¶1Hello, this is Kyle Allander of Syncratic Idealism and this will be the final response video that I have to Joe Schmid and Ethan Muse on their case um at least their case for Catholicism. So, in my last two videos um was sort of a defense and offense. So, the first video I basically was mainly offering a defense showing why their objections to the alternatives weren't very good. Um, and then my last video was um, showing why Catholicism was actually false. Now, um, I do plan to make future videos because there were at least there was one big thing that I wanted to um, change about my last video.
¶2Um, has to do with some of the sources that I was bringing to it. Um, particularly around the Eucharist. So, it wasn't really about the papacy. It was mainly about the Eucharist stuff. Um, and I'll I'll so I'll do a future video kind of going over that in more detail.
¶3Um, but in this video I'm going to be um presenting my final um response to them. Now the thing about this final response is this is going to be a different kind of argument that I'm making. So essentially my last two videos was operate operating within the framework that they were um using. So basically what I did was I said okay well let's just grant the vidipatory miracle um framework does it actually establish what they needed to establish and I showed no it didn't at least within the framework right and that there is actually positive evidence against Catholicism that they didn't consider. In this video I'm actually going to critique the framework itself.
¶4So I'm basically going to show that this entire strategy of vindicatory miracles actually doesn't work. Um, and I'm going to explain why it doesn't work. And um, I have a few new arguments, new objections that I wasn't going to originally include, but I decided to include them here because they have brought more insight into this topic. Um, so that's why it's, you know, that's that's sort of the main reason why I've taken why it's taken much longer to write a part three or to make a part three. Um, is because this part is a lot of this is new content.
¶5um at least in the miracle discourse debates. Um so I want to include those sort of new arguments and those new insights um here so that people can understand you know why it is the case like if you step outside the Catholic and Christian framework and just look at these miracles look at these arguments from the outside why they're actually not um they they shouldn't convince you that Catholicism is true or that any I would even argue like it it shouldn't even convince you that any form of Christianity is true. Um, and so that that will be the goal for this for this video is to show why their framework actually doesn't work. Um, now I will also, you know, I'll make clear later that um, what I have to say in this video also does undercut like even Protestant like apologetics. So like the way that apologetics has been done for the past 20, 50 years, like however long it's been around.
¶6Um, I I will admit that some objections are going to undercut everything. It's going to undercut, you know, it's not just going to hurt Catholics. It's going to also hurt even, you know, non-Christian or non sorry, non-atholic Christian apologist. So, um, this is my critique doesn't just, it doesn't just target Joe. It also targets um the general apologetic strategy that um, Christian apologists try to use to vindicate their religion being true.
¶7Um, so I'm going to basically show why that's the case. Um, but anyways, I just want to make make that clear that some of these critiques um do affect more than beyond what Joe has presented. But I think, you know, Joe is just a special case of this larger pattern that I've seen in Christian apologetics that just needs to be I think it needs to be undercut. It needs to be shown that these strategies don't work. These arguments don't work.
¶8Um, so anyways, that's what I plan to do and um I hope you all enjoy this last episode. All right, let's get to it then. So, um I'm going to I'm going to be presenting what's called the bundling problem. Um why even the miracle data, even if we grant it, does not license the cosmology that is attached to it. Um and we're going to go over certain cases that I think are relevant here.
¶9So, in my last part, like I said, right? So, um parts one and two still left room, right? So um I was disputing something. So like disputing what they said, disputing certain claims they made here. Um I'm going to attack the framework itself.
¶10So essentially I'm going to be undercutting um the entire argumentative strategy that they use. And again this grants even that the miracles happened. Um and I'm going to show in this video why those arguments don't actually um why the entire this entire strategy just doesn't work. Um, so basically the point I want to make is simply this, right? That there's a difference between an anomaly claim and then a cosmology claim.
¶11So an anomaly claim is that something occurred that resists ordinary naturalistic explanation, right? So like you know the sun appeared to move. You can talk about Padre Peio stigmatic wounds, right? Or you can talk about eucharistic miracles. Um so that's an anomaly claim.
¶12Now of course the anomaly claim can apply to any miracle. So it doesn't matter, you know, what um the anomaly is. The point is like you have something that happened within the world that doesn't seem to, you know, fit with quote unquote naturalistic um explanations, right? Um so the issue is you can't go from the anomaly to the cosmology. So the cosmology, what's the cosmology?
¶13Well, the cosmology is a specific metaphysical framework purported to explaining why the anomaly happened, right? And what it means for that anomaly to be true. So um so like when you say like the Virgin Mary appeared or that transpodation occurred right or that a specific deity acted that is a cosmology claim right and you have to establish like in order to go from the anomaly to the cosmology you have to actually like there's a bridge there and I'm going to show why that bridge doesn't work right like that why at least in the simplicit way that is presented that bridge just doesn't like there's so many different problems with the bridge that you cannot go from a miracle to your specific religion being the quoteunquote correct tradition. Um now I also want to explain formally why this inference fails. Right?
¶14So um I'm going to be of course operating on the same framework that Joe is using which is Beijing confirmation theory. Um so here the probability of the cosmology conditional on the anomaly is not high just because the probability of the anomaly itself is well evidenced right. Um because again the the it in order to generate a high probability right um it depends on the probability of the anomaly given the cosmology relative to the anomaly given not the cosmology right now again the cosmology here is not simply just naturalism. You have to include every other possible alternative hypothesis including non-naturalistic hypothesis. Right?
¶15Um so the issue is um the anomaly is very often equally predicted by a whole disjunction of rival cosmologies right so you have yucas cases you have um miran apparitions right um so for example like you could like another cosmology might be unknown naturalistic processes right um another arrival could be a rivals tradition agency right so like something like Krishna uh you know for example like if you're working within a vanism framework you can have Krishna appear as Mary right because that is how people relate to God is through Mary and through the devotions of Catholic categories right um now of course that's just one example but the point is that the anomaly itself does not discriminate in favor over the specific um cosmology of Catholicism right um now it might disprove like you know let's say atheism or maybe not even necessarily atheism but like be something like naturalism or materialism, right? So, it's going to like it's going to be a problem for those views, but it's not going to be a problem for all possible cosmologies, right? Um, so here's the general pro here's the general form, right? If evidence for an anomaly A is sufficient to license belief in a specific attached cosmology, then this holds a course for any anomaly cosmology pairing, right? Um, meeting the same evidential threshold regardless of which tradition supplies the cosmology.
¶16Um so here's some well-evident anomaly um exist right and each anomaly can have an attached cosmology to it. Um, and so the the problem of course is I'm I'm simply making the argument that the evidential support for the anomaly, right? So the evidence for the anomaly itself does not transfer over to the cosmology itself. Right? So an apologist moving from this anomaly is well evidence to therefore this cosmology is true is actually making an inference that um they themselves would already reject in other cases.
