The atheist youtuber Pinecreek (Doug) is well-known for his cross-examinations with theists and his psychoanalysis of Christians who are bold enough to come onto his show. Most notably is his institution of the “flying man” thought experiment. Taking a page from John Loftus’s playbook [1], the gedanken experiment is an outsider test for faith meant to demonstrate the inconsistency of the Christian in affirming the resurrection of Jesus while denying the legitimacy of miracles in other contexts despite given ample evidence.
I have recapitulated a variation of the Flying Man as follows,
"Suppose that you were walking in a forest and found a book. The anonymous work mentions that decades ago a young man named Myron flew over the Grand Canyon in a single leap. You and I would both probably express skepticism towards the alleged feat and disbelieve it. Now let us suppose that we turn the page and find that this was allegedly witnessed by a group of people (let’s say 12 fisherman) who the text claims saw this. We would still be skeptical. The next page states that a group of 500 allegedly saw Myron float over the canyon (though we don’t have 500 individual accounts, only one source claiming that they all saw this). The last page concludes that the author of the work claims to himself have been an eyewitness who saw Myron levitate 20 years ago, but also implies that he received the information of the other witnesses through a creed circulated a few years after the event. Thus we have one firsthand account, and the same witness claims other reports second or third hand. We would still not believe such a story.”
The analogy is not difficult to draw. The Flying Man scenario is meant to mirror the minimal facts approach taken on by apologists such as Gary Habermas and Mike Licona, and parodies the creed found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul is our only firsthand witness in the epistles, reporting his own experience only vaguely and stating that other people saw this as well, through a tradition he (may have) received second-hand from Jesus’s brother and a disciple in Jerusalem a few years after his conversion (per. Galatians 1 and 2).
Though quite silly to conceive, there are elements of the thought experiment that are commendable. It demonstrates that the minimal facts approach that prioritizes Paul and 1 Cor. 15 is too vague and inadequate to truly bolster a claim as extraordinary as levitation. One source giving vague details about a miracle that is mostly reported second hand is not the highest form of evidence. Even if potential persecution is factored in, it is difficult to rule out the idea that Paul was honestly mistaken; he could have theoretically converted through some kind of guilt-induced hallucination. This is not that implausible when compared to the resurrection hypothesis.
One could counter this by taking a moderate or maximal data approach, arguing for the historicity of specific elements within the Gospel narratives or through the high reliability of the sources themselves. Doug usually counters this by adding onto the Flying Man thought experiment by adding on the idea that “decades later, through oral tradition, four anonymous books written by devotees of Myron give elaborate details of his flight over the Grand Canyon. We would still not consider this good evidence that said event occurred.”
This is true if one takes the large agreement in higher criticism that the Gospels are anonymous, apologetically motivated, contradictory, literary in their motifs, and rely on long chains of tradition reported at least second hand. One should be suspicious of details in sources of this nature if they report highly improbable events. Yet many scholars do not make these concessions, arguing that some in certain cases traditional authorial attribution may be correct [2]. Add this eyewitness testimony with sincerity through persecution and a history of reliable reportage, and only two options expound if lying is ruled out: either the witnesses were sincere but mistaken or they were accurate in their relaying. If the nature of the event is such that hallucination, misperception, and false memory could not realistically be applied (through over a month of eating, touching, and conversing with Jesus for hours at a time on repeated occasions), then reliable recounting is our last man standing.
None of this is to say that the Gospels do or do not fit these standards; that is a topic worthy of far more discussion elsewhere. It is only to say that there are hypothetical scenarios in which affirmation of a miracle (in this case the Flying Man) could be epistemically justified.
