Evolution

What Can We Know About Prehistoric Man? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

It never ceases to amaze me that a certain breed of skeptic will believe everything presented in an hour-long History Channel program about an alleged prehistoric ancestor of Homo sapiens – all of it based on a couple fossils – and yet believe nothing in the voluminous written historical records contained in the Bible.

I have seen hours of TV programming that presents prehistoric man doing all sorts of things which are virtually impossible to derive with any certainty from fossils.  Entire animation departments render complete anatomical drawings of man’s ancestors with only partial skulls and teeth to go by.  Where does all the skepticism go when these far-fetched fairy tales are aired?

Although G. K. Chesterton is not a paleontologist, I appreciated his description of this same issue from the early twentieth century.  He was seeing the same kinds of wild extrapolations that I am seeing today.  Here are his thoughts on this issue, from the book The Everlasting Man:

Science is weak about these prehistoric things in a way that has hardly been noticed. The science whose modern marvels we all admire succeeds by incessantly adding to its data. In all practical inventions, in most natural discoveries, it can always increase evidence by experiment. But it cannot experiment in making men; or even in watching to see what the first men make.

An inventor can advance step by step in the construction of an aeroplane, even if he is only experimenting with sticks and scraps of metal in his own back-yard. But he cannot watch the Missing Link evolving in his own back-yard. If he has made a mistake in his calculations, the aeroplane will correct it by crashing to the ground. But if he has made a mistake about the arboreal habitat of his ancestor, he cannot see his arboreal ancestor falling off the tree.

He cannot keep a cave-man like a cat in the back-yard and watch him to see whether he does really practice cannibalism or carry off his mate on the principles of marriage by capture. He cannot keep a tribe of primitive men like a pack of hounds and notice how far they are influenced by the herd instinct. If he sees a particular bird behave in a particular way, he can get other birds and see if they behave in that way; but if he finds a skull, or the scrap of a skull, in the hollow of a hill, he cannot multiply it into a vision of the valley of dry bones.

In dealing with a past that has almost entirely perished, he can only go by evidence and not by experiment. And there is hardly enough evidence to be even evidential. Thus while most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything.

But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it.

More from Chesterton in part 2, and some closing remarks about the whole issue of historical sciences.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

Are You Worried About the Unpardonable Sin? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this post, we learned what exactly the unpardonable sin is – attributing to Satan what is accomplished by the Spirit of God.  But what caused Jesus to give this stern warning to this particular group of people?  It is important to understand so that we can know how to apply Jesus’s warning today.  For the answer, we just continue reading Matt. 12 to get an idea of the kind of people Jesus is admonishing:

Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

Clay Jones summarizes Jesus’s words for us: “The Pharisees’ blasphemy wasn’t a hastily uttered slip of the tongue or simply a mistaken apprehension of reality.  Rather, it was a knowing, deliberate, and final rejection for which they will give an account of themselves on the Day of Judgment.”

Craig Blomberg adds: “Even if all the details are unclear, we should observe that in this text only Jesus’ enemies are in any danger—those who have never professed any allegiance to him and, at least in the pages of Scripture, never do. Instead, they intensify their opposition to the point of crucifying him.”

To further illustrate how hard-hearted the Pharisees are, we should note that even after Jesus issues his warning, this same group of people asks Jesus for another miraculous sign in verse 39!  Clay Jones comments, “It was as if they said, ‘Even though you have healed a blind and mute man in our presence, demonstrated your dominance over spiritual beings, and have refuted our arguments – we still need more proof that what you do is of God.”  Jesus aptly responds, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.”

You can now see that the unpardonable sin does not apply to a Christian living today who utters some hasty or angry words toward God that he later regrets.  As Jones explains, “The very fact that a person would be concerned about his or her relationship with Jesus is evidence that he or she isn’t hardened against the Holy Spirit.”

But for those who persist in rejecting any and all evidence that Jesus is from God, his warning stands.  At some point, a line is crossed.  “By your words you will be condemned.”

