Encountering Mystery w/ Dr. Dale Allison
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- Опубліковано 8 сер 2023
- Today I’m speaking with Dr. Dale Allison, historian and author of many books, including The Resurrection of Jesus, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, and our subject today, Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age.
The subtitle of the book notwithstanding, the unusual experiences we discuss are not explicitly religious. They’re usually interpreted through a religious lens (often without any reflection), but almost all of them needn’t be, which is something we return to quite a bit. Flatly disputing the phenomenon is not the only option available to atheists.
We talk about paranormal and parapsychological phenomena (e.g., clairvoyance, levitation, visions of dead loved ones, etc.) as well as two major sources of skepticism towards things that fall into those categories. On the one hand, of course, there’s materialism, conservative naturalism, skepticism (as in, the skeptic community), etc. But Protestant Christianity, I was surprised to learn, has also been a skeptical force in history due to their drive to debunk Catholic miracle stories, or even just extraordinary events documented by the Catholic Church that explicitly or implicitly were used as evidence for Catholicism.
One thing I forgot to mention during the interview: In addition to Dr. Allison’s book, there are a couple podcasts that regularly discuss cases like the ones that came up today in greater depth. “Otherworld” and “Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World” come highly recommended from me.
Encountering Mystery www.amazon.com/Encountering-M...
Linktree linktr.ee/emersongreen
I am a traditional and orthodox Christian, I found the tone and reflective nature of this conversation deeply refreshing, having listened to many clashes, between apologists (both Catholic and Protestant) and skeptics, and clashes between different Christian apologists.
Dr. Allison is my favorite scholar. Awesome to see a discussion between you two!
I consider myself a skeptic and when people say they saw or heard a loved one that died, I don't think they are crazy. My issue is if they say that their dead loved one was really there in the same way as if I was there if I came over their house and sat in a chair in their living room. I'm fine if they say it seemed like the person was physically there. We don't need to reach for miracles when natural explanations are far more likely, just intrinsically. The explanation could be a miracle or a natural explanation, I just find, intrinsically, on the balance of probabilities, the natural explanation dwarfs the miracle one. We know hallucinations are real. We know grief hallucinations are surprisingly common.
Thanks for doing this, Emerson. I’m convinced that atheism is probably true, but I have been having doubts about my dismissiveness of religious experiences.
Hoping we all can be kind to each other and not assume all interlocutors are dishonest and delusional.
personally im a bit dismissive of religious experiences because i am just not seeing how a god would care about us specifically, what with the evolution and billions of years and all that
But I totally get the idea that there may be something very significant we're missing yknow? More so than the standard dismissals of 'they assume there's an agent'
This dude is the coolest.
This world, and the Academic world especially, needs more people like the dear Professor Allison
Missed this when you dropped it initially. Such a great interview, Emerson. Dr. Allison is the best.
Allison is a bit too open to some woo-ey stuff for my tastes, but he has such an infectious personality that it’s impossible for me to be mad about it.
Your profile and name are funny and clever.
@@beatleswithaz6246 Glad you enjoyed it! I can't take credit for the idea entirely. Someone in a chat once joked that "Hume is the MF Doom of philosophy--your favorite philosopher's favorite philosopher." I thought that was hilarious and I like Hume, so I made the picture
Here are the claims I see actually being made are:
1. We know very little so we should have some epistemic humility. True but that doesn't leave the door wide open to miracle claims. I would argue that we should only leave the door slightly open given that we know about flaws in human psychology and flaws in human perception.
2. People self censor their weird experiences because of social stigma. True.
3. Some skeptics are dogmatic just like the some of religious are. True.
4. Clairvoyance is real phenomenon. This is the claim I would love to know the arguments and evidence that convinced Dr Dale Allison of that. I understand clairvoyance to be the "ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception."
5. Recent accounts of miraculous events are more convincing than ones further back in time. I would agree with this but only if all other things being equal.
6. People can glow in rare instances. I find this extremely doubtful. I don't see how testimony alone should be enough to convince anyone of this.
7. Lots of testimonies can attest to certain specific miracles like people levitating. I guess this is the bottom line for me. I cannot be convinced by testimony alone to miraculous events attested to by people I don't know and whose credibility I cannot assess. I just can't imagine that anyone else should be convinced at this basis.
8. Some people are more prone to visions and dreams than others. True.
Ultimately I see none of the best arguments skeptics use against miracles claims have been addressed in the video and by Dr Dale Allison's explanation the book only pushes back against skeptics in a few instances and is not the purpose of the book.
If there are thin people, maybe I’m just a thick one😂
I don’t want to dogmatically deny these types of stories, or reflexively try to shoe horn then into my pre-existing world view. However, based on my life experiences, and predispositions it would take a lot more for me to become convinced of these types of claims.
Yeah, that makes sense. Dr. Allison said something on page 169 that seems relevant: "Carl Sagan, echoing others before him, famously said: 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.' But the word 'extraordinary' is not a fixed measure. It is rather relative to one's other beliefs. What is extraordinary for one may not be so for another, or at least much less so. Our sense of what can or cannot happen inevitably reflects what has or has not happened to us personally. This in part explains why I hold some beliefs Carl Sagan did not."
@@EmersonGreenso then - what is the most appropriate standard of evidence then? I agree with Allison’s position that what we find extraordinary or unbelievable is idiosyncratic, but I feel that there *should* be some kind of standard by which we try to get others on board with our propositions that we can find reasonable.
