Showing posts with label J. P. Moreland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J. P. Moreland. Show all posts

Sunday, February 04, 2024

People Converted Through Arguments

"My colleague J.P. Moreland, out at Talbot, has taken to responding to, when people say to him, 'You can't bring anybody to Christ through argument.', J.P. says, 'Oh, yeah, you can. I've done it.' And I can say the same. We constantly get emails and testimonies coming into Reasonable Faith that people who have come to Christ after seeing a debate or a video or have come back to Christ after walking away from Christian faith through Reasonable Faith materials." (William Lane Craig, 8:04 in the audio of his November 13, 2023 Reasonable Faith podcast here)

There are Biblical examples as well (e.g., Acts 17:2-4, 19:8).

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Prayer & healing

J. P. Moreland writes:

The Sunday evening service on February 20, 2005, had just ended and I wanted to get home . . . The previous Thursday a virus landed in my chest and throat, and in a period of less than three hours I went from being normal to having the worst case of laryngitis in the 35 years since college. On Friday I went to our walk-in clinic and received the bad news. The doctor warned that this virus was going around, she had seen several cases of it in the last few weeks, and there was nothing that could be done about it. I just had to wait it out. The laryngitis would last 7–10 days. This couldn’t be, I whispered to her. My main day of teaching at the university was Monday, and I was looking at a full day of lecturing. I couldn’t afford to cancel classes because I had already missed my limit of canceled classes for that semester. To make matters worse, I was scheduled to deliver a three-hour lecture at a nearby church that Tuesday evening, and I didn’t want to let the church down. It made no difference. The doctor said I wasn’t going to be able to speak either day, so I had to make other plans. My throat felt as if it had broken glass in it, and I was reduced to whispering. On Sunday evening I whispered a few greetings to various church friends; I tried to speak normally, but it hurt too much. After the service I had to get home, try to contact our department secretary . . . and cancel my classes for Monday. I could cancel with the church the next day. As I was walking out of the sanctuary, two lay elders intercepted me. ‘Hey, J.P.,’ one yelled, ‘you can’t leave yet. Hope (my wife) just told us you have laryngitis, and we can’t let you get outta here without loving on you a bit and praying for your throat!’ So one elder laid hands on my shoulders and the other placed his hand on my lower throat area and started praying. To be honest, I wasn’t listening to a word they said. I had already left the church emotionally and wanted to get home to make my phone call. But something happened. As the two men prayed gently for me, I began to feel heat pour into my throat and chest from one elder’s hand. After two or three minutes of prayer, I was completely and irreversibly healed! I started talking to the brothers normally with no pain, no effort, no trace that anything had been wrong. I never had to make that call to my secretary.

[...]

We have both seen and heard eyewitness testimony to miraculous healings . . . During the last two years, in our church alone, there have been at least six cases of cancer miraculously healed, some of them terminal and beyond medical intervention; one person who instantly had her complete eyesight restored from significant, partial blindness after receiving prayer; a Vietnam veteran blinded in one eye for twenty-five years by a grenade explosion who received full sight after being prayed for by a team of several people; and a young deaf boy who miraculously received full hearing after a friend of ours laid hands on him and prayed. These stories are real – in most cases we know the people involved in praying – and they could be multiplied many times over by other examples of miraculous healing.

More interesting anecdotes about prayer and healing here.

Wednesday, April 01, 2020

The existence of the soul

Currently J. P. Moreland's series on the existence of the soul is available for free here.

Monday, October 07, 2019

Moreland–is there life after death?

In this post I'll use "dualism" as shorthand for substance dualism. I subscribe to Cartesian interactionist dualism. I don't subscribe to Thomistic dualism (hylomorphism). 

A. This is a fairly useful exchange as far as it goes:


But it tries to cover far too much ground in far too little time. Also, Moreland and the interviewer are talking at cross-purposes for a while, which squanders precious time. 

B. Moreland probably has far more to say about religious pluralism, but due to time constraints, deflected that issue.

C. Up to a point, dualism and physicalism are empirically equivalent explanations. Both are consistent with the data that the interviewer cited, viz. memory loss, inability to form new memories, and loss of cognitive function.

