Uncertainty, miracles, conspiracies and aliens

[Mithrae]

In a couple of recent threads a number of folk have openly stated that even if someone were to regrow an amputated leg, they still would not consider it to be evidence of divine healing - or at least no moreso than evidence of leprechauns or magic! One said that he wouldn't consider it evidence of anything unnatural at all. Two others went even further, insisting that even if millions of Christians were suddenly 'raptured' and/or the clouds were filled by armies from heaven with Jesus at their head, it still wouldn't impress them as evidence for Christianity; they'd consider invading aliens a more likely explanation.

Such frank honesty is laudable, but it obviously undermines any claims of "no evidence" when it's clear that there is literally nothing which would be accepted as compelling evidence!

But more than that, it seems to highlight a fairly similar level of dogmatism and rationalization for current views (or against opposing views) which exists on both 'sides' of religious discussion. The ad hoc search for any 'explanation' besides the obvious in the case of the not-so-hypothetical amputation question reminds me quite forcibly of evanglical Christians' attempted rationalizations for some of the worst biblical contradictions. What is so often lacking is any genuine recognition and attempted quantification of uncertainty. People have a tendency to stack evidence or explanations on their preferred side rather than weigh them against each other. This is seen in discussions of Jesus' supposed resurrection for example, where Christian apologists insist that resurrection is the 'best' explanation by pseudo-historical criteria while critics insist that a natural explanation is 'more likely' than the miracle, while few if any folk acknowledge that merely being best or more likely isn't the same thing as ruling the opposing view out.

The alleged 'Miracle of Calanda' highlights this point quite nicely I think. Claims of miracle healing are a dime a dozen - claims of healed amputation rarer, though they're still out there - but by definition they are non-repeatable events, and actual investigation and documentation providing credible evidence for the rest of us is comparatively rare. I made a thread about this one last January, tracking down the sworn testimony of four surgeons and medical workers who'd seen the amputation and showing that the most popular 'debunking' of the event hinged around the utterly false claim that no such testimony existed. See the thread linked below for details. The only way around the conclusion of a miraculous healing (even by leprechauns ) would be to assume without evidence that the authorities and the doctors conspired to falsify the miracle, up to and including lying under oath; possible... plausible... maybe even probable in comparison to the miracle, but nowhere near 100% certain. However after three weeks and four pages of discussion, any admissions of uncertainty were still conspicuously absent:

In this specific case of Pellicer's leg, of course the alternative conspiracy theory 'explanation' is a possibility, even though it's an ad hoc approach intended to explain away the evidence rather than following it. I would (and did) even agree that it is "more likely" than the miracle conclusion.

However the question which I have repeatedly asked, and so far not a single person has answered, is how much uncertainty do you recognize in your opinions about Pellicer's leg? Are you 100% confident that this ad hoc explain-away-the-evidence Church conspiracy theory is true, or do you recognize that since the evidence provided by the various witnesses (especially but not limited to the four hospital workers quoted in the OP) points towards a miraculous healing with no direct contrary evidence available, that also must be a viable conclusion?

It's unusual, but perhaps telling, that so far not a single person has been willing to acknowledge any such uncertainty in their views.

Imagine if some of our more prolific atheist posters were willing to actually admit that the conspiracy explanation - or whatever alternative is chosen in the case of other well-documented miracle claims - is far from one hundred percent certain; to acknowledge even a 10% possibility that God healed the leg, with or without intercession from the 'blessed virgin Mary.' And then I suppose since it's on the table, another five or ten percent chance that it was leprechauns or magic

Or imagine if some of our more insistent Christian posters were willing to acknowledge that the evidence for this miracle of Calanda is of far higher quality than the evidence for Jesus' resurrection... and since even Calanda's miracle is far from certainty, the rational conclusion is that it's most likely Jesus didn't rise.


How important is it to recognize and (ideally) attempt to at least vaguely quantify our uncertainties - to apply our scepticism to all perspectives equally?
Would such admissions of significant uncertainty - of the very real possibility that our opponents are right, or at least closer to the mark - do anything to change the content, tone and outcomes of our discussions here?

[Mithrae]

Such frank honesty is laudable, but it obviously undermines any claims of "no evidence" when it's clear that there is literally nothing which would be accepted as compelling evidence!

Did anybody say that? I certainly didn't say that.

Suppose somebody regrew a leg and I told you Tinkerbell caused that. Would you call that "some evidence of Tinkerbell"? I don't see why you would do that. It's just a claim, not evidence. What is supposed to link Tinkerbell to the leg? How is the Tinkerbell theory any stronger or weaker than the leprechaun theory, or the god theory?