Great interview.
Very interesting discussion. I like Dale a lot.
the only times i've seen things that weren't there was in circumstances of bad visibility and I misinterpreted one real thing as another, the second being much more astounding or threatening than the first thing, which was mundane. these hallucinations would only last a few seconds until i could get a better look, but in the moment they seemed completely real and visually clear in the sense that i could not detect that my brain had added details to my vision that were not there.
Btw the contemporary term for clairvoyance is "remote viewing," and protocols to learn and practice it are in use in a variety of fields. There's lots of discussion about it here on YT!
I agree with the general idea that there are unexplained things and perhaps we will never explain them. I just find the examples poor, nightmares? So what… having feelings or intuitions that are sometimes true( you’ll forget when they aren’t)… a bunch of people seeing something. Forgoing the fact that group hallucinations are a thing there’s also the fact that once one person brings up a phenomena they saw everyone else will edit their own idea of what they saw. This is normally how it goes and everyone has experienced this lol. It’s normal to be fooled by our senses and misremember things and see things that aren’t there. That doesn’t mean anything serious to me honestly.
Given the studies and anecdotes showing that these experiences are fairly common, does Dr Allison view the Jesus appearances in the gospel as mundane?
Really interesting question
Not a scholar, but definitely a fan of scholarship and especially Dale's work. I think the difference between the anecdotes that Dale is talking about in the video and the gospel narrative appearances of Jesus is that there is attribution from gospel authors the 12 disciples all saw Jesus after his crucifixion and that hundreds of others who were still living or dead (1 Corinthians) saw him too.
I think you'd have to explain or reason why the gospels and apostolic epistles stick to the story and see if there are inconsistencies in that story in comparison with the earliest manuscripts of the Christian church. The large witness of Jesus around that specific time frame would, outside of the biblical explanation, require evidence that they were all either hallucinating or that they were just making it up.
Either way, it doesn't seem like a mundane pattern, but something that's odd and requires more investigation than what Dale and Emerson are discussing, at least in my opinion.
I like your question and I think it's something worth meditating on.
The thing that strikes me as a skeptic is the question of why these phenomena so stubbornly resist reliable verifications? Why is it that these prophetic dreams cannot be systematically written down to verify that they truly are prophetic? Why can the remote viewer not perform when controls are put into place? Why do people not glow where cameras are present? why does to UFO never crash in a place where pictures get taken and uploaded to social media (to reference another of your shows)?
As a skeptic I have a very straightforward answer to these questions, but the question is much more challenging for the believer and it becomes more challenging the more common the phenomenona are believed to be.
The Joseph of Cupertino story seems like a pretty good "gotcha" for non-Catholic Christian's historical resurrection arguments. Whatever criteria they're using should apply equally well to him, so why not be Catholic?
It doesn't necessarily follow that because Joseph was Catholic and experienced levitation that Catholicism is exclusively true.
Would really beg the question why God would choose to repeatedly levitate him otherwise, leading people to convert, if Catholicism is false.
@@josephtnied As discussed in the interview "God did it" is a facile way of looking at paranormal events. If God was trying to entice people to convert to Catholicism there are far better ways than randomly levitating some guy and converting the few people who saw him levitate.
It also doesn't follow that 'Joseph wasn't levitating because he is Catholic/because of his beliefs' means 'Catholicism is false'
@@IosefDzhugashvili I don't think you understand the point of my first comment, I wasn't saying that "he levitated therefore Catholicism is true." I'm saying that IF you claim your (non-Catholic) Christian belief is primarily based on the historical evidence of the resurrection, then you would be compelled to believe that Joseph's miracles also occurred for similar historical reasons (many witnesses, opposition agreeing the events took place, etc), and so it would be most reasonable for you to be Catholic.
Whatever arguments they would have against Joseph's levitation being a genuine miracle (it was an illusion, it was devil magic, it was aliens) could be thrown right back at the resurrection, demonstrating that person's bias in interpreting supernatural events.
@@josephtnied I'm saying genuine miracles can happen without God's direct intervention. The glowing people discussed in this episode for instance.
I have strong deja vu sometimes too.
Hmm what’s with the aggression atleast that I perceived regarding hallucinations. We all get them all the time… you need only look at the white gold dress/ blue black dress for surety that just like everyone else we all experience all sorts of weird brain quirks and that’s okay
In my experience it is more often theist that lack humility compared to athiests... In general, as a rule of thumb.
Mystery and spiritual experience seem to me entirely divorced from a theistic or polytheistic world view.
'Spirit' is a human symbol for the sum total of an individual existence, and all the ripples they leave in the world. No 'god' required. Visions of lost loved ones require no 'belief' or theistic thinking. This is just experiencing the power of our own minds and the influence of stories on our experience. Somehow seems perverse to blame a 'god' for them. Rather than take personal responsibility.
Experience is 'real' the stories told about experiences are somewhat more difficult to pin down. Particularly in light of interpretation.
When I was Christian and much younger than I am Now, I had one specific experience in which I believed at the time I had experienced Christ. At the time it was the most powerful experience I had ever had... Yet now, after many more, and much more powerful experiences, I understand I interpreted the experience as 'christ' at the time.
And I now understand that, to name and interpret the experience in that way, was to tarnish and degrade the experience. And recognise the corrupt influence of theism on my thinking as a youngster.