Uncertainty, miracles, conspiracies and aliens

[Mithrae]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 19 by Mithrae]

I view 'supernatural' claims as being in a similar category as we'd treat winning the lottery: The prior probability is for all intents and purposes zero, but certainly we should be open to reassessing that if and when new evidence comes to light.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you there.
The prior probability for a specific individual to win a lottery is, for all intents and purposes zero (or close to it). However, lotteries are indeed won, on an almost weekly basis, if not more often.

It might actually be more rational if we tried to approach each 'miracle' claim with the assumption that we do have one or two confirmed instances of 'supernatural' events of some kind

...for what reason should I, a skeptical atheist, do that? Supernatural means above-nature, right? As in, what I would normally use to try to solve naturalistic claims wouldn't apply to supernatural ones, correct? So...in that mindset, how would one go about investigating supernatural claims, even presupposing there have been one or two confirmed cases? How were those cases confirmed? We've no tools or methodology, at least not that I can see...

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 18 by Mithrae]

Sorry for my own late reply to your late reply. Let's get the ball rolling again shall we?
Even though I'm on the site literally every day, checking "Watched Topics New Posts", this specific thread just doesn't come up...that or maybe I subconsciously skip past it? I dunno, let's move on and continue the discussion.

In your most recent post I count at least four major misrepresentations of what's been written, most of which are quite difficult to pass off as innocent misunderstandings.

If they are misunderstandings, then they are innocent. I take a very dim view of guilty ones.

perhaps you can clarify these for me so I can understand where you're coming from, and hopefully help ensure a productive exchange:

No biggie, so let's get to it...

This was the earliest, most egregious and frankly rather offensive example. I did not even remotely suggest that.

Then you have to forgive me for thinking so, as literally the only times I have heard ANYONE speak about "personal growth" and the concentration camps is when they are trying to downplay the horrors that happened there.

In fact the very next sentence of that paragraph - which you snipped from your quote - was that "Some folk feel there's "too much" suffering in the world, while others conclude that their 'good' god allows only the minimum necessary and that we could fix the vast majority of that if we loved others as we love ourselves."

If you mean you think I did a quote mine intentionally...no. If that does count as a quote mine, then it was unintentional on my part. I remember one time where I did do a quote mine on this site, and my response to it was to write up a post (before anyone had even called me out on it, I was the one who discovered my own mistake) and to apologise. So on the chance of it being a quote mine, I apologise.
Anyway, even including that sentence doesn't help your case very much, doesn't do much to detract from what I said regarding the camps. If our world is a case of a good god only allowing the minimum amount of suffering, and we STILL had a world where literal industrial scale application of genocide was done...? Then I quite literally cannot think of anything worse. If this is the minimum...then there is no maximum (apart from maybe ending all life on the planet...?)
Look at it from my point of view. I'm picturing a box, a category labelled "Minimum amount of suffering necessary"...and I'm being told that in this box, perhaps there are the concentration camps, the literal millions killed. I don't buy that.
Can you help me out here? Is this what you're arguing?

I do not view the Holocaust as a trial for personal growth. Neither do I view it as something to be cynically exploited to score cheap 'points' in a debate.

Okay...so why then did you say things like "Everyone recognizes that in a pampered paradise a computer not loading properly can seem like unbearable suffering; everyone also recognizes that some amount of challenge and adversity are necessary for personal growth." in the part of a discussion that (at least in that part) is focused on the concentration camps?
At absolute least, you come across as blas, not having tact.
Imagine if I told you that my ancestors emigrated to the US, and you said that line about "personal growth", and my response was "Dude...I just told you that my ancestors emigrated because of a famine, in which thousands died of starvation, and those particular ancestors of mine lost members of their own family"
(to be clear, I am completely ignorant as to my ancestors. The above is only a hypothetical)

and it was, undisputably, a human evil regardless of one's theological views or lack thereof.

It was an evil committed by humans yes, I agree with you there, but are you saying that theological views don't play a part or are not a factor in evils being committed? Please explain.

These are extremely misleading comments about that thread.

Any comments I made here in "Uncertainty, miracles, conspiracies and aliens" regarding that other thread of yours were based on, and in response to, what you said. I even quoted you directly.

In its opening post I noted that the medical committees are only asked to make a judgement on medical questions: Essentially, was the cure under consideration rapid, complete and unexplained by medical science? They are not asked to make a judgement about 'miracles' because they have no particular expertise in assessing miracles, and asking for such an assessment would potentially undermine the credibility of their judgement on the medical questions.

Which then means that here, on this thread, you actually have NO evidence that and to quote you again,
the evidence that Mary/Jesus/God healed some people".

