"Schizotypals"

I continue my romp through Richard Carrier's diatribe On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield 2014). In chap. 4, he makes the following claims:

Christianity began as a charismatic cult in which many of its leaders and members displayed evidence of schizotypal personalities. They naturally and regularly hallucinated (seeing visions and hearing voices), often believed their dreams were divine communications, achieved trance states, practiced glossolalia, and were (or so we're told) highly suscepti­ble to psychosomatic illnesses (like 'possession' and hysterical blindness, muteness and paralysis).159 These phenomena have been extensively docu­mented in modern charismatic cults within numerous religious traditions, and their underlying sociology, anthropology and psychology are reason­ ably well understood (in addition to what follows, see also Element 29).

For example, we know the first Christians regularly practiced glosso­lalia. Acts 2 mythologizes this phenomenon, depicting the first Christians 'speaking in tongues' in the middle of Jerusalem as if this actually meant miraculously speaking foreign languages fluently that they were never taught, when in fact we know 'speaking in tongues' actually meant (as it does now) babbling in random syllables, which no one could really under­ stand except special interpreters who were 'inspired' by the holy spirit to miraculously understand and translate for their congregation. We know this because Paul tells us so (in 1 Corinthians 14; in fact the phenomenon is addressed throughout 1 Corinthians 12-14). Thus Acts has taken this real phenomenon and exaggerated it into a legendary power. But we know from Paul it operated differently. And in fact, the phenomenon Paul describes is known across the world, in countless cultures and religious traditions, and has been extensively studied.160 When we see in antiquity a phenomenon we've documented scientifically as commonly occurring in various cultures, it's far more likely to be the same phenomenon than something entirely new yet coincidentally identical. We must therefore conclude the first Christians had some social and anthropological similarities to other cults that practice glossolalia.

Acts represents this as a recurring practice in the church: Acts 10.46; 19.6 (confirmed in Mk 16.17); and in 1 Cor. 14.18, Paul himself says he spoke in tongues more than anyone, and throughout that chapter makes clear it was so commonly happening to others in his churches that he had to set up rules to govern it. And as for glossolalia, so for the other phenomena Paul reports as regularly practiced by the first Christians. The most important of which for our purposes was hallucination (visual and auditory). Humans are actu­ally biologically predisposed to hallucinate. The neurophysiology of hallu­cination is built-in and thus must have evolved for some useful function (or as a side-effect of something else that did).

Normals can hallucinate when exposed to triggers. The most common of which is sleep paralysis (where normals hallucinate at the threshold between being asleep and awake); but the most familiar are pharmaceuticals (many drugs induce hallucination, including several that were not only available in antiquity but known in antiquity), while the most culturally transmitted are trance behaviors.163 Extreme fatigue, heat, illness, fasting, grief and sleep or sensory deprivation ('incubation') can all induce halluci­nation in normals. And by the time of Christianity, cultural practices had long developed to intentionally trigger hallucination, including fasting and sensory or sleep deprivation, but more typically rhythmic prayer or chant­ing or the use of music or dance to induce an ecstatic state (Paul alludes to singing and prayer as likely trance-inducing behaviors in his congregations in 1 Cor. 14.12-15; see also Acts 16.25; Eph. 5.19; and Col. 3.16; which might suggest also dance, as in other cultures whirling or spinning are known triggers). Fasting (i.e., starving) is also attested within the church.

Accordingly, in antiquity, where schizotypals would routinely be regarded as prophets and holy men (and not seen as insane, as they are in modern cultures), we can expect schizotypals will actually gravitate into religious cults that socially integrate them or even grant them influence and status. The availability of niches of strong social support for schizotypals would explain why in antiquity there were few reported cases of psychosis (and why hallucination was not regarded as a major index of insanity except when wholly crippling or conjoined with fever), and why miracles and visions (not just Christian and Jewish, but pagan as well) were so frequently reported and widely believed to be genuine. Obviously schizotypals would prefer the company of people who take them seriously. 

And yet even non-schizotypals can become regular trance hallucinators within cults and cultures that encourage and develop their capacities in this regard. Even in hostile cultures (like our own), normals find themselves hallucinating with remarkable frequency, particularly within the context of religious assumptions and expectations (Christians hallucinate Christ; Buddhists hallucinate Buddha), and psychological priming (UFO enthusi­asts hallucinate encounters with aliens; the bereaved hallucinate encoun­ters with the recently deceased).

