How We Decide: an Analysis of an Essential Process We Take for Granted

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The Mariner IV spacecraft was built with four solar panels. The panels were folded during launch and were to spring out once the spacecraft was in space, but the fragile panels couldn’t be damaged by being abruptly snapped into place. Previous spacecraft had used dampers to control the panels’ motion, but these and other improved dampers were unsatisfactory because they contained oil that could leak or were too heavy or were unreliable. The damping problem became a great concern as the launch date came nearer. Only after investigating what would happen after a complete failure of the damper was it discovered that dampers were in fact unnecessary.
Mariner IV went to Mars in 1964 without solar panel dampers. The lightest and most reliable damper was no damper at all.
Decide decisions
We constantly make decisions in everyday life, but how can we best approach them? Can we improve this familiar process? There are different ways of going about it, some excellent, some atrocious. And that’s what this essay is about.
This is a guest post by long-time commenter Richard S. Russell. Richard is a retired research analyst (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction); long-time activist in the realms of atheism, science fiction, and liberal politics; ballroom dancer; database developer; and generally highly opinionated person. He blogs irregularly at richardsrussell.blogspot.com.
Everybody makes hundreds of decisions every day. Some of those are good decisions, some bad, but the great majority are simply routine. You walk into the bathroom early in the morning and, without spending any noticeable time on it, decide to flip on the light switch, something you’ve done so often it’s habitual.
But somewhere along the line, perhaps on the very first morning you woke up in that house, you had to make that light-switch decision for the first time ever. At that point, you invested a little bit of thought in it. This essay is about decisions like that, the kind where you consciously work through the question before arriving at a conclusion.
It’s not about the sort of process that Malcolm Gladwell discussed in detail in his book Blink, wherein people arrive at judgments—often correct ones—in the blink of an eye but can’t articulate how or what led them to their conclusions. What Gladwell glosses over is that his chief examples are of experts in their fields—art critics looking at what purports to be an ancient Greek status but is actually a fake, or a tennis champion who went on to a long career as a coach and TV color commentator being able to predict with uncanny accuracy which of a player’s soft second serves would turn out to be double faults. These are people who have internalized their expertise into their subconscious minds. But I’ll be discussing normal de novo decisions by normal, non-expert people.
The Idea Factory
Let’s think of decision-making as being akin to an industrial plant—an idea factory, if you will—where inputs go thru a process to get turned into outputs. Because I’m mainly interested in the middle part, let’s quickly dispose of the two ends.
Inputs processes outputs
Outputs
The results of decision-making are things we do, say, think, and believe. Outputs also include several things which occur below (or perhaps outside of) the level of conscious thought: emotions, esthetics, and habits. These are, of course, a vital part of human existence, but they don’t involve conscious thought, so I’m going to skip them.
Inputs
There are several types of inputs into decisions, each with its own problems.
1. Definitions. Words are labels for concepts. We use words to make it easier to comprehend and manipulate the concepts. That makes it essential that we know which word goes with which concept, and that’s sometimes harder than it sounds. For example, consider the word “light.” It’s perhaps the most versatile word in the English language, with over a hundred meanings, in every possible part of speech. Just in the sciences, it can mean:

  • the opposite of heavy (an adjective, used in mechanics),
  • what a bird does on a limb (an intransitive verb, used in ornithology),
  • a visible form of electromagnetic radiation (a noun, used in optics), or
  • ignite, as with a Bunsen burner (a transitive verb, used in chemistry).

Often the meaning of the word will be clear from context, but it’s always a good idea, when getting into complex, knotty issues with people you might disagree with, to be sure you’ve agreed on a common set of definitions right from the outset.
2. Axioms. These are glorified assumptions. The glory comes from several different sources. Axioms are:

  • universal—they apply everywhere, and everyone agrees on them
  • reliable—no exceptions have ever been observed
  • fundamental—they can’t be explained in terms of anything simpler

