Egyptian Afterlife (Dr. Bob Brier, Ancient Egypt) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

The idea of the afterlife is universal in human history, ancient Egyptians included. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli welcome famed Egyptologist Dr. Bob Brier to discuss what the ancient Egyptians believed, including it was similar and different from Judeo-Christian beliefs.

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

This Episode is Brought to You By:
Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World is brought to you in part through the generous support of Aaron Vurgason Electric and Automation at AaronV.com. Making Connections for Life for your automation and smart home needs in north and central Florida.

Catechism Class, a dynamic weekly podcast journey through the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Greg and Jennifer Willits. It’s the best book club, coffee talk, and faith study group, all rolled into one. Find it in any podcast directory.

Fiorvento Law, PLLC, specializing in adult guardianships and conservatorships, probate and estate planning matters. Accepting clients throughout Michigan. Taking into account your individual, healthcare, financial and religious needs. Visit FiorventoLaw.com

Deliver Contacts, offering honest pricing and reliable service for all your contact lens needs. See the difference at delivercontacts.com.

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.

More People Are Demanding to Be ‘Debaptized’ — Here’s What’s Wrong With That

In some places, the demand for debaptisms has been going up, which could be rather surprising.

“What’s a debaptism?” you might ask. “Is that even a thing? How can you un-pour water on someone?”

The short answer is that No, debaptism isn’t a thing, but that hasn’t stopped people from asking for it. And yes, “debaptism” is the language they use. The Pillar explains:

The Catholic Church in Belgium reported on Wednesday a sharp rise in the number of people asking for their names to be removed from baptismal registers.

The Church’s latest annual report, published on Nov. 30, said there were 5,237 such requests in 2021, compared to 1,261 in 2020 and 1,800 in 2019. …

Nevertheless, a rising movement in Europe promoting ‘debaptism’ has encouraged Catholics to write to Church authorities asking to be removed from parish baptismal records. The movement is a consortium of several political and philosophical factions among European secularists.

 

A Movement With Some History

This movement has been around for a while. For example, in 2012, NPR reported:

In France, an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He’s taken the Church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism, in a case that could have far-reaching effects.

Seventy-one-year-old Rene LeBouvier’s parents and his brother are buried in a churchyard in the tiny village of Fleury in northwest France. He himself was baptized in the Romanesque stone church and attended Mass here as a boy. …

But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers. As he didn’t believe in God anymore, he thought it would be more honest to leave the Church. So he wrote to his diocese and asked to be un-baptized.

 

Problems for the Debaptizers

There are problems with what the debaptizers are asking for.

It’s not possible to un-pour water on someone after it has been poured on them. This makes debaptism physically impossible (though some atheist organizations have used tongue-in-cheek ceremonies with hairdryers).

However, it’s also not theologically possible to reverse all the effects of baptism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Incorporated into Christ by baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, baptism cannot be repeated. (1272)

So, when you get baptized, an indelible spiritual mark is put on your soul, and nothing can remove this.

You can commit sins that will remove the sanctifying grace that baptism gave you, but the mark remains.

And — if you change your mind and repent — you can return to grace and resume life as a Christian.

You don’t need to get baptized again. In fact, you can’t get baptized again, because the spiritual mark remains.

 

What Happens in “Debaptisms”?

What happens when a person decides he doesn’t want to be a Christian anymore and sends in a “debaptism” request? The Pillar explains:

A spokesman for the Belgian bishops’ conference told The Pillar on Dec. 1 that when the Church received a ‘debaptism’ request, ‘it is noted in the register in the margin that the person has requested to be de-registered.’

‘You are not allowed to cross out or delete an entry in an official register,’ he explained.

That makes sense, because there needs to be a record of the fact the person was baptized. Suppose that they later change their mind and decide they want to live as a Christian again. There needs to be a record of the fact that they were baptized in order to show that they shouldn’t be baptized again.

What happened in the case of Monsieur LeBouvier? NPR reports:

‘They sent me a copy of my records, and in the margins next to my name, they wrote that I had chosen to leave the Church,’ he says.

Specifically, the revised record said that he “has renounced his baptism.” But that wasn’t enough for Lebouvier, and he sued the Church to have his name removed from the records.

 

A Parallel Case

Why would he do that? Let’s consider a parallel case — getting civilly married.

People sometimes go before a government official, get hitched, and then later change their minds and decide they don’t want to be married to each other after all.

When that happens, they get a divorce, and they seem to be happy with that. They don’t demand that the state go back and erase all records of them ever having been married.

There are good reasons the state doesn’t do that. Various legal matters may turn on the fact that the two people were married at one time (taxes, child custody cases, inheritances, lawsuits, etc.), and the state needs to have a record of the marriage — even if the state now regards it as dissolved.

 

Um … Why?

So why would someone like LeBouvier want his baptismal record obliterated?

Part of it could be confusion caused by poor catechesis. He might think that the existence of a physical record of his baptism itself makes him a Christian.

This would be a case of magical thinking, however, as it isn’t writing on a piece of paper that does this.

On the other hand, it could be cantankerousness. LeBouvier could have simply resented the Church and wanted to be difficult.

Instead of being satisfied with the fact that his parish noted in the records that he had renounced his baptism, he wanted to be a jerk and make a demand that he knew could not be granted, giving him a pretext to take the Church to court.

 

A Case Resolved

Whatever his motives, he ultimately lost. In 2014, the French Supreme Court ruled against LeBouvier, which is as it should be.

