Ellen White’s account of Adventism difficult to counter
Posted: Thu May 03, 2012 4:41 pm
As I see it, the single most persuasive secular argument for the authenticity of the founding events of Adventism isn't actually a single argument or line of evidence at all. It's the fact that no counterexplanation yet proposed for those events accounts for all the relevant data nearly as well as Ellen White's own story does.
If her claims aren't true, the fundamental question to be asked regarding Ellen is whether she thought they were or knew they weren't. In other words, was she in some sense "crazy" or was she consciously deceptive?
Let's take those two options in that order.
Ellen White might have been hallucinating. That's conceivable. However, raving lunacy scarcely seems to explain the lengthy, coherent and complex, Conflict of the Ages series, which includes the unmatched and inspired works Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, The Desire of Ages, The Acts of the Apostles and The Great Controversy. Not to mention her many miraculous visions, restoration of the true Sabbath and the creation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
More to the point here, though, is that many others — e.g., Hiram Edson, etc. — shared revelatory experiences with her. Were all of them mad, too? Or were they just lying?
Already, the notion that Adventism can be explained simply as Ellen White's hallucination desperately needs one or more major supplements.
Moreover, abundant data about those other co-witnesses demonstrates them to have been sane, sincere, respected and respectable, and, though at considerable personal cost, faithful to their testimonies. And there is no evidence — apart from her claimed revelatory encounters themselves — to indicate that Ellen White was prone to hallucination. But to assume in advance that her revelations were hallucinatory is to smuggle into the evidence the very conclusion under dispute, which is a manifest case of what logicians call "circular reasoning."
Suppose, instead, that Ellen was consciously lying. How can this be squared with her surviving personal writings not intended for publication, including journal entries and letters, which breathe sincerity on every page? How does it account for her willingness to suffer persecution from a young age?
And, again, how would Ellen's supposed dishonesty account for all of those co-witnesses? How, exactly, would it explain their experiences?
Let's suppose that she created bogus revelations to fool Adventists. (There's not a shred of evidence for this.) How would fake revelations account for the other exotic visions seen by other Adventists?
So let's assume, instead, that Ellen somehow induced hallucinations in her fellow believers such as Hiram Edson. How would their alleged visions account for the much more matter-of-fact mid-day experience of those who benefit from the practical application of Adventism?
At least two very different explanations have to be invoked in order to explain these things. Ellen requires the skills of a cunning deceiver (her own, or those of a co-conspirator) and, at the same time, she must be capable either of creating remarkable special effects 150 years before George Lucas or of unerringly selecting people from her small rural community crazy enough to obediently see precisely the visions she needed them to see.
No evidence supports either idea.
While the Conflict of the Ages as still only a rumor, critics mocked what was sure to be a silly and obvious fraud. But when the book actually came from the press and proved to be long, complex and remarkably dense.
A tortured historical narrative was fashioned, purporting to explain White’s visions as mere “nervous disorders” (http://www.whiteestate.org/books/egwhc/ ... 4.html#c04). But no critic has successfully accounted for the coherent, internally consistent genius of White’s published works.
If her claims aren't true, the fundamental question to be asked regarding Ellen is whether she thought they were or knew they weren't. In other words, was she in some sense "crazy" or was she consciously deceptive?
Let's take those two options in that order.
Ellen White might have been hallucinating. That's conceivable. However, raving lunacy scarcely seems to explain the lengthy, coherent and complex, Conflict of the Ages series, which includes the unmatched and inspired works Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, The Desire of Ages, The Acts of the Apostles and The Great Controversy. Not to mention her many miraculous visions, restoration of the true Sabbath and the creation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
More to the point here, though, is that many others — e.g., Hiram Edson, etc. — shared revelatory experiences with her. Were all of them mad, too? Or were they just lying?
Already, the notion that Adventism can be explained simply as Ellen White's hallucination desperately needs one or more major supplements.
Moreover, abundant data about those other co-witnesses demonstrates them to have been sane, sincere, respected and respectable, and, though at considerable personal cost, faithful to their testimonies. And there is no evidence — apart from her claimed revelatory encounters themselves — to indicate that Ellen White was prone to hallucination. But to assume in advance that her revelations were hallucinatory is to smuggle into the evidence the very conclusion under dispute, which is a manifest case of what logicians call "circular reasoning."
Suppose, instead, that Ellen was consciously lying. How can this be squared with her surviving personal writings not intended for publication, including journal entries and letters, which breathe sincerity on every page? How does it account for her willingness to suffer persecution from a young age?
And, again, how would Ellen's supposed dishonesty account for all of those co-witnesses? How, exactly, would it explain their experiences?
Let's suppose that she created bogus revelations to fool Adventists. (There's not a shred of evidence for this.) How would fake revelations account for the other exotic visions seen by other Adventists?
So let's assume, instead, that Ellen somehow induced hallucinations in her fellow believers such as Hiram Edson. How would their alleged visions account for the much more matter-of-fact mid-day experience of those who benefit from the practical application of Adventism?
At least two very different explanations have to be invoked in order to explain these things. Ellen requires the skills of a cunning deceiver (her own, or those of a co-conspirator) and, at the same time, she must be capable either of creating remarkable special effects 150 years before George Lucas or of unerringly selecting people from her small rural community crazy enough to obediently see precisely the visions she needed them to see.
No evidence supports either idea.
While the Conflict of the Ages as still only a rumor, critics mocked what was sure to be a silly and obvious fraud. But when the book actually came from the press and proved to be long, complex and remarkably dense.
A tortured historical narrative was fashioned, purporting to explain White’s visions as mere “nervous disorders” (http://www.whiteestate.org/books/egwhc/ ... 4.html#c04). But no critic has successfully accounted for the coherent, internally consistent genius of White’s published works.