Perhaps the best known set of axioms are the five axioms of Giuseppe Peano, from which the entire theory of natural numbers can be derived. Euclid’s axioms and postulates also form the basis for a complete understanding of plane geometry.
However, outside of abstract fields like mathematics and symbolic logic, axioms are very difficult to come by.
3. Ordinary Assumptions. Into absolutely every decision goes at least one assumption (usually many more). Assumptions are notoriously unreliable. You may have heard the old joke about the word “assume,” which is derived from a process which makes an “ass” of “u” and “me.” Yet they are also unavoidable. For example, into every decision you personally make about what course of action you intend to pursue is the assumption that you will be alive to pursue it. In the discussion of processes which follows, we will see that formal logic tries diligently to state its assumptions explicitly, as premises. This is by far the exception; most assumptions are unstated or implicit.
4. Genetics. “You can do anything if you want it bad enough. That is why we see so many people who can fly.” (Elden Carnahan) But you have no wings, so you can’t fly. You have no gills, so you can’t breathe underwater. It’s also likely that your brain is wired in such a way that there are some thoughts that you simply are unable to think. These probably vary from one individual to another, and they’re almost impossible to measure. To some extent, the limitations of genetics can be overcome by diligent training, but some limits imposed on us by nature we can never overcome.
5. Sensations. Sensory input is extremely valuable but also fallible. As part of a demo I use in my database classes, I hold up three pieces of paper, stapled together with a plastic overlay, and ask the class what color each piece of paper is. The top piece appears to be yellow, the middle one looks orange, and the lowest one is green.
At least, that’s the way it looks until I flip up the piece of yellow plastic in front of them, and they’re revealed to be white, pink, and blue.
colored paper
This is just one of many ways in which you might be misled by your senses. Of course, there’s a “but wait” part to the story as well, which is that it was also our senses which gave us the true picture behind the misleading façade. So rigorous attention to detail can produce a substantial improvement on our original casual sensory input. Can we ever be sure it’s perfectly accurate? No.
6. Memories. Your recollections of your own life experiences get hauled out when something trips the trigger of association in your brain that says “Hey, this new thing is like that old thing.” Memories, too, are sometimes unreliable but provide an unavoidable context for your decisions.
7. Testimony, also known as “other people’s memories.” Personal testimony is one of those curious things that has a great reputation which is completely unwarranted. Yet, despite its being colored by the testifier’s expectations and biases, it too serves as a form of input to the decision-making process—just one that we need to be cautious about.
In part 2, we consider the eight ways we process these inputs. Some are good, and some … aren’t.

I used to think I was indecisive,
but now I’m not so sure.
— seen on the internet

Bad decisions make good stories.
— seen on the internet

Image credit: Kosala Bandara, flickr, CC

For This Election Season: How to Say, “I Told You So”

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i told you soIn this election season, many of us get into heated political conversations. Or maybe it’s about public policy (such as climate change). Or science education (evolution). Or religion (end times). One frustrating recent example is atheist Bob Price explaining how he’s an enthusiastic Trump supporter.
You might ignore your better instincts and jump into such an argument, but you’ll probably get nowhere. The thing that gives me the most enduring frustration is not being able to say “I told you so” once the evidence is in. That is, when things play out just like you said they would—whether ten days have passed or ten years—you never even get the minimal satisfaction of hearing your antagonist admit that they were wrong. They conform to the new data without that unpleasant I-was-wrong phase.
The point is not to show how smart you are or your superiority (though that might please the ego) but for the antagonist to learn something to create a small hope that they will be less likely to make this kind of mistake again.
Let me add two hopefully obvious clarifications: (1) sometimes the antagonist does indeed admit their error (it’s just that this is rare) and (2) this goes both ways, and it might be us eating the humble pie and learning the lesson.
Commit to a public declaration
So how can we improve our chances of eventual satisfaction? Let’s say that the topic is rabbit overpopulation, and your antagonist is in favor of the upcoming ballot initiative to release radioactive super-weasels to control the rabbit problem.
You list the problems with this approach but your friend disagrees. Then the initiative passes, the weasels are released, and the environmental catastrophe (and untouched rabbit population) plays out like you predicted. When you confront your friend with this, he agrees that it was a disastrous project but denies specifics of both his prior position and your prediction.
The answer is for you to write a shared Public Declaration. This is a short statement summarizing the facts that clearly states what one of you think will or won’t happen and the time frame. It should be unambiguous so that an objective third party could determine who was right. (Of course, you could both be partly right. Or partly wrong.)
Let’s go back to the rabbit overpopulation problem and imagine that it ended with your writing this:

