Good article! Can i ask what you think of pio? That 12 people saw high temps and he healed without scarring (which is nit possible after 50 yeafrs of injury) is really spooking me
As many people pointed out, you need some specific skills to evaluate miracle claims and come up with a specific, tailored debunking story, or to evaluate them and decide they are credible. I'm not in the habit of dunking on analytic philosophers, but I'm not confident that their skills are the best fit for such a task. So when Joe Schmid said he was convinced by miracle claims my reaction was not "oh, so they might be legit, if a smart guy like Joe thinks they are legit". I remember one of your livestreams, when someone called you and asked you whether you can look into some eucharistic miracle. In retrospective, that was very funny.
I watched Randi many times a long time ago, it was around the time of new atheism, and I came to similar conclusions.
Even so, I checked some of the miracle claims Joe mentioned over the past days and most of them were obvious bunk, not even remotely believable.
On a different note, I wonder why Joe's conversion even made me check this. It wasn't a fully rational decision, somehow his conversion affected me psychologically more than it should have. This is itself something I might have to investigate.
I also agree with your sentiment of not wasting our time on very dubious claims. I couldn't follow this rule of thumb this time, despite my experience with similar claims, and I wasted a lot of time that I could've used much more productively.
Yes, it's weird, isn't it? His conversion occupies much more of my "mental space" than it should. It's like knowing a very calibrated, rational and prudent businessman suddenly investing in the most scam-like looking NFTs, or paying a soothsayer to tell him future stock prices, and all of that because he was convinced by someone selling courses online.
I was following him for years, and I enjoyed his content a lot, despite disagreeing with his use of intuition-pumps in metaphysical arguments. I think many of us who followed him feel like he's not the same person any more. Imagine Lance Bush announcing his conversion to Islam, because of the perfect preservation of the Quran.
And imagine Lance Bush starts saying things like "if there is no Allah, what makes torturing babies for fun wrong??? Under atheism you have no grounds for that!"
Really good read. I especially liked your point at the beginning - "I don’t think miracle claims rise to the level of sufficient plausibility to be worthy of serious investigation or discussion by most people."
I've been thinking about that in connection with the Schmid conversion recently. There's an argument that Christians make which looks something like: "if we can convert an atheist/agnostic who has spent years investigating the truth of our religion, that's a sign of how strong our arguments are."
But I think it runs the other way: somebody who spends years investigating the truth of a religion probably already finds the religion plausible enough to justify the investigation. And it's by no means self-evident that a serious philosopher or thinker would have to regard any religion as plausible enough to warrant that degree of effort; or even that a philosopher would have to regard religion as an object of philosophy at all, alongside the primary objects like knowledge or ethics.
Of course, that risks entering into a kind of closed circle where you dismiss religion on insufficient grounds, and then don't consider the evidence when it's presented. But I think you're right in general that a lack of interest can be the result of prior experience or understanding, not merely of prejudice - with the question just being the strength or validity of that prior experience and understanding.
It’s tough, because I think I’m to the point now of saying there’s likely SOMETHING going on with the abduction and UAP question, but it doesn’t preclude an ultimately mundane but very interesting psychological explanation. So that particular area of inquiry I feel needs a fresh look, without big presumptions about actual space aliens. The overlap between some of what’s recounted from some abduction accounts and things like altered states under ayahuasca seem to imply some sort of trans-cultural phenomenon. So I don’t view the options as being “space aliens are real” and “people are bullshitting”. I think there’s probably a stranger story at root, that isn’t really well addressed by either believers and conspiracy theorists, or most skeptics. What that story IS I’m very hesitant to say, but I find that particular topic more difficult to completely set aside than say ghosts or telekinesis. Of course neither you nor anyone else is required to take it seriously. I think it just bothers me a little bit to talk about these things all in the same breath, when I see the likelihood of there being something genuinely interesting at root as varying quite heavily between them. But this could be just my own bias speaking.
well done, lad!