¶17Right? And I'm going to go over those cases in in this uh video. So the first case I want to talk about is uh what I call what uh so this is this comes from the Buddhist tradition. Um it's called the small rainbow body. Um now I also want to emphasize this is that this is from my tradition.
¶18So I'm going to start off with my tradition and then I'll go into other traditions um including Hindu ones. Um there's a few others that I wanted to discuss here. So keep in mind like I could have talked about like a lot more but I decided not to do that. Um and so the issue is if if you um if you look in for example like the Zen tradition we have these cases of small rainbow bodies. Um, I'll get into fully rainbow bodies in a moment, but you have people that they basically reach the third toe ball vision and then they can when they die their their body shrinks, right?
¶19And we actually have photographs of these. Um, okay. Um, see here, just make sure I'm at the right website. So, yeah. Um, this is one of the photos, right?
¶20So, you have um a recent case of I can't even say his name. Jupanka. I yeah I can't these are all from Tibet so um I can't pronounce Tibetan [clears throat] names very well. Um so this is a this is a well not this this was a well-known um Zulchin master who this is his actual body so you can see it right here. Um and of course you have the monk praying over him right and of course that's the original photo of him and on the right side is him after he died.
¶21So notice how again this is a small room body so the body shrinks to a very small size right um and of course this is a photo taken in um I believe 20 years ago or something um because the body shrank in 1982 but again the point is like we have these cases where basically you have monks who literally um shrink right now of course there's other cases I could talk about right um at least for small body cases which I'm going to go over briefly. Um, let's see here. So, the I don't want to get too much into the tool visions because I'm not qualified to even really discuss um this visions and I don't recommend that anybody study this stuff unless they have a qualified teacher. Um, but but my point is you have these quoteunquote miracles, right? So, you have these rainbow bodies, you have these um small rainbow bodies that happen.
¶22And so it's not just like you know some of these bodies of course if you get a four wheel body then you know the body disappeared right if you get a small body you can actually get the body right and most of these cases are are small bodies right um and so the issue is we have these bodies right in this tradition that are I again like I said in my last video they are they are a result of the practice Right. Um and of course there's many of these cases, right? So it's not just like one or two cases. There are many of these cases, right? Um the other thing too is like the majority of these cases do not involve full bodily disappearance but rather partially dissolved shrunken bodies.
¶23So a lot of these bodies you can actually um you know you can if you go into it you can you can verify these sorts of things or at least see like hey like these bodies are actually there. Now, of course, I'm not saying that therefore these things happen, right? I'm simply saying that when you when you look into these cases, right? Um it actually is a big problem for um Joe's argument because you have miracles that happen in other traditions. um now one thing I also want to mention um briefly and I believe this is okay so I'll go over some of the other cases as well before I make a general point about you know how Roman body stuff works um anyways so you have the richer so you have I can't even pronounce his name Sher Sher GB roici case um so he actually.
¶24So, there was someone who helped research this case for Genesis study and served as um Sherbach or Le's own monk attendant as a child. Um and he of course he recalls. So, these are some some of the eyewitness reports. He died without stirring from meditation postures. Monks then witnessed his body shrink so dramatically that cremation, right?
¶25Um so, this was the specific case I was talking about. I believe that was the photo that I just showed you. Um, and of course crowds. So the other thing too about this case was like crowds reported rainbow light above. So like when he died, you basically have rainbows that appeared um above um where he died, right?
¶26Um I'm going to get into the Dharmakaya sun miracle in a minute because that's another case I want to talk about. Um, but you have these rainbow body cases that I think really challenge um Joe's argument because again if if if Buddhism wasn't true, you wouldn't expect these sorts of things to happen. Um, now I want to talk about the Dharmakaya Sun miracle as well because I think this this is actually something that parallels parallels Fatima pretty well and I actually think in some cases it actually is better than Fatima. Um so in 19 in September 6th 1998 a group of roughly 20,000 gathered at Dharmakaya the Buddhist temple. Um someone in the crowd called they that they saw a vision of the movement's founder right in the sky with the sun at his heart.
¶27The crowd turned to look independent court testimonies for witnesses described the sub radiating shift colors pink blue purplish orange rotating right. One witness's account I want to highlight here, right? Because it actually matches Fatima pretty well. The sun I saw at that moment radiated colors unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. The color shifted as if the sun were moving back and forth.
¶28There was a pinkish glow all around. Then it changed the blue, right? Then it sort of changed colors all the way around, right? Um many people who saw it, stood and watched raving flags. I was moved to tears.
¶29I'm a science student as you can't truly understand something like this unless you experience it yourself. Now, this is important because he's a science student, right? So, he if he understands how these things work, you wouldn't he's not saying like this is something that naturally occurred. This is something like this is probably something supernatural that's happening, right? um you have someone who is you know understands how science works has a scientific worldview and they're describing the experiences outside ordinary explanation from the inside right um and it's of course the same thing that Fatima's own witnesses use as well um so the point is that now of course Ethan knows about this case okay Um so the issue is that he wants to argue that the sunglazers stare at the sun for extended periods of time before anything happens that the Buddhist meditators reported similar effects doing sophisticated exercises.
¶30Um but the issue is that they were not staring at the sun for a prolonged period of time and and of course they were not engaged at the at the time they were not engaged some exotic unusually demanding practice. They were attending an ordinary ceremony and turned to look only after someone else's um you know the the point is like this parallels Fatima pretty well. Um, now the other thing too I want to also mention and this is something that I think we need to be honest about is this specific case was reconstructed recently from Facebook threads and a decade decades long forum thread rather than fresh eyewitnesses interview. Right? So the the issue here is that a lot of these cases can be retold and they can sort of exaggerate certain things, right?
¶31Which of course that happens with um Fatima as well. But the point is the that you have something very similar. So you have a sun miracle in the Buddhist case and in the um Catholic case, right, where basically the sun was dancing, right? It matches very similar to Fatima. Um, and I think that's important because the point is not that it necessarily has to fit Fatima in every single detail.
¶32The point is you have a case which is very similar to Fatima. Um, and yet we wouldn't conclude, oh, therefore Buddhism is true because there's some sun miracle of this occurring, right? Um, now of course there's more I can get into this case, but I don't think I need to really get into that because the point as I'm going to go over I'm going to go over these cases, right? And some of them are going to be more shocking than others. I'm going to make a general point about these cases later.
¶33Okay, that's going to undercut all of them when not just my case but even Ethan use's case as well. So the other thing too I want to get into rimo body as well. Um like I said there's small rim bodies and then there's full rim bodies. Um now Francis Tiso so he this is a Catholic priest right? Um he re he led a research expedition um in I think in the year 2000 specifically to report and to investigate the reported death of Chemo A Cho.
¶34Um again I can't pronounce these names very well but the point is that this is so this is the account and this is collaborated across multiple name witnesses. A Cho died in a noble sleeping posture and on the seventh day of the seventh Tibetan month 1998 without apparent illness reciting his mantra to the end. Disciples reported an immediate change in his corpse's appearance. The aging of his face reportedly vanish replaced by youthful smooth complexion and a persistent fragrance around the hemiage in the days following. um a local llama, so I'll just say llama, um consulted by foam, instructed the disciples to leave the body undisturbed through seven days since there would be signs.
