Pile of Resurrection Evidence - Young Men Shan't See Visions (feat. Shannon Q)
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- Опубліковано 10 чер 2024
- Two scholars (Dr. Calum Miller and Dr. Max Baker-Hytch) did an interview with Capturing Christianity's Cameron Bertuzzi on the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus.
In a series of once-in-a-while episodes, we'll look at the evidence presented, to see what kind of pile it should be placed in.
Just in time for Easter, today's episode looks at the psychology and science behind post-bereavement hallucination research and whether such a thing could explain the appearances of risen Jesus.
LOADS of Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (with Two Scholars)
• The Historical Evidenc...
Shannon Q
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Post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences: A critical overview of population and clinical studies
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
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Thanks for having me on! I love talking psychology (as you know)
I absolutely love that your avatar looks like Sarah Connor from Terminator. It makes your badass stand out more! 💙
Shannon, please make more tipsy commentary vids! FUDGE! ;)
@Greg Letter (non)existence of god has nothing to do with human behaviour.
@Greg Letter Morality based on fear of punishment or desire for reward is the most shallow level of morality possible (the level small children operate under, growing out of it by age 9--even adults who make the argument you are making do not operate under that superficial morality level). See Kohlberg. And beyond that, what horrible thing will a person not do in the name of their religion? What horrible thing can a person NOT do and find a loophole that still allows them into heaven with no punishment? Hell, the only "unforgiveable sin" in most flavors of Christianity is denying the holy spirit...NOT murder...NOT rape...NOT mass murder...NOT torture...etc. Moreover, if the only criteria of your morality is fear of punishment or fear of reward, then the moral views or caprice of the punisher or rewarder is where the "morality" is coming from, NOT the person fearing the punishment or seeking the reward. You can join any old cult and fear punishment and seek reward, but giving the poison koolaid to the children is hardly moral just because you fear the cult leaders or the beliefs they are feeding you.
@Greg Letter But you are assuming fear of punishment and/or seeking reward actually works to achieve moral behavior. It doesn't. It may not even achieve obedience if you avoid the punishment through deception, and steal the reward. (As I said previously, there are always loopholes in religious belief that allow any immoral behavior.) And beyond that, after age 9, virtually everyone's morality has evolved beyond Kohlberg's preconventional stage. Reward and punishment may still be factors in our decisions, but our moral sense is not based on them. We no longer think "that action is moral because I avoided punishment", or "that act is moral because I got a reward". There are plenty of people who PRETEND punishment/reward is the basis of morality, and then try to use it to get away with all kinds of immoral behaviors because that stage is far too shallow to work in a complex adult civilization. (Although I would agree that certain people have no empathy at all for other humans, and may largely operate under a punishment/reward framework. Those are the type of people who seem to think they can kill their whole family and run off with their new girlfriend and no one will notice. But even most of these people have some understanding of their role in a larger society, even if normal guilt or empathy are not factors in their moral decisions.)
I had a grief hallucination a week after my daughter died. I DID NOT think it was a hallucination. I was completely sober and would have swore it happened. I know now that it was a hallucination. Shannon Q nailed it. And they are very common.
Much love to you!
@@arpitsarkar5718 Thank you! ⚘
My condolences for your loss and my gratitude for your honesty in sharing this.
@@martifingers Thank you very much! ⚘
I am so sorry for your loss
When I was 7 or 8, I awoke to see my mother bathed in bright white light...just standing there in my room. She looked exactly as she did in a family picture. There was a profound feeling of peace, as if she were telling me everything was all right. As she faded away, and I felt good that she was ok, I began to realize something. My mom wasn't dead. She was sleeping in the next room. If she had been dead, I certainly would have thought this was real (and probably would have been more prone to having such a dream if she were dead).
I think the key word there is "I awoke"... as in, "I was still half asleep and saw some weird shit". Not that unexpected!
Waking dreams are cool. If you can catch yourself, you can synthetically manufacture your own reality. I do this sometimes in the morning, waking up very early and not letting myself quite fall asleep. Then, start picturing things vividly, with colors and sound in your mind. The combination of semiconciousness and awareness can be exile rating !! It one wakes suddenly during this, the experience IS like an hallucination.
@@onedaya_martian1238 I used to wake up suddenly and see spiders. I once "woke up" to seeing tiny black spiders with orange stripes crawling all over my bedroom wall, and multiplying far faster than reason could explain. I ran out of my room and down the hall, the spiders overwhelming me by the time I ran out to the front yard, screamed...which was a mistake--opening my mouth, I mean--because it allowed the spiders to crawl down my open throat...when I woke up again, in bed. No spiders. lol Man, I had some really bad dreams when I was a kid. (Once in high school I dreamed I got up, took a shower, got dressed, and drove to school. Then I woke up and had to do it all over again. How depressing.)
@@onedaya_martian1238 Right, but aren't all dreams that seem real, hallucinations. "Hallucinations are sensory experiences that appear real but are created by your mind." describes such a dream quite well.
