Book of Acts: Pure Fantasy

[Angrboda]

No offense is ever taken from constructive criticism and I know not all my comments on religion are good ones. In this case, though, I have to say this may be a matter of taste. I say this because this is actually the thing that lept out at me the most when I read the Bible. It isn't just that I don't believe in miracles. It's the juxtaposition of the miracle-rich world of the Bible and the supernaturally tranquil universe we know.

I think, "What? Has Yahweh gotten sleepy or something? Why all the deafening fanfare back then and nothing but the sound of crickets today?"

We likely will never again see the fundamental breaking of symmetry as happened following the big bang. That we do not observe it today is no evidence against it having occurred in the past. It is weak induction at best, a sort of "No black swans" argument that because it impinges on your subjective sense of the credibility of the text you want to raise it to the level of an objective criticism. Please cite the law or rule which allows you to deduce - not infer, but deduce - that the absence of a class of events in the present implies a lack of events of that class in the past. (And no, there is no uniformitarianism which holds for all classes of events, even if you could demonstrate that it is a law.)

On top of that, you're leaving out all questions of hemeneutics and selection bias. In this day, diagnosis of autism, ADHD and other childhood disorders is at an all time high. By your argument, this would seem to imply that the incidence of these disorders is mirrored by the frequency of diagnosis in the past and that therefore more children are developing autism, ADHD and so on now than they had in the past. This is naivety in the extreme.

(There is an article I would like to quote, but am unable to track it down. Basically, the article states that since the introduction of some of the most prescribed atypical anti-psychotics, as we move forward in time since their introduction, the clinical efficacy of these drugs as demonstrated in controlled studies is decreasing, a sort of fatigue effect for atypicals. Are the black swans disappearing here? That seems the obvious implication of the structure of your argument.)

I will likely continue to listen because I like listening to you, but in this case, I think you have none.


ps. If anyone recognizes the paper I'm referring to, from the secondary literature, please provide me with a reference.