What Christianity and alien abduction have in common

I just finished reading Michael Shermer’s book, “Why People Believe Weird Things.”  It’s very long-winded — the book could easily be 1/10th its size and still make the same points — but it did make me realize one thing.  The book discusses alien abduction as an example of a weird thing that many people believe, and points out that it is based entirely on anecdotal stories without a single shred of physical evidence.  As I read this, I realized that the same can be said of Christianity or, indeed, any other religion.  There is as much physical evidence for Christianity as there is for alien abduction:  i.e., none.  Indeed, if we consider the scars that supposed abductees claim were caused by alien medical experiments, there is actually more physical evidence for alien abduction than for Christianity. 

Moreover, the mental processes that leads to both beliefs are remarkably similar.  Both depend upon a leap of faith based on highly improbable stories told by people of unknown credibility.  Both heavily rely on dreamlike visions:  abductees call them “memories,” Christians call them “prophesies” or “revelations.”

And, significantly, both beliefs gained popularity during times when contemporaneous events caused large numbers of people to be receptive to the belief.  It cannot be mere coincidence that the rate of reported alien abductions grew dramatically during the 1960s and 1970s, when the NASA space program — and the idea of space travel — was capturing attention around the globe.  Likewise, Christianity arose at a time and place in human history when many people were claiming to be the Messiah, and many more were claiming to be prophets sent by God.  The belief in witchcraft during the 17th century fits this same pattern.

Does this mean Christianity is invalid?  No, but it does mean Christianity has a lot more in common with alien abduction and witchcraft than it does with, say, Darwin’s theory of evolution.

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grumpypilgrim

Grumpypilgrim is a writer and management consultant living in Madison, WI. He has several scientific degrees, including a recent master’s degree from MIT. He has also held several professional career positions, none of which has been in a field in which he ever took a university course. Grumps is an avid cyclist and, for many years now, has traveled more annual miles by bicycle than by car…and he wishes more people (for the health of both themselves and our planet) would do the same. Grumps is an enthusiastic advocate of life-long learning, healthy living and political awareness. He is single, and provides a loving home for abused and abandoned bicycles. Grumpy’s email: grumpypilgrim(AT)@gmail(DOT).com [Erich’s note: Grumpy asked that his email be encrypted this way to deter spam. If you want to write to him, drop out the parentheticals in the above address].

This Post Has 53 Comments

  1. Avatar of Vicki Baker
    Vicki Baker

    Newton, the discoverer of basic calculus,

    Um Gottes Willen! Das war Herr Leibniz, du Schweinehund!

  2. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    There needs to be distinct interactions of environment factors with genetics that results in all of the errors you claim appear out of no where. These are not random events or natural selection is totally random happenstance.

    Unfortunately, the vast majority (perhaps in the range of 99 % plus percentage) of those errors are deleterious for the organism.

    Combining very rare beneficial errors into sufficient accumulated errors to create a new species is beyond the scope of meaningful probabilities.

    The imagination of the evolutionist works overtime and therefore is in constant need of either more time or some natural law for increasing meaningful information, which is contrary to teh natural laws of entropy.

  3. Avatar of Dan Klarmann
    Dan Klarmann

    The calculus controversy is quite a heated matter of national pride. (wiki: Leibniz and Newton calculus controversy). Leibniz was privy to an unpublished work of Newton's before he wrote anything on the subject. Whether one of them is truly "the father of calculus", or whether it emerged from their interactions is an interesting and insoluble historical riddle.

    But if you want to find the first source of trans-finite calculations of integration and differentiation, Archimedes got almost as far as those two, long before he was killed by a Roman soldier. But his work was thought completely lost, until recently.

  4. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    Dan asks:

    Karl, please define your understanding of "a non-inertial reference frame".

    This would be any place where the effects of motion of the observer could not possibly be a factor in any measurements being made.

    For example, the earth's motions appear fairly invariant to us as riders on the big blue marble. If we were to try to get off of the planet and then if we were to actually somehow to try to bring all of our motions to a stop, where would we end up?

  5. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    Dan says:

    "If there is no inertia, then any force immediately imparts the maximum velocity."

    This is why light can be assumed to have both a force behind its motion yet an instantaneous maximum velocity once it is produced.

    No rest mass for light also implies no measurable inertial effects.