¶35And then multiple named witnesses, including the monk's niece, right, independently reported five colored rainbows appearing above the hemorrhage on multiple days during that week, visible across a ride area. When the body was finally examined after seven days, witness reported it had progressively shrunk and it was gone. Um so the one thing I want to mention about these rainbow bodies because it could be misunderstood is that the rainbow bodies themselves when they happen they happen very slowly right at least slowly in a sense like it's not something that happens all at once it's typically something that it's a process right and so that's why you know small room bodies are important here because it gives us a framework where you have someone who dies and then their body shrinks to a certain size well the full room body it shrinks to the point where it just ceases to exist. right? The body isn't there anymore.
¶36Um the issue of course is if you look at this case, right? Um you have multiple eyewitnesses saying this. You have the niece saying this. You also have um you know rainbows appearing around the area as well which does match well with Zchin practice because Zachchin does include you know rainbows and stuff like that. Um so the point is this is this is categorically different than like let's say resurrection case because in the resurrection in the Jesus you know in the Jesus resurrection you're dealing with ancient hyography right um whereas here you're not dealing with hyography you're dealing with witnesses like you're talking like two years from the original event that this was documented in.
¶37Um, now of course this is not just I just want to mention this case because it's important, right? And there's a reason why I'm not going to spend too much time on this case because you might think like, oh, Kyle's not presenting like a super strong case, at least for his own tradition. And there's a reason for that which I'm going to get into. Um, but before we get to the reason for that, I also want to mention other cases like G um, Gari. I can't even Okay, I can't even pronounce these names.
¶38So um here in this case you have someone who died in a cave during the height of the Chinese political upheal right and then when they and then of course he died in the cave right and then when they returned the next day performing the ritual rights the body had completely disappeared. This is a full disillusion case, not a partial run, right? So you have a full, you know, room of body occurring. Um then you have the case of Biru Tagan Sean. I I can't pronounce these names.
¶39Um so the point is you have one, two, three, four, five, six different cases. Um so why am I mentioning these cases, right? These are reports of bodies disappearing. These are patterns that happen within the tradition. Um I've even spoken to llamas.
¶40Okay, so this is from my own experience. So there's a little bit evidence here. I've spoken to llamas who know people who have gone through these um rainbow body encounters, right? Um, the point here that I'm making is not that these rainbow bodies have occurred. Okay?
¶41The point is that you have many different cases, right? You have many different rainbow body cases that happen all around the globe, right? You just have to look for them in the same way that you would look for Marin apparitions occurring, right? Um, the issue is I'm listing these in the same way that I want a fairminded Catholic to list mar apparitions, right? Not each individuated adjudicate case is going to have the same kind of evidence, right?
¶42But the issue is the evidence. When you have evidence that is sustained, multiply tested when it has a pattern of evidence within a living tradition continuing into recent decades, right? Not a single legend writing on one ancient text. Then the bundling problem applies identically in everything on this list. An anomaly, right?
¶43So in this case, the rainbow body does not therefore imply that therefore Buddhism is true that Zogchin is the true nature of reality or that talking about the true nature of reality. Right? Um I want to make that point clear, right? Because I'm not making the argument that therefore all these things literally happen. I'm simply making the argument that you can accept or reject a rainbow body.
¶44And it would be ridiculous to make the argument that therefore Buddhism is true because these rainbow bodies occur, right? Does that just doesn't follow. Um All right. Um see I've already addressed some of the objections here. Um okay this is an ongoing pattern.
¶45All right so now I want to get into tumo. Right now tumo this is a much stronger case because this is actually something that this this has actually been well documented within the scientific literature. Um so tumo is a practice where basically you you do a certain Buddhist meditation and you can voluntarily like you can change your body temperature to like a very substantial degree to in a way that you otherwise normally wouldn't be able to do. Um so Tibetan monks in particular practicing tumo which is inner fire meditation. Um they raised their temperature up to 17° and they of course dried wet seat draping over their bodies in a cold room.
¶46Um they actually have done experiments like this before within like this has actually been published within um scientific journals right so it's published in nature it's independently replicated by a skeptic so the first case was in 1981 um Dr. Herbert Basson led a research team, right? Um and they did of course the inner fire meditation. So they of course inner fire meditation is component of the six yogas of um Narabo involving controlled breathing and visualization. Um Beninstein documented monks raising the temperature of their fingers again up to 17 degrees.
¶47Um, now of course what makes this case strong is compared to almost anything else in this in this list um is they actually replicated this replicated this in 2013. So there's a skeptic um Maria Coronalfa um they were explicitly skeptical of the original claims. Um they ran their own independent peer-reviewed study, right? and they had the same exact result, right? At least one monk in her study raises core temperature from 98 to 100.
¶48And not just ex extremes, but core temperature through a documented replicable psycho psycho physical or psycho yeah psychophysical process. Um so you have the original study which is 1988 and then you have the replication study that also um documents this as well. Um and of course if you look into the literature you'll find that tumo is one of the few areas where western science has established this to be a real phenomena. Um so the reason why I mention this is because again tumo specifically and I want to give some context. Tumo is a Buddhist practice that is involved in trying to um cut through a karmic pattern.
¶49to cut through and to control certain things about the body that you otherwise wouldn't be able to control, right? Um, and I don't recommend that anyone try without a teacher. So, I I'm not saying that you should try these practices on your own. I certainly don't do these practices because I don't have a teacher that's willing to teach me these, at least not yet. Um but the point here is we have these if you look into the scientific literature on this we do have tumo that is you know um documented pretty well um now another case I want to talk about is um Swami Rama um oh yeah this is it's the same case so anyways it's the same case all right so now we're going to get a reincarnation cases.
¶50And I'll I'll mention reincarnation cases briefly um because this is where we get into some weird um very weird stuff. Okay. Very very weird stuff. [snorts] All right. I'm going to go briefly into reincarnation cases um just because I think it's relevant for the for the overall point I'm going to make later.
¶51So at age three um you have someone who gave nine recorded statements about a house in Kenai 100 miles away before any verification all confirmed against a real family. Right. So the specific case of this was essentially um they correctly recognize three brothers in birth order sisters-in-law a servant and of course um insists on golden father's brother she denies she ever had right and of course something that that the person hid or this the past person hid again assuming that reincarnation happens um this was actually independently verified by the by the, you know, the second person. Um, now, of course, I'm not going to make the argument that therefore, oh, this proves that reincarnation is true because even Stevenson himself doesn't think this to be the case. He has his own hypothesis, which is the um I believe it's called the PSI agent hypothesis or the super PSI agent hypothesis.
