A Cerberus of Templeton-prize type ideas

This is a moderately expanded Goodreads review, that may get expanded more economically and posted on my main blog as well. The nature of the header will be clear soon enough in the review.

The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I interested by the title and the subject matter when I saw it at my library.

Was also apprehensive seeing one of the co-authors. The dust jacket reminded me of what I already had read years ago: Marcelo Gleiser, a second of the three heads of Cerberus on this book, won the 2019 Templeton Prize.

Decided to take it home. First, I researched all three authors. And, if not directly and avowedly so, first and foremost, re this book, all three buy the idea of Gould’s NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria. I do not. Neither do many other scientists who do NOT practice scientism (which is real, but I knew that long before this book) and who are NOT Gnu Atheists.

On Frank, the NOMA seems very true, but, per more critical reviews of other books of his, this is based on a narrow definition of religion. And, of course, if you define "religion" as "old mythology," it's easy to go down the NOMA road. With Gleiser, when a previous book of his is titled “The Dawn of the Mindful Universe,” enough said. Thompson’s “Why I am not a Buddhist” actually looks decent as far as it goes, but he needs to push harder on the reality of both ancient Buddhism and modern New Agey distillates of it being, yes, religions. Shut up, Bob Wright and fanbois.

OK, so decks cleared.

The key is in the first chapter, where the trio lay six principles that cause “The Blind Spot.”

And, even before I got through, a trio of words came to mind. They are: Stereotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.

Before we dive in on each of the six, two other things:

Titling the first section, after a rhetorical question, as “A Guide to the Perplexed” kind of lets the cat out of the bag for those who know the reference. I assume it’s primarily to E.F. Schumacher’s book. (It has “A” and Maimonides has “The”) with its references to things like “smallism.” When he talks about things like the “evolutionist doctrine” (sic) he sounds exactly like our authors. Although the trio don’t mention things like the “great chain of being,” ideas behind it are behind them, too. Above all is the idea that Homo sapiens needs to be “recentered” in the universe.

The idea that someone like Steven Weinberg might be right, and that we’d be better served philosophically dealing with that reality never crosses their lips or fingers.

If that isn’t enough, before we get to the principles, the authorial trio show themselves to have a big old boner for Husserl. He’s discussed, I think, more than all other 20th-century philosophers combined. In other weirdness there, Chalmers gets more mention than Dennett and the alleged “hard problem of consciousness” gets more discussion than any idea of Dennett. So does Galen Strawson’s version of panpsychism. (Citing Whitehead early on might be a clue as to the trio’s angle.)

Why Husserl? Although the word “bracketing” is not used, “epoché” in his sense is used quite liberally. And, in a much more smooth sense than that of the old joke, “and then, god,” the pause of the epoché, or the “step outside” of bracketing, leave that entirely open.

Now, the six items and my thoughts on: Sterotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.

1. Bifurcation of nature. “Color is only an illusion” stereotypes serious modern philosophy of mind discussion about whether qualia exist, and for that matter, the foundation of traditional empiricism (wrong as it may be for various reasons).
2. Reductionism. Not all reductionism is bad, only greedy reductionism, per greedy reductionist Dan Dennett.
3. Objectivism (not the Ayn Rand version). Like reductionism, there are greedy and non-greedy versions of this.
4. Physicalism: See the trio lapping up on the “hard problem of consciousness” above. Note that elsewhere in the book, they’re careful to avoid the claim that, on issues of mind, they’re not epiphenomenalists. What then, are you? Some “tertium quid,” per John Randolph?
5. Reification of mathematical entities. Mathematical Platonism, as the idea is more commonly known, may well be wrong. But, just the fact that it is wrong, if it is, doesn’t push humans back to a pre-Copernican center of the universe. This may not be exactly what they mean by reification of mathematical entities, but I think they’re wrong otherwise.
6. Experience is epiphenomenal. (Here, not using it in the mental dualist version of epiphenomenal, to which I referred above.) Again, total ignorance, or willful kicking, or a bit of both, just as in item 1, of serious modern discussion on philosophy of mind. Thompson is himself a professor of philosophy; his signing off on points 1 and 6 right here guarantees the book is no more than 2 star.

At that point, it’s checking the index time and grokking. While climate change is mentioned on 10 pages, it really doesn’t get that much discussion. The word “ecology’ is not in the index. Nor is Schumacher! (There is no bibliography, as a side note.)

