Atheist Bart Ehrman gets the historicity of miracles wrong.

[Paul of Tarsus]

I've watched the Ehrman vs Craig: Evidence for Resurrection debate video on YouTube several times, and as usual I am less than impressed with the polemics of Bart Ehrman. This time his fallacy involves the historicity of miracles and in particular the miracle of Christ's resurrection. His reasoning goes something like the following:

1. Miracles are the least likely correct explanation for any supposed historical event.
2. The story of the resurrection of Christ is a narrative of an event that if true requires a miraculous explanation.
Conclusion: Any naturalistic explanation of the story of Christ's being raised from the dead is more likely correct than an explanation that allows for the supernatural.

Is it true that miracles are so unlikely that any non-supernatural explanation for a claimed event is more likely true? I'm not sure why Ehrman seems to think miracles are so unlikely. While it's true that miracles are evidently rare, how probable they may be depends on the evidence for them. Ehrman seems to maintain a naturalistic view of miracles based more on an atheistic assumption than on any kind of evidence for them. That's not good reasoning.

I'd like to conclude this OP by pointing out that since I've been debating atheists, I can see that their reasoning is often as bad if not worse than the arguments made by apologists. It seems to me that there would be more atheists in the world if people stopped trying to disprove God.

[bluegreenearth]

As its core my objection is that you have not demonstrated any genuine problem with the viability of miracle explanations. Your claim that something must be "reliably demonstrated to occur in reality for it to be considered a possible candidate explanation" is quite simply incorrect. If you still don't understand why it's incorrect that's obviously a bit of a problem in terms of discussion - our last exchange didn't end particularly well, as you may recall - but obviously the onus falls primarily on you to demonstrate why some reported observations or explanations should be excluded from consideration.

The section of our exchange which I quoted above (the third of four main counter-points which I raised in the August thread) seems straightforward enough: Your reasons for excluding the miraculous from consideration would apparently exclude the notion of physical laws/consistency of nature as much if not moreso. An untenable conclusion implies an untenable argument. I can't see why that is difficult to understand, but I don't think it's possible to express it any simpler than that.

Let's refer back to my analogy to make it even more simple. What is the probability that an object with an unknown number of sides will land on the color blue after it has been tossed in the air given the fact that we don't know if the color blue is even featured on one or more of the object's sides? Are you claiming to know the number of sides on the object and that the color blue is featured on one or more of the object's sides to know it will most likely land on the color blue?

Since the probability of a particular outcome occurring is calculated by dividing the number of events by the number of possible outcomes, we can calculate the probability that a physical law like the speed light will be the same as the last time it was measured because that outcome is observable in reality. The event will be the act of measuring the speed of light and the possible outcomes can only be light's speed each time it is measured. Every prior measurement of the speed of light consistently produced a single precise outcome (i.e. 299,792,458 m/s). Therefore, the probability that the speed light will be 299,792,458 m/s the next time it is measured is practically 100%. How could we calculate the probability that the speed light will be 500,000,000 m/s the next time it is measured if light has never been previously measured at that speed before to know it is even possible? In fact, how could we calculate the probability that the speed of light could be anything other speed than 299,792,458 m/s if it has only ever been observed to travel at that precise speed?

So, where am I making a reasoning error?

[Mithrae]

As its core my objection is that you have not demonstrated any genuine problem with the viability of miracle explanations. Your claim that something must be "reliably demonstrated to occur in reality for it to be considered a possible candidate explanation" is quite simply incorrect. If you still don't understand why it's incorrect that's obviously a bit of a problem in terms of discussion - our last exchange didn't end particularly well, as you may recall - but obviously the onus falls primarily on you to demonstrate why some reported observations or explanations should be excluded from consideration.

The section of our exchange which I quoted above (the third of four main counter-points which I raised in the August thread) seems straightforward enough: Your reasons for excluding the miraculous from consideration would apparently exclude the notion of physical laws/consistency of nature as much if not moreso. An untenable conclusion implies an untenable argument. I can't see why that is difficult to understand, but I don't think it's possible to express it any simpler than that.

Let's refer back to my analogy to make it even more simple. What is the probability that an object with an unknown number of sides will land on the color blue after it has been tossed in the air given the fact that we don't know if the color blue is even featured on one or more of the object's sides? Are you claiming to know the number of sides on the object and that the color blue is featured on one or more of the object's sides to know it will most likely land on the color blue?

If people reported seeing it land on blue then (absent contrary evidence) there's a high probability that it landed on blue. Your counter-argument is that something must be "reliably demonstrated to occur in reality for it to be considered a possible candidate explanation." See post #26 in this thread regarding the wonderful elasticity of terms like 'reliable' as applied to the volume of evidence for miracles, post #14 and my most recent post regarding the common fallacy of applying few- or zero-case data points to probability estimates, and post #37 regarding the untenable implications which follow from a 'presumption of impossibility' approach when applied to other commonly-accepted explanations.