According to dualism, the brain is an interface between the mind and the physical world. It mediates action or information in both directions. If damaged, the brain blocks input or output at both ends. 

If the brain is damaged, that may block new sensory input. That prevents the mind from receiving new information from and about the sensible world.

If, conversely, the brain is damaged, that may block the ability of the mind to communicate with the outside world. Memories are stored in the mind, not the brain. If the brain is damaged, that impedes retrieval. The memories can't get through a washed out bridge. So long as the mind is embodied, that imposes limits on mental activity. 

All things being equal, the scales tip slightly in favor of physicalism as the simpler explanation. All things considered, additional evidence weighs heavily on the dualist side of the scales. 

D. Moreland greatly understates the evidence for the afterlife. I'll begin by proposing a more complex taxonomy:

1. Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife

2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife

3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife

4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife

Let's run back through these:

(1)-(2) constitute evidence for dualism. If there's evidence that the mind is ontologically independent of the brain, then that's indirect evidence for the afterlife. That's what makes disembodied consciousness possible. 

1.  Indirect philosophical evidence for the afterlife

i) The hard problem of consciousness. 

Philosophical arguments that the characteristics of consciousness are categorically different from physical structures and events. 

ii) Roderick Chisholm's argument:


2. Indirect empirical evidence for the afterlife

i) Veridical near-death experiences and veridical out-of-body experiences.  

ii) ESP, psychokinesis. If all mental activity takes place inside the brain, then the mind can't know about the physical world or act on the physical world apart from sensory input or the body interacting with its environment. If, conversely, there's empirical evidence that mental activity is not confined to the brain, then that's evidence for the metaphysical possibility of disembodied postmortem survival. 

3. Direct theological evidence for the afterlife

i) The biblical witness to the intermediate state. If there's good evidence that the Bible is a trustworthy source of information, then that's indirect evidence for whatever it teaches. 

ii) The resurrection of Christ

That's evidence, not for the immortality of the soul, but a reembodied state. 

That's what "Christian physicalists" pin their hopes on. However, the immortality of the soul is a bridge to the resurrection of the body. A philosophical objection to "Christian physicalism" is that if consciousness ceases at death, then what God resurrects isn't the same person who died but a copy of the person who died. And that raises questions of personal identity. If your existence is discontinuous, if there's a break or gap in your existence, then what does God restore? Is a copy of you you

4. Direct empirical evidence for the afterlife 

i) A subset of near-death experiences report meeting a decedent who wasn't known to be dead at the time. In a variation, the decedent imparts information that could not naturally be known. If the report is true, that's direct empirical evidence for postmortem survival. 

ii) Veridical postmortem apparitions, viz. poltergeists, grief apparitions, crisis apparitions, Christophanies. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

To heaven and back?

I don't normally put much stock in NDEs about young children. No doubt some children have NDEs. And it wouldn't surprise me if some have a heaven-and-back episode during the interval when they are clinically dead, prior to resuscitation. But for various reasons, I don't think those accounts are reliable. 

However, this might be an exception. In his recent Biola presentation on NDEs, J. P. Moreland mentioned the case of a boy who died, went to heaven, met his late brother, came back, and told his shocked parents. The mother had aborted that son. Not only is that a veridical detail, but it's not the sort of detail parents would invent if they were hawking a heaven-n-back book. Moreland gives a thumbnail sketch around the 25 min mark of this presentation:


Unfortunately, he doesn't cite the source, so it's not possible to follow up on his summary, to assess the specifics for credibility. 



Friday, November 30, 2018

Krishna, Christ, and Manitou

Recently, J. P. Moreland did a whirlwind presentation on near-death experiences:


Unfortunately, the video froze up near the end. But it was an interesting overview.

A common Christian objection to NDEs is the oft-repeated claim that non-Christian NDErs interpret their purported encounter in non-Christian terms. If we think NDEs are real, that seems to be an argument for religious pluralism. 