Many members of a cult will claim to have seen or heard things, when in fact they didn't, and pretend to go along, because (a) they want to belong (and this is the only way to fulfill their desire to fit in), or they need the benefits the community provides (such as food, shelter, love, companionship), or (for reasons of dysphoria or dissonance outside the cult) they want to believe its claims are true because they are ultimately comforting (such as giving their lives hope or meaning that they did not previously have), or they want the power and influence that being a revered spiritual leader affords them (if they can be adequately convincing and also effective at winning support). These psychological motivations can be quite powerful, and have certainly been documented to compel people to engage in conforming behavior in other contexts, so it can surely happen in this context as well. These members will pick up all the social cues and simply agree with everyone, to both fit in and convince themselves. which if sustained can even alter their memory so that they honestly believe they saw or heard things they didn't (or else they will delusionally refuse to acknowledge, even to themselves, that they didn't).

We should expect this same social phenomenon in the orig­inal church, which is why only apostles 'saw the Lord', as that is what it was to be an apostle: to be one whom the Lord chose to reveal himself (1 Cor. 9.1; 15.5-8; Gal. 1.11-12; note how Gal. 1.8 indicates that revelations from lesser divinities couldn't make one an apostle). This also explains why their number was limited. The Lord might still communicate to lower ranking members through intermediaries (angels and benevolent spirits), but you dare not claim to have 'seen the Lord'...

All of this provides considerable background support to what sev­eral scholars have already argued: that the origin of Christianity can be attributed to hallucinations (actual or pretended) of the risen Jesus. The prior probability of this conclusion is already extremely high, given the background evidence just surveyed; and the consequent probabilities strongly favor it as well, given the evidence we can find in the NT.181 Chris­tian fundamentalists are really the only ones who do not accept this as basically an established fact by now. 

Thus, in Acts 2, we see the entire church hallucinating floating tongues of fire and then babbling in tongues in a mass ecstatic trance. In Acts 7, in the middle of the Sanhedrin court, Stephen hallucinates Jesus floating up in the sky, but no one else there sees it. In Acts 9, Paul hallucinates a booming voice and a beaming light from heaven (and suffers hysterical blindness as a result); and Ananias hallucinates an entire conversation with God. In Acts 10, Cornelius hallucinates a conversation with an angel, and Peter falls into a trance and hallucinates an entire cosmic dinner scene in the sky. In Acts 16, Paul hallucinates a revelation of a man who tells him where to travel (this story probably drawing in one way or another on Paul's own mention of receiving such a revelation in Gal. 2.2). In Acts 27, Paul hallucinates a conversation with an angel. Many Christians receive spirit communications ('prophesy'), as indicated in Acts 19.6 and 21.9-10-and Acts 2.17, which quotes Joel 2.28-31 as being fulfilled in the church: 'I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams'.

Paul confirms this general picture firsthand. In Gal. 1.11-12, Paul says he learned the gospel only from a hallucinated encounter with Jesus (a 'rev­elation') whom he experienced 'within' himself (Gal. 1.16). He confirms this in Rom. 16.25-26, where Paul says, 'My gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ is according to a revelation'. 183 The other apostles received their information from revelations as well. 'Unto us', Paul says (meaning the apostles), 'God revealed [the secrets of the gospel] through the Spirit' (1 Cor. 2.10). And in 1 Cor. 15.1-8 Paul says, 'the gospel I preached' (which in Galatians and Romans he confirms came only by revelation) is the same gospel Peter and the others preached (this is the whole gist of Galatians 1 and 2: see discussion in Chapter 11), who also experienced special iso­lated visions of the Christ just like Paul's, which again was the qualifying requirement to be an apostle ( 1 Cor. 9.1: 'Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?'). 

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says he and others have many glorious 'visions and revelations of the Lord', and among these he includes hallucinated trips to heaven where the hallucinator hears and sees strange things, much like the entire book of Revelation, which is a veritable acid trip, an extended hallucination of the bizarrest kind, an example of the kind of thing going on all the time in the early churches (even despite the fact that that particular example is probably wholly fabricated). Paul then goes on to relate in that same chapter a whole two-way conversation he had with God, demonstrat­ing that he not only heard voices but conversed with them; he also says he experiences an 'abundance of revelations' (2 Cor. 12.7). And in 1 Cor. 14.6, Paul says 'what use am I to you, unless I speak to you by way of a revelation, or knowledge [gnosis, meaning spiritual knowledge], or prophesying, or teaching?' 