Human Nature

How Is Man Exceptional?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

G. K. Chesterton, in one of his masterpieces, The Everlasting Man, writes a powerful defense of something which should not need a defender.  That man is truly exceptional seems exceptionally obvious to all but the most unexceptional.  Here is Chesterton summing up his case in a way that only he can:

It will be well in this place, however, to sum up once and for all what is meant by saying that man is at once the exception to everything and the mirror and the measure of all things.  But to see man as he is, it is necessary once more to keep close to that simplicity that can clear itself of accumulated clouds of sophistry.  The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth.  In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearance of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one. 

He has an unfair advantage and an unfair disadvantage.  He cannot sleep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts.  He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple.  He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture.  His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations.  Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself.  Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame. 

Whether we praise these things as natural to man or abuse them as artificial in nature, they remain in the same sense unique. . . . It is not natural to see man as a natural product.  It is not common sense to call man a common object of the country or the seashore.  It is not seeing straight to see him as an animal.  It is not sane.  It sins against the light; against that broad daylight of proportion which is the principle of all reality.

I agree with Chesterton.  To see man as a purely natural product of blind nature is insanity.

Human Nature

Why Is Man Unique?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the chief answers that Christianity provides is the answer to the question: “Why is man unique?”  The Bible answers this question right at the start in the Book of Genesis.  Man is unique because man is the only earthly creature made in the image of the Creator himself.  No other creature can make this claim, or make any claim at all.

Among most anti-theists, there is the notion that the appearance of  man in history was merely a fluke of random mutation and natural selection, and that man is not actually that unique.  He is just slightly further along the evolutionary expressway than the rest of the animal kingdom.  Give the other animals time and they will catch up or even surpass man.  In fact, if we roll back the process of evolution and try it again, the results would have been quite different.  We can imagine other animals taking man’s place in the hierarchy of life. 

G. K. Chesterton, in his book Everlasting Man, runs the thought experiment of what it might have been like for other animals to ascend.

If there was ever a moment when man was only an animal, we can, if we choose, make a fancy picture of his career transferred to some other animal.  An entertaining fantasia might be made in which elephants built in elephantine architecture, with towers and turrets like tusks and trunks, cities beyond the scale of any colossus.  A pleasant fable might be conceived in which a cow had developed a costume, and put on four boots and two pairs of trousers.  We could imagine a Supermonkey more marvellous than any Superman, a quadrumanous creature carving and painting with his hands and cooking and carpentering with his feet.

We can certainly imagine a great many diverse evolutionary paths, but what actually happened is far more fascinating.  Chesterton reminds us:

Anyone thinking of what might have happened may conceive a sort of evolutionary equality; but anyone facing what did happen must face an exception and a prodigy. . . . [If] we are considering what did happen, we shall certainly decide that man has distanced everything else with a distance like that of the astronomical spaces and a speed like that of the still thunderbolt of the light.

The arrival of man on the scene is surely one of the greatest mysteries that faces us.  Most everyone, according to Chesterton, grants that there is a great mystery in the origin of the universe and another great mystery in the origin of life.  But Chesterton points to a third mystery:

Most philosophers have the enlightenment to add that a third mystery attaches to the origin of man himself.  In other words, a third bridge was built across a third abyss of the unthinkable when there came into the world what we call reason and what we call will.  Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.  That he has a backbone or other parts upon a similar pattern to birds and fishes is an obvious fact, whatever be the meaning of the fact.  But if we attempt to regard him, as it were, as a quadruped standing on his hind legs, we shall find what follows far more fantastic and subversive than if he were standing on his head.

Sin

What Should Be Our Response When We Fail God?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Failing to obey God is something that every Christian does, and repeatedly.  Every one of us sins, but how should we react when we sin, when we fail God?

Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft, in his book Prayer For Beginners, takes some lessons from Brother Lawrence’s little classic The Practice of the Presence of God.  Brother Lawrence says, “When I fail in my duty, I readily acknowledge it, saying ‘I am used to doing so; I shall never do otherwise if I am left to myself.’ If I fail not, then I give God thanks, acknowledging that the strength comes from Him” (Conversation 2).

