Assuming the supernatural is possible

[Justin108]

Would assuming the supernatural is possible suddenly mean that the supernatural is probable? Or would supernatural occurrences still be highly unlikely events?

[Justin108]

[Replying to post 1 by Justin108]
To grasp the probability we would, at the very least, need to know the character of the deity. After all, how probable is it that person x will get married? We cannot even begin to answer that until we know whether person x even wants to marry.

It is even more complicated with the case of Christianity. Christianity does not paint a picture of a deity willy-nilly scattering about disconnected miracles. It relates a story, a meta-narrative.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall you in another post suggesting that it is precisely the resurrection that made you a Christian. If that is the case, would it not be wise to analyse the resurrection not with "YHWH" in mind but rather with a generic, unnamed creator in mind? So basically, instead of asking "what would YHWH do / what is YHWH's character", wouldn't it make more sense to ask "what would the creator of the universe do"?

Place yourself in the shoes of a deist for a moment and then ask yourself if god would bring someone back from the dead?

Thus a fuller question would be something like the following: How probable is it that the power behind the universe is going to bring all creation into a new stage of being by resurrecting a corpse from the grave?

Exactly. How would you answer that?

To assign this an antecedent probability we would have to ask, "How often has this power done exactly that in the past?" Well, never. But that obviously does not solve the problem, for the very nature of this miracle is unique.

It is exceptionally unique. All the alternate explanations you have given for the empty tomb (hallucinations, deception, etc) are not nearly as unique. Is it not therefore rational to believe the less-unique explanations are more likely than the exceptionally unique explanation?

[Mithrae]

It is exceptionally unique. All the alternate explanations you have given for the empty tomb (hallucinations, deception, etc) are not nearly as unique. Is it not therefore rational to believe the less-unique explanations are more likely than the exceptionally unique explanation?

How many reported observations of paranormal events are we allowed to use that reasoning for, before their 'uniqueness' stops being a trump card? Once, sure, no question that it's a slap-down argument. Two or three times, fair enough. Ten times? Fifty times?



Edit: Seems the forum is displaying properly for me again, for anyone who's been frought with concern for my wellbeing

[Justin108]

It is exceptionally unique. All the alternate explanations you have given for the empty tomb (hallucinations, deception, etc) are not nearly as unique. Is it not therefore rational to believe the less-unique explanations are more likely than the exceptionally unique explanation?

How many reported observations of paranormal events are we allowed to use that reasoning for, before their 'uniqueness' stops being a trump card? Once, sure, no question that it's a slap-down argument. Two or three times, fair enough. Ten times? Fifty times?

There have not been a single confirmed instance of the supernatural occurring, so the number is currently at zero.

[Mithrae]

How many reported observations of paranormal events are we allowed to use that reasoning for, before their 'uniqueness' stops being a trump card? Once, sure, no question that it's a slap-down argument. Two or three times, fair enough. Ten times? Fifty times?

There have not been a single confirmed instance of the supernatural occurring, so the number is currently at zero.

What I suspect you mean is that there has not been a single example for which some alternative has not been considered the more plausible explanation by many folk, given the supposed uniqueness of 'supernatural' events. I'm just asking how often that is a reasonable argument to make? For every new discovery there had not been a single confirmed instance of it beforehand, and in most cases the first reports of it were rightly subjected to considerable scepticism, but ongoing reports of the same or similar phenomena or conclusions have (again quite rightly) made out of hand dismissal of the initial report/s as mistaken, deluded or deceptive increasingly unreasonable.

Do you have a ballpark figure for where that line might be in the case of reported paranormal observations by multiple not-obviously-unreliable witnesses?

Or would you keep dismissing hundreds and even thousands of such reports using that same reasoning that they're so 'unique' that even ad hoc alternative explanations must be preferred?

[Justin108]

What I suspect you mean is that there has not been a single example for which some alternative has not been considered the more plausible explanation by many folk, given the supposed uniqueness of 'supernatural' events. I'm just asking how often that is a reasonable argument to make? For every new discovery there had not been a single confirmed instance of it beforehand, and in most cases the first reports of it were rightly subjected to considerable scepticism, but ongoing reports of the same or similar phenomena or conclusions have (again quite rightly) made out of hand dismissal of the initial report/s as mistaken, deluded or deceptive increasingly unreasonable.

