Stephen, the problem here is that Jesus wasn’t a ‘divine savior’ until after he was dead. Why did his people believe in him so much that they had visions of him resurrected? This is Bart’s POV, as you know. How do you explain that? Why him, and not so many other messianic pretenders?
Yes, miracles were attributed to many others as well–why? Because IN THEIR LIFETIMES, they developed that reputation. And it grew after their deaths.
So if prior to his death, Jesus was never believed to have done anything but tell stories and coin aphorisms, he would be the exception, not the rule. There were many many ‘wonder rabbis’ and many pagan miracle workers as well. We don’t have to believe any of them could do anything supernatural to accept that such reputations sprang into being while the people who inspired them were still alive.
And again, it’s happened in the modern era. So I don’t see that you have much of a case here. If you can believe people were convinced a crucified man rose up and walked (when in fact his body may just have rotted on the cross and been thrown in a dung heap), why do you find it so hard to believe they thought he laid hands on somebody and that person said they felt better?
You’re the one making the extraordinary claim. That people would cling so hard to the memory of a man who died that way, when he was never believed in his lifetime to have done anything more than talk. If that’s the case, Jesus is truly the most remarkable man who ever lived.
Nothing all that extraordinary about people thinking you’ve got weird powers. You ever hear of Uri Geller? And geez, that John Edward guy had his own TV show. (Back before he was voted the greatest douche in the universe on South Park.)
Did people make up a reputation for Simon Magus after his death? He was no savior.
Everybody believed in the supernatural back then. Even educated pagans would be open-minded. And that kind of credulity is alive and well today. Because people want to believe. If not in God, then in ‘the paranormal’, which is probably worse.
So even from the most cynical Amazing Randi/Penn&Teller POV–I don’t see your point. I don’t see Bart’s either. I think it’s just reductionism run wild. Most serious scholars think Jesus had a rep in his lifetime. As he’s admitted more than once, Bart is the outlier here.
I fully agree many of the stories were first created after Jesus’ death. But they were based on a strong memory of him having done exorcisms and faith healings. How you explain that is up to you. But if you want to say he never even tried to do that, the burden of proof is on you.
(And Neuro, if you want to say the gospel stories prove Jesus could do all of these things for real, same deal.)
Of course Jesus didn’t know the concept of hypnosis – as you point out it was only described and recognized as such in the 19th centuary, by James Braid and prior to that Mesmerism. But there are hypnotic phenomena in everyday conscious expereince and there is power in the hyonotic effect (and in the placebo effect) – as you have pointed out in your mind-over-matter comments ealrier in the thread. Jesus I think knew this power and used it in a positve and good way, as evidenced by his remarks about the importance of having ‘faith’. However, I think Jesus was able to use this power in a much deeper more powerful and longlasting way because of this God-given authority over physical and mental illness and that Jeus had much greater powers to heal, than your average faith healer, hypnotst or doctor skilled in maximising the placebo effect.
Jesus was acused by the religious authorities of sorcery – that certainly overlaps with hypnosis. Most mystics through the ages have said that sorcery or black magic is actually using the same power but for evil puposes. Stage magicians and hypnosits use both misdirection (deception), suggestion and, in the case of very advanced practioners, I believe tap into more powerful forces , but use it for self-elevation, financial gain and sometimes more sinsister purposes.
Mass hypnosis is a very common phenomenon and is a feature in all sorts of entertainment and is used in vegas , was used by Goebels and Hitler and even by more benign politiinas. It is a feature of mass evangelism and it is certainly a feaure of faith healing ‘services’. That does not neccessrily mean that converts have been conned or that persuasion diaplaying hyonotic phenomena is always a con or that it is bad. Hypnosis includes real power not just to convince, but in some cases to releive symptoms and even sometimes even to effect healing by unkown mechanisms. Hypnosis of all sorts can be used for good or evil. Skilled hynotists can heal people – have you not seen the Derren Brown eposodes on this? He was shocked by his own success at effecting longterm healing when he was just trying to expose faith healing by spoofing it! I think that one of the reasons we we see less healing by mysitcs now in the west is that we have been hyonotised in the reverse direction by atheistic physicalism.
I’ve recently read two entire Hitler biographies.
His abilities as an orator, a demagogue, are certainly mentioned.
Mass hypnosis is not mentioned. He could mesmerize a crowd, certainly–but not in that way.
You’re blurring the lines way too much.
Anyway, where are we going with this? You want to believe Jesus could do magic, so you do. Stephen wants to believe the miracles stories are completely made up, so he does. I just want to know what happened, and it seems very unlikely to me that Jesus’ reputation as a miracle worker was made up out of whole cloth after his death. There was some kernel of fact that got added to over time. But I don’t believe anything he may have done requires belief in paranormal abilities or divine intervention.
I think he was an exceptionally charismatic individual, who showed interest in people others tried to avoid or ignore.
That alone would probably have been sufficient, in that time period, in that cultural milieu, to get stories being told. Posterity does the rest.