When he considers Brother Lawrence’s advice, Kreeft says:

You may think this sounds too easy, too cavalier, almost indifferent. But why?  To be “sensible” of our faults but not “discouraged” by them is not indifference, it is patience.  Not to be sensible of them, or not to confess them, is the road to pride.  But to be discouraged by them is the road to despair. . . . How can we attain this state, of being sensible of our faults but not discouraged by them?  By seeing our faults but also seeing farther than our faults; by framing our faults by our faith, which is not faith in ourselves but faith in God.  No fault, no sin, no failure can exhaust God’s power to forgive.

Kreeft then compares the way Satan wants us to think about our sins versus the way God wants us to think about our sins.

God wants us to worry about our sins before we sin; the devil wants us to worry after we sin. God wants us to feel free after we repent (for we really are free then); the devil wants us to feel free before we sin, as we are choosing to sin (for we really are not free then; the devil is a deceiver). The devil tempts us to cavalier pride before we sin and worrisome despair afterward, since pride and despair both separate us from God, and anything that separates us from God is the devil’s friend and our enemy, while anything that brings us closer to God is the devil’s enemy and our friend. But what is our friend at one time can be our enemy at another.

Kreeft concludes with these thoughts:

What our Heavenly Father wants us to do about our spiritual failures is like what our earthly father wants us to do about our earthly failures.  When we fall off the horse, or the bike, or the high road to Heaven, we must simply climb on again as soon as we are aware of the fact that we have fallen off, rather than sitting there stewing in self-pity or self-hatred.

And remember to thank God for the awareness of the fact that you have fallen off the “horse” of awareness of his presence, for that, too, is his gift, not your achievement.  If he did not give you the grace to notice that you have forgotten his grace, you would not only forget his grace, but you would also forget that you had forgotten his grace. And then your state would be without hope.

Prayer

How Do We Listen to God?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Oftentimes you’ll hear pastors or priests tell us to listen to what God has to say to us, but how exactly are we supposed to do this?  Should we expect God to communicate in a booming voice, much like he spoke to Moses on the mountain?  If not like this, then how are we to understand this command to listen to God?

Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft introduces the concept of listening to God in his book Prayer For Beginners.  An important step in learning how to pray is learning how to listen to God.  So, how do we go about listening to God?

In a conversation, if you are the wisest, it makes sense for you to do most of the talking. If the other person is wiser, it makes sense for you to do most of the listening. The wiser the other is, the more listening you want to do. Well, prayer is conversation with God, and it makes no sense for us to do most of the talking. We ought to be listening most of the time.

But, you may object, we cannot hear God’s voice as we can hear the voice of another human being. True, but we can hear God’s voice in other ways. We hear him in nature, which is his art. We hear him in his providential directing of our lives, and in the lessons in human history, and in the “still, small voice” of our conscience, God’s interior prophet. We hear him loud and clear in Scripture, his inspired Word deliberately given to us.  One way of praying is listening to God’s voice in Scripture, reading Scripture as God’s Word—which is exactly what it is!

And the best listening, the listening that gets the closest to God’s heart, the listening that hears the most total revelation of God, is listening to Christ, God incarnate, God in the flesh, “very God of very God”. “The Word of God” means the Bible only secondarily; primarily it means Christ. In the words of the Catechism, Christ is “the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one” (CCC 65). Praying by reading the Gospels prayerfully and “listeningly” is one of the very best ways to pray.

Let’s review the ways we listen to God.  Kreeft introduces 6 ways of listening to God in order of their effectiveness and importance:

  1. nature
  2. providential directing of our lives
  3. lessons in human history
  4. conscience
  5. Scripture
  6. Christ in the Gospels

The implication of this ordering is that those who listen primarily in ways 1-4 are missing out on the 2 best ways to listen to God.  They are starving themselves of his fuller revelation.  There is nothing wrong with ways 1-4, but we mustn’t stop there.  If we are going to hear the most from God, if we are going to get the “closest to God’s heart,” we must take seriously the reading of Scripture, and especially the reading of the Gospels.

Meaning of Life, Prayer

What Is the Meaning of Life?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This is the one of the most basic and fundamental questions that every human being must come to grips with, or waste their lives away.  If you don’t know what the end goal of your earthly existence is, you will drift like a boat without a rudder on the high seas of life.  You will chase one thing after another, never making any progress, because progress implies that there is something to progress to.

