Steven Carr

ANDREW
This isn't really hearsay. (Unless you are making the correct but irrelevant point that we only have Dr. Keener's word for any of this.) Two people, the child's mother and the evangelist who prayed for the child, separately reported the story. Both of them were eyewitnesses.

CARR
So why do you say the evidence is very weak? And then claim this same (allegedly very weak) evidence was seperately reported by two eyewitnesses?

ApostateAbe

It is a field of the study of the historical evidence of a certain religion that encourages belief in the absurd, and the field is expected to tend to attract adherents of that same religion. I don't see why there should be any mystery about it.

sotto voce

What is absurd?

Steven Carr

Any miracle story that belongs to a religious tradition not being peddled by the person who claims miracles happen in his religion.

sotto voce

There seems to be circularity here. Why is the word 'peddled' justified?

ApostateAbe

A belief that is "absurd" is a belief that seems to conflict with objective reality, as in a large set of confirmed points of fact very much do not expect the "absurd" claim to be a reality. Beliefs in miracles are examples of absurd beliefs, because the set of confirmed facts of the universe very much do not expect miracles.

But, absurdities are not exclusively miracles, and the Christian canon contains a variety of absurdities. For example, the Gospel of Luke 2:1-4 (NRSV) states:

"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.

The claim of this passage is that Augustus required all inhabitants of the empire to register for the census in their ancestral towns. This is a very strong problem of plausibility, because

(1) it would require that millions of people embark on a chaotic pilgrimage to their ancestral home towns, including all of the Jews of the Hellenistic diaspora about the Mediterranean Sea, but
(2) there is no other ancient record of such pilgrimages having taken place, not even other Christian gospels, and
(3) the competing explanation, that the Christian community of the gospel of Luke uncritically accepted and asserted the false belief in such a requirement for a historical census, has far more plausibility, because Christians contemporary to Luke had an explicit bias toward the belief that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, though Jesus was otherwise identified as being from the town of Nazareth--that is how they interpreted a messianic prophecy, and they believed Jesus to be the messiah. The gospel of Luke has explicit bias in favor of evangelical Christianity (Luke 1:1-4), so the critical explanation is far more plausible than the orthodox explanation.

Therefore, it is far less absurd to believe that the gospel of Luke told a falsehood than to believe that the emperor required every constituent to return to his hometown for a census. The orthodox Christian faith, however, encourages belief in the claims of the canon at the seeming expense of probability. The field of Biblical scholarship tends to attract those who adhere to Christian orthodoxy.

andrewcriddle

One should distinguish between two claims.

Claim one: The child was bitten by a snake, became unconscious, and recovered after being prayed for by an evangelist.

Evidence: Mother's statement substantially corroborated by evangelist. (Strictly speaking mother claimed that child claimed that she was bitten by snake, evangelist claimed that mother claimed that child's unconscious state was due to snake bite.) However this is prima-facie basically reliable and corroborated eyewitness evidence.

Claim two: The child stopped breathing after being bitten and did not breath again until prayed for by evangelist roughly three hours afterwards.

Evidence: Only mother's statement (evangelist at most could only corroborate that mother claimed at the time that child had not been breathing for three hours but I suspect that the claim that the child had not been breathing for three hours only took its present form when the mother was telling the story to Keener many years later. Note how Keener has to ask mother how long between child stopping breathing and child reaching evangelist and after thought mother guesses three hours.)

Accepting FTSOA that mother at the time believed that her child had stopped breathing for some considerable time. The mother's testimony is prima-facie unreliable, she is desperately trying to get her very sick daughter to someone who might possibly help before it is too late, she is not carrying out careful tests to distinguish between cessation of breathing and the weak breathing in some forms of unconsciousness.

Hence we have prima-facie quite good evidence for claim one but very weak evidence for claim two.

Andrew Criddle

sotto voce

Is it? Surely it must be proved that a belief conflicts with objective reality, because appearances can be deceptive. Usually, absurdity is self evident. A chocolate teapot surely never needed explanation of its inherent absurdity. A coin marked '59 B.C.' may take a little explanation, but only a little. Those are absurdities. Miracles cannot be instantly dismissed like those examples, if they can be dismissed at all.

Now that's the most absurd argument I'm likely to read for some time. The whole point of a miracle is that it is not expected. It's supposed to be a breaking of the rules! Maybe rules are there to be broken! How circular can humanity get?

But this thread is about miracles. If the poster has an agenda involving another topic (and nobody should suppose that it has in support better logic than is displayed here), it can be pursued elsewhere. If it is not pursued elsewhere, it may be assumed that the change of subject is tacit confession that miracles are indeed possible, may have occurred, and may still occur.

ApostateAbe

OK, suppose I were to tell you right now that I am pouring myself a cup of hot tea from a teapot made of nothing but Hershey's milk chocolate, and I say, "Believe it, because it is a miracle, and miracles are possible." If you were to believe my claim, would it be absurd? If so, what would make my claim absurd?

sotto voce

It would not be absurd for me to believe it, because it might be true.

Nothing. A claim that chocolate teapots were generally useful as teapots would be an absurd claim. No doubt somebody, somewhere actually makes chocolate teapots, but only because they are absurdities.