An Argument against the Argument against Miracles

[Don Mc]

According to Hume's famous "general maxim" against the confirmation of miracles in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish." The basic idea is that the laws of nature being what they are, and human nature being what it is, the probability of a miracle is always lower than the probability that the testimony given for it is simply false. In this Hume seems to have anticipated the logic of Carl Sagan, who popularized the idea that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

While this principle appears rational enough at first blush, there are reasons to think it's not sound. First, it was Hume himself who spelled out the problem of induction that there is no logical basis for inferring future outcomes from past experiences. Assuming there exists a set of well-defined "laws of nature," those regularities would seem to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. But if the laws of nature are descriptive, there is no reason to think miracles cannot or should not occur. Second, the argument against miracles is essentially circular. Hume asserts that there is "uniform experience" against the resurrection, for example, adding that a man risen from the dead "has never been observed, in any age or country." The question of the resurrection, however, is precisely whether or not Jesus was observed by his disciples to have risen from the dead. To say that a resurrection event was never observed because there is "uniform experience" against it is to beg that question (and we should bear in mind that there is equally uniform experience that life does not arise from nonliving elements yet here we are). Finally, while it's true that human nature has the potential to corrupt the testimony of eyewitnesses and the writings of biographers and historians, it also has the potential to corrupt the field reports, lab results, journal articles, textbooks, etc., that lead us to accept the same scientific theories thought to render miracle reports implausible or even impossible. The problem of "confirmation bias" among humans, and scientists in particular, is well documented.

Evidently underlying popular skepticism of miracles is a belief that miracles are inherently, extremely improbable. But that seems to hold only if a miracle is defined in naturalistic terms. After all, the proposition "A man rose from the dead by natural processes" appears considerably less probable on its face than the proposition "Jesus Christ rose from the dead by the power of God." As Paul put it, "Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?" (Acts 26:8)

Questions for debate:
Are miracles improbable? If so, how improbable are they and why?
Could historical evidence for a miracle give us good evidence for theism?

[Don Mc]

It could be argued that the prior probability of Jesus' resurrection, in light of his claims to divinity, wide reports of his healings and exorcisms, and his own prediction that he would be crucified and rise from the dead, was quite high.

Not very high according to the guys who supposedly saw all those healings and exorcisms.

Ha! Well, that's a great point which I will simply have to concede.

A couple of points in response:

Why suddenly take their testimony at face value if those guys were just so many religiously indoctrinated, ignorant, Iron Age simpletons? And if they were so quick to believe miracles, why would they doubt the resurrection at all, and why would Jesus consistently rebuke them for their lack of faith and call them "slow to believe"? You mentioned cherry-picking earlier, but it seems like you may be doing a bit of that with the testimony of the disciples.

From all indications the disciples doubted the resurrection only because they didn't believe the Savior and Messiah who had frequently worked miracles among them could be killed in the first place. Even if their prior probability of the resurrection was not high, they still believed Jesus would continue working miracles not just healing and prophesying, but overthrowing the Roman empire and establishing the kingdom of God in its place so (apart from a brief period of disappointment following the crucifixion) their prior probability of miracles happening remained high.

I try to take the approach that if I couldn't convince a fair-minded sceptic of my opinions - or at least convince her of their plausibility - then it's an opinion which I would have to want to believe. Believing what we want to believe leaves little safeguard against error; that's why scepticism is so important. Those subjective prior probabilities based on personal experience seem to fall into that category.

I take a different approach. Not knowing who is a fair-minded skeptic and who is not, and understanding that all of us (theists and skeptics alike) tend to believe what we want to believe anyway, I decide for myself what I want to believe. The important thing for me is not so much to avoid aligning belief with desire, since that's a tall order psychologically, but to desire to believe truth rather than error.

Besides, I could easily accuse nontheists of (simply) "wanting to believe," as most people are overtly selective with their skepticism. None of the nontheist participants of this thread have expressed much doubt about abiogenesis, for example, though we have no more evidence for abiogenesis than we do for any of the miracles under discussion.

Whether or not you like these facts, the gospels are anonymous, they are propaganda, they do contradict each other even on key details etc. Growth in the face of persecution doesn't make Jesus' resurrection any more likely than Muhammad flying to Jerusalem or Joseph Smith and his mysteriously-vanished golden tablets. According to the gospels what Jesus himself taught were things like forsake all your possessions, trust in God for your daily bread, stop working for money and start working for God.

Well, I don't think declared authorship of narrative documents signified as much in the first century as it does now. The same could be said of attribution of sources. Even then I think there's a good case to be made for traditional authorship of the Gospels (especially in the case of Luke); the early church Fathers were much closer to the events than modern scholars, for one thing.

But it would be an odd sort of "propaganda" in which its promoters are themselves full of doubts about their movement not to mention its founder humiliated, tortured and killed as a common criminal. I suppose it's possible that they introduced these touches of psychological realism to make their story more believable (despite knowing it was false?). This is what we eventually get with most skeptical treatments of the early evangelists: a bunch of gullible, self-destructive knuckleheads willing to believe practically anything at any cost, and at the same time some remarkably refined knaves and sophisticated conspirators.

As for contradictions: most of what passes for a "contradiction" in critical biblical studies amounts to variant readings of the same basic story from differing vantage points, although some discrepancies admittedly appear more serious than others. But I see relatively little in the way of demonstrable incoherence. What bothers me is the critics (not saying you're one of them) who see every point of variance as evidence of contradiction, and every point of agreement as evidence of copying or collusion. That leaves precious little room for genuine multiple attestation from different witnesses.

I'd say that the rise of the church on the preaching of the resurrection is strong evidence that Jesus had risen. The church began in Jerusalem, the very place where Jesus was crucified and buried. For various Romans and Jews alike, that means the resurrection message should have been readily falsifiable. Yet no one closest to the events seems to have bothered to produce Jesus' body and thereby silence the movement. Growth in the face of persecution is important because the disciples also knew that the resurrection message was falsifiable (if it were false), and yet to a man they maintained that they had seen Jesus risen under threat of imprisonment or death.

Believing in his supposed resurrection apparently doesn't help Christians actually do what he taught; quite the opposite, it's a huge distraction to the extent that most professing 'followers of Christ' don't even know that he taught that kind of stuff, and fight tooth and nail against any suggestion that they should actually obey!

Preach it, brother!

Seriously, what you say above is difficult to deny. Not sure how to answer it except to say that lots of Christians have indeed given their goods, and even their lives, for the gospel. I finished my third or fourth reading of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship a few weeks ago, and was reminded of the truths you mention. The man practiced what he preached, all the way to his death in a Nazi concentration camp. Most other Christians I know who hold similar convictions are relatively unknown, I suspect because they are considered "unsuccessful" in a Western church largely given over to the materialism you mention.

It's not coincidence, no... the bible says the same stuff about everything under the sun; sunrise and sunset, rain and drought, plague and prosperity, grass and trees and the diversity of human language. They're all marvelous works of God, according to the bible - would claim that they're all "miracles"? Cherry picking one or two of them merely because they have not (yet) been fully incorporated into the context of broader or deeper observations/theories seems like a god of the gaps kind of argument.

