In order to discredit the resurrection appearances of Jesus, skeptics often try to say that they were group hallucinations. In order to argue this point, they need to show an example of this happening in human history. One major example they try to use is when people claim that the virgin Mary has appeared to them. Since this happens to many people, they argue these are cases of group hallucinations. In this episode we deal with this counter.
Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!), "Big Adventure" by Paul Yudin.
Audio of the Ultimate Questions Podcast is found anywhere podcasts are available.
Hello and welcome to the Ultimate Questions Podcast. For a while now we’ve been evaluating the hallucination theory response to the resurrection appearances of Jesus. The main problem for this theory is that there are no good examples of group hallucinations, in all of human history. Last episode we dealt with a few of the bad examples of group hallucinations that skeptics bring up, which was things like mass poisonings, Bigfoot, Elvis sightings, and UFOs. In all of these cases we saw that they usually didn’t even count as hallucinations, and thus cannot legitimize group hallucinations, and also that they were not at all like the resurrection appearances in terms of quality, and thus, cannot be used as a way to compare them in order to say the resurrection appearances were hallucinations. However, there’s still one big example that skeptics use as a way to try to legitimize group hallucinations, and that is Marian apparitions. We will continue our evaluation by asking two questions, as we did last episode. Firstly, do the examples even count as hallucinations? And secondly, are the examples comparable to the resurrection appearances? As we’ll see, from a skeptical perspective, Marian apparitions can often be explained as either solo hallucinations, rather than in a large group, or they can be explained as a misapprehension of sensory data, or they can possibly even be explained as a hoax at times. However, if nothing else, we should note that Marian apparitions are not at all similar to the resurrection appearances in terms of quality, so they do not help support the hallucination theory.
So, let’s jump into our evaluation of Marian apparitions as a way to legitimize the idea of group hallucinations. These are times when people claim that Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared to them. There are actually many of these cases that have become quite famous. There’s a lot of interesting data surrounding these claims of apparitions, but for today’s purpose, we will look at some similarities in the stories, and then we can focus on the best examples, in order to see how they do or do not relate to group hallucinations, and the resurrection appearances. These Marian apparitions have become an incredibly important part of the Roman Catholic faith for many people, to the point that massive tourist destinations form around the location the apparitions first occurred, and thousands, and in some cases even millions of people visit them every year. There are even quite a few of these Marian apparitions that have been formally recognized by the Vatican as being legitimate cases of miracles. As a quick example of what they look like, some religious person, or small group of family or friends, will come upon an illuminated woman. When they talk to her, she will tell them that she’s Mary, the mother of Jesus. She will then give them some sort of message, usually revolving around repentance, penance, and erecting some sort of religious building on the site. The people will then tell their local Roman Catholic authority, and the location will then become a holy site for pilgrimages. As a brief note, this episode might be offensive to some Roman Catholics who are listening, so I want to make a couple of things clear. Firstly, Marian apparitions can be approved by bishops, and the Vatican, and at times even the current pope speaks in favor of specific apparitions. However, they are still considered by the Roman Catholic Church to be a “private revelation”, and thus does not receive a special type of authority. In fact, a good Roman Catholic is perfectly within their rights to disagree with the pope regarding some specific apparition, and even to deny apparitions are possible altogether. So, it is not as though speaking against Marian apparitions is akin to speaking against the Roman Catholic Church. If you are Roman Catholic, you are allowed to be skeptical about Marian apparitions, and can still be considered a good Catholic. Secondly, this is only a study into Marian apparitions as they relate to the resurrection appearances, and the skeptic’s claim that these are all hallucinatory experiences. The purpose of today’s episode is not to condemn Marian apparitions in general, or to insult the Roman Catholic Church. The point is to see whether they can be classed as hallucinations, or whether there are naturalistic explanations, and then whether they are similar to the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ in terms of quality.