It’s a simple matter of historical fact that LeBouvier was baptized. That’s true regardless of what the effects of baptism are, and as an unbeliever, LeBouvier presumably wouldn’t even believe in the indelible mark it left on his soul.

It’s just true that — on a certain date — he was baptized in a certain parish, and there can be records of that fact occurring, just like there can be records of any other historical event taking place. Shy of having a flux capacitor-equipped DeLorean, there’s no way to go back in time and undo the event.

Just as the state can keep records of things that happened — like marriages — even if their effects are regarded as now neutralized (or not, from a religious perspective), so can the Church.

 

The Effect of a Document

There is a reason that people like LeBouvier might not be satisfied with the Church simply noting in the baptismal records that they no longer consider themselves Christian.

When people get a divorce, they get a court decree — a piece of paper that says they’re no longer legally married — and even though the state hasn’t gone back and erased all records of their marriage, the decree seems to satisfy them.

But the Church doesn’t have an equivalent of this when someone abandons the Faith.

The 1983 Code of Canon Law did envision the possibility of someone defecting from the Church “by a formal act.” This had certain canonical effects, such as no longer being required to have a Catholic wedding.

 

Defections and the German Kirchensteuer

But the German church tax system (Kirchensteuer) complicated matters. Under this system, the German government automatically takes a portion of an individual’s income and gives it to the church they are a member of.

Consequently, some Germans began defecting from the Church and claiming they no longer needed to pay the tax.

Apparently in response to the German situation, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts in 2006 instituted a cumbersome process that made it harder to formally defect. The process involved things like meeting personally with your bishop and convincing him that you really, most sincerely, did not consider yourself a Catholic anymore.

Unsatisfied with the results of this, in 2009 Pope Benedict XVI decided to eliminate the concept of formal defection from canon law entirely.

This had serious unintended consequences, as it meant that people who had been baptized but not raised Catholic — many of whom might not even know that they had been baptized — were now legally unable to contract valid marriages (because of the obligation to observe “canonical form”) and were condemned to the state of perpetual, objective fornication.

To my mind, the cure was worse than the disease caused by the German tax situation, but it meant that one no longer even got a letter from one’s bishop saying that he believed you no longer regarded yourself as Catholic.

 

Looking to the Future

As the secularization of Europe progresses, it remains to be seen whether future Church leaders will deem it appropriate to create a document certifying that “We recognize that you no longer consider yourself or wish to live as a Catholic.”

Hopefully, such a document will not be needed — and God forbid that anyone should want one.

But while the French courts ruled against LeBouvier, we can’t count on this remaining the case in the future.

Anti-Catholic and anti-Christian animus continues to spread in the legal system, and just as there are cantankerous litigants who may just want to “stick it to the Church,” there may be cantankerous judges who wish to do the same thing.

To head off the legal collision that could result from activist judges demanding that the Church mutilate its baptismal records, it could one day be prudent to create a way of formally acknowledging the sad reality of people who no longer consider themselves Christian.

Ellen Gould White (Seventh-Day Adventist Prophet) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Ellen G. White was co-founder and prophetess of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli look at the life of this woman and what her visions disclosed and then ask whether she was a genuine prophetess.

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

This Episode is Brought to You By:
Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World is brought to you in part through the generous support of Aaron Vurgason Electric and Automation at AaronV.com. Making Connections for Life for your automation and smart home needs in north and central Florida.

Catechism Class, a dynamic weekly podcast journey through the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Greg and Jennifer Willits. It’s the best book club, coffee talk, and faith study group, all rolled into one. Find it in any podcast directory.

Fiorvento Law, PLLC, specializing in adult guardianships and conservatorships, probate and estate planning matters. Accepting clients throughout Michigan. Taking into account your individual, healthcare, financial and religious needs. Visit FiorventoLaw.com

Deliver Contacts, offering honest pricing and reliable service for all your contact lens needs. See the difference at delivercontacts.com.

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.

Did God Have a Wife?

Various social media sites have claimed that—in the Old Testament—God originally had a wife that the Israelites worshipped.

This goddess was named Asherah, and she is mentioned at various places in the Hebrew scriptures.

The claim is made that we have no biblical texts that can be confidently dated prior to the reign of King Josiah (640-609 B.C.) that condemn the worship of this goddess.

Before that time, it was allegedly normative for Israelites to worship Asherah alongside God.

How accurate are these claims?

Not very.

It’s true that there was a goddess named Asherah that was worshipped in the Ancient Near East, and it’s true that some Israelites worshipped her.

But it is false to claim that this was a normative practice among Israelites—and that we have no texts from before the time of Josiah condemning the practice.

To understand the situation, we need to understand how the Israelite religion developed.

As a nation, Israel was descended from the patriarch Abraham, who came from “Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen. 12:28)—meaning he was from Mesopotamia, or modern Iraq.

As a native of Mesopotamia, Abraham was raised in the religion of the area, which centered on various eastern deities.

But the Bible records that eventually the true God—the Creator of the universe—called Abraham to leave Mesopotamia and come to the Promised Land of Canaan.

This is discussed in the book of Joshua, which states:

Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.

“Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many” (Josh. 24:2-3).

The Bible thus acknowledges that—before God appeared to him—Abraham worshipped other gods, which was the normal practice of people in the Ancient Near East.

