“Cargo cult science” by Richard Feynman

This was extracted from Richard Feynman’s address to a graduating class in 1974. Among other things, he points out that, if you don’t understand science, adopting its trappings will not make what you do magically become science. There’s a nice, clear copy here: “Cargo Cult Science.”

In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas–he’s the controller–and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land. Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school–we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.
—Richard Feynman

Evolution as Fact and Theory

Here’s a link to Stephen Jay Gould’s notable essay, “Evolution as Fact and Theory.”

According to idealized principles of scientific discourse, the arousal of dormant issues should reflect fresh data that give renewed life to abandoned notions. Those outside the current debate may therefore be excused for suspecting that creationists have come up with something new, or that evolutionists have generated some serious internal trouble. But nothing has changed; the creationists have presented not a single new fact or argument. Darrow and Bryan were at least more entertaining than we lesser antagonists today. The rise of creationism is politics, pure and simple; it represents one issue (and by no means the major concern) of the resurgent evangelical right. Arguments that seemed kooky just a decade ago have reentered the mainstream.

.The basic attack of modern creationists falls apart on two general counts before we even reach the supposed factual details of their assault against evolution. First, they play upon a vernacular misunderstanding of the word “theory” to convey the false impression that we evolutionists are covering up the rotten core of our edifice. Second, they misuse a popular philosophy of science to argue that they are behaving scientifically in attacking evolution.

Sketchy scholarship in The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors

In 1875, Kersey Graves wrote a book about mythical parallels to the Christian story of Christ. No one has yet produced a comprehensive review of his argument. A good, but brief, review of the book is here, by Richard Carrier: “Kersey Graves and the World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors.” Basically, Carrier reports that Kersey Graves was very sure of himself; but he cites few references, makes assumptions, and blurs distinctions. Myths of journeys to the Underworld are not similar enough to count. Sometimes his parallels are from well after the time of Christ and could be based on the Christ story. He also uses the parallel of Christ’s solstice birthday being the same as for many sun gods. But we know that Christ was given that birthday around 300 A.D. for cultural and political reasons. So the book is not reliable. See the review for other problems with Graves’ methods and conclusions.

However, there are two early early examples of death and resurrection that Kersey Graves did not mention.  the Thracian God Zalmoxis and the Sumerian Goddess Innana.

Carrier describes them as follows:

The only pre-Christian man to be buried and resurrected and deified in his own lifetime, that I know of, is the Thracian god Zalmoxis (also called Salmoxis or Gebele’izis), who is described in the mid-5th-century B.C.E. by Herodotus (4.94-96), and also mentioned in Plato’s Charmides (156d-158b) in the early-4th-century B.C.E. According to the hostile account of Greek informants, Zalmoxis buried himself alive, telling his followers he would be resurrected in three years, but he merely resided in a hidden dwelling all that time. His inevitable “resurrection” led to his deification, and a religion surrounding him, which preached heavenly immortality for believers, persisted for centuries.

The only case, that I know, of a pre-Christian god actually being crucified and then resurrected is Inanna (also known as Ishtar), a Sumerian goddess whose crucifixion, resurrection and escape from the underworld is told in cuneiform tablets inscribed c. 1500 B.C.E., attesting to a very old tradition. The best account and translation of the text is to be found in Samuel Kramer’s History Begins at Sumer, pp. 154ff., but be sure to use the third revised edition (1981), since the text was significantly revised after new discoveries were made. For instance, the tablet was once believed to describe the resurrection of Inanna’s lover, Tammuz (also known as Dumuzi). Graves thus mistakenly lists Tammuz as one of his “Sixteen Crucified Saviors.” Of course, Graves cannot be discredited for this particular error, since in his day scholars still thought the tablet referred to that god (Kramer explains how this mistake happened).

There is great need of new work in this area. There really is a huge gap in modern scholarship here–this is one of the few subjects untouched by the post-WWII historiographical revolution. Most scholars today consider the subject dead, largely for all the wrong reasons. And there is little hope. The subject is stuck in the no-man’s-land between history and religious studies, whose methods and academic cultures are so radically different they can barely communicate with each other, much less cooperate on a common project like this.

So it’s as well to skip this book: it will fill your head with factoids of dubious reliability. Check out some of the more modern authors that Carrier mentions and go on from there. If you are looking for a PhD subject in an unworked field, perhaps reurrected saviors before Christ is for you.

Carrier’s conclusion:

…you will never be able to tell what he has right from what he has wrong without totally redoing all his research and beyond, which makes him utterly useless to historians as a source.

Gerald Massey’s lectures on religion and Christianity

Gerald Massey (1828 – 1907) was a very bright young man whose poems attracted attention and enabled him to further his education. Eventually, he became an Egyptologist. He discovered that the story of Christ had its fore-runners in the myths of Egypt, Greece, and Persia.

The lectures of Gerald Massey are precise, concise, and devastating to Christian theology. Some of them were published in 1900. You can read them here: lectures of Gerald Massey:

• The Historical (Jewish) Jesus and the Mythical (Egyptian) Christ
• Paul as a Gnostic Opponent of Peter, not the Apostle of Historic Christianity;
• The Logia of the Lord or Pre-Christian Sayings ascribed to Jesus the Christ
• Gnostic and Historic Christianity
• The Hebrew and other Creations fundamentally explained
• The Devil of Darkness or Evil in the Light of Evolution
• Luniolatry Ancient and Modern
• Man in search of his Soul, during Fifty Thousand Years, and how he found it
• The Seven Souls of Man and their Culmination in the Christ
• The Coming Religion

From “The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ”

The mythical Messiah was always born of a Virgin Mother–a factor unknown in natural phenomena, and one that cannot be historical…. The virgin mother has been represented in Egypt by the maiden Queen, Mut-em-ua, the future mother of Amenhept III some 16 centuries B.C., who impersonated the eternal virgin that produced the eternal child.

Four consecutive scenes reproduced in my book are found portrayed upon the innermost walls of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Luxor, which was built by Amenhept III, a Pharaoh of the 17th dynasty. The first scene on the left hand shows the God Taht, the Lunar Mercury, the Annunciator of the Gods, in the act of hailing the Virgin Queen, and announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming Son. In the next scene the God Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives the new life. This is the Holy Ghost or Spirit that causes the Immaculate Conception, Kneph being the spirit by name in Egyptian. The natural effects are made apparent in the virgin’s swelling form.

Next the mother is seated on the mid-wife’s stool, and the newborn child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the Adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the Gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right, three spirits–the Three Magi, or Kings of the Legend, are kneeling and offering presents with their right hand, and life with their left. The child thus announced, incarnated, born, and worshipped, was the Pharaonic representative of the Aten Sun in Egypt, the God Adon of Syria, and Hebrew Adonai; the child-Christ of the Aten Cult; the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother, personated by Mut-em-ua, as mother of the “only one,” and representative of the divine mother of the youthful Sun-God.

These scenes, which were mythical in Egypt, have been copied or reproduced as historical in the Canonical Gospels, where they stand like four corner-stones to the Historic Structure, and prove that the foundations are mythical.

Happy birthday, dear William!

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday!

Is that you, William?