@@nothanks6549 This overlaps with the other common neurological/psychological condition of *Delusions.* Often defined as an aberrant thought or belief which is not based in reality, yet is so firmly fixed in the subjects mind that no amount of evidence will dissuade them from their certainty that it is real. (Factors like intelligence & education can have a profound impact on how effective evidence & Reasoned Thought can have on some delusions, eg: conspiracy theories, while delusions within Religions seem to be excluded by special pleading.)
While an individual may perceive something like a perpetual distortion/hallucination that's being generated by their internal mind (as opposed to having an objective existence in reality), it often takes the secondary effect of Delusional Thoughts to make the hallucinatory event seem "real" to them.
~ ~ ~
During the dream state of REM, the area of our brain which analyses our reality (the Prefrontal Cortex) is suppressed, allowing us to accept the bizarre as commonplace within our dreams (nb: this is an oversimplification, with the workings of the brain being obviously far more abstruse than can be easily explained to an untrained layperson). There is some evidence that defects in the functionality of the PFC (& interrelated Cognitive Evaluation Networks, like the Rostrolateral/Orbitofrontal Cortex, etc.) are involved in neurological conditions like Schizophrenia, where Delusions play an important part in how a sufferer perceives/experiences their reality.
In 1989 I divorced my husband and never saw him again. I had lucid dreams of conversations with him, thought I saw him in crowds, and heard him call my name for years afterward. He wasn't dead, but I was bereaved. I was 29.
Thank you for sharing. The human experiences are so vast, we barely know ourselves, but through others, we can learn. How amazing that one can become so attached and imprinted by someone that their mind can be captivated by the memory and represent it so clearly in the present! Fascinating.
“Sure, naturalists can talk about hallucinations, but they can’t explain the empty tomb!”
We absolutely can explain it, though. Check this out: it’s just a story.
I have an invisible cat ! Prove me wrong !!
There is the omniscient author problem. "The women told no one." "Jesus all alone prayed like this."
Mark wrote in Greek. He penned a novel using the Jesus of Nazareth myth as story material. The original had a cliffhanger ending. The women told no one.
The authors of Matthew and Luke/Acts took his idea and improved it. Much like modern Sherlock stories are "improvements" on the original. They are different in many ways.
Only in a novel is there an omniscient author who knows what everyone is thinking and what everyone does all alone.
My basement is empty. Bhagfoot left it. (that's right, Bhagfoot, we must mock such silliness.)
@@George4943 It’s possible to spin the “they told no one” by saying, “Obviously, it means they told no one until later derderder”
But, yeah, the stories are written for spinnability.
@@NeverTalkToCops1 “You’re saying i can’t prove Bhagfoot left my basement. Then how do you explain my empty basement, smartypants? QED!”
After my wife passed away I would see something out of the corner of my eye or hear someone walking up the stairs the way she did but i know it was just my mind playing tricks on me and hopeful wishing
My father experienced the same thing after my mother passed.
Obviously very sorry to hear about your loss. Thank you for sharing this personal experience though. I think we can approach the gospels with a lot of empathy. They probably legitimately thought they saw Jesus and stories grew from there and these stories were eventually canonized.
It seems like a perfectly normal process; when you hear a noise in the house, and that part of your brain that analyzes that sort of thing goes, "it's your wife." And it's almost always right about it!
Until one day, it's not. You hear a sound, and that part of your brain says, "it's your wife." And that works for a moment before somewhere else in your brain screams, "SHE'S DEAD!" While part of you is still trying to figure out what that noise was, the rest is consumed again by feelings of loss and grief. It's no wonder that grief can cause depression, and even one's own death.
What helps many is to realize that even though your loved one is gone, those moments are the permanent changes that person has left behind on you. They are a sacred sign of the impact this person had on your life, and a reminder of how precious your time was together. Those recurring moments of grief are not a cursed torment, but instead a blessed reminder of the power of a person to leave behind a mark on others even after their death. They can be an inspiration and a refuge, rather than a stinging wound which never heals.
I'm sorry for your loss. 💔
I wrote my thesis on the epistemology of religious experience, and from my research I have found that human brains can make up a lot of experiences. Also interesting is how similar religious experiences are to alien abduction experiences. Geographic location and surrounding culture are a very accurate predictor of if and what kind of religious experiences and alien abduction experiences you will have.
When we brought my eldest son home from the hospital after he was born I saw my Nan, my wife’s Nan and another unknown man standing right in front of me in my lounge. All very real, all alive and well despite all being long dead. Then I fell asleep. So, it was part of a dream I was already having because I’d fallen asleep before being aware of it. The act of falling asleep was part of the dream. It was incredibly real, and 16 years on I still remember it vividly as if it really was a true visit by relatives.
Wow, what a crazy story. I'm sure that you had a great Nan and miss her very much. Cheers to great grandparents. 🍻
Its amazing what the mind can do and how vivid it can be. Glad you are on part of the spectrum that understands the phenomenon.
Paul possibly being bi-polar is one of the most interesting arguments I've ever heard.
Paul being bipolar, schizophrenic, depressive, obsessive-compulsive, or even catatonic or going completely I-don't-know-how-you'd-call-it insane from guilt might be just an infinitesimally small probability.
