part of a comprehensive description. (Nobody can say for sure, so the issue is still open, but the majority has a definite preference.)

It should be clear why choosing between competing theories is difficult–it’s a matter of predicting the future, not of applying a set of unambiguous criteria. Nevertheless, it’s not completely arbitrary, either; it’s simply a matter of applying a set of somewhat ambiguous standards. Fortunately, cases in which a certain theory would be favored by applying one reasonable criterion while a different theory would be favored by applying a different reasonable criterion are both rare and typically short-lived; the acquisition of additional experimental input or increased theoretical understanding tends to ultimately resolve the issue relatively cleanly in favor of one specific model.

According to this description, the evaluation of a scientific theory involves both a judgment about the theory itself and about the more comprehensive theory which would ultimately describe nature. While a number of disparate factors are applied to concrete theories, the criteria relevant to judging competing comprehensive theories are much more straightforward: among every possible model which fits all of the data, we choose the simplest possible one. “Simplicity” here is related to the notion of “algorithmic compressibility”: the simplicity of a model is judged by how much information is required to fully specify the system. There is no a priori reason why nature should be governed by a comprehensive model which is at all simple; but our experience as scientists convinces us that this is the case.

It should be clear how these considerations relate to the choice between materialism and theism. These two worldviews offer different notions of what form a comprehensive description will take. Acting as scientists, it is our task to judge whether it seems more likely that the simplest possible comprehensive theory which is compatible with what we already know about the universe will turn out to be strictly materialistic, or will require the introduction of a deity.

4. Cosmology and Belief

If we accept the scientific method as a way to determine the workings of reality, are we led to a materialist or theist conclusion? Naïvely, the deck seems to be stacked against theism: if we are looking for simplicity of description, a view which only invokes formal structures and patterns would appear to be simpler than one in which God appeared in addition. However, we are constrained to find simple descriptions which are also complete and consistent with experiment. Therefore, we could be led to belief in God, if it were warranted by our observations–if there were evidence (direct or otherwise) of divine handiwork in the universe.

There are several possible ways in which this could happen. Most direct would be straightforward observation of miraculous events that would be most easily explained by invoking God. Since such events seem hard to come by, we need to be more subtle. Yet there are still at least two ways in which a theist worldview could be judged more compelling than a materialist one. First, we could find that our best materialist conception was somehow incomplete–there was some aspect of the universe which could not possibly be explained within a completely formal framework. This would be like a “God of the gaps,” if there were good reason to believe that a certain kind of “gap” were truly inexplicable by formal rules alone. Second, we could find that invoking the workings of God actually worked to simplify the description, by providing explanations for some of the observed patterns. An example would be an argument from design, if we could establish convincingly that certain aspects of the universe were designed rather than assembled by chance. Let’s examine each of these possibilities in turn.

We turn first to the idea that there is something inherently missing in a materialist description of nature. One way in which this could happen would be if there were a class of phenomena which seemed to act without regard to any patterns we could discern, something that stubbornly resisted formalization into a mechanistic description. Of course, in such a case it would be hard to tell whether an appropriate formalism actually didn’t exist, or whether we just hadn’t yet been clever enough to discover it. For example, physicists have tried for most of the last century to invent a theory which described gravity while being consistent with quantum mechanics. (String theory is the leading candidate for such a theory, but it has not yet been fully developed to the point where we understand it well enough to compare it to experiment.) It is hard to know at what point scientists would become sufficiently frustrated in their attempts to describe a phenomenon that they would begin to suspect that no formal description was applicable. However, it is safe to say that such a point has not been reached, or even approached, with any of the phenomena of current interest to physicists. Although there are undoubtedly unsolved problems, the rate at which successful theoretical explanations are proposed for these problems is well in accordance with expectation. In other words, there does not seem to be any reason to suspect that we have reached, or are about to reach, the fundamental limits of our ability to find rules governing nature’s behavior.

A more promising place to search for a fundamental incompleteness in the materialist program would be at the “boundaries” of the universe. Recall that a complete mechanistic picture involves not only patterns we discern in nature, but some boundary condition which serves to choose a particular realization of all the possible configurations consistent with such a pattern. In the realm of science, this is an issue of unique concern to cosmology. In physics, chemistry, or biology, we imagine that we can isolate systems in whatever initial state we like (within reason), and observe how the rules governing the system play themselves out from that starting point. In cosmology, in contrast, we are faced with a unique universe, and must face the issue of its initial conditions. One could certainly imagine that something like a traditional religious conception of God could provide some insight into why the initial state was the particular one relevant to our universe.

In classical cosmology initial conditions are imposed at the Big Bang, a singular region in space-time out of which our universe was born. More carefully, if we take our current universe and run it back in time, we reach a point where the density and curvature of space-time become infinite, and our equations (gravity described by Einstein’s general relativity, and other fields described by the standard model of particle physics) cease to make sense. This initial moment must apparently be treated as a boundary to space-time. (A boundary in the past, not in any direction in space.) As we now recognize, the conditions near the Big Bang are by no means generic; the curvature of space (as opposed to that of space-time) was extremely close to zero, and widely separated parts of the universe were expanding at nearly identical rates. What made it this way? Do we need to accept the imposition of certain boundary conditions as an irreducible part of our worldview, or is there some way of arguing within a bigger picture that these conditions were somehow natural? Or do we simplify our description by invoking a God who brought the universe into existence in a certain state?

Nobody knows the answers with any certainty. The best we can do is to extrapolate from what we think we do know. In this context, modern cosmology does have something to teach us. In particular, we now know that the issue of boundary conditions is more complicated than it might appear at first. Indeed, we now understand that, despite appearances, the universe might not have a boundary at all. This could happen in one of two ways: either the Big Bang might actually be smooth and nonsingular, or it might represent a transitional phase in a universe which is actually eternal.

The first possibility, that the Big Bang is actually nonsingular, was popularized by the Hartle-Hawking “no boundary” proposal for the wave function of the universe[4]. Discussions of this proposal can be somewhat misleading, in that they frequently refer to the idea that the universe came into being out of nothing. This would be hard to understand, if true; what is this “nothing” that the universe purportedly came out of, and what caused it to come out? A much better way of putting the Hartle-Hawking idea into words would be to say that the apparent “sharp point” at the beginning of space-time is smoothed out into a featureless surface. The mechanism by which the smoothing purportedly happens involves technical details of the geometry of the space-time metric, and in all honesty the entire proposal is very far from being well-formulated. Nevertheless, the lesson of the Hartle-Hawking work is that we don’t necessarily have to think of the Big Bang as an “edge” at which space-time runs into a wall; it could be more like the North Pole, which is as far north as you can possibly go, without actually representing any sort of physical boundary of the globe. In other words, the universe could be finite (in time) and yet be unbounded.

The other way to avoid a boundary is more intuitive: simply imagine that the universe lasts forever. Like the Hartle-Hawking proposal, the idea of an eternal universe requires going beyond our current well-formulated theories of general relativity and particle physics. In the context of classical four-dimensional gravitation, it is well known that the conditions which we believe obtained in the very early universe must have originated from a singularity. Extensions of this picture, however, can in principle allow for smooth continuation through the veil of the Big Bang to an earlier phase of the universe. Within this scenario there are two possibilities: either what we see as the Big Bang was a unique event, about which the universe expands indefinitely in either direction in time; or it was one occurrence in an infinitely repeating cycle of expansions and recontractions. Both possibilities have been considered for a long time, but have received new attention thanks to recent work by Veneziano and collaborators (the “pre-Big-Bang” model[5]) and Steinhardt, Turok, and collaborators (the “cyclic universe” model[6]).

In either case, an attempt is made to circumvent traditional singularity theorems by introducing exotic matter fields, extra dimensions of space, and sometimes “branes” on which ordinary particles are confined. For example, in the model of a cyclic universe advocated by Steinhardt and Turok, our universe is a three-brane (three spatial dimensions, evolving in time, for a total of four space-time dimensions) embedded in a background five-dimensional space-time. Motion in the extra dimension, it is suggested, can help resolve the apparent Big-Bang singularity, allowing a contracting universe to bounce and begin expanding into a new phase, before eventually recollapsing and starting the cycle over again.

I don’t want to discuss details of either the pre-Big-Bang scenario or the cyclic universe; for one thing, the details are fuzzy at best and incoherent at worse. Neither picture is completely well-formulated at this time. But the state of the art in early-universe cosmology is not the point; the lesson here is that we are not forced to think of boundary conditions being imposed arbitrarily at the earliest times. In any of the scenarios mentioned here, the issue of initial conditions is dramatically altered from the classical Big-Bang scenario, since there is no edge to the universe at which boundary conditions need to be arbitrarily imposed. Thus, one cannot argue that we require the initial state of the universe to be specified by the conscious act of a deity, or that the universe came into existence as the result of a single creative act. This is by no means a proof that God does not exist; God could be responsible for the universe’s existence, whether it is boundaryless or not. But these theories demonstrate that a distinct creation event is not a necessary component of a complete description of the universe. Although we don’t know whether any of these models will turn out to be part of the final picture, their existence allows us to believe that a simple materialist formalism is sufficient to tell the whole story.

Being allowed to believe something, of course, is not the same as having good reasons for doing so. This brings us to the second possible way in which scientific reasoning could lead us to believe in God: if, upon constructing various models for the universe, we found that the God hypothesis accounted most economically for some of the features we found in observed phenomena. As noted, this kind of reasoning is a descendant of the well-known argument from design. A few centuries ago, for example, it would have been completely reasonable to observe the complexity and subtlety exhibited in the workings of biological creatures, and conclude that such intricacy could not possibly have arisen by chance, but must instead be attributed to the plan of a Creator. The advent of Darwin’s theory of evolution, featuring descent with modification and natural selection, provided a mechanism by which such apparently improbable configurations could have arisen via innumerable gradual changes.

