Notes
Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth?
—Jeremiah 23:24
INTRODUCTION
1 . Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994), xx.
2 . Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1998), 10.
3 . Steven J. Brams, Superior Beings: If They Exist, How Would We Know? (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983), 14–15.
4 . Quoted in Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 186.
5 . Quoted in Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, 10.
8 . Rene Dubos, A God Within (New York: Scribner, 1972), 3–4.
9 . Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 34–35.
CHAPTER 1: THE PARADOX OF OMNISCIENCE
1 . Let’s return briefly to our scenario with Dr. Eck. My colleague Eric Kaplan has pointed out that knowledge is not quite the same as power. You can know something, but not be able to change it. In the case of Dr. Eck, if you know Dr. Eck is omniscient, then by deciding not to swerve you can “force” Eck to chicken out (i.e., swerve), and you win. However, if Dr. Eck were really omniscient he would know your strategy and see that the game of chicken can have no meaning if both sides know what the other will do in advance. Thus, the omniscient Dr. Eck would refuse to play a game of chicken with someone who knew he was omniscient. To have the scenario be most effective, you would have to be able to force Dr. Eck to play against his will. And if you could do that, then Dr. Eck would not be truly omniscient, because there would be something he did not know—namely, how to prevent you from forcing him to play a silly game against his will. On the other hand, could an omniscient Dr. Eck know all facts but be dumb and not be able to make use of the facts in a logical way? Could an omniscient being know only about possible things? If there were no possible way to prevent you from forcing him to play chicken, then he could still be omniscient while not knowing how to avoid the game. Finally, if Dr. Eck became omniscient after he started racing toward you, then he would certainly lose in your game of chicken.
2 . The March 31, 1997, Newsweek survey is discussed in Wade Roush, “Herbert Benson: Mind-Body Maverick Pushes the Envelope,” Science 276 (April 18, 1997): 357–360.
3 . Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Bible (New York: William Morrow, 1998).
4 . Alan Dershowitz, The Genesis of Justice (New York: Warner Books, 2000), 65.
CHAPTER 2: GOD AND EVIL
Epigraph note: Albert Einstein, address at the Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939; published in Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950).
My colleague Eric Kaplan notes that while Einstein captures an important paradox in the Judeo-Christian conception of God, Einstein does not accurately state the problem. Einstein seems to suggest that because God can do anything (i.e., He is omnipotent), that He does everything. But just because God can make a person be good or bad, this does not mean that He does. In the standard Judeo-Christian framework, God gives humans free will. There need not be a direct contradiction between God’s omnipotence and our free will.
However, if God is the creator of the universe and life, then, like the manufacturer of an airplane, God may have some responsibility for defects in design. In some sense, a father is the “manufacturer” of his son. Yet, we do not suggest that the father should avoid disciplining the child because the father is, in effect, passing judgment on himself. Of course, we would admonish the father if the punishment were overly harsh or if the father punished the child knowing that the child had no choice in his action.
Kaplan believes that for Einstein’s argument to be effective, God must be not only powerful and good but also omniscient. If God is omniscient, the very fact that He knows our thoughts and actions millennia before our births makes it difficult for some to understand why He would punish or reward us for choices that may have been foreordained—regardless of whether He ever directly influenced any of those choices. Such punishment or reward for what we could not help might be, as Einstein says, in contradiction to his supposed goodness.
1 . Interested in learning more about Miss Muxdröözol? See my book The Stars of Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2 . Robert M. Martin, There Are Two Errors in the the Title of This Book (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 1992), 175.
3 . In Alan Turing’s test, a human questioner sits in a room opposite a teletype or computer terminal. Hidden from the questioner is a computer and another human being. The questioner interviews both and tries to determine which is human and which is a computer. If the computer can fool the questioner, the computer is considered to be intelligent.
CHAPTER 3: CAIN AND ABEL’S DILEMMA
3 . William Poundstone, The Prisoner’s Dilemma, 106–108.
4 . Ibid. Game theory suggests that the lower left cell (0,0.5) is the “rational outcome.” Theorists call it a Nash equilibrium point. After playing the game 100 times, there was no evidence of any instinctive preference for this point.
5 . Janet Chen, Su-I Lu, and Dan Vekhter, “The Flood-Dresher experiment.” See also William Poundstone, The Prisoner’s Dilemma.
6 . William Poundstone, The Prisoner’s Dilemma, 123.
12 . Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 8.
CHAPTER 4: THE PARABLE OF ALGAE
Epigraph note: John Fowles, “The Green Man,” Antaeus, No. 57, ed. Daniel Helpurn (New York: The Ecco Press, Autumn 1986), 247.
1 . This kind of logic is discussed further in Robert M. Martin, There are Two Errors in the the Title of This Book (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 1992), 12.