Aren't they all just arbitrary unsupported claims?

Either it's fair to say that every event is evidence of every hypothesis, or else you need something better than someone claiming goddidit before you have actual evidence.

[Replying to post 6 by wiploc]
Exactly. I mentioned this in the other thread recently where this was being discussed. I don't think I got a reply explaining just how it is Mithrae was able to link the leg regrowth to the prayer to Mary, especially since there was an admission that prayers were being offered for years. No evidence of a causal relationship was offered, just the assumption that it was a years-long stretch of prayers that 'Marydidit'.
Convenient how Mithrae left that part out of his OP.

For some the OP was too long to read properly, and for others it was too short to cover everything adequately

The difference between Marydidit and leprechauns or Tinkerbell is the latter are entirely ad hoc notions... as I suggested in the OP. There is literally nothing to connect leprechauns to the event, whereas long and fervent prayers to Mary do explicitly bring her into the picture, even if you suppose it to be tenuously.

Bear in mind of course that this is not just a once-off anecdote. The Marian shrine at Lourdes has perhaps the best-evidenced 'miracle' claims I've encountered; thorough documentation of cures which have passed panels of local medical workers (3/4 majority) and more careful investigation by international medical experts (2/3 majority of 20ish doctors) certifying them to be rapid, complete and unexplained by contemporary medical science (which the patient's local bishop may then deem to be a 'miracle'). Of the thousands of alleged cures, many though obviously not all of which may be genuine, there've been seven which were confirmable and impressive enough to pass the rigorous process and eventually be certified as miracles since 1970. I like the Calanda 'miracle' not because it's got the best evidence, but because it clearly allows for legitimate uncertainty, and cuts both ways in showing how much poorer the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is.

I was raised a decidedly anti-Catholic Protestant and among mainstream Christian sects I still have bigger concerns about that institution than all but the most rabid of evangelicals, so I'm not exactly comfortable with the Mary thing. Certainly I would not conclude from these that miracles occur only in the Catholic church - they just seem to be most careful with the paperwork! But the evidence does seem to clearly suggest some efficacy in prayers to Mary which cannot be even remotely rivaled by leprechaunists or Tinkerbellists.

Claims of miracle healing are a dime a dozen - claims of healed amputation rarer, though they're still out there - but by definition they are non-repeatable events,

Why unrepeatable? That's certainly not part of the definition. Cut it off again, and pray again, and see then if you don't start winning converts.

Of course it is; if it could be repeated on demand it would just be normal, not 'supernatural,' miraculous or paranormal. That's another distinction against the magic theory too, by the way; magic is supposedly human harnessing of extra-ordinary powers and therefore should be repeatable. In contrast miracles by definition are given at the discretion of the gods.

And in a similar vein:

Okay, for the sake of argument, (note, this means I don't really believe it in reality), I will agree that there was a man who had lost a leg, who prayed for years at a shrine to Mary the mother of Jesus, who then had his leg regrown (somehow) and that a number of doctors signed off on it.
Now please explain how you are able to link the regrowth of the leg to praying to Mary (for years, I have to remind you). How sure are you that the one caused the other? If it did cause the regrowth, why did it take years?

As I mentioned in the original Calanda thread, the healing occurred in the year of the 1600th anniversary of a supposed apparition of Mary to James the Greater on the banks of the Ebro. Perhaps that year was important to Mary herself, or perhaps its significance to Pellicer increased his faith and the fervency of his prayers.

Besides which, how many people would believe the miracle had really occurred, if there weren't so many who'd known Pellicer as a one-legged beggar for those two years?

And if such miraculous healing occurred at the snap of the fingers, what would that do to so many others who don't get instantly healed? Far from being some kind of ad hoc hypothesis, the bible itself explicitly states that Jesus considered redemption from sin far more important (and far more impressive) than healing a paralytic, or on other occasions that he couldn't even do many miracles due to the people's lack of faith.

Prosperity doctrine preachers aside, I don't think there's anything in the theology of any major religion suggesting that the gods are just magic genies whose job is to grant our every whim. Perseverance and fortitude throughout the suffering and trials of life are important character traits from both religious and secular points of view, which are emphasized in the bible and doubtless other scriptures. Presumably a 'good' interventionist deity is preventing far more suffering than is allowed (though of course it's hard to see the tragedies which don't occur), and offering some hope and mitigation of the permitted suffering through occasional miracles: But a central point of the religious message is that we can't and shouldn't just sit back expecting god to do everything for us, that we should actively work in helping the poor and sick ourselves.

