Undesigned coincidences in the Gospels … is an argument that was well-known in the nineteenth century but has, for no really clear reason, simply been forgotten as time has gone on. It is a cumulative case argument that the Gospels reflect, to an important extent, independent knowledge of actual events. Please note that this argument is quite independent of one’s preferred answer to the synoptic question. That is to say, even if, e.g., Mark was the first Gospel and others had access to Mark and show signs of literary dependence on Mark, the argument from undesigned coincidences provides evidence for independent knowledge of real events among the Gospel writers. There are many more of such coincidences beyond those given in the talk.
Basically, this argument finds cases where the same story is in two sources, but where some important detail is left out of one account so that something about the story seems out of place. But the other source has the missing detail that unlocks the mystery. This supports the view that the sources are independent witnesses of the same events. Multiple attestation is an indicator that the material is historical.
My favorite example of undesigned coincidences is the Philip example from John 6.
As I was listening to Tim’s examples, I was struck by all the reasons there might be for a real eyewitness not to fill out the explanation for a detail. Think for example how tedious it is to listen to someone who goes back to explain every little detail he mentions in a story.
[…]Similarly, as John is telling the story about the feeding of the five thousand, it would be quite natural for him to say that Jesus asked Philip where they could buy bread if he were really an eyewitness–that is, because he remembered that Jesus did ask Philip. (Tim talks about why it was Philip in the interview.) But John himself might have had to stop and think for a moment if someone had asked him, “Why did Jesus ask Philip rather than any of the other disciples?” Presumably when John told the story, he wasn’t particularly thinking about some special reason for Jesus to select Philip for the question. But if someone were forging the story as fiction, he would have a reason for choosing to use a given disciple as a character at that point in his fictional narrative, and therefore he would be unlikely to choose that character without making the reason clearer to his readers.
All sorts of such things can happen when one is telling a true story, especially a story one has witnessed. One gets caught up in what one actually remembers and drops in incidental references to small facts, which facts are to some extent selected randomly by the memory as one brings the scene back to memory. This is typical of real memoirs but not of elaborate forgeries.
If you think this is interesting and useful, then give the lecture a listen.
This podcast is a must-listen. Please take the time to download this podcast and listen to it. I guarantee that you will love this podcast. I even recommended it to my Dad and I almost never do that.
Details:
In this podcast, J. Warner examines the evidence for the existence of the mind (and inferentially, the soul) as he looks at six classic philosophical arguments. Jim also briefly discusses Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos and discusses the limitations of physicalism.
Atheist Thomas Nagel’s latest book “Mind and Cosmos” makes the case that materialism cannot account for the evidence of mental phenomena
Nagel writes in this recent New York Times article that materialism cannot account for the reality of consciousness, meaning, intention and purpose
Quote from the Nagel article:
Even though the theistic outlook, in some versions, is consistent with the available scientific evidence, I don’t believe it, and am drawn instead to a naturalistic, though non-materialist, alternative. Mind, I suspect, is not an inexplicable accident or a divine and anomalous gift but a basic aspect of nature that we will not understand until we transcend the built-in limits of contemporary scientific orthodoxy.
When looking at this question, it’s important to not have our conclusions pre-determined by presupposing materialism or atheism
If your mind/soul doesn’t exist and you are a purely physical being then that is a defeater for Christianity, so we need to respond
Traditionally, Christians have been committed to a view of human nature called “dualism” – human beings are souls who have bodies
The best way* to argue for the existence of the soul is using philosophical arguments
The case:
The law of identity says that if A = B’ if A and B have the exact same properties
If A = the mind and B = the brain, then is A identical to B?
Wallace will present 6 arguments to show that A is not identical to B because they have different properties
Not everyone of the arguments below might make sense to you, but you will probably find one or two that strike you as correct. Some of the points are more illustrative than persuasive, like #2. However, I do find #3, #5 and #6 persuasive.
1) First-person access to mental properties
Thought experiment: Imagine your dream car, and picture it clearly in your mind
If we invited an artist to come and sketch out your dream car, then we could see your dream car’s shape on paper
This concept of your dream car is not something that people can see by looking at your brain structure
Physical properties can be physically accessed, but the properties of your dream care and privately accessed
2) Our experience of consciousness implies that we are not our bodies
Common sense notion of personhood is that we own our bodies, but we are not our bodies
3) Persistent self-identity through time
Thought experiment: replacing a new car with an old car one piece at a time
When you change even the smallest part of a physical object, it changes the identity of that object
Similarly, your body is undergoing changes constantly over time
Every cell in your body is different from the body you had 10 years ago
Even your brain cells undergo changes (see this from New Scientist – WK)
If you are the same person you were 10 years ago, then you are not your physical body
4) Mental properties cannot be measured like physical objects
Physical objects can be measured (e.g. – use physical measurements to measure weight, size, etc.)
Mental properties cannot be measured
5) Intentionality or About-ness
Mental entities can refer to realities that are physical, something outside of themselves
A tree is not about anything, it just is a physical object
But you can have thoughts about the tree out there in the garden that needs water
6) Free will and personal responsibility
If humans are purely physical, then all our actions are determined by sensory inputs and genetic programming
Biological determinism is not compatible with free will, and free will is required for personal responsibility
Our experience of moral choices and moral responsibility requires free will, and free will requires minds/souls
He spends the last 10 minutes of the podcast responding to naturalistic objections to the mind/soul hypothesis.
*Now in the podcast, Wallace does say that scientific evidence is not the best kind of evidence to use when discussing this issue of body/soul and mind/brain. But I did blog before about two pieces of evidence that I think are relevant to this discussion: corroborated near-death experiences and mental effort.
You might remember that Dr. Craig brought up the issue of substance dualism, and the argument from intentionality (“aboutness”), in his debate with the naturalist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, so this argument about dualism is battle-ready. You can add it to your list of arguments for Christian theism along with all the other arguments like the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, stellar habitability, galactic habitability, irreducible complexity, molecular machines, the Cambrian explosion, the moral argument, the resurrection, biological convergence, and so on.
WINTERY KNIGHT 