Can you give an example of a new discovery for comparison sake?

Do you have a ballpark figure for where that line might be in the case of reported paranormal observations by multiple not-obviously-unreliable witnesses?

Or would you keep dismissing hundreds and even thousands of such reports using that same reasoning?

This is not about the amount of reports but rather how well these reports are documented. For example, if we were to ever find Big Foot's corpse, that single corpse would confirm his existence. One well documented instance of Big Foot is all that's needed. The reason Big Foot is met with skepticism is because all of its sightings are poorly documented. Platypuses were discovered in 1939. People accepted their discovery because they were well documented. Big Foot was not. Similarly, people reject supernatural reports not only because they are rare but because they are poorly documented.

[Mithrae]

What I suspect you mean is that there has not been a single example for which some alternative has not been considered the more plausible explanation by many folk, given the supposed uniqueness of 'supernatural' events. I'm just asking how often that is a reasonable argument to make? For every new discovery there had not been a single confirmed instance of it beforehand, and in most cases the first reports of it were rightly subjected to considerable scepticism, but ongoing reports of the same or similar phenomena or conclusions have (again quite rightly) made out of hand dismissal of the initial report/s as mistaken, deluded or deceptive increasingly unreasonable.

Can you give an example of a new discovery for comparison sake?

A round Earth. Heliocentrism. Evolution. Plate tectonics. Ozone depletion. Anthropogenic global warming. Take your pick.

Do you have a ballpark figure for where that line might be in the case of reported paranormal observations by multiple not-obviously-unreliable witnesses?

Or would you keep dismissing hundreds and even thousands of such reports using that same reasoning?

This is not about the amount of reports but rather how well these reports are documented. For example, if we were to ever find Big Foot's corpse, that single corpse would confirm his existence. One well documented instance of Big Foot is all that's needed. The reason Big Foot is met with skepticism is because all of its sightings are poorly documented. Platypuses were discovered in 1939. People accepted their discovery because they were well documented. Big Foot was not. Similarly, people reject supernatural reports not only because they are rare but because they are poorly documented.

The International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL) is a panel of some 20-odd medical experts from various countries which since 1954 has been tasked with investigating and documenting alleged miraculous healings at Lourdes, and deciding "whether to declare or refuse to confirm that this cure is inexplicable according to present scientific knowledge." Between 1947 and 1954 a similar, French-only committee served a similar purpose.

An article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (Dowling, 1984) describes its process in some detail:

• If, after the initial scrutiny and follow up, the Medical Bureau thinks that there is good evidence of an inexplicable cure, the dossier is sent on to the CMIL which usually meets once a year in Paris. A preliminary examination of the data is made and if the members agree that the case is worth investigating they appoint one or two of their number to act as a rapporteur. The rapporteur makes a thorough study of the case, usually seeing the patient himself, and presents the material in a detailed written dossier circulated to the members before the meeting at which they will take their decision.
  
  The report is then discussed critically at length under 18 headings, a vote being taken at each stage. In the first three stages the Committee considers the diagnosis and has to satisfy itself that a correct diagnosis has been made and proven by the production of the results of full physical examination, laboratory investigations, X-ray studies and endoscopy and biopsy where applicable: failure at this stage is commonly because of inadequate investigation or missing documents. At the next two stages the Committee must be satisfied that the disease was organic and serious without any significant degree of psychological overlay. Next it must make sure that the natural history of the disease precludes the possibility of spontaneous remission and that the medical treatment given cannot have effected the cure: cases ruled out here are those about which there cannot be any certainty that the treatment has not been effective - e.g. a course of cytotoxic drugs would lead to the case being rejected, even where the likelihood of success was small. Then the evidence that the patient has indeed been cured is scrutinized and the Committee must be satisfied that both objective signs and subjective symptoms have disappeared and that investigations are normal. The suddenness and completeness of the cure are considered together with any sequelae. Finally, the adequacy of the length of follow up is considered.

