Brain snatching is not a model of life after death

Van Inwagen infamously suggested the possibility that at the moment of death God snatches a core chunk of our brain, transports it to a different place, replaces it with a fake chunk of brain, and rebuilds the body around the transported chunk.

I think that, were van Inwagen’s suggestion is correct, it would be correct to say that we die. If not, then it is a seriously problematic view given the Christian commitment that people do, in fact, die. Hence van Inwagen's model is not a model of life after death.

Argument: If in the distant future all of a person’s body was destroyed in an accident except for a surving core chunk, and medical technology had progressed so much that it could regrow the rest of the body from that chunk, I think we would not say that the medical technology resurrected the person, but that it prevented the person’s death.

Objection: The word “death” gets its meaning ostensively from typical cases we label as cases of “death”. In these cases, the heart stops, the parts of the brain observable to us stop having electrical activity, etc. What we mean by “death” is what happens in these cases when this stuff happens. If van Inwagen’s suggestion is correct, then what happens in these cases is the snatching of a core chunk. Hence if van Inwagen’s suggestion is correct, then death is divine snatching of a core chunk of the brain, and we do in fact die.

Responses: First, if death is divine snatching of a core chunk of the brain, then jellyfish and trees don’t die, because they don’t have a brain. I suppose, though, one might say that “death” is understood analogously between jellyfish and humans, and it is human death that is a divine snatching of a core chunk of the brain.

Second, it seems obvious that if God had chosen not to snatch a core chunk of Napoleon’s brain, and allowed Napoleon’s body to rot completely, then Napoleon would be dead. Hence, not even the death of a human is identical to a divine snatching.

Third, I think it is an important part of the concept of death is that death is something that is in common between humans and other organisms. People, dogs, jellyfish, and trees all die. We should have an account of death common between these. The best story I know is that death is the destruction of the body. And the van Inwagen story doesn’t have that. So it’s not a story about death.

Brains, bodies and souls

There are four main families of views of who we are:

1. Bodies (or organisms)

2. Brains (or at least cerebra)

3. Body-soul composites

4. Souls.

For the sake of filling out logical space, and maybe getting some insight, it’s worth thinking a bit about what other options there might be. Here is one that occurred to me:

5. Brain-soul (or cerebrum-soul) composites.

I suppose the reason this is not much (if at all) talked about is that if one believes in a soul, the body-soul composite or soul-only views seem more natural. Why might one accept a brain-soul composite view? (For simplicity, I won’t worry about the brain-cerebrum distinction.)

Here is one line of thought. Suppose we accept some of the standard arguments for dualism, such as that matter can’t be conscious or that matter cannot think abstract thoughts. This leads us to think the mind cannot be entirely material. But at the same time, there is some reason to think the mind is at least partly material: the brain’s activity sure seems like an integral part of our discoursive thought. Thus, the dualist might have reason to say that the mind is a brain-soul composite. At the same time, there is a Cartesian line of thought that we should be identified with the minimal entity hosting our thoughts, namely the mind. Putting all these lines of thought together, we conclude that we are minds, and hence brain-soul composites.

Now I don’t endorse (5). The main ethical arguments against (2) and (4), namely that they don’t do justice to the deep ethical significance of the human body, apply against (5) as well. But if one is not impressed by these arguments, there really is some reason to accept (5).

Furthermore, exploring new options, like the brain-soul composite option, sometimes may give new insights into old options. I am now pretty much convinced that the mind is something like the brain plus soul (or maybe cerebrum plus intellectual part of soul or some other similar combination). Since it is extremely plausible that all of my mind is a part of me, this gives me a new reason to reject (4), the view that I am just a soul. At the same time, I do not think it is necessary to hold that I am just a mind, so I can continue to accept view (3).

The view that the mind is the brain plus soul has an interesting consequence for the interim state, the state of the human being between death and the resurrection of the body. I previously thought that the human being in the interim state is in an unfortunately amputated state, having lost all of the body. But if we see the brain as a part of the mind, the amputated nature of the human being in the interim state is even more vivid: a part of the human mind is missing in the interim state. This gives a better explanation of why Paul was right to insist on the importance of the physical resurrection—we cannot be fully in our mind without at least some of our physical components.