To reiterate the point behind the skeptic’s argument, they will say that Marian apparitions are obviously not true, and so we need to explain why so many people throughout history have had experiences where Mary appeared to them as a ghost or apparition. The skeptic will argue that, since the people are having an experience that is not tied to reality, then it must be an hallucination. And, since there are so many people having the same kind of experience, then it must be an example of a group hallucination. And if we have a case of group hallucinations with Marian apparitions, then maybe the sightings of a resurrected Jesus by the disciples were a similar sort of case of group hallucinations.
As a first point, while there have been many people who have claimed to have seen an apparition of Mary, they are usually “different” apparitions of Mary, at different times, and at different places. Each individual Marian apparition is usually seen by just a single person, or a very small group of people. For example, the apparitions Akita, Laus, Guadalupe, Caacupe, Lourdes, and many others were all to a single individual. In these sorts of cases, it could very well have been hallucinatory experiences, considering you have a lone individual seeing the apparition. In some of these cases, we even have an individual seeing the apparition, and other people are present who cannot see it. For example, the apparition at Laus, Our Lady of the Golden Heart at Beauraing, and the more famous example of Our Lady of Lourdes. In these particular instances, this is the definition of what an hallucination is, because one person is having a sensory experience that no one else is having, because the sensory data is not coming from the real world, and instead, is in their mind alone. In fact, in some cases where a single individual saw something and others present did not, we even have good reason to think the person was in a dissociative state. For example, for the Lourdes apparition, the witnesses who were present and couldn’t see anything miraculous said that the young girl seeing the apparition was in a trance like state. Also, for the apparition at Beauraing, one of the apparitions was to the girl while she was sick in the hospital, where the other people present didn’t experience the apparition. Since she was hospitalized, there’s an increased chance there were physiological problems contributing, causing her to dissociate. In these sorts of cases it looks quite possible that the individual was in a dissociative state, which could have brought on the hallucinatory experience. So, yes, there are many people that have seen an apparition, but even if we grant that it was an hallucination, if a particular apparition is being seen by just one individual, then it doesn’t count as a group hallucination. Someone else, somewhere else, at a different time having a similar experience is irrelevant. These experiences cannot be lumped together as being the same event, even though they’re similar. So, all the Marian apparitions to a single individual cannot count as evidence of group hallucinations.
Another point worth considering in this discussion is that many of these Marian apparitions were to children. For example, the cases of our Lady of la Salette, Golden Heart, Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje, Beauraing, Velankanni, and many others. Even if we have a small group of three or so children claiming to have seen an apparition, I still don’t think group hallucination is the best explanation for the skeptic. Even if group hallucinations are possible, which I don’t think they are, they would still be extremely rare phenomenon that are quite unique in human psychology. It hardly seems appropriate to assume a few childhood friends coming back from playing in the woods did in fact have a strange psychological experience that’s unique in all of human history, rather than just thinking maybe their imaginations got carried away. As I mentioned in the previous episode of the podcast, most of us have experienced childhood imagination, like with my scenario where for years I would swear my friend and I had flown. So, I think it seems far more likely that these cases of children seeing an apparition are just their imaginations run wild, rather than group hallucinations, which we have no evidence whatsoever to consider real. So, when we see Marian apparitions to children, I don’t think they should count as evidence for group hallucinations, no matter how skeptical the person is.
There are even many cases of Marian apparitions where the person who saw it was not only alone, but was also a child. For example, Our Lady of Chapi, Virgin of the Poor, and Our Lady Help of Christians. In these cases, the story gets widely told, thousands of people flock to the site, all because a single child claims to have seen something. Regardless, I don’t think cases where there’s only one individual can possibly count as a “group” hallucination, since it’s not a group seeing it. I also don’t think the experiences of children should be regarded as being hallucinations, because it seems far more likely that it’s their imaginations. So then, these sorts of cases really shouldn’t be considered evidence for group hallucinations.