I have discussed the criterion needed for investigation into miracles in other posts. In brief, one could affirm that such a thing happened given certain conditions. We would need multiple firsthand witnesses reporting soon after the time of the event, and it would be helpful if some of these witnesses were originally opposed or hostile, rather than sympathetic and already prone to believe. This is especially true if this was proclaimed in an environment where such claims would be highly scrutinized. If we were then convinced that something happened and that the witnesses were sincere, we would then evaluate whether mistakes in perception could have been made. Did this event occur once or multiple times? Did the flight happen quickly and suddenly or did it last for long enough where normal perception could not be mistaken? Were the witnesses already familiar with Myron as a person, or was he a stranger to them? Did this occur in bad lighting or from a far distance, or did the witnesses have a good view where optical illusions couldn't easily overcome them? Were the descriptions consistent and rich in detail, or are they too vague and/or contradictory? All of this is relevant, yet it is all hypothetically possible once these controls are in place.
Another relevant detail is the context in which this occurred. Did this happen within a religious context, or was this just some strange superpower Myron seemed to have? At least in the case of Jesus, the Nazarene claimed to be a prophet and God’s agent, performing deeds which people thought were miracles and predicting He would rise again. Gary Habermas attempted to bring up this detail during his interview with Doug, albeit not communicated as articulately. If the person already associates themselves with God, that provides ample context for the conditions that God may potentially intervene in this scenario. In performing a miracle, God deliberately goes against the normal regularities of nature in order to stand out, so that He may communicate a message. With the resurrection and other Christian miracles that succeed it, there is the context of Christianity spreading to all corners of the globe and becoming the most prominent religion in human history. The miracle of the resurrection, if true, would certainly have a profound effect. One would need to add such an auxiliary hypothesis to Myron if his levitations occurred independently of a religious context, especially a religion whose message is already wide-spread. Why would God bother raising Myron to the clouds if its impact in the world was nil?
The Real Life “Flying Man”
There is, strangely enough, a real-life case study directly parallel to Doug’s proposed aviator. Joseph of Cupertino spent most of his childhood being told that he was a "good-for-nothing" peasant who would never accomplish anything.[3] The boy was notoriously clumsy, constantly dropping and breaking things and being unable to keep a job. Eventually, Joseph became a servant to the clergy, where he would spend his days in the stables taking care of stallions. Here he began to show potential, and after a long process of education and training, the man became a priest in 1628.
The priest would spend much of his time in prayer, and would constantly receive ecstatic visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary. These visions began to gain attention when they resulted in the Catholic levitating high in the air for extended periods of time. During mass he would sometimes be seen in a trancelike state, where he would suddenly fly over the heads of several people and land on the alter. On one occasion, workers attempted to plant a large stone cross into a socket, and Joseph was lifted up in the air, grabbed the cross, and supplanted it into the ground for them. There are more than 70 recorded instances of these feats, from a collection of hundreds of witnesses. The sheer number of first hand testimonies, alongside the contemporary sources about Joseph, make the priest's miracles better attested and more credible than almost any other saint in history, "[Joseph's feats][are] not paralleled in the reasonably authenticated life of any other saint."[4]
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| Painting of Joseph's levitations |
Despite his popularity, the Church was actually very irritated with these levitations as they would constantly (and understandably) distract people from prayer and devotion during church services. Though the Inquisition found him innocent of any demonstrable heresy, they made great efforts to mitigate the friar's public demonstrations of flight, requiring the clergy to move him to different locations in order to hide him from the general public eye. This effort largely failed; Joseph of Cupertino's fame only escalated as the talk of the town would attract religious pilgrims and political officials of all walks of life to witness him fly through the air. Perhaps his most well-known levitation was in front of Pope Urban VIII, where Joseph was suspended in the air when he attempted to kiss the Pope's feet in devotion. He was stuck floating until the Minister General of the Order commanded him to to descend back down, to which Joseph complied. Likewise was his backwards levitation in the presence of John Federeich, the Duke of Brunswick, which converted the Lutheran to Catholicism. The Duke himself was notable for his affiliation with the famed Christian philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, who in his writings briefly mentions Federich's conversion to the Catholic Church while visiting Joseph of Cupertino, though Leibniz fails to expound on any further detail to the event.