When Abraham came to Canaan it was filled with its own people, who also worshipped a variety of gods.

Later, when Abraham’s descendants spent time in Egypt, they also lived among a polytheistic people.

Being surrounded by polytheistic people meant that the Israelites were tempted to join their neighbors in worshipping other gods, and they sometimes did so.

They even did so during the Exodus, as Moses was leading them out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land.

This is illustrated by the golden calf incident (Exod. 32) and by Moses’ instruction to offer their sacrifices to God, saying, “they may no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-idols after which they were prostituting” (Lev. 17:7, LEB).

While people did engage in these practices, they were not acceptable. Thus, after the golden calf incident:

Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tables out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.

And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the sons of Israel drink it.

And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought a great sin upon them?” (Exod. 32:19-21).

It was similarly recognized that, upon returning to Canaan, the polytheistic inhabitants could tempt the Israelites into being unfaithful to God. Concerning the Canaanites, God says:

You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods.

They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you” (Exod. 23:32-33).

Also, God made a covenant with the Israelites that they would worship only him. This requirement is explicit in the Ten Commandments:

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod. 20:2-4).

The Bible thus depicts orthodox Israelite religion as involving the worship of God alone. However, it frankly acknowledges that unorthodox Israelites could and did worship other deities.

The struggle against this is a major theme in the Bible, and the prophets regularly condemn Israelites for worshipping other gods. You cannot read the Old Testament without repeatedly encountering this theme.

So what about Asherah? She was a goddess that was worshipped by the Canaanites—as well as other people in the Ancient Near East—and she was often regarded as the wife of the high god.

In the Canaanite pantheon, the high god—the head of the pantheon of gods—was named El, which is the Hebrew word for “God.”

El was also named Yahweh, and some Canaanites regarded Asherah as the wife of Yahweh.

Under the influence of their Canaanite neighbors, some Israelites did worship her—just as they worshipped other gods, like Ba’al and Milcom.

But according to the Old Testament, by doing this, they departed from the normative, orthodox Israelite religion and did things they were not supposed to.

What about the claim that this was normative before the time of King Josiah? Two points need to be made.

First, the theory depends on a very late dating of the biblical texts. There is good evidence that the books of Exodus and Leviticus were written around the time of David and Solomon (c. 1000 B.C.)—long before Josiah.

Furthermore, we have other texts before Josiah condemning the worship of Asherah.

For example, Isaiah 17:8 prophesies that a time is coming when the Israelites “will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense” to pagan gods.

The Asherim were pole-like religious objects used to worship Asherah, and even liberal scholars acknowledge that Isaiah 17 was written during the time of the prophet Isaiah (8th century B.C.), well before Josiah (7th century B.C.).

Even earlier was the event recorded in 1 Kings 15:13 that King Asa “removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had an abominable image made for Asherah; and Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron.”

Asa reigned between 912 and 870 B.C., and while 1 Kings wasn’t written until later, it records events repudiating Asherah that took place long before Josiah.

Second, the “Asherah worship was normative” view is just cherry-picking Old Testament texts.

If—at one time—it was orthodox for Israelites to worship Asherah, where are the texts praising her?

There aren’t any.

Advocates of this view must argue that any texts that were positive toward her were removed, and new, negative passages were introduced after Josiah.

That’s simply cherry-picking. You can prove anything you want—on any subject you want—if you get to pick evidence you think favors your position and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

For example, you could “prove” that the original thirteen U.S. colonies were founded by Russian immigrants by saying that—later on—all the references to Russian immigrants were mysteriously removed from our historical documents and replaced by references saying they were founded by English colonists.

The fact is, the texts we have in the Old Testament indicate that orthodox Israelites worshipped the true God, that unorthodox Israelites also worshipped other gods like Asherah, and that this practice was condemned from very early times.

Kabbalah: Secret Teachings (Jewish Mysticism; Secret Teachings; Esoteric Judaism; Qabala) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Kabbalism is a school of Jewish mysticism that’s made a celebrity splash. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli continue a conversation with Dr. Justin Sledge about the controversial millennia-old Kabbalah teachings about God, the creation of the world, the origin of evil, and the afterlife.

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

Mysterious Headlines

This Episode is Brought to You By:
Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World is brought to you in part through the generous support of Aaron Vurgason Electric and Automation at AaronV.com. Making Connections for Life for your automation and smart home needs in north and central Florida.

Catechism Class, a dynamic weekly podcast journey through the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Greg and Jennifer Willits. It’s the best book club, coffee talk, and faith study group, all rolled into one. Find it in any podcast directory.

Fiorvento Law, PLLC, specializing in adult guardianships and conservatorships, probate and estate planning matters. Accepting clients throughout Michigan. Taking into account your individual, healthcare, financial and religious needs. Visit FiorventoLaw.com

Deliver Contacts, offering honest pricing and reliable service for all your contact lens needs. See the difference at delivercontacts.com.

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.

Kabbalah! Secret Origins (Jewish Mysticism; Secret Teachings; Esoteric Judaism; Qabala) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Kabbalah is a school of Jewish mysticism that has been around for centuries, experiencing a revival in popularity. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss with Dr. Justin Sledge the controversies surrounding Kabbalah and its origins and history.

https://youtu.be/kgUA1Nf_eEE

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

Mysterious Headlines

This Episode is Brought to You By:
Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World is brought to you in part through the generous support of Aaron Vurgason Electric and Automation at AaronV.com. Making Connections for Life for your automation and smart home needs in north and central Florida.

