MiracleQuest Continues: Another Response To jimWhile doing some "fall cleaning" around here, I found today's post in the "drafts" folder.
Although the original exchange occurred over a month ago, and I'm unsure why I'm responding to a guy who banned me from his blog for an unspecified "breach of honesty" while he apparently has no problem calling me names like "mealy-mouthed prick" all over the internet, but dedication to the arguments must overlook the uglier sides of debate. Granted, I know what one or two of you might be thinking: "Ah cl, we hate it when you rehash these 'he said this, I said that' arguments. Why burden us with your own online social difficulties??" It's not that. Rather, I feel there are some cogent rebuttals here on my part, and I thought it would be a waste to just trash the post.
So, let's get to it. Comments welcomed.
What The Bible Actually Says About Salvation, or, The Logic Behind Jesus As The Only Way To GodAs an aside, I think this could become a useful post series (What The Bible Actually Says About…), because I often find myself running into difficulty in arguments based on differing interpretations of the Bible. Two of TWIM's five seven post series are effectively stalled right now: Rebutting Atheist Universe, and eBates. The former is stalled mostly for lack of motivation, really. I tend to write spontaneously and follow arguments wherever they might interestingly lead, which is why I'll never whine a lick about what those who lack pertinent arguments often demonize as "thread derailment." Freethought has no boundaries, folks.
This spontaneity also means it's hard for me to force myself to respond to David Mills once a week when I'm not particularly feeling it — which I haven't been for a while. eBates and the whole "Power Commenter" ideas we've experimented with haven't gotten off the ground yet, mostly for lagging on my own part I suppose. The first person I invited to an eBate declined, and I just haven't asked anyone else yet. I've expressed interest in having one with Ebonmuse regarding his essay A Ghost In The Machine, but he declined to respond. But let's not digress too much here.
How Would You Define A Miracle, ReduxWhat in the world do people mean when they use the word miracle?
The answer is essentially something out of this world.
The problem is, how in this world do we test for that?
Over at SI's, Modusoperandi recently described a miracle as "something that doesn't happen." Okay, well… I had to assume he meant something that rarely happens, but is that really any more helpful as a parameter? I'm no probability whiz, but it seems to me that given enough rolls of the dice, any combination can eventually result.
Another problem with this view is that it just simply assumes miracles rarely happen. Granted, nobody I know has been resurrected, but who's to say any of the countless everyday occurrences where lives are being saved weren't miraculous? Who's to say any of the countless everyday occurrences where lives are being lost weren't malevolent expressions of the phenomenon? Who's to say there's not a supernatural or spiritual component to things like UFO phenomena, astral projection, clairsentience or any of the other strange phenomena human beings experience? If we have no idea what miracles are, how can we move forward and say they happen rarely?
False Argument #30, Or, MiracleQuest Continues: The Case Of Kayla Knight, Pt. IFalse Argument #30 is a two-tier one coming from the chaplain and PhillyChief:
Well I think we can start by reviewing everyone who refused medical treatment instead of prayer and were healed. That list would be….. strangely unavailable.
-PhillyChiefMaybe all those who were healed by prayer never bothered reporting it to the newsies. I wonder why they kept their lights hidden under their bushels? It seems like their testimonies would be powerful stuff. Still, it seems strange that not even one person appears to have stepped up and told such a story.
-the chaplain
Now, there's certainly some non-committal posturing on chaplain's behalf here, but someone who's looked into this stuff for even a microsecond has to wonder: Are chaplain and PhillyChief merely being rhetorically successful? Are they taking themselves seriously? Or have they really not looked into this stuff for more than a microsecond?
Although I certainly don't expect either of them to think any miracle story on the news is actually credible, that's a different story, and .22 seconds on Google disproves their claims. Accordingly, a rational person has to wonder: Are the chaplain and PhillyChief reliable? Like John Evo said about my last little soiree with PhillyChief: Is he even doing any research? Is the chaplain? Or are they just voicing their opinions?
On Atheists & Blind Faith, Or, False Arguments 27, 28 & 29: Why Prayer Studies Are Not CredibleSo I locked horns with PhillyChief and John Evo, again, this time it was over the following comment from PhillyChief – who if I remember correctly – claims to be a scientifically-minded rationalist atheist:
Prayer helps no one but the one praying, providing a euphoria and calming effect, which could be comparable to ejaculating.