The Christian answer to this question is powerful and compelling.  Recently, as I was reading philosopher Peter Kreeft’s little book, Prayer For Beginners, I came upon Kreeft’s wording of the Christian answer to the meaning of life.  Prayer, Kreeft explains, is a necessary activity for attaining the meaning of life.  In this context, he explains what the meaning of life is:

Becoming saints is the meaning of life.  It is why we exist.  It is why God created us.  It is the reason he banged out the Big Bang, . . . and why he providentially provided this one perfect planet, and why he breathed his Spirit into the Adam he formed out of its dust, and why he does the same to every baby conceived, and why he prepared a chosen people, and sent prophets among them, and finally came down from Heaven into a mother and a manger and a Cross, and was forsaken by God so that we need never be forsaken, and rose again, and sent his Spirit to haunt our hearts—all this stupendous effort was for one end: to make saints, to make little Christs, to give his Son brothers and sisters.

The whole universe is a saint-making machine.  And prayer is the fuel that powers it.  He was not called “Jesus” (Savior) merely because he was to save us from the punishment for our sins; he was called “Jesus” “for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21).  His purpose was not just to make us safe but to make us saints.  Prayer is our first step in becoming saints.

The meaning of life is to become like Christ, to become a saint.  It is not to become wealthy, it is not to gain honor before other men, it is not to become famous, it is not to gain power over other humans, it is not to seek bodily health so that we can live longer, it is not to revel in fleshly pleasures.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Heb 12:1-2

Philosophy, Science and God

Why Is Scientism Self-Refuting?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

More times than I can count we have skeptics comment on the blog who insist that science is the only means of attaining knowledge.  If you don’t believe me, just read the comments underneath last week’s blog posts.  I have covered this topic numerous times, but it seems to surface over and over again, which tells me that we are touching upon a fundamental disagreement between two worldviews.  In other words, this is a pivotal issue for everyone to understand.

So, I call back to the stand again Professor Edward Feser and his book, The Last Superstition.  When confronted with the assertion that only scientific reasoning gives knowledge (justified true belief), how shall we respond?

There are two problems with this view (which is known as “scientism” or “positivism”).  First, if they want to take this position, they will need to defend it and not simply assert it; otherwise they’ll be begging the question against their opponents and indulging in just the sort of dogmatism they claim to oppose. 

Feser makes an important point here.  It is not enough to merely say, as skeptics sometimes do, that scientific reasoning is the only way to know things, and then just leave it at that.  This viewpoint may be fashionable among atheists and skeptics, but among the rest of the populace, it just doesn’t fly.  The vast majority of thinkers from pre-Socratic Greece to today reject the assertion that scientific reasoning is the only way to know anything.  Given that fact, we expect an argument to be made.

Second, the moment they attempt to defend it, they will have effectively refuted it, for scientism or positivism is itself a metaphysical position that could only be justified by using metaphysical arguments. 

How so?  Why can’t science argue for science without employing metaphysical arguments?

Of  its very nature, scientific investigation takes for granted such assumptions as that: there is a physical world existing independently of our minds; this world is characterized by various objective patterns and regularities; our senses are at least partially reliable sources of information about this world; there are objective laws of logic and mathematics that apply to the objective world outside our minds; our cognitive powers – of concept-formation, reasoning from premises to a conclusion, and so forth – afford us a grasp of these laws and can reliably take us from evidence derived from the senses to conclusions about the physical world; the language we use can adequately express truths about these laws and about the external world; and so on and so on.

Notice that none of these are claims of science, are they?  As Feser explains, “Every one of these claims embodies a metaphysical assumption, and science, since its very method presupposes them, could not possibly defend them without arguing in a circle.  Their defense is instead a task for metaphysics, and for philosophy more generally; and scientism is shown thereby to be incoherent.”

