Freaking out about what we really can "know" here...

[outhouse]

The point of this thread was not to debate miracles but what can be known by human beings.

We know man factually creates deities and writes mythology and theology. Generally the deity is not chosen but based on geographic location where a person is born.

 

[outhouse]

I do not believe that we are bereft of any evidence at all.

Im sorry there is no credible evidence in support of any deity ever.

 

[JoStories]

Every semester I guest speak at a local college for philosophy and religion classes. Today the question of miracles came up, and the more I argued that they did not happen the more I realized that claim is impossible to make. There are too reasons for this. (1) Even if out of all the humans that ever lived there was not one person who rose from the dead, to say rising from the dead is impossible because of this is a huge leap of statistical faith. (2) In order to know if something was a miracle – a violation of natural law – you would have to know every single little thing about the universe and the could possibly happen, and determine that this absolutely could not. So faith or arrogance, neither of which I am a big fan of, I was required to use in my claim that miracles do not exist, and eventually to avoid arrogance was forced to accept the concept of “miracles” as an untouchable topic, since we may well never have enough knowledge to comment on such a thing.

Things get even crazier though. Understanding everything about our universe from a human perspective means that all the knowledge will be sense based and three dimensional, as humans interpret all the information and the universe as we experience it is third dimensional. Yet there is absolutely no reason or ability to say that is all there is. Perhaps there are Nth dimensional entities who are responsible for miracles, and even though we understand the universe as we experience it we have no way to know of these beings, therefore no ability to know if there are the cause of supposed miracles. Even if these beings came into your living room and told you all the things they know, there would still be no way of knowing whether they had the full picture or not.

Let’s take the example of depression. When people with depression get the proper anti-depressant it can seriously aid with the disorder. This would suggest that depression is something chemically based which can be addressed with medication. Our senses and knowledge of the universe as we experience it tell us then that depression is a physical/chemical illness which can be treated by physical pills and chemicals. However, what if there is actually an invisible imp pounding on people’s brains causing their depression, and the imps happen to be put to sleep by serotonin and other such drugs? Many will laugh, but the sad fact is there is no way to address this. All we can ever do is make claims based on statistics and the assumption that humans are seeing the whole picture.

Another common example is the “invisible pink unicorn in my garage” point I see way too often. Previously I laughed at this and argued that there’s no evidence of unicorns nor invisible things, but I no long feel like holding on so tightly to that faith. Nor am I willing to be arrogant and say that I know enough about existence itself to say with certainty this is not the case. All I can do is say that – as far as I can tell – there is not going to be a unicorn in your garage. In other words, there is nothing I can do to argue against you. What if you have specially evolved eyes and the unicorn moves interdimensionally? Most would laugh but only out of fear or arrogance. The simple truth is you have no idea if I have an invisible unicorn in my garage which only I can see and which moves only through the Nth dimension.

A bit of a ramble, but when you start studying knowledge your mind seems to become pretty much a jumble. I’m interested in anyone’s take on this.

I don't think you can use the example of a physiological illness to discuss miracles. My dissertation was on mystical experiences and the shared commonalities of those experiences across all faiths and cultures. Some of those mystical experiences were considered by those who had them to be 'miracles'. Were they? We have no way of knowing, as you mention, however, we must take the anecdotal experiences at face value because we only have perceptions to couch experiences into. My perception is not yours. Nor can we even prove those perceptions. The color of the sky for you might be cerulean blue but for me, its sky blue. That knowledge is as true as it gets, for you and for me. Neither of us can prove that the color is correct. Can one prove the experience of the stigmata? As far as I know, and I could be very well wrong, there have mean no documented cases of stigmata since the early 1990's and that case is highly controversial, that being Heather Woods. But if you will read about her, you will note a long history of serious abuse. Is it not possible that miracles that are reported are not the result of a very troubled mind? We cannot prove miracles. We have not the technology but even if we did, would it be proven? Would you not have to first define what constitutes a miracle? And would that not change with each culture? For example, there was a plane that landed on the Hudson and some claim that to be a miracle but really, was it? Or just good luck?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Every semester I guest speak at a local college for philosophy and religion classes. Today the question of miracles came up, and the more I argued that they did not happen the more I realized that claim is impossible to make. There are too reasons for this. (1) Even if out of all the humans that ever lived there was not one person who rose from the dead, to say rising from the dead is impossible because of this is a huge leap of statistical faith.

