Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal and Pseudoscience , livre ebook

Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal, and Pseudoscience
Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal, and Pseudoscience
An Anthropological Critique
H. Sidky
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
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Copyright © H. Sidky 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-162-5 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-162-8 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
For Kathryn Lea. Thank you for being my advocatus diaboli in Venice, Italy and helping me shape many of the ideas expressed here.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One The Problem with Religion: Preliminary Issues
Why Are Believers Incensed by Criticism?
Religion as a Mind Virus
Immunizing the Mind Virus
Faith Is Superstition
Faith Promotes Unreason
Why Believers Are Dangerous
Religion as an Evolutionary By-Product
The Flaws in the Scholarly Studies of Religion
Chapter Two The Unreal Real: The Supernatural, Religion, and the Paranormal
What Is the Supernatural?
What Is Religion?
What Is the Paranormal?
The Paranormal and Pseudoscience
Chapter Three Can Science Say Anything About Religion and the Supernatural?
Science and Religion: Non-Overlapping Magisteria?
Methodological Naturalism and Its Religionist Critics
A Theistic Science Instead of an Empirical Science?
What Are the Unassailable Foundations of a Theist Science?
The Actual Meaning of Naturalism in Science
Unfalsifiable Claims and the Scientific Criterion of Replicability: The Story of N-Rays
Provisional Methodological Naturalism: How Science Really Works
How Science Assesses Non- Falsifi able Claims
Assessing Claims to Knowledge: Zeus, Circe, Santa Claus, God, Unicorns, and the Problem of Evil
Why the Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
Some Further Religionist Anti-Science Assertions
Scientism: What Does It Really Mean?
Science Caused the Holocaust
Hitler Was a Darwinian
Science Is a Worldview or a Religion
Subjecting the Entire Range of Religionist and Creationist Assumptions to Critical Scrutiny
Chapter Four Ghostly Rappings, the Science of the Soul, and the Religious Nature of the Paranormal
Spiritualism and the Quest for the Soul
Parapsychology and the Religious Nature of Psi Phenomena
On the Persistence and Weirdness of Ghost Beliefs and Otherworldly Powers
Why Believers Won’t Quit: The Legacy of the Nineteenth-Century Search for Ghosts and the Soul
How Paranormal Beliefs Are Immunized: Explaining Away Disconfirmations
The Cumulative Weirdness of Psi Phenomena
Why Don’t Paranormalists Accomplish Great Things?
Chapter Five Ghostly Encounters in the Field: Anthropology of the Paranormal or Paranormal Anthropology?
Anthropology and Paranormal Phenomena
Paranormal Anthropology: Ghostly Encounters in the Field
Extraordinary Anthropology and Paranthropology: Epistemological Quandaries
From Paranormal Anthropology to Theistic Anthropology
What Do Paranormal Experiences in the Field Signify?
Chapter Six Why We Think the World Is Haunted
How Our Cognitive Biases Predispose Us to Paranormal Ideation
Why We Think about Ghosts and Other Uncanny Entities: Intentional Agents and the Theory of Mind
Why Spirits, Ghosts, and Gods Have Human-Like Minds
Why the World Is Mind-Like, Souls Persist after Death, Animism, and Anthropomorphism
Why Humans Believe in the Soul and an Afterlife
Responses to Naturalistic Cognitive Explanations of Religion by Theistic Philosophers
Is There a Sensus Divinitatus or God-Module in the Human Brain?
Implications: Supernaturalism Debunked
Chapter Seven Cognitive Biases and Why People Think Eerie Thoughts
Memory, Cognition, and Supernatural and Paranormal Ideation
What the Roswell UFO Crash Tells Us about Paranormal Ideation
Memory Distortions and Beliefs in Paranormal
Witnessing the Resurrection of the Dead during Anthropological Fieldwork: What Does It Mean?