Since the probability of a particular outcome occurring is calculated by dividing the number of events by the number of possible outcomes, we can calculate the probability that a physical law like the speed light will be the same as the last time it was measured because that outcome is observable in reality. The event will be the act of measuring the speed of light and the possible outcomes can only be light's speed each time it is measured. Every prior measurement of the speed of light consistently produced a single precise outcome (i.e. 299,792,458 m/s). Therefore, the probability that the speed light will be 299,792,458 m/s the next time it is measured is practically 100%. How could we calculate the probability that the speed light will be 500,000,000 m/s the next time it is measured if light has never been previously measured at that speed before to know it is even possible? In fact, how could we calculate the probability that the speed of light could be anything other speed than 299,792,458 m/s if it has only ever been observed to travel at that precise speed?

So, where am I making a reasoning error?

> Applying those ideas to miracles would be invalid; for the third time, you're assessing probability based on the frequency with which light is measured at that speed, but applying frequentist probability to few- or zero-case scenarios will always be invalid unless you have first established the statistical significance of those data points, which hasn't been done in the case of miracles and hence would be simply begging the question

> You're not allowing for different circumstances, which is particularly ironic given this choice of exemplar; the speed of light measured in a vacuum even a billion times does not give us "practically 100%" confidence of its speed measured under different circumstances, such as when passing through water, and in fact even most high school kids have learned that it is different under those different circumstances

> You're not accounting for observation of different or unexpected results, which is the basis of all empirical knowledge; even if you could validly infer an infinitesimally low prior probability of a given phenomenon under its own unique circumstances (or that we can't know the prior probability), that wouldn't change the fact that observational data can easily overturn whatever we thought we knew (or didn't know) and lead to a high posterior probability estimate, or even near-certainty of it given strong enough observational data

[bluegreenearth]

If people reported seeing it land on blue then (absent contrary evidence) there's a high probability that it landed on blue. Your counter-argument is that something must be "reliably demonstrated to occur in reality for it to be considered a possible candidate explanation." See post #26 regarding the wonderful elasticity of terms like 'reliable' as applied to the volume of evidence for miracles, post #14 and my most recent post regarding the common fallacy of applying few- or zero-case data points to probability estimates, and post #37 regarding the untenable implications which follow from a 'presumption of impossibility' approach unless its application to miracles is simply special pleading.

According to the scenario I described, the object could not be observed by anyone. How did you determine it was possible for people to see the object land on the color blue to conclude such an outcome was highly probable given the fact that the object was not observable? If the people did somehow manage to observe an unobservable object land on the color blue, that logically contradictory outcome would have certainly been unexpected. However, as I will explain in more detail elsewhere in this post, having a different or unexpected result does not identify the cause of that result. There would still be no justification to conclude that a miracle is what probably caused people to see an unobservable object land on the color blue because we have no evidence at all of what the cause of such an extraordinary outcome could have been. If you want to claim a miracle was the cause, you have to explain how it was the cause. Otherwise, if you cannot explain how a miracle caused an event to occur, then all the miracle claim does is suggest an unexplained event is explained by something that is unexplainable and non-demonstrable. Not much explanatory power there. As such, the only justifiable and intellectually honest response is to conclude that the cause is currently unknown.

It is important to recognize that I'm not presuming a miracle is impossible here. I've clearly articulated that I'm currently agnostic towards the possibility or impossibility of various miracle claims. So, why are you using the label "presumption of impossibility" in your objection? People are welcome to propose and speculate on all the miracle claims they want. They just won't be able to calculate the probability that a miracle is the most likely explanation for any reported event without first knowing if such a miracle is even possible in reality.

Your black hole analogy is not equivalent because the probability that a black hole could exist was calculated based on previously demonstrated physical properties of the universe like the relationship between mass and gravity. In other words, there were no individual properties of a black hole that anyone had to imagine into existence because all those individual properties had already been previously observed in realty for scientists to know they were possible causes for something like a black hole. We have nothing equivalent for miracle claims.

> Applying those ideas to miracles would be invalid; for the third time, you're assessing probability based on the frequency with which light is measured at that speed, but applying frequentist probability to few- or zero-case scenarios will always be invalid unless you have first established the statistical significance of those data points, which hasn't been done in the case of miracles and hence would be simply begging the question

Correct. That is precisely why it makes no sense to claim a miracle is the most probable explanation for a reported event.