¶52Um, so there are ways to account for this without reincarnation literally being true. But again, this points to this just supports my overall point, which is the anomaly doesn't license a cosmology. Same thing with this case, right? So you have a H3 um you have someone who began describing life as the son of a wealthy Brahman Prada 500 kilometers away. His lawyer his lawyer father published the statements in a regional newspaper before any verification.
¶53Right? So you have these reincarnation cases that um basically like the statistical probability that you get all these reincarnation cases by chance is just super low. Um, and the two main hypotheses that are used to explain this is either actual reincarnation or the agent PSI hypothesis or the super PSI hypothesis. Um, or I think it's called the living agent hypothesis. Never mind.
¶54I think that's yeah, I mean, at least that's the hypothesis that Stevenson himself goes with. And I don't have a problem with that because again, um, anomaly doesn't imply cosmology. Um, and of course there's the Prawny Johnny case, which is something that Seth Hart has already discussed, but you have 35 scientists. Um, and he placed um, Johnny under continuous CCTV um, you know, surveillance for 15 days. Um, where they basically gave him no food, no water, no urination, no defecation.
¶55Um, and of course they replicated this across two separate trials, seven years apart, right? Um, and the claim of course is that essentially he claimed that he was able to do this because of his goddess, right? [laughter] Um, he was able to actually not eat, drink, do anything because of his goddess. That's the claim at least that he's making. and because of the hole in the in the top of his head.
¶56Right? Now, of course, what's the reply to this? It's like, well, God won't let his name be forged. Right? Now, Joe knows about this case, right?
¶57Joe replied with a specific theological distinction. A miracle reforming God's name as creator cannot be false because God would not let his own name be forged, right? Um, and of course, Johnny claimed that this sign involved the goddess Ama and not the ultimate, you know, G god, right? Um, so Joe made the argument like, oh well, you know, this isn't the ultimate god, right? But of course, there's several there there are several problems with this, right?
¶58Um if the principle is that God's goodness would prevent deceptive miracles generally not just creator invoking ones then the persistent then the persistence of zombie style deception becomes evidence against classical theism itself right um because why would a why would God allow people to make false claims about him right um now of course this is structure the problem of evil wearing a miracle shaped outcome exactly the move used to explain produced suffering. Um, and it's equally available to used to explain apparently just the non-Christian miracles, right? Um, so basically like Joe's criterion, it proves too much, right? Secondly, you have the invincible ignorance problem. Catholic teaching itself already accepts that God permits people to be sincerely and notably led into theological error through no fault of their own.
¶59Right? That's what invincible ignorance is, right? And if God already tolerates sincere blameless error at that level, so if he already allows for invincible ignorance to actually occur, then why would God there's no principal reason to expect that God would tolerate um a specific miraculous sign to have a false god attached to it, right? At least again, if we're working within Joe's framework. Um, now of course there's the bigger problem which is that Joe's entire rescue depends upon Ama occupying a definitively sub divine agent doing this right but of course this is not true right within the Hindu within his own Hindu tradition to the person we're talking about um Ama is not treated as a lesser intermediate deity at all she is theologized as a form of durga and more specifically as Audi pionai the primordial source of all being right so the issue is if you actually take Jenny's own words right um he literally says I am strong and healthy because it is the way God wants me to be right so this language suggests that you have a personal god distinct from himself right um so basically the overall point here is that you can have um Johnny in this case literally believe that God is like a female, right?
¶60Like that's something that you find in Hinduism. Hinduism is not just a masculine religion. It also has like you it has God like in at least one of the traditions, God is literally a feminine character, right? Um he's not masculine. [laughter] So um so that's kind of the the main issue here with the argument.
¶61Now I want to talk about Roma John. Um so this will be my last miracle case. Um and of course I didn't spend too much time the other miracles because this one in particular I think is the strongest in my opinion. Um so Ramadan working with almost no no formal mathematical training produced thousands of results, true results, previously unknown results and arriving with no shown derivation at all. Not proofs handed to him.
¶62Um, so you know, these weren't proofs that were just handed to him, but rather they are just results that just literally just he just got from his from his mathematical um research. Um, so I'm going to talk about Ramadan because this case is um I think the strongest one of the strongest non-Christian miracle cases out there. Why is that the case? Well, we'll get into that. [laughter] So, one thing we have to understand about what he actually had, right?
¶63So, he had in his possession char synoptic synopsis of elementary results, right? Um, so it's compressed already dated 1880s Cambridge exam prep, right? So he had 4,000 to 5,000 known theorems, say with no proof, right? Um, he had incomplete formal schooling, so he had scholarships, right? And of course, he had a local community.
¶64Now one thing that I want to make a distinction between char and Ramadan is um in char's case every result was already established right you have textbook ma by textbook mathematics right um any 1880 student could find the derivation elsewhere so they can find the proof elsewhere of these results in Ramadan's case um he didn't get any derivations of these results anywhere. Um these basically were handed to him from his god. At least that's the claim that he's making, right? So this is different than um something like Fatima, something like Zaiton. This is different than any of the miracle cases that we've discussed.
¶65This is different from the cases that I've discussed and it's different from all the cases that Joseph has discussed because here we're not just talking about something that um we're not talking about evidence that you can that you have to rely upon eyewitness reports on you. We are talking about evidence that you can independently verify yourself so you can check the math yourself. Right? And this is important because if you have a mathematician who literally claimed like Ramadan who literally claimed that he got his results from a goddess and then later on mathematicians verify the math right so like math that Ramadan couldn't have um you know at least that he claimed that he got from his goddess that is significant Right. Um there is no comparable case here.
¶66I just wanted to also mention here because the the most obvious skeptical mood is going to say that plenty of serious mathematicians state results without any proof. So why treat Ramage silence as remarkable rather than normal practice? Right? So for example like you have for Monty's last theorem stated in 1637 and it was later approved in 1995. Um using math that didn't exist in his lifetime.
¶67Gayas's private um diary held discoveries independently discovered decades later, right? Um the issue of course is like you have fully trained formally embedded real correspondence networks um and there's no absence to derive them, right? Um So another thing I want to mention is this objection like oh well any mathematician can have results ahead of time without proof that is true but here here's the difference right both the cases they were fully trained fully embedded mathematicians at the center of the field with real correspondent networks right um and in this case Gaus Pascal The so these mathematicians they were surrounded by the leading mathematicians of his error right their withholding of proofs looks like confidence private habit or simply not bothered to write things up right that's a fundamentally different kind of phenomena from an untrained person with no correspondence networks and a single dated exam prep book as his substantive resource producing results with apparently no derivational path available to him at Right. So the issue is like we have no good president for this this specific combination. We have someone who is self-taught, minimal training and producing the same pattern anyway that the greatest mathematicians have ever produced.
¶68Right. Now, I also want to press on how well evidence this anomaly is because the full story is stronger than the math checks out. Right? It is that Ramadan's textbook contains somewhere between three and 4,000 statements of results. The overwhelming majority given no proof or derivation at all.