No, I wouldn't say those are all miracles per se, because they are mostly ongoing, periodic or seasonal phenomena. A singular miracle like the creation of the universe or the creation of life is conspicuously non-recurring (and evidently non-replicable) by contrast.

Educated modern folk have access to much more information in each field, a long history of earlier falsified or discredited theories to look back on and, where uncertainty exists, usually a stronger array of current/viable theories to consider. We could use the same term, 'chronological snobbery,' to dismiss folk who take the opinions of adults more seriously than kids, but the reality is that people with more information etc. available to them have numerous potential errors ruled out by that fact. If memory serves Lewis' specific use was regarding reliability of observational reports(?); and in that regard he was probably right that ancient folk were not noticeably more prone to erroneous or dishonest reporting. If four medical workers swore up and down that they'd seen an amputee regrow his limb today, we should take that with a fair dose of salt too. There've been more than enough frauds and hoaxes to warrant it.

Although I don't think refusing chronological snobbery entails "dismissing" those who take more stock in the opinions of adults than children, otherwise that's well stated and pretty well argued. But I would hesitate to accept that you and I are woefully ignorant and what we say is fraught with error simply because future generations are almost certain to think that of us.

[Don Mc]

Biblical accounts are not the only testimonies to miracles, for one thing. More significantly, the only way we could know that the rest of human experience is really against the "handful of claims" is if humans were to universally attest to that experience but that would meanaccepting their testimony. On Hume's premise that miracle claims should be rejected because human testimony is inherently suspect, then all claims should be rejected regardless of their content. That would leave precious little for us to learn about beyond our own personal experiences.

I have admittedly not read much of Hume directly, but I suspect that you aren't characterizing his argument accurate and fairly.

My take on it is the following:
An event supposedly occurs. All human testimonials are "accepted" as the data points they are. All data points, testimony and otherwise, are compared and a conclusion is drawn. If the overall evidence is weak, belief in the occurrence of the event in question is not warranted. If the overall evidence is strong, belief in the occurrence of the event in question is warranted, but simultaneously also normalized by the strength of the evidence to the point that belief in its miraculousness is not warranted.

My take is a little different. When Hume refers to "evidence" in the context of his anti-miracle argument, he means general background knowledge in terms of a frequency interpretation of probability of the event (which sounds like what you mean by the "normalizing" factor above?) rather than specific facts relevant to the case at hand. That's why he asserts that his argument amounts to a "full proof...against the existence of any miracle." Essentially he weighs the background evidence against the "testimony" for the particular miracle. I don't recall him suggesting that testimonial evidence could ever warrant belief.

So a Christian defending the resurrection might appeal not only to the written "testimony" of the NT documents, but specifically to the set of facts behind the narratives: early witnesses to the empty tomb, the disciples' collective experiences of Jesus appearing to them, the rise of the early church in Jerusalem on the preaching of the resurrection and in the face of violent threats, failure of Jesus' enemies to produce his body (or even claim to know where it is or what happened to it), and the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

By contrast, Hume merely presumes the previous number of confirmed resurrection events to be zero and dismisses the present case out of hand regardless of any other facts. This dismissal means that even the resurrection counts as just another check in the loss column for miracles. One of my objections to Hume's procedure, then, is that it appears to continually and artificially "dilute" the prior probability of miracles by rejecting case-specific evidence for miracles in favor of an already diluted prior based on a fairly subjective frequency interpretation of evidence.

Of course the conclusion can fall somewhere in between on a spectrum, but there is never any way it could end up simultaneously both
(A) congruent enough with our general understanding of reality to be believed and
(B) incongruent enough with our general understanding of reality to be considered miraculous.

The problem there is that our "general understanding" is not set in stone. It's continually modified by new discoveries, confirming evidence, falsifying evidence, etc. You're probably aware that Bayes distinguished new evidence from background evidence in his theorem, so that new case-specific facts could be used to update probabilities. Hume simply failed to appreciate that distinction. For him all "evidence" for miracles is background evidence, and he never bothered to explain how we came to acquire any of it in the first place. And clearly we can't arrive at a general understanding of the world by already having a general understanding of the world.

Finally, while it's true that human nature has the potential to corrupt the testimony of eyewitnesses and the writings of biographers and historians, it also has the potential to corrupt the field reports, lab results, journal articles, textbooks, etc., that lead us to accept the same scientific theories thought to render miracle reports implausible or even impossible. The problem of "confirmation bias" among humans, and scientists in particular, is well documented.

Are you suggesting the problem is that these theories are scientifically wrong? Or that people are wrongly applying them to miracles, which are scientific exceptions?

If it's the former, then the event simply being a misunderstood natural event is no less viable an interpretation than it being a miracle. After all, the very premise is that we are lacking in scientific understanding.

If it's the latter, then you are simply making a special pleading.

That's a compelling dilemma at a glance, I must admit. But I think your argument relies too heavily upon an assumed reliability of natural science that doesn't seem justified.

It wasn't intended as a dilemma. I was honestly asking clarification on what you meant, and just answering for either case ahead of time. Or perhaps you have a third answer. I remain unclear about what you meant. Fundamentally, I find it quite strange that you imply that certain "biased" scientific theories create erroneous ideas about the possibility of miracles, being as miracles are not supposed to be subject to scientific understanding in the first place.

Okay, but when you "answer for either case" and each answer if valid would refute, or at least weaken, my argument, it sounds an awful lot like a dilemma. I take it you'll forgive my confusion.

Miracles are not subject to scientific understanding, true, but the argument against miracles is often based on the presumed veracity of scientific theories. So if it turns out that scientific theories are not just falsifiable in principle, but often false, the argument against miracles weakens accordingly.

[Mithrae]

If we were to presuppose the existence of a material reality (which would be necessary for "disembodied" to be a meaningful term) there might be some merit to that. Otherwise, idealism/mental monism is actually much more parsimonious than physicalism/material monism, since the former does not posit the unknowable existence of non-mental stuff and the latter even introduces an additional problem with the so far insoluble hard problem of consciousness. Positing the existence of a singular, universal Mind would seem to be the simplest version of idealism (though of course neither a monotheistic God nor omnipotence are required for the occurrence of miracles).

I am something of a neutral monist. Metaphysically speaking, I see idealism and materialism as a distinction without a difference. For that reason I immediately see your objection as not mattering at all, because regardless of whether the world we live in is at base idealistic or materialistic, whatever it is that we call "bodies" are still something; and they are a "something" that is universally associated with causally effective agency. So I actually disagree that the term "disembodied" is meaningless in this context even given a metaphysically idealistic reality.

In that case you're extending 'bodies' to include basically everything that is known, up to and including things as nebulous and mysterious as dark matter and dark energy. Supposing that a divine mind is distinct from all observable and unobservable 'bodies' at that point doesn't seem justifiable. At the absolute worst, positing a divine mind might be on about equal footing as positing a mindless universe, though I'm not persuaded the latter has even that much merit.