Miracles-on-demand would pretty much undermine all the good which we should be doing for each other.


(All of which is just quasi-theological speculation of course... in response to non-logical speculation that a real miracle, if it had occurred, 'should' have happened sooner. We've got the evidence that it did very possibly happen; asking why it happened in that particular way doesn't change that!)

[Divine Insight]

How important is it to recognize and (ideally) attempt to at least vaguely quantify our uncertainties - to apply our scepticism to all perspectives equally?
Would such admissions of significant uncertainty - of the very real possibility that our opponents are right, or at least closer to the mark - do anything to change the content, tone and outcomes of our discussions here?

Again, I need to make it crystal clear the purpose and intent of this forum venue and the reason why I feel a need to address all posts on this venue within this framework.

Christianity and Apologetics

To begin with, it appears to me that religious and superstitious people tend to exaggerate mundane events. And in many cases have been caught outright fabricating them as known hoaxes in an effort to support their beliefs.

Therefore, even with respect to all religious and spiritual philosophies, I have very good reasons to be highly suspicious of reports of so-called "supernatural miracles".

And this is especially true when no credible sources have ever been able to confirm these reports.

But let's put all that aside for the moment. To begin with I don't even claim that no God could exist. For all I know perhaps a God does exist.

Let's take a look at one of the things you said in the OP:

Such frank honesty is laudable, but it obviously undermines any claims of "no evidence" when it's clear that there is literally nothing which would be accepted as compelling evidence!

There's a huge problem here. First off, it appears to be religious fanatics who are so concerned with what other people may or may not believe about the Gods of their favorite religion.

If there truly was an omnipotent supernatural God who wanted me to know that it exists, it shouldn't be the slightest bit of a problem for that God to provide me with sufficient evidence for His, Her, or Its existence.

What's the Christian theological apology for why this God hasn't made his existence known to me? The apology is an extremely nasty claim that I must somehow be an evil person who either has no desire to know that the Biblical God exists, or refuses to acknowledge that the Biblical God exists, or worse yet, doesn't deserve to know that the Biblical God exists.

All of these Christian accusations are downright hateful accusations. Moreover, nothing could be further from the truth. And this is a truth which I can be absolutely certainly about.

So it's clear to me that this dogma is basically a hateful dogma that make every attempt to belittle, degrade, and vilify anyone who refuses to cower down to its authority. It's clearly not even a religion about a supposedly loving caring God because no loving caring God could be as hateful and ignorant as this religious dogma demands.

So Christianity is a highly insulting religion. It's a grave and hateful insult to anyone who has recognized it as being ignorant and ungodly.

Moreover, "miracles" aren't about to repair a clearly broken and barbaric Bible. The Bible has its God acting like an extremely ignorant, selfish, bigoted moron. Far from what this God is claimed to be.

There is no repairing the Biblical God. Growing a new amputated limb would never convinced me of Christianity, or Judaism, or Islam.

If I was going to attribute the "miracle" to a supernatural God I would definitely consider other religions first. Hebrew mythology of Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah, or whatever else they might call their jealous God is dead. There is no reviving it.