There is one case that is quite odd in regards to the details, as it relates to whether it was a group hallucination. In the case of Our Lady of Knock, not only was it not just children, but it also wasn’t a lone individual, nor was it a small group. In this case, 15 people, from age five to 75 were present for the same apparition. For this apparition, first of all, when we hear that about ten adults all saw the same thing, and they weren’t on drugs or anything at the time, we then start to consider other options other than hallucinations, because psychologically speaking we know that hallucinations are private experiences, and not shared. So we naturally start to wonder, what exactly did they see? Is there a possibility they were merely mistaken? For this case, they only saw something; there was no sound involved in the apparition at all, and even then, the apparition was still, involving no movement at all either. It was also during a storm, with rain and clouds. However, the area of the apparition apparently had light on it, and the rain never touched that area. The apparition wasn’t of just Mary, but was also of St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, and a lamb on an altar. The apparitions never spoke, and never moved. A last important point is that other people who were present said they didn’t see anything at all. Now, while this is definitely a strange case with unique elements, considering it was only visual, without even movement involved, in the dark, during a rain storm, it does seem like this could possibly have been a case of misapprehension of sensory data. The skeptic could argue that they did have some kind of visual experience, but it was vague, given the darkness, rain, and unique light situation. Because it didn’t move, or have any sound, and the visual data was hindered in some ways, there wasn’t very much sensory data, so their brains could have interpreted the situation as being miraculous. It also could have been a case where all the people involved were encouraging each other in what they were seeing, which caused the others to misinterpret their sensory data as well by the power of suggestion. This would also explain why others present didn’t see anything, because the power of suggestion worked on some present, but not all.
Another major aspect for Marian apparitions is a bit more of an offensive point to make. I don’t wish to be insulting to our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, but when the evidence is evaluated, the vast majority of these Marian apparitions do turn out to be great money makers for both the community of those involved, as well as for the Roman Catholic Church. There are exceptions, but nearly every case of Marian apparitions involves the apparition of Mary requesting a building to be erected on the site she appeared. The religious authorities then jump on this idea, create the building, and it becomes a massive tourist destination. As I said, these pilgrimage sites get thousands, and for some of them even millions of visitors, every year! A friend of mine has visited one of the largest of these Marian apparition sites, which was Guadalupe, and he described it by saying that there were so many people wanting to see the main site, that the Church literally built a conveyor belt to herd people through as quickly as possible. Of course, at these locations many businesses are set up, and vast sums of money flow through the area.
There’s one especially financial case of a Marian apparition, where the apparition didn’t tell them to build a building, but instead, instructed that a medal be created, and anyone who wore this medal would be granted with great graces. Because of this, the Roman Catholic Church started to mass produce these medals, and as of today has sold hundreds of millions of these medals. Considering the amount of fame and funds that are generated by these Marian apparitions, it’s hard to not consider the possibility that at least some of these apparitions may have been entirely faked, for the purpose of benefit to the church involved, the local community, or as a well-meaning attempt to benefit the Roman Catholic Church. The skeptic could also argue that the majority of Marian apparitions come from young women and children, who could have fallen prey to the ambitions of their local priest wanting to create a tourist destination in their area. As it relates to group hallucinations, if we are presented with a Marian apparition where a small group of people all claim to have seen the same thing, and it ended up generating a lot of fame and wealth, we then have to come up with the best explanation. Does it seem reasonable to suppose group hallucination as the best explanation, where hallucinations don’t even seem theoretically possible to be shared experiences, and where we have absolutely zero cases of this happening throughout human history? Or, does it seem more reasonable to say the case is possibly a hoax, all for the sake of bringing in additional funds to a struggling church and community?
To summarize, most of these Marian apparitions involve either one, or a very small number of people seeing it, and it often involves children who are prone to imaginary experiences. It also usually involves the erection of a building, creating a tourist destination, and a great deal of money coming into the community, and the Roman Catholic Church. If we take the experiences at face value, without additional skepticism, then these do usually sound like either the imaginations of children, or, hallucinatory experiences where there is no external sensory data, or at best, a misapprehension of sensory data. All this considered, it’s also important to note that Marian apparitions don’t match the resurrection appearances, because there were moments where Jesus appeared to many people at once, who were all adults, the experiences were prolonged, they involved sensory experiences that were quite obvious, rather than vague, and the disciples didn’t financially gain from proclaiming the resurrection, and instead, were often punished quite severely, and even killed for it. For these reasons, not only do I think Marian apparitions are not best explained as group hallucinations, but I also think they shouldn’t be used as a comparison to the resurrection appearances.
