Just launched a new blog, Praying For Revival (prayingforrevival.wordpress.com)
In this sermon, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones says:
“I am calling your attention to these two verses, and to the second in particular in order that we may consider together the great subject of revival, and of the need, the urgent need, of a revival in the Church of God at the present time. For I am persuaded that this is a very urgent matter.â€
I share the Doctor’s conviction that the church needs reviving. We need Holy Spirit power. Church attendence is falling, congregations are stale, secularism is on the rise… as we enter this post-Christian millenium, we must stop relying on our plans and theories and instead, depend on – plead for – the Holy Spirit.
So join me over there – as a reader or contributor.
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I think focusing on prayer is a good move for your purposes, despite not believing that prayer has any direct effect on the world whatsoever.
Whether anyone’s listening or not, regular prayer is a form of affirmation. It attunes the subconscious mind to the chosen goal and allows people to more easily pick up on ways to make it happen. Non-religious people can do the same thing just by writing something down 15 times a day. New Age folks have any number of ways to similarly apply the energies they imagine. As Daniel Dennett says, “Every time you read it, write it or say it, you make another copy in your brain. Every time you read it, write it or say it, you make another copy in your brain.” (He repeats it every time.)
The emotional involvement intrinsic to sincere prayer can only assist the process. Therefore I won’t be surprised if mass prayers for revival actually yield great results. However, you will have the opportunity to consider the possibility that God hasn’t had anything to do with it.
Of course.
But then again, I’d expect genuine revival to be accompanied by things unexplainable in those terms.
You might be surprised (though you shouldn’t be!) that there is a position among Christians that “Prayer changes us, not God”.
I think it’s bollocks. I’ve seen prayer answered in areas I have no control over.
I wonder – how do you explain it when people have prophetic visions?
Here’s one example: http://www.ardorpes.com/2009/01/24/prophetic-dreams-experiences-mark-driscoll/ (I’d like to find more but I don’t have time)
Here we go:
Start at 16mins (well, feel free to watch what is before that)
oops – link:
http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/media/video/mark_driscoll_in_sydney/
Given that there is such a position among certain Christians, one which I essentially share, I’m certainly not surprised that you think it’s bollocks.
My name links to my general response to claims of prophecy on ATA. I’ve been linking back to it regularly since I wrote it, since folks keep sending in new claims without reading what’s already there.
The SA.net video is down for the weekend, so I read that first blog about Driscoll’s dream instead.
Driscoll had personally seen and heard a bunch of solid indicators that something was fishy about the older man. Therefore if Driscoll dreamed about him, the dream would very likely paint the man negatively. The dream also had the two meeting at easily the most likely place and time: in the church, during the coming service. Driscoll had known the guy for a while, so he also had some idea of what he would be wearing and carrying.
After Driscoll dismissed the man, he felt vindicated by the fact that other churches had also kicked him out. Thing is, they kicked him out on SUSPICION of doing what Driscoll thought he would. In other words, the man had rubbed other pastors exactly the same way as he had Driscoll, and like Driscoll they’d sent him packing before his full intentions were even clear.
In the context of my own article, this one fits squarely in the High Probability of Success category. Though nothing stops it from being a proper prophetic vision, that possibility must be weighed against not only the small chance that it was pure coincidence, but against the very good chance that it was an easy guess for Driscoll’s subconscious to make.
Fair enough – though I’m keen to hear what you think of that video when it comes online!
Will read that article after I do some of these mounting law readings
Just re-read Rhys’ post, then the section of the book he was quoting from. He’s left some bits out – If you have time I’d encourage you to read the fuller story online, starting at the top of this page
Other random thought: that’s what I reckon about most prophecies, actually. Nostradamus’ prophecies were so vague they were bound to be ‘fulfilled’ eventually (or even, regularly).
But the Bible’s prophecies about Jesus are unique in their detail and specificity (not to mention number!).
Some might be thought general enough to apply to many people, though I’d say that finding one person to fulfill even just all the ‘general’ ones would be a task.
Some are deliberately fulfilled by Jesus, so you could argue there’s nothing supernatural in that (eg Isaiah 53:7, fulfilled Mark 15:4-5), though then you’d have to accept that Jesus was conscious of his massive claim.
