And, back to the issues at r/AcademicBiblical

 The first is from a mod, not a question-poster or a regular commenter. Well, actually it's from John Meier. I've not read all three volumes of "A Marginal Jew," but I read the first eons ago and I've read enough otherwise about Meier to be kind of dumbfounded that he thinks there actually were 12 disciples. I'm neutral at best on the idea of Israel-symbolism attesting to vs. detracting from, the idea of authenticity. I can see where Meier would think that this is part of Jesus proclaiming himself as the new Israel.

That said, the mod notes that — duh — it's clear that more than 12 followed Jesus. 

So, other than symbolic value by gospelers, why would he believe that Jesus picked out 12?  

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Why would Paul "invent" the 500 witnesses to the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, per this question? And, why does Dale Allison believe it's real? 

Dale, in reality, that's Corinth 2,000 years ago. Like some Corinthian Jesus-fearer is trekking off to Jerusalem, Judea and Galilee with a checklist asking people within the Jesus-fearer communities there "did you witness the resurrection"?

As for another post from a few years ago, the idea that 1 Corinthians 15:3b-5 was an earlier creedal statement but 6-7 may be Pauline? Per the chapter, verse 3a has Paul's "what I have received." While this does not have the added "from the Lord," the language which he uses to introduce the Eucharist, which many scholars believe he invented, it at least leaves open the possibility he's claiming divine revelation.

Beyond that, since Paul was an irregular visitor to Jerusalem and Caesarea after starting his missionizing, and as far as we know, never went to Galilee, how would he know a certain number of these 500 were still alive anyway?

Add this all up and Allison doesn't have much credibility. It should be added that, per a long-ago piece by me, Allison is at the conservative end of critical scholarship.

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Side note: I recently left the similar (and also blocking) subreddit r/AskBibleScholars, after seeing the creator saying he was going to migrate it elsewhere or something. (His reasoning made it look self-serving, and besides, even if he moves, he can't kill the subreddit. They live forever, even if it will be a shell.) I also blocked him.

I will take a pass on Alfred Mele

 (At least he's not racialist Frank Miele!)

This is adapted from an updated version of my review of two piecse by Gregg D. Caruso who in them and in other writings, wrestled not only with Benjamin Libet, but also Daniel Wegner and others. Do we have a conscious free will in the classical sense? I think Wegner has, at a minimum, raised some good questions.

 

Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is reviewed by me here.

 

Off of it, I am concentrating on Jonathan MS Pearce's review of Caruso and his reliance on the title character, Alfred Mele. 

Back to the logical disjunction. It's possible that some varieties of free will might be MUCH more averse to retributive justice than might a quasi-determinism. Any sort of theory of free will that sees free will as something evolving would likely favor a theory of justice that aided that evolution, even with cases like criminal behavior. Per my "dehumanizing" notes above, that's that type of free will.

And, as for Caruso's case for free will being an illusion, in essence for committing to some broad variety of determinism, beyond my issue-by-issue, action-by-action partial psychological determinism? Per an OK to decent review of his book on the subject, I think I'm far from alone in finding him wanting, even if it's for other grounds, and beyond those, of the review. That said, the reviewer is Jonathan MS Pearce, with all that entails.

 

First, I disagree with his take on Wegner, which seems highly dependent on Mele. Pearce cites Mele, saying he had disproven scientists who claim they have proven free will is an illusion. First, per classical informal logic, can you disprove a negative any more than you can prove it? I doubt it. Second, Wegner himself never claimed he has "proven" any such thing. And indeed, Pearce also notes that Mele accepts the possibility of pre-conscious brain actions that seem to be right up Wegner's street.

 

I should add that the original version of my main piece on Caruso was before my second reading of Wegner. 

 

I will also note that, grokking Goodreads reviews of a couple of books, Mele's "magnum opus" on free will in 2014, per an Italian two-star review, while targeting Libet, of course, and also Milgram and Zimbardo, doesn't even appear to look at Wegner. Also, given Pierce's background, it's interesting that he does NOT pick up on much of Mele's funding coming from the Templeton Foundation. And, at 112 pages, how much argumentation can you do? 