In this course of his presentation, Moreland recommended this book:

John Burke, Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future that Awaits You (Baker Books, 2015). And Moreland quoted this passage:

Osis and Haraldsson, two researchers, studied five hundred Americans and five hundred Indians to determine how much religious or cultural conditioning shaped one's near-death experience. They noted, "If the patient sees a radiant man clad in white who induces in him an inexplicable experience of harmony and peace, he might interpret the apparition in various ways: as an angel, Jesus, or God; or if he is a Hindu, Krishna, Shiva, or Deva."

Though I have heard researchers state conclusions like this, i have never read of NDErs describing anything like Krishna (who has blue skin), Siva (who has three eyes)... (pp141-42).

I haven't read Burke's book, and I'm dubious about using NDEs to detail heaven and hell. But it does draw an important distinction. Hindus use the names of their gods to denote what they saw, but what they (say they) saw doesn't match Hindu iconography. They're just using the religious designations culturally available to them. But to say they saw a being by that name doesn't mean they saw an individual who corresponds to the Hindu god–because the visual impression is different from the conventional designation. 

To take a comparison, suppose Jesus appeared to an Iroquois brave in the 15C. Suppose the Christophany looks like an ancient Palestinian Jews with a robe, beard, and sandals. The Iroquois brave has no word for "Jesus" or "Christ". So he might call him Manitou. That would be the only designation available to him to denote a numinous, humanoid being. 

That might convey the impression of religious pluralism if we fail to make allowance for the fact that he can only use the vocabulary and categories his culture provides. 

If, however, he provided a visual description that didn't match the traditional Iroquois iconography for Manitou, then it would be invalid to infer that he saw Manitou. Rather, he saw a being whom he calls Manitou because that's the only name he has at his disposal to denote a numinous, humanoid being. It doesn't mean his experience actually refers to Manitou. 

Perhaps, then, NDEs have less religious diversity than meets the eye. In principle, non-Christian NDErs might report meeting a heathen deity because that's their only frame of reference. But they didn't actually see a pagan god. They simply use the name of a pagan god as a placeholder. 

I'm insufficiently well-read on NDEs to know how non-Christian NDEers describe their encounters, so I don't know how applicable that distinction is. But it's something to make allowance for when assessing their reports. 

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Prayer & providence

In response to something I posted yesterday, John Loftus linked to the following article of his:

***QUOTE***

Christians will assert that the “God of the gaps” epistemology doesn’t adequately describe their knowledge about God and his activity, since God is not just known in the gaps of our knowledge. But consider how science has filled in the gaps when it comes to prayer and healing.

When ancient people prayed for their “daily bread,” they did so because crops could sometimes fail in their local area, or a hunter may fail to bag a deer. Such disasters as these things could produce hunger, and possible starvation. Do Christians today have the same fervor when they pray for their “daily bread” as ancient Christians did? Many Christians in the industrialized West don't even pray before every meal, especially when they eat at a McDonald's. Many if not most all of the Christians in the industrialized West, take their food pretty much for granted.

When Christians are very sick, they will take a prescribed pill from the doctor and be confident they'll get better, even if they do pray. But in the ancient times when someone got very sick they could die. Christians in the ancient past had no choice but to depend almost completely upon God's help here. Are Christians saying they wrestle with God over sickness in prayer like the Christian people of old did? Or is their confidence more in the results of science and medicine, than in God? I know the answer. They just haven't admitted it yet.

As science helps Christians with their daily meals and with healing, they believe in prayer and in God’s help less and less, and they believe in science more and more. Say it isn’t so!

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2006/01/prayer-healing-and-god-of-gaps.html

***END-QUOTE***

1.Loftus’ little piece is predicated on a half-truth.

In an age of affluence and modern technology, we may well be less aware of our dependence on God.

2.However, when preindustrial Jews and Christians prayed for their daily bread, they didn’t expect that manna from heaven was a permanent substitute for seedtime and harvest.

Biblical theology has always struck a balance between ordinary providence and miraculous provision.

It was never one or the other. At most, the only thing that’s changed is the emphasis.

3.In addition, many of the needs or predicaments which drive us to our knees are not and never will be soluble by the wonders of modern technology.

Indeed, modern technology can generate a new set of moral or practical conundra.

Bioethics is creating new moral dilemmas and borderline cases.