'Prove' is perhaps an even more relative term here than usual, but at least in theory it should be possible to both prove absolute determinism in human 'choices' and disprove quantum indeterminacy - two of the main hurdles to justification for determinism in general - or to both solve the hard problem of consciousness and (perhaps, though this is a bit harder to imagine) devise a means of experiencing other beings' qualia (providing at least some basis for asserting an absence of consciousness in trees, bacteria, rocks etc.) - thereby making materialism the most viable theory. Philosophical 'proof' seems unlikely at this point, but that would be another route too; for example I would opine that substance dualism is disproven inasmuch as philosophy can prove or disprove anything, in that it's conceptually incoherent.

I don't buy it. I firmly believe these are entirely philosophical problems rather than scientific ones. Quantum indeterminacy is a useful scientific model, but it is at best a set of random outcomes within a set of non-random parameters; it's hardly supportive of free will. Not that I think it's even applicable to metaphysics in the first place. If it were completely random in all facets, it'd just be noise and obviously not a viable scientific model at all.

Observing an element of apparent randomness in reality at least partially undermines a deterministic view, so disproving or solving that problem would go some way towards validating determinism.

I am not sure how one could prove absolute determinism in human choices. I don't recall for a source, but I have heard that we already have technology that can detect a choice in the brain before we even consciously "decide" upon it. But I don't see why one has to be conscious of their choice before they make it in order for it to be "free".

If memory serves from discussions 5+ years ago, in experiments with a simple 'choice' like which button to press researchers were able to detect neural impulses up to 6 seconds before the subjects' self-reported awareness of the decision to act allowing them to predict the outcome of the choice in ~80%(?) of cases. Whatever they detected would apparently be neither necessary (many choices are made in less than 6 seconds) nor sufficient (~20% of cases where the observed impulse was absent or misleading) for decisions; but presumably more research along those lines could demonstrate that what we experience as 'choice' follows and is caused by brain chemistry, which would invalidate any basis for belief in free will.

The sum probabilities of all mutually exclusive, exhaustive possibilities must equal 100%: If we have 90% confidence in one explanation, all other explanations (and the unknown) can only add up to 10%. Hence if 'miracle' had been the strong leading explanation for an event (at say 60% confidence) but then aliens explicitly taking credit and demonstrating how they'd done it led to a 90% confidence in that explanation, it would radically reduce the viability of the 'miracle' explanation for that event. Same goes for finding the hidden wires of a hoax, obviously.

Why are you assuming it has to be a zero sum game? I used the word viability specifically to indicate it wasn't.

Here are a few definitions for "viable":
able to work as intended or able to succeed
able to exist, perform as intended, or succeed
able to be done or likely to succeed
capable of working, functioning, or developing adequately

It's a zero sum game because that's how probability works. How can an explanation be viable without being probable, or at least falling somewhere on a probability scale?

If I go from a state of being outside my house to being inside my house, then to explain that change in state one could suppose I entered through the door, or they could suppose I entered through the window (we'll limit it to those two to keep things simple). Common sense would suggest the door is the more likely explanation, but both explanations are completely "100%" viable so long as we presume I have the means to do either. The window explanation would lose viability if, say, the only windows were on the second floor and my access to a ladder was in doubt.

The problem with divine intervention is that it is always a viable explanation for anything, therefore it is unfalsifiable.

You seem to be using viable as a synonym for 'possible' (which would be consistent with your quoted definitions), but I think that's missing the point. Wouldn't you say that a theory whose probability of being correct went from 60% down to >5% had been falsified? Virtually nothing is ever proven absolutely impossible, 0% probability. Supposing that the standard for falsification is proof of impossibility/unviability would mean that most theories even in the sciences are 'unfalsifiable.'

Are you really arguing that no miracle claims have ever been debunked/falsified?

Colloquially, sure. But that's rarely what's meant when the term "falsifiable" comes up in matters of epistemology.

In general epistemic terms it surely is! A stricter/more formal definition may apply in the sciences, but in general terms of evaluating the reliability of our conclusions the question is simply whether our views can potentially be shown to be false or implausible, not whether they can be proven impossible. Falsifiability is simply a way of determining the validity of purported evidence favouring a viewpoint; if any set of circumstances would be taken as equally favouring that viewpoint then the particular circumstance currently used as 'evidence' for it means nothing. The potential to falsify purported miracles at the level to which many have been falsified (for example the supposed 'miracle of the sun' at Fatima or, at the higher end and nearing 100% certainty that it didn't happen, the global flood of the bible) is more than enough to make that distinction that some sets of circumstances favour a miracle conclusion much more than others - and therefore if and when we find ourselves in a set of circumstances highly compatible with a miracle conclusion, that conclusion should be acknowledged as reasonable.

[Mithrae]

My take is a little different. When Hume refers to "evidence" in the context of his anti-miracle argument, he means general background knowledge in terms of a frequency interpretation of probability of the event (which sounds like what you mean by the "normalizing" factor above?) rather than specific facts relevant to the case at hand. That's why he asserts that his argument amounts to a "full proof...against the existence of any miracle." Essentially he weighs the background evidence against the "testimony" for the particular miracle. I don't recall him suggesting that testimonial evidence could ever warrant belief.

So a Christian defending the resurrection might appeal not only to the written "testimony" of the NT documents, but specifically to the set of facts behind the narratives: early witnesses to the empty tomb, the disciples' collective experiences of Jesus appearing to them, the rise of the early church in Jerusalem on the preaching of the resurrection and in the face of violent threats, failure of Jesus' enemies to produce his body (or even claim to know where it is or what happened to it), and the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

By contrast, Hume merely presumes the previous number of confirmed resurrection events to be zero and dismisses the present case out of hand regardless of any other facts. This dismissal means that even the resurrection counts as just another check in the loss column for miracles. One of my objections to Hume's procedure, then, is that it appears to continually and artificially "dilute" the prior probability of miracles by rejecting case-specific evidence for miracles in favor of an already diluted prior based on a fairly subjective frequency interpretation of evidence.

This reminds me of a thread from 2017. (Which you might have seen/remember: What was your previous username, by the way? I feel like I would remember posts of this quality, but your name isn't familiar.)

I think I've found the core problem of the most common argument made against miracles and the like. Stopping short of appealing to philosophical naturalism, the argument basically states that since the poster has seen no "confirmed" examples of paranormal events, the probability of such events must be considered to be zero - and therefore any more normal explanations will necessarily be more plausible.

The problem with the argument is that zero "confirmed" paranormal events may not be significantly different from one or two or even a dozen confirmed events, at least at any high level of significance: And by making that argument, in asserting their 'zero' figure to be significant, proponents are implicitly assuming answers to the relevant questions beforehand. Obviously if it's not a valid probabilistic argument, it then amounts to little more than an appeal to ignorance and personal incredulity of the various reported miracle observations we've all heard of.

It's only now occurred to me that Bluegreenearth's initial argument seems to have been a very similar variation; merely asserting that based on the supposed absence of 'confirmed' miracles they must be kept off the probability scale altogether (rather than having ~0% probability) leaving any more normal explanation as preferable.

