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:
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 magicMithrae in January 2018 wrote: 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.
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?