A Thomistic argument for the possibility of an afterlife for animals

1. Accidents are more intimately dependent on substance than substantial forms on matter.

2. If (1) is true and God can make accidents survive without the substance, then God can make forms survive without matter.

3. If God can make forms survive without matter, then God can ensure life after death for animals by making their forms survive and restoring their matter.

4. God can make accidents survive without the substance.

5. So, God can ensure life after death for animals.

The most controversial claim here is (4), but that follows from the Thomistic account of the transsubstantiation.

Of course, there is a great gap between the possibility of an afterlife for an animal and its actuality. And the above argument works just as well for plants and fungi.

Evils that are evidence for theism

It’s mildly interesting to note, when evaluating the evidential impact of evil, that there can be evil events that would be evidence for the existence of God. For instance, suppose that three Roman soldiers who witnessed Christ’s resurrection conspired to lie that he didn’t see Christ get resurrected. That they lied that they didn’t see Christ get resurrected entails that they thought they witnessed the resurrection, and that would be strong evidence for the existence of God, even after factoring in the counterevidence coming from the evil of the lie. (After all, we already knew that there are lots of lies in the world, so learning of one more won’t make much of a difference.)

In fact, this is true even for horrendous and apparently gratuitous evils. We could imagine that the three soldiers’ lies crush someone’s hopes for the coming of the Messiah, and that could be a horrendous evil. And it could also be the case that we can’t see any possible good from the lie, and hence the lie is apparently gratuitous.

Life in the interim state and the nature of time

Assume this thesis:

1. We go out of existence at death and return to existence at the resurrection.

Suppose, further, that:

2. There is a last moment t₁ of earthly life and a first moment t₂ of resurrected life.

Then:

3. If there are no intervening moments of time between t₁ and t₂, one is never dead.

4. Whether there are any intervening moments of time between t₁ and t₂ depends on what happens to things other than one.

5. So, whether one is ever dead depends on what happens to things other than one.

6. So, whether one is ever dead is extrinsic to one.

But that’s absurd in itself, plus it implies the absurdity that death is only an extrinsic harm. So, we should reject 1. We exist between death and the resurrection.

There are two controversial assumptions in the argument: 2 and 4. Assumption 4 follows from an Aristotelian picture of time as consisting in the changes of things. Since one doesn’t exist between t₁ and t₂, those changes would have to be happening to things other than oneself. If one doesn’t accept the Aristotelian picture of time, it’s much harder to argue for 4.

Assumption 2 is obviously true if time is discrete. If time is continuous, it might or might not be true. For instance, it could be that one lives from time 0 to time 100, both inclusive, in which case t₁ = 100, but it could also be that one lives from time 0 to time 100, non-inclusive, in which case t₁ doesn’t exist. Similarly, one could be resurrected from time 3000, inclusive, to time infinity, non-inclusive, in which case t₂ = 3000, but it could also be that one is resurrected from time 3000, non-inclusive, in which case t₂ doesn’t exist.

However, even in the continuous case the argument has some force. For, first of all, it’s obvious that death is an intrinsic harm to us, and that obviousness does not depend on obscure details about whether the intervals of one’s life include their endpoints. Second, it is at least metaphysically possible for 1 to hold. But then in a world where 1 were to hold, our death would be merely an extrinsic harm to us, which would still be absurd.

Does Christianity require a belief in matter?

The doctrines of incarnation, resurrection and real presence certainly require us to believe ordinary language existence claims about bodies, bread and wine. It's hard to take Scripture to be inspired without believing ordinary language existence claims about plants, animals, mountains, seas, etc. But do we need to believe that there is matter?

A search of the Church Councils up to and including the First Vatican Council turns up nothing dogmatic about "matter" in the relevant sense of the word (I am not including the technical sense of "matter of a sacrament" in sacramental theology). Searching for "material" finds some talk of material weapons, material flesh, and material food and drink. But I think that it would seem to me to be an overreach to take the Councils to be dogmatically teaching that weapons, flesh and food and drink are material. Rather, the relevant distinction seems to be between the spiritual weapons, spiritual flesh and spiritual food and drink and their ordinary earthly versions, rather than teach something about the nature of the ordinary versions, except that they differ from the spiritual.