This is easily countered. The probability that some event X happens with probability 1 doesn't mean that it necessarily happens, and likewise the probability that some event Y happens with probability 0 doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In fact, so essential is this to probability theory that the abbreviations of analysis are adopted to the probabilistic "almost always", "infinitely always", etc.

(2) In order to know if something was a miracle – a violation of natural law – you would have to know every single little thing about the universe and the could possibly happen

Then, necessarily, if you don't know "every single little thing about the universe", you can't assert anything is a violation is natural law and therefore can't assert anything is a miracle.

as humans interpret all the information and the universe as we experience it is third dimensional

We actually don't experience a 3D reality. That's because we don't experience any dimensionality and the concept is both counterintuitive and quite complicated for those who haven't taken courses in linear algebra, functional spaces, etc. For example, even those who have taken enough math to work with complex numbers typically don't realize that it doesn't make sense to refer to numbers outside of 2D and that the complex numbers can be said to belong to R2. More importantly, it isn't generally recognized that the difference between a 3D cosmos and one that is 4D (or 11D, or 100,000D) has nothing to do with some alternate dimension. Our experience of a 3D world necessarily entails (if true) that there exists no 1D or 2D reality.

Perhaps there are Nth dimensional entities who are responsible for miracles

This is, again, the dimensionality fallacy. Physicists, statisticians, and many scientists frequently work in thousandth dimensional space or more. Dimensionality is nothing without an ontological interpretation, and this makes the dimensionality issue as expressed here completely irrelevant.

Let’s take the example of depression. When people with depression get the proper anti-depressant it can seriously aid with the disorder. This would suggest that depression is something chemically based which can be addressed with medication.

Turns out, when you take ecstasy, tend to feel good. This is as much a demonstration that you are depressed and have a disorder as is the efficacy of antidepressants.

 

[ether-ore]

Im sorry there is no credible evidence in support of any deity ever.

OK, that is your choice. My position is, because the testimonies of the many witnesses to God are coherent, cohesive and corroborative over several millennia, that they are indeed credible. But more than their indications that God exists is the consistent story of meaning for our existence in eternal terms. The story of our relationship to God, our existence before coming into mortality, why we are here in mortality and what can happen to us after we leave this life has the ring of truth to it. It also appeals to reason that purpose to existence is involved here.

So, I suppose that credibility is in the eye (or mind) of the rational beholder. I do not and cannot subscribe to the idea that because I cannot see something, it therefore does not exist. The absence of empirical evidence for one person is not justification to reject what many others have seen, especially when those testimonies are cohesive, coherent, consistant and corroborative over millennia.

One other point. The Judaeo-Christian scriptures are the only multi source references in existence and therefore have the necessary corroboration for reliability.

 

[Thanda]

If miracles are simply events that violate natural law and we define natural law to be those laws of nature and physics with which the world "usually" operates then miracles are entirely possible. All it would take for an event to be a miracle would be for it happen in a way we did not expect. That is judging from the inputs that we perceive the output would need to be unexpected. For a miracle to take place therefore the only requirement is for the observer to be logically surprised by the outcome produced by the inputs he perceived.

Now let me give an example. If we go back in time 1000 years and take with us two cellphones (and some sort of satellite); suppose we do so and then demonstrate their use to the multitude without explaining how the mechanism works, will it not be a miracle for them? It certainly will be. For to them all they can see is a piece of plastic and glass. And from their understanding of "natural law" one can't use a piece of plastic and glass to communicate with someone hundreds of miles away.

Likewise if a being of higher intelligence comes among us and, with the snap of his fingers Mount Everest to the size of a match box we would have no choice but to call it a miracle since our understanding of natural law precludes the possibility of there being a relationship between the snapping of someone's fingers and a mountain shrinking.

