Jason Engwer either doesn't know about, or doesn't care about, authenticating evidence: The Enfield poltergeist farce, again

 I cannot believe what a dipshit Jason Engwer is.   I've written about his Enflield Poltergeist crap before.  See here and here.

He is expecting his readers to draw confident conclusions about the paranormal based on audio recordings of the "Enfield Poltergeist" that somebody else uploaded to YouTube.  See here.

Gee, Jason, have you never heard of authentication, and what is implied when you cannot or will not authenticate the evidence you supposedly want skeptics to deal with?

Or maybe you think authentication was invented only by skeptics to make sure they could get rid of most of the evidence for the spiritual world?

An examination of the people who uploaded that audio also doesn't inspire confidence:

DescriptionWe are The Paranormal Detectives - a duo of paranormal investigators that visit haunted locations in an attempt to catch evidence of the paranormal on camera. Everything you see on this channel is real. No evidence is tampered with. Nothing is faked. Be sure to subscribe to us and follow our journey of the paranormal world.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheParanormalDetectives/about

In other words, Engwer wants his Christian readers to think that these promises of authenticity are dependable, when in fact the "paranormal detectives" won't claim to have been the person who made the recording.  

That would be like me telling you that the moon rocks in my possession are not fakes.  Given that i wasn't the one who originally obtained them, how the fuck could I possibly expect you to believe that claim of authenticity was reliable?

Engwer is willing to talk all day and night about what he knows from the tapes, but he doesn't upload them, nor provide any authenticity declaration.  See here.

Engwer created a post entitled "The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes Made More Accessible",  but, as usual, he doesn't direct us to downloads of those tapes. instead, he boasts "I've only listened to a small minority of the audio so far. I intend to write posts about the contents of the tapes as warranted."  See here.

Engwers most comprehensive resource page for this paranormal fakery appears to be "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism", but, as usual, he doesn't provide links to downloads of the audio, but instead boasts "After the digitizing of Guy Playfair's tapes was completed, I wrote a post about it."  LOL!  See here.

Let's just say that if Engwer were being prosecuted for murder in court, and the chain of custody for the incriminating recordings had all of the flaws the "Enfield tapes" do, Engwer would be screaming his head off that charges need to be dropped for lack of authentication.  We skeptics are not the least bit unreasonable to demand, before we turn over our entire lives to an invisible man, that the evidence in favor of the spirit world meets the highest tests of authenticity. Jason, did you forget that spiritual evil exists everywhere, and according to you, especially in the case of people who are considering taking the spirit world more seriously?

And so you think that believing some shit found on the internet should be "good enough" to pretend that the reviewer has been placed under an intellectual obligation to either confess the reality of the spirit world, or confess their bias against supernaturalism renders them unable to objectively evaluate the evidence?

So unless Engwer thinks the authentication tests required in a Court of law are unreasonably high, he cannot balk at skeptics who demand that checkable Affidavits of Authentication demonstrating a chain of custody and authentication accompany these alleged recordings from the 1970's, before there is any chance of this evidence foisting the least bit of moral or intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to 'explain' it.

Yes, that would make things impossible for Engwer, because the two girls who played this joke on paranormal investigators have never done what would otherwise be normal in court, and testified under oath to the authenticity of those tapes.  At most they visited the haunted house 40 years later, and they have appeared on talk programs, but they have never done anything remotely near as serious as testifying under oath.

So the truth is, you don't have the first fucking clue how much of such alleged audio is authentic and how much isn't.  Maybe Jason has a better idea, but that is hardly relevant to the skeptic, who isn't getting anything more from Engwer except endless trifles about how skeptics aren't dealing with certain details and have misinterpreted the evidence.

Release the properly authenticated Enflield recordings, Jason, or use up some brain cells trying to reconcile the obvious contradiction between your strong belief that this poltergeist was real, and your own refusal to release the relevant recordings.

NOW what are you going to do, Jason?  Maybe direct us to equally unauthenticated videos and audios "from the internet" ?

Since Jason cannot be accused of being retarded, it is certainly reasonable to infer that Jason's refusal to release the tapes is not due to oversight, but intention.  Well gee, if the tapes prove so much, why are you unwilling to release them?  Did you have a deal with SPR to keep the tapes private so other people could make money charging access fees?  What exactly?

Did you have a vision of God who told you to avoid writing down what the clouds said releasing the tapes?

LOL

Jason once said "The case and the tapes deserve further study."  See here.