Indeed, modern science has provided plausible explanations for the origin of all the complex phenomena we find in nature (given appropriate initial conditions, as we just discussed). Nevertheless, these explanations rely on the details of the laws of physics, as exemplified in general relativity and the standard model of particle physics. In particular, when we consider carefully the particular laws we have discovered, we find them to be specific realizations of more general possible structures. For example, in particle physics we have various kinds of particles (fermions, gauge bosons, a hypothetical Higgs boson), as well as specific symmetries among their interactions, and particular values for the parameters governing their behavior. Given that the universe is made out of fermions and bosons with particular kinds of interactions, to the best of our current knowledge we do not understand why we find the particular particles we do, or the particular symmetries, or the particular parameters, rather than some other arrangement. Is it conceivable that in the particular realization of particles and forces of our universe we can discern the fingerprints of a conscious deity, rather than simply a random selection among an infinite number of possibilities?

Well, yes, it is certainly conceivable. In fact, the argument has been made that the particles and interactions we observe are not chosen at all randomly; instead, they are precisely tuned so as to allow for the existence of human life (or at least, complex structures of the kind we consider to be necessary for intelligent life).

In order for this argument to have force, we must believe both that the physical laws are finely tuned to allow for life (i.e., that the complexity required for life to form is not a robust feature, and would generally be absent for different choices of particles and coupling constants), and that there is no simpler alternative explanation for this fine-tuning. I will argue that neither statement is warranted by our current understanding, although both are open questions; in either case, there is not a strong reason for invoking the existence of God.

Let’s turn first to the fine-tuning of our observed laws of nature. It is certainly true that the world we observe depends sensitively on the particular values of the constants of nature: for example, the strength of the electromagnetic and nuclear forces. If the strong nuclear force had a slightly different value, the balance which characterizes stable nuclei would be upset, and the periodic table of the elements would be dramatically altered[7]. We could imagine (so the argument goes) values for which hydrogen were the only stable element, or for which no carbon was formed in the life cycle of stars. In either case it would be difficult or impossible for life as we know it to exist.

But there are two serious holes in this argument, at least at our current level of expertise: we don’t really know what the universe would look like if the parameters of the standard model were different, nor do we know what are the necessary conditions for the formation of intelligent life. (Both of these claims are open to debate, and there are certainly scientists who disagree; but if nothing else these are the conservative positions.)

To appreciate the difficulty of reliably determining what the universe would be like if the constants of nature took on different values, let us imagine trying to figure out what our actual universe should look like, if we were handed the laws of subatomic physics but had no direct empirical knowledge of how particles assembled themselves into more complex structures. A fundamental obstacle arises immediately, since quantum chromodynamics (the theory of quarks and gluons, which gives rise to the strong nuclear force) is a strongly coupled theory, so that our most straightforward and trustworthy techniques (involving perturbation theory in some small parameter, such as the fine-structure constant of electromagnetism) are worthless. We would probably be able to conclude that quarks and gluons were bound into composite particles, and could even imagine figuring out that the lightest nearly stable examples were protons and neutrons (and their antiparticles). It would be very hard, without experimental input, to calculate reliably that protons were lighter than neutrons, but it might be possible. It would be essentially impossible to determine accurately the types of stable nuclei that protons and neutrons would be able to form. We would have no chance whatsoever of accurately predicting the actual abundance of heavy nuclei in the universe, as these are formed in stars and supernovae whose evolution we don’t really understand even with considerable observational input. Most embarrassingly, we would never have predicted that there was a significant excess of matter over antimatter, since the process by which this occurs remains a complete mystery (there are numerous plausible models, but none has become commonly accepted[8]). So we would predict a world in which there were almost no nuclei at all, the nucleons and antinucleons having annihilated long ago, leaving nothing but an inert gas of photons and neutrinos. In other words, a universe utterly inhospitable to the existence of intelligent life as we know it. Of course, perhaps life could nevertheless exist, of a sort radically different than we are familiar with. As skeptical as I am about the ability of physicists to accurately predict gross features of a universe in which the laws of nature are different, I am all the more skeptical of the ability or biologists (or anyone else) to describe the conditions under which intelligence may or may not arise. (Cellular automata, the simple discrete systems popularized by Wolfram and others[9], provide an excellent example of how extreme complexity can arise out of fundamentally very simple behaviors.) For this reason, it seems highly presumptuous for anyone to claim that the laws of nature we observe are somehow delicately adjusted to allow for the existence of life.

But in fact there is a better reason to be skeptical of the fine-tuning claim: the indisputable fact that there are many features of the laws of nature which don’t seem delicately adjusted at all, but seem completely irrelevant to the existence of life. In a cosmological context, the most obvious example is the sheer vastness of the universe; it would hardly seem necessary to make so many galaxies just so that life could arise on a single planet around a single star. But to me a more pointed observation is the existence of “generations” of elementary particles. All of the ordinary matter in the universe seems to be made out of two types of quarks (up and down) and two types of leptons (electrons and electron neutrinos), as well as the various force-carrying particles. But this pattern of quarks and leptons is repeated threefold: the up and down quarks are joined by four more types, just as the electron and its neutrino are joined by two electron-type particles and two more neutrinos. As far as life is concerned, these particles are completely superfluous. All of the processes we observe in the everyday workings of the universe would go on in essentially the same way if those particles didn’t exist. Why do the constituents of nature exhibit this pointless duplication, if the laws of nature were constructed with life in mind?

Beyond the fact that the constants of nature do not seem to be chosen by any intelligent agent, there remains the very real possibility that parameters we think of as distinct (for example, the parameters measuring the strength of the electromagnetic and nuclear forces) are actually calculable from a single underlying parameter. This speculative proposal is the goal of so-called grand unified theories, for which there is already some indirect evidence. In other words, it might turn out to be that the constants of nature really couldn’t have had any other values. I don’t think that, if we discovered this to be the case, it would count as evidence against the existence of God, only because I don’t think that our present understanding of these parameters counts as evidence in favor of God.

But perhaps the parameters are finely tuned; we might imagine that our understanding of physics, biology, and complexity some day will increase to a degree where we can say with confidence that alternative values for these parameters would not have allowed intelligent life to evolve. Even in that case, the existence of God is by no means the only mechanism for explaining this apparently unlikely state of affairs; a completely materialist scenario is provided by the well-known anthropic principle. Imagine that what we think of as the “constants of nature” are merely local phenomena, in the sense that there are other regions of the universe where they take on completely different values. This is a respectable possibility within our current conception of particle physics and cosmology. The idea that there are different, inaccessible regions of the universe is consistent with the theory of “eternal inflation,” in which space-time on large scales consists of innumerable distinct expanding universes, connected by regions of space driven to hyperexpansion by an incredibly high-energy field[10]. Within each of these separate regions, we can imagine that the matter fields settle into one of a large number of distinct metastable states, characterized by different values of all the various coupling constants. (Such a scenario is completely consistent with current ideas from string theory[11], although it is clearly at odds with the idea from the previous paragraph that all of the coupling constants might be uniquely calculable. The truth is that either scenario is possible, we just don’t know enough at this point to say with confidence which, if either, is on the right track.)

In a universe comprised of many distinct regions with different values of the coupling constants, it is tautologous that intelligent observers will only measure the values which obtain in those regions which are consistent with the existence of such observers. This is nothing more fancy than the reason why nobody is surprised that life arose on the surface of the Earth rather than the surface of the Sun, even though the surface area of the Sun is so much larger: the Earth is simply a much more hospitable environment. Therefore, even if we were to be confident that tiny alterations in the particles and couplings we observe in our universe would render life impossible, we would by no means need to invoke intelligent design as an explanation.

5. Conclusions

The question we have addressed is, “Thinking as good scientists and observing the world in which we live, is it more reasonable to conclude that a materialist or theist picture is most likely to ultimately provide a comprehensive description of the universe?” Although I don’t imagine I have changed many people’s minds, I do hope that my reasoning has been clear. We are looking for a complete, coherent, and simple understanding of reality. Given what we know about the universe, there seems to be no reason to invoke God as part of this description. In the various ways in which God might have been judged to be a helpful hypothesis–such as explaining the initial conditions for the universe, or the particular set of fields and couplings discovered by particle physics–there are alternative explanations which do not require anything outside a completely formal, materialist description. I am therefore led to conclude that adding God would just make things more complicated, and this hypothesis should be rejected by scientific standards. It’s a venerable conclusion, brought up to date by modern cosmology; but the dialogue between people who feel differently will undoubtedly last a good while longer.

See article for Notes and References.

How to Ask for Book Reviews (& Why You Should)

Here’s the link to this article.

March 9, 2023 by Guest Contributor 6 Comments

By Liz Alterman

You’ve written a book. Congratulations! Now for the next hurdle—gathering those all-important ratings and reviews.

When my novel, The Perfect Neighborhood, was released last July, I quickly learned how critical these are. Leading up to my launch, I reached out to a nearby library to see if they’d consider it for their book club. Before I could even offer to donate copies or attend the meeting, I was promptly told to call back when I had more than one hundred, four-star ratings. Ouch!

For many authors, myself included, knowing that people took the time to read your words feels like a gift in itself. Can you really ask them to take more time out of their busy lives to write and post a review? Yes, you can, and here’s why you must.

First, reviews and ratings serve as a form of social proof. The more you have—especially positive ones—the more likely readers are to give your book a try.

As Scott Blackburn, author of the southern crime thriller It Dies With You, pointed out, publishers are doing less and less promotional work in an increasingly crowded market, making book reviews crucial—especially for debut authors.

“Even now, I often find myself scrolling Goodreads and Amazon, looking for new material to read, and more times than not, the quality and quantity of a book’s reviews will guide my decision on what to buy,” said Blackburn. “Do those criteria mean a book will be a guaranteed hit? Absolutely not. That’s all subjective. Did those reviews help the authors behind those books? Most definitely.”

Second, while having plenty of reviews and ratings may encourage readers to take a chance on your book, there’s another reason they’re important.

“In order to qualify for certain promotions on Amazon and BookBub, you need to have 50 or 100 reviews on Amazon,” explained Andrea J. Stein, author of the novel Typecast, and a book publicist by profession. “Also, the more reviews you have, the more the algorithm will promote your book.”

So, How Do You Make the Ask?

For plenty of authors, asking readers for reviews and ratings can feel awkward, almost like fishing for compliments.