 

And, per his 2013 "Effective Intentions," the editorial blurb has him stating he's deliberately following in Dennett's "Brainstorms" footsteps. UGH! An Amazon five-star review mischaracterizes Wegner. (God, this is epidemic!) They claim that Wegner claims the idea of free will is only imposed after an action. Not.Even.Wrong. Supposedly, Eddy Nahmias, whom I have run into before, pushes this idea even harder with the mash-up word "Willusionists."

 

OK, then in his "Free Will: An Opinionated Guide," one reviewer claims that Mele implies Libet was committing some sort of research and experimentation fraud. I've never heard that claim before, and I find it even more an eye raiser.

 

And, his book on self-deception? The claim that people never consciously do that relies on a pretty rigid divider between conscious, subconscious and unconscious selves, I think. This one-star review at Amazon is hard hitting. (That said, the reviewer seems in places to confuse conscious self-deception with self-deception in general.)

 

As for Pearce? Here he is looking like a Jesus mythicist before pretending to run away from that, but without actually running away. (I just like kicking him again.)

The sayings of Jesus: Do not worry

I had said at the end of Amy-Jill Levine's newest book that I wanted to take a critical look at several sayings of Jesus from  The Sermon on the Mount, and perhaps elsewhere.

My interest is not textual criticism, nor any version of higher criticism. Rather, it's common-sense secularist skepticism. And with that, let's dive into one of his most famous.

From The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:25-32, New RSV:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

OK, several issues. 

The first verses, 25-28, might be filed under "perennial wisdom," per Aldous Huxley, with verse 29 adding a particular referent from Israelite history.

But, precisely because it could be called perennial wisdom means we have nothing unique to Jesus about the insight.

That said, the saying in the second half of verse 28 is problematic. I'm sure nobody in his circle back then, and nobody outside some early Buddhists or early Jains in India, thought a lily had a "soul" or anything close. Birds have brains, and some level of consciousness, and corvids at least have lots of brains. But, analogizing off flowers makes no sense. Beyond that, lilies also have no hands, beaks, claws or anything else with which they COULD work, even if they had a brain, let alone a "soul."

Verse 30 becomes more problematic yet. Wild grasses, wheat straw, or whatever is either being used for a cooking fire or else burned in the field for clearance? Even in my religious days, wild grasses especially would never have been considered "clothed" by me. Why he didn't talk about sheep on the hillsides of Galilee growing wool, then regrowing it after being sheared, I have NO idea.

Then there's that last verse.

Plenty of gentiles, like the aforementioned Buddhists and Jains, or the likes of the Pythagoreans or Cynics closer to Jesus (including the cities of the Decapolis being home to noted Cynic philosophers at this general time) did not "seek all these things." 

Anyway, to go Jesus Seminar (and I am not sure how they rated the Sermon on the Mount in general, or this part) I'm not that sure Yeshua ben Yusuf said this.

Euphemism creep and language issues

First, "euphemism creep", or the "euphemism treadmill," per Steven Pinker is a real thing. James McWhorter has also written much about it.

It's when a euphemism replaces a no-longer acceptable term, but soon enough becomes no longer acceptable itself.

Think "handicapped" being replaced by "disabled," then that becoming not acceptable and it being replaced by "differently abled." Some day in the not too distant future, because of the word "differently," that will be replaced as well.

This is a field with enough to mine that I am going to write about this on various spots, including my philosophy and critical thinking blog. But, there as here, I'll use the same starting point — Substacker Corey Hutchins talking about how different media outlets in Colorado struggle (or maybe "struggle" with scare quotes intended) on how to talk about "people who aren't supposed to be here," or if I need scare quotes inside that, "people who aren't 'supposed' to be here."

Or, per old friend Brains, who used it non-disparagingly? "Ill Eagles." 

Here, it's not just ground-level, but, in media, an official style issue, as the Associated Press long ago said both "illegal immigrant" and "illegal alien" aren't allows.

I agree for sure with the word "alien." That said, quoting Hutchins, I disagree with the AP already trying to get ahead of euphemism creep three years ago.