It's still INFINITELY more likely than Paul seeing an actual magic vision of a magic dead man, because the probability of that happening is a flat zero.
Hell, Paul being ALL of the above at the same time (or as professionals in the industry call it, _Completely Flat-Out Go-For-Broke Crazy-Coo-Coo Nuttier-Than-Squirrel-Poo Batshit Whackjob)_ is infinitely more probable than magic vision time.
I call it the Professional Sports Effect. When every game's score ends 0-0, all it takes is one point to send you into the goddamn stratosphere.
I would not say "possibly".
@@EdwardHowton
I'm bored so I decided to come here to play the smartass ok?
I know that you're trying to present a reductio ad absurdum but to claim that Paul having a mental problem would be "infinitely small" as a probability is way beyond reasonable, lol.
Again, I know that you're trying to present a reductio ad absurdum but to say that something is infinitely less likely than something infinitely unlikely is just not coherent lmao. How is something more impossible that something which is impossible? If we have an event A which is impossible and two events B and C which are unlikely, both B and C happening is way more unlikely than either B or C happening. But, A, B and C happening is just as unlikely as A happening.
Now let's get to the actual discussion, I disagree with how you presented this situation, I would never say something like "it's impossible that someone actually witnessed an angelical being/a manifestation of God...". Since we cannot know with absolute certainty anything, the possibility of souls existing or that there are transcendent magical beings able of creating universes or saving people by sacrificing themselves to themselves will always be non-zero. To claim otherwise would be pure dogmatism. Dogmatism is always self-defeating, so I will discourage anyone of arguing this way with a believer.
I simply would say something like:
"Anyone that spends their time researching History knows that most of the events of the Bible that we can check didn't happen, and even if those happened and the ones that we know that happened were completely different from the accounts presented.
Since the Bible doesn't mind to separate the parts that are historical from the parts that are not, and even some claims of the Bible are said by your apologists to be hyperbolic (the violence against the Caananites), clearly no biblical claims can be trusted by themselves.
Do you believe that the deity describe in your book would present such weak evidence for his existence at the risk of eternal punishment? You're seriously telling me that given all of this, it's way more likely that Paul actually witnessed Jesus than he had a hallucination? If it's not, how can you be so sure?
Are you sure that the case presented for your religion is better than others? Did you study the other religions? Salvation is an individual enterprise.
If billions of souls are at risk of eternal punishment, why does it all depend on believing a book that presents laughably weak cases of historicity? Why do gullible people that never question any of this get a free ticket to salvation?"
At this point they will dismiss all and I would simply say that I would reconsider it if they can present me a calendar of events for the Passover before the Crucifixion depicted on the four Gospels.
I told you I was bored.
@@didack1419 I completely agree with you. As someone who has studied a fair bit of measure theory in mathematics, I also want to say that an event having a probability assignment of 0 also does not imply the event cannot happen. If I tell you to pick a single real number between 0 and 1, you will indeed pick a number. What is the probability that you would have picked that number? The probability is 0, because a probability measure evaluated for a singleton set is 0. But you still picked the number, so it still is clearly possible to pick the number. In fact, the idea that probability 0 implies impossibility is only true for finite sample spaces.
I have had several experiences of hallucination in my life. They all brought me peace. They all were the result of grief. I didn't start a religion because of it.
Between the age of 8 and 10 I was convinced that my late brother would come and watch over us at night. I know, now, it was a combination of greif and pareidolia.
At 13 I saw, from the corner of my eye, my late grandma in her favorite chair.
At 16, in an extremely tired and emotionally vulnerable state, I saw my late grandpa sitting with my late grandma in their favorite spots on the couch.
You should start a religion. I hear it is very lucrative.
@@Bdfhvj I've been haunted by a phantom cat for decades.
Jesus rose from the dead. Simple as that.
@@PR-cq4zc That is some simple thinking.
Thankfully, God has made the gospel simple enough for a child to be saved. How about you?
You don't even have to be grieving to see people you love everywhere. Just go to a mall expecting a really good friend to show up in 5 minutes. As time ticks away any person walking by starts to resemble them until you actually can see that it is not them.
Can also add 30-40 could also be losing their older demographic parents
Yes my thought (and sadly my experience) also.
This also to me seems to be the reason for such wide open unabashed bigotry. The segregationist boomers are all dying, and their children and grandchildren are trying to get the money, especially with the churches and right wing media telling the boomers to disinherit the liberal and non-bigots in the family. It is a competition to be the biggest waste of skin to make the segregationist boomers proud.
Well, incident frequencies are tied to life stage, and what else is going on in their lives. Considering the very different social structure, the age ranges could be different.
Im 57 and still have both parents, my mother had both well into her 70s
@@thelyrebird1310 good! I am glad you had healthy parents. That still does not change what I said.
I'm so sick of Cameron from CC getting debunked like every single day for years and he just carries on like nothing is wrong. Ridiculous.
He caters for believers. They don’t know he’s debunked “every single day”.
@@pansepot1490 that's why I can't stand him. His believers aren't to blame. But he is absolutely to blame for being a dishonest scumbag. I wouldn't call him that if he hadn't been debunked and refuted to his face uncountable times.
