skepticdude

I was just brushing up on the "satanic ritual abuse" case of Paul Ingram from Olympia WA. In a nutshell, his daughters, after being told by a woman prophet during bible camp, that they had been raped by their father, came home, accused him, he was sentenced to 20 years, and was released in 2003 only on condition that he admit his guilt and register as a sex-offender.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_ingra.htm

The case was popular as a poster-child of false memory syndrome gone bizerk.

When you remember that this is a case of two kids, who testified strongly and consistently to things that failed empirical evidence (i.e., dad killed many babies and buried them in his backyard, investigation not only didn't turn up any bones, it failed to detect that any earth had ever been moved), it would seem to be the perfect counter-argument to the "eyewitness" theory of the resurrection. Yes, they were all sure that they saw Jesus alive after he died. And they were afflicted with false memory syndrome too.

In other words, apologists are forced to admit that those who are involved in the more extreme or fundamentalist form of Christianity (Ingram's family attended the charismatic "Church of Living Water", which promoted speaking in tongues though without being fully pentecostal), can become so fanatical that they start to truly believe they have experienced true physical stimuli when in fact they haven't. Unless apologists can come up with a rebuttal to false memory syndrome, this one would seem to knock the ball out of the park.

dog-on

Farther out of the park than a flying immortal zombie?

I wonder.

Juststeve

I think false memory fits very poorly with what we can know about early Christianity. This is primarily because there are no well documented memories of the risen Jesus.

What we have today is not writings or testimonies from people who remember seeing the risen Jesus. Instead we have stories about what some other guy allegedly saw, written by an unknown authors. We have stories about what Mary saw, or Mary and some other women saw, or Mary some other women and the disciples saw, but these come from third party writers long after the fact. They are not false memories but rather recitations of stories the writers heard from someone, we don’t know who.

To be interested in false memory as an explanation I would first have to be convinced that there was a time when people were going around claiming to remember seeing the risen Jesus themselves. Then we could ask whether their memory was true or false. We just don’t know what Mary, the other women and the disciples were themselves claiming to remember, therefore there are no memories to explain away.

Steve

aa5874

The "false memory syndrome" appears to be very important to HJers. HJers want people to believe the historicity of Jesus is directly dependent upon MASS AMNESIA, that is, both the supposed disciples and the NON-believers suffered from AMNESIA at the same time.


But, the very Jesus stories have discarded such an ad hoc idea.

In the Jesus stories, in the short-ending of gMark, the visitors to the tomb ran away trembling with fear even though they were told Jesus was risen.

But, to eliminate MASS AMNESIA it was claimed Jesus himself asked for FOOD to EAT and did EAT.

See Luke 24. 30 and 42.

The Jesus stories were written to counter charges of Mass Amnesia or false memory syndrome.

Jesus ATE FOOD.

It MUST be REMEMBERED that in the Jesus stories the body of Jesus was NOT found by the visitors and that they had NO idea where the body was located and that the visitors did NOT even expect Jesus to have resurrected.

See John 20.9 There is a very simple explanation that BLOWS the false memory syndrome out of the water.

"The Joseph Smith of Mormonism syndrome." A man makes stuff up and it is believed by the DUPED. Now, there are MILLIONS of Mormons even a former presidential candidate.

Jesus was just an invented story that was believed to be true by the DUPED blows away the false memory syndrome .

d-ray

Elvis lives! Michael Jackson lives! Jesus lives! Some people never give up on their favorite superstar.

Jane H

Ingenious and clever! I've not seen this one before.

A truly astonishing legal case.

Would a reconstruction of your proposal be this then? After Jesus death, the disciples pratted about Israel keeping alive Jesus memory on some basis. Paul lost grip of reality on the road to Emmaus and was doing variations of the same outside Israel. At some point, someone came up with the idea that Jesus had died, but had been bodily resurrected. This caught on, and several people started claiming they had experienced these appearances, based on false memory syndrome.

The first point would be that I really can't buy this as historically credible. Most people in the early church would go, “Hang on a minute, where has all drivel this come from?”, and this controversy would have become a more obvious problem. It's very hard to see this process establishing resurrection as the central element of Christianity.

Secondly, for all the disciples and others to fall victim to this syndrome seems unlikely.

Thirdly, the disciples theology is being driven by reacting to events. For instance, they interpret the resurrection not just as a bodily return to life, but as an unexpected first instalment of the general resurrection. The resurrection forces them to completely rethink what they believed about national liberation, the pre-eminent place of Israel in the world, the role of Torah, and what the Messiah would do. I don't see false memory syndrome doing this.

This part I would agree with (as long as we're talking football).

Solo

No kidding, Jane !


Jiri