They do talk about the Gaia hypothesis, and both James Lovelock and Lynn Marguils. She? A 9/11 truther (and false flagger). An AIDS denialist, at least on HIV causing it, and that’s of relevance given the authors’ use of COVID to bash that “good old time fundamentalist science.” And, a rejector of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Symbiosis comes off as something she was looking for precisely because she saw it as a rejection of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and then moved on from it when it was incorporated.

While I’m here? Their info about greenhouse gas science’s start is incorrect. An American woman scientist first postulated the idea 50 years before Arrhenius.

Barry Commoner is referenced briefly. Murray Bookchin not at all. No Wendell Berry, etc etc.

Had the book actually had a chapter on modern ecology, with some in-depth discussion on “recentering humans” and how this would actually avert a sixth mass extinction and a climate crisis (the real problem is overly-human centered neoliberal capitalism), I would forgive its philosophical tendentiousness enough for two stars. If it did a lot more than that, I’d give it three.

The real issue isn't "human centering" or lack thereof. It's capitalism, especially modern neoliberal versions. And, that has humans VERY centered, and, that's the whole problem. Various recent popes have issued pleas for economic social justice and called out the worst of capitalism. Protestants? Fundagelicals have done no such thing. Jews? Probably some sort of splittage.

Anyway, with that, the last jig is up. The trio doesn't want to recenter Homo sapiens, they want to recenter Homo religiousus and some form of religiosity, spirituality, and ultimate metaphysical ground.

As is, this is not a whole lot more than a stylized, intellectually-veneered version of holding one’s breath, Templeton style, especially with the presumption in the subtitle that science is ignoring human experience. It isn't, and neither are philosophers. And, at an average rating at the time of my post of 4.10 stars, it’s overrated anyway. But, it's not worth reading through for a crushing review like I gave Sapolsky. 

Speaking of Sapolsky, one last look at where the trio is wrong on criticizing philosophers.

I've been thinking recently about how memories come up "from the vasty deep," to use the whole poetic phrase.

Who summons them?

If the trio wants to claim it's some conscious "I," I'm giving them a cyber-kick in the nads right now.

The reality is that no such thing happens. Memories pop to the surface of our individual consciousnesses — I can't say of their own free will, because that implies a free will behind them, and "of their own accord" even seems to imply a willer behind that. Per Dennett's "subselves," while rejecting his multiple drafts, as that implies a draftsman as I see it, an impersonal "sea" casts up memories upon the shore of whatever our consciousness is at the time like so much flotsam and jetsam.

And, with that, I turn to the first six of Susan Blackmore's ten meditative questions.

1. Am I conscious now? 2. What was I conscious of a moment ago? 3. Who is asking the question? 4. Where is this? 5. How does thought arise? 6. There is no time. What is memory?

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Did Peter and Paul get offed internally, by internecine Christian disputes? Almost certainly not, and let's deconstruct the bad reasoning

A VERY interesting comment on r/AcademicBiblical, that, if one strips away legendary interpretations of 1 Clement, Peter and Paul may indeed have faced that.

Or may not. We'll get into this below.

So to start, let's look at the possibly very interesting comment:

So then in 1 Clement 5 and 6, it discusses other violence caused by jealousy that has impacted Christian families, at which point Clement says in 7.1: "These things, beloved, we write unto you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves." In short, Clement is admonishing Christians for the previous acts. So what are those previous acts? Well, those also include the deaths of Peter and Paul. 

Scholars have attempted to argue that 1 Clement mirrors Tacitus on the Neronian Persecution where he writes of a great multitude being killed (πολύ πλήθος) and this is argued to be paralleling Tacitus, Annals 15.44 where he writes that a large crowd were killed (multitudo ingens). But this is probably incorrect, the primary reason being that Clement is not talking about a singular event but an accumulation, i.e., he is saying that the deaths of Peter and Paul can be added to sequentially other previous deaths. Thus, this is not a specific event being referenced. Likewise, scholars argue the introduction of the letter may refer to the persecution of Nero or Domitian, but Bernier and others have reviewed the opening and found it is actually kinda just typical of a delayed letter. 

So, there is a good case Paul and Peter were killed by fellow Christians. This would explain also why Luke-Acts ignores Paul's death, because Luke-Acts is obsessed with trying to present the early church as a more or less united front. Christians killing each other is as far from this as one gets. We also know early Christians were not violence averse. The portrayal of both Paul and Peter is that the former was a persecutor himself, had it out against perceived false teachers, and Peter dismembered a Roman guard, killed two people for not giving him money (which some early Christians even interpreted as being extreme, like John Chrysostom), and also some portray him as killing Simon Magus. We also know Peter and Paul also greatly disagreed with each other on multiple fronts (see Galatians 2). So we even have a potential motivation for a lethal intra-community conflict.