  6. Avatar of Mark Tiedemann
    Mark Tiedemann

    Yet Einstein theorized and it was subsequently proved that light is affected by gravity, ergo it has some mass. Demonstrating a rest mass might be difficult, but it's a given according to the previous fact. Neutrinos so far as the only particles that seem demonstrably to have no mass, and they are affected by nothing.

  7. Avatar of Dan Klarmann
    Dan Klarmann

    Light has relativistic mass, and is affected by the curvature of space. Photons may not have a rest mass, as with the other virtual particles.

    Neutrinos can be detected, and therefore do affect other matter in subtle ways.

  8. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    No takers on the question?

    If we were to try to get off of the planet and then if we were to actually somehow to try to bring all of our motions to a stop, where would we end up?

    I believe we would be propelledy away from the center of the most predominant gravitatonal field in a given locality of space. The increase in speed would be proportional to the increases in rotational inertia that were used to try to bring our motions to a stand still.

    What would this look like? Put a gyroscope into motion and then either gradually or quickly increase the rate of its revolution and see what it ends up doing in space?

    The more subtle the increase in rotational inertia the slower our speed would be, the more rapid the increase in the rotationsl inertia the faster the increase in velocity would be.

  9. Avatar of Dan Klarmann
    Dan Klarmann

    Karl, Motion is always relative to something. There is not absolute motion, nor absolute stillness.

    I didn't see a question in you previous response.

    What assumptions underlie your belief that lack of motion causes anti-gravity? How can one change the angular momentum of a gyroscope without including external forces?

  10. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    Dan asked

    What assumptions underlie your belief that lack of motion causes anti-gravity? How can one change the angular momentum of a gyroscope without including external forces?

    Internal impulses that varythe rate of an objects rostaion would change the angular momentum as would a change of the shape of the rotating obkectas well. These could all be produced within the object itself, or from energy supplied internally.

  11. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    Color commentary from Admin: I can only assume that Karl is once again trying to convince readers that the laws of physics leave room for sporadic Divine intervention into the affairs of humans.

  12. Avatar of grumpypilgrim
    grumpypilgrim

    Karl wrote, "Evoution is supposedly science, but it can not be observed as an historical even." [sic]

    Creationists, like Karl, like to make strawman arguments about evolution. Evolution actually has only three components: heredity, mutation & selection criteria. Heredity refers to the fact that offspring inherit the genes of their parents. Mutation refers to the fact that offspring sometimes don't inherit perfect copies of the genes of their parents. Selection criteria refers to the fact that some offspring are more likely than others to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on the genes of that line. Before Darwin came along, biologists and Christian theologians didn't argue about the first two components of evolution (because these were well-proven facts), they argued over the third. The theologians asserted that God was the sole selection criteria — that God, alone, decided if someone would reproduce and how long each person would survive. Biologists had no convincing counter argument, so theologians basically carried the day. Then Darwin came along and suggested that *natural selection* was the only selection criteria that was needed, and that no god was necessary to explain observed selection processes. That was Darwin's "theory of evolution" and that is what initially set the Christian establishment against him. It wasn't evolution *per se* that bothered Christians, it was that Darwin's theory of *natural selection* provided an explanation for the mechanism of evolution which did not depend on the Christian god. Only many years later did Creationists, out of complete ignorance of what evolution actually is and what Darwin actually wrote abou it, suggest that evolution *per se* was invalid.

    Accordingly, when people like Karl assert that, "Evoution is supposedly science, but it can not be observed as an historical even." [sic], they display a profound ignorance both of what evolution actually is and of the nexus of the actual historical controversy. Evolution *is* scientific and *is* observable; what is theory is whether or not a supernatural deity is involved with the mechanism of evolution; i.e., the selection criteria. So far, despite a century and a half of experiments, there is no scientific data to support supernatural intervention. In the absence of such support, natural selection is considered by far the most likely explanation, regardless of whatever observed data people such as Karl demand. Indeed, given that scientific experiments will always have some degree of uncertainty, people like Karl will always be able to find some excuse to hang onto their beliefs, no matter how irrational or incredible those beliefs might be.

  13. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    I just wanted you all to know that I consider my footing to be just as sure if not more certain than that of the atheistic evolutionist who would do what ever is needed to discount any historical or scientific evidence that doesn't support his or her beliefs.