Catechism Class, a dynamic weekly podcast journey through the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Greg and Jennifer Willits. It’s the best book club, coffee talk, and faith study group, all rolled into one. Find it in any podcast directory.

Fiorvento Law, PLLC, specializing in adult guardianships and conservatorships, probate and estate planning matters. Accepting clients throughout Michigan. Taking into account your individual, healthcare, financial and religious needs. Visit FiorventoLaw.com

Deliver Contacts, offering honest pricing and reliable service for all your contact lens needs. See the difference at delivercontacts.com.

Want to Sponsor A Show?
Support StarQuest’s mission to explore the intersection of faith and pop culture by becoming a named sponsor of the show of your choice on the StarQuest network. Click to get started or find out more.

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.

Are Fine-Tuning Arguments for God (or the Multiverse) Circular?

In a recent video, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that design arguments for God’s existence commit the fallacy of begging the question—also known as circular reasoning.

Do they?

Before we began, I want to lay my cards on the table and say that I’m a fan of Sabine Hossenfelder. She’s smart, well qualified, and a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.

I appreciate her commitment to explaining physics in comprehensible terms and her willingness to challenge ideas that are fashionable in the physics community but that are not well supported by evidence.

She also doesn’t reject religious claims out of hand—as many do. Instead, she typically concludes that they are beyond what science can tell us, one way or the other.

 

A Finely Tuned Universe?

In her recent video, she notes that many people argue that the laws of physics that govern our universe seem finely tuned to allow life to exist. Even slight changes in the constants they involve would prevent life from ever arising.

An example she cites is that if the cosmological constant (i.e., the energy density of space) were too large, galaxies would never form.

Similarly, if the electromagnetic force was too strong, nuclear fusion would not light up stars.

Given all the values we can imagine these constants having, it seems unlikely that the laws that govern our universe would be finely tuned to allow life to exist just by random chance, so the question is how to explain this.

 

God or the Multiverse?

One proposed explanation is that the universe isn’t finely tuned by chance. It’s finely tuned by design.

Some entity with immense, universe-spanning power (i.e., God) designed the universe to be this way, and in religious circles, this type of argument is known as a “design argument” for God’s existence.

Another proposed explanation is that our universe is finely tuned for life by chance. But since it would be improbable to get a finely tuned universe with a single throw of the dice, it’s inferred that there must be other throws of the dice.

In other words, our universe is just one of countless universes that contain other laws and constants, and we just happen to be living in a universe where the things happen to come up right for life to exist.

(After all, we wouldn’t be here if they didn’t.)

Such a collection of universes is known as a multiverse.

 

God and the Multiverse?

From a religious perspective, the multiverse hypothesis can look like an attempt to get around the obvious implication of the universe’s apparent design—i.e., that it has a Designer.

However, that doesn’t mean that the multiverse doesn’t exist. If he chose, God could create a vast array of universes, each of which have different laws, and not all of them may contain life. (After all, most of our own universe does not contain life!)

Similarly, from the perspective of someone who believes in the multiverse, multiple universes wouldn’t rule out the existence of God, because you could still need a God to explain why the multiverse exists at all.

The God hypothesis and the multiverse hypothesis thus are not incompatible.

 

Both Are Possibilities

Dr. Hossenfelder acknowledges that both God and the multiverse could be real, but she says—correctly—that this would not add to our knowledge of how our universe works.

If God exists, that doesn’t tell us what the laws of our universe are. We still have to discover those by observation.

And if the multiverse exists, that also doesn’t tell us about the laws of our universe. Observation is still necessary to figure them out.

 

Circular Reasoning?

Her claim is that the fine-tuning arguments for both God and the multiverse don’t work—and, specifically, that they involve circular reasoning.

She fleshes out this claim along the following lines:

  1. To infer God, the multiverse, or anything else as the cause for why our universe seems finely tuned, you need evidence that our universe’s combination of constants is unlikely.
  2. However, the only evidence we have is what we have measured, and—precisely because the constants are constant—we always see them having the same values.
  3. Therefore, we have no evidence that the combination we see is unlikely.
  4. So, advocates of these views must assume what they need to prove—that the combination is unlikely—and that’s circular reasoning.

 

The Pen Objection

Dr. Hossenfelder seeks to head off an objection to her argument by pointing to a parallel case: Suppose you saw an ink pen standing upright on a table, balanced on its point.

It seems very unlikely that a pen would be balanced in this way, and so you’d suspect there was a reason why the pen was standing like this—perhaps a special mechanism of some sort.

But, she says, the reason that we can rationally suspect this is because we have experience with pens and know how hard it is to balance them this way.

Therefore, it would not be circular reasoning to propose an explanation for the oddly balanced pen.

However, the only experience we have with the constants of nature is the set we see. We thus can’t estimate how likely or unlikely they are to occur, because we don’t have evidence about the probability of this combination of constants.

 

What Do You Mean by “Evidence”?

The problem with Dr. Hossenfelder’s argument is the way she uses the term “evidence.”

In the video, she seems to assume that “evidence” must mean empirical evidence—that is, evidence derived from observation using the physical senses (and their technological extensions, like radio telescopes and electron microscopes).

This is the kind of evidence used in the natural sciences, and so you also could call it “scientific evidence.”

However, this is not the only kind of evidence there is.