If the committee decides by a two-thirds majority vote according to its website (or possibly a simple majority as of 1984, according to that paper) that the cure is currently inexplicable, it still isn't necessarily considered a miracle since ultimately that's not something that medical or scientific experts can make a judgement on, at least as professionals in their field. Arguably priests are no more equipped to do so either, of course But ultimately what that means is that even having passed the Committee's 'currently-inexplicable' verdict, the reported healings might not always be hailed as miracles; that final decision seems to rest with the archbishop of the cured patient's diocese (who for example may refrain from calling it intervention by his God if the patient had since become a Buddhist).

Lourdes receives some 5 million visitors every year (~4 million in the early 1980s), about 65,000 of whom are "registered and documented as sick" (according to that 1984 paper). I don't know how many of those sick pilgrims have claimed to be healed, but only about 40-50 of them per year have made healing claims which the Medical Bureau has deemed worthy of opening a dossier on (1300 between 1947 and 1977). Of those probably more than 2000 investigations up to the present, only 12-15 have eventually been deemed to be miracles since the CMIL began in 1954 (very roughly, about 0.00038% of all sick pilgrims in that period or 1 in 260,000; or about 0.7% of the claims investigated).

The Skeptic's Dictionary provides some interesting perspectives and statistics, but does not actually dispute any of those 12-15 allged miracles. (It's hard to be sure exactly how many since sources from different dates say "There have been X miracles reported since such-and-such a date.")

The Miracle Sceptic site offers a great deal of scathing rhetoric, but directly disputes only a single one of the reported miracles. A second disputed case is reported by James Randi, as quoted in Wikipedia (which may be alluded to in the Miracle Sceptic site, though in the midst of all its vague rhetoric it's hard to be sure).

You can read details on these dozen-odd late 20th century alleged miracles from the bottom of this page if you're interested, and continued on page 4:
http://www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/lourdes/miracles3.html
I came across it from Googling "confirmed miracles" just now, and it piqued my interest enough that I decided it was at least worth a couple of hours' investigation.

[Justin108]

What I suspect you mean is that there has not been a single example for which some alternative has not been considered the more plausible explanation by many folk, given the supposed uniqueness of 'supernatural' events. I'm just asking how often that is a reasonable argument to make? For every new discovery there had not been a single confirmed instance of it beforehand, and in most cases the first reports of it were rightly subjected to considerable scepticism, but ongoing reports of the same or similar phenomena or conclusions have (again quite rightly) made out of hand dismissal of the initial report/s as mistaken, deluded or deceptive increasingly unreasonable.

Can you give an example of a new discovery for comparison sake?

A round Earth. Heliocentrism. Evolution. Plate tectonics. Ozone depletion. Anthropogenic global warming. Take your pick.

Do you believe there was sufficient evidence for these discoveries? Do you believe supernatural claims to be as well supported as the above discoveries?

[Mithrae]

What I suspect you mean is that there has not been a single example for which some alternative has not been considered the more plausible explanation by many folk, given the supposed uniqueness of 'supernatural' events. I'm just asking how often that is a reasonable argument to make? For every new discovery there had not been a single confirmed instance of it beforehand, and in most cases the first reports of it were rightly subjected to considerable scepticism, but ongoing reports of the same or similar phenomena or conclusions have (again quite rightly) made out of hand dismissal of the initial report/s as mistaken, deluded or deceptive increasingly unreasonable.

Can you give an example of a new discovery for comparison sake?

A round Earth. Heliocentrism. Evolution. Plate tectonics. Ozone depletion. Anthropogenic global warming. Take your pick.

Do you believe there was sufficient evidence for these discoveries? Do you believe supernatural claims to be as well supported as the above discoveries?

You're missing the point quite spectacularly. I never said or implied that any miracle or paranormal claims were as thoroughly substantiated as widely acknowledged scientific facts. That would be foolish and obviously incorrect. I said that even discoveries which have since become widely acknowledged facts started out in the position where there had "not been a single confirmed instance." So obviously, that argument is only a trump card (if it ever is) for dismissing the first one or two or X reports of hitherto unsubstantiated events, after which a reasonable person has to start considering the evidence with an open mind and be as thoroughly sceptical of alternative explanations as of the reports themselves.