“We don’t use the terms illegal immigrant, unauthorized immigrant, irregular migrant, alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented (except when quoting people or documents that use these terms),” the AP wrote. “Many immigrants and migrants have some sort of documents, but not the necessary ones.”

As I said in a comment to Hutchins, why not just add "allegedly" in front of "undocumented immigrants"? 

Per that Shitter link, the AP does offer alternatives. But? Most of them are kind of cumbersome, which undercuts the usefulness of language.

Also, per the authors I cited at the top of the page, this issue tends to get politicized. And, it's usually "conservatives" vs "liberals." Setting aside L/libertarians and some Green types who claim to be neither right nor left, the politicized polarity also ignores friendly skeptical non-liberal leftists.

I want to move beyond that angle, as I've already tackled the politics on my main blog.

In part, we're at Wittgenstein's language as game. For various reasons, including but by no means limited to, politics, and within that, in the US, including but by no means limited to two-party "duopoly" politics, not everybody will be willing to play the same game.

For me, this isn't a killer. But, it is a heads-up, depending on how serious the issue is. 

Within politics, the AP says that if an official statement has "illegal immigrants" and it's being quoted, quote as is — no bowdlerizing.

However, that's print media. Political interviews, or everyday oral communication, political or otherwise, the issue is not so avoidable.

To extend the language as a game angle, language, like Monopoly, can have "house rules" versions. It can also have people cheating, or the linguistic equivalent thereof. Or throwing temper tantrums. 

Let us take the "word" (that's a scare quote, not a reference quote, folks) "trans."

I don't use it, and won't let it be used in written communication with me. It's either a prefix missing a referent noun or adjective, or the first name of an old GM car.

We can talk about "transsexual" or "transgender." And, that's all I'll talk about. Try to use the stemless prefix and I am out of the conversation. 

This, then gets into larger issues scientific as well as cultural and sociological.

But, let's tie it to philosophical issues. Per last week's piece, I reject attempts to claim that existence is an attribute, whether a general attribute or one of specific items, rather than simply a descriptor.

That itself is not a euphemism. But, it's arguable that something like "Ground of Being," especially with English, not German, title-case spelling, is. 

A partially failed refutation of Gödel's logical proof for the existence of god

 I had heard of his proof before, but never actually looked at it.

Atheology, which gets updated occasionally and is also on Substack, actually offered up a refutation.

And, even my first, partial look said that said refutation wasn't perfect.

My comment.

I am certainly not here to support Gödel, but I am also nowhere near a pure empiricist. I don't have time to read everything now, but, I know your refutation of his Point 1 isn't itself on 100 percent pure ground. And your refutation of his Point 5 is on the wrong grounds. (And I hope this isn't part of your ground of attacking ontological arguments, either.) The better answer is that "existence" simply isn't a property.

And, it isn't. Whatever philosophy professors this guy had, their focus was on philosophers and issues from before the second half of the 20th century, if not earlier.

"Existence" is simply a descriptor. The simple fact of "being" (lowercase, no "Ground of Being") is not a property. To use the quasi-dialectic of the refutation, it really can't be a property. Besides, if this guy were as thorough-going a neo-empiricist as he claims to be, he'd accept that, from his Weltanschauung, there is no such thing as "properties" in general. 

He responded to me on Substack with more verbiage than in the original. On the first point, he said science is empirical not rational. Yes, but, Gödel, like his many forbearers, is offering a logical proof, not a scientific hypothesis. 

On the second? He says he could have cited Kant's famous phrase that existence is not a predicate. But, this is itself a fail. I wasn't referring to Kant, just as I don't refer to Kant in tackling Anselm's and other ontological arguments. Rather, I am riffing on existentialism. Existence simply "is." Hence it's not a property, and I make no reference to Kantian non-predicates.

But, I'm not going to respond to him, lest I get something even more long-winded back. See below.

A later, fuller reading?

Well, I first saw this piece about what Mr. Lyman calls "epirealism" and yes, we're in the land of pretty hardcore empiricism, updated for modern times. And, it's probably not worth arguing with his deconstruction of Gödel. And, as for who he is? By name, I've never come across him before.