Correction:  the case and the PROPERLY AUTHENTICATED tapes deserve further study.  Which apparently means they don't become deserving of further study until Jason decides that the unbeliever's peril in refusing to believe in the spiritual is so great as to "deserve" giving them Jason's best possible evidence...as opposed to his ceaselessly trifling about this shit as if he thinks it was the 28th book of the NT.

Jason's post at the Paranormal Detective YouTube channel from about January 2021 is:

Jason Engwer 

2 months ago 

Thanks for posting these clips. I've listened to all of the tapes, in their digitized form, and have posted a lot of articles on the contents of the tapes, if anybody is interested. Search for a post titled "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism" at Triablogue. The tapes have a triple-digit number of hours of material, including a lot that hasn't been discussed publicly much or at all. The evidence for the case is much better than people typically suggest.

Then why aren't you releasing the full and properly authenticated audio?  Maybe you are afraid of bowling over the skeptics with so much evidence for the spiritual world that skeptics will start committing suicide?  YEAH RIGHT.  Triablogue exists for no other reason than to stomp down skeptical arguments.  So we are reasonable to believe that if you seriously believed the Enfield tapes proved your conclusions, you'd have uploaded them by now.  You've had since July 2018 to do this, but you haven't.  You forfeit your right to balk if skeptics become suspicious that you know your evidence is nowhere near as compelling as you pretend.

So now that we know Jason has all the tapes digitized, we have to wonder why he thinks it would be better for the world if they were only given mere tidbits of unauthenticated bits of the tapes here and there, downloadable without the slightest assurance of authenticity, interspersed with his endlessly trifling comments about how skeptics didn't account for this and that.  FUCK YOU.  

Demolishing Triablogue: Jason Engwer's stupidity in pushing the Enfield Poltergeist

Jason Engwer can't seem to get enough of the Enfield Poltergiest case.  See here.

Engwer seems to think that because he can trifle all day long about non-absolute evidence deriving from accounts that contain a mixture of gullibility, intentional deceit, and unfathomable stupidity and coincidences, this "poltergeist" continues to disprove atheism by proving that immaterial life forms do indeed exist, hence, "god" cannot be automatically dismissed merely because he is an "immaterial" life form.

I've got news for Engwer.  There are several compelling reasons why the real existence of immaterial life forms isn't enough to render atheism foolish.

For the last 20 years I've been attacking the arguments for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, which are now most cogently set forth by Christian apologists Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and Bill Craig.

1st Corinthians 15:17 says Christian faith is futile if Jesus did not rise from the dead.  So the bible forces Engwer to admit that his whole theological world necessarily falls apart if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  he cannot avoid that danger by merely carping that God's basic existence remain unaffected by Jesus' staying dead for 2,000 years.  In other words, Engwer must candidly acknowledge that if Jesus didn't rise, Engwer would still be in his sins, and his faith would be in vain, even if a resurrection failure left God's basic existence unaffected.  Engwer could not merely jump from "jesus didn't rise from the dead" straight over to "this doesn't mean atheists are out of danger!"   Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would, alone, put Engwer in the same degree of danger he thinks atheists are in.  How much danger is there in "your faith is in vain" and "you are still in your sins", and "we are found false witnesses" (1st Cor. 15)?

Let's inquire anyway:  What relevance would the alleged falsity of atheism have, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?  Would the generic existence of the OT YHWH still somehow "show" that the atheist was in the same degree of "danger" of divine judgment?

Fanatics like Engwer, constantly hawking the Christian merchandise,  would insist that a successful debunking of Jesus' resurrection doesn't remove the atheist's own danger, for in that case, Engwer would use the OT YHWH as the fallback option, and this god is still wrathful against atheists (Psalm 53:1).

But there are serious problems with employing the OT YHWH in the effort to overcome the embarrassment of Jesus staying dead for 2,000 years:

First, as demosntrated above, Jesus' failure to rise from the dead results in vain faith, still being in your sins, and being false witnesses before god, and being "most miserable".  That will not disappear merely because Engwer would prefer to jump immediately from "Jesus didn't rise from the dead" to "that doesn't get the atheist out of trouble!".

Second, would Engwer encourage atheists who remain unimpressed with the historical evidences for Jesus resurrection, to become Orthodox Jews in a way that was consistent with the OT?  Probably not, yet using this god as the fallback position leads to that consequence.  How could Engwer argue that even if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the OT YHWH doesn't want people to worship him today the way he instructed Moses and the prophets to worship him?  Did the classical theist god change his mind in the last few centuries?