@@bradwhelan4466 true. It's so much more than a belief system. It's his full time job.
I was very interested to see a Pinecreek video reviewing a conversation with Cameron and his brother - who is now straight up atheist and seems to feel relieved and happy by tossing out Christianity.
Paul didn't even claim to see a risen Jesus though, by his own account he fell blind and heard a voice that no one around him heard.
Jesus rose from the dead. Simple as that.
He couldn't even keep that much straight: in one version, he says that his companions saw a bright light but heard nothing, and in another, he says they saw nothing, but heard a voice. These are classic symptoms of schizophrenia.
@@PR-cq4zc LOL! Simpler, the entire episode was a made-up lie.
Wrong interpretation of these two accounts you have.
Hearing and understanding are sometimes used synonomously in the bible. They both mean the same thing.
@@PR-cq4zc well his smell rose , that's about it .
At my daughter's funeral I clearly heard birdsong with no bird. It was winter and the kind of bird and their song was impossible. Yet, I heard it, I did!
Now you make me cry.
My only hallucination was a few hours after my daughter birth.
She sleped in my arms and I was thinking of all the good things i hope she will experience and around me that dark room blurred into a sunlit meadow and bright blue sky!
My thoughts go out to you, I hope you are doing well
as long it was not flying trash can lids you're fine.
As long as it was not flying trash can lids (thrown by Julius Caesar as he crossed the Rubicon) you're fine
@Eastern fence Lizard around 1977?
@Eastern fence Lizard personal hunch - If you can trace it to that rough time period, the source of the skeleton imagery might have been the first mass-media representations of an army of skeletons, the 1977 film "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger".
I know the imagery existed before but it got a big push into the public consciousness with that film.
Shannon's careful analysis fits brilliantly into this series. Fair play to you both.
I love the laughter in Shannon Q's voice as she's comparing the symptoms of bipolar disorder to Paul's own words. Also how the two of you take the bible out of the realm of being supernatural, and therefore untouchable, and bring it back into the real world by making the people real.
It would also make sense that an apocalyptic preacher might attract disciples with psychological issues.
Jesus rose from the dead. Simple as that.
@@PR-cq4zc Proof it or shut up ya reli troll.
@@PR-cq4zc (chuckles quietly)
@@PR-cq4zc you don't have any evidence of that by chance, do you?
Shannon Q is the best, need more of her in your videos
16:00 Shannon Q literally kills it!!! Well done!
I remember when I was christian I used to think British accents made people sound smarter or more credible. Cameron is making a smart business decision to bring on British people frequently to more easily manipulate his christian audience.
You should hear my Liverpool (scouse) accent, no way would you continue to hold that view ! 😁
I just watched a video called “Cockney Star Trek.” It was hilarious! Imagine Michael Caine making these arguments. But I think you make a good observation.
As a British person, I can only give a hollow laugh. This bloke is not even particularly well-spoken. He comes across as a definite 2:2. Someone who received a middle grade degree.
I had "bereavement hallucinations" for a while after both my grandparents died within a 2 week period- (the hallications were nothing too dramatic; Their bedroom was next to mine, and I was used to hearing their muffled conversations, and the muffled sound of their tv through my bedroom wall. I kept hearing those muffled "conversations" late at night, for 2 or 3 months after their deaths). I was eleven years old when that happened- the implication that it only happens to senior citizens, is just false.
Thank you Shannon, the only person I had ppersonally known to experience post bereavement hallucination was my mother. She was 37 when my father died. As this occurred in the 1970's the reaction to her experiences was to prescribe valium.
Thank you Shannon. I hallucinate during my migraines and more people need more information about them to prevent judgement.
Hi Paul thanks for your work
Wonderful content. Plus, I am constantly in awe of your editing abilities with these videos. Flawless stuff, Paul. Bravo!
I had grief hallucinations after my best friend died. I saw her everywhere.
Thank you for sharing. There is so much of the human experience we are unaware of, until someone shares. Much appreciated.
So when are you going to formalize your Peter and Paul origin theory into a published journal for peer review?! Would love to see you take the next step with it because I'm fascinated by, and inclined to agree with it.
A little over a year ago, I was housesitting for my parents when I noticed my mittens were missing. I thought back to the last place I saw them, and recalled taking them off to open the front gate a few minutes prior.
So I searched the house, and the yard, and in front of the gate. But I couldn't find my mittens after like an hour, and was losing my damn mind.
I was certain, absolutely 100% certain I had them when I got to the house. I would have bet a FINGER over this.
It was only after I finished housesitting, when I went home and found my mittens laying on the floor of my room, that I realized I must have made the whole memory of taking them off to open the gate up out of nothing.
So that's why I don't believe in eyewitness testimony.
I've had similar experiences.
My mind once invented the memory in my young mind of visiting my uncle and his family when he’d died of cancer a year before I was born. Our minds and memories are not as bulletproof as we would like to think they are
And yet I picture the inside mitten missing the outside mitten, going out to find it and then the two of them, hand in hand, making their way home to wait for you. Kind of "Incredible Journey" for knitted goods.
Them disciples had been partaking of the burning bush, by the sound of it.