But then there are those which Jesus had no control over and are astonishing in their specificity. Eg the price paid (30 pieces of silver) to betray Jesus (Zechariah 11:12, fulfilled: Matthew 26:14-15), the use of this money (Zechariah 11:13, fulfilled: Matthew 27:6-7), His ancestry (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Jesse, David), born in the rural hick town of Bethlehem, that the Messiah would come before AD 70 (when the temple was destroyed – prophecied that the Messiah would come to the temple), that He’d be born to a virgin (now, say what you will – how plausible is it that Jesus’ own mother would believe He was the Son of God – that much alone amazes me… but wouldn’t she know if He was born to a virgin?), that He’d live in Egypt, minister in Galilee, that he’d restore sight to the blind etc, that he’d be rejected by Jews (particularly unlikely in light of the one I just mentioned), betrayed by a friend, that he’d be pierced through the hands and feet (this prophecy was written before crucifixion was even invented!), given vinegar to drink, his clothes divided by lot (remarkably specific!), no bones would be broken (contrary to the usual practice of crucifixion), there would be darkness over the land at noon (which happened at his crucifixion), buried with the rich, and resurrected.
That list is a selection from here: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/prophchr.html (which is itself a selection, I’ve seen fuller lists).
I challenge you to identify one other person in history with that resume.
but I don’t think that you’d put *this* in the High Probability of Success category.
I’m going out on a limb here
Haha so much for those law readings huh!
I’ll comment on the Messianic prophecies in the new post you’ve just done, and keep this thread focused on Driscoll.
The article on Driscoll did leave some important things out, now that I’ve read the complete passage.
First was the actual fact that the man was wearing the outfit from the dream. I assumed this anyway, and as I said Driscoll knew the guy’s wardrobe to some extent.
Second was the fact that the man spoke the same Bible passages as Driscoll heard in the dream. Given that Driscoll had been discussing theology with this man long enough to call him a “mentor”, and suspected that he was making a power play, how difficult would it be to guess the Biblical passages the guy would use to reflect his wishes? Especially if, say, they’d read those passages together that week?
Finally the blogger leaves out that God spoke ONLY Biblical passages in the dream. He paraphrases to make it sound like God had something original to say, which in fact He didn’t.
Even assuming Driscoll remembered everything from the dream perfectly (tried to do that lately?) he had all he needed to predict with great probability the actions of this man he had suspected and so carefully watched. Even if something didn’t match, he said he had to collect his thoughts; perhaps the initial shock of being in the basic situation from the dream blinded him to a couple of discrepancies. He immediately turfed the man out, so for example he couldn’t double-check the outfit.
I’m looking forward to seeing the video, and essentially getting a third perspective from the same source.
Yeah interesting… though Driscoll doesn’t say they’d read those passages together that week (out of a 1000-odd page book, that would be pretty unlikely, I’d say)
I don’t dream (or have absolutely no recollection of them) but it’s not hard to imagine that, were God to speak through a dream, He’d make sure we remembered it.
Of course his being struck makes it hard to double check the details… but don’t lose the forest for the trees! It’s significant *that* he was struck.
Anyway, I’m not suggesting that this one experience is knock down evidence. The other stories in the video aren’t either, but I think they’re a bit more so.
Driscoll didn’t say he’d read the passages with the guy, but he might have made it more amazing by saying he hadn’t. And yet he didn’t. So I wonder.
You’re using the dream to support the existence of God. If you’re then going to presuppose God was really in the dream in order to support Driscoll’s memory of it, there’s not much point arguing about whether the dream was correct.
He was struck, all right, but the subconsious mind correctly guessing a future situation based on past experiences is amazing too. It’s just the sort of amazing that has some method to it.
Fair call in all respects, except one:
“You’re using the dream to support the existence of God. If you’re then going to presuppose God was really in the dream in order to support Driscoll’s memory of it, there’s not much point arguing about whether the dream was correct.”
No – this is not a good argument. I certainly can’t use a premise which implies God’s existence in a syllogism to prove it, but in this case all I’m doing is showing that it is internally consistent.
You must criticise something from within its own theoretical framework; this is the only way to avoid the fallacy you rightly denounce. It is no use for me to tell a post-modern that truth must exist because 2+2=4 universally. They will rightly say “But you don’t understand – 2+2 only equals 4 to you“. You see, it is I who has assumed my conclusion (absolute truth exists) in my attack. Their response justifies the internal consistency of post-modernism. They, likewise, cannot use this statement to form an argument against modernism – it too must be criticised from within its own framework.
Suggesting that dreams are usually hard to remember is ok, but if you want to say “Driscoll could not have remembered his dream” suddenly you have assumed your conclusion (‘There is no God’).
I did not assume God exists, all I said was If He does, it is not impossible that His dream would be abnormally well-recalled. In essence, all I said was that your criticism is not valid because it presumes your conclusion.
Does that make sense?
Some. What you said is internally consistent, yes.
I didn’t say “Driscoll could not have remembered his dreamâ€, I meant to suggest he might not have remembered it as well as it seemed to him in hindsight. Some details of the waking encounter might have transferred back to the dream in his mind.
Anyway, we’re in agreement that this story is 1. very interesting and 2. probably not as convincing as some other such stories. So I’ll get around to watching the video.