However, there’s one last Marian apparition I want to go into, which is probably the most famous of all of them, and which is also completely different from all these others. It’s also probably the best Marian apparition for the purpose of the skeptic trying to argue that mass hallucinations are possible, because this one involved an event that happened to a very large group of people, all at one time, and in one location. This is the Marian apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, in Fatima Portugal. Back in 1917, three children, who were ten, nine, and seven years old, saw the virgin Mary while they were out tending the sheep. The apparition told them to come back on the 13th of each month, for the next six months. Her message was normal for Marian apparitions, where she asked for prayer and repentance, but she also asked for “devotion to her immaculate heart”. And, of course, she asked for a chapel to be built in her honor. While these aspects are quite normal for Marian apparitions, it’s what happened next that is quite unique. The fame of this situation kept growing, until on October 13th, 1917, the apparition of Mary was supposed to show up again, and this time between 70 and a hundred thousand people showed up for it! Then, on that day, what occurred has been called “the miracle of the sun”. It had been raining, and the clouds parted, revealing the sun, and the people witnessed a strange phenomenon for roughly ten minutes. Some people said it looked like the sun would come crashing down into the earth. Others said it looked like the sun bounced around the sky. People were screaming, and crying, and some were confessing their sins. We even have quotes from different people’s testimonies regarding the event. One said the sun looked like it was “surrounded with scarlet flame” one moment, then “aureoled in yellow and deep purple” in the next moment. Another said it was “spinning from the sky… it was like a fire wheel”. Another said this, the sun “seemed to come down in a zigzag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment.” The sun then went back to normal, and apparently the people’s clothes, and even the ground, were totally dry. The Roman Catholic Church has deemed the miracle of the sun “worthy of credence”. Because of the dramatic nature of this particular scenario, some people have tried to claim that this is a legitimate case of mass hallucination. There were many people all seeing something extraordinary, and there was a very high degree of expectation among the people, which could prime their minds for being able to have an experience outside of the normal every day sensory experiences. Basically, some argue it was a case of mass suggestion, which led to mass hallucination. Three skeptics that have argued for this being a mass hallucination are Michael Shermer, Joe Nickell, and Richard Wiseman.
Other skeptics have looked at the data concerning the miracle of the sun at Fatima, and they recognize that it can’t be explained as a mass hallucination, because you just can’t have thousands of people all hallucinating the same thing at the same time, because that’s not how hallucinations work. So, these skeptics then look to natural phenomenon to see whether something like this can be explained. For example, there are atmospheric phenomena called sundogs, or parhelic circles. You can see examples of this on YouTube if you type it in. What it looks like is a giant ring of sunlight in the sky, with almost a cross shape in the middle, and with three suns attached to it, one on the left, one of the right, and one in the middle. I admit that, if I had a high degree of religious expectation, for example thinking a miracle would happen that day, and I saw a sundog right when I thought something supernatural was going to happen, and I didn’t know what it was, I would probably feel very justified in feeling it was miraculous, and yes, I might even scream. Another explanation is that this was a sun pillar, which is when it does somewhat look as though the sun is going to come crashing down into the horizon. In both of these cases, these phenomena happen in cold weather, and the miracle of the sun happened in October when it’s cold, and it happens when there is water in the air, and it had just been raining on this particular day. Even if this is the case, it’s still quite incredible that it happened on the exact day that Mary was supposed to show up again. However, all the previous cases for this apparition were actual sightings of Mary, and this last dramatic event, while impressive, was still just an atmospheric phenomenon, and involved no appearance of Mary, no message, and no supernatural elements.