Miracles therefore are all about perspective and, because of this, they happen all the time.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Every semester I guest speak at a local college for philosophy and religion classes. Today the question of miracles came up, and the more I argued that they did not happen the more I realized that claim is impossible to make. There are too reasons for this. (1) Even if out of all the humans that ever lived there was not one person who rose from the dead, to say rising from the dead is impossible because of this is a huge leap of statistical faith.

Kinda sorta. Inductive reasoning can never get you to perfect certainty. However, this doesn't mean we should dismiss inductive reasoning as completely worthless, especially if we're talking about "certainty for all practical purposes" instead of "perfect certainty."

Consider an example that doesn't rely on miracles or the like:

While swimming in the ocean, there is a very small but non-zero chance that the random fluctuations in salt concentration will cause an island of salt to crystallize beneath you and carry you out to sea.

This is absolutely possible: the relevant equations from physics and chemistry tell us that the probability of this is greater than zero (it's miniscule, but still greater than zero). Still, even though we can acknowledge that this is a *theoretical* possibility, we can also treat it as a *practical* impossibility. Nobody carries a waterproof bag with food and a two-way radio while swimming in the ocean "just in case".

For most purposes, I find it more useful not to ask "is there any theoretical chance that X is possible?", but instead to ask "are the chances of X greater than or less than other things that I've decided are so unlikely that they can be ignored?"

(2) In order to know if something was a miracle – a violation of natural law – you would have to know every single little thing about the universe and the could possibly happen, and determine that this absolutely could not.

That's right... and it applies to people making miracle claims as much as it does to people denying them. It may not be justified to say "miracles can't happen", but it's perfectly reasonable to say - for ANY miracle claim - that the label "miracle" is unjustified.

So faith or arrogance, neither of which I am a big fan of, I was required to use in my claim that miracles do not exist, and eventually to avoid arrogance was forced to accept the concept of “miracles” as an untouchable topic, since we may well never have enough knowledge to comment on such a thing.

But again: that goes both ways. If it's true, then it means that it can never be justified to claim that some event was a miracle.

... but in the end, I'm not sure it matters. Set aside the "miracle" aspect and miracle claims just turn into claims of the form "____ happened by an unknown mechanism." This claim still needs support for the "____ happened" part for us to accept them rationally. The "... by an unknown mechanism" part is the bit that's much harder (maybe impossible) to demonstrate, but this is really the problem of the person making the claim

Things get even crazier though. Understanding everything about our universe from a human perspective means that all the knowledge will be sense based and three dimensional, as humans interpret all the information and the universe as we experience it is third dimensional. Yet there is absolutely no reason or ability to say that is all there is. Perhaps there are Nth dimensional entities who are responsible for miracles, and even though we understand the universe as we experience it we have no way to know of these beings, therefore no ability to know if there are the cause of supposed miracles. Even if these beings came into your living room and told you all the things they know, there would still be no way of knowing whether they had the full picture or not.

We're limited, finite creatures. It's eminently reasonable that there's all sorts of stuff beyond our knowledge... or maybe even beyond our capability to know.

... but it's all beyond us, which means that it isn't available to someone trying to justify their claims.

Sure: we can't conclusively rule out the possibility that some claim that someone made by guessing just coincidentally turned out to be true. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But for any unsupported-but-not-completely-ruled-out claim, we can come up with some other unsupported-but-not-completely-ruled-out-claim that's incompatible with the first one. Any valid answer to the question "why should we take your claim more seriously than this other one?" is going to deal with things within human knowledge... and if there's no valid answer given, then we can disregard the claim, since its truth value is indistinguishable from that of a false claim.

There are any number of claims that are compatible with what we know of the universe but false. The mere fact that a claim is compatible with what we know of the universe is not enough reason to take it seriously. That's the point of mental exercises like Russell's Teapot and Sagan's Dragon in the Garage.

 

[Thanda]

Kinda sorta. Inductive reasoning can never get you to perfect certainty. However, this doesn't mean we should dismiss inductive reasoning as completely worthless, especially if we're talking about "certainty for all practical purposes" instead of "perfect certainty."