I used to think that we need to believe hylomorphism. After all, the Fifth Lateran Council teaches that the soul is the form of the body. But while this gives us the morphê (form) part of hylomorphism, it doesn't give use the hyle (matter) part. We need to believe that the soul is the form of the body; not that it is the form of the matter.

If this reading of the Tradition is right, then Christian philosophers do not need to try to figure out the knotty question of what constitutes materiality. We have to accept, in some way, the existence of bodies, bread and wine, but we don't have to say that these things fall into some philosophically important kind like "matter". The handful of statements about "material" things we can simply understand in the vague way as about "things relevantly like ordinary things around us", without thinking that matter is any kind of metaphysically or physically important kind. We don't have to worry that if it turns out on our best science that physical reality is constituted by fields rather than particles, then we will have a conflict between faith and science. We still would have to find a way of locating bodies, bread and wine within physical reality, but we would not have to identify them with bits of matter.

Of course, it may turn out that the concept of matter has philosophical or scientific use apart from the needs of faith. But I have a suspicion that thinking about the nature of the body may be more promising than thinking about the nature of matter.

Christ is risen!

Happy Easter, everyone!

Here are Easter eggs in Minecraft generated using my pysanka.py python script (included with Raspberry Jam Mod). The middle one is based on the design here (I am trusting that the amount of deformation and transformation is sufficient that it not be a copyright issue to post the Minecraft version).

Here are instructions on making eggs like that.

Death, materialism and resurrection

Consider two Christian materialist theories about how life after death works:

1. Snatching: At the last moment of life, God snatches a central part of the person (say, the cerebrum), transports it away to heaven, purgatory or hell, keeps it alive there, and replaces it in the corpse with a replica.
2. Fission: At the last moment of life, the cells in the body or a central part of it get the power to split into two cells. One of these cells is a dead cell found in the corpse and the other is in heaven, purgatory or hell.

Here's problem both Snatching and Fission face: there is no death on these stories, since death requires the cessation of biological life. But on both, biological life is continuously maintained. These are stories about life after teleportation rather than about life after death. But we do in fact die: Scripture is completely clear on this.

Maybe one could modify my formulations of Snatching or Fission to solve this problem. Rather than the snatching or fission happening at the last moment of life, it happens at the first moment of death. Thus, God snatches or fissions a central part of the person after the person is already dead, and then resuscitates the part in heaven, purgatory or hell. The problem with this is that Snatching and Fission are meant to preserve biological continuity. But while typically after death cells remain with some semblance of biological life, this need not always happen. Suppose that someone dies by having a laser blast their brain. That person dies precisely when those cells central to biological life have been destroyed. But it is precisely those cells that would need to be snatched or fissioned after death.

(I used to think, by the way, that the interim state--the state between death and the resurrection of the body--was also an objection to Snatching and Fission. But it's not. For the materialist can say that after Snatching or Fusion, the person exists as a mere brain in a vat in heaven, purgatory or hell. And then only at the second coming does that brain regain the rest of the body. The materialist can even say that the brain plays the functional role of the soul here.)

Death is bad: An argument against cessationist models of resurrection

Consider cessationist models of resurrection. On these, the person who is saved completely ceases to exist at death--not even a core of the person, like a soul, continues to exist. But then some time later God resurrects the person to full existence, an existence that involves complete human fulfillment for an infinite amount of time.

Many Christian materialist models are cessationist. Perhaps God gathers the matter and forms it into something close to what the body was like at death in a way that ensures personal identity. Perhaps God gives the body at death a miraculous power of causing a future body at the time of resurrection. Or perhaps God arranges for the pre-death body (or some part of it) to time travel to the time of resurrection and replaces the original body with a simulacrum which we bury.

Now consider this argument:

1. Death is always a great harm for the person who dies.
2. Death is not a great harm on cessationist models.
3. So cessationist models are false.

In this post I am going to take (1) for granted, even though I know that a number of Christians deny (1). I want to focus on an argument for (2). Suppose Francis dies in his sleep and is resurrected a thousand years later. So: Francis goes to sleep. Next thing he knows, he wakes up resurrected, and much happier than when he went to sleep. Where is the harm in that? Sure, had he not been resurrected, it would have been bad for him. But given that he was going to be resurrected, it wasn't.

