No Such Thing As Evidence

One thing I have pretty much given up on is trying to convince religiously-based conservatives of anything.

I spent a lot of time, in earlier years, presenting clear and simple evidence for the science of evolution. I think my books were pretty good in this regard. But I was not trying to convince creationists. They know they are wrong, and creationism is just a way of them influencing other people to be their followers.

I have also spent a lot of time presenting clear and simple evidence for the science of global warming. I briefly thought I might convince some “climate skeptics” that they were wrong. But they already know they are wrong. “Climate skepticism” is just their way to influence other people to be their followers.

More recently, millions of people refuse to believe that there is any such thing as the covid pandemic. Some of them run state governments. Here in Oklahoma, the Republicans have repeatedly proclaimed that a mask mandate is just as bad as Hitler’s Holocaust. They ignore all medical evidence.

To religious conservatives, there is no such thing as externally-verifiable truth. This became abundantly clear during the Trump years. Trump’s followers believed, and still believe, that He won the election of 2020. Their evidence? None, other than the fact that He says so. I deliberately gave the God-capitalization to the pronoun.

The religious conservatives have always been half-hearted in their beliefs. When the preacher Rice Broocks visited the University of Illinois, before he became a cofounder of a major church, he publicized that he was going to speak about creationism, but he asked the audience to release him from this topic, so that he could talk more about all the miraculous healing that God was doing through his hands. When I contacted the leader of the Heartland Institute, asking him for evidence regarding some of his claims that global warming was a hoax, his personal email response to me was, “Snore.” I’m not sure what that means, other than that he has no time to answer any questions. He was too busy hoodwinking people into believing him.

But with the covid epidemic and the Trump campaign, religious conservatives have abandoned all pretense at presenting evidence. The total absence of evidence does not show them they are wrong but is simply proof that Satan is so good at hiding their evidence that nobody can see any of it. I heard a preacher claim, a couple of months ago, that Joe Biden stole 41 million votes. Where is the evidence for this? None. To them, the absence of evidence is evidence that they are right.

And not only right, but the very rightness of God. Religious conservatives are blasphemers, who believe that Donald Trump creates truth by saying it. Here in Oklahoma, I see their flags and stickers all over the place. And they have stockpiles of automatic weapons. They do not hide this fact.

There is no point in trying to convince anyone on the political right. They already consider themselves to be incapable of error, as inerrant as God Himself.

When I stood in line last summer at a state agency, a Trumper started telling us that the covid epidemic was caused by dirty Mexicans coming over the border, or else (he was unclear) Biden invented it as an excuse to take away our freedoms. I had to struggle to suppress my desire to raise my voice. He insulted me by saying that my extensive studies, leading to a Ph.D. in biology, were less important than his wild guesses.

Further evidence of their blasphemy is that they not only despise anyone who does not believe them, but they particularly despise their fellow Republicans. To Trumpers, Biden (and especially that colored woman who is his vice president) is an infidel, but moderate Republicans like Liz Cheney are heretics. Heretics are always worse than infidels. Shi’a extremists hate Sunnis worse than they hate Christians.

I continue to write about evolution and global warming, not to try to convince right-wing blasphemers, but to educate people who already know the truth but appreciate discovering new evidence. Only the people who already know about evolution and global warming and the pandemic and that Trump lost, only these people, are delighted to learn new things.

And as a science educator and writer I really enjoy helping sincere people understand the world better, and that is my only goal and the only reward. In a way it is a relief to not have the burden of convincing anyone.

Incredible Events of the Past

In an old book, I ran across an account of the Chase Vault in the cemetery of Christ Church, on the island of Barbados. It seems that, beginning in 1807, recently deceased people began to be interred in that vault. At first nothing unusual happened. But then a young woman committed suicide, and her remains were interred in the vault. The next time the vault was opened, all the coffins had been thrown around as if by an incredible force, even though the island had experienced no earthquakes and there was no sign of damage on the inner walls, the outer walls, or the surrounding part of the cemetery. The cemetery workers put the coffins back in their places, and interred the next coffin. The next time the vault was opened, the coffins were again found strewn about. This time, after the coffins were rearranged and the new coffin interred, the workers placed sand and ashes carefully and smoothly on the floor. The next time the vault was opened, and the coffins were again strewn about, there was no disturbance in the ashes. Superstitious people believed that ghosts, who leave no footprints, had thrown the coffins around, perhaps the uneasy ghost of the woman who took her own life. The church ordered the coffins to be buried elsewhere and the crypt left open.