¶69And he simply wrote down what he found. a lost notebook of further material from the last year of his life went missing entirely for over 50 years until George Andrews rediscovered it by chance in 1976 and a box of a deceased mathematician's paper um containing more than 600 additional formulas again stated without proof proven that any of this became a multi-generational undertaking. Right? So, this is something that's kind of kept a secret within the mathematics community. Um, and the issue is, so basically here here's here's what we're dealing with, right?
¶70We're dealing with a mathematician who who wrote down these results in his notebook. He had no he had no proof of these from mathematical standpoint and they had to be later checked. So the results that he had had to be um proved by later mathematicians and they were you know it took literally a hundred years to get all the proofs for all these results, right? Um so that's the the evidence that we're dealing with. So we're dealing with math.
¶71[laughter] We're not dealing with eyewitnesses. Okay, we're dealing with math that you yourself can check if you have the um you know the training for it. So that in my opinion that beats all the miracle stuff at least all the other cases because the other cases require eyewitness testimony. It requires some documentation. Here you can just independently check the math yourself.
¶72Like all the results that he gave out, you can literally just check for yourself, [laughter] right? You don't you don't need to rely upon eyewitness reports. Right. Now, of course, there's one error which I do want to mention um so that people so I don't overestimate his brilliance. Um so in I think in 1915 there was a sign error right so 30 pages of draft material cut before publication never was it visited unpublished until 199 1997.
¶73Um now so th this is important because there is one error that Ramadan made but here the error was like he didn't publish it. This was literally in one of his notebooks that um he never endorsed. He never endorsed the inequality that he wrote down. Um so I think that's important to also mention. Now one thing that I also want to mention about this case is um mock ta functions um and we're going to get a little bit so what are what are mock ta functions well is it is a new kind it's a new category of a mathematical object right had no president in char no president anywhere available to him the field itself lacked the concepts to properly define what he' found until Sa Sweder connected them to harmonic mass forms in a 2002 doctrinal thesis um 82 years later.
¶74Um so so that's the so at least that's one of the main issues is the math that you need in order to get these results. They didn't even have Ramadan didn't even have the framework to get the results. um without a proof and of course in order to get the proof you need later ma mathematics that um we didn't have at the time. Um the other thing too is that Ramadan himself says that an equation has no meaning for me unless it expresses a thought of God. Right?
¶75He didn't separate math from his devotion. So that's another thing we have to keep in mind. So what is the actual evidence for this miracle? Well, this isn't necessarily a miracle per se because it's not a healing miracle. It's not some extraordinary phenomena.
¶76This was simply a mathematician, right? Who had minimal formal training, but yet he was able to produce 3 to 4,000 results, right? These were extraordinary novel results. These were extraordinarily accurate results. So there are 10 or few errors in the 3000 results.
¶77Um there were no proofs for these results until much later until after he died. Um and it took decades of mathematicians to develop the field of mathematics so that they can understand like mock ta functions right. Um, so the math section you can just you can check yourself, right? You don't need to take my word for it. Um, and the other thing too is there's an so there's kind of three layers.
¶78There's math layer which is there then there's the phenomenological layer and then there's the attribution layer. Um, so I just want to make sure that my ar Okay. So I just want to make sure my argument is clear. So many people around this time said like he had dreams where basically his goddess would would um just give him these results, right? Um there was one case where I think he woke up at like 2 a.m.
¶79or something and people were saying like he was literally like writing down mathematical results um through his dreams. And of course he explicitly attributes his results to um narabi. Um, and of course this visit dream content is like a red screen, a handwriting, right? Um, now of course that's kind of kind of weird because you know it's not necessarily a goddess in the full sense but you do have um Rama John who claimed again the claim is that he got these results from his goddess right um so I'm not going to say this is a miracle but it is in my view it is extraordinary because you have basically the closest we have to an actual Um, you know, imagine like, I don't know, Jesus appearing to you and then giving you math, mathematical results that literally takes hundreds of years to later verify. That's the kind of stuff we're dealing with.
¶80Except this case, it's not Jesus doing it. It's um, Namagari or Namigari. Um, so it's a Hindu god goddess that's allegedly doing this. All right. Now I also want to briefly mention the pattern because it's the pattern not the exception.
¶81So Tumo or Ramadan aren't cheric outliers. They represent how anomaly and cosmology get treated across the entire paranormal and contemplative science record. Right? Um so here's my argument, right? is you cannot claim oh because you have a great mathematician I got all these mathematical results therefore I have to be a Hindu now no that doesn't follow or oh because tumo works therefore I have to be a Buddhist now no that doesn't work either the point is you cannot go from an anomaly to a cosmology that is my whole argument in a nutshell right that's the point I'm making that's the reason why I'm bringing all this up now I could have made a much better case for each of these cases.
¶82I'm simply presenting these cases because these cases show you like just because weird things happen does not therefore mean that you have to believe in the cosmology that's that's attached to the weird thing. So now of course the most obvious um response to this objection that I'm making is well you know Fatima's message coheres with centuries of you know prior mar devotion right so the cosmology isn't on isn't ad hoc in a way that you know Ted Owens cases or some of these other weird cases right now of course I didn't talk about Ted Owens because Ted Owens is I was going to include Ted Owens but I'm not gonna that's too um too weird. I wasn't I again I could have gone crazy if I really wanted to but I didn't want to do that. Um the problem of course is coherence only shows consistency right um Owen's claims themselves were coherent right um same thing with Ramadan same thing with other cases like reincarnation cases tumo cases they're coherent so what doesn't mean anything right and of course there's a deeper problem which is it's question right our traditions reference explains the data because the data coherence with our tradition but that presupposes that cosmology you're in dispute right um the identical raw anomaly run through a different tradition's logic coheres just as well with that tradition's priors, right? So Ramadan literally like again um you can check the math yourself.
¶83So literally like um yeah like you can check to see like Ramadan's math checks out and it's been verified hund by hundreds of mathematicians and we also know historically from a historical critical side like he also claimed to get these results from his goddess and um we also have other people who also claim that he woke up in the middle of the night waking up from dreams writing down results from his goddess. So therefore I have to believe that Hinduism is true because Ramadan got some math from his goddess. No, that is like that is ridiculous. That is a ridiculous argument. Right?
¶84And again I'm using Ramadan here because Ramadan is is a completely different case. You don't have to believe an eyewitness testimony. You can literally just take his word for it that he got this from his goddess and you can check his math. Right. Okay.
¶85Yeah. Like it doesn't follow, dude. It does not follow that. Therefore, because some weird stuff has happened with math that I have to now be a Hindu or believe that Ram that Ramadan's goddess is literally real. Um, and of course, familiarity is not evidence, right?
¶86So, a cosmology being old, elaborate, and widely shared doesn't make it logically better explanation for any anomaly, right? Um, so like just because Catholicism is the biggest tradition in the world doesn't mean that therefore oh because it's so familiar with us therefore it's evidence. No, popularity isn't evidence. Right? Now, of course, it to be fair, it might feel less arbitrary because it's like, yeah, if you're a Catholic and, you know, you devote yourself to Jesus and Mary or whatever, then um like it just feels like, oh yeah, the Marian apparitions, the the Eucharistic um miracles, like all these miracles are so they're so like expected on my theory.