Similarly, the fact that Christians regarded as inspired scripture such books as Daniel, which depict authoritative information coming from God through both visions and dreams, entails that Christians believed authori­tative information came from God through visions and dreams (otherwise they would not deem such books as honest or reliable, much less scripture). They could therefore see their own visions and dreams as communications from God, too. Thus, even if books such as Revelation are fabricated, as symbolic discourses on the times, they still represent themselves as genuine hallucinatory experiences. 

i) Over the years, Triablogue has posted copious documentation for the veridicality of phenomena that Carrier breezily denies. In this post I'm just scratching the surface. 

ii) Because Carrier is attempting to prove that Jesus never existed, he's committed to redefining all eyewitness accounts of Jesus as hallucinations. 

iii) Carrier appeals to the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology to discount all dreams and visions as hallucinatory. A beautifully unverifiable, unfalsifiable theory, because it's so elastic: "and thus must have evolved for some useful function (or as a side-effect of something else that did)."

iv) In the footnotes, Carrier cites some people in support of his contentions who, in fact, don't share his outlook, viz. Felicitas Goodman, Gordon Fee, William James, Phillip Wiebe. 

v) Carrier acts as though 1C Christians were Whirling Dervishes intoning Gregorian chant. 

vi) Carrier hatches a conspiracy theory wherein the 1C Christian movement was a magnet for psychotics and schizotypals. Carrier has a lively imagination for Just-So stories. 

vii) Carrier disregards the different contexts of 1 Cor 15:1-8 and Gal 1:11-12. In the former, Paul is appealing to publicly available evidence because he's addressing churchgoers who doubt the physical resurrection of Christ. In the latter, Paul is appealing to his firsthand revelatory experience because he's vindicating his divine commission. In the former, Paul appeals to testimonial evidence to establish a fact about Jesus. That's a different issue than he's making in Gal 1-2, where he's talking about himself, to his independent authority. 

viii) In Acts 2, the observers don't literally see "tongues of fire". Rather, Luke uses "tongues" as a pun for xenoglossy. The description is poetic–Luke uses a simile–so it's hard to tell what the event actually looked like, although it has affinities with theophanic storms in the OT. 

xi) There's evidence that xenoglossy is an ongoing, albeit rather rare phenomenon. Cf. Del Tarr, The Foolishness of God: A Linguist Looks at the Mystery of Tongues (Springfield, Mo.: Access, 2010); Jordan May, Global Witnesses to Pentecost: The Testimony of “Other Tongues” (Cleveland, Tenn.: CPT Press, 2013). So that's not mythological. 

x) Since we don't have tape-recordings of 1C Corinthian glossolalia, we can't directly compare that to tongues in the modern charismatic movement. Hence, we can't identify the modern phenomenon with Paul's description. 

xi) I doubt there's a uniform explanation for alien abduction stories. Some "abductees" are undoubtedly nothing more than publicity seekers. There is, however, some evidence linking the phenomenon to old hag syndrome. In that event, some alien abduction stories may recount genuine encounters, only these are occultic entities which "abductees" reinterpret in science fiction categories. Cf. Hufford, D. The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions (University of Pennsylvania Press; 2nd ed. 1989); "Sleep Paralysis as Spiritual Experience," Transcultural Psychiatry 42/1 (March 2005), 11-45; "Visionary Spiritual Experiences in an Enchanted World," Anthropology & Humanism 35/2 (November, 2010), 142-158.

xii) No doubt some people hallucinate, and hallucinations can be induced. That, however, fails to debunk all such reports, for it depends on your understanding of the mind/body problem. On the receiver/filter theory of the brain, induced states of altered consciousness can sometimes access an objective reality that's normally screened out by the brain. Cf. M. Beauregard, Brain Wars (HarperOne 2012).

xiii) Carrier takes for granted that revelatory dreams and visions are hallucinatory. No doubt some are. But there's evidence for veridical revelatory dreams and visions. For instance:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/11/premonitions.html 

xiv) Unlike Carrier, I don't dismiss all reported apparitions of the dead as hallucinatory. Indeed, there's evidence that some–crisis apparitions–are veridical encounters. Same with some hauntings and poltergeists. For instance, P. Wiebe, God and Other Spirits (Oxford 2004).

xv) Even secular-trained psychiatrists refer some patients to clergymen for exorcism, because they exhibit symptoms of possession that are naturally inexplicable. For instance: 

Peck, M. Glimpses of the Devil (Free Press 2005)

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/

xiv) As an atheist, Carrier naturally dismisses sincere claims to hear an audible voice from God as psychotic or hallucinatory, but again, there's evidence that sometimes that's the real McCoy. 

xv) Dreams and visions of Jesus aren't confined to Christians. They include Jews and Muslims who are predisposed to be hostile to the Christian faith. For instance:

http://denverseminary.edu/resources/news-and-articles/a-wind-in-the-house-of-islam/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2015/06/03/dreams-and-visions-the-muslim-encounter-with-isa/