Sigmund Freud and I disagree on the best approach to the rabbit overpopulation problem. Sigmund advocates the radioactive weasels proposal in Initiative 7 on the November, 2016 ballot. I think it will be a terrible idea.
Prediction: I predict that the weasels will (1) have little impact on the rabbit population and (2) have the side effect of endangering the populations of other animals like birds. This is the position of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which has come out against Initiative 7.
Test: Check with the NRDC one year after the proposal has been implemented to see if things turned out how I predicted.
(signed) Friedrich Nietzsche

Here’s what’s good about this statement.

  • It’s specific about the claim: you referred to Initiative 7 on the November ballot, and you predict that if implemented, “the weasels will (1) have little impact on the rabbit population and (2) have the side effect of endangering the populations of other animals like birds.” There’s no need to also summarize your opponent’s position because he simply thinks that you’re wrong.
  • It’s clear on the time frame: judgment day is “one year after the proposal has been implemented.”
  • It defines an objective test: use the NRDC’s analysis after the proposal has had time to work. This could be a weakness of this public declaration if the NRDC is seen as biased. Another option might be to predict an editorial confirming your position. It works as long as your opponent agrees on the test. It’s tempting to imagine that “everyone” on this future date will just know who was right, but the lack of a clear test would weaken such a statement.
  • It’s a shared statement. This project works best when you work on it and sign it together.
  • Recording your position for posterity is satisfying, which is better than just walking away frustrated and angry.

Be as specific as possible. Things that are clear and obvious in your mind now could be forgotten by the time the prediction must be evaluated. (Contrast this with the vague and unspecific claims made by biblical prophecies.) Imagine the future judgment day and give yourself a clear and unambiguous statement to work with.
By writing the statement together, each party should be proud, rather than reluctant, to sign it and commit to it.
How can someone forget so important a position?
While you’re arguing with someone, the argument and your position are very, very clear in your mind. (Well, you think things are clear. Simply writing down the issue may reveal a misunderstanding that could advance the discussion.)
While the declaration could prevent your antagonist from lying about their former position once it’s been proven wrong, I think simple forgetfulness is the bigger issue. The Challenger memory experiment makes clear the difference between vivid and accurate memories—just because you have a clear memory of a past incident doesn’t mean that memory is correct. (I write more about this experiment here.)
Implementation
The idea could play out in different ways. This could be as casual as notes on the back of a napkin or cardboard coaster, though something this informal might get lost. It could wind up on a Facebook post (use a consistent phrase, like “public declaration,” so that you can search for it on judgment day). Or maybe there’s a single site, PublicDeclarations.com, that could give a simple template for those who want to boldly plant their flag.
This could work for several kinds of claims.

  • If-then claims such as, “If same-sex marriage is legalized in the U.S., then X will happen” or “If Hillary is elected, then X will happen.”
  • An even simpler claim is, “X will happen,” such as the predictions about the end of the world by John Hagee, Hal Lindsey, and Harold Camping. Another example: “Biologists will realize that evolution doesn’t explain life.”

Since arguments usually distill down to a simple “Yes, it will” vs. “No, it won’t” dichotomy, public declarations could have wide applicability.
What do you think?

We survive by virtue of people extending themselves,
welcoming the young, showing sympathy for the suffering,
taking pleasure in each other’s good fortune.
We are here for a brief time.
We would like our stay to mean something.
Do the right thing.
Travel light.
Be sweet.
– Garrison Keillor

Image credit: Jonathan Baker-Bates, flickr, CC

Are Atheists Just in Need of a Father Figure?

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Paul Vitz was a professor of psychology. His Faith of the Fatherless (1999) attempts to use Freudian techniques to conclude that “modern atheism originated in the irrational, psychological needs of a few prominent thinkers.”
Which Freud are we talking about?  
Presumably this is the same Sigmund Freud who concluded that, according to Karen Armstrong in A History of God, “a personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever.” Armstrong continues:

[Freud concluded that] God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind.