That's incredible
Moldy rye.
Shannon did a great job talking about hallucinations and danger of thinking you would know or can tell.
I have years of having hallucinations. I pay close attention to minor details as one way to tell if what I experience is congruent with reality.
This being said, I still hallucinate without realizing I am, while actively looking out for signs that I am
All our best, Bruce.
@@Paulogia thank you kindly
I hadn't thought of the reason why age could relate to post-berievement hallucinations. Thank you Shannon!
They brought poor apologetics in a Shannon Q fight, poor fools!
No they are well paid
Holy shit, I never thought that Paul the apostle possibly met the seven criteria for bipolar disorder via the mnemonic DIGFAST:
Distractibility, Irritability, Grandiosity, Flight of Ideas, Activity Increase, Sleep deficit, Talkativeness.
Mind. Blown. 💥
Ive always thought of him as being just a crazy obsessive, possibly schizophrenic - the blinding light and hearing voices.
Awesome. I've been waiting, patiently. Thanks.
That is an awesome video! Shannon's papers and stats were so helpful! And you've got the classic principle of showmanship down, Paulogia! You left me wanting more!
Very good conversation. Thanks for making it available so widely.
Always thought this series needed an episode 4 to round it off. 👍.
Can you put all 4/5 together in a playlist on your UA-cam Channel?.
Really appreciate the monumental effort required by you to put these together.
Awesome vid! Shannon and Paul are the best ❤️
Well, Shannon is.
My grandfather hallucinated when he had pneumonia. That's very common with old people. He very much enjoyed trout fishing in the kitchen.
Yes lads here we goooooo!
I love how well detailed and simply explained you guys make you content
The problem with many of these resurrection apologists is that they assume that something at least very close to what is documented in the New Testament actually happened. They can't accept that most of it could be a fabrication or heavy exaggeration.
Always great, keep it up. What a perfect theme for Easter
Fantastic commentary by Shannon. The comparison of the bipolar diagnostic criteria with verses from Paul's letters is powerful, it's going to stick with me for a while.
Yeah. You'd need to make sure that the quotes were from those letters sholars agreee are by Paul.
"Lies destroy faith." My mother brought be up as a Catholic, before she was excommunicated in 1964. Since then I had the faith common to those who go through life not questioning much. But in recent years I have heard lie, after lie, after lie spoken by the evangelical leaders. From that I came to understand that it is impossible to have faith in anything told by those who openly tell lies about almost everything. "We don't vote for no preachers." Was the last blow to my faith.
When my cat died, I often "felt his presence" around the house, where he normally would be. Not in any supernatural sense, but as in I just expected him to still be there because I wasn't used to him being dead yet. Expectations have a strong influence on perception.
I always find it funny when Paulogia just uploads a real video on April Fool's.
I'm also grateful, as most creators I follow don't and I end up with nothing I actually want to watch on this day lol. Thanks Paul!
Counter-programming 😊
Why are you guys making it SO hard to enjoy my visit to Church this easter Sunday without cognitive trauma? Oh, but that might bring on a hallucination of Jesus. Whew!
ha
Great stuff; Shannon informative as always
Saying there were too many individuals who claimed a sighting for them to have been hallucinations overlooks the habit people have of claiming/thinking they witnessed a much talked about event they didn't see first hand. All it really take is a good story and the human habit of centering ourselves when we repeat the tale.
For sure! I have a few “childhood memories” that I don’t think are real. After talking with other members of my family these things may have occurred but not to me or in my presence. The brain is fascinating!
So, back in August, after months of being cooped up due to the pandemic, and stress from working at home, I kind of had a breakdown of sorts (not my first), and when I woke the next day, it was in the middle of a semi-flashback to a rather emotional breakup from a couple decades ago. The flashback then lasted basically all week. It was mostly aural (auditory) and emotional, though I could physically "feel" things and "let" it manifest visually, if I let my guard down enough. It didn't completely suck me in; I knew where I was and when I was, but it was pretty traumatic, nonetheless. It was persistent and definitely not welcomed (they are called involuntary recurrent memories for a reason). Since then, my memories of this person are incredibly acute, bright, vidid, etc., and so are my emotions towards her from that place and time. I can recall moments so vividly that they can sometimes fool me for a moment into thinking I could just jump into the car, drive to where she lived then, and everything would be like it was. I colloquially think of this as her "haunting" me. Thing is, she's very much still alive. She lives two states away, is married, and has two kids. I, myself, am married and my kid is twenty now. My point is, brains are weird. No supernatural explanation is needed for any of this. I personally don't believe Jesus as a literary figure merits anything more than the simple explanation that people tell stories to each other (though widespread belief in the paranormal itself deserves much dissection, and of course, the history of the bad things people do with religion is of utmost importance), but anybody who thinks they can rule out any and all psychological phenomena as a means of explaining weird reports from two-thousand years ago is either completely lacking the personal experience and/or study to form a coherent opinion, or simply too defensive of their beliefs to allow for the possibility.
Woohoo paulogia's back and I'm loving the epically polite butt-kicking!