Aw I wished it made more clear. It’s a settled principle of argument, but I can’t remember the technical term.
Oh! I think for the first time I see that you are suggesting that as an explanation of how he might have come to think it was prophecy! That makes much more sense. Yes, potentially. I do wonder how far we can go into speculation to avoid a conclusion before it becomes unreasonable (/ad hoc).
Question related to that: do you have any positive evidence against God? Because Antony Flew is correct in saying the burned of proof lies with the theist… but I’ve met many an atheist so vehement in their denial of theism as to suggest they had some positive reason for their leaps to ever-more unlikey explanations. (Not you, though this thread has elements of it)
I have one friend who said even if God turned water into wine on the table before him, and it could be chemically proven, he’d still leap to any other explanation before God. I asked him if he had any reason not to believe in God, and when we worked through them he did not (though he thought he did), and after working through them he seemed no nearer to accepting God as an explanation.
I had another friend, having discussed the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, cling to the idea that the disciples were in it for the money, and even after I pointed out that no-one got anything more than floggings for their faith until centuries later, he clung all the more and said they were in it for the money for their descendents.
At what point do we look at where our speculations have ended up, and notice that they have absolutely no evidence going for them but that they save us from the uncomfortable alternative. At what point does the atheist stop saying “There is no evidence for God” and start saying “There is no evidence for God that I have not had to explain away”?
(And yes, I agree with your assesment of Rhys’ blog entry. Subject to this comment, of course)
And, further, at what point does the atheist say “The number of explanations I’ve had to come up with is becoming unreasonable.”
When, in essence, is there enough evidence that one stops justifing a multitude of explaining-aways to account for a hypothesis one has no independent reason to hold?
Yes, mate, that’s exactly what I’m doing for Driscoll and also the Messianic prophecies in the other thread – finding alternative explanations and weighing their likelihood against that of divine action. Glad we’re on the same page now.
You’re right about the disciples, but you’ve got me thinking now. If they were in it for the money, that doesn’t mean they were successful.
I have no positive reason to disbelieve in God. It’s an unprovable negative, if indeed it’s a negative. I became an atheist when I realised that my reasons for believing weren’t good or even real reasons.
The lack of a positive reason to disbelieve is not in itself a reason to believe, as is obviously the case with, say, fairies. Otherwise we would be compelled to believe in multiple, contradictory things, and have to choose arbitrarily.
The hypothesis of the absence of gods is what’s known in statistics as a null hypothesis. It’s an uncontroversial hypothesis I adopt by default in an apparently natural world, one which requires evidence to contradict rather than confirm. In order to reject the null hypothesis and accept an alternative hypothesis such as the existence of a given god, a hypothesis which must be confirmed rather than contradicted, the evidence for it must be significant.
That’s not a vague statement, it’s very specific: “significant” means there’s a set probability (ranging from 90% to 99.5% for most purposes) that the evidence is not simply happenstance, coincidence or misleading random variation. Once one reaches that point, one rejects the null hypothesis and adopts the particular alternative, accepting the remaining 10% to 0.5% probability that one has made a mistake. It’s a justifiable point at which to change one’s mind without having any conclusive proof one way or another.
To apply this to the topic at hand: would I allow a minimum 90% probability that this dream, combined with all other claimed fulfilled prophecies I know of, are too many and too detailed to have occurred as part of normal world workings? No. Not when I consider the set of alternative explanations which apply to most or all of them, the fulfilled prophecies (about Muhammed, for example) which support contradictory conclusions and the silent multitude of predictions and premonitions which never come true, and thus are never reported. (Occasionally you do see public prophecies go pear-shaped; witness the works of Ronald Weinland.) For an atheist, Hayesy, the potential problem isn’t too many explanations but too few. Right now there are tons.
Hope that makes sense, maths/comp-sci grad to law student.
It makes a lot of sense (I’m really a science student in disguise – I’m best at maths and took an Advanced Physics unit at uni last semester to keep me sane. I miss it this semester).
I did a bit of statistics in Psychology, and that all rings familiar bells. I don’t remember statistically significant results having a set probability, but rather a certain test had a certain threshold… but maybe my memory fails (or we didn’t go deep enough).
It’s difficult to give probabilities to these things, though, isn’t it. Especially over against the probability of the explanation (because, of course, the probability of an alternative explanation is never 100%). What of the case where the ‘God explanation’ is more likely than the alternative on balance of probabilities?
And don’t those calculations depend on your starting assumptions anyway? The committed materialist will maintain the probability of a miracle is 0 (or minute), while a theist will say it is good (and 1, if the theist is convinced God wills it).