During the canonization process of the saint, well over 100 accounts from people various walks of life (politicians, Popes, cardinals, military leaders, medical doctors, etc.) claimed that they had witnessed Joseph levitate, sometimes outside and sometimes inside, often in broad daylight, and in various cities over a thirty-five year period.[5] Prospero Lambertini, the Devil's Advocate in the case against Joseph's canonization, eventually became impressed with the descriptions of "prolonged levitations" and "frequent elevations" at the attestation of "unexceptional witnesses".[6] The Church would eventually go on to canonize Joseph as a saint in 1767 due to two recognized miracles of healing that occured through his post-mortem intercession. Due to his alleged ability of flight, he is now fittingly considered the Patron Saint of pilots and astronauts.
Are these incredible claims far removed legend and rumor, or can they be grounded in eyewitness testimony? Claims of the friar's flights were officially discussed during his 1638 Inquisition in Naples when Church authorities expressed concern that Joseph's ecstasies were disrupting of clerical procedures. After his death in 1663, these claims became no less prevalent. Various written statements from eyewitnesses to Joseph's levitations began to be produced only a few months following his death. The earliest biography of Joseph was completed only a few years following the friar's death before being officially published 1678, about 15 years following the end of Joseph's life. This biography, written by Joseph's friend Roberto Nuti, uses primary sources from witnesses who at the time claimed to have witnessed the priest's levitations. Another contemporary of the priest named Don Areangelo, writing in an unknown year, recounts his own experiences and records 70 instances of Joseph's levitations derived from contemporary testimonies (he claims to have stopped at 70 because his book would become too long had he recorded the very numerous accounts of the time). Most well-known is the 1722 vita of Joseph written by Domenico Bernini, which cites previously signed affidavits and depositions from named eyewitnesses first produced during the start of Joseph's canonization inquiry. The vita remains an invaluable source for its "its copious transcription of eyewitness testimony based on the earliest documents." [7] To date, the most extensive record of Joseph's life derives from Gustavo Parisciani's San Gieseppe Da Copertino; the 1963 tome by the scholar spans well-over 1,000 pages and discusses at length all prior biographies of the Saint. Notably, Parisciani's work emphasizes its subtitle of Alla Luce dei Nuovi Documenti (In Light of New Documents), whereby the author discusses never-before published primary documents recently discovered in several monasteries and church archives across Italy.
Indeed, the documentation for these alleged miracles is quite extensive, and despite much of the original documentation being lost to time, the sources that we have access to are numerous, "The sources of sworn eyewitness testimony are found in the various trials (processi), which are listed, described, and quoted at length in the books of Bernini, Nuti, Rosmi, Parisciani, and others." [8] All in all, an estimated 150 signed depositions from eyewitness over a 35 year period mention Joseph of Cupertino levitating to various degrees. As Michael Grasso lays out, we have countless independent testimonies from a large number of geographic areas, all of which were consistent in describing Joseph as a mystic who could levitate, [9]
"we have multiple witnesses [to Joseph's flights]…observations in daylight, letters, diaries, records from the Inquisition, numerous written depositions, and a thirty-five-year-long career….The primary sources…include thirteen volumes in the Vatican Archives, trial records, biographies, diaries, letters, and official church documents originating in the different cities and convents Joseph lived in or visited, like Grottela, Naples, Rome, Assisi, Pietra Rubbia, Fossombrone, and Osimo."
What are we to do with such accounts? How can we assess these with our aforementioned filters? The accounts of Joseph’s miracles are contemporary with him, with the reports being given by known witnesses who were alive at the time. The sheer number of witnesses makes deliberate deception unlikely. Joseph's flights into the air are so well documented that few are able to deny their historical reality. Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University, comments as to the mystifying nature of these levitations, and the difficulty in explaining them historically,[10]
We have numerous accounts of levitators and we have not just accounts from peasants who think they saw somebody fly, but we have accounts from all sorts of different people at all different social levels, including crowned monarchs who would testify that they saw [Joseph] hovering. And how do you explain this? How do you explain all these testimonies? What can we make [of them]? And of course, we put that in brackets. We can’t say, Joseph Cupertino actually flew. No. We can’t say that. But we need to explain why hundreds, if not thousands, of people claimed to see him floating in the air. Not inside a building, but outside where it’s very difficult to pull off a magic trick...I’m talking about writing a history of the impossible. How do we approach the impossible? How do we write about it?