When evaluating Fatima and how it applies to the nature of hallucinations, we really need to look at the two parts of it separately, because they’re so different. We have the actual appearance of Mary to the three children, and then the event of the “miracle of the sun”. The actual Marian apparition was just like all the other apparition stories. It could be argued that they’re children, so the whole thing was just their imaginations. This is different from hallucinations, because while there is no external sensory data, there’s also no actual sensory perception happening in the child’s brain. They’re just playing pretend, and their brains aren’t developed enough to always be able to differentiate fantasy from reality. An hallucination is when there is a legitimate sensory experience happening within the person’s brain, and it's not caused by external real-world stimuli. So, Fatima doesn’t even need to be explained as an hallucination, or even a misapprehension of sensory data, simply because the children who saw it were young. Another argument the skeptic can make is that it’s possible the children were encouraged by someone and involved in a ploy to try and create a tourist destination, which succeeded, because so much money poured into the area. In terms of the resurrection, this, like most of the other Marian apparitions, isn’t a fair comparison. Here we have a small number of very brief moments, to very few people, while the resurrection had more encounters, some of them were for long periods of time, some of them were to far more people, and the appearances were to grown adults.
However, when we evaluate the miracle of the sun, we get quite a different answer. The entire experience was impressive, and caused a great deal of emotional reaction from the observers. However, it was still vague. There wasn’t even an apparition of a person in any way. There was no message either. Realistically, everyone saw lights in the sky, and that’s it. Now, this cannot be explained as an hallucination, even though some skeptical scholars try to say that it was. The idea that literally thousands of people all hallucinated the same sort of thing, at the same time, and the same location, is just not the sort of thing that’s possible. Again, when you get a large group of people, they cannot have the same personal and internal sense perception happening in their brains if there’s no external sense data from the real-world. It is, however, quite possible that there was a vague and limited sort of sensory data coming from some atmospheric phenomena happening with the sun, and since the people observing it had high religious expectations, they then applied their own sense of meaning to the event. This would be a misapprehension of sensory data, as we’ve seen in many other cases, and then also mass suggestion from the crowd’s reaction. I think many skeptics get confused between these terms, which is why I’ve gone over them so many times. They think of people having an experience that’s not really real, and then classify it as an “hallucination”, without really knowing the nuance between the different sorts of experiences and psychological phenomena that are at work. So, if we say the miracle of the sun was a vague sort of sensory data from an atmospheric event, and then the people applied religious meaning to what they saw, that would not be able to be counted as a legitimate hallucination, and thus cannot possibly work as an example of a group hallucination. When applying this to the resurrection, it’s incredibly different. With the resurrection appearances we had face-to-face meetings happening with Jesus, long discussions and sermons, sight sound and touch all at once in some cases, and there were many events during multiple weeks’ time. This is very different from the miracle of the sun, since this event did not involve any type of message, no person to interact with, the only sense involved was sight, it only lasted ten minutes, and it can even be explained naturalistically. Therefore, it is not comparable to the resurrection appearances.
So, let’s come back to Richard Carrier’s point that I mentioned in the previous episode. He believes that the disciples hallucinated the appearances of Jesus. The example he uses is from Dr. Louis Jolyon West, who wrote about a vague example of sailors at sea on a lifeboat after a shipwreck, and they see a nonexistent ship on the horizon. In this rather non-specific and hypothetical example, we see it falls prey to the same sort of situation as our other examples that we’ve gone through. Here, we have a case where there is sensory data involved, because the sailors are looking off into the distant horizon, and thinking that they’re seeing something. It’s also not a completely private and internal event where their brain is inventing a complete experience. Instead, they are receiving minimal and vague sensory data from the real-world, and because of their expectations and hopes, their brains are filling in the missing data by making them think they’re seeing a ship. Because it is real-world sense data coming in, it’s not purely internal, and thus not an hallucination. Since it’s not an hallucination at all, then it cannot be a group hallucination, but instead, it is a misapprehension of sensory data, leading to the power of suggestion. This is what allows for all of the sailors to see the same thing. Interestingly, while Dr. West uses the term “hallucination” to describe this event, he also describes it as an “external object” that is being “inadequately recognized”. That just sounds like misapprehension of sensory data, rather than the sailors having legitimate hallucinations. Again, we need to use proper terminology, and recognize the nuances of each case we evaluate, as we’ve done today, in order to see that these sorts of cases are not comparable to the resurrection appearances.