Third, the OT makes God's wrath against deceptive theists far more clear than Psalm 53 sets forth God's wrath against atheists.  Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 prescribe the death penalty for anybody who would use signs/wonders or "word of the Lord" in a way that is not truly from God:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.   (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:19-22 NAU)

But no equally clear requirement of the death penalty is prescribed for Gentiles who deny this god's basic existence.  Where does the bible say people who deny god's basic existence are to be put to death?  It doesn't.

If it be more likely that Jesus remained dead for 2,000 years than that he rose (i.e., if any naturalistic explanation for the resurrection testimony is more likely true than the "god did it" explanation), then the sign or wonder of Jesus' resurrection, along with the Christian "word of the Lord" accompanying such sign, constitute the very types of misleading misconduct that this particular OT god is wrathful against.

In other words, if the historical probabilities favor Jesus staying dead more than the theory that he "resurrected", then the Christians would be in just as much trouble from the OT god as they think the atheists are.  If that is the case, then the fact that Christians are under the wrath of God as much as atheists, would intellectually justify the atheist to conclude that Christians do not have spiritual authority, so that what "god" wants is anybody's guess.

Hammering into oblivion the alleged evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection renders irrelevant any evidence for immaterial life.  The point is that Engwer is accomplishing zero apologetics good with all the time, money and effort he expends pushing this "immaterial life is more likely than not" crap.  As the above indicates, attacks on Jesus' resurrection can be so powerful that they render god's basic existence irrelevant to the atheist. 

This is why I encourage other bible skeptics to recognize that refuting the historical theory that Jesus rose from the dead has more power than in trifling with apologists about the philosophical shortcomings of "theism"...or in helping Engwer commit the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14) by bickering with him about whether there is anything about the Enfield Poltergeist case that puts the honest reader under any degree of intellectual compulsion to keep the door open to the possibility of immaterial life forms or the "spirit world".

And what do smart people do when they conclude that the preacher is in just as much trouble with his own god, as he thinks YOU are?  We convert to his religion, obviously, but only after Googling his claims for the next 55 years to make sure we don't end up incurring the wrath of god for making a theological mistake in the process.

A final argument is that Christianity's "truth" is irrelevant to modern-day people, since there is nothing in the bible indicating its authors ever intended anybody beyond the audiences they identified, to bother with what they had to say.  Engwer can trifle that an author can possibly intend for a wider audience than he specifically identifies, but that would be Engwer's burden, and he isn't going to turn that possibiltiy into a probability by merely noting that the bible and Christianity have survived for 2,000 years. 

For the Christian to argue that Christianity only survived for 2,000 years only because God was pushing it, is for the Christian to necessarily go outside their happy place (the bible) to make use of non-biblical historical evidence.  After all, precision requires that we ask the nuanced question "what form of Christianity is the right one, and how do we know it survived for 2,000 years?"  And the NT has no tolerance for forms of Christianity that Paul disapproved of (Titus 3:9-11, Galatians 1:8-9).  The mere historical survival of various groups that named the name of Christ in ways contradictory to each other, doesn't constitute the survival of "Christianity", but only the survival of "various contradictory Christianities".  Nothing about this suggests that among the lies and embellishments, one of those forms of surviving Christianity was the "true" one.

Since forms of Christianity Engwer says are false, were part of that rise (i.e., Roman Catholicism), we are not unreasonable to deny "god's" activity in keeping Christianity alive through the years.  Since Engwer is not a Calvinist (at least that's what he said some years ago), he cannot pretend that we are under some type of intellectual compulsion to accept that God also wanted the heretical forms of Christianity to survive in history.  Non-Calvinist theology allows for people to do things contrary to god's will.

Furthermore, a strong argument could be made that Paul was a heretic, the Judaizer gospel was much closer to what Jesus intended for Gentiles, and therefore, the very fact that the true form of Christianity died out and continued being replaced for 2,000 years by various fake forms, makes it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that Christianity's evolution through 2,000 years had more to do with a misrepresentation that the bible god hates (Deut. 13 and 18, supra) and less to do with God trying to keep some semblance of the truth alive. 

This rebuttal to the "Christianity survived through the centuries" apologetic will be formidable to most Christian apologists even if it isn't in the eyes of "Calvinists", who say God infallibly predestined people to commit all the sins they will ever commit.