Maybe the harm is that there was a thousand years without Francis. But that sounds like a harm for the world, not a harm for Francis. Moreover, there were billions of years without Francis before Francis was conceived, and that wasn't bad for Francis. As far as Francis is concerned, he basically time-traveled by a thousand years into the future (cf. Merricks). Maybe we can worry that his heavenly existence is short a thousand years, but that seems mistaken: it's infinite, after all, and infinity less a thousand is no shorter than infinity.

Let me try to make the point perhaps more vividly. Consider two people, Hyacinth and Agnes. Both of them go to sleep in the evening at age 80, and neither has dreams.

Agnes has a heart attack in her sleep. But at the very moment that she would otherwise have been dead, the resurrection happens, so she never dies. Instead, she wakes up to heavenly life. The badness of death didn't touch Agnes since she never died.

A much more complicated thing happens to Hyacinth. He, too, has a heart attack in his sleep. But one second before he was going to die, he time-travels to a time one second before his conception (or whatever point marks the beginning of a human being's life). He lives for one second then, albeit asleep, and then dies. Eighty years later the resurrection happens. Coincidentally, the resurrection happens the moment right after Hyacinth was whisked back in time.

Hyacinth died but Agnes didn't. However, notice that Hyacinth actually exists at every moment of time from his conception onward. He also has that weird little extra one second of existence before his conception due to time travel. But surely that's insignificant. It doesn't seem that Hyacinth is noticeably worse off--or even at all worse off--than Agnes.

But now compare Hyacinth to Francis, who dies in his sleep 80 years prior to the resurrection without any time travel. Both Hyacinth and Francis die 80 years before the resurrection. The only difference is that for Hyacinth, that death 80 years before the resurrection takes place just before Hyacinth's conception. But surely that doesn't make Hyacinth significantly better off than Francis. Francis and Hyacinth are roughly on par in how well off they are. And by the same token, Francis and Agnes are roughly on par. But Francis dies and Agnes doesn't. So death isn't bad for you on the cessationist model.

What models of resurrection make death be bad for you? I think it's models on which you continue to exist between death and resurrection but in a way that is importantly diminished. For instance, a dualist can say: It's really bad to lose your arms. But when you die, you lose your arms, so dying is really bad. And you also lose your legs, your eyes, your ears, etc. (You even lose your brain though maybe God miraculously supplies the mental functions that we normally need a brain for?) Granted, you are more than amply compensated by union with God, but that a bad is compensated for does not make it not be bad. Similarly, a non-cessationist materialist could think that God snatches your brain out of your body just prior to death, replaces it with a replica, and then makes you literally be a brain in a vat in heaven. Such a non-cessationist materialist would be able to say why it is really bad for you to die, because you lose your arms, legs, eyes, ears and most of your body, except your brain.

Heaven and materialism: The swollen head problem

Suppose, as Christian materialists believe, that materialism is true and yet some people have eternal life in heaven. Good experiences happen daily in heaven, and bad things never do. It is a bad thing to fail to remember a good experience. So in heaven people will have more and more good experiences that they remember. But it is plausible that there is a maximum information density in our brains, and given materialism, all the information in memory is stored in the brain. Thus, it follows that those who will be in heaven will have their heads swell without bound. Humans will eventually have heads that are millions of light-years in diameter, just to hold all the good experiences that have happened to them. But a life with such big heads just doesn't seem to be the life of human fulfillment.

Objection 1: Perhaps there are patterns to the good experiences in heaven such that the total information content in the infinite future of good experiences is finite.

Response: If the total information content is finite, then it seems likely that one will eventually get bored. Moreover, plausibly, human flourishing involves continual growth in knowledge, and it would not be fitting for heaven if this growth were to slow down eventually in order to ensure an upper bound on the total information content.

Objection 2: The laws of nature will be different in heaven, and while there is maximum information density in our current brains, heavenly brains will be made of a different kind of matter, a matter that either has infinitely many particles in any finite volume or that is infinitely subdivisible. After all, the Christian tradition does hold that we will function differently--there is speculation that we may be able to go through solid walls as Jesus apparently did after the resurrection, move really fast, see really far, etc.