Technology can get us into trouble just as easily as it can get us out of trouble. How many employees have gotten into trouble because they accidentally hit the “send” button or inadvertently cc’d their email to the wrong party, viz. the boss?

4.Science does not fill the gaps of prayer and healing. Not only with respect to (3), but in another key respect as well, for the claim disregards the evidence of answered prayer.

Answered prayer is not a gap in our knowledge. To the contrary, answered prayer is positive evidence of God’s existence and providential care.

5.It is also beside the point to counter this with examples of unanswered prayer, for evidence and inevidence are not on an epistemic par.

A relative lack of evidence does nothing to negate the actual evidence for a given phenomenon. Your inexperience does nothing to erase my experience.

6.Finally, J. P. Moreland has an interesting little lecture on answered prayer, in which he supplies some general criteria as well as concrete illustrations from his own experience.

***QUOTE***

Most, if not all, of us wonder if God actually answers prayer. While remembering these answers can be accomplished through journaling, identifying them can be much more difficult.

The Discipline of Journaling

The last three articles have focused on the nature and importance of spiritual disciplines, and we have investigated some specifics about the disciplines of witnessing and solitude/silence. I want to close this series on spiritual disciplines by taking a look at the importance of identifying and remembering answers to prayer.

In my more than 35 years as one of Jesus' apprentices, I have experienced literally hundreds of specific, detailed answers to prayer which have strengthened my faith considerably. I, along with others, experience unanswered prayer as well, but in all honesty, I (and my family and close Christian friends) have seen enough specific answers to prayer that it is no longer reasonable for me to doubt that prayer actually works.

Of the two tasks — identifying and remembering answers to prayer — the latter is relatively easy to discuss, so I will spend most of my time providing ways to identify answers to prayer.

As for remembering answer to prayer, the most effective way that I have accomplished this is by keeping a prayer journal. The point of this journal has not been to write in it every day, but to record the content (and date) of important prayer requests. When I receive positive answers, I then note the date and circumstances associated with them.

Over the years, I have accumulated an incredible record of God's answers to my prayers, including those times when He answered me in ways different than what I had asked. From time to time, I will look back through this journal, and when I do, my faith is deeply strengthened. This record has been so crucial to me because, if I had never logged these incidents and the incredible, supernatural details surrounding them, they would have been forgotten, leaving me with a much weaker view of prayer's effectiveness.

Help from the Intelligent Design Movement

That said, let's turn to some reflections about recognizing answers to prayer. Interestingly, we can get help in this regard by insights derived from the Intelligent Design movement.

Recently, William Dembski has written a book in which he analyzed cases which validate the inference that some phenomena are the result of purposive, intelligent acts carried out by an agent.1 Among other things, Dembski analyzes cases in which insurance companies, the police, and forensic scientists must determine whether a death was an accident (no intelligent cause) or brought about intentionally (done on purpose by an intelligent agent).

According to Dembski, whenever three factors are present, these various investigators are rationally obligated to draw the conclusion that the event was brought about intentionally: (1) The event was contingent; that is, even though it took place, it did not have to happen, (2) the event had a small probability of happening, and (3) the event is capable of independent specifiability; that is, a number of features of the event are specified prior to and independent of the event itself taking place.

To illustrate, consider the game of bridge. Now imagine that one of the players is holding a random set of cards — let's call it hand A — while the dealer is holding a perfect bridge hand. Now if that happened, we would immediately infer that, while hand A was not dealt intentionally, the perfect bridge hand was and, in fact, represents a case of cheating on the part of the dealer. Is our suspicion justified? In order to answer this, let's apply the three factors cited above to the situation.

First, neither hand had to happen. There are no laws of nature, logic, or mathematics that necessitate that either hand had to come about in the history of the cosmos. In this sense, each hand and, indeed, the very card game itself, is a contingent event that did not have to take place.

Second, since both hand A and the perfect bridge hand have the same number of cards, each is equally improbable. So the small probability of an event is not sufficient to raise suspicions that the event came about by the intentional action of an agent.