There you go.

But? Problematic, as it turns out, as is the commenter in other ways.

First, let's be upfront with the overblown claims.

Annias and Sapphira weren't killed for not giving Peter money. First, they and others gave their money to the church, in the story, which in reality didn't exist. Second, they weren't killed for not giving money; the story is about ALL their money, or not. Third, they weren't even killed for that; they were killed for lying about whether this was their "all" or not. Acts 5 makes that clear!

On the second one? Peter didn't "dismember" the guard, at least not as the word is understood connotatively. The guard doesn't end up like Monty Python's Black Knight; he loses only an ear.

Self-touted independent "scholar" Hansen is getting all sorts of stuff wrong in combination with misinterpreting or overinterpreting. Not surprising.

On the third one? If you're plumping for an early date (late 90s CE, the "conventional" date) you just petard-hoist, since at least in writing, the story of the death of Simon Magus doesn't make its appearance until the Acts of Peter, dated late second century.  OOPPPSSSSS. More on that below.

In addition, standing an "orthodoxer" on his head, Clement citing Titus, and apparently 2 Peter, is proof of its lateness based on their lateness! 

Beyond that, Hansen offers no support for this being an "accumulation," at least not here, just an assertion.

Kind of going down the Jesus mythicism route, Chrissy Hansen appears to be doing Candida Moss (with whom I agree on martyrdoms, or lack thereof) on steroids, and claim that 1 Clement talks about internecine Christian battles leading to both Peter and Paul being killed by Christian subgroups. But, as noted above, wrong. Hansen claims that it reflects a culmination of a list of deaths. But, if you accept Candida Moss that early era martyrological deaths of Christians are likely legend, and you know that Acts' story of Stephen is ahistorical, WHAT "accumulation"? We could have Jesus in Luke 11:51, but that's all Tanakh deaths, and I read Hansen as presenting this as Christian deaths. 

Speaking of? There's two MORE problems, at least.

They begin with the fact that this "issue," whatever it actually is only runs in Chapters 4-7 of 1 Clement. Second, per this translation, the most modern of the three at Early Christian Writings, we have issues in chapters 6 and 7.

First of all, who the heck are the "Danaids and Dircae" in chapter 6? They're originally women from Greek myth. Per this site, Clement is supposedly referring to Christian women martyred in the style of their deaths. I find that doubtful, to pivot back to Moss. Clement claims these women are part of "a great multitude of the elect [who] furnished us with a most excellent example." That's Martyr Hagiography 101, and in short, further undermining of the idea that anything in Chapters 4-7 allegedly in semi-current times to author is actually historical.

Second, chapter 7:

These things, beloved, we write to you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves. For we are struggling in the same arena, and the same conflict is assigned to both of us.

That struggle today surely isn't talking about violence unto the point of death at Rome or wherever the actual provenance of 1 Clement was, and ditto at Corinth. Methinks that level of violence would have been picked up 40 years later by Celsus. Rather, per the end of chapter 6, it appears to be about envy and strife in general. Paul talks about being "displayed" in the arena in 1 Corinthians 4 and fighting wild beasts at Ephesus in 1 Corinthians 15. Even if the second is literal, the first is not. To me, it's clear this is a metaphorical struggle in 1 Clement 7.

If Hansen claims otherwise, they're not even close to being a "scholar."

(Up above, the orthodoxer's appeal against this representing an empire-wide persecution and thus as support for early dating means nothing, as there was no such persecution until the third century.)

So, I think thought at first the 1 Clement idea is at least somewhat interesting, and Hansen even has a video about it. Is it plausible? Probably not, and certainly not as Hansen presents it as far as details. Probable? Most likely not, again, especially with the above caveats.

I'm not saying it's 100 percent IMprobable, but the OP on this post, talking about it, does raise issues. I've noted elsewhere that I reject traditional dating of 1 Clement, which may be 130-140 CE, so her interpretation, and that of David Eastman to the same end, may be iffy there, too. And, with that much later of a data, this idea then becomes early Christian urban legend. Eastman offers no suggested date for 1 Clement and appears to accept Tacitus, a very likely interpolation, at face value on Neronian persecution. This started my debate with Hansen which I have eventually ended. (Also at r/AcademicBiblical, ex-Mormon plumps for a conventional date. Shock.) As part of that, I've circled back on earlier writing to update my thoughts on the Tacitus passage being a very likely interpolation.

Hansen (edits from original) also is .... interesting elsewhere. Hansen apparently thinks Shushama Malik is the real deal. I don't. See here for her take. Elsewhere, Hansen gets puffed by KamilGregor, who I don't think a lot of, but, he notes she has NO academic biblical background. See here for publishing CV. Great.