Ironically the only way it could be true is if the God it represents is an evil, immoral, and untrustworthy God. But that's supposed to be the antithesis of what the Biblical God is supposed to be anyway. So there is no reviving the Biblical God. Yahweh is clearly as fictional as Zeus was. So it's time to move on from that myth.

~~~~~

Finally, in our modern times when we see technology SOARING beyond belief. Why would I jump to the conclusion that anything that appears to be a "miracle" wasn't caused by some sort of advanced technology.

From my understanding magicians (illusionists) have been able to fool people into thinking they saw things that are impossible. So my first rational guess would be that any reported miracles are most likely some sort of underhanded magic trick played on naive believes by unscrupulous theists. As I've already said, theists have been known to be dishonest in their reports up to, and including, outright purposeful hoaxes.

So Hoax would be my very first guess.

The second guess might be current technology that we already have and I simply may not yet be aware of it. I've heard rumors that our military has a lot of technology that the public has no clue even exists. After all, the military isn't in the habit of bragging about its technological secrets.

And finally, as a last possible explanation I would turn to the idea that it could be technology from an advanced extraterrestrial or even extra-dimensional beings. Why not? Mathematicians and scientists are telling us that the real world may indeed include as many as 11 dimensions.

But in the end, I have absolutely no reason to think that anything could revive the Biblical description of God. We can pretty much rule that idea out entirely.

It would take far more than a few miracles to repair an extremely self-contradictory collection of ancient fables.

The God of Christianity would be a last resort guess. In fact, I would basically need to rule out Zeus first. At least Zeus was allowed to be immoral. So we can't rule Zeus out based on extreme self-contradictions.

But the Biblical God? If the Biblical God existed and was as righteous and moral as he's claimed to be, he would have already made himself known to me LONG AGO.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 11 by Mithrae]

The difference between Marydidit and leprechauns or Tinkerbell is the latter are entirely ad hoc notions... as I suggested in the OP. There is literally nothing to connect leprechauns to the event, whereas long and fervent prayers to Mary do explicitly bring her into the picture, even if you suppose it to be tenuously.

But now you have to explain why it took years for there to be any effect, and why we only have the story of the one leg regrown. Marydidit doesn't explain that, whereas my adhoc (I will not deny it was adhoc) mischievous leprechauns (or whatever) do.
Plus, there are branches of Christianity that teach that praying to someone who isn't Jesus/God won't do anything and is blasphemy.

Bear in mind of course that this is not just a once-off anecdote. The Marian shrine at Lourdes

Why are you talking about Lourdes? This started off over a discussion over Calanda.
In fact, in your link back to that earlier thread on Lourdes, you took pains to stress that the people on the committee were not claiming miracles, but rather whether the illnesses being healed was explaining scientifically. Yet here you are trying to pass off Calanda as a healing by Mary. Is there a committee somewhere that has investigated Calanda and said it was a bona fide miracle?

In fact...on the Lourdes thread, you chastised DanieltheDragon by saying to him "And yet you have provided not a single shred of evidence for this supposed conspiracy. "...and yet on this thread, you say

the healing occurred in the year of the 1600th anniversary of a supposed apparition of Mary to James the Greater on the banks of the Ebro. Perhaps that year was important to Mary herself, or perhaps its significance to Pellicer increased his faith and the fervency of his prayers.

You just toss things out like this, without a single shred of evidence. Hypocrisy much?

And if such miraculous healing occurred at the snap of the fingers, what would that do to so many others who don't get instantly healed? Far from being some kind of ad hoc hypothesis, the bible itself explicitly states that Jesus considered redemption from sin far more important (and far more impressive) than healing a paralytic, or on other occasions that he couldn't even do many miracles due to the people's lack of faith.

Lack of faith...and yet you're talking about Calanda and Lourdes where millions of people have gone, presumably full of faith, and yet there is only a relatively low number of supposed healings.
What about Jesus saying that his followers could do things greater than he, that his followers should be able to lay hands on the sick and heal them? If healing sin is more important than healing paralytics, why did Jesus heal paralytics at all? Or apparently Mary here at Calanda?
It sounds to me like you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Prosperity doctrine preachers aside, I don't think there's anything in the theology of any major religion suggesting that the gods are just magic genies whose job is to grant our every whim.

Ask and it shall be given you

Does that line ring a bell? Why are you now denying something that is VERY WELL known? You come across as deceptive here.

Presumably a 'good' interventionist deity is preventing far more suffering than is allowed (though of course it's hard to see the tragedies which don't occur)

I think some people who stayed at Costa del Auschwitz might have something to say about that...

(All of which is just quasi-theological speculation of course... in response to non-logical speculation that a real miracle, if it had occurred, 'should' have happened sooner. We've got the evidence that it did very possibly happen; asking why it happened in that particular way doesn't change that!)