Consider an example that doesn't rely on miracles or the like:

While swimming in the ocean, there is a very small but non-zero chance that the random fluctuations in salt concentration will cause an island of salt to crystallize beneath you and carry you out to sea.

This is absolutely possible: the relevant equations from physics and chemistry tell us that the probability of this is greater than zero (it's miniscule, but still greater than zero). Still, even though we can acknowledge that this is a *theoretical* possibility, we can also treat it as a *practical* impossibility. Nobody carries a waterproof bag with food and a two-way radio while swimming in the ocean "just in case".

For most purposes, I find it more useful not to ask "is there any theoretical chance that X is possible?", but instead to ask "are the chances of X greater than or less than other things that I've decided are so unlikely that they can be ignored?"


That's right... and it applies to people making miracle claims as much as it does to people denying them. It may not be justified to say "miracles can't happen", but it's perfectly reasonable to say - for ANY miracle claim - that the label "miracle" is unjustified.


But again: that goes both ways. If it's true, then it means that it can never be justified to claim that some event was a miracle.

... but in the end, I'm not sure it matters. Set aside the "miracle" aspect and miracle claims just turn into claims of the form "____ happened by an unknown mechanism." This claim still needs support for the "____ happened" part for us to accept them rationally. The "... by an unknown mechanism" part is the bit that's much harder (maybe impossible) to demonstrate, but this is really the problem of the person making the claim


We're limited, finite creatures. It's eminently reasonable that there's all sorts of stuff beyond our knowledge... or maybe even beyond our capability to know.

... but it's all beyond us, which means that it isn't available to someone trying to justify their claims.

Sure: we can't conclusively rule out the possibility that some claim that someone made by guessing just coincidentally turned out to be true. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But for any unsupported-but-not-completely-ruled-out claim, we can come up with some other unsupported-but-not-completely-ruled-out-claim that's incompatible with the first one. Any valid answer to the question "why should we take your claim more seriously than this other one?" is going to deal with things within human knowledge... and if there's no valid answer given, then we can disregard the claim, since its truth value is indistinguishable from that of a false claim.

There are any number of claims that are compatible with what we know of the universe but false. The mere fact that a claim is compatible with what we know of the universe is not enough reason to take it seriously. That's the point of mental exercises like Russell's Teapot and Sagan's Dragon in the Garage.

As I mentioned above a miracle is always a matter of perspective. If something happens and the person witnessing it finds the event irrational according to their understanding of "natural law" then he has every right to term it a miracle. It need not be a miracle to you though, if you understand how the event was wrought. So there can be no denying that miracles have happened and continue to happen.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The simple truth is you have no idea if I have an invisible unicorn in my garage which only I can see and which moves only through the Nth dimension.

Yet you lay claim to "simple truth"

This type of sophomoric angst is more than a little underwhelming.

Don't let the perfect serve as enemy of the good. Knowledge is provisional. You may "have no idea" if there's a life-sucking goblin beneath your bed, but if and when you start sleeping on the couch it's time to seek help.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

As I mentioned above a miracle is always a matter of perspective. If something happens and the person witnessing it finds the event irrational according to their understanding of "natural law" then he has every right to term it a miracle. It need not be a miracle to you though, if you understand how the event was wrought. So there can be no denying that miracles have happened and continue to happen.

"Miracle" is a slippery word. I don't have much use for it, myself (or "natural", for that matter).

The meaning you suggest (i.e. something like "an event I, the speaker, can't identify a 'natural' cause for") is probably the least useful meaning I've encountered.

Rather than playing semantic shell games, I think it's better to step back and see how the word is being used in context. For instance, instead of arguing something like "X is a miracle, therefore God did it, therefore God", it's a heck of a lot clearer to skip the middle step and argue "I think God exists because of X."

 

[Thanda]

"Miracle" is a slippery word. I don't have much use for it, myself (or "natural", for that matter).

The meaning you suggest (i.e. something like "an event I, the speaker, can't identify a 'natural' cause for") is probably the least useful meaning I've encountered.

