Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appeared before the Knights of Columbus to reassure them that they shouldn't be afraid to... (I'm tempted to say "make fools of themselves"!) ... appear foolish to "educated circles". He was seeking to reassure them that religion does not make you dumb.

I think he was basically correct on his central point. After all, some religious people are dumb, but some are very smart. The set of religious people includes all sorts. Including, no doubt, those smart people who are good at rationalizing things they came to believe for not-smart reasons... as Shermer once said. No matter how right Scalia may have been, though, I just couldn't help notice the incredible irony about how he attempted to make his point. Now, bear in mind that Scalia is a brilliant man. Very smart. Everybody - friends, enemies, and colleagues - all agree that he is one of the brightest legal minds out there. Corrupt? Maybe. Partisan? Definitely. Dumb? Never.

So, how can one of the brightest legal minds out there possibly misunderstand the nature of eyewitness testimony badly enough to say this?

“Intellect and reason need not be laid aside for religion,” he said. “It is not irrational to accept the testimony of eyewitnesses who had nothing to gain. There is something wrong with rejecting a priori (deductively) the existence of miracles.”

Now, miracles are tricky class of events, and their status will certainly depend upon how you define them, so I won't challenge whether it is proper to use deductive means to rule out the possibility of them. The real problem is that the guy poised to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America has trouble distinguishing between eyewitness testimony and hearsay!

The simple fact is that there are only a couple of passages in any text anywhere that include a claim to be an eye-witness to Jesus' time on earth. Of those very few passages, some are very much in dispute as to meaning. Others are disputable as to the validity of the claims. And none of them but the very questionable John 21:22-24 testifies to any of the miraculous events Scalia referred to. This passage states:

Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what [is that] to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what [is that] to thee? This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.

It's impossible to tell if the author of John is claiming to be the "wandering Jew", or if he is claiming to have gotten his story from him. Even if the author is claiming to be an eye-witness himself, he certainly wasn't witness to the virgin birth and several other miraculous events. Furthermore, there is no way to authenticate his possible claim to eye-witness status.

Furthermore, Scalia should recognize that eye-witness testimony is all but useless unless there is some mechanism by which to cross-examine the witness. Since the witnesses in this case (if any) are long dead, and cannot even be reliably placed near the events that they claim to describe, their testimony really counts for no more than legend.

Now, Scalia could have just as well said "religion doesn't make you dumb, and there is nothing wrong with believing in things because of religious traditions." Instead he effectively said - "look, religion made me - an otherwise very smart man - dumb."

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Posted by smijer at February 1, 2005 03:31 PM