Transcription
This isn't a video I wanted to make. I'm a believer in the truth of the gospels and in the truth of the accounts therein. Some of that is faith, but it's grounded on what I found to be an extensive amount of evidence, much of which I've covered or will be covering on this channel. But as I've said for most of the videos on this channel, I'll be focusing on the logic of arguments behind issues in Christian religious studies, and I just can't continue to let the fallacy of undesigned coincidences go unaddressed.
It's my view that bad arguments undermine the goals of apologetics and give needed ammunition to skeptics who will use them to caricature and cast doubt on otherwise legitimate arguments. It does the field of apologetics no good to allow fallacious arguments like undesigned coincidences to go unchallenged. Because I have nothing but respect for the proponents of undesigned coincidences, I hope this critique is taken in the good faith manner it's intended. I'll do my best to keep this as brief as I can, and I'll put it in my queue to do a deeper dive later if need be.
Of note, I'm not addressing any argument or rebuttal in particular, and so it's possible that others have made the same points that I'm making here. I will say, however, that many of the criticisms of undesigned coincidences that I've seen from skeptics elsewhere do completely miss the point. And as a result, I've found many of the rebuttals that apologists make to be logically consistent, given the skeptical arguments they're addressing. Many skeptics, in their zeal to poke fun and otherwise ridicule the seriousness of the argument, misconstrue the argument and miss the most obvious rebuttal, which only further adds needless back-and-forths.
So let's start here with the definition of undesigned coincidences. According to the Daily Apologist, an undesigned coincidence occurs when an account of one event omits a piece or pieces of information which is filled in, usually incidentally, by a different recording, which helps to answer inquiries raised by the first. Thus, it is another piece of the cumulative case. As the apologist John Mlosh states, "The case is at its strongest when taken as a cumulative whole." In other words, it's death by a thousand mosquito bites.
So what's the problem with this? Honestly, it depends on what one's trying to prove with the undesigned coincidence. If all you aim to show is that the writers are drawing from the same fact pattern, undesigned coincidences are helpful and perhaps even revealing. However, the claims made by the proponents of undesigned coincidences go farther than this and unfortunately do not hold up logically.
For example, according to leading undesigned coincidences advocate Dr. Lydia McGrew, an undesigned coincidence provides reason to believe that both all of the statements that contribute to it are truthful. With respect to the gospels, this is untrue, at least it's untrue without committing fallacies. What the argument from undesigned coincidences attempts to prove is that the cumulative nature of these coincidences, undesigned, is evidence of the truth of the underlying events. In other words, undesigned coincidences are used to help show that the events written about are likely to have happened.
Concerning the gospels, this logic fails. This is only true where we have no other reason to believe that the writers are drawing on the same source materials. But if we already know that the source fact pattern is in fact shared, undesigned coincidences prove absolutely nothing additional.
So why do proponents keep making this mistake? It's because they understandably misunderstand the logic of the arguments leveled against it by skeptics. The skeptic is arguing that the accounts in the gospels are not true, that they never happened. Given the synoptic problem and the widely held belief that one or more of the synoptic gospels was copied or was at least literarily influenced by another, no amount of unplanned coincidences in this set of writings can rebut the skeptic without committing a fallacy. In fact, no amount of unplanned coincidences in any set of writings can offer evidence of truth to the underlying facts where we know that the writers had access to the same source materials.
What undesigned coincidences prove, and all they prove, is that two or more writers are writing about the same events. That's it. Put another way, we expect to find undesigned coincidences anytime different writers were offering different renditions of the same set of facts, regardless of whether those facts are true or not. The longer the fact pattern, the greater the likelihood of coincidences will be found. With respect to texts as lengthy as the gospels, finding them is all but a certainty. This is why the synoptic problem rebuttal is as powerful as it is.
Purely for the sake of argument, let's say there was a single original source that wrote an account of Jesus, and that source made the entire thing up. Then two later writers copied and embellished that otherwise fictitious initial account. What would you expect to find? You guessed it: undesigned coincidences.
To illustrate, I ran this simple experiment with a friend. I asked my friend, a writer who was not religious and knows nothing whatsoever about undesigned coincidences, to write her own version of the following story that I made up. The rules were that she could add details to the story, but that she couldn't change any of the facts that were already there. However, she could add or delete facts as she chose to, as long as it was the same story. She had 10 minutes in total to get something down.
For my first story, which for the record is 100% fiction, here's what I wrote: The band just finished playing their fourth song when the alien beings fired laser beams from their eyes into the crowd. Many were killed and many in the crowd fled. Jenny began to run, but she tripped and fell behind the bleachers. Mickey ran about a half mile to a gas station and called 911. It took more than 30 minutes for the police and paramedics to arrive, and by by the time they did, there were over 1,000 people dead. By this point, the creatures had gotten back into their spaceships and zoomed off. The paramedics eventually loaded Jenny into the ambulance and left for the hospital.