Fields like logic, mathematics, and ethics depend on principles—sometimes called axioms—that cannot be proved by observation.

The evidence we have for them comes in the form of intuitions, because they seem either self-evidently true or self-evidently probable to us.

Since each of these fields is part of or closely connected with philosophy, we might refer to this intuitive evidence as “philosophical evidence.”

Whatever you want to call it, it’s evidence that we depend on—certainly in every field that involves logic, mathematics, and ethics.

Science involves all three, and so, while the scientific enterprise depends on observational evidence, it also depends on intuitive, philosophical evidence.

 

Do We Lack Observational Evidence?

It’s true that we can’t observe other universes, and so we lack observational evidence of the laws and constants that might be at play in them.

But does this mean that we lack any observational evidence that constants could have different values?

Confining ourselves strictly to our own universe—the only one we can observe—we see that not all constants have the same value. For example:

  • The strong coupling constant is about 1
  • The fine-structure constant is about 1/137
  • The top quark mass is about 1/10^17
  • The bottom quark mass is about 3/10^19
  • The electron mass is about 4/10^23

Clearly, we see things that we regard as constants with different values, even in our own universe. The constants I’ve just listed span 23 orders of magnitude!

Why do all these dimensionless constants have different values?

That’s a natural question to ask!

And so, one could argue that we do have observational evidence that constants can have different values—not from universe to universe but from constant to constant—and that leaves many people asking why.

 

Variable Constants

Further, we even have evidence that some of these constants may vary over time.

In particular, we have evidence that the fine-structure constant—which deals with the strength of the electromagnetic interactions—may have varied slightly over time within our universe.

Dr. Hossenfelder says in her video that this “has nothing to do with the fine-tuning arguments,” but this seems false.

If we have evidence that some things scientists initially took as constants aren’t constant after all, then it further raises the question of why they have the values they do.

 

The Evidence of Intuition

I’m not at all convinced that we don’t have observational evidence that invites us to ask why the constants we see in our universe have the values they do.

However, even if I were to waive this point, we still have one other line of evidence: direct intuition.

People who study the constants can imagine them having different values. We can, for example, imagine the electron mass being twice—or half—what its measured value is.

That makes it rational to ask why a constant has the value it does. As theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman famously said about the fine-structure constant:

It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.)

Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the “hand of God” wrote that number, and “we don’t know how He pushed His pencil.” We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don’t know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out – without putting it in secretly!

 

In Search of Explanations

Finding out the explanations for things is a key part of the scientific enterprise. The same is true of the philosophical enterprise.

We have a powerful (philosophical) intuition that things we encounter have explanations, and thus we seek them.

In philosophy, this intuition is sometimes framed as the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and while precisely how to formulate the principle is controversial, some kind of sufficient-reason quest is behind the scientific enterprise.

It would not do at all—and it would not be scientific at all—to encounter phenomena like stars shining, plants growing, and objects falling and say, “Those are just brute facts that don’t have explanations.”

Our intuition tells us that they need explanations, and it is the task of science to find them—to the extent it can—based on observation of how they work.

When we discern that many of these phenomena can be explained in terms of a set of underlying laws and constants, it’s then natural to ask what the explanation for these is—particularly when we notice that if these things were even slightly different, we wouldn’t be here.

 

The Limits of Science

Ultimately, Dr. Hossenfelder doesn’t deny that explanations for these things exist. She specifically says:

But this does not mean god or the multiverse do not exist. It just means that evidence cannot tell us whether they do or do not exist. It means, god and the multiverse are not scientific ideas.

The problem with this is how she’s using the word “evidence.” She’s taking it to mean empirical/observational/scientific evidence.

And it’s true that, at least in any conventional sense, you can’t do a laboratory experiment that shows that God exists—or a laboratory experiment that shows the multiverse exists.

Consequently, both ideas are beyond what can be proved scientifically.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t argue for them on other grounds. You can, in fact, argue for them based on your intuitions about what needs to be true in order to explain the constants as we see them.

This makes God and the multiverse subjects of philosophical argumentation rather than scientific demonstration.

 

Not Circular Reasoning

And that means that the charge of circular reasoning is false.

It would be circular reasoning to simply assume that it’s improbable the values of the constants we see in our universe should have the values they do.

But it’s not circular reasoning to say, “I have a strong intuition that this calls for an explanation” and then reason your way to what you think best explains it—even if that explanation lies beyond what’s scientifically measurable.

In other words, just because you’re doing something beyond science, it doesn’t mean that you’re simply begging the question.

 

The Return of the Pen

Let’s apply this insight to the ink pen example that Dr. Hossenfelder brought up.

Even if I’d never before seen a pen–or any similar object–it would make sense, when I first encountered one, for me to ask why it is the way it is.

Just like scientists and philosophers ask this for anything else they encounter.

I don’t need to know how likely or unlikely it is that an ink pen would be balanced on its point. The fact I can conceive of it being otherwise makes the question of why it’s standing rational.

Just asking the question is not begging the question.

And neither is having an intuition that it’s unlikely to be standing on its point (or in any other position) without an explanation.

 

Tying up Loose Ends

To keep things simple, I haven’t responded to everything Dr. Hossenfelder says in her video, since I wanted to keep things focused on her main argument.

However, I would like to circle back to the God hypothesis and the multiverse hypothesis as explanations for the apparent fine-tuning of our universe.

Personally, I like the idea of there being multiple universes—not for scientific or philosophical reasons, but just because I think it would be cool.