I wonder if Vitz really wants to hold up Freud as a reliable critic of religion or if he wants to cherry pick just the bits from Freud that he likes. (I’m guessing the latter. Vitz does a lot of cherry picking.)
The defective father hypothesis
Vitz uses Freudian thinking to conclude that atheists are atheists because of the absence of a good father. Disappointment in one’s earthly father leads to a rejection of the heavenly Father.
He’s yet another Christian apologist who concludes that atheists don’t exist and are actually theists. They aren’t atheists because there’s no god; rather, they know that God exists but suppress or reject that knowledge for psychological reasons.
Vitz supports his “defective father hypothesis” by listing believers such as Blaise Pascal, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who had present and loving fathers and atheists such as Voltaire, Freud, and (wait for it … !) Hitler who had absent or unloving fathers.
(There’s plenty of reason to argue that Hitler was actually a believer, but let’s ignore that for now.)
This is the argument of a scientist? This is no comprehensive survey; it’s just cherry picking. This correlation that he’s selected can be easily turned around: it’s not that atheists are driven by a poor home life to petulantly reject the Father who is obviously there; rather, Christians are coddled by the strong and wise guidance of their father, and when they mature, they remain too weak to face reality without the crutch of a father who’s far more powerful than they. They then project a supernatural extension of that caring father onto the universe.
If I could provide the opposite list—famous Christians who had no father figure and famous atheists who did—would Vitz reject his hypothesis? For example, let’s take one of modern Christianity’s premier thinkers, C. S. Lewis. Here’s what Lewis said about his father: “God forgive me, I thought Monday morning, when he went back to his work, the brightest jewel in the week.”
Would this cause Vitz to walk away from his poor-father hypothesis? Of course not. I’m sure he knows about this example but just chooses to ignore it. If I presented this defeater to his case, he would accuse me of biased selection of my examples. He’d be right, of course, but why is it okay for him but not me?
Uri Geller predicts the election
Uri Geller the mystic used the same empty reasoning in a recent Facebook post. He declared that Donald Trump will win the election. Why? Because “Donald Trump” has 11 letters and “11 is a very powerful mystical number.”
Not enough evidence for you? Well consider this, Mr. Skeptic: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, John Kennedy, and more also have 11 letters in their names!
Like Vitz, Geller simply ignores the inconvenient counterexamples such as George Washington (16 letters), Thomas Jefferson (15), Abraham Lincoln (14), and Teddy Roosevelt (14), just to take the faces on Mount Rushmore.
Epitaph
What I find personally obnoxious about Vitz’s claim, and again we’re in the realm of anecdote and not statistics, is that my own father was present, strong, and loving. He also emphasized education and reason, and I’m the result. I could argue that this and many other examples refute Vitz, but he and his hypothesis are a waste of time.
I’d rather pass on a powerful story written by Charles Handy, an English economist and author. He describes the funeral of his father, a quiet and modest man who had lived his life as an unambitious minister of a small church in Ireland.

When [my father] died, I rushed back to Ireland for the funeral. Held in the little church where he had spent most of his life, it was supposed to be a quiet family affair. But it turned out to be neither quiet nor restricted to the family. I was astounded by the hundreds of people who came, on such short notice, from all corners of the British Isles. Almost every single person there came up to me and told me how much my father had meant to them—and how deeply he had touched their lives.
That day, I stood by his grave and wondered, Who would come to my funeral? How many lives have I touched? Who knows me as well as all of these people who knew this quiet man?
When I returned to London, I was a deeply changed man. Later that year, I resigned my tenured professorship. More important, I dropped my pretense of being someone other than who I was. I stopped trying to be a hot shot. I decided to do what I could to make a genuine difference in other people’s lives. Whether I have succeeded, only my own funeral will tell.
I only wish that I could have told my father that he was my greatest teacher.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/28/13.)
Photo credit: hnphotog, flickr, CC
 

Book Excerpt: “Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life Without Religion”