–PhillyChief
I felt that was an odd statement for a scientifically-minded rationalist to make, but was not surprised that it came from a sarcastic atheist who claims to be "almost always right", and so I replied,
How would you know? Where is that "demonstrable evidence" you're so fond of? Aside from being grossly unscientific, statements like the above appear contradictory alongside appeals to soft atheism as you've recently made on my site.
–cl
MiracleQuest Continues: On Deacon Duncan’s “Unapologetic”So I was about to hit "post" when I took a break, and found myself randomly staring at a TV that was on. It was that History Channel show called MonsterQuest and now you probably see the significance of the title. The show begins with narration on the nature of different sorts of monsters, you know, Big Foot, the New Jersey Devil, Werewolves, et cetera: "Monsters. Are they real? Or imaginary? Join us as science tries to find out."
That's exactly what's been going on at EvangelicalRealism for the past few weeks now: we've been on a MiracleQuest. Except that MonsterQuest can at least define exactly or near-exactly what it is they're looking for. Despite my stodginess on the issue and the naysayers, I think we'll soon solve these problems of definition and criteria. The more we talk about it, the more ideas get tossed out, the bigger the pile of potentially good ideas grows, and sooner or later we're there.
MiracleQuest Continues: But How Do You Know You’ve Been Stabbed??"How might we reasonably define a miracle?" asks cl.
"Regrow a limb on video, empty out a cancer ward, levitate a bunch of Christians out of a burning church and I'll be on the road to belief," says cl's opponent.
"I don't mean give me your own particular examples of a miracle," cl says.
"Oh, well what a disputationist and sophist you are!" quips cl's opponent only a little irrationally.
How Would You Define A Miracle?In the past few months, via several discussions with a variety of learned skeptics and religious people, I've come to better understand the disparities in our concepts of miracles, and specifically, I've been thinking about how falsifiability and confounders diminish the extent to which an alleged miracle can be considered authentic. It may very well be that proving a miracle is impossible, and on this matter I haven't quite decided yet, but I've certainly concluded that there is a wide range of skeptical positions one might take concerning the concept of miracles, and what we can justifiedly say about them, if and when they do occur.
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome regarding alleged healing miracles is developing a reliable method for excluding confounders of spontaneous remission and the placebo effect. Hitherto unexplained, either of these mysterious phenomena would provide good confounding cover for a genuine miracle, and that's not to say that all instances of spontaneous remission and placebo effect are intrinsically miraculous, either. Some skeptics are fond of claiming that only repeatable, observable, systematic instances of miracles would be sufficient to convince them that they were unjustified in their skepticism. This is sounds more like magic than miracle.
Lyell Claims Earth Is 6,000 Years Old! or, False Argument #21: Bible Teaches Interfaith Love Is SinAlright, so I had stayed up until the morning yesterday writing and backlogging what I feel are three interesting and different posts for the upcoming week, on the decision that I was going to take a 10-day break from posting and blogging.
So what happened?
Well, I woke up this morning and after getting into the swing of things, popped over to DA where what I read in the first few sentences just happened to comprise perhaps the biggest example to date of an exegetical post of Ebonmuse's that completely misses the mark.
So I was overcome with an irresistable force to write, and barfed out the following.
All for the better, I suppose. It didn't take long, and I had been wondering what I would stumble across for #21 in the series. Although admittedly skewering a fish in a barrel, this fits the bill perfectly.
False Argument #17: Bible Claims Those Who’ve Never Heard Of Jesus Go To HellFor the past three days I've been spending way too much time on an atheist forum where over a dozen commenters have taken me strongly to task on this issue. Yet strangely, when asked for scriptural support, they offer nothing but the standard verses relating to salvation.
I agree that the Bible says Jesus is the only way to God. Does this mean that those who have never heard of Jesus go automatically to hell? My atheist opponents cry an emphatic yes.
But even a basic Bible education disproves this idea. If this interpretation is correct, then Moses, Isaac, Abraham, Daniel, Isaiah, David, Solomon and ALL of the other Old Testament figures would ALL be in hell, correct? Yet scripture clearly indicates otherwise, and each of these people lived and died before Jesus ever walked the Earth.