Additionally, even enemies of the Catholic Church reported seeing Joseph’s flights in the air, such as protestant officials visiting Cupertino at the time. Along with the excessive number of eyewitnesses, Joseph's flight is notable for its potential embarrassment. Unlike other Catholic miracles, the Church was not supportive of the priest's miraculous acts and saw them as greatly distracting when they occurred during mass. A cult of personality quickly formed around Joseph, so much so that the Church attempted to hide him from the public and frequently moved him from one location to the other. Such action is indicative of discomfort, and its initial controversy raises the probability that the miracle was not merely Catholic propaganda, but rather an attempt to cover up a real phenomenon from the public eye. This is furthered by the fact that Joseph was canonized not for his famous flights but for his healing miracles; though no one doubted that the priest could fly, the Church did not see the acts as theologically significant.[11] All of this reduces the probability of outright fraud on the part of the witnesses; the high number of reports, the attestation of enemies, and the disapproval and investigation by the Catholic Church who attempted to downplay such reports strongly rules against intentional deception.
We are down to two options: either the witnesses were sincerely mistaken, or they are relaying their witness accurately? The hypothesis of being sincerely mistaken seems highly implausible given the nature of the descriptions. William Lane Craig, in describing the resurrection appearances of Jesus, unknowingly evokes a sentiment that is applicable to Joseph’s levitations, “The appearances [in our case, of Joseph flying] were experienced many different times, by different individuals, by groups, at various locales and under various circumstances, and by not only believers, but also by unbelievers.” Hallucinations and optical illusions will be difficult in accounting for this.
Taking up this challenge, some skeptics have proposed that Joseph was a sort of gymnast, able to leap great heights and then land on the ground,[9] since Joseph's levitations were often proceeded by a great yell before a brief leap into the air. Joe Nickell, a skeptic who holds to the "gymnast" theory of Joseph's levitations, argues that "Joseph did not hover in the air but, after rapidly ascending, he then rested on some support such as a tree limb or held onto some fixed object such as a statue."[12]
Of course, this theory has issues if Joseph's levitations were sustained for more than a few seconds at a time, which some accounts do report. Nickell does admit that there are accounts where Joseph is described as staying in the air for an extended period of time; as an example, Dr. Jean Andino of Arizona State University records a few instances from Joseph's biographies where he apparently remained in the air for long stretches of time, "On October 4th, 1630, the town of Cupertino held a procession on the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi. Joseph was assisting in the procession when he suddenly soared into the sky, where he remained hovering over the crowd." Author Michael Grosso also argues that Joseph's levitations were "sustained floating" that could sometimes last around 15 to 30 minutes, and that this detail “seem[s] to point to the reality of an unrecognized force of nature...enough to render implausible the claim that they were tricks of perception.”[13]
Such instances of "sustained floating" are quite frequently mentioned in our primary sources. Of the more fantastic accounts are those that mention Joseph remaining suspended high in the air for hours at a time,[14]
"One Sunday, he [Joseph] was in the kitchen-garden with some other brothers when he saw a lamb belonging to the monastery and, wishing to have a look at it, one of the young friars took it up and put it into Joseph's arms. He clasped it to his breast and then took it by the legs and flung it across his shoulders. Becoming gradually more and more agitated, Joseph began to run through the garden, followed by his companions, anxious to see what was going to happen. Having thrown the lamb into the air, Joseph flew after it high up above the trees in the garden, and remained kneeling in space, as it were, for more than two hours (per piu di due ore) speaking with the Good Shepherd and adoring that Lamb the counterpart of which he had thrown into the air.