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So much of apologetics and counterapologetics involves men that I’m delighted to right the balance slightly with this guest post by Karen Garst, author of the just-released book Women Beyond Belief. Here is an excerpt of the story of one of the women she writes about.
Ceal Wright is a young woman who arrives on campus eager to learn and experience what university life has to offer. She meets the man of her dreams and falls in love. But this young man is not a Jehovah’s Witness like she is. A “friend” turns her in to the church because she has slept with a non-believer. A tribunal of three church elders is convened.
From the book:

“You must consider him a tool of Satan.”
My face refused to remain neutral as my ears took in this sentence. Did I hear him right? With an expression of incredulity and confusion, I looked back at the elder who’d just spoken and the two others on the panel with him, and replied, “Uh, I don’t see how that’s possible. I don’t think you understand—I love him. This isn’t just a crush—I love him—I wouldn’t be with just anybody. Jehovah is a God of love and this is love, so I don’t see how that is even remotely connected to Satan.”
“Satan is using him to draw you away from Jehovah and is disguising himself as this boy,” another elder chimed in.
Oh silly young Ceal, you hadn’t realized that you’d fallen in love with the devil.
The fluorescent lights became unbearably bright as I felt my body stiffen, preparing for my reply. I stood my ground and continued to refute their offensive correlation of my love with the devil. Trying to reason and explain my logical feelings (as opposing as that sounds) to this tribunal of elders was futile though. In this Church females were not given equal voice and stature; therefore, for me to come into the room prepared for anything but groveling for forgiveness was tantamount to disrespect. I had naïvely presumed they would treat me with the respect and openness that I had been raised to believe I deserved, and in the heat of that moment, I did not recognize the danger I was in by voicing my thoughts. After a solid two hours of back-and-forth, they left the room for an agonizing ninety minutes to deliberate, during which time I sat alone in the back room of the Kingdom Hall feeling confused, abandoned, and pissed.
Believing still that God was real and his Holy Spirit was directing the men outside, I was convinced by my conditioning that my case would be dealt with justly—after all, this was my first offense in my twenty-three years of life. Finally, they filed into the small room and sat back down.
They all read a scripture that they had personally chosen for me and then informed me that they were leaning toward disfellowshipping me—the highest punishment available to them—but by the grace of one elder who had known me for years, they decided to grant me a reprieve to think upon their counsel and come back repentant.
And in that instant, my faith shattered.

Ceal Wright is one of 22 women who tell their personal stories of leaving religion. Karen L. Garst has compiled these essays into Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion, which is available online and in bookstores.
Dr. Garst became incensed when the U. S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby in 2014. This decision said that because of its religious views, Hobby Lobby, a craft store, would not be obligated to follow the dictates of the Affordable Care Act and provide certain forms of birth control to its employees. Would the fight for women’s reproductive rights never end? Once again, religion has influenced the laws of our land. Politicians cite their religion in supporting restrictions on abortion, banning funding for Planned Parenthood, and a host of other issues that are against women.
Dr. Garst wants to add a focus on women and the role this mythology has played in the culture of many countries to denigrate and subordinate women. Religion is the last cultural barrier to gender equality. More and more women atheists are speaking out. And as we all know, if women leave the churches, they will collapse.
She has received support with reviews by Richard Dawkins, Valerie Tarico, Peter Boghossian, Sikivu Hutchinson and other atheist authors.
I encourage you to check out Dr. Garst’s blog at faithlessfeminist.com and order her book, Women Beyond Belief. At this writing, the book is Amazon’s #1 new release in Atheism.

We don’t worship cancer or hunger or a hurricane,
we don’t worship many things that have power to devastate us,
nor do we appeal for mercy to these things,
because we have an idea they’re not directing themselves at us….
Inside a snow globe no one can hear you scream,
and the person stops shaking it when they’re done being amused.
It’s pure delusion to think there’s a relationship going on here.
— commenter Kodie

The Atheist Worldview: Is Life Without God Bleak?

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This is a popular Christian attack: life without God is bleak. For example, Christian apologist Ken Ham said about the atheist worldview,

None of our accomplishments, advancements, breakthroughs, triumphs, or heartbreaks will ultimately matter as we face extinction along with our universe. This is certainly a bleak and hopeless perspective.