    As for the diversity found in living species. Why wouldn't it be conceivable that a designer of tremendous ability could have enabled a process that could create tremendous variety from interactions between organisms and their environement?

    This really is the crux of the problem that evolutionist have with variation in living things. They believe that new genes have to somehow come into existence to make a new variety of species possible. But in all likelihood the potentiial for variety could already be present in a species based upon multiple factors such as temperature, available sunlight, available raw materials, available frequencies of energy sources man made verses natural foods and even the positions of the sun, moon and the planets.

    As long as the environment is steady state we shouldn't expect to see much natural selection at work now should we. Then when one variety of a species is impacted by one of these factors the evoltuionist jumps to the wild conclusion that the DNA as been altered through mutation.

    Strangley, it has been shown that after years of producing a new strain of fruit flies the variations disappear after normal environmental conditions and full population interaction is once again permitted.

    This does not point to changes to the hereditary information in a species now does it?

  14. Avatar of Dan Klarmann
    Dan Klarmann

    Karl, you have demonstrated repeatedly that you don't know what the "theory of evolution" is, that you are not familiar with the basic math necessary to take university level science classes, and that you are unfamiliar with most of 20th century advances in chemistry, physics, astronomy, and biology.

    Speaking for myself, I don't think your footing in arguing these topics is as secure as that of those of us with degrees in science, or a lifetime of critically examining these issues in light of the Christian foundations of (pre-Enlightenment) Western knowledge.

    You clearly are not aware of the differences between Lamarckian evolutionary theory (favored by Hitler and Stalin) and Darwinian evolution (books of which were burned by Hitler).

    New genes (as we have pointed out repeatedly directly to you) do appear out of nothing, regularly. Other genes vanish, just as regularly.

    You have argued both that all species are as they have always been, and that species changed with supernatural rapidity after The Flood, which occurred well within the era of human documentation.

    As to scientists discounting evidence: My most frequent request to you is, "show me". Better yet, show real experts this hypothetical evidence that you claim is ignored. As I have pointed out several times under several subjects, such evidence is craved by any scientist who hopes for a Nobel prize. Disproving an established theory is the way to success in science.

    Scientists do ignore bad procedures, like long discredited methods. Even the ICR and Discovery Institute have been trying to stop producing yet more egregious examples of "new evidence" based on silly errors. Like claiming that traces of C-14 well within the measurement error of infinity means that something "must be" young.

  15. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    Dan,

    Examine what you are saying. You decry the lack of eye witness accounts for any religion and then you come off with a statement like this.

    New genes (as we have pointed out repeatedly directly to you) do appear out of nothing, regularly. Other genes vanish, just as regularly. Surely science can look for a reason for how these genes appear besides the glossy overused mantra of random mutation.

    It obvious cancer and genetic defects have roots in mutations where the genetic code is garbled.

    The genes that vanish are caused by entropy or a loss of organized information in heredity. This is reverse evolutiion, don't claim these changes create new species – that's insane.

    The genes you state have magical appearance are about as founded scientifically as alien abductions. I myself would rather point to variations on existing species that science really has shown are either dominant or recessive traits.

    When does the dominant trait of a newly appeared gene overcome the populations ability to remove its significance?

    I know the answer to that one. When the original population is reduced to only the recessive traits' carriers. Funny how evolution theory constantly downplays the need for the ancestral forms to vanish but we have untold number of species that have existed for millions of years unchanged, how strange that many of these were once presumed extinct by evolution, but many have miraculously been resurrected as well.

    You claim science as a method has every right to state the extrapolated as provable because of the naturalistic support for the probabilities. What you are really saying is, you are forced to believe such or the atheists will laugh at you. Well, you know what, you laugh at me, insult me and treat me as if I had a mental illness or purposelessly have lied about my education. Think what you will, it doesn't bother me.

    The facts don't bother me, intellectual honesty and integrity are important to me even though you think I'm ignornat because I state matters that make you have to think about what you believe.

  16. Avatar of Dan Klarmann
    Dan Klarmann

    Karl, you apparently don't bother going to the links we specifically provide for you.

    "Surely science can look for a reason for how these genes appear besides the glossy overused mantra of random mutation."