4 . Edward Kasner and James Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination (Redmond, Washington: Tempus, 1989), 103. Originally published by New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940.
5 . David Eugene Smith, A History of Mathematics in America Before 1900 (Chicago: Open Court, 1934).
CHAPTER 5: NEWCOMB’S PARADOX AND DIVINE FOREKNOWLEDGE
1 . Martin Gardner, Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments (New York: Freeman, 1986), 158.
3 . Robert Nozick, “Newcomb’s Problem and Two Principles of Choice,” in Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempl, ed. Nicholas Rescher, Synthese Library (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1969), 115–116. Robert Nozick, cited in Martin Gardner, “Mathematical Games,” Scientific American (March 1974): 102.
4 . Isaac Levi, “A Note on Newcombmania,” Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 337–342. Richmond Campbell and Lanning Sowden, Paradoxes of Rationality and Cooperation: Prisoner’s Dilemma and Newcomb’s Problem (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1985).
5 . See the collection of columns in Martin Gardner, Knotted Doughnuts.
6 . Maya Bar-Hillel and Avishai Margalit, “Newcomb’s paradox revisited,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 23 (1972): 301.
7 . Martin Gardner, Knotted Doughnuts, 161.
9 . Maya Bar-Hillel and Avishai Margalit, “Newcomb’s Paradox Revisited”; William Lane Craig, “Divine Foreknowledge and Newcomb’s Paradox.”
10 . George Schlesinger, Aspects of Time (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 79, 144.
11 . Dennis M. Ahern, “Foreknowledge: Nelson Pike and Newcomb’s Problem,” Religious Studies 75 (1979): 489. Also see analysis in William Lane Craig, “Divine Foreknowledge and Newcomb’s Paradox.”
13 . William Lane Craig, “Divine Foreknowledge and Newcomb’s Paradox.”
15 . Martin Gardner, Knotted Doughnuts, 171. Also see, Martin Gardner, The Night Is Large (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), 437.
17 . William Poundstone, Labyrinths of Reason (New York: Anchor, 1988), 257.
18 . John Milton, Paradise Lost (New York: Penguin, 2000), Book III, lines 116–118.
19 . Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 309.
20 . Clifford Pickover, Time: A Traveler’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
21 . Fabre D’Olivet, Cain: A Dramatic Mystery in Three Acts by Lord Byron (New York: Kessinger Publishing, 1997).
22 . Anne Rice, Memnoch the Devil (New York: Ballantine, 1997).
23 . Clifford Pickover, Time: A Traveler’s Guide.
CHAPTER 6: THE DEVIL’S OFFER
1 . Edward J. Gracely, “Playing Games with Eternity: The Devil’s Offer,” Analysis 48 (June 1988): 113. See also Glenn W. Erickson and John A. Fossa, Dictionary of Paradox (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), 48.
2 . Glenn W. Erickson and John A. Fossa, Dictionary of Paradox, 48.
4 . Clifford Pickover, Keys to Infinity (New York: Wiley, 1995). Also see Clifford Pickover, “Slides in Hell,” Skeptical Inquirer 19 (July/August 1995): 36–39.
5 . J. Theodore Schuerzinger, personal communication.
CHAPTER 7: THE REVELATION GAMBIT
1 . Genesis 14:18, Hebrews 7:11–28. Jim Bell and Stan Campbell, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Bible (New York: Macmillan, 1999), 38.
2 . Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975).
3 . Steven J. Brams, Superior Beings: If They Exist, How Would We Know? (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1983), 15.
4 . Didymus Jude Thomas (ca. A.D. 75–100), The Gospel of (According to) Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus, trans. Marvin Meyer (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), verse 77.
5 . Steven J. Brams, Superior Beings, 15.
7 . This stable outcome is called a “Nash equilibrium”; see Steven J. Brams, Superior Beings, 20.
8 . Steven J. Brams, “Belief in God: A Game-Theoretic Paradox,” International Journal of Philosophy and Religion, 13 (1982): 121–129.
9 . Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 4–5.
11 . Clifford Pickover, The Stars of Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
12 . John Brooke, “Science and Religion: Lessons from History?” Science, 282(5396) Dec 11, 1985–1986, 1988.
14 . C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1943).
15 . Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the Bible (New York: William Morrow, 1998), 101.
16 . Jim Bell and Stan Campbell, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Bible, 70.
17 . J. R. Porter, The Illustrated Guide to the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
20 . Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (New York, HarperCollins 2001).
21 . Robert M. Martin, There are Two Errors in the the Title of this Book (Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 1992), 18.
22 . J. R. Porter, The Illustrated Guide to the Bible, 99.
23 . Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
24 . Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).
25 . Bahaullah, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh (Kitáb-i-Íqán ) (Wilmette, Illinois: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1983), 50–55.