And yet this perception doesn’t sound like that of atheists who exist in real life rather than those that exist just in Ken Ham’s head. Since he can’t correctly describe their worldview, maybe he should try again.
But instead of having a young-earth Creationist ineptly tell atheists what they think and how they’re wrong, we can explore the idea of life without God through an article by atheist Julian Baggini, “Yes, life without God can be bleak. Atheism is about facing up to that.”
Baggini makes two reasonable points: (1) atheists see no good evidence for God and refuse to live as if there were, and (2) in focusing on the positive side of life in recent ad campaigns, atheists have glossed over the fact that for many people life sucks.
While I agree with his points, I don’t like how he gets there. Let’s examine his support of the Christian claim that life without God is bleak.
Baggini sees the popular stereotype of atheists within society as “the dark, brooding existentialist gripped by the angst of a purposeless universe” and fears that atheists have overcompensated. They’ve pushed the happy side of atheism (without much apparent success, if “brooding existentialist” is still what comes to mind), but atheists haven’t acknowledged that life can be meaningless and miserable.
Baggini again:

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. Can you really tell the parents who lost their child to a suicide after years of depression that they should stop worrying and enjoy life? …
Sometimes life is shit and that’s all there is to it.

True, but this is the human condition. It’s not like the Christian has an advantage. Will you say to the Christian parents who lost their child to suicide, “They’re in a better place”? Or “It’s all part of God’s plan” or “God must’ve needed another angel” or “You’ll be reunited soon”? Do these evidence-less platitudes bring the parents much comfort? Would the parent rather hear empty Christian phrases or an atheist’s honest offer of help and support?
Both the atheist and the Christian feel that this hypothetical child’s death was an injustice—life is just not supposed to work that way—but Christians actually make things worse for themselves. Christians must believe just the right thing to meet heaven’s entrance requirements. What if they get it wrong? The invention of heaven created a new anxiety that never burdens the atheist.
And what if the child got it wrong? I once listened to a theology podcast with a panel of pastors wrestling with this problem. A man’s twenty-ish son had died in an accident. Problem 1 was the obvious one: the man was grieving the loss of his son. Problem 2 was entirely of Christianity’s making: the man’s beliefs put his son in hell, in torment.
The atheist’s advice would be to drop the beliefs in a God who isn’t there (and have him take his nonexistent hell with him), but the pastors were obliged to tap dance around this enormous burden of their own making, unable to seize the simple, obvious, and complete solution provided by the atheist’s worldview.
Many Christians grant God license to do things that seem immoral. Drowning humanity with the Flood (for example) sounds barbaric to us but might make good sense to a God who is omniscient. If God has carte blanche, he might just refuse entrance into heaven for any or all Christians for no (apparent) good reason. Since God does things that seem illogical or immoral to us, the Christian must see this as a very real possibility and one to which they could make no protest.
Baggini wonders where atheist morality comes from.

Anyone who thinks it’s easy to ground ethics either hasn’t done much moral philosophy or wasn’t concentrating when they did.

Here’s the short atheist answer: humans are social animals like other great apes. Evolution selected for social behavior (trust, compassion, Golden Rule, and so on) because these traits improved evolutionary fitness.
Christians make unwarranted claims for the existence and accessibility of objective morality and ground all this in make-believe, and he’s concerned about what grounds atheist morality? When Christians bring something compelling to the table, perhaps I’ll see a need to justify atheist morality more than the short answer above.

Although morality is arguably just as murky for the religious, at least there is some bedrock belief that gives a reason to believe that morality is real and will prevail.

No, it’s not murky for the atheist. We can see why morality evolved the way it did for humans. By contrast, Christians have only just-so stories about a creator god who loves us, drowns us, and/or consigns most of us to hell, depending on his mood.

So I think it’s time we atheists ’fessed up and admitted that life without God can sometimes be pretty grim….
The journey can be wonderful but it can also be arduous and it may end horribly.