Or what of the famous account, mentioned earlier, of Joseph flying atop a church to plant a metal cross into its roof?[15] The cross itself was 36 feet high and required 10 men to lift; Joseph with great ease flew 70 yards and landed on the roof, and with a single motion supplanted the cross in its place as if the structure were nothing more than straw. If reported accurately, this cannot possibly be accounted for via mere acrobatics.Clearly then these durations make such a natural hypothesis practically unsustainable.[16]
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| Depiction of St. Joseph supplanting the cross |
The most impressive reports of Joseph's flights, most of which derive firsthand from sworn eyewitness testimony recounted under oath, include but are not limited to the following:[17]
- Joseph, upon seeing a large Madonna atop the chapel, quickly flew up to grab onto the structure, "At the sight of her [the statue], [he] gave a huge scream and flew about thirty meters [about 98 feet] in the air, embracing her." This is generally considered the highest height of Joseph's purported levitations on record.
- Several shepherds testified that they had seen Joseph, at the sound of pipes, began to dance to the sound of the music as he "flew up in the air like a bird, halfway to the ceiling, where he continued dancing above the main alter".
- Joseph once granted another friar temporary suspension from gravity, "he lifted [one of the friars] off the ground with great vigor of spirit, using only one hand under the arm, and swinging him around as though he weighed nothing, even though he was surely stronger, taller and heavier than [Joseph] himself."
- A man with a mental illness was brought to Joseph for healing, and was suddenly lifted up into the air with Joseph before being cured, "he went into a rapture, rising from the ground up high, and bringing the madman with him. They were both suspended in the air for almost ten minutes....[afterward] [the man]seemed perfectly sound of mind and went home."
Let us not forget that on more than one occasion, such purported levitations occurred under relatively controlled conditions by which others checked to see if any sign of trickey could be detected. In one account involving the maestro Antonio Cossandri, we read the following: [18]
"One of his biographers, Roberto Nuti, records the fact that on one occasion during the singing of the canticles it was noticed that Joseph was apparently kneeling in space, although part of his habit [robe] still touched the ground. Wishing to be certain of his complete levitation, one of those present passed his hands beneath him, thus assuring himself that Joseph was completely raised from the ground."
Nickell believes this incident was an illusion created by Joseph, who secretly lifted by the soles of his toles while raising his knees to give the appearance of flight. Nickell pushes back against accounts such as these, arguing that the three boys that attempted to feel under Joseph's robe would have been "compliant" and "not aggressively skeptical", though this attempt to poison the well hold little water. [19] If such witnesses were as credulous as Nickell claims, why attempt to check under his garments at all? Nickell describes the boys as being "invited" to feel under his robe, though the original text he cites gives no indication of this and rather implies that the witnesses did this of their own volition. The skeptic also forgets that this levitation, and others like it, involved Joseph in a state of ecstasy and unable to communicate with the boys as to potentially misdirect them as to where they ought to feel. If Joseph maintained this feat for several minutes in a dazed state where he was not speaking, how could he guarantee that they not feel around in the wrong places? A good magician makes sure to properly control any potential features of the illusion open to audience examination.
This likewise is not the only account where investigation of this sort is said to have occured. The surgeon Francesco Pierpaoli, in accompaniment with Dr. Giancino Carosi, testified to seeing Joseph levitate while being operated on in 1663. The doctors were operating on Joseph's leg, which was extended out onto the surgeon's lap; Joseph then fell into a trance with his arms spread out and his face gazing towards heaven. He floated a few inches (a "palm's length") out of the chair, staying suspended for around eight minutes. Surprised by this, the two medics got on their knees to better observe the levitation and confirmed that he truly was floating out of his chair unaided. No gimmicks to the chair or robe were to be found, and it was evident that a space a few inches in length separate Joseph's body from the surgical chair. His leg remain extended out, unable to be moved down even when pressure was applied by the medics. Eventually, they called his name to come down, and Joseph fell back in the chair. Joseph did not seem to have any recollection of the event while he had been in his dazed state.[20]
The fact that these reports mention Joseph levitating for very long periods of time, high above the ground, unaided, and in broad daylight, on several different occasions, fit none of the conditions for misperception or false memory. Had Joseph only been in the air for a few seconds, certainly such frantic details recollections could prove to be errant. It is however nearly impossible to imagine misremembering a man levitating several feet in the air and remaining there for tens of minutes at a time, especially when such acts of flight occurred not just once but countless times amongst hundreds of different people. It is not conceivable that one could still be mistaken given these details.