Actually asking why IS pertinent, especially if you're trying to push a specific entity as the one responsible for it. Because now you have to explain why this entity apparently only bothered to regrow the one leg in the past 2,000 years. Now you're stuck trying to pass off god-like entities as being both powerful enough to intervene in the world to prevent suffering, and yet impotent enough that apparently they couldn't prevent Auschwitz. Which undermines the theology that claims its god is all powerful, who can speak universes into existence!

[Mithrae]

How important is it to recognize and (ideally) attempt to at least vaguely quantify our uncertainties - to apply our scepticism to all perspectives equally?
Would such admissions of significant uncertainty - of the very real possibility that our opponents are right, or at least closer to the mark - do anything to change the content, tone and outcomes of our discussions here?

Again, I need to make it crystal clear the purpose and intent of this forum venue and the reason why I feel a need to address all posts on this venue within this framework.

Christianity and Apologetics

I'm well aware that your interest lies primarily in knocking down the low-hanging fruit of the most fundamentalist forms of Christianity - it seems you feel impelled do the same thing with every single thread in which I try to raise the level of discussion a little.

What's the Christian theological apology for why this God hasn't made his existence known to me? The apology is an extremely nasty claim that I must somehow be an evil person...

A fundamentalist claim Jesus praised the Samaritan and the centurion for their love and faith, regardless of divergent beliefs, while noting that many who called him Lord would never enter heaven; Paul acknowledged the Athenians' devotion "to an unknown god," and those whose actions show God's law written on their hearts. Abou Ben Adhem reflects the spirit which many if not most Christians find in their faith.

Your failure to think clearly and critically about such diversity and distinctions in the Christian religion is your own burden to bear, I'm afraid. I have no intention of indulging it in yet another thread.

[Mithrae]

Presumably a 'good' interventionist deity is preventing far more suffering than is allowed (though of course it's hard to see the tragedies which don't occur)

I think some people who stayed at Costa del Auschwitz might have something to say about that...

Perhaps. Some who survived came out with stronger faith, for example, while some had the opposite response. Meanwhile those who fled Germany early enough, and those who were hidden and helped later on, and those who lived to see the fall of the Nazi regime would almost certainly be glad that there was so much more suffering prevented than there could have been.

(All of which is just quasi-theological speculation of course... in response to non-logical speculation that a real miracle, if it had occurred, 'should' have happened sooner. We've got the evidence that it did very possibly happen; asking why it happened in that particular way doesn't change that!)

Actually asking why IS pertinent, especially if you're trying to push a specific entity as the one responsible for it. Because now you have to explain why this entity apparently only bothered to regrow the one leg in the past 2,000 years. Now you're stuck trying to pass off god-like entities as being both powerful enough to intervene in the world to prevent suffering, and yet impotent enough that apparently they couldn't prevent Auschwitz. Which undermines the theology that claims its god is all powerful, who can speak universes into existence!

No-one said it was one leg in 2000 years; in fact I explicitly pointed out that there are other claims of healed amputees, merely less well-documented. I also pointed out the much better-documented healings at Lourdes. Please try not to invent your own data.

You've also snipped out an explanation only so you can then demand the explanation that you just snipped. Here it is again:
"Presumably a 'good' interventionist deity is preventing far more suffering than is allowed (though of course it's hard to see the tragedies which don't occur), and offering some hope and mitigation of the permitted suffering through occasional miracles: But a central point of the religious message is that we can't and shouldn't just sit back expecting god to do everything for us, that we should actively work in helping the poor and sick ourselves. Miracles-on-demand would pretty much undermine all the good which we should be doing for each other. "

Beyond the basic analysis, the theological problem of evil is little more than subjective feelings, regardless of how strongly held those feelings may be in the face of particular tragedies. Everyone recognizes that in a pampered paradise a computer not loading properly can seem like unbearable suffering; everyone also recognizes that some amount of challenge and adversity are necessary for personal growth. Some folk feel there's "too much" suffering in the world, while others conclude that their 'good' god allows only the minimum necessary and that we could fix the vast majority of that if we loved others as we love ourselves.

Ultimately neither answer has much bearing on the veracity of alleged miracles. If the evidence suggested that Mary/Jesus/God healed some people, and you also believe that they allow too much suffering, then you must conclude that they're inconsistent or capricious: It doesn't change the evidence that Mary/Jesus/God healed some people.

Prosperity doctrine preachers aside, I don't think there's anything in the theology of any major religion suggesting that the gods are just magic genies whose job is to grant our every whim.

Ask and it shall be given you

Does that line ring a bell? Why are you now denying something that is VERY WELL known? You come across as deceptive here.

Remind me how did the story go when Peter asked Jesus not to go to his death, or when James and John requested to sit at his side in heaven? Snipping out a single phrase to distort the meaning even of its own passage - never mind the rest of the books - is primary school hermeneutics at best, willfully dishonest at worst. There's more in the gospels and the rest of the NT about suffering for the name of Christ than about any kind of answered prayer, let alone the magic genie kind.