I’d also be fine with them having different laws and constants governing them. That would only add to the coolness.

But—speaking philosophically—there would still need to be a reason why the whole collection of them exist and why the laws that govern them vary from one to another.

Elsewhere, I’ve written about this as a “cosmic slot machine”:

If there is a multiverse with every possible combination of natural laws in the universes it contains . . . what is driving the change of laws in each universe? If there is a cosmic slot machine, whose innards cause the constants to come up different in each universe, why is that the case?

To explain the existence of such a cosmic slot machine, we’d need to appeal to something beyond the multiverse itself.

And so, whether or not there is a multiverse, I favor the God hypothesis.

God and the gods – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Throughout human history, people in all cultures have sensed the divine and developed a bewildering arrays of beliefs and ideas. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli explore the conflict between belief in one God vs. many, the journey that God had led his people on through time, and how we should understand these concepts today.

Help us continue to offer Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World. Won’t you make a pledge at SQPN.com/give today?

Links for this episode:

Mysterious Headlines

Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World is brought to you in part through the generous support of Aaron Vurgason Electric and Automation at AaronV.com. Making Connections for Life for your automation and smart home needs in north and central Florida.

And by RosaryArmy.com. Have more peace. Visit RosaryArmy.com and get a free all-twine knotted rosary, downloadable audio Rosaries, and more. Make Them. Pray Them. Give Them Away at RosaryArmy.com.

And byJacqueline Brown, author of The Light Series, a best-selling Catholic fiction series that will leave you asking “Who would I become if the world fell away?” Enter code MysteriousWorld at jacqueline-brown.com for 10% off.

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.

Waco Siege: The Evidence (David Koresh, Branch Davidians, Texas Apocalypse) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Federal agents stormed a religious commune in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993 after a months-long siege, leaving dozens dead. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli are back to consider the allegations of government misconduct, coverup, and conspiracy; examine the evidence; and seek the truth of what happened.

Links for this episode:

Mysterious Headlines

Direct Link to the Episode.

Subscribe on iTunes. | Other Ways to Subscribe.

Mysteries of the Magi

“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem” (Matt. 2:1).

“Wise men” is a common translation in English Bibles, but it doesn’t give us a good idea who they were.

The Greek word used here is magoi—the plural of magos. These terms may be more familiar from their Latin equivalents: In St. Jerome’s Vulgate, we read that magi came from the east, and an individual member of the group would thus be a magus.

 

Who Were the Magi?

Originally, the term magi referred to a group of people in Persia (modern Iran). Around 440 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus listed the Magi as one of the six tribes of the Medes (Histories 1:101:1).

Apparently, they were like the Jewish tribe of Levi, for they exercised priestly functions. Herodotus says that, whenever a Persian wanted to sacrifice an animal to the gods, he would cut it up and then “a magus comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods, as the Persian tradition relates it; for no sacrifice can be offered without a magus” (Histories 1:132:3).

In the book of Daniel, magi are also called upon to interpret dreams (1:20; 2:2, 10, 27).

Magi were also called upon to interpret heavenly omens. Consider the case of the Persian king Xerxes I (also known as Ahasuerus, who married the biblical Esther). In 480 B.C., he asked the magi to tell him the meaning of a solar eclipse that occurred as he was about to do battle with Greeks.

They said that the sun was special to Greeks, so when it abandoned its place in the daytime, the god was showing the Greeks that they would have to abandon their cities. This greatly encouraged Xerxes (Histories 7:37:4).

However, things didn’t work out well. His expedition against Greece ended up failing, but this does show the original magi were interpreters of portents in the sky—as later magi would be for the star of Bethlehem.

With time, the term magi ceased to refer exclusively to members of the Persian priestly caste. The skills they practiced became known as mageia, from which we get “magic” in English, and by the first century, anybody who practiced magic could be called a magos.

Thus in Acts 8, we meet a man named Simon, who was a Samaritan—meaning he had mixed Jewish ancestry. Simon practiced mageia (8:9, 11), and so he became known as Simon Magus.

Full Jews also could be magi, and in Acts 13 we meet a Jewish man named Bar-Jesus, who is described both as a magus and a false prophet (13:6).

This means that, in Jesus’ day, the term magus was flexible, so we need to ask another question.

 

Who Were These Magi?

Matthew’s magi were clearly dignitaries of some kind, as shown by the facts that they (1) saw themselves as worthy to congratulate a distant royal house on a new birth, (2) had the resources and leisure to undertake such a lengthy journey, (3) could offer costly gifts, and (4) received a royal audience with King Herod the Great.

Matthew says that they came “from the East,” which from the perspective of Jerusalem would point to locations like Arabia, Babylonia, and Persia.

There were Jews in all of these regions. Consequently, some interpreters have proposed that the magi who visited Jesus were Jews, who would naturally be interested in the newborn king of the Jews.

However, most scholars have concluded this is unlikely. If they were visiting Jewish dignitaries, Matthew would have identified them as co-religionists. The fact he merely describes them as being “from the East,” suggests that they were Gentiles who came from a distant, eastern land.

Matthew also says that they went back “to their own country” (2:12), suggesting they were among its native inhabitants rather than Jews living in exile.

In fact, there is a pattern in Matthew’s Gospel of Gentiles who respond to the true God. Matthew uses it to show his Jewish readers that Gentiles can be Christians. The pattern culminates in the Great Commission, when Jesus tells the apostles to “make disciples of all nations” (alternate translation: “make disciples of all the Gentiles”; 28:19).

