Michael R. Jordan

Hello,

I am working on a historical essay that explores the miracles within the life on Antony and the life of Benedict. Considering this essay, I am toying with the idea of arguing the miracles within their recorded lives did not likely happen and inferring the past from the present, I would argue that it is far more plausible that such men suffered schizophrenia, like 1% of our populace today.

Yet, to do so, wouldn’t be necessary for me to have the probability of miracle to happen? Could I work out some probability equation such like was done within the Ehrman-Craig debate?

http://www.holycross.edu/departments...transcript.pdf

Toto

Considered from a Baysian point of view, the probability of a miracle has to be taken as 0. Modern scientists have been conducting experiments for centuries, and have never yet observed a miracle - so even if you started with the idea that a miracle is possible, each experiment over the past several hundred years provides more evidence that a miracle has not occurred and is not possible.

Practically every example of modern scholarship is based on the idea that miracles cannot and do not occur.

EarlOfLade

Miracles == Wishful thinking
probability of miracles == ZERO

andrewcriddle

In Charles Kingsley's book The Hermits online at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hrmt10.txt
there is an interesting but sceptical discussion of miracles in the lives of the desert hermits.

It is the section beginning Andrew Criddle

one allegiance

So you would argue that thousands of people hallucinated at the SAME time and all of those who hallucinated saw the SAME thing..?

Amaleq13

No, what actually happens is that the differing details of the individual delusions tend to become homogenized over time after hearing the reports of others. ETA: Or the experience of a single individual spreads to others like a mental virus (ie "collective hysteria").

Decypher

I'm not sure it is really possible to do. Miracles are something outside of the ordinary course of nature, so I don't think you can really argue from what happens inside of the ordinary course of nature.

I believe it would have to come down to the probability of the existence of God, and the probability that he would have the kind of character or made the choice to perform miracles or create in such a way as to allow for them.

EarlOfLade

Which has a probability of ZERO too!

Solo

Most miracles of the New Testament look very much like symbolic representation of changes in perception and cognition during ecstasies, and were not read by the earliest community as "real events". For the issues with the historical use of contemporary medical labels see my review of Koenraad Elst. You might find useful my description of intruding paradoxical mentation into waking states (as in hypnagogia) as a key to the story of the fig tree.

Best,
Jiri

Bobinius

No, I don't think that to assign a prior probability of 0 to a miraculous event is correct, from a scientific pov. You do not need evidence that something is not possible, possible in a logical sense. Only logically impossible events have a probability of 0. Secondly, whatever evidence we would gather, miracles would remain at 0 probability. Which again is not scientifically correct.It would mean to nullify any possibility of evidence for miracles (and for God) to appear. On what basis do you sustain that?

Methodological naturalism is needed for the scientific study of events. But that does not imply that miracles are logically impossible. They would become integrated in the universe, and their relation with the world would become part of the natural structure of the world, and like this, they would lose their "miraculous" attribute.