MiracleQuest Continues: Retracing Our Steps At DD’s
Posted in Atheism, Blogosphere, MiracleQuest, Religion, Science, Skepticism, Thinking Critically on | 5 minutes | 5 Comments →
So I'm part of the lovely little soiree about miracles that's been going on over at DD's for months. The purpose of today's post is to strain some of my points from that debate, and eventually I hope to distill them into one concise listing.
When I entered the discussion over at DD's, I just happened to be fresh off the heels of a similar argument, and my first comment criticized attempts to verify miracles without agreed-upon definitions and criteria. More specifically, in the context of allegedly miraculous healing, I asked how we might eliminate confounders such as spontaneous remission and the placebo effect. Commenters John Morales and jim both chimed in at this point.
John Morales pointed me to a link in which he defined a miracle as something that "prima facie violates natural law." Jim added that a miracle should be, "Something unambiguous. Something that doesn’t easily fall onto the skeptic’s side of Occam’s razor. In other words, something that cannot be suitably explained away by a naturalistic hypothesis." Somewhere else, the words stringently verified were offered.
In a move that stoked both their ire, I denounced these definitions as useless due to their subjectivity. Guess what? We used to think airplanes were impossible because they would violate natural law. Many things are unambiguous and stringently verified. Whether or not something falls on the skeptic's side of Occam's razor is going to vary from person to person. And what's our natural hypothesis for the Great Pyramid at Giza? Is it a miracle? How might we differentiate between what can and cannot be suitably explained by a naturalistic hypothesis?
The way I see it, with such loose definitions and criteria like theirs, we’re forever destined to talk past one another. Miracle discussions seem absolutely hopeless if we won’t clarify these subjective words, what they mean in the real world, and most importantly, how we might know when we’ve discovered something that meets them.
The Marian apparition at Zeitoun was unambiguously seen and stringently verified by thousands of people. It has not been explained by a naturalistic hypothesis. So, why doesn't that make it a miracle? Ironically, the same people who were so confident in the usefulness of their definitions ended up saying Zeitoun was not a miracle. So, I think my point stands that we need a rigorous set of criteria for making preliminary evaluations of any case. Let's actually try to quantify these terms we’re throwing around here.
Commenter jim got a little ahead of himself and misrepresented my position:
Again, since you by definition label anybody’s standards as ‘subjective, therefore dismissible’, there’s nothing really left to say.
Problem is, I didn't label "anybody's standards" as subjective and useless; I labeled jim and John Morales' standards as subjective and useless. Why jim took liberty to extend the scope of my statement is beyond me, and what's even more annoying is that his misunderstanding led to his pulling the "cl is a mean and horrible sophist" card!
The second post I commented on was Cross-Examining Bernadette's Healing, where I introduced the example of the re-capitation man to illustrate that even when an unambiguous violation of natural law occurs, skeptics will not be satisfied. What if you see a man decapitated, and after a Buddhist monk prays for him, he suddenly re-attaches his head and saunters off for a drink at the local watering hole? Natural law as we know it has been violated, but the skeptic can say, "Has it? Perhaps the re-capitation had a natural cause?" And that's exactly what they said, things like, "It could be a SMERF (Sudden Magical Entropy Reversal Field)." As hard as it might be to think of a more unambiguous event that does not clearly fall on the skeptic's side of Occam's Razor, my opponents maintained that the re-capitation would not be proof of miracles. So clearly, the definitions my opponents provided are inadequate.
Now, I can agree that re-capitation does not prove anything in a strictly scientific context. The re-capitation would certainly confront philosophical naturalism head-on, but in a strictly scientific context remains veridically useless. One sample is rarely sufficient in science, and we have no discernible way of verifying who or what actually triggered the re-capitation. But come on! Is it really that much an abandonment of logic or reason to assume something legitimate may have occurred in the re-capitation scenario? I think it takes more superstitiousness to deny this particular miracle than to accept it. And guess what? We're right back to square one.
Today, nearly two months later, I asked DD for an explanation of how somebody might verify an allegedly supernatural phenomenon to his satisfaction. I'll let you know when I hear something.
Lifeguard
says...I’m totally shooting from the hip here, but how’s this?
Miracles, if they exist, are observable phenomenon whose cause cannot be sufficiently explained in purely scientific terms (materialistic and naturalistic causes).