Seems to me that unless we have sufficiently accurate and detailed knowledge of a subject to show that there should be a significant difference between some and zero positive results, all such arguments are invalid. It's basically the same problem as with arguments from silence; in the case of say Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster we might reasonably expect that there should be solid evidence and hence absence of solid evidence (zero positive results) is evidence of absence, but in many other examples that's obviously not the case.

[bluegreenearth]

bluegreenearth wrote: The rest of your argument, to be completely honest, is so obviously and absurdly disingenuous that it doesn't deserve the dignity of a response because it was clearly offered in bad faith. When you are ready to argue in good faith, I'll take your perspective more seriously.

Feel free to demonstrate that these rude accusations are in any way even accurate... and if you manage that then you can attempt to show how they are 'constructive criticism.' If you are unable or unwilling to engage with someone's arguments, that's okay - presumably no-one is forcing you to be here - and projecting "bad faith" and disingenuous attitude onto them as an excuse for your failure to support your position is at least understandable, if not particularly impressive. Having had a couple of days to cool off and yet still trying to pass it off as 'constructive criticism' is really scraping the bottom of the barrel though

You presented what I perceived and still perceive to be an obviously and absurdly disingenuous argument. This was and is my opinion based on the comparison between you and more civil and respectable theistic interlocutors on this forum like Tanager, for example. Keep in mind that referring to your argument as obviously and absurdly disingenuous isn't the same thing as accusing it of being fallacious but to point out where it is dishonest in the same way "A Modest Proposal" by Johnathan Swift was dishonest. So, I'm putting the breaks on this debate because you have demonstrated yourself to be doxastically closed and insufferably uncharitable in your interpretation of other people's perspectives. There is no point in wasting any more of my time with someone who is either intellectually disingenuous or suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. You may call that rude if you want, but it is honestly the impression you given me. So, I'm done going round and round with no signs of progress in any direction. Your arguments aren't convincing me to move beyond agnosticism despite my willingness to be convinced otherwise, and my objections to your arguments aren't moving you back towards agnosticism. We just keep talking past each other.

[Mithrae]

Why suddenly take their testimony at face value if those guys were just so many religiously indoctrinated, ignorant, Iron Age simpletons?

I haven't suggested that description of them. In fact I've said that I would give more or less equal weight to the named, formal sworn testimonies of relevant professionals in the 21st century as in the 16th and by implication the 1st also, at least in terms of raw observation; the smaller knowledge pool of folk in earlier eras presumably would have fairly minimal impact there. The key point about the antiquity of the gospel reports lies in the paucity of contextual information both generally, regarding the disciples, authors and Jesus specifically, and perhaps most importantly regarding the earliest decades of composition/transmission of the extant documents.

And if they were so quick to believe miracles, why would they doubt the resurrection at all, and why would Jesus consistently rebuke them for their lack of faith and call them "slow to believe"? You mentioned cherry-picking earlier, but it seems like you may be doing a bit of that with the testimony of the disciples.

From all indications the disciples doubted the resurrection only because they didn't believe the Savior and Messiah who had frequently worked miracles among them could be killed in the first place. Even if their prior probability of the resurrection was not high, they still believed Jesus would continue working miracles not just healing and prophesying, but overthrowing the Roman empire and establishing the kingdom of God in its place so (apart from a brief period of disappointment following the crucifixion) their prior probability of miracles happening remained high.

That would be one explanation, true. But much of the behaviour reported of the disciples in the gospels reads like fable or parable, their doubts perhaps most obviously. The 'doubting Thomas' pericope is the least subtle; don't be like that guy, the reader is exhorted, blessed is he who believes without seeing! Likewise with other stories in which they are slow to believe, or their fleeing and denial of Christ challenging later Christians by contrast to stand firm in their faith, and so on. That doesn't prove those events didn't happen, but particularly in light of the authors' habits of creatively fixing facts to suit their needs it's a real possibility worth considering.

Whether or not you like these facts, the gospels are anonymous, they are propaganda, they do contradict each other even on key details etc. Growth in the face of persecution doesn't make Jesus' resurrection any more likely than Muhammad flying to Jerusalem or Joseph Smith and his mysteriously-vanished golden tablets. According to the gospels what Jesus himself taught were things like forsake all your possessions, trust in God for your daily bread, stop working for money and start working for God.

Well, I don't think declared authorship of narrative documents signified as much in the first century as it does now. The same could be said of attribution of sources. Even then I think there's a good case to be made for traditional authorship of the Gospels (especially in the case of Luke); the early church Fathers were much closer to the events than modern scholars, for one thing.

I would say it's near certain the first gospel wasn't written by an apostle, but more likely than not that traditional attribution of the latter three is correct; especially John, though curiously the likely disciple/eyewitness account is the one which seems to have the least interest in mundane facts! But the potential accuracy of later attribution doesn't explain why the authors were unwilling to put their names to the words they wrote in the first place, and even if we can speculate some good reason as to why that might be (eg. fear of reprisals) it doesn't change the fact that even named, sworn testimony is far from conclusive and the gospels are a far, far cry from that!

But it would be an odd sort of "propaganda" in which its promoters are themselves full of doubts about their movement not to mention its founder humiliated, tortured and killed as a common criminal. I suppose it's possible that they introduced these touches of psychological realism to make their story more believable (despite knowing it was false?). This is what we eventually get with most skeptical treatments of the early evangelists: a bunch of gullible, self-destructive knuckleheads willing to believe practically anything at any cost, and at the same time some remarkably refined knaves and sophisticated conspirators.

He probably was tortured, humiliated and killed, a fact impossible to deny in the early years and therefore eventually incorporated into the absolute central doctrine, of Pauline theology at least (despite Jesus himself preaching little if anything along those lines). The inclusion of impossible-to-deny facts doesn't make the presence of far-fetched or just-a-little-too-convenient stories more plausible. The obvious purpose of the gospels - explicitly stated in John - was to promote belief in Jesus. Only Luke even pretends to be writing accurate history, yet plays fast and loose with the source material perhaps even more than 'Matthew' (albeit a bit more subtly in most cases!)

As for contradictions: most of what passes for a "contradiction" in critical biblical studies amounts to variant readings of the same basic story from differing vantage points, although some discrepancies admittedly appear more serious than others. But I see relatively little in the way of demonstrable incoherence. What bothers me is the critics (not saying you're one of them) who see every point of variance as evidence of contradiction, and every point of agreement as evidence of copying or collusion. That leaves precious little room for genuine multiple attestation from different witnesses.

In some cases I'd agree with you, but details like whether or not there were guards and an earthquake at the tomb (Matthew vs the rest), number of angels present (Matthew/Mark vs Luke/John) or whether the disciples went to Galilee (Luke vs the rest) are hardly minor discrepancies considering how much faith one would have to put in the reliability of these reports to consider the resurrection probable! In some cases those discrepancies seem to clearly line up with other themes/theological agendas of the authors (eg. Matthew's guards or Luke's "stay in Jerusalem" story); in others they may plausibly and innocently have arisen from variant tellings over the decades (eg. number of angels). But even the latter would obviously be enough to cast considerable doubt on the reliability of the report as a whole.