Feser ends this section with a brilliant quote of philosopher E. A. Burtt:

Even the attempt to escape metaphysics is no sooner put in the form of a proposition than it is seen to involve highly significant metaphysical postulates.  For this reason there is an exceedingly subtle and insidious danger in positivism.  If you cannot avoid metaphysics, what kind of metaphysics are you likely to cherish when you sturdily suppose yourself to be free from the abomination?  Of course it goes without saying that in this case your metaphysics will be held uncritically because it is unconscious; moreover, it will be passed on to others far more readily than your other notions inasmuch as it will be propagated by insinuation rather than by direct argument. . . . Now the history of mind reveals pretty clearly that the thinker who decries metaphysics . . . if he be a man engaged in any important inquiry, he must have a method, and he will be under a strong and constant temptation to make a metaphysics out of his method, that is, to suppose the universe ultimately of such a sort that his method must be appropriate and successful. . . . But inasmuch as the positivist mind has failed to school itself in careful metaphysical thinking, its ventures as such points will be apt to appear pitiful, inadequate, or even fantastic.

Philosophy, Science and God

Is There a War Between Religion and Science?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This canard has been repeated so often that it is now part of 21st century folklore.  Contrary to this popular myth, philosopher Edward Feser, in his book  The Last Superstition, correctly points out that the “so-called ‘war between science and religion’ is really a war between two rival philosophical worldviews, and not at bottom a scientific or theological dispute at all” (emphasis in original).

On one side is the worldview derived from the “classical philosophical vision of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas.”  The other side, that of materialistic secularism, derives its premises from the likes of Hobbes, Hume, Descartes, Locke, and Kant.

Feser presents candid comments from several modern scientists and philosophers who admit as much.

The physicist Paul Davies tells us that “science takes as its starting point the assumption that life wasn’t made by a god or a supernatural being.”  Feser further quotes Davies as saying that partially out of fear of  “open[ing] the door to religious fundamentalists . . . many investigators feel uneasy about stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they freely admit that they are baffled.”

Feser continues by quoting prominent contemporary philosophers.

Tyler Burge opines that “materialism is not established, or even clearly supported, by science” and that its hold over his peers is analogous to that of a “political or religious ideology”; John Searle tells us that “materialism is the religion of our time,” that “like more traditional religions, it is accepted without question and . . . provides the framework within which other questions can be posed, addressed, and answered,” and that “materialists are convinced, with a quasi-religious faith, that their view must be right”; and William Lycan admits, in what he himself calls “an uncharacteristic exercise in intellectual honesty,” that the arguments for materialism are no better than the arguments against it, that his “own faith in materialism is based on science-worship,” and that “we also always hold our opponents to higher standards of argumentation than we obey ourselves.”

One of the most famous admissions from a scientist about the war of worldviews comes from the materialist biologist Richard Lewontin.  Writing in a book review, Lewontin admits:

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

All of this points to the need for the public conversation to include philosophy and worldviews.  The secularist who claims that science, in and of itself, disproves God has merely smuggled in atheism from the start.  Science, in and of itself, does not disprove God.  Only when it is built on a foundation of materialism can it do that kind of work.

Historical Christ, Miracles, Resurrection

Are the Healing Miracles of Vespasian Believable?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Let’s briefly cover some historical background.  The Roman emperor Vespasian ruled from A.D. 69 -79; his reign ended with his death.  Writing about Vespasian some 25 years later, the Roman historian Tacitus reported a famous incident where Vespasian is said to have miraculously healed two men – one blind and one lame.

This miracle account is important because it has been frequently compared to the miracles of Jesus, and in particular, to his miraculous resurrection from the dead.  The argument that skeptics make goes something like this: “The accounts of Vespasian’s healing miracles are as well evidenced as the resurrection of Jesus.  People of the ancient world were credulous enough to believe both Vespasian’s miracles and Jesus’s miracles.  However, sophisticated modern people do not believe that Vespasian actually healed the two men.  Therefore, since the evidence for his miracles is at least as good as the evidence for Jesus’s reported resurrection, a sophisticated modern person should also not believe Jesus’s miraculous resurrection.”

The most famous skeptic to put forward the miracles of Vespasian as a defeater to the resurrection of Jesus was the 18th century philosopher David Hume.  In his book, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume claims, “One of the best attested miracles in all profane history, is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cured a blind man in Alexandria, by means of his spittle, and a lame man by the mere touch of his foot; . . .” 

Hume goes on to report that Tacitus is known for his “candour and veracity” and that his sources for the miracle report were also of “established character for judgement and veracity.”  Hume concludes with the following: “If we add the public nature of the facts, as related, it will appear, that no evidence can well be supposed stronger for so gross and so palpable a falsehood.”