    There is nothing "magical" about how new genes appear. The simple (well documented, often observed) transcription errors cited above are all that is needed. They happen stochastically, a more precise term that may be read "randomly" to people without chemistry, biochemistry, quantum physics, and biology training.

    When these errors combine to form a new gene, sometimes there is a visible difference in the development, growth, or behavior of the organism. Most transcription errors result in either no difference, or a prenatally fatal difference. In the minority of other cases, there is some noticeable physical effect, like extended color vision or the ability to digest things your ancestors found indigestible or dying sooner from Huntington's disease.

    Those differences can increase or decrease lines of descent from a gene pool. If a single mutation confers a 1% advantage in survival or procreation, it will likely constitute 90% of the population in less than 65 generations (1.01<sup>65</sup> = 1.91, or about a thousand years in pre-urban human evolution). Now compound this with many such mutations every generation, and hybrid vigor calculations, and one necessarily sees an exponential change in any species. And this is observed.

    The old ideas about binary dominant and recessive genes only applies to a small minority of characteristics. For example, eye color is loosely connected this way, but skin color is not.

    Science has no need to cite a causative agent. It simply describes what happens due entirely to known natural processes. I don't denounce religious beliefs for the lack of credible witnesses; I do it because they claim validity in contradicting direct observations via ancient writ.

    Example (that we've been over): The world is at least hundreds of millions of years old according to dozens of completely independent dating methods, many predating Darwin. The crust first froze nearly 5 billion years ago, according to a handful of others. The universe in which it floats is showing us deeper and deeper time, the more carefully we look. Yet a small minority of Christian and Muslim scholars claim that their interpretation of an old book (totally disconnected from repeatable observation) proves that the universe and the Earth cannot be older than a few thousand years.

    We naturalists and 90% of the rest of the world accept the dozens of (verified, always testing, never accepted as dogma) methods as producers of facts, and the old book as a faith-based view of a minority. The descendants of this minority will accept what we know now about geology and biology, as they now easily accept that the sky is neither a closed sphere nor a canopy, nor is the world flat, nor does light exist apart from sources to emit it, nor vision without those sources, nor disease as a result of sin (all traditional Bible-based understandings).

    I don't think that you, Karl, are stupid. We wouldn't bother engaging with you if we did. But must you so often make claims that run counter to massively reinforced human knowledge of how the universe actually behaves?

  17. Avatar of grumpypilgrim
    grumpypilgrim

    Karl wrote, "Surely science can look for a reason for how these genes appear besides the glossy overused mantra of random mutation."

    Karl, the reason why geneticists refer to processes as being "random" is because that is what the mathematics shows the processes to be. Random processes behave in particular ways — a normal or "Gaussian" distribution, for example. When experimental data fits a Gaussian distribution curve, the process is said to be random because, by definition, that's what it is. This doesn't require any deep knowledge about what causes the process to be random, it is merely a recognition that the process *is* random because it behaves exactly the same way that other, known random processes behave.

  18. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    I make statements that obvious make it hard for you to understand how I discount what seems to be overwhelming evidence to you. Any amount of circularly reinforced human theories that have been put together as much by imagination purported to be field stidies and analytic investigations should be questioned more than it is accepted.

    Darwin said so himself, but his postulates and theories were pushed into the forefront of modern science by atheistic lawyers and those opposed to existing religions in general.

    Accepting any naturalistic philosophy that purports to answer questions of a metaphysical nature are futile and will continue to only cause dissention among scientists world wide.

    University scientists may believe they have a corner on what is approved metaphysical explanations for matters beyond scientific observations, but even the majority of Americans still believe there is more to life than meets the eye. Most Americans still believe in matters of the spirit, including God. Atheistic scientists who think they do mankind a service by pushing matters of the spirit out of everyday life are only asking for trouble, especially those who deny an intelligent creator.

  19. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    I make statements that obvious make it hard for you to understand how I discount what seems to be overwhelming evidence to you. Any amount of circularly reinforced human theories that have been put together as much by imagination purported to be field stidies and analytic investigations should be questioned more than they are accepted.

    Darwin said so himself, but his postulates and theories were pushed into the forefront of modern science by atheistic lawyers and those opposed to existing religions in general.