Response: This seems to me to be the best materialist response. But given that on materialism the brain is central to the kinds of beings we are, there is a worry that such a radical reworking of its structure into a different kind of matter would create beings that aren't human. The dualist can allow for a more radical change in the physical aspects of the body while allowing that we still have the same kind of being, since the kind of being could be defined by the soul (this is clearest in the hylomorphic theory).

Objection 3: The dualists face the same problem given that we have good reason to think that memories are stored in the brain.

Response: Maybe memories are not entirely stored in the brain. And see the response to Objection 2: the finer-matter response is more defensible in the case of the dualist.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all my readers! Christ has indeed risen, turning despair into hope, shining light where there was none.

A quick theological argument that we do not cease to exist at death

On materialist reconstitution views of the resurrection, we cease to exist at death, but then we are reconstituted at the resurrection. On Thomas Aquinas's view, we cease to exist at death, though our soul continues to exist, and then at the resurrection we come back to life.

On these views, we should view the badness of death as primarily constituted by a cessation of existence. But Christ did not cease to exist when he died. The Trinity did not become a Binity between Good Friday and Easter Sunday! So if the badness of death is primarily constituted by a cessation of existence, Christ either did not die or at least did not undergo the primary badness of death. And both options do serious damage to the doctrine of atonement.

(The view of death that seems right to me is that death is the destruction of the body. And Christ underwent that.)

Kenotic Christianity and the problem of Christ's resurrected body

According to kenotic Christianity, when Christ became incarnate, he literally ceased to have divine omni-properties. But at the same time, after his resurrection, he was glorified and presumably has regained them.

But what happened to his humanity after his glorification? Either Christ is still human or he is simply divine. If Christ is still human, then it follows that having the divine omni-properties is logically compatible with being human, which undercuts I assume one of the major motivations for kenotic Christianity. If Christ is no longer human, what happened to his resurrected body? Was it resurrected only to be destroyed shortly thereafter? That seems deeply unfitting.

Happy Easter

I wish a very happy Easter to all my readers.

Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!

Wittgensteinian anti-literalism

Consider this Wittgensteinian line of thought about the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus (similar things can be said about many other doctrines).[note 1] The way to understand what believers say when they confess "Jesus is risen" is to see what role that utterance plays in their lives, both there and then (say, in the liturgy) and more broadly in their lives. Further, the word "risen" in this sense has little currency outside religious contexts, so the notion of a "literal" meaning of the word outside of a religious context is problematic, and hence the role that the utterance plays in lives is determinative for meaning. It is difficult, therefore, to say what the disagreement between literalists and non-literalists about the resurrection is really about.

It seems to me that there is a fairly simple response to this line of thought. For the sake of argument, let's take on board the Wittgensteinian assumption that language gets its meaning from use, and hence to examine the meaning of an utterance one must see what role it plays in a life. But we must not forget that a significant part of the role that an utterance plays is found in its inferential connections with other utterances, both deductive and non-deductive.

For instance, the utterance "Jesus is risen" provides inferential support (one needs to judge on a case-by-case basis whether it's deductive or not) for such claims as "Jesus is not dead", "Jesus's skeleton isn't presently lying in the earth", "Jesus is alive", "People saw Jesus after his resurrection by means of photons reflected from his body", etc. This inferential support is at least as constitutive of the meaning of the utterance as is, say, the utterance's liturgical role. Moreover, the it is also a part of the role of the utterance that it is (non-deductively) supported by such claims as "Jesus's tomb is empty and his body is nowhere to be found", "Jesus was seen eating fish after he died", "Some of those who report Jesus as being risen knew what Jesus looked like", etc.

Perhaps unlike the confession "Jesus is risen", the claims I gave as inferentially connected with this confession make use of ordinary vocabulary and in ordinary ways. These claims are a part of our ordinary non-religious language games. We ask whether someone is alive or dead, whether someone's skeleton is buried in the earth, whether someone's tomb is empty, whether anyone saw someone eating fish, and so on. Now the Wittgensteinian anti-literalist will insist that the inferential connections between "Jesus is risen" and such ordinary claims do not do justice to the religious significance of "Jesus is risen", that for that significance one must pay attention to the liturgical and motivational role of the utterance in the lives of believers, and so on. But the literalist can take all that on board. There is more to the resurrection than is captured by the inferential connections with various ordinary non-religious claims. But there is no less: these inferential connections are an essential part of the constitution of the phrase's meaning, in a way that the non-literalist has a harder time accounting for. What connection, for the anti-literalist, is there between "Jesus is risen" and the fact that some of those who reported seeing Jesus knew what he looked like? But on a literalist reading, the inferential connection is clear.