It may considered good historical practice to consider unintentionally shared details between two independent accounts to be potentially indicative of a shared memory. In Domenico Bernini's vita of Joseph, we find a rather strange and unexplained description of Joseph's flights causing his clothes to remain rather firm while in the air,[21]
"His priestly robes or his daily tunics, always remained very composed, both as he flew from the air or as he fell to the ground as though dead, thrown by the force of the Spirit that moved him. It in fact appeared as if an invisible hand wrapped itself around him and shaped the clothes appropriately...every part of his dress was as it should have been (as if he were motionless), a thing that seemed miraculous, given the way his body thrashed during the ecstasies and raptures"
This detail is not only peculiar but likewise counterintuitive; one would think that those flying through the air would see their garments blown by the excessive movement and wind, with their robes hanging loosely from their bodies as gravity pulls them to the ground. Though a definitive answer is given in Joseph's biographies, some scholars have noted striking parallels to this detail when consulting accounts of the levitation of demon-possessed individuals in Antiquity. Jerome of Stridon recounted in 404 AD an incident in which a witness described female demoniacs who, while visiting the tombs of saints, happened to levitate upside-down without their clothes falling on their face, "for she [Paula] saw demons screaming under different tortures before the tombs of the saints…They twisted their heads and bent them backward until they touched the ground; women too were suspended head downward and their clothes did not fall off [over their head]."[22]
Is this shared description of levitators maintaining gravity-defiant clothing a mere coincidence? Perhaps, though the unintuitive nature of said detail begs for an answer outside the realms of happenstance. Is it instead a product of intentional design, with Catholics using the writings of the earlier Church Patriarchs to shape their theology of levitations? This is possible, though one would think that advocates for Joseph's sainthood would want to strive away from paralleling the friar's levitations to those of demons. The levitations were already controversial enough during his canonization hearings due to their strangeness, so suggesting that they may have been caused by demon possession would do little to help his case. A third option, and perhaps the simplest, remains: the details of the sturdy clothes come neither from chance nor deliberate invention but from genuine memory of the witnesses who purported to have seen it.
Concluding Remarks
Whatever one may believe about Joseph of Cupertino, it is undeniable that he was a memorable figure whose alleged levitations easily supersede other similar reports.[23] One may digress with Eire's forecited contention that, historically, "we can't say Joseph of Cupertino actually flew." Why such a stipulation should be made escapes me. A better statement would be to say that we can establish that, in all probability, Joseph of Cupertino was seen in the air for extended periods of time by hundreds of people. Joseph may have actually "flew", but the explanation as to how such a thing is possible is something that history would have difficulty answering. Indeed, it is for that reason that some historians have conceded that the friar did in fact levitate, but that it was through some strange physiological or biological mechanism that we have yet to understand. Such a hypothesis is taken on by New Testament scholar Dale Allison, "My verdict is that, if the saint levitated, the explanation is some ill understood, rarely exhibited human ability." [24]
I will let the reader make what they will of Joseph of Cupertino. Regardless, it is a case far more interesting than Doug's hypothetical "Myron the Flying Man", establishing the conditions in which we would be more justified in arguing that something truly supernatural occurred. |
| Body of St. Joseph, resting in the titular Basilica in Osimo, Italy |
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I enjoyed reading through this. Honestly, that's incredible. -Kelton
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