Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

56 J.J.C. Smart
belief so as to make us feel completely sure of the truth of the Phoenicians’
claim to have sailed round the south of Africa. Bradley also refers to the
alleged phenomena of stigmata which might more recently have come to be
regarded as medically possible, and to the report of African confessors who
spoke even though their tongues had been cut out, which had, he says, come
to be regarded as physiologically possible. 98
C.A.J. Coady, in his valuable book Testimony: A Philosophical Study, 99
worries that Hume’s and Bradley’s criteria would have ruled out acceptance
of many historical propositions that we now regard as quite certain, such as
reports of human sacrifice or of trial by ordeal, Socrates’ acceptance of death
rather than freedom, and the astonishing feats of Napoleon Bonaparte. In
connection with the last case he quotes from Archbishop Whateley’s witty
Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte. 100 In reply I would urge that
though Napoleon was unusual and so were many of his deeds and sufferings,
we are aware of the great variability of human character, talents and abilities,
and so in a sense the humanly unusual is usual. At any rate it fits well into
what we know of human genetics, plasticity of brain function and so on.
The case is different with the resurrection of Jesus. Similarly with Coady’s
examples of human sacrifice and trial by ordeal. These may be unusual in
our experience, but are perfectly compatible with what we know of human
nature. This example shows the importance of the notion of coherence in this
connection, rather than those of ‘the usual’ or ‘the analogous’. (Bradley did
use the latter term, but he need not have.)
Of course in science we do have anomalies. Consider the advance of the
perihelion of Mercury which was unexplained until Newtonian gravitational
theory was succeeded by general relativity. In such cases, however, we are
dealing with repeated or repeatable observations or experiments. Moreover
scientists do not despair of a naturalistic explanation of anomalies: they wait
until a better theory explains them. (Except in cases in which doubt is cast on
the observations or experiments, but in these cases we do not have a proper
anomaly.) Indeed this came about in the historical case of the Phoenicians
and the circumnavigation of Africa. We might give a naturalistic explanation
of Jesus appearing to his disciples after his death but then it would lose its
main religious significance. There have indeed been theories that Jesus did
not die on the cross but appeared to be dead and was entombed in a state
that mimicked that of death, later recovering and being seen on the road to
Emmaus. I do not want to put any weight on such speculations.
If a person already has positive beliefs about the supernatural many of the
supernatural elements in the Gospels may well be easily assimilated into his
or her web of belief. However, if one is already sceptical about the facts of the
historical Jesus then one will have a very different attitude to the Biblical
documents. Some scholars might indeed assess the documentary evidence in