In other words, as far as ancient reports of miracles go, the miracles of Vespasian are as well evidenced as you can get, yet we know today that the whole affair was a fraud.

But has Hume accurately reported the circumstances around this miracle account?  Has he properly understood Tacitus’s account?  It seems the answer is a resounding “no.”

Timothy and Lydia McGrew, in their essay “The Argument from Miracles” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, respond to Hume:

Hume’s presentation here is so careless that it struck his opponents as disingenuous. The “candour and veracity” of the historian are beside the point, since the manner in which Tacitus introduces the story indicates plainly that he disbelieved it. Hume’s characterization of the persons on whose authority Tacitus relied in relating the miracle as “of established character for judgement and veracity, as we may presume” drew special scorn from Campbell, for Tacitus says nothing of the sort.

Scholars who study Tacitus’s works consider his account of Vespasian’s miracles to contain numerous “ironical and sarcastic” elements, a point that Hume seems to have completely missed.  According to Glenn Miller of the Christian Thinktank, “This  account [of Tacitus’s] has so many tongue-in-cheek elements in it — even for a court historian — it is hard to be ‘impressed’ by Vespasian’s performance.”  Miller also explains, “Tacitus uses this miracle story to paint a VERY unflattering portrait of Vespasian, all couched in conventional forms.”  

The McGrew’s continue:

The entire affair bears on its face the marks of obvious imposture. It was conducted in Alexandria, the first major city to declare in favor of Vespasian’s imperial aspirations, and it was done in honor both of the emperor, for whom a divine sign would be most convenient, and of the local deity.  At Vespasian’s request, physicians examined the two men who claimed to have received visions in the night telling them to appeal to Vespasian to be cured; the physicians reported that the blind man was not totally blind, nor the lame man totally lame, and added that any glory for a successful cure would redound to Vespasian himself, while any blame for a failure would fall back upon the two supplicants for having fraudulently represented the oracle of Serapis.

Vespasian, when presented with these two men, wanted a physician to confirm that the men could be healed before he would attempt it.  In case the healing didn’t work, according to Tacitus, the “the onus of failure would belong to the poor beseechers.”  This was a win-win for Vespasian, because if he succeeded, he would get the credit, and if he failed the men would be blamed! 

W. Adams, a contemporary of Hume, notes, “Where then is the wonder that two men should be instructed to act the part of lame and blind, when they were sure of succeeding in the fraud, and of being well rewarded (as we may well suppose) for their pains?”

The McGrew’s add:

As for Tacitus’s reference to living witnesses, there is no mystery here. If the fraud was perpetrated publicly as described, there were doubtless many people who saw the two men leap up and claim to have been healed. There is no need to suggest that the witnesses were liars; it suffices that they were at most somewhat credulous. There was no need for them to inquire too closely since – unlike the apostles – they had absolutely nothing to lose in maintaining their account of what they had seen. “No evidence,” Douglas concludes drily, inverting Hume’s claim, “can well be supposed weaker.”

The McGrew’s conclude by assessing the Vespasian miracle story in comparison to the resurrection of Jesus.

At every point, the case of Vespasian differs critically from that of the resurrection. Indeed, from a Bayesian point of view, the wonder would be if, under the circumstances, some story of a miraculous demonstration in favor of Vespasian were not forthcoming. Given our background knowledge, the Bayes factor for the testimony is so close to 1 as to give us virtually no epistemic traction: the report was almost as strongly to be expected if the two men had been parties to the deceit as if they had genuinely been healed. It is absurd to suggest that the evidence for these miracles bears comparison with the evidence for the resurrection.

A newly appointed emperor in a city taking sides in an imperial political contest needs a miracle as a stamp of divine approval.  Two men willingly come forward to provide the “miracle” needed.  They have nothing to lose and everything to gain.  Even the ancient Roman historian who reports this miracle doesn’t believe it, his account dripping with sarcasm and irony.  Are we to seriously believe that Vespasian’s “miracles” rival the resurrection of Jesus?  No truly objective person could possibly think so.

A Christian Apologetics Blog