Now, here's what my friend wrote: After John and the Rockets played "Keep Dreaming," we saw hundreds of people scrambling. At first, we did not know what was going on until we heard the screams and saw people dropping. You could smell the stench of burning flesh. Red lasers were pouring down from the sky like raindrops. The creatures seemed like they were hunting down the fans like prey. I started running, but got scared about running in the open football field and so I found cover and hid. That's where I saw Jenny sitting and crying with her left leg covered in blood. Tommy tried to calm her down, but she was inconsolable. We had no idea where Mickey and Sally went, and none of our cell phones worked. It was like something was jamming our signal. When the paramedics finally arrived, we called for them to come and help Jenny since she couldn't walk. They took her to Good Sam Hospital, and Tom and I followed behind when it was safe.
So, what coincidences can you find? I found a few, and a few others that could have become undesigned coincidences if we had more "quote unquote" historical context. One example was that we learned Jenny tripped in the first case, but we learned why in the later example, which mentions her leg injury but nothing about her tripping. We also see that cell phones were not working in the second example. This may explain why Mickey went to a gas station instead of using a mobile phone to call 911 in the first example. If we knew more about the band or stadium, etc., we might find even more. But the point is, even if we had hundreds of these, these findings can't be used to prove the fact that the aliens in fact shot laser beams into a crowd of music goers. All this tells us, at best, is that the same underlying story, whether fictitious or not, is being referred to.
Thus, in the synoptic context, if a skeptic's argument is that the gospel accounts are fiction, the finding of undesigned coincidences doesn't disprove the fiction. That is, unless we commit the circularity fallacy of first assuming that the underlying gospel accounts are in fact true. And note, it doesn't prove that it's fiction either. But even if we concede, for the sake of argument, that there's independent basis to believe that the events recited in the gospel accounts are true, say archaeological findings, Tacitus, Paul, etc., undesigned coincidences add nothing to the evidence of that truth. For these very same reasons, we expect to find coincidences where writers are drawn from the same source of facts. And so undesigned coincidences prove nothing additional other than the source of the facts is the same.
This is only a helpful argument if that's the point, that the gospel writers draw from the same source. But again, the skeptic already concedes that. I'm afraid I don't see any way around this point. If you ask four moviegoers to write a narrative about Star Wars, there would undoubtedly be undesigned coincidences in those narratives. But all that would prove is that all four were familiar with a Star Wars story. If 200 years from now, the Star Wars story was hypothetically lost forever, and some future person stumbled on these narratives, they would not, and indeed could not, prove that the events in Star Wars really happened. Again, they really happened as far as the movie goes, but that's a far cry from saying that the events contained in those narratives indeed happened in real life.
This is why the synoptic problem issues are fatal to the undesigned coincidences argument, and why many of the conclusions drawn by the proponents are fallacious. There are areas where undesigned coincidences could have exceptional value, and that is in a case where we don't have any reason to believe that two or more narratives could have had access to the same fact pattern without observing the facts themselves. For example, detectives come across a crime scene where they're the only ones who could have certain knowledge of the facts of the scene, and where the only other way to have had the knowledge that would have been found in the witness accounts would have been to be a witness of the event at the scene. Perhaps that could be a case where undesigned coincidences could be useful. And in this situation, finding undesigned coincidences in the witness accounts would add credibility to the fact that their testimony is true.
Indeed, with respect to the gospels, if there was a case for undesigned coincidences at all, it would have to concern the Gospel of John, and the argument there would have to be that John never had access to the stories of the synoptic gospels, nor the gospel texts themselves. A difficult proposition in its own right, and unlikely to be conceded by any skeptics.
Before I wrap up, and just for completion, there's another problem with undesigned coincidences: that is, the argument can't be falsified. That's to say, undesigned coincidences can only be found. Failure to see them doesn't disprove the argument, and finding them tells us very little because there's no way to know just how many should be expected to be found in any given case. But I can touch on that and expand on that later.
In closing, here's how I view undesigned coincidences. This is not based on logic, and so if matters of faith are of no concern to you, there's really no need to listen any further. I'm someone who believes the accounts of the gospels are true. Indeed, I think the case for the gospels as being historical documents is quite strong. For example, I believe there's good reason to view at least the Gospel of Matthew as an eyewitness account of the events described within it, and a credible case that John is too. So, as one who already believes that the gospels are historical accounts, again, in my informed opinion, this is the most logical belief given the evidence. Undesigned coincidences just serve as the additional, expected validation of that belief. This does not survive logical scrutiny and does not rebut the skeptic. But undesigned coincidences help solidify something I already believe.