Now, X might be a number in the tens or in the hundreds or in the thousands. In the case of events which seem to 'violate' the observational patterns which early theist scientists dubbed 'laws' of nature, I myself would say that X should be somewhere in the range of seven to seventy, for observational reports by multiple not obviously unreliable witnesses.

But you have not yet answered my question: How many such reports can we dismiss more or less out of hand?
Have you given it any thought, or would you be content to keep dismissing reports indefinitely?

[Justin108]

I never said or implied that any miracle or paranormal claims were as thoroughly substantiated as widely acknowledged scientific facts. That would be foolish and obviously incorrect. I said that even discoveries which have since become widely acknowledged facts started out in the position where there had "not been a single confirmed instance.

A round Earth. Heliocentrism. Evolution. Plate tectonics. Ozone depletion. Anthropogenic global warming. These are the discoveries you mentioned. None of these are "instances". A round Earth is not a "single instance", it's a constant state of reality. This cannot be compared to an instance of, say, someone coming back from the dead. That instance would be a temporary, singular instance whereas the Earth being round is a permanent constant. So do you have examples of single instances rather than constant facts?

"not been a single confirmed instance." So obviously, that argument is only a trump card for dismissing the first one or five or X reports of paranormal events, after which a reasonable person has to start considering the evidence with an open mind.

Well obviously if a single instance can be confirmed, one can no longer claim there to be no confirmed instances. If one can no longer make that claim, then clearly it can no longer be used as a trump card.

However, this might introduce a new trump card. If there has literally been just one confirmed case of X happening in recorded history, if someone were to claim X happened to them, I would still be greatly skeptical since X is clearly not something that happens often.

But you have not yet answered my question: How many such reports can we dismiss more or less out of hand?

I can't just throw out a number without first investigating the reports individually. I can't draw up a quota of "if a hundred supernatural claims are made, we should ignore about 70 of them". I'm not exactly sure what you're asking here.

[Mithrae]

But you have not yet answered my question: How many such reports can we dismiss more or less out of hand?

I can't just throw out a number without first investigating the reports individually. I can't draw up a quota of "if a hundred supernatural claims are made, we should ignore about 70 of them". I'm not exactly sure what you're asking here.

Of course, we're not likely to investigate more than a few reports in any kind of depth. You haven't responded in even a cursory manner to my brief comments (from a mere two or three hours' investigation) on the alleged Lourdes miracles, for example. To the level of interviewing witnesses and so on we might never investigate any reports in depth, which would mean that we're relying entirely on what other people have written pro and con about some alleged event with all their attendant biases, limitations and human errors.

If someone reports that they have observed a 'miracle,' and even when one or more other people confirm that they also observed it, and those people are not obviously unreliable (eg. con artists or mentally ill), unless I know them really well straight off the bat I might assume "Okay, ten to one they're probably wrong somehow." Without even trying or pretending to consider any evidence. But given the nature of the claim I think that would be fair, wouldn't you? That's almost exactly what you said earlier about the resurrection of Jesus - that other ad hoc 'explanations' are surely going to be better.

But if I then found four and five and six other situations of the same type, that's a little different. Even at 10 to 1 odds, on seven distinct reports I'd be left with about a 50/50 chance that at least one of them is correct. Even if I stretched it out to an entirely arbitrary assumption of 100 to 1 odds that each individual claim is wrong, by the time I found seventy reports I'd have to be seriously considering the possibility that some of them could be correct.

I'm not asking you to ignore any miracle reports and I'm not asking you accept any. I'm not even asking you to be as sceptical of alternative explanations as you are of the reports themselves, yet: I'm just asking whether you believe there is any point at which we should be as sceptical of alternative explanations?

Because let's face it, mass hallucinations, conspiracies or "there's bound to be a scientifically consistent explanation one day" usually are not particularly plausible alternatives (hopefully honest though the latter may be), so if and when they are invoked and accepted as being more reasonable than unusual reports it is a pretty clear indication that someone is not being very sceptical of those alternatives.

It is exceptionally unique. All the alternate explanations you have given for the empty tomb (hallucinations, deception, etc) are not nearly as unique. Is it not therefore rational to believe the less-unique explanations are more likely than the exceptionally unique explanation?