This gives us both a way to characterize the disagreement—the literalist takes such inferential connections with ordinary claims to play a central part in the constitution of the meaning of "Jesus is risen" while the non-literalist does not—and a reason to favor the literalist reading, since the literalist is operating with a fuller collection of data.

At the same time, the literalist reading of "Jesus is risen" has significant flexibility, because the inferential connections are often probabilistic. The claim that x is risen makes probable that x was seen by means of photons reflected from x's body. But it does not entail it. It may be that x's body no longer reflects photons or that nobody has seen x. Thus, the literalist need not be committed to the claim that Jesus was seen by means of reflected photons, and might even deny it (there is a strong tradition that Jesus's body had some very special properties) but the literalist does need to see the confession "Jesus is risen" as of such a sort as to make the photonic claim a plausible inference. On an anti-literalist reading, however, the photonic claim does not seem to be a plausible inference. And that favors the literalist.

This gives us a literalism without a commitment to any such dubious thing as a "literal meaning".

But there is a lesson for the literalist, too. The literalist should not take the meaning of "Jesus is risen" to be exhausted by the inferential connections to ordinary claims. That, too, would be basing the meaning on merely partial data.

Christ has risen!

Indeed he is risen!

Here is an interesting question.  Why is Easter the greatest liturgical celebration of the year for Christians rather than Good Friday?  One might, after all, imagine someone reasoning thus: "On Good Friday we celebrate Christ's bearing our sins, and this payment of the penalty for our sin is what frees us from the debt that we cannot pay.  So the Good News is in fact the events of Good Friday, and the Easter event's main role for us is merely evidential--it is evidence of our future resurrection."  But that is not how the Church thinks.

I think there are at least three responses to this reasoning.

1. The evidential and symbolic is of great existential importance to our lives, and to celebrate the event central to the evidence of Christ's prophetic (and hence divine, given that he said things that in an Old Testament context are claims of divinity) status as the central liturgical event of the year is very appropriate.

2. This is very speculative.  One might ask: When did Christ's payment of the penalty come to a completion?  Was it when he died on Good Friday?  Or was it only after the descent into sheol?  If the latter, then the resurrection marks the completion of Christ's payment, and thus the celebration of Christ's bearing of the penalty for our sins fits well with Easter.  On the other hand, I do not think the Tradition sees Christ's descent into sheol as a part of his sufferings.  For instance, in the Odes of Solomon, the descent is present triumphantly.

3. Imagine that Christ's penalty was paid, and resurrection for us was won, but Christ did not rise again, either because he remained a disembodied soul or because the Incarnation terminated.  Then we wouldn't we have nearly as good evidence of our resurrection, as point 1 says.  But also, there would no longer be bodily communion with Christ.  Think of it from the point of view of the Apostles.  There was their friend who died.  If they rose but he did not, they might be able to commune with him spiritually, but never again in an embodied way.  The resurrection makes bodily communion with Christ possible.  This bodily communion takes place in two ways.  First, in the Eucharist.  And thus one reason for the centrality of the Easter event is that if Christ were not risen, we could not receive his present human flesh and blood.  Easter, thus, grounds the Eucharist.  Second, eventually in heaven through human fellowship.  The Easter event, works not only our individual resurrection, but our corporate resurrection as the Church, including centrally Jesus, the head.

Let us rejoice with the Apostles and Mary that he whom they loved above all creatures is risen!

The resurrection of Christ and the multiverse

Todd Buras has shared the following thought with me. Suppose one thinks both (a) that the multiverse should be invoked in order to explain the origins of life, because the probabilities in one universe are too low (or, presumably, to explain fine-tuning of constants) and (b) the resurrection of Christ is too weird to believe. Well, in an infinite (naturalistic, I suppose) multiverse, someone very much like Christ does in fact get resurrected—it is very unlikely that the particles should move in such a way as to reverse death, but in an infinite multiverse even such unlikely things will happen. Isn't that an interesting thought? (It reminds one of David Lewis's observation that on his view the Greek gods exist, though he thought—I don't know with what justification—that they didn't exist in our world.)