Rather than playing semantic shell games, I think it's better to step back and see how the word is being used in context. For instance, instead of arguing something like "X is a miracle, therefore God did it, therefore God", it's a heck of a lot clearer to skip the middle step and argue "I think God exists because of X."

Miracles, on their own, don't prove the existence of God. Hence Jesus said "an evil and adulterous nation seeketh after signs". Where miracles become helpful for the establishment of belief in God is when they happen at an expected time as a result of a specific path I may have followed. So for example if I live the commandments of God and pray for something to happen and it does, and then tomorrow I pray again for some other thing to happen and it also happens, and so forth: then these miracles start forming a body of evidence that will help confirm my belief that there is a God.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Miracles, on their own, don't prove the existence of God.

If all "miracle" means is "something I can't explain (even if someone else can)", then of course they don't prove the existence of God... or anything, really.

Hence Jesus said "an evil and adulterous nation seeketh after signs".

"People who ask you to support your claims are bad people." Talk about poisoning the well.

Where miracles become helpful for the establishment of belief in God is when they happen at an expected time as a result of a specific path I may have followed. So for example if I live the commandments of God and pray for something to happen and it does, and then tomorrow I pray again for some other thing to happen and it also happens, and so forth: then these miracles start forming a body of evidence that will help confirm my belief that there is a God.

Given how you've defined "miracle", how can a miracle ever be helpful?

 

[outhouse]

My position is, because the testimonies of the many witnesses to God are coherent, cohesive and corroborative over several millennia,

Unsubstantiated rhetoric.

There has never been anything we can call a witness with any credibility. Not one credible witness every wrote about it. So far its only self proclaimed experiences written in rhetorical prose and factual mythology.

So, I suppose that credibility is in the eye (or mind) of the rational beholder.

No. Not at all, you have a position of faith. Gods of any kind do not exist scientifically because there is nothing outside mythology to observe.

 

[outhouse]

Miracles, on their own, don't prove the existence of God.

To date miracles are only luck and human perception based on ignorance of said illusion or event. Scientifically they do not exist as a product of nature only mythology.

Hence Jesus said "an evil and adulterous nation seeketh after signs".

Jesus never said a word we know. Only unknown authors far removed from any actual event have stated he said something. Every word in the NT is attributed to him, not something we can say he credibly said.

 

[Thanda]

To date miracles are only luck and human perception based on ignorance of said illusion or event. Scientifically they do not exist as a product of nature only mythology.



Jesus never said a word we know. Only unknown authors far removed from any actual event have stated he said something. Every word in the NT is attributed to him, not something we can say he credibly said.

You are merely repeating what I have said: perception and ignorance is what makes something a miracle. If you are unable to explain an event through whatever laws of nature or science you know you are well within your rights to term that event a miracle - because that is all a miracle really is.

The problem comes when you assert that nothing can happen and has ever happened which you and the people you know cannot explain according to the laws of nature and physics you are currently aware of.


You clever little sermon on Jesus is pointless and doesn't add anything of value to the present discussion.

 

[outhouse]

You are merely repeating what I have said:

Mine cut to the chase and had no rhetoric.

You clever little sermon on Jesus is pointless

You stated the man said something, he didn't. There is context there for some, maybe you missed it.

 

[outhouse]

: then these miracles start forming a body of evidence

This is the example of rhetoric.

There is no body of credible evidence.

 

[Thanda]

Mine cut to the chase and had no rhetoric.



You stated the man said something, he didn't. There is context there for some, maybe you missed it.

Do you have any evidence he didn't say it?

 

[Thanda]

This is the example of rhetoric.

There is no body of credible evidence.

Credible to whom? If many have believed as a result of the evidence they have received and experienced then obviously they have found the evidence sufficiently credible.

 

[outhouse]

Do you have any evidence he didn't say it?

Yes. The unknown authors were far removed from any actual event speaking and writing in a different language then the Aramaic Galilean many decades after his death hundreds if not thousands of miles away from where he might have said something.

Not one word in the NT is based on a single eyewitness.