There is no blurring of lines – the lines you imagine are not there. You love to draw lines gs! – lines between scientific truth, historical truth and religious truth for example; and now between various forms of hypnotic suggestion. There is a real secret here (which you can get from reading: : hypnosis is not actually a thing: it soes not exist as a single entity, it is simply thar art of persuasion by imagination and increased expectation. Faith involves a type of it. Also my colleagues Lush & Seth at Sussex University have just presented an abtract at the ASSC meeting showing that the persuasion is produced by altering brain models of expectation (predictive processing) in the same way in many intances in every day life as well as in so-called hypnosis.So yes it is all ‘in that way’, as you phrase it
Magic is real – this is gradually seeping into to our reverse hypnotized culture obessesed with physical causal determinism. I hate to be the first to break it to you, but the physical causal system is not closed. Read Bona fide non-Christian scientist Dean Radin’s new book qid=1562182004&s=books&sr=1-1 It will stunn you, particulerly the highly contolled (methodolgically) experiment in which he gets shows consciousness can influence the interference pattern in double slit experiments. A lot of physicists are begining to realise there are some very odd anomalies, even some neurosceintists are starting to get it. You theologians have some catching up to do – the world is a changin
I certainly do believe Jesus could do magic, though of course there would have been over-attibution and myth added to the ‘kernal ‘ of real supernatural acts. The paranormal is here to stay. Jesus was certainly a exceptionally charismatic individual (and thus indeed hypnotic) and as you say, he loved people and empathised with them deeply (hey, you got something in common), and showed a huge interest in the unloved, the poor etc (as predicted by Isaiah 53, by the way). I think his great love was possibly also one of the secrets of his power – I think great love in the healer, combined with great faith (eg hypnotic expectation) in the recipients is a great mix! I think there was some additonal divine authority to comeplete the picture. You don’t need to invoke a magical cultural milieu in getting stories being told, or posterity – although both have undoubtedly helped the stories along their way – that’s part of the veil of the messianic secret.
Magic that’s real isn’t magic.
What makes it magic (or a miracle) is that it isn’t real. You can’t pin it to a board and stick a label on it.
Well you can, but you look silly doing it.
I believe in the line between church and state because each has the potential to diminish the other.
I feel the same way about religion and science.
And about magic and reality.
It’s all the same thing.
I know lines get blurred in reality. But this one’s pretty clear. If it’s real, you can prove it. You can’t. And you haven’t. And you won’t. But you might sell some books. Which only proves there’s a market for anything. 😉
Nice paradoxical quote about real magic – Dennett quotes this in one of his books. It’s by a magician as I recall. However, I completely disagree. Read Radin’s Real Magic, it will make you re-think this. Re: lines and blurring them: you worry too much about your beliefs in one area, undermining those in another. I don’t think you need to fear this, I let myself doubt and be challenged – I say let truth be truth across all my compartmentalized areas of belief – it’s wondefully freeing, but it helps if you are a theist, because at least you can put your feet on that solid ground while you doubt all else. I find in doing this, the unveiling of truth often begins. You can’t really proove very much apart from the obvious, everthing else is belief based on very little evidence, lots of pre-suppositions, current theories, and prevailing academic opinions (which change like the wind changes in the Norwegian Fjords).
I agree with you about Dennett and he’s also an obfuscator ie iI think he deliberately sets out to baffle his readers and lead them away from truth, but he’s fun to read and extremely smart and part of the staple diet of anyone interested in consciousness. You are right, I should read Popper, but tine is limited and I have much else to get through. Can you give me a Popperian admonition to Neurotheologian?
Hi godspell, bearing in mind length of this discussion, is it worth summing up our positions or should we both respond to questions? 
(actually, we agree on quite a lot, it just the supenratural, where we part company). Does anybody else want to make any further points?
Hi Judith, I tried to access the article, but couldnt because I don’t have a subscription. What was her argument for America being a miracle? Of course, all nations are made of of people with consciousness, personhood and free will – none of which can be explained by neuroscience and therefore I believe in itself is evidence of the ‘supernatural’. As discussed further back in this thread, were people not everyday phenomena, each an every one of us could be seen as miraculous. So this would be a good start for making an argument that America is a miracle
Neurotheologian said
Hi godspell, bearing in mind length of this discussion, is it worth summing up our positions or should we both respond to questions?
Bearing in mind the length of this discussion, it’s remarkable how little has been said.
Let me be brief:
I don’t believe anything in Revelation is prophetic of distant future events, and the same goes for Nostradamus, or the Mayan Calendar. It’s all nonsense. The people creating these things are reacting entirely to contemporary events. But because they write in vague allegorical terms, as visionaries tend to do, their words can easily be twisted around to refer to something happening in the present day. And this has happened, over and over and over, in many different eras. People in each time period keep saying “This is what they meant.” They can’t all be right. But they can all be wrong. And they are.
You have a social security card?
You want to bet nobody talked about Revelation back when that became a thing?
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