I'd say that the rise of the church on the preaching of the resurrection is strong evidence that Jesus had risen. The church began in Jerusalem, the very place where Jesus was crucified and buried. For various Romans and Jews alike, that means the resurrection message should have been readily falsifiable. Yet no one closest to the events seems to have bothered to produce Jesus' body and thereby silence the movement. Growth in the face of persecution is important because the disciples also knew that the resurrection message was falsifiable (if it were false), and yet to a man they maintained that they had seen Jesus risen under threat of imprisonment or death.

According to Acts the disciples waited seven weeks before beginning to preach the resurrection. Why wait, with such an important message to share? Seems like that'd be enough time for a body - even assuming it was in their opponents' possession - to decay beyond recognition, wouldn't it? (Hat tip to Tired of the Nonsense for that.) As I noted, plenty of other movements such as Islam, Mormonism, Heaven's Gate etc. have been undeterred by opposition, persecution or even death - willingly self-inflicted in the latter case - but while that might attest to the sincerity of the principles or beliefs they hold, it hardly constitutes evidence for their truth. So even assuming the stories of early persecution in Acts are true, we would still be left with possibilities such as
- the disciples, devastated by the death of their messiah and perhaps prompted by a couple of mistaken identity 'sightings' of Jesus, persuaded themselves over the course of seven weeks that this had all been prophesied and therefore Jesus must indeed have risen, culminating in a burst of religious fervour during the festival of weeks,
- or that (in the rather cult-like setting fostered by Jesus of complete devotion, leaving homes and devaluing family ties) the message they wanted to promote (for example, drawing focus away from the nationalism and material ambitions which eventually and somewhat predictably resulted in the devastating wars with Rome) was viewed as being important enough to warrant Jesus' wilful self-martyrdom, the disciples' potential persecution and perhaps even deliberate fraud in the resurrection story.
In both cases there are other examples of similar scenarios; but ultimately the question isn't even whether one of these scenarios looks particularly likely in itself, but whether (given the very limited and skewed information left to us) they can be considered as or more likely than a corpse coming back to life and flying away!

Believing in his supposed resurrection apparently doesn't help Christians actually do what he taught; quite the opposite, it's a huge distraction to the extent that most professing 'followers of Christ' don't even know that he taught that kind of stuff, and fight tooth and nail against any suggestion that they should actually obey!

Preach it, brother!

Seriously, what you say above is difficult to deny. Not sure how to answer it except to say that lots of Christians have indeed given their goods, and even their lives, for the gospel. I finished my third or fourth reading of Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship a few weeks ago, and was reminded of the truths you mention. The man practiced what he preached, all the way to his death in a Nazi concentration camp. Most other Christians I know who hold similar convictions are relatively unknown, I suspect because they are considered "unsuccessful" in a Western church largely given over to the materialism you mention.

If I were preaching, I wouldn't be practicing what I preach My point is that whereas you framed the supposed resurrection as "a lasting testament to God's nature-transcending power," it seems at least as plausible (if we try to start from the perspective of what Jesus himself likely taught and did as recorded in the Q passages and gMark) that the important message and 'lasting testament' should have been something quite different, which has instead been largely eclipsed by the resurrection story. Given that the evidence for the resurrection is so weak and the effect of emphasizing it seems so contrary (or at best a distraction from) Jesus' own teaching and example, is there really any value in continuing to try to force it into the foreground a la Paul? In other words a critical/sceptical attitude towards the resurrection isn't even necessarily a non-Christian approach (though of course I am non-Christian); it could be compatible with a faith even more closely aligned with Christ's than orthodox Christianity has ever been.

[FarWanderer3]

If we were to presuppose the existence of a material reality (which would be necessary for "disembodied" to be a meaningful term) there might be some merit to that. Otherwise, idealism/mental monism is actually much more parsimonious than physicalism/material monism, since the former does not posit the unknowable existence of non-mental stuff and the latter even introduces an additional problem with the so far insoluble hard problem of consciousness. Positing the existence of a singular, universal Mind would seem to be the simplest version of idealism (though of course neither a monotheistic God nor omnipotence are required for the occurrence of miracles).

I am something of a neutral monist. Metaphysically speaking, I see idealism and materialism as a distinction without a difference. For that reason I immediately see your objection as not mattering at all, because regardless of whether the world we live in is at base idealistic or materialistic, whatever it is that we call "bodies" are still something; and they are a "something" that is universally associated with causally effective agency. So I actually disagree that the term "disembodied" is meaningless in this context even given a metaphysically idealistic reality.

In that case you're extending 'bodies' to include basically everything that is known, up to and including things as nebulous and mysterious as dark matter and dark energy. Supposing that a divine mind is distinct from all observable and unobservable 'bodies' at that point doesn't seem justifiable. At the absolute worst, positing a divine mind might be on about equal footing as positing a mindless universe, though I'm not persuaded the latter has even that much merit.

Wow, I actually agree with you here. It is notable that a so-called transcendent divine mind is the standard Christian position.

I don't so much have a problem with Pantheism/Panentheism, but it would mean that the natural and the divine are the same thing, making it so that a "miracle" doesn't hold a meaningful distinction from a natural event.

'Prove' is perhaps an even more relative term here than usual, but at least in theory it should be possible to both prove absolute determinism in human 'choices' and disprove quantum indeterminacy - two of the main hurdles to justification for determinism in general - or to both solve the hard problem of consciousness and (perhaps, though this is a bit harder to imagine) devise a means of experiencing other beings' qualia (providing at least some basis for asserting an absence of consciousness in trees, bacteria, rocks etc.) - thereby making materialism the most viable theory. Philosophical 'proof' seems unlikely at this point, but that would be another route too; for example I would opine that substance dualism is disproven inasmuch as philosophy can prove or disprove anything, in that it's conceptually incoherent.

I don't buy it. I firmly believe these are entirely philosophical problems rather than scientific ones. Quantum indeterminacy is a useful scientific model, but it is at best a set of random outcomes within a set of non-random parameters; it's hardly supportive of free will. Not that I think it's even applicable to metaphysics in the first place. If it were completely random in all facets, it'd just be noise and obviously not a viable scientific model at all.

Observing an element of apparent randomness in reality at least partially undermines a deterministic view, so disproving or solving that problem would go some way towards validating determinism.

You don't need quantum mechanics to find apparent randomness. Apparent randomness is everywhere and QM is simply an accepted scientific theory that operates in line with that paradigm. That's it. Experiencing everyday human social interaction is incomparably more persuasive in favor of free will than anything having to do with quantum mechanics will ever be.

But perhaps more importantly, the reason I keep bringing up free will rather than indeterminism is because determinism/indeterminism was never precisely the relevant metric here; we're talking about miracles, and presumably how free will is necessary for miracles to be possible (that seems to be your claim, anyway). Randomness would disqualify determinism, but it wouldn't imply free will at all.