The magi are part of this pattern: They are Gentile dignitaries who represent an early response to God’s Messiah, in contrast to the Jewish king, Herod, who seeks to kill him. This prefigures how the Jewish authorities will later kill Jesus, but Gentiles will embrace his gospel.

Scholars have thus concluded that Matthew’s magi were Gentile astrologers from an eastern land, though we can’t be sure which one (see Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 168-170).

The earliest discussion we have is found in St. Justin Martyr, who around A.D. 160 said that they came from Arabia (Dialogue with Trypho 78:1), and around A.D. 210 Tertullian deduced that this is where they came from based on the gifts they offered (Against Marcion 3:13). In the ancient world, gold and frankincense were associated with Arabia, though this isn’t conclusive since they were widely traded in the region.

Many scholars have seen Babylon as a possibility, and the Jewish readers of Matthew would have been familiar with the book of Daniel, which associates magi with Babylonia. It’s also been argued that the major Jewish colony there could have given the magi a special interest in the Jewish Messiah, though this was also a common expectation of Jews in other lands.

Most Church Fathers concluded that the magi were from Persia. Just after A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria identified them as coming from there (Stromata 1:15), and they were commonly depicted in early Christian art wearing Persian clothing. They thus may have been members of the original class of magi.

 

How Did They Know?

In popular accounts, the magi are depicted as following the star, which led them to Bethlehem. That has led many to see the star as a supernatural manifestation that moved around in the sky in a way stars don’t.

However, this isn’t what Matthew says. He never claims they were following the star, only that it was ahead of them as they went to Bethlehem and that it stood over the house (2:9). This was a providential coincidence.

They weren’t being led by the star for, as Benedict XVI points out, they initially went to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem—the natural place to find a newborn prince (Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, ch. 4). They assumed that Herod the Great or one of his sons had just had a baby boy who would grow up to be king.

When they learned there was no new prince at the palace, a consultation had to be held with the chief priests and scribes to learn where the magi really needed to go: Bethlehem (2:4).

The fact that the chief priests and scribes looked to a well-known prophecy of the birth of the Messiah (Micah 5:2; cf. Matt. 2:6) suggests the magi could have seen the appearance of the star as signaling not just the birth of an ordinary king but of a particularly great one—the predicted Messiah.

While magi weren’t following the star, it did tell them when he was born, for they said, “We have seen his star in the East” (2:2).

Recently, scholars have argued that this is a mistranslation and that the Greek phrase rendered “in the East” (en tê anatolê) should instead be “at its rising”—that is, when it rose over the eastern horizon as the Earth turns. Some have argued that this is a technical term for what is known as a star’s “heliacal” rising, which occurs when it briefly rises above the horizon just before sunrise.

The real question is what told them the star was significant and why they linked it to a king of the Jews. Here we can only speculate.

The system of constellations in use at the time, which includes our own zodiac, was developed in northern Mesopotamia around 1130 B.C, and it was used by Babylonian and Persian astrologers.

It’s not surprising that they would associate a particular star with the birth of a king, because at this time astrology was used to forecast national affairs. Horoscopes weren’t normally done for ordinary people.

Heavenly signs were interpreted as having to do with things of national importance, like relations between nations, wars and rebellions, whether the crops would be good or bad, epidemics, and kings.

It’s thus not a surprise that the magi would be looking for signs dealing with the births of kings.

What the star they saw might have been is difficult to determine, but one possibility is Jupiter. At this time Jupiter and the other planets were considered “wandering” stars since they moved against the background of “fixed” stars.

Unlike some later Greeks, Mesopotamian astrologers didn’t see the stars as controlling events on Earth. Instead, they thought the gods made their wills known through celestial phenomena—so it was a form of divine revelation.

Jupiter was associated with Marduk, the king of the Babylonian pantheon, and it was often involved in signs associated with kings.

For example, one Babylonian text says that if Jupiter remains in the sky in the morning, enemy kings will be reconciled with each other.

An Assyrian text indicates that if a lunar eclipse takes place and Jupiter is not in the sky then the king will die. To protect the king, the Assyrians came up with an ingenious solution: They took a condemned criminal and made him a temporary, substitute “king” who could then be executed to save the life of the real king!

Whether Jupiter was the star the magi saw will depend on when Jesus was born, and that’s something scholars debate.

 

When Was Jesus Born?

According to the most common account you hear today, Herod the Great died in 4 B.C., so Jesus would have to have been born before this.

In Matthew 2:7, Herod secretly learns from the magi when the star appeared, and in 2:16, he kills “all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.”

This indicates the star was understood as appearing at Jesus’ birth, which is to be expected since such portents were associated with births (as opposed to conceptions).

It also indicates Jesus was born up to two years before the magi arrived, though it may not have been a full two years, since Herod may have added a “safety” margin to his execution order.

Many scholars have thus proposed that Jesus was born around 7-6 B.C., and this is the date you commonly hear.

However, other scholars have argued that this calculation is wrong. A better case can be made that Herod died in 1 B.C. (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., and Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul).

This likely would put Jesus’ birth in 3/2 B.C., which is the year identified by the Church Fathers as the correct one.