“Many authors struggle with this aspect of self-promotion because they feel rude or pushy when asking for reviews,” said Blackburn. “If this is the case for you, keep this in mind: in a world where a majority of shopping is done online, people encounter reviews and ratings on a daily basis, which means they understand why those things are so important.”

So how does Blackburn handle it? Approach these requests with kindness and professionalism, he advised.

“Simply let people know how much reviews help and how appreciative you are to get them,” he said. “This could be done in a blanket post on social media or in a casual conversation with a reader.”

His go-to script? “If you have time, I’d really appreciate a review.”

“If the person you ask isn’t comfortable with—or simply doesn’t know how—to write a book review, it’s good to remind them that clicking a star rating only takes seconds, and those can be just as helpful,” Blackburn added.

Stein offered her strategy. “Whenever someone tells me they loved my book, my immediate response is to ask if they could post a review on Amazon,” she said. “If it’s in response to an email, I’ll tell them that they can just use the same text they used in the email as their review.”

You can also ask that they paste that same text on various retailer and review sites to boost your book on multiple platforms.

Stein added that she’s never had anyone say anything but “yes,” and most often, they keep their word.

“When I send an ARC to a potential reviewer, I simply thank them for their interest and wish them ‘happy reading!’” she said. “I then follow up to confirm they’ve received the ARC and to ask if they know when they’ll be able to read/review the book. I always point out that reviews can be short. I don’t want people to feel they’re expected to write an essay.”

Blackburn offered additional strategies, such as creating a social media post like: “I’m sitting at 97 reviews. If you read my novel, I’d love for you to help me reach 100 reviews.”

“I’ve had success with similar posts,” he said. “At minimum, it’s a reminder to readers to leave a review, and more than that, people love to be a part of a milestone. I’ve even seen authors host giveaways when they hit review milestones.”

Author and humorist Julie Vick shared an innovative, quieter but just as effective strategy.

To spread the word about her book, Babies Don’t Make Small Talk (So Why Should I?): The Introvert’s Guide to Surviving Parenthood, Vick connected with stewards of Little Free Libraries (LFL) and also left her book in LFLs in her area. In each copy, she placed a sticker encouraging readers to leave a review. She shared the text she included:

“This book was donated to a Little Free Library for you to enjoy. If you enjoyed reading it, I would love it if you could leave a review on a retailer’s site or Goodreads (you don’t have to have bought a book there to leave a review).”

If friends or family haven’t had a chance to read your book yet, they can still give the work a boost by marking it “to-read” on Goodreads. How does it help? When someone checks that box, all of their Goodreads friends will see your book on their homepages, increasing its free exposure.

Courtesy Counts

Vick said that as she asked readers to rate her book, she was always conscious to “not bombard people with requests.”

Blackburn agreed there’s a line between being persistent and being pushy and said there’s no need to publicly seek reviews daily, but if you’ve recently launched a book or your reviews begin to slow, don’t be afraid to ask.

“I’ve also tried to just be a good literary citizen in terms of reviewing other authors’ books,” said Vick. “So when I read a book that I enjoy, I try to review it on one of the sites. This can often lead to reciprocal reviews from other authors you know without you having to ask.”

Blackburn echoed the importance of returning the favor. “If you’re asking for reviews,” he said, “make sure you’re leaving reviews for your fellow authors.”

If you’re not seeing those reviews and ratings pile up, don’t panic.

“It’s also important to keep in mind that less than 15% (often less than 10%) of people review or rate the books they read, so there’s no need to panic if you’ve sold 500 books and you’re nowhere near 100 reviews,” said Blackburn. That’s totally normal.”

While asking for ratings and reviews may feel uncomfortable, much like writing itself, once you’ve done it you’ll be glad you did. Chances are, they’ll help your book find more readers and, ultimately, isn’t that what writers want?

Liz Alterman is the author of the suspense novel, The Perfect Neighborhood. the young adult novel, He’ll Be Waiting, and the memoir, Sad Sacked. Liz lives in New Jersey with her husband and three sons. When she isn’t writing, Liz spends most days reading, microwaving the same cup of coffee, and looking up synonyms.

The Story of the Righteous Job and His Righteous God

Here’s the link to this article written by Bart Ehrman.

March 9, 2023

In my previous post I explained how the book of Job comprises both a folk-tale written in prose about a righteous man named Job (chs. 1-2; 42) and a set of dialogues written in poetry between Job, his so-called friends, and eventually God (chs. 3-42). These are two different compositions with two different authors living at two different times with two different understandings of why Job and people like him suffer.

To unpack these understandings, I begin with the folktale as discussed in my book God’s Problem (HarperOne, 2008).

******************************

The Folktale: The Suffering of Job as a Test of Faith

The action of the prose folktale alternates between scenes on earth and in heaven. It begins by indicating that Job lived in the land of Uz; usually this is located in Edom, to the southeast of Israel. Job, in other words, is not an Israelite. As a book of “wisdom,” this account is not concerned with specifically Israelite traditions: it is concerned with understanding the world in ways that should make sense to everyone living in it. In any event, Job is said to be “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1). We have already seen that in other books of wisdom, such as Proverbs, wealth and prosperity come to those who are righteous before God; here this dictum is borne out. Job is said to be enormously wealthy, with 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys, and very many servants. His piety is seen in his daily devotions to God: early every morning he makes a burnt offering to God for all his children, seven sons and three daughters, in case they have committed some sin.

The narrator then moves to a heavenly scene in which the “heavenly beings” (literally: the sons of God) appear before the Lord, “the Satan” among them. It is important to recognize that the Satan here is not the fallen angel who has been booted from heaven, the cosmic enemy of God. Here he is portrayed as one of God’s divine council members, a group of divinities who regularly report to God and, evidently, go about the world doing his will. Only at a later stage of Israelite religion (as we will see in chapter 7), does “Satan” become “the Devil,” God’s mortal enemy. The term “the Satan” here in Job does not appear to be a name so much as a description of his office: it literally means “the Adversary” (or the Accuser). But he is not an adversary to God: he is one of the heavenly beings who reports to God. He is the adversary who plays “devil’s advocate,” as it were, who challenges conventional wisdom in order to try to prove a point. In the present instance his challenge has to do with Job. The Lord brags to the Satan about Job’s blameless life and the Satan challenges God about it: Job is upright only because he is so richly blessed in exchange. If God were to take away what he has, the Satan insists, Job would “curse you to your face” (1:11). God doesn’t think so, and gives the Satan authority to take everything away from Job. In other words, this is to be a test of Job’s righteousness: can he have a disinterested piety, or does his pious relationship to God depend entirely on what he manages to get out of the deal?

The Satan attacks Job’s household. In one day, the oxen are stolen away, the sheep are burned up by fire from heaven, the camels are raided and carried off, all the servants are killed, and even the sons and daughters are mercilessly destroyed by a storm that levels their house. Job’s reaction? As God predicted, he does not utter curses for his misfortune: he goes into mourning:

Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (1:20)

The narrator assures us that in all this “Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (1:22). One might wonder what “wrongdoing” God could possibly do, if robbery, destruction of property, and murder is not wrong. But in this story, at least, for Job to preserve his piety means for him to continue trusting God, whatever God does to him.

The narrative then reverts to a heavenly scene of God and his divine council. The Satan appears before the Lord, who once again brags about his servant Job. The Satan replies that of course Job has not cursed God – he has not himself been afflicted with physical pain. But, he tells God, “stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse you to your face” (2:5). God allows the Satan to do so, with the proviso that he not take away Job’s life (in part, one might suppose, because it would be hard to evaluate Job’s reaction were he not alive to have one). The Satan then afflicts Job with “loathsome sores…from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (2:7). Job sits on a pile of ashes and scrapes his wounds with a potsherd. His wife urges on him the natural course, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” But Job refuses, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad”? (2:10). In all this Job does not sin against God.

Job’s three friends then come to him – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. And they do the only thing true friends can do in this kind of situation, they weep with him, mourn with him, and sit with him, not saying a word. What sufferers need is not advice, but a comforting human presence.

It is at this point that the poetic dialogues begin, in which the friends do not behave like friends, much less like comforters, insisting that Job has simply gotten what he has deserves. I will talk about these dialogues later, as they come from a different author from the prose narrative. The folktale is not resumed until the very conclusion of the book at the end of chapter 42. It is obvious that a bit of the folktale has been cut out in the process of combining it with the poetic dialogues: for when it resumes, God indicates that he is angry with the three friends for what they have said, in contrast to what Job has said. This cannot very well be a reference to what the friends and Job said in the poetic dialogues, because there it is the friends who defend God and Job who accuses him. And so a portion of the folktale must have been cut off when the poetic dialogues were added. What the friends said that offended God cannot be known.

But what is clear is that God rewards Job for passing the test: he has not cursed God. Job is told to make a sacrifice and prayer on behalf of his friends, and he does so. God then restores everything that had been lost to Job, and even more: 14,000 sheep, 6000 camels, 1000 yoke of oxen, and 1000 donkeys. And he gives him another seven sons and three daughters. Job lives out his days in peace and prosperity surrounded by children and grandchildren.

This is an intriguing understanding of why there is suffering — it comes as a test. It is not the view you find in the other part of Job, the forty chapters of poetic dialogue between Job and his “friends.” But what do you think of it as an evaluation for why people (even the Jobs of the world) suffer? I’ll explain what I think of it in the next post.

Writing Journal—Friday writing prompt

Your protagonist wakes in the dark, her body contorted and in pain. She can’t remember what happened, but as the fog lifts, she realizes she is in the trunk of a moving car. Write the scene, along with her eventual escape.

One Stop for Writers

Guidance & Tips

Write the scene of discovery (i.e., tell a story), or brainstorm and create a list of related ideas.

Here’s five story elements to consider:

Character
Setting
Plot
Conflict
Resolution

Never forget, writing is a process. The first draft is always a mess.

The first draft of anything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway

03/09/23 Biking & Listening

Biking is something else I both love and hate. It takes a lot of effort but does provide good exercise and most days over an hour to listen to a good book or podcast. I especially like having ridden.