Shannon, you nailed it with the Paul bipolar hypothesis. I was diagnosed bipolar 1 later in life and I would have probably had no problem dismissing allegations like that. But once you experience how surreal bipolar and psychosis symptoms are, it is virtually impossible to seperate them from "spiritual" experiences if you have a supernatural inclination.
So one of the most influential smartest men of history was bipolar?
@@Justas399 They said Paul, not Plato.
@@siriusfun Billions study what Pau wrote. What did Plato write that people quote?
@@Justas399 Bipolar doesn't make one less intelligent or influential. Mainly, because you're not "stuck" in psychosis but cycle into it with sometimes long periods of lucidity. And a high intelligence works against the bipolar person because they may be very effective at reasoning themselves into their delusions. Couple that with the ego that often accompanies intelligence and it could be more difficult for others to help reason them out of the delusional beliefs.
There are many artists, writers and thinkers now and throughout history that have shown signs of mental illness and have had profound impact on many. Watch "A beautiful mind" the story of John Nash a Nobel prize winning schizophrenic.
@@B.S._Lewis Who in history has said Paul was bipolar? What historian has said this?
Great epi!
Good stuff guys. Thank you 👍
Thank you for making this video.
I suspect the reason why this kind of hallucination is also prevalent in the 30-39 age bracket may have something to do with parents dying. A lot of people lose their parents around that age and it is worth mentioning that as life expectancy rises, for many this is the first time they ever encounter death in a meaningful way. Before the modern age, very few reached adult age without having siblings dying, children dying, cousins dying and parents dying (without mentioning grandparents). Death was much more common a feature in one's early stages of life (and in the others, too).
I have read studies to the effect that this up to this point unknown phenomenon- of having one's first meaningful contact with death as an adult- has very important consequences: very often, these adult children will struggle greatly to handle their loss as they have never developed coping developments up to that point.
If we consider all this, it makes perfect sense that this age bracket would be very susceptible to grief hallucinations.
I suspect that in the future, we will see this bracket also including ages 40-49 and beyond as life expectancy grows and thus people lose their parents later in life.
15:30 on top of that, in that time hallucinations were seen as divinely inspired. Where now, with our current understanding of psychiatry someone _might_ realise they're hallucinating, and thus conclude that therefor they shouldn't put too much importance on it, it's very likely that if someone in that time realized they were hallucinating, that would be _more_ reason to take it seriously. Because they believed that's how gods communicate with you.
Hell even now a good chunk of callers of the atheist experience will say they were converted because they saw something they had no rational explanation for, or even by a dream _sent by god._ How the hell can they argue that people 2000 years ago would not accept a hallucination as a true communication from a god - if they realized they were hallucinating at all, that is - while people today, with all the knowledge we have about psychology, will still accept even just dreams as such...? After all, it's not as if the bible anywhere states that the supposed resurrected Jesus was physical...
Exactly !
My experience is that my wife has been bed-ridden for the last 9 months because of a massively serious sepsis event that nearly killed her. She can't even stand up enough to transfer from a bed to a wheelchair. I have to use a hoyer lift to move for between her bed and whatever chair she wants to use. When she poops, I have to hoyer her out of her chair and let her hang to poop on the floor and then clean it up after her. I've had to get out of bed several times during the night to help her with severe leg cramps. So, when I'm laying in bed and hear her cry out, I get up and go into her room and find her fast asleep. When I hear her voice, it is crystal clear, but it's all in my head. So to say that someone "hears" Gawd speaking to them, I just find that the weakest, most pathetic form of "evidence" for something.
You're a good husband thank you ♥️😘
God bless your wife ✌🏻
Good discussion
'Jesus has risen!'
'Wow... you saw him?'
'Er ... no... I heard it from a friend who heard it from his wife's sister's servant's son...'
Worse, people hear it over and over and over and over and over and over and over ... From parents and parents friends and those dam preachers everywhere and from friends, and if you are unlucky, in school, over and over, until unless it is part of the way you speak, those people don't relate to you positively.
My coworker told me a story about how he saw his grandfather sitting in a chair after he had passed. Now I know what my coworker experienced! Thanks Shannon
Love this stuff
The idea that hallucinating people know they're hallucinating could be an improper extrapolation of post-enlightenment attitudes of psychology sample groups, when historically and anthropologically many cultures have placed strong epistemic emphasis on dreams, trances, and such. Examples are present in the new testament (angels commanding people through dreams) so it makes sense that if one or more of these people dreamed of seeing jesus, they could interpret it as significant
After I got back from Iraq, there was a period of several years where I would see one of my dead Marines quite frequently. Sometimes more than once a day.
I personally believe the theory posited in the documentary "Ceasars Messiah" here on youtube, that Titus Flavius had Josephus reconstruct the jewish sacred texts and create the New Testament as a way to integrate the Jews more easily into their system of governance after the sacking of Jerusalem. It makes sense and explains logical solutions to many of the problems we have about authorship and issues about the history bible. If anyone hasn't seen it, they absolutely should.
@Eastern fence Lizard I know! I felt it answered the majority of questions we have about the actual origins of the gospels, the inconsistencies between historical jewish text and practices and the mandates we find in the new testament, as well as the dubious chronology of the text. It was well done.