¶87It's like, okay, well, what about these other weird phenomena that you would also have to reject or to put and say, oh, those are just demonic. Like, why would a demon tell math that's going to help techn like that's going to help our society? That doesn't that doesn't make any sense. Um, so yeah, familiarity is not evidence. Um, now let's let's return back to the cases, right?
¶88We have Padre Pio, right? So, we have an anomaly, Fatima, same thing. Ukar's decay the same thing right um none of this proves that Fatima didn't happen that Mary didn't appear that Pipio's wounds haven't been any explanation or that Ray body is illusurary right it proves that the inference from anomaly to cosmology is invalid as a general matter for every tradition equally so this is my this is my overall like point right is I've mentioned all these other cases because there are genuine anomalies that have occurred right outside the Christian tradition. But just because they've occurred does not therefore mean that you must accept the cosmology that's attached to it. It doesn't follow.
¶89So anyways, um now I'm going to reconstruct the vindicator miracle argument. So, I'm going to try to in this part of the video, I'm going to try to um reconstruct Joe's argument and Ethan Muse's argument or any other argument that one might use. And then I'm going to show why the argument doesn't work. Okay. So, Joe uses vindicator constantly.
¶90He never once lays out what it actually means for it to be true that a miracle can count as vindicator or as vindicating one tradition over its rivals. Right. So I'm going to I'm going to state the argument in its best form. Right. The vendtory function a miracle within tradition T constitute evidence T's do content as a divinely endorsed discrimination.
¶91Well evidence anomalies within T raise T's probability relative to rival tradition not just relative to naturalism. So again we're not just comparing naturalism. We're literally comparing all other rival traditions. C. Evidential base.
¶92Catholicism exhibits well documented anomalies meeting their threshold for non-uniki's rivals traditions don't exhibit comparatively concentrated well evidence anomalies. Therefore, Catholicism is more probably true than its rivals on the strength of its vindicatory miracle account. So that's the argument, right? That's the argument that um that Joe and Ethan want to present. Right?
¶93Now, of course, there are six premises. Um and of course, I've already shown why some of these don't work. So, premise one needs a miracle to constitute doctrinal endorsement. Um, I already showed why this doesn't work. So, you can separate between manifestation endorsement.
¶94So, just watch part one of this video series as a way to show why premise one doesn't work. Premise 2 needs a to favor T specifically over its rivals. Um, I showed like this that doesn't work. Um, A doesn't discriminate from cosmology 1 to cosmology 2 to cosmology 3 for any tradition. Um, premise three.
¶95Premise three. So, the issue with premise 3 is premise 3 needs the event describable independent of the tradition tested, right? But of course, I already showed why this doesn't work either. Um, because the event already presupposes metaphysical Catholicism as the background. Um, and of course, there's Bible traditions that can also explain the event or the miracle.
¶96Um now the other thing too is premise 3 requires well doumented of course needs frequency. Um premise 4 needs coherence to discriminate. Um I showed why coherence doesn't work as a way just because just because you have a theology that's coherent or a story that's coherent doesn't mean it's true. Um because literally any tradition can be coherent within its own framework and then um premise three and four need a non need a neutral certifying process. Um and of course the magisterium is simultaneously to defend it and a judge right um now I'm going to say more about this in a minute um because I think it's relevant.
¶97Let's see. Um, let's go down here. Okay, I already I already stated this stuff. So, what does this mean for vindicatory U miracle as a category? If if my objections go through, um, so six premises, none stated anywhere in Joe's script.
¶98Right? So, these these are sort of background assumptions in order for Joe's arguments to work. Um you need these you need these assumptions to work in the background. Um and the issue is that there will just they just all don't work. Right?
¶99So manifestation is endorsement. We've shown why that doesn't work. Um discriminated evidence and we've shown why that doesn't work. neutral evidence description. We shown why that doesn't work.
¶100Anyways, so yeah, the vendor miracle argument doesn't work. Um, now I also want to go over the specificity gap. So these are these are actually new objections that I have against. So, this is probably the main reason why um I've taken much longer to respond to Joe and Ethan compared this part to the others because this is actually a new argument that I came up with um that I think completely undercuts um any argument that they could make for why Catholicism is true given these miracles. So, let's let's suppose this suppose that axiological theism is true.
¶101You right? So, you have a maximally valuable realizing being exists. Um so, I'm granting theism, right? And suppose a specific fully evidence miracle occurred exactly as reported, right? Um the problem is you still haven't gotten to Catholicism.
¶102God exists and working wonder is compatible with Catholic Christianity and it's compatible with um a Hindu view. It's compatible with a non-religious accommodation account. Um and it's also compatible with a framework that nobody has ever formulated. Right? Um, so here's and effect I'm gonna instead of laying it out here, I'm going to I'm going to give you guys the full version of my argument just so that people can understand the actual argument that I'm making.
¶103So for the sake of argument, T is true. Some form of theism is true, right? I'll just grant that. Premise two, miracle granted. So grant the miracle.
¶104So we're granting theism and we're granting the miracle. Now we have the specificity question. The question at hand is not whether T is true or whether M occurred but whether T and M together license CS. The claim that one specific doctrinal evaluated tradition Catholic Christianity with this particular commitments regarding trinity incarnation atonement and sacmental structure is the correct account of what T and and mean. Now here's the problem right you have not CS.
¶105So the negation of Catholic Christianity or even you can call it um the Christian story. So CS just means the Christian story. So the negation of the Christian story is not merely some other actual world religion. So this is important. It is the complete disjunction of every T-compatible framework other than the Christian story capable of accounting for the miracle.
¶106So we have rival human religious traditions. We have inclusivists and exclusivists alike. Non-religious accommodation frameworks not tied to any specific doctrinal community. And any further theism compatible hypothesis that is logically possible but not yet formulated or not even humanly conceivable since nothing in theism itself restricts its own scope to traditions humans have historically produced. >> [laughter] >> Okay, so we're talking about every possible um disjunction or every possible rival hypothesis within theism um that is not the Christian story.
¶107The problem of course is that bare theism does not itself concentrate prior probability on the Christian story specifically within this disjunction. Theism asserts only that a maximally value realizing being exists. It entails nothing about what that being would communicate through a trinity, an incarnation, a specific Sacramento economy or any other doctrinal particular um content dist that distinguishes um the Christian story from its rivals. Absence any independent argument, the probability of the Christian story is not shown to extend the prior shared by any comparable specific member of the negation of CS merely by conditioning on T. So now we have the law of total probability.