I am not sure how one could prove absolute determinism in human choices. I don't recall for a source, but I have heard that we already have technology that can detect a choice in the brain before we even consciously "decide" upon it. But I don't see why one has to be conscious of their choice before they make it in order for it to be "free".

If memory serves from discussions 5+ years ago, in experiments with a simple 'choice' like which button to press researchers were able to detect neural impulses up to 6 seconds before the subjects' self-reported awareness of the decision to act allowing them to predict the outcome of the choice in ~80%(?) of cases. Whatever they detected would apparently be neither necessary (many choices are made in less than 6 seconds) nor sufficient (~20% of cases where the observed impulse was absent or misleading) for decisions; but presumably more research along those lines could demonstrate that what we experience as 'choice' follows and is caused by brain chemistry, which would invalidate any basis for belief in free will.

That's probably the experiment I was thinking of, thanks. Even if we could predict a person's future actions by their brain activity I don't think it would disprove free will, though. It's a rather common affair that one person could predict the actions of another before they make any decision themselves, and no one seems to think that's a problem for free will.

The sum probabilities of all mutually exclusive, exhaustive possibilities must equal 100%: If we have 90% confidence in one explanation, all other explanations (and the unknown) can only add up to 10%. Hence if 'miracle' had been the strong leading explanation for an event (at say 60% confidence) but then aliens explicitly taking credit and demonstrating how they'd done it led to a 90% confidence in that explanation, it would radically reduce the viability of the 'miracle' explanation for that event. Same goes for finding the hidden wires of a hoax, obviously.

Why are you assuming it has to be a zero sum game? I used the word viability specifically to indicate it wasn't.

Here are a few definitions for "viable":
able to work as intended or able to succeed
able to exist, perform as intended, or succeed
able to be done or likely to succeed
capable of working, functioning, or developing adequately

It's a zero sum game because that's how probability works. How can an explanation be viable without being probable, or at least falling somewhere on a probability scale?

If I go from a state of being outside my house to being inside my house, then to explain that change in state one could suppose I entered through the door, or they could suppose I entered through the window (we'll limit it to those two to keep things simple). Common sense would suggest the door is the more likely explanation, but both explanations are completely "100%" viable so long as we presume I have the means to do either. The window explanation would lose viability if, say, the only windows were on the second floor and my access to a ladder was in doubt.

The problem with divine intervention is that it is always a viable explanation for anything, therefore it is unfalsifiable.

You seem to be using viable as a synonym for 'possible' (which would be consistent with your quoted definitions)

That's not a very good synonym, because I am trying to make a qualitative distinction between functionality and probability. No new piece of information could ever, even in principle, serve as an impediment to divine intervention's functionality as an explanation, because, unlike a conventional scientific theory, it never has to be made consistent with any other observations. You can always make a just-so claim that "God did it".

Regardless of the semantics of it all, can you see the distinction I am making here?

, but I think that's missing the point. Wouldn't you say that a theory whose probability of being correct went from 60% down to >5% had been falsified? Virtually nothing is ever proven absolutely impossible, 0% probability. Supposing that the standard for falsification is proof of impossibility/unviability would mean that most theories even in the sciences are 'unfalsifiable.'

You are assuming that divine intervention "explanations" should ever be worthy of being assigned a probability in the first place. If the "probability" of a divine resurrection of Jesus is undefined whether aliens show up and take credit for it or not, then it's not going to be "falsified" no matter what happens. Hence, "unfalsifiable".

As a point of clarification: a generic resurrection is falsifiable- a divine one is not.

[Mithrae]

In that case you're extending 'bodies' to include basically everything that is known, up to and including things as nebulous and mysterious as dark matter and dark energy. Supposing that a divine mind is distinct from all observable and unobservable 'bodies' at that point doesn't seem justifiable. At the absolute worst, positing a divine mind might be on about equal footing as positing a mindless universe, though I'm not persuaded the latter has even that much merit.

Wow, I actually agree with you here. It is notable that a so-called transcendent divine mind is the standard Christian position.

I don't so much have a problem with Pantheism/Panentheism, but it would mean that the natural and the divine are the same thing, making it so that a "miracle" doesn't hold a meaningful distinction from a natural event.

In 'substance' they'd be the same thing yes, but that doesn't stop there being a meaningful distinction both from our perspective (miracles being particularly unusual/exceptions to the rule) and causally/from god's perspective (a loose analogy might be us actively holding our breath, a deviation from the usual unconscious pattern).

Observing an element of apparent randomness in reality at least partially undermines a deterministic view, so disproving or solving that problem would go some way towards validating determinism.

You don't need quantum mechanics to find apparent randomness. Apparent randomness is everywhere and QM is simply an accepted scientific theory that operates in line with that paradigm. That's it. Experiencing everyday human social interaction is incomparably more persuasive in favor of free will than anything having to do with quantum mechanics will ever be.

But perhaps more importantly, the reason I keep bringing up free will rather than indeterminism is because determinism/indeterminism was never precisely the relevant metric here; we're talking about miracles, and presumably how free will is necessary for miracles to be possible (that seems to be your claim, anyway). Randomness would disqualify determinism, but it wouldn't imply free will at all.

Not that free will is necessary for miracles, but that absolute determinism along the lines of proscriptive physical laws would preclude (proclude?) miracles. Both free choice and quantum indeterminacy are distinct/unrelated* plausible counter-examples to absolute determinism; that's not to say free choice or indeterminacy in the form of randomness would necessarily permit miracles, but proving that even those levels of deviation from an established pattern do not/cannot occur would greatly decrease the plausibility of such radical deviations as miracles imply.

* I say they're unrelated, but I suppose what I mean is that there's no obvious reason to suppose that quantum indeterminacy has any relation to choice. I do find it interesting though that possibly the most coherent model for our experience of choice in a particular moment (what I tend to think of as 'first order' choice) would be something very similar to the probability distribution which characterizes quantum indeterminacy (with the more meaningful 'second order' choice being the way in which our prior decisions develop our character and shape the probability distribution of future first-order choices). As you've hinted, the biggest problem with the idea of 'free will' is the difficulty in conceptualizing how it's supposed to work without being either random or deterministic!

If memory serves from discussions 5+ years ago, in experiments with a simple 'choice' like which button to press researchers were able to detect neural impulses up to 6 seconds before the subjects' self-reported awareness of the decision to act allowing them to predict the outcome of the choice in ~80%(?) of cases. Whatever they detected would apparently be neither necessary (many choices are made in less than 6 seconds) nor sufficient (~20% of cases where the observed impulse was absent or misleading) for decisions; but presumably more research along those lines could demonstrate that what we experience as 'choice' follows and is caused by brain chemistry, which would invalidate any basis for belief in free will.

That's probably the experiment I was thinking of, thanks. Even if we could predict a person's future actions by their brain activity I don't think it would disprove free will, though. It's a rather common affair that one person could predict the actions of another before they make any decision themselves, and no one seems to think that's a problem for free will.