And, I add, such a thing will happen in infinitely many universes, given an infinite naturalistic multiverse: In infinitely many universes, a monotheistic religious leader named "Jesus" is crucified and rises again on the third day, with all the details being as Christians claim. In our universe, it is claimed by otherwise credible witnesses that this happened—and these witnesses are not contradicted by other alleged eye-witnesses. Why not take their claim at face value, and say that we just are in one of the infinitely many universes where it happens?

Of course, in a naturalistic multiverse, there will also be infinitely many universes where a resurrection is claimed and one didn't happen. But that's not a bigger infinity than the infinity of universes where it's claimed and did happen. Now, one might say: When in infinitely many universes, some set of testimonies not contradicted by any witnesses is true, and in infinitely many universes, the equivalent set of testimonies not contradicted by any witnesses is false, we should suspend judgment. But then I should suspend judgment over the existence of China if a multiverse obtains. For I only know of China on testimony, and in infinitely many universes the testimony is true, and in infinitely many it's false.

So, given a multiverse, it is just as reasonable to assert the resurrection of Jesus as it is to assert the existence of China.

I do not offer this as a serious argument for the resurrection, because the argument can probably be used to show too much. Rather, I think, this highlights the serious problems that multiversists have with probabilistic reasoning.

Some remarks on Hume on miracles

1. Let's suppose for simplicity that miracles would violate of laws of nature. Consider then a "modernized" version of Hume's argument against miracles: The laws of nature have always been scientifically observed to hold. Whatever the merits of Hume's original argument, this version is really weak. It is, in fact, not uncommon for scientists to get data that does not fit what is predicted from the laws. When this data can be reproduced, it is taken seriously. But when the data cannot be reproduced, unless it is in some way spectacular, it will, I think, be dismissed as experimental error, an artifact of the particular experimental setup, etc. If only one scientist saw something on one occasion, and repeats do not show it, and no one else sees it, then it will not be taken seriously. The one scientist who saw the effect might investigate and try to find the source of the deviation, estimate to see whether the deviation falls within experimental error. But sooner or earlier, I think, the problem will be put aside, unless the data point was spectacular. However, miracles are not supposed to follow any rule—God is not a vending machine who produces a miracle when the right coins are put in. (God does answer prayers; however, he does not always answer them in the way expected; I think when we sincerely pray in Jesus' name, we will either get what we asked for, or we will get something as good or better.) So bringing science in does not help Hume's case.

2. Much of my knowledge of the sorts of regularities that miracles would go against is in fact through testimony. For instance, take the case that interests Hume most: the observation that dead people stay dead. I have never actually seen anyone die. I am sure Hume did. But unless one is a medical professional, a soldier or a witness to tragedy, one is unlikely to have seen very many people die. Moreover, one typically personally only observes a particular dead body for a fairly short time. Observe that once a body is buried, one no longer has direct observational data for the claim that the person stays dead. It could be, for all that one has directly observed, that the person came back to life, clawed at the coffin, and then asphyxiated again. Thus, one has very little direct observational data for the claim that dead people stay dead. But the bulk of our data for the claim that dead people stay dead comes from putting together the testimony of others.

Granted, we may have some indirect observational data. I have never seen graves opening when I visited a graveyard, nor have I driven by a funeral parlor and seen staff running out and screaming, with a formerly dead person walking out after them. However, in the case of most graves in a graveyard, it is through testimony that we know that there is someone in fact buried there. The indirect observational data depends on testimony, too, then.

Our knowledge of the regularity that dead people tend to stay dead depends largely on testimony. However, we only get the universal claim which Hume needs, the claim that all dead people always stay dead, when we dismiss some of the testimony available to us, namely the testimony for cases of resurrection. But it is no surprise that if we dismiss the testimony to the deviations from a regularity, what remains is testimony to the universality of the regularity.

3. In fact, miracle reports are very common, across many cultures. This should undercut one's confidence in any kind of Humean argument that miracles are apparent violations of universally holding regularities. For the sheer volume of miracle reports is strong evidence against the claim that the regularities always hold.