> You're not allowing for different circumstances, which is particularly ironic given this choice of exemplar; the speed of light measured in a vacuum even a billion times does not give us "practically 100%" confidence of its speed measured under different circumstances, such as when passing through water, and in fact even most high school kids have learned that it is different under those different circumstances

Correct. I neglected to specify "in a vacuum" for the sake of brevity and mistakenly assumed you would understand my point. Nevertheless, my same point remains that we can calculate the probability that the speed of light (in a vacuum) will be the same speed it was the previous time it was measured (in a vacuum) because the possible outcome is observable in reality.

> You're not accounting for observation of different or unexpected results, which is the basis of all empirical knowledge; even if you could validly infer an infinitesimally low prior probability of a given phenomenon under its own unique circumstances (or that we can't know the prior probability), that wouldn't change the fact that observational data can easily overturn whatever we thought we knew (or didn't know) and lead to a high posterior probability estimate, or even near-certainty of it given strong enough observational data

You need to be careful to distinguish between a different or unexpected outcome and the cause of a different or unexpected outcome. Observing a different or unexpected outcome doesn't disclose the identity of what caused that outcome as I explained earlier in this post. For instance, if the speed of light (in a vacuum) is discovered to be something different the next time it is measured, that observation wouldn't demonstrate a miracle was the cause of the unexpected result. The probability that a miracle is what caused a change in the speed of light would still be incalculable because no miraculous cause was observed during the experiment or any previous experiment to know it occurred or could have possibly occurred in reality. Colloquially, people might refer to the unexpected result as a miracle, but a miracle could not technically be identified as the explanation for the reported event because only the outcome of some unknown cause was observed. At best, the empirical knowledge gained from that unexpected outcome would be that the speed of light in a vacuum is not consistently the same at all times. Whatever the explanation might be for that outcome would still be unknown. Claiming a miracle was the cause of the observed result would have no explanatory power because it doesn't describe how the speed of light in a vacuum was different in that moment than what had been consistently observed in all previous measurements. Once again, the miracle claim would merely assert that this unexplained event is explained by something that is unexplainable and non-demonstrable. You may be satisfied with an unfalsifiable miracle claim as a non-explanation, but I prefer a falsifiable hypothesis with more explanatory power.

I hope that clarifies some of the confusion. If I am still making a reasoning error, I encouraged you to correct me.

[Paul of Tarsus]

BGE, if somebody asks you a question in person, do you ignore their question only to ask them your own question expecting an answer when you didn't bother to answer their question? That would be rude. You skipped right over my question for debate in the OP. Since I started this thread, I should be asking you questions, not you asking me questions. Please answer the question I posted in the OP: Is it true that miracles are so unlikely that any non-supernatural explanation for a claimed event is more likely true?

Are you equally critical of apologetic arguments when skeptics identify where logical fallacies and other significant errors exist within them? Would you be willing to apply the same level of skepticism to apologetic arguments as you have for arguments from atheists?

I think so. For example, I've pointed out that Christian theologians and apologists really cannot have a God who is all-powerful and perfectly good who allows suffering. To resolve this logical difficulty, I posit a God who simply cannot put an end to suffering.

Are you aware of an apologetic argument that is without any logical fallacies or other significant errors?

An apologetic germane to this discussion that has no fallacies is the miracles-happen-all-the-time apologetic. Christians testify to miraculous answers to prayer. If they are correct, and they might be correct, then the claim made by many atheists that miracles don't happen is false. So contrary to what Bart Ehrman says, miraculous explanations are by no means the least likely true explanations of stories like the resurrection.

[bluegreenearth]

Is it true that miracles are so unlikely that any non-supernatural explanation for a claimed event is more likely true?

I don't know what the likelihood of miracles are because I don't know if they are possible or not.

I think so. For example, I've pointed out that Christian theologians and apologists really cannot have a God who is all-powerful and perfectly good who allows suffering. To resolve this logical difficulty, I posit a God who simply cannot put an end to suffering.

Fair enough.

An apologetic germane to this discussion that has no fallacies is the miracles-happen-all-the-time apologetic. Christians testify to miraculous answers to prayer. If they are correct, and they might be correct, then the claim made by many atheists that miracles don't happen is false. So contrary to what Bart Ehrman says, miraculous explanations are by no means the least likely true explanations of stories like the resurrection.

I don't claim to know if miracles happen or not. The burden of proof is on the person who claims miracles do or don't occur.

[brunumb]

Except of course for those - such as myself - without religious belief who have nevertheless concluded the probability that miracles do occur.

Perhaps I need a refresher on exactly what you regard as a miracle. Thanks.

[brunumb]

Thus in the case of the thoroughly investigated instances of rapid, medically unexplained cures of serious illnesses which have been documented at Lourdes for example, they cannot be situated within a theory of naturalism without various ad hoc suppositions (at the expense of parsimony) which contribute little or nothing towards understanding of other observations (hence having little breadth of explanatory power), although in some cases may have some depth or specificity regarding the speculated mechanism for the healing.

