WHERE WE ARE
In Part 32 of this series I rejected Kreeft's argument constituting his Objection #10 against the Hallucination Theory because his argument was both INVALID and UNSOUND. However, I attempted to revise and repair his argument by keeping his basic principle about hallucinations and constructing historical premises that were not as obviously IRRELEVANT or FALSE as Kreeft's historical premises.
I am attempting to take Kreeft's steaming pile of dog shit, and turn it into a more reasonable argument for Objection #10.
Here is the revised and improved core argument for Objection #10:
D. Over a period of about one or two months, Jesus' disciples had various experiences that seemed to be of the risen Jesus, and in at least some of those experiences, the person who they thought was the risen Jesus was NOT a figment of their imagination.
F. IF the Hallucination Theory were true, THEN in all of the experiences of Jesus' disciples that seemed to be of the risen Jesus and that took place over a period of about one or two months, it was the case that the person who they thought was the risen Jesus was just a figment of their imagination.
Therefore:
A. The Hallucination Theory is FALSE.
Premise (D) is a key premise in this argument, and it is based on Kreeft's principle about hallucinations, plus two historical claims:
2. Figments of your imagination do not hold extended conversations with you, unless you have a serious mental disorder.
B. Over a period of about one or two months, Jesus' disciples had various experiences that seemed to be experiences of the risen Jesus, and in some of those experiences it seemed to the disciples that they (sometimes individually and sometimes as a group) had extended conversations with the risen Jesus.
C. None of Jesus' disciples had a serious mental disorder.
Thus:
D. Over a period of about one or two months, Jesus' disciples had various experiences that seemed to be of the risen Jesus, and in at least some of those experiences, the person who they thought was the risen Jesus was NOT a figment of their imagination.
In Part 32 I argued that in order to make it less likely that (C) is FALSE, we should interpret the phrase "Jesus' disciples" narrowly as referring to "the eleven" disciples who were specifically chosen by Jesus to be his inner circle of disciples. But in this case (C) is still DUBIOUS because we have almost no information about the words and actions of most of "the eleven" disciples, especially after the crucifixion.
In order to evaluate the argument for the key premise (D), we also need to evaluate the historical claim (B). In Part 32 I pointed out that the verse that Kreeft provides in support of his historical claim (Acts 1:3) not only FAILS to support his historical claim, but it also FAILS to support the historical claim made in premise (B).
However, there are eight passages in the NT that describe alleged experiences of the eleven disciples (or a subset of them) in which they experienced an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus. In Part 33 I reviewed each of those eight NT passages and concluded that NONE of them show that any of the eleven disciples had an experience of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus in which it seemed that they had an extended conversation with Jesus. I concluded that premise (B) is DUBIOUS.
Since both premise (C) and premise (B) are dubious, and since these are premises in the argument for premise (D), the argument for (D) should be rejected, and therefore, premise (D) is itself DUBIOUS.
There is one other premise in the argument supporting (D), so I will go ahead and evaluate that premise, even though it is already clear that the argument for (D) FAILS.
EVALUATION OF PREMISE (2)
Here once more is premise (2), which is the only premise of any worth in the argument Kreeft presented for Objection #10:
2. Figments of your imagination do not hold extended conversations with you, unless you have a serious mental disorder.
Obviously, one can DREAM about having a conversation with another person. So, clearly one can HALLUCINATE about having a conversation with another person. So, it is unclear whether (2) is true or false.
Kreeft follows the horrible example of McDowell by providing NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER in support of this empirical claim. Premise (2) makes an empirical claim that is in the field of psychology. Since Kreeft is NOT an expert in the field of psychology, the fact that he thinks premise (2) is true and asserts that premise (2) is true is of no significance.
If one can experience what seems to be an extended conversation in a DREAM or HALLUCINATION, then clearly premise (2) would be FALSE. So, the truth or falsehood of premise (2) depends completely on the distinction between a conversation that is EXTENDED and a conversation that is NOT EXTENDED. We have already seen that the concept of an "extended conversation" is VAGUE and that Kreeft offered no definition or clarification of this VAGUE phrase.