It also fits with Luke’s statement that Jesus was “about thirty years old” when he began his ministry (3:23), shortly after John the Baptist began his in “the fifteenth year of the reign Tiberius Caesar” (3:1)—i.e., A.D. 29. Subtracting 30 from A.D. 29, we land in the year 2 B.C. (bearing in mind that there is no “Year 0” between 1 B.C. and A.D. 1).

 

What Was in the Sky?

Regardless of which view of Jesus’ birth is correct, it occurred in the first decade B.C. So what notable astronomical events took place then that could have served as the star of Bethlehem?

A large number have been proposed. The following list contains only some:

7 B.C.

  • 1: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

6 B.C.

  • April 17: Jupiter has its heliacal rising in Ares (a constellation associated with Judaea), with several other significant features in the sky
  • May 27: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction
  • 6: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

5 B.C.

  • March: A comet in Capricorn

4 B.C.

  • April: A comet or nova (which one is unclear) in Aquilea

3 B.C.

  • August 12: Jupiter and Venus rise in the east, in conjunction with each other, in Leo, near Regulus
  • 11: The sun in mid-Virgo, with the moon at the feet of Virgo
  • 14: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus

2 B.C.

  • 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
  • May 8: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
  • June 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Venus

One of the most interesting of these events is the rising of Jupiter and Venus on August 12, 3 B.C. Since Babylonian times, Jupiter was seen as a heavenly king, and Venus was seen as a heavenly queen, suggesting a birth. Further, the Babylonians named Regulus (the brightest star in Leo) “the king,” and the lion was a traditional symbol of the tribe of Judah (cf. Gen. 49:9).

Also very interesting is what happened on September 11th, 3 B.C. In Revelation, John says, “A great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1). This woman then gives birth to Jesus (12:5). Some have proposed that this encodes information about when he was born: When the sun was in the middle of Virgo (“the virgin”) and thus “clothing” it, with the moon at her feet.

Unfortunately, we can’t say which—if any—of these events corresponds to the star of Bethlehem without knowing precisely when Jesus was born. That’s something the Bible never tells us, and the Church Fathers had different opinions, with only some proposing December 25th.

 

What Was the Role of Jewish Thought?

Thus far we’ve looked at how the magi would have interpreted celestial events largely in terms of establish, Mesopotamian astrology.

This association with paganism gives rise to questions, such as, “Would God really use pagan astrology to signal the birth of his Son?”

That’s a matter for God to decide. Scripture indicates God cares for all people and makes himself known to them in various ways (cf. Rom. 1:19-20). It wouldn’t be so much God using pagan astrology to mark the birth of his Son as choosing to preserve certain true ideas among Gentiles to point to this event.

Also, if the magi were Persians, they wouldn’t have been polytheists. By this period, the Persians did not believe in the old gods, and their dominant religion was Zoroastrianism.

This faith teaches the existence of a single, great, all-good Creator God who they refer to as “the Wise Lord” and who will vanquish evil in the end. They believe in the renovation of the world, the final judgment, and the resurrection of the dead.

If the magi were Persians, they could have seen themselves as spiritual kin to the Jews and as worshipping the same God—the only true God—using their own term for him.

Finally, they may well have had contact with Jews living in their own land, and thus come into contact with biblical revelation that could have influenced their perception of the star.

They could have learned, for example, of the lion as a symbol of Judah, and they could have associated the coming Jewish Messiah with a star.

One of the most famous messianic prophecies is “a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Num. 24:17).

This prophecy was already associated with the Messiah, which is why in the A.D. 130s the messianic pretender Simon bar Kosiba was hailed as “Simon bar Kokhba” (Aramaic, “Simon, son of the Star”).

 

What About Astrology?

What about the role of astrology itself in this account? While astrology was popular among Gentiles, it wasn’t as popular among Jews, who often looked down on it.

This is itself a sign that Matthew’s tradition about the magi is historically accurate. It’s not the kind of thing that Jewish Christians would tend to make up.

However, while astrology wasn’t as popular among Jews as among Gentiles, it did exist.

Genesis says that God made the sun, moon, and stars “to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (1:14). This could mean that they are simply to be time keeping markers.

But some Jews thought that their function as “signs” went beyond this and included information about future events. Thus, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain astrological texts.

In the ancient world, there was no rigid distinction between astronomy and astrology. It’s only in the last few centuries that the two have been disentangled. This happened as scientists learned more about the effects the sun, moon, and stars do and don’t have on life here on Earth.

Even Thomas Aquinas, based on the science of his day, thought that the heavenly bodies had an influence on the passions and could, for example, make a man prone to anger—but not in such a way that it would overwhelm his free will (Commentary on Matthew 2:1-2, ST I:115:4, II-II:95:5).

Subsequent scientific research showed they don’t have this kind of effect, and consulting the stars for these purposes is superstition. Thus the Catechism today warns against consulting horoscopes (CCC 2116).

While the stars don’t have the kind of influence many once thought, that doesn’t mean God can’t use them to signal major events in his plan of the ages. The fact he signaled the birth of his Son with a star shows he can. This isn’t what people think of as astrology, but it’s part of divine providence.

In fact, this doesn’t appear to be the only time God did something like that. On the day of Pentecost, Peter cited the prophet Joel’s prediction that the moon would be turned to blood as fulfilled in their own day (Joel 2:31-32; Acts 2:20-21).

It so happens, on the night of the Crucifixion (April 3, A.D. 33), there was a lunar eclipse visible from Jerusalem. The moon did turn to blood.