The evidence for the ghost tantrum seemed good. The ashes on the floor would have revealed the activity of marauding humans or animals. This was, in fact, the same trick that Daniel used in the apocryphal book Bel and the Dragon to prove that the pagan priests had used a secret trap door to sneak into the altar and eat the food, pretending that the god Bel had eaten it. Daniel threw some flour on the floor, and the priests left footprints in the flour, which they could not see in the dark.

But there is one flaw to the story of the tantrum ghosts of Barbados. There is no primary documentation of it. The vault began to be used in 1807, and has been empty for over a century. The priest supposedly wrote a record of the events, but this putative record burned in a church fire. The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society carried an account of the marauding ghost in May, 1945, over a century after the supposed events. Quite simply, today, nobody can be sure if the stories were real. No other accounts of the marauding ghost have survived, if they ever existed.

The reason I am writing this essay is to draw a comparison with the gospel accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus. The evidence for the Resurrection seemed pretty good. A stone was rolled over the opening of Jesus’ tomb, and Roman guards kept watch over it. Supposedly angels made the guards faint and then rolled the stone away, and Jesus came walking out. The stone and the guards gave considerable credibility to the account.

The problem is that the Resurrection account seems to have first been written down long after the supposed event. It is not found in the earliest Christian writings. For example, the earliest version of the earliest gospel (Mark) did not contain it. Mark 16: 9-20 were added later, at a time when any eyewitnesses would have been dead. Quite simply, as with the marauding ghosts, nobody today can be sure if the stories were real. No other accounts of the resurrection have survived, if they ever existed. One might have expected a Roman military record of it, since it would have been a major breach of military control if it happened.

It is clear that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was alive. They said so. But that does not mean that his body actually came forth from the tomb. They may have believed Jesus’ continued existence to be a spiritual one. Disciples walked on the Emmaus Road with a man whom they did not recognize until after he had left, and then they decided it must have been Jesus. Jesus appeared inside a locked room. None of these sound like a physical resurrection, but may have been visions or delusions that reflected a deeper faith rather than evidence that would convince a skeptic.

You can believe Jesus is alive if you want to, but do not call me a liar for disbelieving the supposed evidence of the resurrection just as I disbelieve the evidence for the tantrum ghost of Barbados. Whether Jesus is alive or not is, to me, a spiritual question.

The search for evidences, part one

I used to be a creationist and a fundamentalist. I believed that there was historical and scientific evidence to verify a literal (or what I thought was a literal) interpretation of the Bible. Even long after I had left this viewpoint behind, I wanted desperately to have some evidence to verify that, at least, God exists and that there is a spiritual realm.

One of the pieces of evidence that I considered good, even though not perfect, was the Near Death Experience (NDE). This occurs when people who are in a coma believe that they are floating above and seeing their own bodies on the bed; who see and speak with departed loved ones; and who see a tunnel towards light, into which a powerful and serene spiritual being invites them. Then they come back from the brink of death—always, they report, unwillingly.

Of course, all of this could be hallucination, caused by oxygen deprivation. But in some cases, patients have reported seeing things that they could not have known—usually things that happened in the operating room. But this can be explained if we consider that, despite them being in a clinical coma, their senses may have been able to detect some information for later recall.

But one patient said she saw red shoes on the roof, which (the story goes) was later confirmed and which she could not have known if her spirit had not been halfway to Heaven.

What is needed is a scientific study. Enter Sam Parnia, M.D. He wrote a book in which he described a scientific study of NDE. It was a brilliant experimental design. It included ceiling tiles that had symbols printed on the upper side, which neither the patient nor the medical personnel could see, but which an ascending spirit might be able to see. I was very excited as I read the book. Unfortunately, the book was only about the experimental design; no results. Presumably Parnia did not yet have results, and will publish them later. We are waiting, Sam!

Meanwhile, I found out that electromagnetic stimulation of the right temporal lobe of the brain could induce mental images of the tunnel of light. This is experimental evidence, though not quite proof, that this part of the NDE is a hallucination. Certain drugs, such as ketamine, can stimulate something similar to an NDE. This was very disillusioning for me to discover. I can remember where I was standing, and where the television was, when I saw this on one of the educational cable channels in 1999.

Therefore, as to whether NDE reveal a spiritual realm beyond our physical bodies and ecosystems is something about which we must remain agnostic. I say this not because I wish to reject a spiritual realm, but in spite of wanting to believe in one.