Here’s my bike, a Rockhopper by Specialized. I purchased it November 2021 from Venture Out in Guntersville; Mike is top notch! So is the bike, and the ‘old’ man seat I salvaged from an old Walmart bike.

Here’s a link to today’s bike ride. This is my pistol ride.

Here’s a few photos taken along my route:

Here’s what I’m currently listening to: McNally’s Secret, by Lawrence Sanders

He was a tremendously talented writer.

Amazon abstract:

First in the series starring the sleuthing Palm Beach playboy from the #1 New York Times–bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author.
Inveterate playboy Archy McNally gets paid to make discreet inquiries for Palm Beach’s power elite. But keeping their dirty little secrets buried will take some fancy footwork in McNally’s latest case. A block of priceless 1918 US airmail stamps has gone missing from a high-society matron’s wall safe. Lady Cynthia Horowitz, now on her sixth husband, is a nasty piece of work who lives in a mansion that looks like Gone With the Wind’s Tara transplanted to southern Florida. McNally’s search takes him into a thickening maze of sex, lies, scandal, and blackmail. When passion erupts into murder and McNally must dig even deeper to uncover the truth, he unearths a shocking secret that could expose his own family’s skeletons.

Top reviews from the United States

Linda G. Shelnutt

5.0 out of 5 stars Cure Cultural Volcanics with Bubbling Champagne. Design Life To Suit Taste & Times.

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2006

Verified Purchase

This book didn’t merely capture my reading interest. It became a book of my heart…

In McNally’s SECRET, the pilot to this series, we’re informed that the pater McNally is not an “old-money” man. Okay. I get that and I like it. (That’s not the secret.)

Having reviewed 4 of the original 7 McNally books by Lawrence Sanders, I had accepted the face value (not realizing the facade) of the Palm Beach mansion and the genteel lifestyle of pater Prescott McNally, Yale graduate, leather-bound-Dickens-reading, attorney-at-law. Upon reading (in McNally’s Secret) the illuminating passages of Archy’s grandparent’s ways into money, I began to wonder what other Secrets this novel might expose.

Usually, if possible, I prefer to read a series in order, pilot first. I can’t explain why, but, in this case I’m glad I read 4 of the original 7 McNally’s prior to reading SECRET (though I believe this series can be satisfyingly read in any order).

The opening of this novel was classic, and felt to be the initiation of what Sanders was born and itching to write, beyond the sagas of his other fine works. The introductory remarks were exquisite in mapping the reasons for, “Can’t you ever be serious, Archy?” I’d love to quote that paragraph, but maybe I should allow you to read it with the book in hand. I will quote a few other passages, however, which might serve as appropriate appetizers to this banquet of a book.

Comparing himself to S. Holmes, Archy says:

“I can’t glance at a man and immediately know he’s left-handed, constipated, has a red-headed wife, and slices lox for a living. I do investigations a fact at a time. Eventually they add up – I hope. I’m very big on hope.”

Archy’s description of the start up of the Pelican Club were the best type of soul food. This is how and why such a club should be started (then survive through a near hit of Chapter 7). Of course you really should read the book to get the whole of that brief history, but here’s a prime paring:

“We were facing Chapter 7 when we had the great good fortune to hire the Pettibones, an African-American family who had been living in one of the gamier neighborhoods of West Palm Beach and wanted out.”

They “wanted out” and they deserved a chance where their skills could and would save not only themselves, but those who hired them. Isn’t that the type of win/win the world needs now?

I almost sobbed at the below passage, I felt such a deep surge of “right on” (definitely did a breath-catch hiccup and heart moan):

“… we formed a six-piece jazz combo (I played tenor kazoo), and we were delighted to perform, without fee, at public functions and nursing homes. A Palm Beach critic wrote of one of our recitals, `Words fail me.’ You couldn’t ask for a better review than that.”

Yep. This is a book of my heart. Words don’t often fail me in reviews; too much the contrary. But I’m getting better at refraining from using my critic hat with a steel-studded-bat accessory, which is what Archy was getting at.

Some might wonder why a person in my position, with my un-hidden agendas, would take so much time to write raves on a series by a deceased author. Mostly, I love Archy. But, possibly the live spirits of the dead are sometimes more able to be helpful than dead souls of the living? Keeping my tongue in cheek, I might add that freed spirits probably have better connections for helping an author into the right publishing contacts for a character series with ironic assonance with this one.

Moving quickly onward and upward, though not with wings attached yet…

In contrast to the other 4 I’ve read, I noticed that this Archy is less bubbly-buffoonish (though the buffoon is always endearing) and slightly more serious, sensitive, and quietly contemplative. I like both versions of Archy, though I prefer the slight edge of peaceful acquiescence in the pilot, and I can’t help but wonder, as I do with all series, how much reader feedback, and editor/agents’ interpretation of it, directed the progression of balance of certain appealing or potentially irritating qualities. I wonder how each series would have progressed if the feedback had been balanced and pure (as a species, we’re not there yet, but forward motion is perceptible), rather than inevitably polluted by the “life happens” part of the sometimes perverted, capricious tastes of us squeaky wheels, and the healthy ego needs of professionals in positions of swallow and sway.

I’m still trying to understand why honesty is the most appealing human quality to me, yet honest criticism does not speak to my heart, nor to my soul, not even to my head. Often, though, it does speak in perfect pitch to my funny bone. And, of course true Honesty (with the capital “H”) leaps beyond speaking the “truth” as one happens to “see” it on a good or bad day. Cultural honesty, of the type dramatized by Stephen King, Lawrence Sanders, Tamar Myers, Barbara Workinger, Joanne Pence, Sue Grafton, (and others) is what most often pushes me to stand up and cheer.

Somewhere.

One of the best spots I’ve found is on the edge of the clear cliff of ozone found in Amazon’s sacred forum of Customer Reviewers.

Of course the first lines in SECRET, the sipping of champagne from a belly button would snag the attention of even the most sexually skittish reader of the nose-raised, neck-cricked, personality persuasion. But, truly and honestly, what sunk me with every hook were the few lines exposing why Archy could never be serious. I know I said I wouldn’t, but I have to quote this passage, beginning on page 1 chapter 1. For me, it’s one of the main selling points of the series:

“I had lived through dire warnings of nuclear catastrophe, global warming, ozone depletion, universal extinction via cholesterol, and the invasion of killer bees. After a while my juices stopped their panicky surge and I realized I was bored with all these screeched predictions of Armageddon due next Tuesday. It hadn’t happened yet, had it? The old world tottered along, and I was content to totter along with it.”

I’d bet my fortune (which is based on a skill of “make do”; there are no bananas in it) that the above passage is what captured a collection of readers so absolutely in a “right on” agreement that this series spanned the grave of the author and is still spewing pages and stretching shelves. And, of course, this attitude of “if you can’t lick `em; flick `em” which Archy aimed toward “kvetch-ers” as he terms them, continues from the above, with relish accumulating, throughout the book.

Archy is a rare sane person swimming along nicely within the insanity of a last-gasp-culture (which is “drowning in The Be Careful Sea” as I described and termed that syndrome in one of my sci fi manuscripts titled MORNING COMES).

To Jennifer, of the champagne sea in her belly button, Archy answered why he wasn’t an attorney:

“Because I was expelled from Yale Law for not being serious enough. During a concert by the New York Philharmonic I streaked across the stage, naked except for a Richard M. Nixon mask.”

That answer brought to mind the bright side of Howard Roark (from Ayn Rand’s FOUNTAINHEAD, see my review posted 10/14/05) who was arrogantly unconcerned about his and the Dean’s reasons for Roark’s being expelled from architectural school. You’d be right to wonder where I got that comparison, since Roark could never be accused of being anything but serious. Syncopated irony? Assonance?

You be the judge. Get the SECRET of the McNally collection.

As I relished the final chapters and pages of SECRET, I had a thought about the beauty, warmth, lovely literary melancholy, and subtly complex richness radiating from those concluding textual treasures:

In retrospect, this novel doesn’t feel like a planned pilot to a mystery series. It feels to be a singular novel, like but not like, the ones Sanders had written prior to it. What it feels like to me is that Lawrence hit upon a “soul speak” story which couldn’t halt the cultural conversation it had initiated, however serendipitous that initiation may have been.

Yes, I do recall that in some of my other reviews (“reveries” according to my Amazon Friend, L.E. Cantrell) I speculated on something which could seem contradictory to the above mentioned “thought.” I had wondered if Parker’s Senser series might have been somehow a spark for this McNally series. I continued to see references to Boston in this book (as in other McNally’s I’ve reviewed), which, of course, is the city for which Spenser did the Walkabout. So possibly SECRET was somewhat an antithetical homage to Spenser, possibly even a hat “doff” with a friendly, competitive “one-better” attempt, meant only to be a single novel rather than a never-die series.

Based on Agatha Christie’s official web site, Miss Marple was not originally intended to be another Poirot, and look what happened there (see my Listmania of the Miss Marple series).

To me, Archy appears to be a gatekeeper for pure and primal, hidden wishes and dreams. Living home comfortably, guiltlessly at 37, on the top floor of his parent’s mansion in Palm Beach; eating drool-food from a house chef; having established a club like The Pelican as a side atmosphere to partake in daily; working at a cushy, just challenging enough, engaging career for discreet inquiries … If an author’s (or reader’s) going to retire that would be da place (or at least an entertaining option).

It’ll be interesting to see if/how I’m able to bridge the gap from Lawrence Sanders’s Archy to Vincent Lardo’s. I’d love to know how that bridge was built and continues to be maintained.

Though a perfectly acceptable, gorgeous reprint in a mass market paperback was (probably still is) available on Amazon’s Super Saver Special, I felt lucky to find a vender on Amazon (a-bookworm2) holding a used G. P. Putnam’s Sons hardcover of this novel, a first printing of the 1992 copyright. What an honor it will be to have this version of the pilot of such an auspicious series from such a life-perceptive author, Lawrence Sanders. The glossy-black jacket provides a luscious background for the name and title printed in thick, gleaming, copper ink, with the artwork of an antique magnifying glass and fancy-brass scissors weighing down the million-dollar-valued, 1918 US Stamp of the Inverted Jenny.