¶108So the probability of the miracle equals the probability of the miracle conditional on the Christian story times the probability of the Christian story plus the probability of the miracle conditional on the negation of the the Christian story times the probability of um the negation of the Christian story. So here's the argument, right? Observing the miracle raises the probability of um the Christian story above the Christian story only to the extent that the B factor the miracle story exceeds one enough to overcomes the um the Christian story's prior share of the disjunction. Um and of course a prior share that is already shown not to be large. And of course, this is where my argument becomes more technical.
¶109The Baze factor has not been shown to favor the Christian story. A combinationist and non-Christian frameworks within the negation of the Christian story documented across, you know, parts um so you know my individuation thesis, the Hindu frameworks, right? um can and historically have produced comparable evidential packages. A founder, anomalous sign, a moral teaching, a community that forms around it where the rival firmer predicts the same observed package in a comparable likelihood. um and it's so of course then the conclusion as that the base factor for the Christian story over that specific royal tradition um is basically I'm making the argument that um you haven't they haven't actually demonstrated a large bay factor here and so here's the here's the critical point because the negation of CS pulls every member capable of matching M's evidential profile even a modest per rival likelihood is more than an offset to of GK.
¶110So in other words, even if you have let's say a group of not CS's or if if you have just a small section of them able to modestly predict the miracle, then that disjunction is going to outweigh the probability of the Christian story itself being true. And so the combined miracle or the combined probability of the miracle conditioned on the negation of the Christian story across the whole disjunction is not shown to be smaller than the probability of the miracle in the Christian story. Um therefore granting both the so granting both theism and the miracle in full does not by itself raise the probability of the Christian story conditional on theism and the miracle to a level warranting belief in Christians um specifically over the disjunction of the negation of the Christian story. their inference from God exists and this miracle occurred to therefore Catholic Christianity specifically is true requires an independent non-ircular argument discriminating Christian story from the entire space of um theism compatible rivals um and of course this this also blocks the abducted version too because one might argue that if we let's say we don't use the Beijing argument um we say that the Christian story is simply the best explanation of theism and the miracle taken together. Um, this doesn't work either.
¶111First, an explanatory inference needs an explanatory gap for the preferred hypothesis to close that its rivals leave open. Premise six and seven above show that there isn't one. If the Christian story and its strongest members of not Christian story both predict the observed package, founder science teaching community in a comparable rate, then the Christian story isn't uniquely closing an explanatory gap the rivals leave open. It is one adequate explanation among several adequate explanations and best collapses into the most familiar to the person holding the explaining which is exactly um what I've already mentioned earlier which is you know just because there's a lot of Christian Catholics or Christians doesn't mean that therefore oh well this miracle is supposed to vindicate Christianity. Second, if you instead try to ground best explanation in some standard other than comparative likelihood, like let's say you go with simplicity matters, um that standard has to be shown to be truth tracking or isn't doing any epistmic work at all.
¶112It is just restating a preference, right? So what what is the what's my formal complaint or what's what's the exact argument I'm trying to make here? Um, the argument is you have so many different alternative hypotheses that are compatible with theism that explain the Christian miracles that if you have enough of the collection of those disjunctions, then that is going to outweigh like the disjunction is going to outweigh the probability of um the Christian story being the most probable one, right? Granting theism and granting the miracle. That's the issue that you run into.
¶113Now, I also want to mention um the religious context objection because this is the standard reply. This is like the most common response that anyone is going to give to my argument. Um, so I'm going to go over I'm going to go over this response briefly. So the standard, you know, objection to my argument might be that this complates a prior with a posterior and that an intentional axiological response of God shouldn't be modeled as picking C out of an indifferent an under out of an indifferentiated urine. the way a marriage proposal isn't um scattered uniformly across every possible way of doing it.
¶114So the argument was never that that premise 4 doesn't claim every every member of Nazi starts equally probable. So I'm not saying that the the negation of the Christian story that every possible alternative to the Christian story is equally probable. It claims that bare theism itself doesn't concentrate the probability on the Christian story specifically because acts on acts based on axiological reasons fix a fixes a type of narrative not which member of that type obtains right so like a marriage proposal for example explains why the the miracle is likelier given t than given naturalism but it says nothing about which member of the negation of Christian story is is a um which member of you know the negation story. I a rational agent would favor one radically already inside theism. Um and of course the more serious reply is that the religious context um sort of allows for you to say like okay given a religious context then if a miracle occurs within that religious context then it ver then it vindicates that miracle.
¶115Um, this doesn't work, right? Um, I'm going to show why this doesn't work. So, putting the context back in. So, let's say we put a context back in, right? Um, requires a story about why God would act inside a specific prophetic and sotological frame at all.
¶116And the most natural version of that story is a combinationist. An axiological response of being meet each cultures through whatever prophetic and sotiological forms are locally available rather than validating one tradition specific context over the others. Right? And so on that model, the local religious packaging, a founder, a prophetic line, a sotology is exactly what you'd expect God to generate inside every culture regardless of which one if any carries the actual relevatory content, right? Um so you run into a problem where like literally even in like I'm just let's talk about like for example like in the um her Krishna tradition you literally have Krishna literally saying that I will appear to you in the form that you um whatever you worship God as I will appear in that form.
¶117Okay. Um that's inside the religious context. >> [laughter] >> Right? That's inside a religious context. >> So literally you can have Krishna being God and appearing as Jesus, right?
¶118Because that is how you know Christians in particular relate to God. Um so this doesn't work because incurring inside a specific narrative in a prophetic context stops being evidence that discriminates um the Christian story from the non-Christian story and becomes something close to guaranteed across the whole disjunction. Right? Since accommodationism is just as true or true any right. So the point is like accommodationism is true on both CS and not CS or at least you know if we're talking within like an inclusivist form of CS.
¶119Um and of course this isn't a hypothetical worry because second Judaism alone produced a documented sequence of figures instantiated the exact same evidential signature that Christianity did. Right? So you have a founder, a following, a prophetic sociological frame, right? And of course it was tied to Israel's own scriptural expectations. Um, and I'm going to get into that here because I think it's relevant for this whole argument like, oh, well, the context matters because if the context matters, well, you have you have some really big problems.
¶120All right. So, now I'm going to get into um some figures that I think really backfire against this whole accommodationist or not the accommodations but the religious context strategy. Um so, the theoticis or the I think it's the um so according to Josephus, the persuaded the great part of the people to take up their possessions and follow him to the Jordan River. He claimed to be a prophet and promised that his command to the river would part. An explicit reenactment of the Exodus and Josiah's crossing.
¶121Um, and so you have this character. So this is after Jesus, right? Um, basically you have someone that's following the exact pattern that you see in the gospels. You have the Egyptian prophet. So you have um and of course this prophet is attested independently of do Josephus and Acts where Roman where Roman tribute mistakes Paul for the same figure.
¶122Um this person gathered 330,000 followers to the mount olives pro promised that his com that his command Jerusalem walls would collapse and his followers overthrow the Roman garrison. It drew directly on prophetic deliverance expectation and legal Roman response under um Aonius flex. So there's no name for this prophet but there is an Egyptian prophet that you'll find um within Satoba Judaism. So this is like again this is after Jesus but you find the same pattern. Um Judas the Galilean same thing.