Chrissy Hansen is an example of an independent researcher with no formal degree in Biblical studies and she currently has eight(!) academic publications in Biblical studies listed as forthcoming. In 2022 alone, she managed to publish six journal articles (and in good journals, too).

OK? Not OK. Gregor doesn't disclose that he's a co-author with her at least once. That itself is an ethical issue, and I've already had other reasons to dislike him, too. And, given that at least one of the journals is specifically geared to contributions from people with no academic biblical background, how peer-reviewed are they? They're NOT "academic," by definition, so scratch that.

That's enough there for starters; I'll have a full post about these sidebar issues in another month.

Back to Hansen's original claim.

Let's start by diving in more on the dating.

1 Clement 5 repeats claims that are, in many ways, dependent on the Pastorals, especially 2 Timothy, vis-a-vis Paul's final struggles. (I have long thought of 2 Timothy as being a novelistic short story of pathos and bathos, like a more tragic O. Henry piece.) In addition, re dependence on the Pastorals, or at a minimum, reflecting the same time in early Christian history, it talks about bishops and deacons in chapter 42, and a rule of succession for dead ones in chapter 44.

And, since the last quarter of Acts is non-historical and Paul wasn't a Roman citizen, he had no "appeal to Rome" as a hole card. His desire to get to Spain was surely nothing more than that. Yes, 1 Clement says "farthest limits of the west," but this only gets more spelled out for the first time in the Acts of Peter and the Muratonian Canon, both late second century. Also, here, it comes off like an "A to Z" thing, like Deuteronomy and 70 angels for the 70 nations of the world.

So, that's backup for me agreeing with other scholars (I see what I did) on a late dating for 1 Clement. The pastiche nature of later chapters, which do reflect books like Shepherd of Hermes, is additional reason for that.

And, even if it IS earlier? That's still a nothingburger of Christian legend, per what I said about Acts. Paul in all likelihood never got to Rome in the first place. And, if that's a nothingburger, so is the rest of 1 Clement 5.

Next? While 1 Clement 5 could be read as Peter being killed by inter-Christian strife, it seems more of a stretch on Paul.

There's other problems with that chapter.

When was Paul "driven into exile"? His time in Damascus ended with an engineered escape, not a driving into exile, and nothing else comes even that close. With Peter, to the degree Acts is historical, it mentions nothing about "many labors" for him, and thus we're in legendary territory here.

Rather, it seems more likely that this is all ahistorical, and the author of 1 Clement is simply "spitballing," looking for more modern examples of internecine territory.

Per my thoughts on the end of Acts' ahistoricity, it's possible Paul DID break the temple proscription, bring a goy in, and either get lynched or crucified. Peter? Maybe he got killed along with James. Or killed in the scrum of the Jewish revolt. But, neither of those would be internecine Christian violence.

But, the radical idea of this Hansen person, that Paul and Peter offed each other? Laughable. And, the claim that 1 Clement offers serious support for that? Even more laughable. (I am surprised that Hansen didn't invoke the idea I have about Paul's demise in Acts, and say that Peter was behind it. I might halfway believe that.)

It's like Robert Eisenman perusing the pseudo-Clementines and coming up with bullshit. And, since he's a semi-mythicist, Hansen ought to oppose that, too. 

Oh, while I'm here? That idiot Carrier thinks 1 Clement was written in the 60s. The "orthodoxer," inverted above, crushes such stupidity.

Oldest manuscript of Jesus' alleged infancy found

 Of course, the word "alleged" is nowhere in the CBS News story about the discovery of the oldest manuscript fragment of The Infancy Gospel of Thomas. (Without the "alleged" or similar up front, the story is kind of clickbait.) Official news release from Humboldt University in Berlin, which had the manuscript in its possession without knowing what it was, is here.

The two key takeways?

First, this manuscript was dated 4th-5th century; the previous oldest IGT manuscript is from the 11th century. This is only 13 lines, so not of much use in text criticism.

Second? It's in Greek. Authors say that confirms Greet as the language of the original.

Because of the date and language, it's also cited by the authors as confirming second-century authorship.

What that shows is that, beyond the Protoevangelion and the various Pseudo-Acts, that "wild" stories about Jesus were developing fairly early in the Christian tradition. The fragment at hand, for example, includes the story about bubbe Yeshu creating clay sparrows and clapping them into life.