This pilot is a rare find in a rare series.

Linda G. Shelnutt

Why Religious Experience Cannot Justify Religious Belief

Here’s the link to this article by David Kyle Johnson.

April 30, 2021

(2020)

[This article was originally published in Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 2020), pp. 26-46.]

As [Paul] was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground… (Act 9:3-4, NASB)

In Chapter 9 of their 1999 book, Phantoms in the Brain, entitled “God and the Limbic System,” neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee told the story of a patient named Paul—a Goodwill store assistant manager who has been blessed—or haunted—by intense religious experiences all his life. Ironically, Paul’s experiences mirror, almost exactly, those of his biblical namesake: the Apostle Paul. “I remember seeing a bright light before I fell on the ground and wondering where it came from.”[1] Like the Apostle, Paul’s experiences completely changed his life, and he goes on to write, at great length, about the profundities of religious truths—”an enormous manuscript … [that] set out his views on philosophy, mysticism and religion; the nature of the trinity; the iconography of the star of David; elaborate drawings depicting spiritual themes, strange mystical symbols, and maps.”[2] But unlike the Apostle’s, Paul’s brain can be directly observed by modern science—and we now know what causes his religious experiences: focal seizures in his temporal lobe. Each one coincides with a religious experience and produced in Paul what has come to be known as “temporal lobe personality.”

Similar experiences happen to individuals of every religion, yet they teach those individuals vastly different, even contradictory, things. The Apostle Paul’s experience, for example, taught him that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God, and (arguably) that he was identical to God himself.[3] Muhammad’s religious experiences, which inspired his writing of the Qur’an, taught him the exact opposite—that Jesus was “no more than a messenger” (Q al-Ma’idah 5:75), that “[i]t is not befitting to (the majesty of) God that He should beget a son” (Q Maryam 19:30-35), and that it would have been blasphemy for Jesus to have claimed to be God (Q al-Ma’idah 5:116-117). Of course, similar disparities among those who have religious experiences abound. A Buddhist’s religious experience will likely teach him that there is no God, no persons, and no afterlife, whereas a Christian’s will teach him that there is a God and if a person worships him properly, one can enter Heaven.

These facts seem to raise serious doubts about the ability of religious experiences to justify religious beliefs, especially for the modern academic theist who is aware of them. Why this is true, however, has not yet been clearly identified. To be sure, many have attempted to argue that these facts do not threaten the justificatory power of religious experience; but those say they do have yet to accurately articulate why.[4] It is the goal of this essay to do so. The author will argue that, at least for those aware of such facts, such as the modern academic theist, the diversity of religious experience and the existence of neurological explanations for religious experience entail that religious experience cannot justify religious belief. First, the author will define and identify the significance of religious experience. Then, the author will argue that the diversity of religious experience establishes its unreliability, rendering its justificatory value moot. Lastly, the author will argue that modern scientific explanations for religious experiences do the same by presenting an alternative and preferable natural explanation of those experiences. The author will do so utilizing two epistemic theories that are prized by theistic philosophers of religion: reliabilism and virtue epistemology.

Defining and Using Religious Experience

Before establishing that religious experience cannot justify religious belief, it is important to define religious experience and the role theists claim it plays in justifying their belief. Religious experiences can be defined as encounters with “the divine” that are ultimately caused by the divine—in which “the divine” is broadly defined to encompass as many religious notions as possible (e.g., the Christian God, the Hindu Brahman, and the Buddhist Void). Some are professed to be visual or auditory experiences not brought about by the ordinary senses; others are simply intellectual realizations (without accompanying experiences). Still others are reactions to worldly stimuli—perhaps an ordinary stimulus (e.g., seeing God in a sunset) or a seemingly miraculous stimulus (e.g., witnessing a faith-healing)—while others are what one might call mystical experiences, which William James said were ineffable (i.e., they cannot be accurately described).[5] Most are likely passive (one cannot will them to occur) and transitive (they only occur for a short period of time). And while most are also noetic (convey insights into deep truths), others may simply consist in what Jonathan Haidt called “uplift” (something one might feel while singing a hymn at church).[6] It is difficult to say more than that but, presumably, that does not matter—because, supposedly, when one has a religious experience, one will know it.[7]

Religious experience has played a significant role in justifying religious belief throughout the history of religion. In addition to the aforementioned role it played in the production of both Christian and Islamic texts, religious experiences appear in Scripture as well: Moses, via his burning bush experience, comes to believe that he should lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Mary and Joseph, via angelic announcement, learn of Jesus’ miraculous conception. The apostles, in Acts 2, after receiving the Holy Spirit, learn how to speak in different languages. Nonbiblical religious experiences include the conversion of C. S. Lewis and the visions of Bernadette Soubirous.[8] The political and historic significance of religious experience also cannot be forgotten. The Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity after a religious experience and tried to influence the entire empire to do likewise. In 2005, George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that a religious experience inspired him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.[9]

The role that religious experience plays in justifying religious belief is probably most clearly made by the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. In his 2000 book, Warranted Christian Belief, when articulating his “Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model,” Plantinga spoke of humans possessing a sixth sense, the sensus divinitatis, which is attuned to the divine. Through it, the Holy Spirit can instigate beliefs in selected believers through what amounts to a religious experience. As an example, Plantinga has spoken of looking upon a mountain vista and coming to believe that it, and the universe, was designed by God.[10] According to Plantinga, such beliefs are “properly basic.” They are justified (even though they are not based on evidence), not because the religious experience provides “evidence” for the belief in question (which it does not), but because it justifies theistic belief in the same way that seeing a tree can justify one’s belief that a tree exists.[11] In fact, most defenses of religious experience’s ability to justify religious belief rely on some kind of “sense of sight” analogy.[12]

The ability of religious experience to justify religious belief is important because many theists (although not all) admit that evidence for God’s existence, and other religious beliefs, can be found nowhere else.[13] The classic arguments for God’s existence, for example, fail. The justification provided by religious experience can also help theists who admit to having no good answer to the evidential problem of evil. Plantinga has even argued that beliefs instigated by religious experience are immune to evidential challenge.[14] But let the reader now consider two arguments that religious experience cannot justify religious belief for the modern academic theist—an inductive argument based on religious diversity and another derived from natural explanations for religious experience.

The Diversity of Religious Experience

The fact that devotees of different religions have religious experiences that lead them to contradictory conclusions seems to threaten the ability of religious experience to provide justification for religious belief. But exactly how this threat should be understood is not straightforward. David Silver articulates it in terms of the individual; the justification that X is true provided by one person’s religious experiences can be nullified by the trustworthy testimony of a friend who also had a religious experience but instead came to believe ~X.[15] But there are a few flaws with his account.

First, it is not clear that even trustworthy testimony can “transfer” the justification provided to someone who has a religious experience to someone else. William James, for example, would argue that the friend’s religious experience can only provide justification for the friend’s religious belief—not the original person’s.[16] So the original person may still have more reason to believe X than ~X and thus not be in the epistemic bind Silver describes. More importantly, Silver’s individualistic account does not seem to fully appreciate the threat posed by the realization that there are millions of epistemically virtuous, morally upstanding people, who belong to other religions and have religious experiences that teach lessons contrary to one another. Lastly, Silver’s argument does not show that religious experience fails to provide justification for religious belief. It just shows that the evidence initially provided by a religious experience can be counteracted by contrary evidence, leaving one in an epistemically neutral position. The problem that arises from the diversity of religious experience, however, seems to entail something more: that religious experience cannot provide justification for religious belief in the first place.

Theistic philosophers, like Plantinga, are fond of reliabilism—the notion that beliefs are justified if they are produced by “reliable processes” (i.e., processes that are trustworthy, that usually lead to true belief). This is why Plantinga, for example, thinks that his religious experiences justify his religious belief—because they were processes instigated by the Holy Spirit, and any such process must be truth-preserving. But the diversity of religious experience calls into question the reliability of religious experience itself.

To understand why, suppose there are only two religions in the world, with half the world’s population belonging to each, and that the religions are mutually exclusive (only one can be true). Suppose also that religious experiences, which tell the experiencer that their religion is true, are had by adherents of both. Since both religions cannot be true, the religious experiences of at least half the world’s population are leading them astray— producing false belief. Consequently, one must conclude that religious experience is not reliable; half of the time, it results in incorrect conclusions. In such a situation, one could not be justified by a religious experience to believe what it suggests is true; it is just as likely, as not, that it is leading the experiencer astray.

The problem, of course, is that the conditions in the real world are even less favorable. There are five major world religions, only one of which can be true, and there is at least one major split in each. So, without adjusting for the popularity of certain religions, religious experience produces wrong belief 90% of the time. And even taking popularity into account, and assuming the best case scenario in which the most adhered to religion (Christianity at 31%) is true, and the generous assumption that Christian religious experiences are uniform, religious experience still leads the experiencer astray two-thirds of the time. That hardly makes it a reliable truth-preserving process.[17] So, since the diversity of religious experience entails that religious experience is not a reliable truth-preserving process, and if it is not it cannot justify religious belief, the diversity of religious experience entails that religious experience cannot justify religious belief.

To respond, one cannot merely claim one’s religious experience is stronger than someone else’s; no one has access to how strong the religious experiences of others are. In fact, the others could simply in turn claim that theirs is stronger—and that leads right back to the same problem.

One might also try to divide religious experience into different kinds, and claim that one kind—one’s own kind—is reliable. Unfortunately, attempts to do so will either beg the question (one cannot claim to know so via one’s religious experience) or undermine the epistemic authority of the kind of religious experience being argued for. For example, if one provides additional evidence for the beliefs produced by a certain kind of religious experience (to show that kind of religious experience reliably leads to true beliefs), then it will be that evidence—not the religious experience—that is doing the justificatory work for the beliefs in question.