Another common cause of hallucinations that they don't mention is a simple lack of sleep.
And food.
@@DutchJoan and air
and lack of food (if one is already slim, it my only takes a couple of days for starvation to cause hallucinations)
Thanks for this series. Im coming out at to my friends from church next week to try and explain why im not coming back and I needed a few things to verify that my position is well founded so if they launch an “intervention” I could honestly defend why I believe what I believe or more accurately don’t believe.
There's also the point that people tended to live much shorter lives back then due to the relative lack of medical care and harsher living conditions than many today.
"penultimate" - second to last
love your content
"... to see what kind of pile it should be placed in.". Lol! Well said, Paul! 😁
"I was getting answers, but not the ones I wanted, so I kept looking until I found the ones that suited my conclusions." -literally every theist ever
That was me. I hope it is not currently me.
@@Paulogia No, that isn't you. Your integrity is not in doubt. Congrats on another great video.
@@Paulogia Hey, no worries, Paul. Newly-minted apostate here. I was a devout Christian for 25 years. Now, in my early 30's, I'm finally starting to use my brain. Or at least trying to. ;)
@@Paulogia Check that information comports with reality ? Checks it makes testable predictions ? Definitely on the right tract (pun in tended) !!
@@hjelsethak Good on you! It's great, isn't it? It's taken me over 50 years, but it's been well worth it.
Ok so even IF, and its a big IF, there was an empty tomb, so what?
You still can't get to the "he rose from the dead"
And even if he did, you have to get to "Therefore God of our religion!" rather than "Necromancer!" or another option.
@@diamondflaw Necromancy is orders of magnitude more plausible. Put me down for that one.
@@Burtimus02 Naughty necrophiliac necromancers noodling the nutjob of Nazareth.
Yup. I can grant all the empty tombs they want. Plenty of mundane explanation for a tomb being empty. Resurrection is as good as humans from the future beamed the corpse on their starship.
Now that I think of it, that would make a good plot for a sci-fi movie. People from a super advanced civilization traveling back in time to start religions.
@@pansepot1490 I’d watch that!
So many assumptions made. Life expectancy of those times made individuals ancient at 40 (wealthy exception noted). Y'all are sharp "knives". Thank you!
Short life expectancy means that there’s high probability of dying young. Healthy people could easily arrived at 70 or thereabouts so a 40 yo would be considered past middle age, not “ancient”. What drives down life expectancy “at birth” is child mortality. Studies claim that in antiquity up to half the children died in the first year and another half didn’t make it to puberty. Those individuals who made it into adulthood had their chances of getting old greatly improved because they had survived the most dangerous period of their life.
I am soon in the 30-39 year group. :-) and I am looking forward to it. I am looking forward for my life. Right now I feel stalemate. :-D and that is fine, for now.
Hope everybody remember to enjoy the now, and remember to make sure for a better day tomorrow than we had today.
As someone who has been an atheist for over half a century, it kind of perplexes and amazes me when smart and savvy people (like Shannon and Paul) are 'dumbfounded' by disingenuous arguments, poisoning of the well and false assertions made my apologists. It is (imo) the only card they have. The vast majority of apologists know their scientific style arguments are losers. They arent 'making argument mistakes', they are purposely contorting the argument to make it seem plausible to those who already believe. For 'newer' atheists, I guess I can see how one can think these apologists are trying to engage in valid argument, are trying to get to the actual truth through discussion. Let me assure you that in the vast majority of cases, they arent talking to the atheist at all, but to the believers they are trying to hold on to, who are often inherently more susceptible to believing, less skeptical by nature. It may take decades to see this with the cynicism I do, but to think these christian talk show hosts are genuinely seeking the truth and trying to engage in actual intellectual debate is .......well.......naive.
Having Shannon one was great!
A friend of mine, lost his mother and baby child within weeks of each other, and soon after he saw the ghost of his mother holding the ghost of his baby. He was 29 at the time. So not old, who was grieving, saw a hallucination.
Also, this was far before people had understanding of the way brain states might manifest like we do today.
Shannon totally crushin' it
I love this line of argument from apologists. "A post-bereavement hallucination would be pretty unlikely given the circumstances, so it must have been a miracle". Uh... I'm not sure you've thought that through very well.
I kept saying “yes, thank you!” to Shannon’s comments. Hallucinations happen to people so commonly, most people aren’t even aware of it. And because it is a personal experience (one that is seen, felt, smelled, heard, tasted), we tend to believe it was NOT a hallucination. They usually start with, “I know this sounds crazy, but it ACTUALLY HAPPENED and it wasn’t a dream, I know this for a fact!”
Also, I am a huge fan of Paul having a mental illness, which had spurred him to work in the way that he did. He is an unusual fellow on his own, so viewing him through the lens of potential mental illness makes his actions make far more sense.
Yeah, the whole bipolar observation was mind-blowing to me. Trust you're well, Ms Lemon.
@@Paulogia It was so good to go through the diagnostic criteria with his writings!
I’m mentally well, physically similar. Hoping you could use me in another video sometime, I promise to record better audio this time haha
Do you have to animate all their bobbing when they talk, or is there a program that does it for you?