Most of your post seems to be similar attempts at delving into convoluted theological distractions; they don't have any bearing whatsoever on the evidence available to us, and if a 'miracle' actually occurred they don't change the causal agent indicated as most likely by both numerous correlations and the efficacy of the supplicants' beliefs. They're just questions about more detailed aspects of God's nature, or attempted challenges to the orthodoxy with which we're familiar. And even then, they're all answered relatively easily, quite plausibly even if not to your personal 100% satisfaction; but this thread wasn't intended for theological discussion.


The questions under discussion are:
> How much uncertainty do you recognize in your opinions about Pellicer's leg? How plausible are the conspiracy and miracle conclusions respectively?

> How important is it to recognize and (ideally) attempt to at least vaguely quantify our uncertainties - to apply our scepticism to all perspectives equally?

> Would such admissions of significant uncertainty - of the very real possibility that our opponents are right, or at least closer to the mark - do anything to change the content, tone and outcomes of our discussions here?

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 15 by Mithrae]

Perhaps. Some who survived came out with stronger faith, for example, while some had the opposite response. Meanwhile those who fled Germany early enough, and those who were hidden and helped later on, and those who lived to see the fall of the Nazi regime would almost certainly be glad that there was so much more suffering prevented than there could have been.

Still pretty sure that the humans who were being gassed on an industrial level would disagree with you. What's worse than a government literally trying to figure out the most efficient way to kill hundreds of thousands/millions of people? At least with wars and other regimes, the people being killed had a purpose other than simply being killed (namely conquest). The Nazis killed the people in the concentration camps simply because they wanted them dead.

No-one said it was one leg in 2000 years; in fact I explicitly pointed out that there are other claims of healed amputees, merely less well-documented.

If you can't provide evidence, then they don't count. I'm only allowing the one leg for the sake of argument, and that simply because there are apparently doctors who signed off on it.
If you want to have other legs/limbs counted, then I'm going to start claiming my electronics run off of magicoleum.

But a central point of the religious message is that we can't and shouldn't just sit back expecting god to do everything for us, that we should actively work in helping the poor and sick ourselves. Miracles-on-demand would pretty much undermine all the good which we should be doing for each other. "

I didn't ignore that part. I may not have quoted it in my previous reply, but I did speak to the thinking behind it.
If no miracles on demand, if caring for ourselves, is the teaching being passed down from God...then this undermines the claim that a leg was regrown simply by praying to a statue of a holy woman (albeit over a period of years, which by itself undermines the causal connection between the two, I have to remind you).

Everyone recognizes that in a pampered paradise a computer not loading properly can seem like unbearable suffering; everyone also recognizes that some amount of challenge and adversity are necessary for personal growth.

So now you're just trying to pass off Auschwitz and Dachau and the other camps as being trials for personal growth.
Pretty sure that if you asked a victim of the camps whether they would have gone to the camps if they had had a choice, they would have answered no.

If the evidence suggested that Mary/Jesus/God healed some people, and you also believe that they allow too much suffering, then you must conclude that they're inconsistent or capricious: It doesn't change the evidence that Mary/Jesus/God healed some people.

It makes me wonder why they apparently healed at all, and why I should bother with these alleged entities. They certainly can't be the caring/loving gods their followers paint them as then, can they? Should I then pray to them, worship them, follow their teachings?
Also just to remind you, I don't agree with you on the point of "the evidence that Mary/Jesus/God healed some people". You don't have any evidence for that. I have to remind you that you said, on your Lourdes thread, that the committee there does not say that any healings they say happened, happened because of a god.

Remind me how did the story go when Peter asked Jesus not to go to his death, or when James and John requested to sit at his side in heaven?

Then we have a religion and theology that is contradictory. I quoted the Ask line merely to rebut your claim of I don't think there's anything in the theology of any major religion suggesting that the gods are just magic genies whose job is to grant our every whim..
The line exists within the holy book of Christianity, therefore your claim is false. It's not my problem if the line is contradicted by some other lines. It's still there.

and if a 'miracle' actually occurred they don't change the causal agent indicated as most likely by both numerous correlations and the efficacy of the supplicants' beliefs.

Except you don't HAVE any evidence of who or what this causal agent is. Remember, you said it yourself on your Lourdes thread. And here with the regrown leg, you said it yourself, it took years, which again, repeating myself, undermines the strength of the claim of that causal agent being the statue the fellow was praying to.

How much uncertainty do you recognize in your opinions about Pellicer's leg?

How much uncertainty do YOU have? You seem to be so gosh darned sure that his leg did heal.

How plausible are the conspiracy and miracle conclusions respectively?

Conspiracy is more plausible simply by mere dint of being possible within our reality, of not violating any laws of physics. With miracle, you literally have to toss aside said laws and posit an as yet unevidenced supernatural agent with magical powers. Your story might as well have said that someone waved a thin wooden stick and said "Leggius Regrowthus" for several years on end.