Good article! Can i ask what you think of pio? That 12 people saw high temps and he healed without scarring (which is nit possible after 50 yeafrs of injury) is really spooking me
As many people pointed out, you need some specific skills to evaluate miracle claims and come up with a specific, tailored debunking story, or to evaluate them and decide they are credible. I'm not in the habit of dunking on analytic philosophers, but I'm not confident that their skills are the best fit for such a task. So when Joe Schmid said he was convinced by miracle claims my reaction was not "oh, so they might be legit, if a smart guy like Joe thinks they are legit". I remember one of your livestreams, when someone called you and asked you whether you can look into some eucharistic miracle. In retrospective, that was very funny.
I watched Randi many times a long time ago, it was around the time of new atheism, and I came to similar conclusions.
Even so, I checked some of the miracle claims Joe mentioned over the past days and most of them were obvious bunk, not even remotely believable.
On a different note, I wonder why Joe's conversion even made me check this. It wasn't a fully rational decision, somehow his conversion affected me psychologically more than it should have. This is itself something I might have to investigate.
I also agree with your sentiment of not wasting our time on very dubious claims. I couldn't follow this rule of thumb this time, despite my experience with similar claims, and I wasted a lot of time that I could've used much more productively.
Yes, it's weird, isn't it? His conversion occupies much more of my "mental space" than it should. It's like knowing a very calibrated, rational and prudent businessman suddenly investing in the most scam-like looking NFTs, or paying a soothsayer to tell him future stock prices, and all of that because he was convinced by someone selling courses online.
I was following him for years, and I enjoyed his content a lot, despite disagreeing with his use of intuition-pumps in metaphysical arguments. I think many of us who followed him feel like he's not the same person any more. Imagine Lance Bush announcing his conversion to Islam, because of the perfect preservation of the Quran.
And imagine Lance Bush starts saying things like "if there is no Allah, what makes torturing babies for fun wrong??? Under atheism you have no grounds for that!"
Excellent post
Really good read. I especially liked your point at the beginning - "I don’t think miracle claims rise to the level of sufficient plausibility to be worthy of serious investigation or discussion by most people."
I've been thinking about that in connection with the Schmid conversion recently. There's an argument that Christians make which looks something like: "if we can convert an atheist/agnostic who has spent years investigating the truth of our religion, that's a sign of how strong our arguments are."
But I think it runs the other way: somebody who spends years investigating the truth of a religion probably already finds the religion plausible enough to justify the investigation. And it's by no means self-evident that a serious philosopher or thinker would have to regard any religion as plausible enough to warrant that degree of effort; or even that a philosopher would have to regard religion as an object of philosophy at all, alongside the primary objects like knowledge or ethics.
Of course, that risks entering into a kind of closed circle where you dismiss religion on insufficient grounds, and then don't consider the evidence when it's presented. But I think you're right in general that a lack of interest can be the result of prior experience or understanding, not merely of prejudice - with the question just being the strength or validity of that prior experience and understanding.
Fantastic piece, Lance.
You said you used to be a hardcore new atheist. Did your complete 180 from conspiracy theories lead you to new Atheism?
Or are the two not related?
Yes, they are very closely related. And this was right around the time New Atheism began to emerge.
It’s tough, because I think I’m to the point now of saying there’s likely SOMETHING going on with the abduction and UAP question, but it doesn’t preclude an ultimately mundane but very interesting psychological explanation. So that particular area of inquiry I feel needs a fresh look, without big presumptions about actual space aliens. The overlap between some of what’s recounted from some abduction accounts and things like altered states under ayahuasca seem to imply some sort of trans-cultural phenomenon. So I don’t view the options as being “space aliens are real” and “people are bullshitting”. I think there’s probably a stranger story at root, that isn’t really well addressed by either believers and conspiracy theorists, or most skeptics. What that story IS I’m very hesitant to say, but I find that particular topic more difficult to completely set aside than say ghosts or telekinesis. Of course neither you nor anyone else is required to take it seriously. I think it just bothers me a little bit to talk about these things all in the same breath, when I see the likelihood of there being something genuinely interesting at root as varying quite heavily between them. But this could be just my own bias speaking.
It’s a rehash. There were skeptics handling this stuff years ago. People have short memories.