C. S. Lewis has some great things to say about this in Miracles (a book I’ve only flicked through)
Yes, miracles are a very difficult and subjective thing to assign probabilities. That’s why my main question (last paragraph in the last post) doesn’t use them at all.
That doesn’t mean it rules them out. It simply considers the likelihood or unlikelihood of only known natural effects producing the same results. Next is the simplest part of the calculation: one minus the probability of all natural options (which individually are much easier to estimate, and in some cases even calculate) is the probability of supernatural options.
The next job is narrowing those down to the right deity.
P(miracle) = 1 – P(natural)
Hrmmm… I’m not sure where you get this. Does it follow that if a result can be explained with a total probability of 1, that in this situation a miracle is impossible?
That seems totally absurd.
I just wonder where this idea comes from?
(Of course in that situation we’d have no basis for thinking it was a miracle, but that does not make it impossible that it was one)
Too simple.
P(definitely a miracle) = 1 – P(possibly natural)
P(possibly a miracle) = 1 – P(definitely natural)
Which one you look at depends on how strongly you want to argue for an event as a miracle.
P(definitely natural) cannot possibly be 1, because perhaps the supernatural is emulating natural happenstance exactly. It’s the unprovable negative again. P(definitely a miracle) of 1, on the other hand, might be achieveable in tightly controlled conditions where every natural mechanism can be ruled out.
Yeah… I’m still not sure if it works, or even if it’s of any use.
How do you show something is definitely natural? Surely now we’ve stopped talking about explanations…
Hang on a minute, the second try made little sense. I’m trying too hard. It actually is as simple as
P(miracle) = 1 – P(natural).
Labeling all supernatural events as miracles, an event can’t be both natural and a miracle, but it must be one of them. Therefore the probability that it’s natural OR a miracle is 1, or
P(natural) + P(miracle) = 1
Shift P(natural) across, and you’re there.
Your source of confusion is this: it does NOT follow that if an event has a natural explanation, then it is definitely not a miracle. That an event has a natural explanation doesn’t mean P(natural) = 1, it just means P(natural) is not zero. That leaves room for a miracle. How much room depends on the natural explanation.
Yep ok I’m with you now.
Still think it would be very difficult to come up with a probability for real events though.
Are you familiar with the work of Peter Stoner (Professor Emeritus of Science at Westmont College)? I’m not, but a google search turned up his name
He calculated the odds of a person filling 8 messianic prophecies to be 1 in 10^17. Of 48: 1 in 10^157. To my knowledge he never calculated the probability of someone fulfilling all 456 prophecies identified by Edersheim.
Now, his research might be totally bogus, I don’t know. But on the face of it, that seems to take you into the realm of significant probability of miracle, no?
Difficult, yes, but not impossible to at least produce upper and lower bounds.
Stoner’s calculations use the hypothetical premise that it all actually happened, and without any knowledge of the existing prophecies. The probability that I will repeat a specific action described in a newspaper in Oslo in 1926 is in the same ballpark, but it’s the same for any paper in any country on any date, and I’d bet I’ve mirrored stories from throughout the century.
Within the Made to Order scenario, the sheer number of prophecies fulfilled might actually decrease credibility. Just one good, evidenced, fulfilled prophecy would be enough for a godly person to establish his cred. Is all the extra credit necessary?
Self-Fulfilling would work along the same lines. Jesus knew of some prophecies himself; could he have seen them as a checklist?
Hrmmm this seems a bit self-contradictory to me…
In the first bit, about Stoner’s calculation, you rightly say that you could well have repeated stories in many newspapers. I agree – it would not be surprising to find someone doing one isolated thing the same.
But then you say “Just one good, evidenced, fulfilled prophecy would be enough”. Haven’t you just refuted this? I’m sure many people could prove they’ve fulfilled one of those prophecies… which is why the whole list is needed.
It’s like a menu, so that when *all* these things are combined, we’d recognise him.
And I dealt with the self-fulfilling in my post on prophecy here. Specifically this bit and following:
“Some are deliberately fulfilled by Jesus, so you could argue there’s nothing supernatural in that (eg Isaiah 53:7, fulfilled Mark 15:4-5), though then you’d have to accept that Jesus was conscious of his massive claim.
But then there are those which Jesus had no control over and are astonishing in their specificity. Eg: …”
By “just one good, evidenced, fulfilled prophecy would be enough”, I meant one which, if you hypothesise was not actually luck or divine intervention, could not be anything else. If there’s a plausible alternative explanation, and I stick by that word, we get into the muck of just how likely a miracle is by comparison, and there’s no decent evidence to be had.
Yes, I read the other bit about self-fulfilling prophecies, but Jesus did have the opportunity to fulfill at least a few of them deliberately. I’m not talking about all of them here. The ones which are “astonishing in their specificity” and out of the main man’s control are better candidates for Made to Order.