4. Hume himself thought that the ubiquity of miracle reports was evidence against their truth, because he thought that miracles should be confined to the true religion, and at most one of the religions could be true. However, I think we can now have a more ecumenical view of miracles. Moreover, I think we can distinguish between miracles that bear witness to a particular proposition and miracles that do not. A healing can simply be an act of divine love for the person healed and her friends/family, and there is no reason to deny that such miracles might hold quite universally.

But some miracles very clearly bear witness to a particular proposition. Thus, in the fifth century, apparently about sixty Catholics had their right hands and tongues cut out at the roots by an Arian heretic for espousing the doctrine of Nicaea. But these Catholics continued to speak, and presumably to preach the Nicaean doctrine. This seems to be a miracle that is a witness to a particular doctrine. Bishop Victor, writing two years after the alleged event, says:

If however any one will be incredulous, let him now go to Constantinople, and there he will find one of them, a sub-deacon, by name Reparatus, speaking like an educated man without any impediment. On which account he is regarded with exceeding veneration in the court of the Emperor Zeno, and especially by the Empress.

In the case of miracles that bear witness to a particular doctrine, when the doctrines conflict, one has a harder time making the ecumenical move. However, I do not know that there really are that many cases of reliable miracle reports that bear witness to incompatible doctrines. The case of the tongueless sub-deacon is very remarkable, and I do not know of any similar miracles reported on the part of the Arians. It is an interesting bit of religious history that at the time of the Protestant Reformation, one of the arguments adduced by the Catholic side was that claims as sweeping as those of the Reformers should be backed up by miracles—but none, the Catholic apologists alleged, were offered.

So Hume cannot dismiss ubiquitous miracle reports that are not tied to a particular doctrine. He could say something about mutual cancelation in the case of miracles that bear witness to a particular doctrine, but it is not clear that there is actually all that much in the way of reports of such miracles, of equal reliability, bearing witness to incompatible doctrines. And even if there were, it seems to me that the hypothesis that both reports are unreliable is less probable on its face than the hypothesis that only one of the reports is unreliable.

Sleep

Here is a quick argument that sleep is bad in some respects. Sleep either involves unconsciousness or non-veridical experiences. Unconsciousness is bad, since it is the lack of consciousness, which is a good, and a good due to our nature as rational. Non-veridical experiences are clearly a bad. So, sleep always is bad in some respects.

Whether this argument succeeds or not (I think it doesn't; from our nature as rational beings it does not follow that it is our nature to always exercise rationality), it does raise a question about the value of sleep. Clearly, sleep is instrumentally good. Is it good non-instrumentally, though? And will we sleep after the resurrection of the body? As one of our grad students pointed out, Scripture considers sleep analogical to death. There are also positive portrayals of wakefulness. So when death is no more, will there be sleep? Aquinas thinks not.

Death and resurrection

I think that among the conditions that an account of resurrection needs to satisfy is this one: the account has to make it possible to explain why it is that it is very bad bad to die even if one is going to be resurrected. This condition is important. Unless it is met, it is going to be unclear why it is intrinsically very bad and unloving to kill innocent people.

Some accounts of resurrection satisfy this. For instance, Peter van Inwagen once played with the following materialist story: at death, a crucial chunk of your brain is removed, and taken elsewhere, and replaced by a copy in the corpse. On this account, death is very bad, because it involves one's existing in severely truncated form. It is clearly very bad to lose all one's limbs and sensory organs, and a fortiori it is very bad to lose all of one's body except for that chunk of the brain. (This doesn't mean that the account is otherwise satisfactory. This account fails to distinguish between death and an accident where everything but that chunk of one's brain is destroyed.) Likewise, on a dualist account on which the soul survives, death reduces one to an even more severely disabled form—one loses all of one's body.

On the other hand, an account (whether materialist or not) on which at the time of death you simply skip ahead—time travel—to the time of the resurrection, so that you simply enjoy gappy existence seems to fail this criterion, since then death does not seem a bad—it's just time-travel.

Whether accounts on which you cease to exist, but then later you are reconstituted (either directly by the power of God or by some new causal power that was implanted in you at the time of your death and that works across a temporal gap) pass this criterion depends on whether they can be distinguished from the time-travel account.[note 1]