How do you propose that these non-naturalistic miracle cures were achieved? Given the enormous failure rate of cures being delivered at Lourdes, is it not reasonable to think that the cures that did occur were the result of natural but not understood complex processes within the human body. Remissions occur all the time without any appeal for divine assistance.

[brunumb]

That may be true for some people, but I won't put faith in any claim that lacks good reason and evidence.

Would you please share some of those good reasons and evidence that has convinced you that some of the claimed miracles actually occurred.

Again, this is not a debate about proving miracles, but just for the record, Christian miracles are evidenced by eyewitness accounts and documentation.

OK, so you've actually got nothing.

[Mithrae]

You need to be careful to distinguish between a different or unexpected outcome and the cause of a different or unexpected outcome. Observing a different or unexpected outcome doesn't disclose the identity of what caused that outcome as I explained earlier in this post. For instance, if the speed of light (in a vacuum) is discovered to be something different the next time it is measured, that observation wouldn't demonstrate a miracle was the cause of the unexpected result. The probability that a miracle is what caused a change in the speed of light would still be incalculable because no miraculous cause was observed during the experiment or any previous experiment to know it occurred or could have possibly occurred in reality. Colloquially, people might refer to the unexpected result as a miracle, but a miracle could not technically be identified as the explanation for the reported event because only the outcome of some unknown cause was observed. At best, the empirical knowledge gained from that unexpected outcome would be that the speed of light in a vacuum is not consistently the same at all times. Whatever the explanation might be for that outcome would still be unknown. Claiming a miracle was the cause of the observed result would have no explanatory power because it doesn't describe how the speed of light in a vacuum was different in that moment than what had been consistently observed in all previous measurements. Once again, the miracle claim would merely assert that this unexplained event is explained by something that is unexplainable and non-demonstrable. You may be satisfied with an unfalsifiable miracle claim as a non-explanation, but I prefer a falsifiable hypothesis with more explanatory power.

It's worth noting that this highlighted sentence could just as readily be applied to any explanation invoking the laws of physics, the formalized patterns which we are able to recognize based on observations from perhaps 1 or 2% of the populated land surfaces of a single planet (or at least, the subset of those observations which are repeatable, over the course of a few centuries after the discovery of telescopes). Until scientists can come up with a complete Theory of Everything which unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, explains the existence and origins of our universe, and accounts for the dark matter and dark energy believed to constitute ~95% of the mass-energy of the universe we've obviously still got only a partial picture of even the physical aspects of reality (to say nothing of the hard problem of consciousness!) and little basis for answering questions about the actual existence and nature of any proposed 'laws' which would really explain what we observe. For all we know everything is really moved around by tiny undetectable demons frantically ensuring that every action has an equal and opposite reaction or (as proposed more seriously by some academics and scientists) are merely the parameters or conventions of a complex computer simulation in which we all exist Towards the end of that August thread, in a more productive exchange with FarWanderer, I came around to the view of 'explanations' simply being the process of situating particular observations within the context of a broader theory, but your comments above - including a critique of the unknowns and limitations of the broader theories or worldviews themselves as inherent to the explanation - would render everything ultimately 'unexplained.' As I commented to another poster last March,

• That [the triumph of cause-effect relationships "in the real world" over "god of the gaps thinking"] is a philosophy which many scientists undoubtedly hold also, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that it's true. It's a bit of a tangent to the thread topic, but it's worth understanding this: Explaining something in terms of some other unexplained thing might defer our curiousity a little, but it would only be considered an actual explanation by an easily-pleased mind. Anyone who's tried to answer a child's endless series of "Why?" questions knows that they'll pretty quickly run headlong into their own ignorance: Asserting that this ignorance is a basis for ruling out any particular theory seems rather laughable. If memory serves scientists are still working on a Theory of Everything, and that theory of 'everything' if and when it comes will account only for the baryonic matter which makes up ~5% of the mass-energy of the observable universe.
  
  If reality were a pool table, we've 'explained' the motion of the blue and red balls by observing that they were hit by the white ball, and you are triumphantly mocking everyone who thought they were moved by an external agency.

Beyond that, a lot of your post is stuff which was hashed out (I would say refuted in many cases) in our August discussion and some already in this thread. But it would seem that for the purpose of this thread (ie, the alleged resurrection of Jesus) or indeed any reported observation of the miraculous, we could choose to freely grant all of your claims and what it would amount to is the position that depending on our assessment of the strength of observational evidence maybe Jesus was indeed raised from the dead with angels seen at the tomb etc... and your objection is simply to the suggestion of divine intervention as an explanation for that resurrection.

[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to Mithrae in post #50]

Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to be arguing for something like the solipsist perspective. If so, I don't disagree that it is difficult to know almost anything with absolute certainty. However, we don't need absolute certainty to acquire a functional knowledge base.