    Accepting any naturalistic philosophy that purports to answer questions of a metaphysical nature are futile and will continue to only cause dissention among scientists world wide.

    University scientists may believe they have a corner on what is approved metaphysical explanations for matters beyond scientific observations, but even the majority of Americans still believe there is more to life than meets the eye. Most Americans still believe in matters of the spirit, including God. Atheistic scientists who think they do mankind a service by pushing matters of the spirit out of everyday life are only asking for trouble, especially those who deny an intelligent creator.

    As for Mark wanting to know what could replace the vacuum caused by the collapse of any modern scientific theory, have you considered that nothing stands a chance because of the climate in modern univeristies today?

    Intelligent design can't even be discussed by other departments in universities without the biology departments breathing down their necks.

  20. Avatar of Erik Brewer
    Erik Brewer

    You assume that because there is no canopy now that there never was one (bad assumption). You assume that the Bible teaches that the world is flat, when it clearly does not. Disease came into the world as a result of sin. That does not mean that disease that comes today is the result of individual sins (original sin brought it). There is a connection between sin and STD’s (common sense teaches that). Where does the Bible teach that light emits apart from a source? God is light so as long as He exists then there is a source. Again, pay attention to the details sir and you might learn not to make regurgitated remarks that others have made mistakenly.

  21. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    Karl: You have failed in your attempt to divide the world into "atheistic scientists" and people of faith. Beliefnet has published an article indicating that 30% of biologists are theists. Although this brief article doesn't lock the issue down with precision, apparently LOTS of scientists both believe in God AND accept a naturalistic world view. http://www.beliefnet.com/News/1999/12/Scientific-

    Perhaps you should call up Francis Collins and try to convince him that he is really an atheist.

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/coll

  22. Avatar of Mark Tiedemann
    Mark Tiedemann

    Karl writes:—"Intelligent design can’t even be discussed by other departments in universities without the biology departments breathing down their necks."

    Karl. Let's try this one more time.

    Intelligent Design IS NOT SCIENCE.

    Nothing's stopping universities from discussing it in Philosophy Courses.

  23. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    "Nothing’s stopping universities from discussing it in Philosophy Courses."

    Tell that to the philosphy teachers who don't have tenure.

  24. Avatar of Karl
    Karl

    Erich,

    Your 40-60 split for university scientists in general verses 30-70 split for biologists and even a greater 23-77 split for physicists/astronomers are just the tip of the iceberg. The are social definitions that tell little about really is going on in the heads of those responding to these questions.

    These surveys are not scientific and are by no means representative of anything other than how these scientists believe they are suppose to be responding to the question in the context of how and why it is being asked.

    I've never been trying to divide the world into clear cut lines of theists versus atheists. People who are uncertain of what they believe will always stay open to ideas other than their own. If someone could convince me with truly overwhelming naturalistic evidence that ruled out the existence of any thing other than a naturalistic physical existence, I would be fully insane to hold to what I believe.

    You can never get me to sell out the importance of values to my thought process. No amount of overwhelming circular physical evidence will ever make me ammenable to a strict naturalistic point of view. You may not understand this, but it is because I believe the second commandment is exactly what is says it is.

    The tendency of everyman and woman to create a god in their own image is exactly as it states. Dan seems to call it pimping what you believe in, I call it idolatry. Naturalism taken to the extreme of modern science is nothing short of idolatry.

    I point to tendencies in most scientific minds as being fully capable of creating through the use of their imagination a description of the world that limits their conceptions of god, but they still believe they are theists in the process. Those who have no problems with the assumed meanings of field observations and inconceivably low possibilities must use imaginations that work overtime to keep god in the box they have created.

    I do not judge people as being stupid or ignorant that read books like The God Delusion, I am only saddened when readres are overwhelmed by the naturalistic perspective it presents of a writer who denies the existence of God but who chose to worship a god of their own imaginations.

    Calling unproven hypothetical science reliable and fully trustworthy is the same as saying I can believe what I chose to imagine but no further.

  25. Avatar of Mike Pulcinella
    Mike Pulcinella

    Erik writes: "There is a connection between sin and STD’s (common sense teaches that)."

    Erik, what is the connection between a young mother and cancer? I have known two 30-something mothers of young children who have recently died painful deaths from cancer and left behind bewildered children. Did God do that to them and why?

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