The third criterion, however, provides the factor that does give us a sufficient reason to raise these suspicions. The perfect bridge hand can be specified as special independently of the fact that it happened to be the hand that came about, but the same cannot be said for hand A. Hand A can be specified as "some random hand or other that someone happens to get." Now that specification applies to all hands and does not mark out as special any particular hand that comes about. So understood, A is no more special than any other random deal. But this is not so for the perfect bridge hand. This hand can be characterized as a special sort of combination of cards by the rules of bridge quite independently of the fact that it is the hand that the dealer received. It is the combination of contingency (this hand did not have to be dealt), small probability (this particular arrangement of cards was quite unlikely to have occurred), and independent specifiability (according to the rules, this is a pretty special hand for the dealer to receive) that justifies us in concluding that this is most likely a case of intelligent design; the intelligence behind this design, of course, is that of the dealer.

So, how does this apply to identifying answered prayer?

Application to Recognizing Answered Prayer

Now the same thing takes place in specific answers to prayer. To illustrate, early in my ministry, while attending a seminar in Southern California, I heard a presentation on how to pray in a more specific way.

Knowing that in a few weeks, I would be returning to Colorado to start my ministry at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden with Ray Womack, a fellow Campus Crusade worker, I wrote a prayer request in my prayer notebook — a prayer which was known only to me. I began to pray specifically that God would provide for the two of us a white house that had a white picket fence, a grassy front yard, a close proximity to the campus (specifically, within two or three miles), and a monthly payment that was no more than $130.

I told the Lord that this request was a reasonable one on the grounds that (a) we wanted a place that provided a homey atmosphere for students, was accessible from campus and that we could afford, and (b) I was experimenting with specific prayer and wanted my faith to be strengthened.

I returned to the Golden area and looked for three days at several places to live. I found nothing in Golden and, in fact, I only found one apartment for $135/month about 12 miles from campus. I told the manager that I would take it and she informed me that a couple had looked at the place that morning and had until that afternoon to make a decision. If they didn't want it, then I could move in the next day.

I called late that afternoon and was informed that the couple took the apartment which was the last available one in the complex. I was back to square one. Now remember, not a single person knew that I had been praying for a white house.

That evening, Kaylon Carr (a Crusade friend) called me to ask if I still needed a place to stay. When I said yes, she informed me that earlier that day, she had been to Denver Seminary. While there, she saw a bulletin board on which a pastor in Golden was advertising a place to rent, hopefully to seminary students or Christian workers. Kaylon gave me his phone number, so I called and set up an appointment to meet the pastor at his place at nine the next morning. Well, as I drove up, I came to a white house with a white picket fence, a nice grassy front yard, right around two miles from campus, and he asked for $110 per month rent. Needless to say, I took it, and Ray and I had a home that year in which to minister.

This answer to prayer — along with hundreds of others that my Christian friends and I have seen — was an event that was (1) contingent and did not have to happen according to natural law; (2) very improbable; and (3) independently specifiable (a number of features of the event were specified in my prayer prior to and independent of the event itself taking place).

Meeting these three criteria are not necessary conditions for being judged to be an action by God (God can answer general prayers that are not too specific), but they do seem to be sufficient, and as such, answers to prayer in my life have increased the rational justification of my confidence in Jesus Christ. And by recording these in my prayer journal, they are an ever-present source of encouragement to me in my life as Jesus' apprentice.

http://www.trueu.org/Academics/LectureHall/A000000425.cfm

***END-QUOTE***

Now, what am I to make of Moreland’s testimony? What’s the most plausible explanation?

There are only three options: (i) he’s telling the truth; (ii) he’s a deceiver, or (iii) he’s self-deluded.

It’s hard to believe that someone of Moreland’s sophistication is self-deluded.

Could he be a liar? Well, anything is possible. But I have no reason to believe that he’s a liar.

And even if he were a liar, he is not a fool. Moreland is a high-profile apologist. That makes him a very inviting target to unbelievers.

If he were caught in a lie, it would destroy his reputation. And he doesn’t need to tell a lie to be a successful Christian apologist.

This leaves us with what is far and away the most plausible explanation: that there is a God who answers prayer.

Not every prayer. But some prayers. And that’s what Scripture would lead us to expect.