On that note, many of the examples the skeptics use are just misapprehension of sensory data, so, could the resurrection appearances have been like this, where the disciples did in fact have some real-world sensory input coming in, but the data was vague, so the disciples’ brains filled in the data by making them perceive the risen Jesus? Firstly, as I’ve mentioned in previous episodes, while the doctrine of resurrection was in Judaism, it was supposed to happen at the end of time. This means that no one was having the expectation of a resurrection here. We can also see a good example of this view of Jewish resurrection theology when Jesus told Martha that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, and Martha’s response is that she interpreted what Jesus said as being at the end of time, rather than right then, because that’s the understanding of resurrection she had. We can also see in various parts of the story that the disciples lacked faith after Jesus’ death, so they didn’t have a hope or expectation of a resurrection for Jesus. This means that, even if the sensory data the disciples perceived was vague, their brains still wouldn’t have filled in the gaps by making them perceive Jesus alive again. This is because the expectation is incredibly important in cases of misapprehension of sensory data. Your brain fills in the gaps with what it “thinks” is happening. This is why lifeboat survivors will see a boat on the horizon of the ocean, and not a bus or a train. They expect boats out in the water, and not trains. If someone is stranded in the desert, they will see an oasis on the horizon, or a merchant caravan, and not a boat. So, when the brain fills in the gaps of vague sensory data, it will use past memories of similar situations to do so. Since the disciples did not expect a resurrection, their brains would not have conjured up a risen Jesus. But, it actually gets worse than that. These weren’t cases with vague sensory data. In many of the resurrection appearances it wasn’t dark, Jesus wasn’t far away, and it wasn’t brief. We have cases where Jesus showed Himself to a room full of people, in the middle of the day, for extended periods of time, it was up close and personal, and He had conversations with them collectively. So, since the sensory data was not vague, and instead it was quite clear and obvious, then many of the resurrection appearances could not have been a misapprehension of sensory data.
We’ve looked at many examples in these two episodes of the podcast that skeptics bring up as comparable situations to the resurrection appearances, where their goal is to say that group hallucinations are possible. In all of these cases we see similar sorts of situations, and similar sorts of conclusions. When the sensory data is vague, it seems to be more of a case of misapprehension of sensory data. When children are involved, it can be easily explained as imagination. When there are great practical benefits to those involved, it can be argued they were making it up. When it’s just one person, or a very small group, it can’t work as an example of mass hallucination. And, when the data becomes quite impressive, where we have many people all seeing the same thing, the conclusion that it’s an hallucination stops being reasonable, and we have to start thinking about the possibility the case is legitimate, even if it goes against our biases. With the resurrection in mind, the sensory data involved was not vague, there were no practical benefits for the disciples (in fact quite the opposite, since they were persecuted), and it wasn’t just one person, in fact, at times it was many people. The data from the resurrection appearances starts to be strong enough that it looks like the disciples had legitimate experiences of Jesus after His death. We need to follow the evidence where it leads, rather than simply succumbing to our biases. In the end, the skeptic is left with the same problem they started with; there is nothing in all of human history that is comparable to the resurrection appearances. They cannot be explained away as group hallucinations, in fact, we have no good examples in all of human history of any event that can be best explained as a group hallucination.
For the next episode, we’re going to look at another way that skeptics try to argue in favor of the hallucination theory. This is the idea that Christianity possibly started out as a mushroom drug cult. While that may seem laughable to you, the popular podcast host Joe Rogan seems to actually be in favor of this view, and has mentioned it multiple times on his podcast. While this isn’t an extremely popular view, it is one that is held by people in our culture. On this view, the early Christians could have hallucinated the resurrection appearances of Jesus after His death because they had taken hallucinogenic drugs. So I hope you’ll join me next time, for the argument of mushroom drug cult origins for Christianity, here on the Ultimate Questions podcast.
Comments