How important is it to recognize and (ideally) attempt to at least vaguely quantify our uncertainties - to apply our scepticism to all perspectives equally?

Very important.

Would such admissions of significant uncertainty - of the very real possibility that our opponents are right, or at least closer to the mark - do anything to change the content, tone and outcomes of our discussions here?

Yup. Thing is, to date, you have yet to offer anything that indicates I should be uncertain about what it is I believe.

[Inigo Montoya]

[Replying to post 15 by Mithrae]

The questions under discussion are:
> How much uncertainty do you recognize in your opinions about Pellicer's leg? How plausible are the conspiracy and miracle conclusions respectively?

> How important is it to recognize and (ideally) attempt to at least vaguely quantify our uncertainties - to apply our scepticism to all perspectives equally?

> Would such admissions of significant uncertainty - of the very real possibility that our opponents are right, or at least closer to the mark - do anything to change the content, tone and outcomes of our discussions here?

I say, for me, there's as much uncertainty about this leg as there is concerning almost anything that happened before about 1979 and smells (not unpleasantly) of magic. What am I to do with these stories? In what way can I possibly verify this leg or a resurrected carpenter-preacher? Am I to grant them on the merits and intents of the people doing the reporting? I can be gullible at times and this seems a very dangerous way of holding the door open for any story tied to a notable profession or personality. So how do I verify the motives and merits in any realistic way, given how far removed in history I am from the extraordinary events being reported?

You seem to want to focus on the specificity of doubt, even to a percentage, and I'm actually okay with that. I agree all parties would be better served in publicly admitting their lack of certainty on most fronts. It's a symptom of the nature this debate takes, though, and it could be said (in a child's voice) that the religious started it. You don't hear many maybes from the pulpit, as it were.

You ask how plausible conspiracy and miracle conclusions might be. I say it's obviously not going to be objectively quantifiable, as I'm sure you know. But neither do I think that's your mission. You're often an equal opportunity contrarian, smacking one side's silliness down while reminding the other they're guilty of the same missteps in reason. Plausible is synonymous with reasonable, likely, credible, or believable. If you're hunting for individual opinions on the matter, which I think you must be, I can say I have no clue. Assigning percentages to the likelihood of miracles or conspiracy on the given reporting is beyond my humble powers of deduction. What do you propose is the benchmark for deciding?

I know that I personally have no experience that persuades me the miraculous is even on the table as a real thing, so I'm not likely to assign that particular category much in the way of probability. That's just me, though. I've often been accused of having a bias toward the supernatural. To which I say, "Yeeeess? Having not been acquainted with any, EVER, that doesn't seem a particularly outrageous stance."


Recognizing and vaguely quantifying our uncertainty is immeasurably important, and most especially if it's at least done individually and privately. It's probably a lot to ask for most people to do it publicly, mind you, but as long as there's a constant internal battle in the mind, always questioning what you think you know, that'll do for now. And of course the tone of these exchanges would benefit mightily from these admissions of doubt by posters and speakers. It's just not likely, I'm afraid.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 16 by rikuoamero]

Hi Rikuo. Sorry for taking so long to reply, but other interests have taken up much of my spare time lately and there's too much detail here to reply on my way to or from work! And partly, I've had little motivation to respond. In your most recent post I count at least four major misrepresentations of what's been written, most of which are quite difficult to pass off as innocent misunderstandings. Of course misunderstandings do occur at times, particularly when people adopt an adversarial approach to discussion - such as your comments about 'hypocrisy' and 'deception' in the post before this one - but four in a single post...?

Before delving any further into the topic, perhaps you can clarify these for me so I can understand where you're coming from, and hopefully help ensure a productive exchange:

Everyone recognizes that in a pampered paradise a computer not loading properly can seem like unbearable suffering; everyone also recognizes that some amount of challenge and adversity are necessary for personal growth.

So now you're just trying to pass off Auschwitz and Dachau and the other camps as being trials for personal growth.

This was the earliest, most egregious and frankly rather offensive example. I did not even remotely suggest that. In fact the very next sentence of that paragraph - which you snipped from your quote - was that "Some folk feel there's "too much" suffering in the world, while others conclude that their 'good' god allows only the minimum necessary and that we could fix the vast majority of that if we loved others as we love ourselves." I do not view the Holocaust as a trial for personal growth. Neither do I view it as something to be cynically exploited to score cheap 'points' in a debate. I view it as one of the grossest human evils of the 20th century - and it was, undisputably, a human evil regardless of one's theological views or lack thereof.

Also just to remind you, I don't agree with you on the point of "the evidence that Mary/Jesus/God healed some people". You don't have any evidence for that. I have to remind you that you said, on your Lourdes thread, that the committee there does not say that any healings they say happened, happened because of a god. . . .


Except you don't HAVE any evidence of who or what this causal agent is. Remember, you said it yourself on your Lourdes thread.