¶123Um founder of move Josephus explicitly groups with the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essins as they for distinct philosophy and major identif identifiable movement led resistance to the Roman census of Coronicus. Um Simon Bar. So then you know um of course this happened after the the um destruction of the temple but this is a movement where you have leading rebbitic endorsement um a prophetic siological frame um sabi right so basically the problem is like okay you want to talk about fulfillment you have all these other people that also fulfilled a lot of things and you >> [laughter] >> in the same way that Jesus fulfilled um that you'll find in second of Judaism. So I'm not going to go over all these cases here because I recommend everyone the point is like Jesus was Jesus's movement was not the only messianic movement. There were other messianic movements that happened at the time.
¶124Um and so the symmetry point isn't abstract, right? If you apply it to directly to Christianity's own central discrimination claim that Jesus fulfilled Jewish messianic prophecy and it turn and it runs to the same problems it's supposed to solve for everyone else. Right? And so the problem is this the prophetic sociological frame being cited as part of what makes the miracle meaningful is the frame set by the Hebrew Bible's own messianic expectations. And those expectations were not vague.
¶125They are spec spec specific textually grounded commitments. Um, so here's the problem, right? If you look into the Hebrew Bible itself, um, those messianic expectations were very specific. So it required military deliverance. It required restoration of reigning divided king into an actual throne and gathering of the scattered land back to the land.
¶126um and so many other things, right? Military deliverance, the Davidic throne and guiding of the exiles, universal peace, universal knowledge of God, the that the temple would be rebuilt, which it wasn't, of course, but besides the point. Um, [clears throat] now of course none of this has ever rested on treating every logically possible narrative as equally likely. It is the narrow claim that nothing offered in reply does the independent work. So basically, if you want to argue, so here's my point, right?
¶127If you want to argue that the context is what provides quoteunquote the independent support of the miracle and that that that gives the miracle some special divine status, that doesn't work because we already know that Jesus did not fulfill very specific prophecies that were supposed to be fulfilled by the Messiah. um and that Christians had to literally reinterpret everything in ways that by the way other followers did the exact same thing in other their other traditions as I'm pointing out here. Right. All right. So that pretty much concludes my um my response to them for the most part.
¶128Um well does it though? Because I mean h I mean this just seems so like weird, right? Like I'm I'm being so abstract, right, in my criticisms? Um but there there has to be something deeper, right? What what exactly is the problem, right?
¶129What what is what is like what's the logical issue? Like, you know, I'm being so abstract and like bringing all this beige machinery and like talking about all these other miracles and right? What's the problem? Like, I don't understand. Like, why can't we just be Catholics, you know, just see Mary and see all the Marian stuff and all the Eucharistic stuff and, you know, like just say like, "Oh, oh yeah, all the other non-Christian miracles there are all demons and you know, all the religious context matters and like what what what's the problem?
¶130I mean, there there has to be some, you know, way that it could be true. Um, oh, wait, wait a minute. Oh, no. Garbau is aism, man. Not garblo.
¶131Suppose a man named Gary, an electrician from Ohio, correctly predicts the winning numbers of three consecutive regional lottery drawings, writing each prediction down and having it notorized in advance. Investigators find no evidence of fraud. Statisticians run the numbers and agree the odds against three independent correct predictions by chance are extraordinary. This is a genuine well-documented anomaly. Call it A.
¶132Gary explains that the numbers come to him in dreams from a being called Garblo, an interdimensional accountant who has selected Gary as his terrestrial liaison and communicates through prime numbers and the smell of ozone. Gary starts a small congregation. They meet on Tuesdays. They report that prayer to Garbau has produced several unexplained recoveries from illness among the members and a devoted follower photographs an unusual light pattern in the church parking lot that no one can quite explain. The congregation grows.
¶133Two generations later, the movement has structure. A council of senior garbite elders convenes to settle a dispute that has been simmering for decades. Exactly how many rights properly channel Garbau's accounting power. Some communities recognize three. Others recognize upward of a dozen, including one faction that counts sincerely balancing your checkbook as a distinct sacred act.
¶134The council rules definitively. There are exactly seven garbanic rights, no more and no fewer, each analyzed according to a technical distinction between the rights ledger matter and its ledger form. A distinction nobody in Gary's original Tuesday congregation had any vocabulary for and would not have recognized as a category at all. The council further rules that Gary himself in his kitchen dreaming of prime numbers personally instituted all seven and that anyone who denies this is formally cut off from Garblo's accounting grace. Around the same time a sotiology develops.
¶135A second council citing the first declares that reliable passage to the ledger beyond requires correct standing with the seven rights specifically that sincere adherence of a rival prophet who also predicted lottery numbers decades earlier in Nevada are almost certainly damned unless invincibly ignorant of Garbau's superior claim and that the Nevada movement's own welldocumented anomaly their prophet also nailed three numbers in a row independently investigated never debunked must be explained as either coinc coincidence, low-grade psychic noise, or the work of a rival lesser interdimensional entity impersonating Garbau to mislead the faithful. The elders investigate the Nevada case personally. They rule it inauthentic. They are naturally the only body anyone has empowered to make that ruling, and they are also the ones whose own authority the ruling happens to protect. A century from now, if the movement survives, historians will note that the founding anomaly was investigated and never debunked.
¶136that the internal system, rights, ledger matter, and ledger form, the doctrine of who is saved and who merely means well, grew steadily more intricate and cross-referenced with itself over time. And that this intricacy was routinely offered by believers as evidence of the systems depth and truth rather than as evidence of what several centuries of committed people working hard on a founding anomaly none of them could let go of are able to build. Nobody reading this needs to be told that none of it would make Garbau real, that the seven rights were instituted the moment Gary dreamed of prime numbers or that the Nevada prophet's identical anomaly must be counterfeit. The lottery numbers are the anomaly. Everything after Garbau, the rights, the ledger matter/leger form distinction, the sotiology, the ruling against Nevada is the cosmology elaborated.
¶137Every later addition feels to someone standing inside the tradition like a discovery. The deeper meaning of what Gary always meant unfolding naturally over time. From outside, every one of those additions is a separate unearned leap. And stacking a hundred unearned leaps on top of one another doesn't make the first one earned. Complexity accumulated on top of an unlicensed inference is still an unlicensed inference.
¶138It's just gotten better at not looking like one. That gap between a genuine anomaly and the entire elaborated architecture eventually built to explain it, defend it, and adjudicate rivals to it is the entire distance this three-part response has been walking across. It doesn't matter whether the cosmology is Gary's garblo, Ted Owens's space intelligences, or a 2,000-year-old tradition with cathedrals, a curia, seven sacraments, and a doctrine of salvation behind it. The logical relationship between the anomaly and everything bolted onto it one century at a time doesn't change because the bolting is old, because the bolts are numerous, or because each new bolt was added by people who sincerely believed they were only making explicit what was true from the start.