Occasionally getting in a correct guess about our nearest and dearest's behaviour based on extrapolation from the past is a far cry from objectively observing neural activity to predict behaviour with high/100% accuracy (proving or strongly implying causation). In the latter case the only way to save the idea of free will would be an ad hoc and possibly incoherent assertion that our experience of a freely-made decision is distinct from and follows after the 'actual' decision, which we therefore didn't consciously make at all.

You seem to be using viable as a synonym for 'possible' (which would be consistent with your quoted definitions)

That's not a very good synonym, because I am trying to make a qualitative distinction between functionality and probability. No new piece of information could ever, even in principle, serve as an impediment to divine intervention's functionality as an explanation, because, unlike a conventional scientific theory, it never has to be made consistent with any other observations. You can always make a just-so claim that "God did it".

Regardless of the semantics of it all, can you see the distinction I am making here?

Yes, but that's true of naturalistic explanations also; ad hoc alterations can be introduced to adjust virtually any theory to new observations. Doing so isn't best practice in science of course, but miracles (like most things which we as individuals accept as true or useful information) generally aren't a subject of science to begin with. If your wallet goes missing and someone tells you "Jack took your wallet," that is 'non-falsifiable' and always functional in the sense you're describing; if someone says they saw Jack elsewhere maybe it was a twin, if your wallet is found in Jill's room maybe Jack put it there, if Jack is dead maybe he left instructions in his will etc. Limitations on 'functionality' are a consequence of specificity in the theory and the parameters constraining causal factor/s, and there's no reason - in principle - why miracle explanations shouldn't be limited thus. For example in Christian orthodoxy God is good, God is "not the author of confusion" (one or two stated exceptions aside, I suppose ) and God alone is to be worshiped; so purported miracles being performed by someone would be falsified if they started telling everyone to worship the golden calf which gave them their power. But even so, I think it's a bit of a red herring to argue that a theory with <5% probability is somehow not 'falsified' simply because it's still 'functional.'

, but I think that's missing the point. Wouldn't you say that a theory whose probability of being correct went from 60% down to >5% had been falsified? Virtually nothing is ever proven absolutely impossible, 0% probability. Supposing that the standard for falsification is proof of impossibility/unviability would mean that most theories even in the sciences are 'unfalsifiable.'

You are assuming that divine intervention "explanations" should ever be worthy of being assigned a probability in the first place. If the "probability" of a divine resurrection of Jesus is undefined whether aliens show up and take credit for it or not, then it's not going to be "falsified" no matter what happens. Hence, "unfalsifiable".

As a point of clarification: a generic resurrection is falsifiable- a divine one is not.

If it's a functional explanation then it must fall somewhere on the probability scale, even if that probability is zero or not precisely known. If an alien explanation of Jesus' resurrection were found to have >99% probability, then divine intervention must have <1% (arguably much less, since the hoax/hallucination etc. possibilities are somewhere in there also!). The only way to describe that as not falsified would be by defining falsification as "absolute proof of impossibility," which seems absurd and would make most scientific theories 'unfalsifiable' too.

What distinction are you seeing between a generic resurrection and a divine one? As above, I would think the less specific claim would necessarily have less scope for falsification; the only way to falsify a 'generic resurrection' would be by showing that there was no resurrection, but that would obviously falsify the divine one also, whereas the divine explanation can also be falsified by either proving some other cause or disproving the existence of god/possibility of god's intervention.

[FarWanderer3]

Biblical accounts are not the only testimonies to miracles, for one thing. More significantly, the only way we could know that the rest of human experience is really against the "handful of claims" is if humans were to universally attest to that experience but that would meanaccepting their testimony. On Hume's premise that miracle claims should be rejected because human testimony is inherently suspect, then all claims should be rejected regardless of their content. That would leave precious little for us to learn about beyond our own personal experiences.

I have admittedly not read much of Hume directly, but I suspect that you aren't characterizing his argument accurate and fairly.

My take on it is the following:
An event supposedly occurs. All human testimonials are "accepted" as the data points they are. All data points, testimony and otherwise, are compared and a conclusion is drawn. If the overall evidence is weak, belief in the occurrence of the event in question is not warranted. If the overall evidence is strong, belief in the occurrence of the event in question is warranted, but simultaneously also normalized by the strength of the evidence to the point that belief in its miraculousness is not warranted.

My take is a little different. When Hume refers to "evidence" in the context of his anti-miracle argument, he means general background knowledge in terms of a frequency interpretation of probability of the event (which sounds like what you mean by the "normalizing" factor above?) rather than specific facts relevant to the case at hand. That's why he asserts that his argument amounts to a "full proof...against the existence of any miracle." Essentially he weighs the background evidence against the "testimony" for the particular miracle. I don't recall him suggesting that testimonial evidence could ever warrant belief.

So a Christian defending the resurrection might appeal not only to the written "testimony" of the NT documents, but specifically to the set of facts behind the narratives: early witnesses to the empty tomb, the disciples' collective experiences of Jesus appearing to them, the rise of the early church in Jerusalem on the preaching of the resurrection and in the face of violent threats, failure of Jesus' enemies to produce his body (or even claim to know where it is or what happened to it), and the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus.

Feeling a bit disadvantaged, I took the liberty of reading the text in question. Fortunately it was (much!) shorter than I expected. This is really the only part that matters:

there must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, because otherwise the event wouldn't count as a miracle. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, we have here a direct and full proof against the existence of any miracle.

He's saying any event worthy of being considered as a miracle will necessarily (by definition, basically) have uniform experience against it, and anything with uniform experience against it has proof against it.

Where I think you are getting things wrong is that you seem to think that what qualifies as "uniform experience" actually matters. He provides numerous examples of what he considers "uniform experience" for illustration purposes, which you contest; but it's rather irrelevant to contest them as you do, because the logic of the core argument works by any consistent definition of "uniform experience" (which is actually the whole point). If you want to tear his argument down you'll have to show he's equivocating between two different meanings of "uniform experience" or you'll have to attack elsewhere.

Here's a formal version of the argument. Have at it.

1) Any supposed miracle will have uniform experience against it.
2) Any supposed event with uniform experience against it will have full proof against it.
C) Any supposed miracle will have full proof against it.

By contrast, Hume merely presumes the previous number of confirmed resurrection events to be zero and dismisses the present case out of hand regardless of any other facts. This dismissal means that even the resurrection counts as just another check in the loss column for miracles. One of my objections to Hume's procedure, then, is that it appears to continually and artificially "dilute" the prior probability of miracles by rejecting case-specific evidence for miracles in favor of an already diluted prior based on a fairly subjective frequency interpretation of evidence.

I have to say I think you are completely misreading him here, as illustrated above.

Of course the conclusion can fall somewhere in between on a spectrum, but there is never any way it could end up simultaneously both
(A) congruent enough with our general understanding of reality to be believed and
(B) incongruent enough with our general understanding of reality to be considered miraculous.

The problem there is that our "general understanding" is not set in stone. It's continually modified by new discoveries, confirming evidence, falsifying evidence, etc. You're probably aware that Bayes distinguished new evidence from background evidence in his theorem, so that new case-specific facts could be used to update probabilities. Hume simply failed to appreciate that distinction. For him all "evidence" for miracles is background evidence, and he never bothered to explain how we came to acquire any of it in the first place. And clearly we can't arrive at a general understanding of the world by already having a general understanding of the world.