Erik Baldwin and Michael Thune, defenders of Silver’s thesis, point out that theists fond of Plantinga’s A/C model are likely to respond to threats posed to the reliability of religious experiences by observing, “If indeed one’s religious experience is reliable, then the belief is still justified.”[18] But, although that conditional is true, it does not help one defend religious experience’s ability to justify religious belief. As already shown, there is good reason to think the antecedent of this conditional is false—and if it is false, there is no good reason to think that religious experience can justify religious belief. Indeed, there is good reason to think that it cannot. Because religious experience leads the experiencer astray at least two-thirds of the time, one knows it is not an accurate determiner of religious truth.

The truth of this conditional does entail that, for any given process that justifies a belief, one does not need to know that process is trustworthy (what Plantinga would call “reliable”) in order for it to justify the belief in question. For example, even if one does not know that one’s faculty of sight is trustworthy—after all, one might be dreaming—if it is indeed trustworthy, then it does in fact reliably produce true belief and thus can justify one’s belief that the world is real (at least according to reliabilism). But if one’s faculty of sight is not in fact untrustworthy—suppose it regularly produces hallucinations—then it cannot justify one’s belief. What’s more, if one has good reason to think that it is untrustworthy (suppose one knows that it produces hallucinations two-thirds of the time), then it certainly cannot justify one’s belief! And in such a situation, pointing out “if it were reliably accurate, it would justify belief” does not change this fact, nor does it make one’s sight-based beliefs justified.

Perhaps one might continue the point further, suggesting: Even though the diversity of religious experience provides evidence that religious experience is untrustworthy, it still might be that one’s religious experience is reliably accurate—maybe one’s religious belief really is instigated by the Holy Spirit—and thus, contrary to the claim of this paper, it is at least possible that religious experience can justify religious belief despite the diversity of religious experience. But this seems patently false. To see why, consider another analogy with sight.

If one has good reason to think their faculty of sight is untrustworthy (perhaps one has good reason to believe one is living in a computer simulation), even if it turns out their sight is accurate (one is, in fact, not in a computer simulation), one’s doubt about the trustworthiness of one’s senses erases any justification that their faculty of sight can provide. In fact, if one has good reason to doubt their sight, one should not believe what it tells them, even if it is telling them the truth. In the same way, even if it turns out that one happens to belong to the one true religion and their religious beliefs were bestowed by God via a religious experience (and they are thus reliable), the diversity of religious experience still gives one good reason to doubt the reliability of the religious experience. Thus, it cannot justify one’s religious belief, and one should not believe what it purports to be true.

If one is unaware of the reasons to question the trustworthiness of religious experience (e.g., the diversity of religious experience) and it also happens that one has the kind of religious experience that is accurate (e.g., an experience caused by God)—in that very special circumstance, religious experience would likely justify religious belief. But this will not help the academic theist (or anyone reading this paper) for they cannot claim such ignorance. Thus, the paper’s thesis still stands.

The other solution to this problem is to look for overlap to thus defend “the unanimity thesis”: Yes, the doctrines supported by religious experience throughout the world’s religions are contradictory, but that is because people interpret their religious experiences through the lens of their culture and religious traditions. A Christian will see Jesus; a Hindu, Brahman. But the “core” of all religious experience is the same: it is an encounter with an indescribable reality (often called “the Real”) which gives rise to feelings of peace and blessedness that tends to make one less selfish. So, while religious experience may be untrustworthy as a means to true belief about specific religious doctrines, it does reliably produce accurate beliefs regarding these “core” elements. So, religious experience can justify those beliefs.

The idea that there is a common core of religious experience has been defended by Peter Byrne, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, C. D. Broad, and John Hick (just to name a few).[19] Ironically, however, their accounts of this core are largely incompatible. For example, Hick claims that “the Real” is indescribable and incomprehensible by human language and understanding, while Byrne says it can be described and understood by human concepts both negatively and relationally.[20] By itself, this fact seems to refute the unanimity thesis. But even setting such disagreements aside, another problem remains. To sensibly claim that such a core is common amongst those who have religious experiences, the phrases used to describe this supposed “core” are so amorphous and ambiguous that they are meaningless. “A distinction-less reality gave me a feeling of peace and made me less selfish.” This could mean so many different things that two people could have two completely different experiences, which share no core at all, yet describe them in exactly this way.

But even if one is willing to concede that all religious experiences have a common core and justify such beliefs, this paper’s thesis is only slightly weakened. It is still the case that religious experience cannot justify most of the religious beliefs that religious adherents claim they do—beliefs specific to their particular brand of religion. What’s more, the fullest version of the author’s thesis can still be defended because even those defending the unanimity thesis will not be able to avoid the objection of the next section: the problem of natural explanations for religious experience.

Natural Explanation for Religious Experience

Readers saw, in the introduction, a natural explanation for some religious experiences: focal seizures within the temporal lobe. This has actually helped identify the part of the brain responsible for the production of religious experiences. But epilepsy is not the only way one’s temporal lobe can become appropriately stimulated to produce religious experiences. Fasting, illness, meditation, stress, sleeplessness, drugs—even expectation and the right circumstances (e.g., going to church camp) will alter one’s temporal lobe and produce a religious experience. Michael Persinger has even invented a transcranial magnetic stimulator that, when applied to one’s temporal lobe, reportedly produced religious experiences in his test subjects. His device has come to be known as “The God helmet.”

To understand the argument of why potential natural explanations for religious experience reduce their justificatory power, let one consider the case of someone who had a religious experience while wearing the God helmet and subsequently came to believe in the existence of “the Real” based on that experience.[21] Would one say that belief was justified? Of course not. Why? Because in order for it to reliably convey accurate knowledge about the Real, and be genuine, the religious experience must ultimately be caused by the Real. Yet the idea that it was caused by Persinger’s God helmet is a much better explanation (most notably, it is more parsimonious since it does not invoke any extra entities or assumptions) and is, thus, the explanation that a rational person should prefer.

Notice that it will not do to suggest the subject coincidentally happened to have a religious experience that was caused by the Real while wearing the God helmet, and that the God helmet did not play a causal role in producing the religious experience. This is clearly just an unfalsifiable ad hoc excuse to save the religious experience’s justificatory power. Notice also that it will not do to suggest that the Real somehow used the God helmet to produce the religious experience, thus actually being its ultimate cause. Not only is this explanation also ad hoc, and not only is its explanatory power low—because it invokes the inexplicable and raises more questions than it answers—but it also multiplies entities unnecessarily by invoking extra outside influences when none are needed.[22] One need not invoke the Real to explain the experience; the God helmet alone will do. In addition, “the Real” explanation also contradicts known physical laws—like the causal closure of the physical, the conservation of energy, and the conservation of momentum—by having a nonphysical entity interact with the physical world. As Ted Schick, author of How To Think About Weird Things, would undoubtedly point out: The purely natural explanation should be preferred because it is more “adequate.” It has wider “scope” (because it explains more), it is “simpler” (because it requires fewer assumptions and entities), and is more “conservative” (because it does not conflict with established facts).[23] Given that one should conclude that the Real was not involved in the production of the experience, one should conclude that the religious experience was not genuine and thus does not justify the belief it produces.[24]

All this makes abundantly clear why the religious experiences of Paul, the Goodwill store assistant manager, cannot justify religious belief. Since one has good reason to think that religious experiences can be produced by temporal lobe seizures, and one knows that Paul has temporal lobe epilepsy, temporal lobe seizures are the best explanation for the religious experiences he has. Invoking God as an explanation of the seizures would, for the same reasons as above, be a less parsimonious, less wide scoping, and less conservative ad hoc excuse.

But what about religious experiences in other circumstances when one is not wearing the God helmet or does not have temporal lobe epilepsy, so one does not have direct awareness of what is going on inside the experiencer’s brain at the time of the experience? Should one still favor the natural explanation? Of course. Consider someone who has a religious experience of the Real while fasting, meditating, highly stressed, ill, on drugs, or depriving themselves of sleep. For example, when I attended Southern Nazarene University, a chapel speaker once said that, after not eating for two weeks, he saw Jesus walk through a wall and convey divine truths to him. Sure, one cannot directly observe what their brain was doing at the time of the experience, but one can still ask, “What is the best explanation for the cause of their experience?” Has their physical condition altered their brain and produced the experience, or has the Real reached down from the great beyond to teach them a lesson? The latter multiplies entities beyond necessity, raises more questions than it answers, invokes the inexplicable, and is not conservative. The natural explanation, on the other hand, is quite simple, coheres with how the brain works (and malfunctions), and offers a robust explanation. And it will not do well to suggest that God somehow “used” the altered physical state to produce the experience, for the same reason it will not do to suggest that God used Paul’s seizures, or the Real used the God helmet. Clearly the natural explanation should be preferred.

This is true even for the spontaneous religious experience that one has merely in a conducive environment, such as church camp or a church service. Although it is possible that the Real reached down from outside the physical realm to bestow knowledge of its existence, it is still more likely that one’s own expectations and environment overstimulated their temporal lobe or otherwise influenced their brain to cause the experience.[25] The latter explanation should be preferred, and as such, the religious experience in question cannot justify the belief it produces.

Of course, one cannot prove that the religious explanation is false, but that something cannot be proven false is no reason to think it is true. That would be an appeal to ignorance. In the absence of proof, the best explanation should be preferred, and clearly the natural explanation will always be the best since it will always be simpler, have wider scope, and be more conservative. If a religious experience is produced by purely natural means, it is not a genuine religious experience and cannot justify religious belief. So, in short, since the academic theist can likely never be justified in believing that a religious experience is genuine, religious experience can likely never justify their religious belief.

To reinforce this line of reasoning, consider phlogiston—a substance that was once thought to account for heat by flowing in and out of objects as they became hotter and cooler. Once it was discovered that heat is merely a result of the movement of molecules, it became irrational to believe in phlogiston. One could invoke phlogiston to explain the movement of the molecules, but doing so is less simple, less explanatory, not conservative, and the movement of the molecules can be accounted for without it. If one can explain something with less, one should. Likewise, since one can explain religious experiences with less, one should.