These are extremely misleading comments about that thread. In its opening post I noted that the medical committees are only asked to make a judgement on medical questions: Essentially, was the cure under consideration rapid, complete and unexplained by medical science? They are not asked to make a judgement about 'miracles' because they have no particular expertise in assessing miracles, and asking for such an assessment would potentially undermine the credibility of their judgement on the medical questions. Of course, the cures which pass their medical assessment obviously meet the criteria which virtually everyone who doesn't believe in leprechauns would recognize as a miraculous healing (by far the biggest caveat being that later medical science may explain what was once unexplained, which is why I enumerated only the six 'miracles' certified since 1970); but both to preserve the integrity of the medical committees and presumably for theological reasons, the Catholic church has chosen to keep the final official pronouncement of a miracle to itself.

Remind me how did the story go when Peter asked Jesus not to go to his death, or when James and John requested to sit at his side in heaven?

Then we have a religion and theology that is contradictory. I quoted the Ask line merely to rebut your claim of I don't think there's anything in the theology of any major religion suggesting that the gods are just magic genies whose job is to grant our every whim..
The line exists within the holy book of Christianity, therefore your claim is false. It's not my problem if the line is contradicted by some other lines. It's still there.

This seems even worse than the above:
> Going from "anything in the theology of any major religion" - theology, their gestalt view of god or their 'religious beliefs and theory when systematically developed' as defined by google - to "here's a cherry-picked line from their canon" is entirely mistaken to begin with, even if it said what you claimed, and I had already tried to correct your approach in my previous post. You might as well try to argue that "There is no god" is part of Christian theology since that line is found in the bible also
> You've cited one third of a single verse, as if it were not clear from "seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" that there's something more in view here than just 'name it and claim it.' That paragraph goes on to say that "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him!" How many parents hand over everything their children ask for? Just a dozen verses earlier is the passage in which Jesus tells his disciples to stop working for money, give up their earthly treasure and trust in God for their most basic food and clothing. Continuing to pretend that quoting a third of a verse shows that Matthew was portraying God as a "magic genie whose job is to grant our every whim" is not just a misunderstanding: It is blatantly and deeply dishonest.

How much uncertainty do you recognize in your opinions about Pellicer's leg?

How much uncertainty do YOU have? You seem to be so gosh darned sure that his leg did heal.

I have never suggested anything of the sort. In fact in my previous post on this page of this thread, addressed to you, I said that "I like the Calanda 'miracle' not because it's got the best evidence, but because it clearly allows for legitimate uncertainty..." In the opening post of this thread I quoted my 2018 comment explicitly stating that "I would (and did) even agree that [a church conspiracy] is 'more likely' than the miracle conclusion." As far as I can tell it is literally impossible to get from these posts the impression that I am "so gosh darned sure that his leg did heal"... and yet that is the view which you have chosen to attribute to me.



Once again, an occasional misunderstanding from an adversarial perspective is understandable and even excusable. But these four whoppers in a single post? Please help me to understand what's going on here - would I just be wasting my time if I wrote up a serious reply to the rest of your post?

[Mithrae]

I know that I personally have no experience that persuades me the miraculous is even on the table as a real thing, so I'm not likely to assign that particular category much in the way of probability. That's just me, though. I've often been accused of having a bias toward the supernatural. To which I say, "Yeeeess? Having not been acquainted with any, EVER, that doesn't seem a particularly outrageous stance."

I'm heading off to bed soon, so your post deserves a lot more time than I've got at the moment, but I wanted to at least comment briefly on this. I view 'supernatural' claims as being in a similar category as we'd treat winning the lottery: The prior probability is for all intents and purposes zero, but certainly we should be open to reassessing that if and when new evidence comes to light.

More specifically, we need to be very careful with the reasoning "I've never seen such-and-such." In the case of very rare events - which miracles obviously are, even if they do occur - and limited scope of observations, there may be no statistically significant difference between zero and one or two or even a dozen positive results. An emphasis on the supposed 'zero confirmed cases,' considering that to be a significant part of our reasoning, is equivalent to asserting that there is a statistically significant difference there, which therefore presupposes the probabilities in advance. It might actually be more rational if we tried to approach each 'miracle' claim with the assumption that we do have one or two confirmed instances of 'supernatural' events of some kind and we're just trying to see if this new one measures up also. (It's not as if there aren't plenty, such as the Lourdes healings, which could be true!)

That's poorly explained perhaps, but I wrote more about it in my thread on Probability and rare or paranormal events.

[StuartJ]

This topic is worth a coupla YouTube videos to illustrate the nonsense to be found in "miracles" ...



ONLY people of faith would fall for THAT, surely ...?!

Anyone who believes they have a friend in Jesus should become mates with Derren Brown ...



Humans will need more input from the Indwelling Holy Spirit to do this ...