I am aware of Bayes. Interestingly I only became aware of him in recent years (while debating with Mithrae here, coincidentally enough).

General understanding not being set in stone is not a problem at all, because neither what warrants belief nor what deserves to be called a miracle are set in stone either. They all move in relation. This goes back to how Hume's argument works for any definition of "uniform experience".

Finally, while it's true that human nature has the potential to corrupt the testimony of eyewitnesses and the writings of biographers and historians, it also has the potential to corrupt the field reports, lab results, journal articles, textbooks, etc., that lead us to accept the same scientific theories thought to render miracle reports implausible or even impossible. The problem of "confirmation bias" among humans, and scientists in particular, is well documented.

Are you suggesting the problem is that these theories are scientifically wrong? Or that people are wrongly applying them to miracles, which are scientific exceptions?

If it's the former, then the event simply being a misunderstood natural event is no less viable an interpretation than it being a miracle. After all, the very premise is that we are lacking in scientific understanding.

If it's the latter, then you are simply making a special pleading.

That's a compelling dilemma at a glance, I must admit. But I think your argument relies too heavily upon an assumed reliability of natural science that doesn't seem justified.

It wasn't intended as a dilemma. I was honestly asking clarification on what you meant, and just answering for either case ahead of time. Or perhaps you have a third answer. I remain unclear about what you meant. Fundamentally, I find it quite strange that you imply that certain "biased" scientific theories create erroneous ideas about the possibility of miracles, being as miracles are not supposed to be subject to scientific understanding in the first place.

Okay, but when you "answer for either case" and each answer if valid would refute, or at least weaken, my argument, it sounds an awful lot like a dilemma. I take it you'll forgive my confusion.

Miracles are not subject to scientific understanding, true, but the argument against miracles is often based on the presumed veracity of scientific theories. So if it turns out that scientific theories are not just falsifiable in principle, but often false, the argument against miracles weakens accordingly.

I am confused as to why you think "the presumed veracity of scientific theories" even matters in this context. Granted there are some skeptics who will conclude a miracle didn't happen because it contradicts scientific understanding (which is simply question begging), but that's not an issue of the quality of the science itself. After all, we should expect that a perfectly well-founded scientific theory would contradict the miraculous just the same as a biased scientific theory would.

[FarWanderer3]

Occasionally getting in a correct guess about our nearest and dearest's behaviour based on extrapolation from the past is a far cry from objectively observing neural activity to predict behaviour with high/100% accuracy (proving or strongly implying causation). In the latter case the only way to save the idea of free will would be an ad hoc and possibly incoherent assertion that our experience of a freely-made decision is distinct from and follows after the 'actual' decision, which we therefore didn't consciously make at all.

I don't agree. I think the difference is entirely quantitative rather than qualitative, even if extremely different quantitatively-speaking.

You seem to be using viable as a synonym for 'possible' (which would be consistent with your quoted definitions)

That's not a very good synonym, because I am trying to make a qualitative distinction between functionality and probability. No new piece of information could ever, even in principle, serve as an impediment to divine intervention's functionality as an explanation, because, unlike a conventional scientific theory, it never has to be made consistent with any other observations. You can always make a just-so claim that "God did it".

Regardless of the semantics of it all, can you see the distinction I am making here?

Yes, but that's true of naturalistic explanations also; ad hoc alterations can be introduced to adjust virtually any theory to new observations. Doing so isn't best practice in science of course, but miracles (like most things which we as individuals accept as true or useful information) generally aren't a subject of science to begin with. If your wallet goes missing and someone tells you "Jack took your wallet," that is 'non-falsifiable' and always functional in the sense you're describing; if someone says they saw Jack elsewhere maybe it was a twin, if your wallet is found in Jill's room maybe Jack put it there, if Jack is dead maybe he left instructions in his will etc.

As I said, conventional scientific theories* have to be made consistent with other observations, which is exactly what you are doing with these ad hoc alterations (which weaken the theory).

*Perhaps we shouldn't call them scientific theories per se, just inductive theories in general.

Limitations on 'functionality' are a consequence of specificity in the theory and the parameters constraining causal factor/s, and there's no reason - in principle - why miracle explanations shouldn't be limited thus. For example in Christian orthodoxy God is good, God is "not the author of confusion" (one or two stated exceptions aside, I suppose ) and God alone is to be worshiped; so purported miracles being performed by someone would be falsified if they started telling everyone to worship the golden calf which gave them their power. But even so, I think it's a bit of a red herring to argue that a theory with <5% probability is somehow not 'falsified' simply because it's still 'functional.'

Yes, notice how here you rely on a logical inconsistency rather than an ad hoc alteration to explain the observation. This illustrates my point when I said it doesn't have to be made consistent with any other observation.

What you have here isn't even "falsified", because it never graduated beyond the realm of married bachelors.

Put another way, you are trying to "falsify" by deduction when the objection being raised is that it needs to be falsified by induction.

, but I think that's missing the point. Wouldn't you say that a theory whose probability of being correct went from 60% down to >5% had been falsified? Virtually nothing is ever proven absolutely impossible, 0% probability. Supposing that the standard for falsification is proof of impossibility/unviability would mean that most theories even in the sciences are 'unfalsifiable.'

You are assuming that divine intervention "explanations" should ever be worthy of being assigned a probability in the first place. If the "probability" of a divine resurrection of Jesus is undefined whether aliens show up and take credit for it or not, then it's not going to be "falsified" no matter what happens. Hence, "unfalsifiable".

As a point of clarification: a generic resurrection is falsifiable- a divine one is not.

If it's a functional explanation then it must fall somewhere on the probability scale, even if that probability is zero or not precisely known.

OK, stop right there. This is epistemic probability we are talking about here. It doesn't make sense to say you don't "know" what the epistemic probability of something is, except perhaps to mean that you simply are unable to adequately interpret the information you have. And if it's categorically impossible to interpret the info you have, then... the probability is undefined!

If an alien explanation of Jesus' resurrection were found to have >99% probability, then divine intervention must have <1% (arguably much less, since the hoax/hallucination etc. possibilities are somewhere in there also!). The only way to describe that as not falsified would be by defining falsification as "absolute proof of impossibility," which seems absurd and would make most scientific theories 'unfalsifiable' too.

It can only be concluded to have >99% probability in the first place if you exclude miracles (which are incongruities by definition) as a matter of course.

What distinction are you seeing between a generic resurrection and a divine one? As above, I would think the less specific claim would necessarily have less scope for falsification; the only way to falsify a 'generic resurrection' would be by showing that there was no resurrection, but that would obviously falsify the divine one also, whereas the divine explanation can also be falsified by either proving some other cause or disproving the existence of god/possibility of god's intervention.

For a generic resurrection you only need to show it's incongruent with other observations of reality. For a divine resurrection, it doesn't matter if it's incongruent with other observations, because that's the whole point of a miracle.