I want to either give you amazing praise for your dedication, or just regular praise for finding a program that makes your life easier.
:D
I was about 30 when I had my "vision". I'd already left religion but this was definitely the final nail in the coffin sort of event. 40+ years ago....wish it would happen again.....it was lovely.
Even if the initial hallucination only incorporates one sense (sight/ sound) the very common phenomenon of "false memory"* can easily fill in the other senses later without the person realizing.
*False Memory: All our memories are constantly being rebuilt as details are forgotten. Although the brain is very good at filling in gaps in our vision and memory sometimes it gets things wrong and over time the inaccuracies can build off each other. This is the reason witness testimony is so weak in court.
When these people talk about the whole "hallucination" "problem", I think about all the people today, despite being well into the "age of reason", SO MANY people that just make up shit that they think is true and what Gawd wants and how Gawd works and what he approves of and doesn't and all the shit that they make up out of whole cloth. And then realize that the people that actually wrote down these fairy tales lived in an age where making shit up was substantially more prevalent. Dr. Calum Miller and Dr. Max Baker-Hytch and trying to cast the writers of the gospels as if they lived today, with all the education and critical thinking that we enjoy, which is just ignorant and flat-out stupid. People, today, still claim to see dead relatives all the time, _still_ see Elvis, think they see actors and politicians (depending on your personal bias) all the time. People will disagree on conversations they had weeks, days, or even hours before. Why is it so hard to imagine that the people that wrote down these stories had been regurgitating these stories orally for so long that they actually believed them without a shred of actual real truth to them?
It really baffles me the hoops that these people go through to try to justify what any rational person would recognize and pathetic "evidence" for a claim, but they seem to think that all they have to do is imagine up some barely plausible excuse for some little snippet of the story and that magically makes the whole story 100% factual.
So hey Paul. One For Israel is the YT ad on this and the last 4-5 videos of yours I've watched. Any thoughts or exposes?
I missed the reason why we should merit Bible accounts of the empty tomb in the first place. This whole exchange is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Love your dusky voices
@17:50 - "it's dumbfounding to me why they don't even talk about Paul ..."
Why talk about one witness when they have 500 ... plus the disciples.
Oh, wait ...
How many people have had multiples dreams of meeting close one just to wake up it was just a dream? How probable is it to imagine those same people dreaming of people they love when they are grieving their death...
After my uncle died, my aunt talked about multiple occasions where she felt his presence, and he even talked to her. She had no prior mental health issues, but his sudden death hit her extremely hard. She is not at all religious, but still believes in some sort of afterlife, or at least that he watches over her. Heck, after the cat I grew up with died, I would see shadows reminding me of her.
So I don't see any reason to deny the possibility that something similar happened to Paul, especially since Jesus was an important figure in his life.
Aaaaand we're back
Not to long ago I was at home on my computer when I decided to make a coffee. But !! I just could not find my favorite coffee cup anywhere in the house. I retraced my steps through the house, bathroom, kitchen, garage, bedroom but nuthin. So giving up I went to my sec fav cup making a coffee. As I was sitting at my desk & TRIED to set my cup in it's usual place. I was shocked to see my fav cup just sitting there. But the really scary spooky part, it was full of hot coffee !!. I swear to GOD this really happened it put me off my meds for the rest of the day.
Look at that tomb what do you see?--uh nothing? ......exactly you see my friend right there is proof of our risen lord. Hallelujah!!-------um excuse me -I see nothing.-nothing is your evidence? Kind of what I thought
The hoops these fellas have to jump through in order to say that a few people having grief hallucinations or being otherwise sincerely mistaken is somehow less likely than a man coming back from the dead
I have auditory hallucinations due to insomnia (which is also affected by stress). I also experienced grief hallucinations (more so immediately after but iv had them since just far less frequently) when one of my cats passed away. They were visual & tactile, I would imagine seeing her but also there were many times I believed I could feel her laying on my legs in bed.
I can personally attest to having had a post bereavement hallucination, visual and auditory. I had not considered the possibility of that being the cause of claiming seeing a dead person resurrected - but it makes sense. A good possible, rational, natural explanation for a supernatural claim. Discourse elevated.
Have you got a playlist for this series?
I guess it could make sense that the hallucinations would be in multiple modalities at least initially- if it was a single modality people might not register or report these hallucinations or know whether they "qualify" as a "real" hallucination.
Maybe there mind it's more inclined to disregard an auditory hallucination as "just mishearing" or a visual one as mistaking a face in the crowd for someone else where it's possible to misattribute them, given the brain often latches onto answers and explanations for comfort, where both seeing AND hearing someone might be harder to write off or disregard with "I'm just tired" and may be more distressing and confusing to the person as a result, making them fear they are "losing their mind" and falling apart in addition to struggling with their grief.
It makes sense that Peter, in an era without modern psychological knowledge and services which took dreams as prophetic, may have latched on to how real the experience felt and the desperation for it to be true that Jesus was restored and victorious after the truly awful experience of witnessing Jesus's crucifixion and his real belief that Jesus was going to lead or save them (from the Romans?).