A broader takeaway, which ties to desire for specific dating of composition of IGT? The pericope at hand would indicate that Christians, on "work on the Sabbath," thought this was an issue for mocking Jews; indeed, the entire Gospel seems to have Jewish-Christian separation as its main focus. Any early church fathers calling it Gnostic are almost certainly referring to the Gospel of Thomas.

A third takeaway, not specific to the IGT? There's probably still other manuscripts of biblical books, or at least of church fathers, still floating unidentified in the archives of universities and research institutions.

Catholic consecretation of perpetual virginity: patriarchy at work

 Well, this one's creepy.

You can live a public life, not become part of any order of nuns, but yet, get an official consecration as a perpetual virgin.

Second, it's clearly a perpetuation of patriarchy. No such vow or consecration is promoted for male perpetual virgins. I quote from the Consecrated Virgins organization website:

The consecrated virgin in a particular way images the Church as virgin-bride of Christ, and, because of this, it is assumed that a woman who aspires to Consecration has been living tranquilly a private resolve of perpetual virginity for the sake of Jesus Christ for several years. She has the gift of physical virginity to offer to Christ, as she has not knowingly and deliberately engaged in sexual relations at any time during her life. [It is important to note that women who may not have the gift of physical virginity to offer to Christ may still make some form of personal consecration to Christ or pursue another form of Consecrated Life, such as being a member of a religious institute or a secular institute, or living an eremetical life.] A woman who has engaged in sexual relations before Baptism, or a woman whose marriage has been annulled, is not eligible to receive the consecration of virgins. In cases in which the loss of physical virginity was not intended by the woman, for example in case of rape or involuntary incest, she remains eligible for the consecration of virgins.

Unless one believes in a gay Jesus and a male bride for him (is that you, Morton Smith?) then this is women only. Well, the language says women-only, but, it's a good opening to kick Rome for opposing gay marriage, and to kick Morton Smith for being Morton Smith while I'm here.

It also vaguely reminds me of the Catholic May Crowning ceremony, about which I wrote three years ago.

Lead likely did NOT cause Beethoven's deafness or more

That's contra friend (his latest leads me to scratch the "friend") Skeptophilia, who posts to that end, with link to a Smithsonian piece, that in turn riffs off a letter to the editor in Clinical Chemistry.

There's a LOT to unpack.

First, Beethoven's hair has been tested before. Contra what I infer the letter writers implying, this is nothing new.

Second, the lead acetate mentioned in the story? Goes back to Roman times. So does lead being in pottery glazes. So does lead-pipe plumbing. Was Caesar deaf? Cicero? Augustus? Seneca? I think not.

Third, the authors note they were able to sequence much of Beethoven's genome and that he had a genetic disposition toward liver disease and had hepatitis B at the time of his death.

You know what exacerbates liver disease? Alcohol, as in the alcohol that contained the lead acetate grape syrup Beethoven was drinking.

A History Channel piece goes further down that road, talking about this hair study, which was published in Current Biology:

Moreover, the researchers provided the first proof that Beethoven was infected with the hepatitis B virus, which inflames the liver and could have spread to him during childbirth, sexual intercourse, or surgery with contaminated instruments.

“If you have hepatitis B today, then your doctor is going to tell you not to drink a single glass of wine,” says Meredith, a co-author on the paper.

Yet, though most evidence suggests Beethoven was a moderate drinker for the era, “it’s safe to assume he was drinking practically daily,” says Tristan Begg, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in England and the paper’s lead author. In all likelihood, the researchers say some combination of alcohol consumption, hepatitis B, and his genetic predisposition to liver disease caused cirrhosis, from which he never recovered.

There you are.

If that's not enough?

Even an old ScientificAmerican story mentions a mix of alcohol and viral hepatitis on his death. (Beethoven also appeared to have had late-life pancreatitis, often associated with alcohol abuse.) From that 2023 hair study, again. In addition, Ars Technica notes Beethoven contracted typhus in 1796.

As for the deafness?

Beethoven had no genetic predisposition there. And, lead poisoning can be a factor. But, again, see above. And, some types of typhus can be a cause.

Not the first time Skeptophilia has run with something without being on the firmest of foundations. Why, this time, other than the "tears" on his piece meaning this has more pathos than Beethoven's drinking problem and wherever he got Hep B from, I don't know.

As for the letter he cites? When this was all over the news a year ago saying that lead probably was NOT the issue. It seems you have a couple of people hitting "publish" on the publish-or-perish button.

Now, how did Beethoven get Hep B? On causes, I doubt he was sharing dirty needles, and it surely wasn't from birth. That leaves him most likely visiting an infected prostitute. Boo hoo on that one, Skeptophilia.