Since NONE of the relevant NT passages about alleged experiences of the eleven disciples of the risen Jesus involved Jesus speaking for more than one minute, a Christian apologist clearly needs the phrase "extended conversation" to be defined as requiring only a very short period of time. Although it is clearly stretching the ordinary meaning of this phrase, I would be willing to accept a minimal duration of five minutes of conversation as a definition of an "extended conversation". Even with this definition, the evidence in the NT FAILS to show that any of the eleven disciples seemed to experience an extended conversation with the risen Jesus.
With this clarification, we are in a better position to evaluate premise (2). Can one have a DREAM or HALLUCINATION in which one seems to have a conversation with another person that lasts for at least five minutes? If this is possible, then premise (2) should be judged to be FALSE.
It seems obvious that one can have a DREAM or HALLUCINATION of having a brief conversation that lasts for one minute. If so, then it would seem possible, even if not very common, to have a DREAM or HALLUCINATION of having a conversation that lasted for five minutes. I see no way to rule out this possibility other than by means of extensive scientific study and experimentation.
There is, however, an important ambiguity involved in this question. Dreams and hallucinations can, and often do, alter our experience of time. It is possible for a single deam that lasts only a few minutes to include events that cover both the beginning, middle, and end of a full day. And a dream can encompass a much larger span of time; even years can pass by in a single dream. So, what does it mean for a conversation to last for "five minutes" in a dream? Does the dream itself have to last for "five minutes"? or could it just seem to the dreamer that about five minutes had passed during the dream conversation, even if the dream itself lasted only one or two minutes?
We can measure the duration of a dream, to some extent, because scientists have ways of detecting whether a person is currently experiencing a dream. But in the case of the eleven disciples, what matters is their subjective experience of the time that passes while they experience an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus.
If, for example, Peter had a dream about the risen Jesus, and the dream was about Peter and Jesus having a conversation about Jesus' death on the cross, and it seemed to Peter that this conversation with Jesus lasted for nearly an hour, the fact that the dream actually took place in just a few minutes would be largely irrelevant. Peter, when thinking about and talking about his experience of having a conversation with the risen Jesus would naturally describe it as lasting for nearly an hour.
So, if there were any evidence that one or more of the eleven disciples had an experience of an alleged appearance of the risen Jesus in which it seemed to them that they had an "extended conversation" (i.e. a conversation lasting five minutes or longer) with Jesus, this could easily and plausibly be explained in terms of the subjective experience of time passing in a DREAM or HALLUCINATION.
Because even if the dream or hallucination actually lasted less than five minutes, the experience they had during the DREAM or HALLUCINATION could be one that seemed to last much longer than five minutes, and it is the amount of time that SEEMED to pass that would, in general, determine how they thought about and talked about the alleged conversation with the risen Jesus.
Because it is clearly possible for some of the eleven disciples to have had a DREAM or HALLUCINATION about having a conversation with the risen Jesus, and because the experience of the passing of time in a DREAM or HALLUCINATION is not directly tied to that actual duration of the DREAM or HALLUCINATION, it is clearly possible for some of the eleven disciples to have had a DREAM or HALLUCINATION about having a conversation with the risen Jesus in which it seemed to them that this conversation lasted for more than five minutes, even though the actual duration of the DREAM or HALLUCINATION was less than five minutes.
What matters is NOT the actual duration of the DREAM or HALLUCINATION, but the subjective perception of the passing of time experienced by the disciple(s) in the DREAM or HALLUCINATION. Therefore, premise (2) is FALSE.
Figments of our imagination CAN have "extended conversations" with us in DREAMS or HALLUCINATIONS, in that it can seem to us in a DREAM or HALLUCINATION that we have conversed with someone for more than five minutes, even though the actual duration of the DREAM or HALLUCINATION was less than five minutes.
EVALUATION OF THE ARGUMENT FOR PREMISE (D)
The argument in support of premise (D) is a complete and utter FAILURE.
The historical premises (B) and (C) are both DUBIOUS, and the principle about hallucinations that Kreeft asserts in premise (2) is:
(a) asserted without any reason or evidence whatsoever,
and
(b) appears to be FALSE.
It is obviously possible to DREAM or HALLUCINATE about having a conversation with another person, and the passage of time in DREAMS and HALLUCINATIONS is not tied to the actual duration of the DREAM or HALLUCINATION.
Because the argument for (D) is a complete FAILURE, the key premise (D) in the core argument for Objection #10 remains DUBIOUS.
In the next part of this series, I will evaluate the other key premise of the core argument for Objection #10.
No comments:
Post a Comment