Understanding this argument reveals why the most famous attempts to circumvent the problem of natural explanation for religious experience are insufficient. For example, Robert Ellwood argues that identifying the neural correlate of a religious experience cannot establish it is illusory; if it did, then identifying the parts of the brain responsible for visual sensations would force one to conclude that everything one sees is illusory.[26] But the argument that has been presented by this paper does not merely identify a neural correlate of a religious experience. It also identifies the cause of the experience as something else besides what must cause it in order for the experience to be genuine—a seizure, drugs, or the environment. Yes, the realization that visual sensations are correlated with activity in the visual cortex does not give one reason to think that they are illusions; but that is because this realization does not give one reason to think that visual sensations are not ultimately caused by the objects they are reported to be of. If one found out, however, that the most likely ultimate explanation of a visual sensation was something besides the objects one was apparently perceiving—for example, suppose one realized that the best explanation for why one was seeing pink elephants was the work of alcohol on one’s visual cortex—then one should conclude that their visual sensation was illusory. In that case, one would not be justified in believing in the existence of what one’s visual sensations were suggesting was there (in this case, pink elephants). Potential natural explanations for religious experiences provide a better explanation for religious experience that is not ultimately caused by the object that the experience is reportedly of. Since to be genuine (and to justify belief) a religious experience must be caused by the object that the experience is reportedly of, natural (neural) explanations make religious experiences incapable of justifying that belief.

C. D. Broad argues that the fact that altered physical states correlate with religious experiences does not mean they are illusory because:

[If] there is an aspect of the world which remains altogether outside the ken of ordinary persons…. It seems very likely that some degree of mental and physical abnormality would be a necessary condition for getting sufficiently loosened from the objects of ordinary sense perception to enter into cognitive contact with this aspect of reality. Therefore, the fact that those persons who claim this peculiar kind of cognition generally exhibit certain mental and physical abnormalities is rather what might be anticipated if their claims were true. One might need to be slightly “cracked” in order to have some peep-holes into the super sensible world.[27]

There are a few problems with this argument, however. First, as Jeff Jordon argues, it seems quite odd to suggest that there are necessary conditions for having a religious experience.[28] Divine presence is a divine prerogative. But in addition, as a response to the argument presented, Broad’s critique is insufficient. While it is possible that temporal lobe seizures open up a cognitive gateway to the great beyond, that explanation is not more adequate than the purely natural one for all the reasons cited above: it is a less simple, nonconservative explanation with narrow scope.

But what if there is not an immediately available natural explanation? What if there was no fasting, meditating, or anything else that one can think of which could alter the brain in the right way? Can one conclude, in such a situation, that one had a genuine religious experience? No. The fact that one cannot think of a natural explanation is not reason to think that there is not one; again, that would be an appeal to ignorance. It is more likely that one’s inability to think of a natural explanation is due to one’s ignorance than it is to there being no natural explanation. This is akin to reasoning made by medical doctors when they cannot diagnose a disease. Their inability to come up with a natural explanation is not good reason to appeal to divine wrath or demonic possession; it is much more likely that the natural explanation is just hidden because of their lack of knowledge. Besides, something like undiagnosed temporal lobe seizures will always be a better (simpler, wider scoping, more conservative) hypothesis than a supernatural one.

But what if one does not know that religious experiences have potential natural explanations? What if one is ignorant of the developments of neuroscience? Can one be justified in believing their religious experience has a supernatural origin then? Perhaps, but this is not going to help the modern academic theist justify their religious belief via religious experience. First, the author doubts many actually are ignorant of such things. Second, even if they are, this does not allow them to justify their religious belief in this way. Why? The answer lies in an epistemic theory often defended by theists: virtue epistemology. To see why, return once again to the disease analogy.

Suppose that an academic theist has somehow remained ignorant of the germ theory of disease. He then contracts the flu but does not understand why, and does not even know that there are natural explanations for such illnesses. Can he justifiably believe that the infection is caused by a demon? No, for even though he does not know there are natural explanations, he should. By remaining ignorant of the germ theory of disease, he has neglected his epistemic duty. He is epistemically blameworthy and, as a result, his ability to be justified in this belief is nonexistent.

In the same way, an academic theist who has remained ignorant of the natural explanations for religious experiences cannot hide behind this ignorance. He should be aware of such things; at the least, it is his duty to learn about things directly relevant to his theistic belief—and this is obviously one of them. He has neglected his epistemic duty. He is thus epistemically blameworthy, and his ability to be justified in this belief is nonexistent.

Interestingly, however, religious experience might have been able to justify religious belief in earlier times. If natural explanations are not completely available (e.g., undiscovered), one cannot be expected to know about them and, thus, be derelict in one’s epistemic duty. The Apostle Paul, for example, could have been justified in thinking that disease was caused by demons and that his religious experience on the road to Damascus was one of supernatural origin. But if he were alive today, he could not—for he should know the germ theory of disease and that his conversion experience mirrors exactly the symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy.

So perhaps the Apostle Paul could have been justified, by his religious experience, in believing that Jesus was the Messiah. He did not know about the better natural explanations for his experience, nor could he have been expected to. But an academic theist cannot be so justified, either by their own religious experience (they should be aware of the better natural explanations) or by relying on Paul’s (for one knows it is much more likely that Paul was a temporal lobe epileptic). And the same holds for all religious experiences; they cannot, for the modern academic theist, justify religious belief.

Conclusion

Ramachandran, in his chapter about Paul the Goodwill store assistant manager, essentially dodges the obvious questions regarding the legitimacy of Paul’s religious experience: “But why do patients like Paul have religious experiences?….One [possibility] is that God really does visit these people. If that is true, so be it. Who are we to question God’s infinite wisdom? Unfortunately, this can be neither proved nor ruled out on empirical grounds.”[29] While he is right that it can neither be proved nor disproved that God visits Paul (because nothing in science can be proved or disproved), it would be an appeal to ignorance to suggest this is a reason to accept the hypothesis that God does. It also does not mean that evidence and scientific reasoning cannot be brought to bear on the question, nor does it mean that there is not good reason to reject this possibility. And clearly, since the neurological explanations for religious experience are more adequate, they should be preferred. To not accept them is unscientific and irrational, just as it would be to think that demons cause disease. As seen, one could lump God on as an additional causal mechanism, where God is the cause of the neurological state, but this is unnecessary. Such states can be, and are, accounted for completely by natural mechanisms—the effects of God helmets, seizures, drugs, fasting, illness, stress, and even the environment—on one’s brain. Lumping God onto the explanation makes it less simple, raises more questions than it answers, invokes the inexplicable, and conflicts with existing knowledge. Therefore, it should be avoided.

Ramachandran also wrote that natural explanations for religious experience have no bearing on whether or not God exists: “My goal as a scientist … is to discover how and why religious sentiments originate in the brain, but this has no bearing one way or the other on whether God exists or not.”[30] However, again, while it is true that neurological explanations for religious experience do not disprove God’s existence, it is clearly false that they have no bearing on it since natural explanations for religious experiences negate their ability to provide evidence for God’s existence. If one relies on religious experience to provide justification for one’s belief in God, as many theists do, clearly discovering natural explanations for religious experiences has great bearing on one’s justification for belief in God. In addition, if it can be effectively argued that belief in God (or religious belief in general) originally arose because of religious experience, but religious experience has a purely naturalistic cause, then significant doubt arises about God’s existence.

One might reply that such reasoning commits the genetic fallacy, but such a reply misunderstands that fallacy. The genetic fallacy entails that one cannot dismiss evidence for a theory by identifying the origin of that theory. For example, one cannot dismiss the hypothesis that the structure of Benzene is circular (“ring shaped”) based on the fact that the idea came to Kekule in a dream because the subsequent evidence that he was right is insurmountable. But the genetic fallacy does not mean that the origin story of a thing is irrelevant to whether or not that thing exists. One could, for example, provide good reason for not believing in El Chupacabra by pointing out that the myth started when Madelyne Tolentino confabulated a story after watching the movie “Species” in 1995.[31] Identifying the belief’s origin cannot be used to dismiss the subsequent “evidence” for El Chupacabra (there are other ways of doing that); but the fact that belief in El Chupacabra does not actually originate from an genuine sighting of a blood-sucking, goat-killing cryptocreature—but instead from a confabulated story—is good reason to think that there is no such thing. Likewise, without good evidence for God’s existence—something that many who rely on religious experience admit—the fact that belief in God does not originate in God, but instead in naturally caused religious experiences, would be good reason to think that there is no God.

Swinburne has defended the ability of religious experience to justify religious belief with the “principle of credulity”: “(in the absence of special considerations), if its seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present (and has some characteristic), then probably x is present (and has that characteristic).”[32] In other words, unless there is some reason to think otherwise, if a person has an experience which seems to be of x, then it is rational to believe that x exists. This paper has not argued that this principle is false. It has shown why (when x = God), there are indeed “special considerations.” The diversity of religious experience and the existence of natural explanations for religious experience entail that, when it comes to whether religious experiences are genuine, there is always some reason to think otherwise.[33]

See article for Notes and References.

What’s the Difference Between an Editor and a Book Coach?

Here’s the link to this article.

March 7, 2023 by LISA POISSO – Resident Writing Coach 5 Comments

If you’re all about Mark Zuckerberg’s famous credo “move fast and break things,” you may feel confident diving from writing into self-revision and then editing. But if you like to get the lay of the land before trying new things, or if you’d appreciate having an experienced guide to call on as you’re writing, a book coach could be just what you need.

A book coach shows you the ropes from start to finish. Book coaches have been described as consultants, mentors, teachers, and personal trainers for your writing.

Book Coaching Vs. Editing

Book coaching shares a lot in common with developmental and line editing, especially from experienced editors who provide customized approaches beyond critiques or edits. Generally speaking, book coaching is more ongoing and interactive than editing, but one-to-one comparisons don’t paint the entire picture.

Editing provides feedback and guidance once the writing is complete.
Coaching provides feedback and guidance as the writing progresses.

Editing happens in stages, one person at a time: the writer writes, then the editor edits, then the writer revises, then the editor reviews …
Coaching happens collaboratively as the project progresses, with regular, real-time check-ins.

Editing is primarily text-based, using editing and written feedback.
Coaching frequently occurs via Zoom and email as well as written feedback and editing.