Notice the names in bold. If you are going to argue that specific named entities that are considered supernatural did some supernatural healings, like regrow a lost limb, then you cannot point to Lourdes as evidence for this. The Lourdes committee, by your own admission, do not name supernatural entities as being the causal agents behind anything that they say are healings.

the Catholic church has chosen to keep the final official pronouncement of a miracle to itself.

Should we trust the word of this group? Why the RCC, and not say, Southern Baptists? Or Eastern Orthodox? Or Seventh-Day Adventists?
This is rhetorical by the way. My point is that you seem to be arguing, if unintentionally, that the Catholic Church and ONLY the Catholic church can or does or should get the last say on what is a miracle and what is not a miracle.
What if there are healings, but it has nothing, literally nothing at all, to do with the magical mother figure venerated by Roman Catholicism? Since this is supernatural stuff we're talking about, empiricism cannot be used.

This seems even worse than the above:
> Going from "anything in the theology of any major religion" - theology, their gestalt view of god or their 'religious beliefs and theory when systematically developed' as defined by google - to "here's a cherry-picked line from their canon" is entirely mistaken to begin with, even if it said what you claimed, and I had already tried to correct your approach in my previous post. You might as well try to argue that "There is no god" is part of Christian theology since that line is found in the bible also

If you go here
https://biblehub.com/matthew/7-7.htm
and look to the right of the page, you will find what are called "Cross-references". Or you can check the commentaries at the bottom of the page.
This isn't just some throw away line. This is something that Christian theologians have indeed thought about!

You've cited one third of a single verse, as if it were not clear from "seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" that there's something more in view here than just 'name it and claim it.' That paragraph goes on to say that "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him!" How many parents hand over everything their children ask for? Just a dozen verses earlier is the passage in which Jesus tells his disciples to stop working for money, give up their earthly treasure and trust in God for their most basic food and clothing. Continuing to pretend that quoting a third of a verse shows that Matthew was portraying God as a "magic genie whose job is to grant our every whim" is not just a misunderstanding: It is blatantly and deeply dishonest.

That paragraph goes on to say that "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him!" How many parents hand over everything their children ask for?

You'd be surprised...there are indeed parents who do just that. In fact, that line, that yourself have just quoted, can indeed be interpreted as advocating for just that. I wouldn't be surprised if a Christian parent doing his studies were to read that passage and think to himself "...so Jesus teaches that God the Father will reward me in heaven if I give good gifts to my children"

Just a dozen verses earlier is the passage in which Jesus tells his disciples to stop working for money, give up their earthly treasure and trust in God for their most basic food and clothing.

And if those disciples asked of God only for basic food and clothing, would they have received it?

Continuing to pretend that quoting a third of a verse shows that Matthew was portraying God as a "magic genie whose job is to grant our every whim" is not just a misunderstanding: It is blatantly and deeply dishonest.

It is a response to your claim. You make it out as if theology of a religion is something distinct from, separate and/or disconnected from that religion's holy book.
The line is in there.

You might as well try to argue that "There is no god" is part of Christian theology since that line is found in the bible also

Not the same thing at all. Just to double check, I downloaded a PDF of the NIV, and searched for that phrase. It does indeed turn up 15 times. Thing is...it appears not as their own sentences. There is no example of a holy man saying flat out "There is no God", period, end of discussion. No, it's always part of a larger sentence, stating the exact opposite, most often on the theme of "There is no God but me"
Whereas the "Ask and ye shall receive?" The theme (at least from what I see) is plain to see
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek
and you will find; knock and the door will
be opened to you.
8
For everyone who asks receives; he
who seeks finds; and to him who knocks,
the door will be opened.
9
"Which of you, if his son asks for bread,
will give him a stone?
10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a
snake?
According to what Matthew says Jesus said, Jesus is apparently saying that if one asks, they will receive what they ask for, if they knock, the door will open and even rebukes the idea of not giving what was asked for, of giving something different instead.

Perhaps the reason most Christians don't treat their God as a "magic genie whose job is to grant our every whim" (despite what the text of their holy book says) is because it simply does not happen. It appears then that reality and the expectations of most Christians is in direct conflict with the holy book that is supposedly the foundation or ultimate justification for that religion.

In the opening post of this thread I quoted my 2018 comment explicitly stating that "I would (and did) even agree that [a church conspiracy] is 'more likely' than the miracle conclusion."

Okay, my mistake then. I'll own this. Somehow, after reading both threads, and taking part in this discussion, I came away with the impression that you honestly believe and argue that there was a leg regrown.