Clearly this definition has problems– namely, given the nature of science, today’s miracles are killed by tomorrow’s scientific discoveries. Although the other side of that is you can always say that by this definition, life itself is a miracle. Whatever the shortcomings though, if one believes miracles exist, then I don’t see how you can beat that definition.
The problem is the only acceptable definition of a miracle for a non-believer is as follows: Miracles are events whose causes either (1) cannot be explained by the present state of knowledge (2) are erroneously believed to be beyond the possibility of chance (take your basic Grilled Cheese-us), and/or (3) attributed to a supernatural cause.
I understand what you’re trying to get at with these posts, but I think it’s highly unlikely you’ll find an atheist who will concede that any given example you give is clearly and unambiguously beyond a materialist explanation… although the Exterminator once quipped something like that he’d believe in god if he saw ants arranging themselves on a hill to spell “JESUS SAVES.”
cl
says...Hola Lifeguard..
Do you think the re-capitation example is clearly and unambiguously beyond a materialist explanation? If not, could you at least concede that per Occam’s, a supernatural explanation of the re-capitation is more logical?
I don’t know if Ex would believe or not. Belief is always volitional and the error slothful induction always present, even amongst the sharpest of the bunch – a bunch that I categorize Ex in.
Lifeguard
says...You wrote:
“Do you think the re-capitation example is clearly and unambiguously beyond a materialist explanation? If not, could you at least concede that per Occam’s, a supernatural explanation of the re-capitation is more logical?”
I don’t know that I would say it is unambiguously beyond a materialist explanation or even that a supernatural explanation is ostensibly simpler as per Occam’s razor, but let me explain precisely why.
This past holiday season, my wife and I went on a cruise with her parents. On the ship we went to see a mentalist-illusionist and subsequently got into a big argument over whether what we saw was actually magic, clairvoyance, or what have you. Naturally, I was innately skeptical even though I had no idea how this guy pulled off some of those stunts.
Granted, I acknowledge that for the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking about a bona fide re-capitation as opposed to something that may or may not be a simple illusion, but I feel like I would be giving away the farm if I made either of those concessions, and I’m reluctant to do that given that I think anyone faced with a real life re-capitation would have some serious investigatory questions before conceding that they indeed just saw what they think they saw.
And that’s where I think this discussion will always get derailed, because it’s difficult to talk about an abstract miracle or even an example of one. Many atheists object to the idea of miracles based on a generalized (and healthy) skepticism about extraordinary claims directed at the limits and biases of personal observations. The minute you bring up a hypothetical miracle, you run into all the questions and alternative explanations a skeptic would raise before considering a supernatural cause.
That’s why I think the most I could say is that if I did witness a re-capitation I don’t see how I could simply rule out a supernatural explanation out of hand. Part of me would likely consider the possibility that I just saw an act of God, but I don’t think I’d make that leap. I might even call it a “miracle” in the same way I think childbirth and the Giants winning the Super Bowl two years ago are “miracles.” In the end, though, I’d chalk it up to something utterly inexplicable, perhaps even supernatural, but it would not convince me that there is a god.
John Morales
says...The claim about the comment:
The salient part of the comment:
The claim about my response:
My response:
The link in my response includes this salient portion:
(emphasis above mine))
I post this to indicate that I cannot, in good conscience, concur with your characterisation of the situation.
cl
says...Lifeguard,
You and I seem to be mostly on the same page. It seems you can see that at a minimum, the re-capitation seems to confront naturalism dead-on. However,
I’m a bit hesitant there. Sure, anyone looking to explain miracles scientifically is going to have some serious investigatory questions, but as you say, something inexplicable that violates a known law of nature has occurred in direct response to prayer, which meets both of John Morales’ criteria below. Why John Morales maintains his criteria are useful yet to my knowledge has not accepted the re-capitation example is beyond me, and I cannot, in good conscience, concur with his conclusions.
Incidentally, anybody could’ve followed my links to see the entirety of jim or John Morales’ comments. It’s not like I was hiding anything.
Further note John Morales’ criteria of “repeatable,” then the following from DD:
DD’s criticisms apply to at least part of John Morales’ criteria, and like you said Lifeguard, “this discussion will always get derailed.”
Where commenter jim and I agree is that we both think like you in this regard; to paraphrase jim, “because any progress in such discussions inevitably seems to entail one side acquiescing to the other.”