Life with or without God can be grim. You seem to imagine that the alternative to atheism is skipping through a meadow, hand in hand with Jesus, with all worries forgotten. Some Christians might imagine that, but any honest Christian occasionally wonders if their story is just BS. Many Christian sites have articles about dealing with Christians’ inevitable doubts.
Concluded on the next page.

Pages: 1 2

Bible Prophecies: Fulfilled or Fail? (Part 5 of 4)

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hugh ross reasons to believe bible prophecyOkay, this is the last post in this series.
Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (an old-earth Creationist ministry) claims that the Bible has thousands of fulfilled prophecies, and he gives us his top 13. Let’s continue our critique (part 1 here).
12. “Jahaziel prophesied that King Jehoshaphat and a tiny band of men would defeat an enormous, well-equipped, well-trained army without even having to fight. Just as predicted, the King and his troops stood looking on as their foes were supernaturally destroyed to the last man.”
2 Chronicles 20 tells of a great army approaching Judah. King Jehoshaphat prayed to God, and the prophet Jahaziel reported that God would deliver them. The next day, God caused the individual tribes within the opposing alliance to fight each other until they were all dead.
What is there to say except that it’s a fanciful story? Just like #11, this is a self-contained story with a prophecy. The dating problem is also similar: King Jehoshaphat reigned in the 9th century BCE, while the books of Chronicles document events up to Cyrus the Great allowing the Jews to return after his conquest of Babylon 539 BCE. They were probably written later still, in the 4th century BCE.
Half a millennium passes from event to documentation, and Ross wants us to credulously accept the story as true?
13. King Jeroboam of Israel (922–901 BCE) encouraged worship of deities other than Yahweh. A prophet told him that a future King Josiah of Judah (641–609 BCE) would burn the bones of Jeroboam’s wayward priests on their own altar. And that’s indeed what happened.
The prophecy is in 1 Kings 13:2, and the fulfillment is in 2 Kings 23:15–18. Here Ross is making the same mistake yet again: the two books of Kings were originally one book. It documents events up to the year 560 BCE, and it received its final editing at about that time. There is no prophecy if the prophecy and the fulfillment were edited at the same time.
Hugh Ross’s conclusion
Since the probabilities were stated without justification, I haven’t been critiquing them, but Ross has attached one to each prophecy, from one chance in 105 to one in 1020. They’re outlandish figures, both since they have no justification and because the natural explanation is so obvious, but that doesn’t stop Ross from computing the final probability.

Since these thirteen prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence for all thirteen is about 1 in 10138.

Then he talks about how unlikely “the second law of thermodynamics will be reversed in a given situation” and concludes,

Stating it simply, based on these thirteen prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics.

(This tangent about thermodynamics is intriguing but irrelevant.) The Christian who wants to accept this as true without considering an alternative view now has a compelling sound bite.

Each reader should feel free to make his own reasonable estimates of probability for the chance fulfillment of the prophecies cited here.

There is no “chance fulfillment of the prophecies” when the natural explanation works fine, but I accept your challenge. 1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1×1 = 1 (rather than 1 in 10138).
Ross wraps up by saying that, given that the Bible is so fabulously correct, the Bible’s 500 upcoming prophecies “will be fulfilled to the last letter.” Who can risk ignoring these upcoming events, missing out on the blessings of Jesus, and blah blah blah?
As I’ve researched each of Ross’s claims, I’ve been amazed at how elementary these mistakes are, and this is from a guy with a doctorate in physics. But perhaps I should be more accustomed to this. We see many scholars skilled in one field who ineptly jump into apologetics. William Lane Craig has two doctorates, and John Lennox and John Warwick Montgomery have three.
You say the Bible has a prophecy from God? First make sure that it avoids the childish mistakes that Ross makes here. Next, makes sure that the prophecy meets the straightforward criteria I explore here—criteria that you’d instinctively demand from any foreign religion or supernatural claim.
Thirteen certainly hasn’t been Hugh Ross’s lucky number. That he had to cite this many rather than offering just one compelling prophecy is a clue that even he thinks they won’t be convincing.
These 13 claimed prophecies have been a useful exercise in seeing what prophecies from a perfect holy book would not look like.

I won’t insult your intelligence
by suggesting you believe what you just said.
— William F. Buckley

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