Additional Distorting Effects on Memory and Perception
Misunderstanding Probabilistic Events and Paranormal Beliefs
Synchronicity and the Bible Code
What the Shroud of Turin Tells Us about Paranormal Believers
The Shroud as a Paranormal Object
Holy Things, the Christian Cult of Saints, and Relics of the Christ
How the Shroud Became a Magical Object of Veneration
How Shroud Believers Have Misrepresented the Evidence
What Historical Records and Iconography Reveal
Scientific Evidence, Pseudoscience, Pious Frauds, and the Shroud
Radiocarbon Dates: Disgracing What Cannot Be Disproved
Chapter Eight Miracles as Evidence of God’s Actions in the World
The Role of Miracles in Religion
David Hume on the Nature of Testimonial Evidence and the Psychology of Miracle Claims
Pious Frauds, Miracles, and Why Extraordinary Claims Always Require Extraordinary Evidence
Evaluating Extraordinary Claims
What Do Miracles Actually Signify?
Are Miracles Logically Possible?
The Theist Case for Miracles and Efforts to Refute David Hume
Chapter Nine When God Talks to People: Are Religious Experience Evidence of God?
Visionary Experiences and the Rise of Religious Movements
Do Religious Experiences Support the Existence of the God of Theism?
Do Religious Experiences and Public Perceptions Have Epistemic Parity?: Swinburne’s Theological Proof
What Do the Experiences of God Really Signify?
Are Religious Experiences Cosmically Significant Supernatural Events?
What Do Altered States of Consciousness and Anomalous Experiences Really Signify?
Are Religious Experiences Veridical or Paranormal Fantasies?
Religious Experience and Brain-Based Hallucinations
Does God Speak to People? Julian Jaynes’s Eccentric Theory of the Bicameral Mind
Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences
Cognitive Mechanisms of Hallucinatory Phenomena
Apparitions: Perceiving Figures
Collective Hallucinations and Group Delusions
Marian Apparitions: What Do They Signify?
Chapter Ten Books Authored by God? Sacred Texts as Evidence of the Supernatural
Proposed Evidence of the Divine Origins of Sacred Texts
What Would Books Written by God Really Look Like?
The Old Testament: God’s Message to Humankind 1.0
The New Testament: God’s Message to Humankind 2.0
Chapter Eleven God’s Fingerprints in the Natural World: Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, and Cosmic Fine-Tuning
The Cognitive Foundations of Arguments from Design
The Nature of Design Argument
William Paley, Natural Theology, and the Argument from Design
Paley Updated: Swinburne’s Case
What Would a Designed Universe Really Look Like?
Taking Reverend Paley to the Microbiology Laboratory: God’s Handiwork in Molecular Structures
What Is Irreducible Complexity and Does It Prove “God the Designer”
Intelligent Design and the Argument from Ignorance
The Case for Irreducible Complexity and Its Flaws
Looking for God’s Handiwork in the Cosmos: Taking Reverend Paley to Outer Space
The Fine-Tuning Argument as Natural Theology and Physics Mysticism
Inferring God’s Handiwork from Cosmic Features: Isaac Newton and Laplace’s Response
The Theological Underpinnings of the Fine-Tuning Argument and Its Inconsistencies
Does Fine-Tuning Imply the Existence of a Fine-Tuning Deity?
What the Anthropic Principle Says about a Purported Paranormal Fine-Tuner
Chapter Twelve The Miracles of the Bible: The Quintessential Foundations of Paranormal Beliefs in Western Culture
Who Narrated the New Testament Stories, Who Wrote Them Down?
The Nature of the Texts
Are the Gospels History?
Assessing Christian Apologist Claims Regarding the Historicity of the Gospel Accounts
Is There Evidentiary Parity between the Resurrection and Julius Caesar’s Crossing the Rubicon?
The Relevance of Josephus and Tacitus
An Assessment of Contemporary Christian Apologetic Scholarship
Chapter Thirteen Jesus the Miracle Worker, Magician, and Sorcerer
Jesus’s Miracles as the Prototypical Examples of Paranormal Beliefs in the West
Assessing Jesus’s Paranormal Feats
Jesus as Sorcerer and Magician: Arguments from the Greek Philosopher Celsus and the Early Christian Apologist Origen of Alexandria
Jesus’s Miraculous Works Compared to the Deeds of Miracle Workers Today
The Many Raisers of the Dead: The Banality of Resurrection Events in the Ancient World
Present-Day