Editing is generally considered a distinct, one-time service for hire.
Coaching is more like short-term consulting or a long-term mentorship.

Editing seeks to identify and course-correct issues in a manuscript.
Coaching seeks to prevent issues from creeping into the manuscript to begin with.

Editing guides writers to improve their work in progress.
Coaching guides writers to improve their work in progress and develop long-term mastery.

But just because book coaching covers a lot of ground, don’t look for a book coach who claims to do it all. A jack of all trades is master of none—the best book coaches specialize.

Book coaches who specialize—certain genres (upmarket and literary fiction, SFF, historical fiction), certain types of clients (debut writers, memoirists, women, experts in a professional field), or specific tasks like self-publishing or marketing—possess a deep understanding of their fields and can offer nuanced and tailored feedback.

Coaches who claim to do it all may lag behind in rapidly evolving areas such as self-publishing or marketing. They may not edit frequently enough to stay fluent in the minutiae of copy editing. Yet when coaching companies spread these tasks across multiple points of contact, the carefully nurtured collaborative spirit of the client–coach relationship is diluted.

What Book Coaches Do

Book coaches typically lean into one or two of the following broad areas.

Story coaches help you develop and write your story. They’ll help you deepen your concept and plot and cultivate richer characters and themes. They’ll teach you how to use story form and structure to support your story. They’ll help you outline your book, and they’ll nudge your output as you write to keep it on track. They’ll help you define your genre, readers, and comp titles. These coaches are personal alpha readers, editors, and storytelling gurus rolled into one.

Support coaches focus on motivation, accountability, and emotional support for the writing journey. These coaches are like personal trainers, keeping you moving and helping you maintain a healthy outlook during the notoriously roller coaster experience of writing a novel. They’ll help you develop and stick to a writing schedule and keep you accountable for turning in pages regularly. Most book coaching encompasses at least some elements of support by virtue of regular communication and one-on-one focus.

Writing coaches are more like teachers, mentors, and editors. Their feedback may include story issues but often focuses on how authors express themselves on the page. Writing coaches will steer you through tricky narrative choices like point of view and help you master narrative techniques like narrative distance and dialogue before you’ve baked problems into the entire manuscript.

Publishing coaches are like project managers for writers. You may hear them referred to as book shepherds or book sherpas, publishing guides or consultants, or book consultants. These coaches may personally provide self-publishing or marketing services such as cover design, ebook formatting, website design, and marketing plans, or they may steer you toward reputable providers.

What Book Coaches Don’t Do

As versatile as book coaches are, you’ll want to hire other specialists for some tasks.

Ghostwriting If you want someone else to write your book for you, you deserve a dedicated, experienced ghostwriter.
Book doctoring To have someone rebuild an unsuccessful story from the ground up, doing most of the heavy lifting themselves, hire a book doctor.
Editing Completing your manuscript under the eyes of a book coach won’t necessarily prepare your manuscript for querying or publication. Coaching is not a form of incremental book editing. Talk to your coach about the next steps for your book, and don’t be surprised if that includes editing.

Steer clear of book coaches who promise to get you an agent or publisher as part of their services. Legitimate professionals do not guarantee representation or publication for your book.

Book Coaching Benefits

Why would someone work with a book coach? To get the jump on things. Coaching accelerates your creative development as a novelist. Think of it as professional training or a start-up cost for your writing career.

The benefits you reap from coaching begin immediately and last long after this book is out the door. Your book gets intensive one-on-one development, and you finish with storytelling and writing skills you’ll use the rest of your writing career.

What To Look for In A Book Coach

When you’re ready to work with a book coach, identify your priorities. Do you want help with story development, writing technique, accountability and support, or publishing and marketing? You can have more than one of those things, but you probably can’t have them all from one person.

Check out coaching programs from bigger companies, but keep in mind that their standardized, one-size-fits-most methods may not work for you and your book. In programs that emphasize teaching and group feedback, you might not get as much one-on-one time with the coach. Some programs use proprietary software or methods to analyze your work and guide your revisions, which may not fit your writing or work style.

When coaches advertise themselves as certified or trained in a specific methodology, recognize that they’re referring to completion of a certificate program and not a professional certification. There are no professional boards or organizations that certify book coaches. Certificates indicate the coach has completed a paid training program with a company or trainer, not that they are certified by a professional or occupational board or organization.

How Much Does Coaching Cost?

Individual coaching sessions start around $60 an hour at the low end, climbing to a more typical $100 to $150 an hour. Rates for one-time consultations are often significantly higher, due to the prep time required.

Competitive coaching programs can cost $2,000 to $3,000 for several months of coaching. Bespoke packages or plans from independent coaches who provide frequent one-on-one face time or personally handle self-publishing or marketing tasks can approach $10,000.

Hiring a book coach is a smart move if you want to improve your writing and storytelling skills while developing and polishing your work in progress. With the help of a coach to keep you on track and offer support along the way, you’ll write more efficiently, effectively, and confidently, and you’ll optimize your book’s potential to connect with readers.

Tip: If you’re looking for a great coach or editor…check out our amazing
Resident Writing Coaches!
We also list some more under Editing & Formatting Services in this post.

Here are some other helpful posts:

Feedback and Editing: The Right Eyes at the Right Time
When Are You Ready for Professional Editing?
Best Practices for Working with an Independent Editor
“Perfect to Me”: How Self-Editing Can Take Your Novel to the Next Stage

LISA POISSO – Resident Writing Coach

Lisa Poisso specializes in working with new and emerging authors. As a classically trained dancer, her approach to coaching and editing is grounded in form and technique as the doorway to freedom of movement on the page. Writers have referred to her Plot Accelerator/Story Incubator coaching as an indispensable “pre-edit in a bottle.” Find Lisa (and her industrious team of #45mphcouchpotato retired greyhounds) at LisaPoisso.com, and hop over to her Linktree to get her newsletter, download a free Manuscript Prep guide, and more.

Suffering in the Two Books of Job. Two Books?

Here’s the link to this article by Bart Ehrman.

March 8, 2023

After I finished my short thread of posts about the problem of suffering a couple of weeks ago, I realized that it might be helpful for me to discuss one or two of the books of the Bible that deal with the issue head-on — in part because many people don’t read these books much, even if they know about them, and in part because many people who *do* read them don’t know how expert interpreters have explained them.

For no book is this more true that that gem in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Job. Or rather those two books, the two books of Job.

To talk about Job and what it is really about will require several posts. This is the first, an introduction to the single most important issue connected with the book that most people have never heard and that completely affects how the book is to be interpreted.

This is how I discuss it in my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer (HarperOne, 2008).

The Book of Job: An Overview

Most people who read Job do not realize that the book as it has come down to us today is the product of different authors, and that these different authors had different, and contradictory, understandings of why it is that people suffer. Most important, the way the story begins and ends – with the prose narrative of the righteous suffering of Job, whose patient endurance under duress is rewarded by God – stands at odds with the poetic dialogues that take up most of the book, in which Job is not patient but defiant, and in which God does not reward the one he has made to suffer but overpowers him and grinds him into submission. These are two different views of suffering, and to understand the book we have to understand its two different messages.^[i]

As it now stands, with the prose narrative and the poetic dialogues combined into one long account, the book can be summarized as follows: it begins with a prose description of Job, a very wealthy and pious man, the richest man in the eastern world. The action moves up to heaven, where God speaks with “the Satan” – the Hebrew word means “the adversary” – and commends Job to him. The Satan claims that Job is pious toward God only because of the rewards he gets for his piety. God allows the Satan then to take away all Job has: his possessions, his servants, and his children; then, in a second round of attacks, his own health. Job refuses to curse God for what has happened to him. Three friends come to visit him and comfort him; but it is cold comfort indeed. Throughout their speeches they tell Job that he is being punished for his sins (that is, they take the “classical” view of suffering, that sinners get what they deserve). Job continues to insist on his innocence and pleads with God to allow him to present his case before him. At the end of the dialogues with the friends (which take up most of the book), God does show up, and overwhelms Job with his greatness, forcefully reproving him for thinking that he, God, has anything to explain to Job, a mere mortal. Job repents of his desire to make his plea before God. In the epilogue, which reverts to prose narrative, God commends Job for his upright behavior, and condemns the friends for what they have said. He restores to Job all of his wealth, and more; he provides him with another batch of children, and Job lives out his life in prosperity, dying at a ripe old age.

Some of the basic discrepancies between the prose narrative with which the book begins and ends (just under three chapters) and the poetic dialogues (which take up nearly forty chapters) can be seen just from this brief summary. The two sources that have been spliced together to make the final product are written in different genres: a prose folktale and a set of poetic dialogues. The writing styles are different between these two genres. Closer analysis shows that the names for the divine being are different in the prose (where the name Yahweh is used) and the poetry (where the divinity is named El, Eloah, and Shaddai). Yet more striking, the portrayal of Job differs in the two parts of the book: in the prose he is a patient sufferer, in the poetry he is thoroughly defiant, and anything but patient. Correspondingly he is commended in the prose but rebuked in the poetry. Moreover, the prose folktale indicates that God deals with his people according to their merit, whereas that the entire point of the poetry is that he does not do so – and is not bound to do so. Finally, and most important, the view of why the innocent suffer differs between the two parts of the book: in the prose narrative, suffering comes as a test of faith; in the poetry, suffering remains a mystery that cannot be fathomed or explained.

To deal adequately with the book of Job, then, we need to look at the two parts of the book separately, and explore at greater length its two explanations for the suffering of the innocent.

[i]. As you might imagine, the literature on Job is vast. For introduction to some of the most important critical issues, see the discussions and bibliographies in Collins, Hebrew Bible, 505-17; Coogan, Old Testament, pp. 479-89; and James Crenshaw, “Job, Book of” in Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, vo. 3, pp. 858-68.

Writing Journal—Thursday writing prompt

Your wild and rebellious character has been forced to spend his summer with his elderly aunt and uncle on their farm. Seeking an escape from the laundry list of chores that fill each waking hour, he hides out in the locked-up barn the one place he’s forbidden to go. What he finds inside fills him with terror.

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