bd-from-kg

Tercel:

In your post of Feb 18, 6:18 PM , you suggested that I was misunderstanding you. You say that you never meant to claim that the fact that an alleged clear violation of natural laws had occurred in a “religious context” made the claim more plausible, or made it more likely to be true, but meant only that it was possible that the event in question was a “miracle” since a miracle by definition requires a religious context. Thus by your definition even the most clear-cut, massive violation of natural laws would not qualify as a “miracle” unless it occurred in a “religious context”.

Before proceeding let’s get rid of a couple of red herrings.

First, requiring a religious context is not necessary to eliminate “laboratory experiment[s] discovering that something didn't conform to currently recognized laws[/i]”. Your own criterion of “unrepeatability” is quite sufficient to rule such things out. If an event turns out to be a manifestation of a hitherto unknown natural law or phenomenon, it is obviously not an unambiguous violation of natural laws.

Second, I did not call your definition of a miracle “completely wrongheaded”. I was not even aware of your idiosyncratic definition until now.

Now let’s move on to the main point.

I agree that you can define “miracle” to mean whatever you like. But I have a couple of comments about this particular case.

(1) It would have been nice if you had told us a little earlier that this is what you mean by “miracle”. Using nonstandard definitions is fine, but if you’re interested in communicating with people you really ought to tell them that you’re using a nonstandard definition of a term the first time you use it.

(2) This definition seems to be less useful than the standard one (in which the proviso about a “religious context” is omitted) because it leaves us without a term for a clear-cut violation of natural laws that did not (or did not necessarily) occur in a religious context.

However, to facilitate the discussion I’m willing to go along with your definition of “miracle” from this point on. Just remember that up to now I’ve been using the term to mean any clear-cut violation of natural laws, regardless of any possible religious context.

But it seems to me that you’ve been making exactly the kind of argument that my post of February 16 was devoted to refuting. So it seems that we are not merely dealing with a misunderstanding resulting from our different definitions of “miracle”, but with a substantive disagreement. For example, in your post of February 14 you said:

The only possible interpretation of this, so far as I can see, is that, considered only as an alleged violation of natural laws without regard to any possible religious context, a resurrection is extremely implausible; but given a religious context it is much less implausible. In Bayesian terms, you seem to be saying that in the absence of a religious context it is entirely rational to set P(A) extremely low – say, one in ten billion - but in the presence of a religious context it is rational to set P(A) mush higher – say, one in a thousand. But this is precisely the kind of argument that my post of February 16 was aimed at.

Similarly, in your reply to HRG on Feb. 18, you said:

Once again, the only sense that I can make of this is that it is rational to assign a very low prior probability (P(A)) to an alleged violation of natural laws if it does not occur in a religious context, but that it is rational to assign P(A) a much higher value if there is a religious context.

And in the very post where you (finally) explain what you supposedly mean by a “miracle”, we find this:

This would make no sense if your only point were that by “miracle” you mean a violation of natural laws occurring in a religious context, because in that case the first sentence would be dispository. In fact, this seems once again to be precisely the kind of argument rebutted in my Feb. 16 post.

If you are going to make this kind of argument, you’re going to have to deal with my counter-arguments; you can’t just evade them by pointing out that we were using the term “miracle” to mean different things. For example, when I gave the example of a holy man who was alleged to have levitated and asked “Does the fact that this alleged miracle occurred in a ‘religious context’ make it more or less likely that it actually occurred?”, you replied:

This is essentially a quibble about my wording; it doesn’t address the point.

While we’re still on the subject of the relationship between the plausibility of miracles and “religious context” I want to comment briefly on your final statement:

That’s a remarkable concession, because the religious context for the Resurrection was constructed after the actual event. Or are you under the impression that the disciples were Christians?

Finally, you argue that the sheer number of miracle claims should be enough to establish at least a prima facie case that some miracles may well have occurred:

Actually it’s a pretty easy call. If someone keeps calling the police to report that he was the one who murdered each of thousands of victims, and after investigating a few dozen at random they find that he was not the murderer, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that most likely all of his claims are false. It’s possible of course, that one or two of them are true, but the most parsimonious explanation is that none of them are.

Anyway, there must be something wrong with this argument, because the very same type of argument can be used to “show” that all sorts of things are far more plausible than they really are. For example, since there have been innumerable reports of witchcraft from reputable sources, should we take seriously the possibility that witches really exist? Since lots of people have claimed to be psychics, should we take seriously the possibility that there really are psychics? Since lots of people have claimed to have been abducted by aliens, should we take seriously the possibility of alien abduction? Since lots of people have claimed to have witnessed cases of demonic possession, should we take seriously the possibility of demonic possession? Since lots of people have claimed that astrology really “works”, should we take seriously the possibility that our lives are influenced by the stars? The list could be extended indefinitely.

But all this is really beside the point. It may or may not be true that even one actual violation of natural laws proves the existence of something outside this universe (though I can’t for the life of me think of a single serious argument to support this claim). But even if we knew that at least some of the myriad miracle claims are true, that wouldn’t give us a hint as to which ones, and it therefore wouldn’t tell us anything about what the “something” is that exists outside our universe. To draw any useful conclusions we would still need convincing evidence (i.e., good enough evidence to justify rational belief) that certain specific miracle claims are true. So this argument, even if sound, would still get you nowhere in terms of demonstrating anything interesting.

Draygomb

Even if Miracles were routine that would only prove the existence of Miracles not God.

Tercel

Bd-from-kg,
I don't have much time to respond right now, hopefully I'll have some time on Monday. Your first post (February 20, 2002 04:30 PM) is, as you note, rather large so it will take me some time to cover your points.
So I'll cover what I feel are the important disagreements in your second post now.

I probably should get everything clear to begin with, but the definition isn't always important so I normally leave it and clarify later if necessary. I would also argue that my definition of miracle is not non-standard. That is to say that while it probably differs from what the average person means by miracle - which is normally "coincidence", what I am using is pretty much the standard use of the word as used throughout Christian Theology and it seems to fit in well with everything in philosphy I'd read on the subject, bar Hume's writings. Indeed, Hume's meaning of the word "miracle" seemed to be one of the major complaints about his work. (I was rather fascinated that Hume's argument could be taken seriously by anyone when I read it, so I read a number of commentaries both for and against it)

But if such an event occurs outside a religious context, all you are left with is an unexplained event. And indeed I think Hume’s argument is successful about why such an event should never be accepted as true.

I would agree completely with your Bayesian representation of my argument. Your say your post of February 16 was aimed at this. Your point? I’ve already responded to what I felt were the important points in your post…

Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

Huh? It seems to make perfect sense to me. You’d asked why I wanted to include a religious context requirement in the definition of a miracle. My point is that a “miracle” without a religious context has a very very low P(A), and it is important to distinguish such from a proper miracle with a religious context which has a higher P(A). Not to mention Hume’s argument makes the distinguishing important since his argument serves to rule out the non-religious context miracles.

I believe I did actually answer that question at one stage by agreeing that sceptics are a more reliable audience than the fanatically religious.

I note I used the word “constructed”. I believe you were pointing out that where there was no religious context, then one would be shortly created. I was agreeing that such later constructions do not count. A religious context must be in existence at the time of the miracle and should be the natural interpretation, not an artificially constructed one. The Resurrection had plenty of context. It occurred within the Jewish tradition, but more importantly within the context of the teachings of Jesus and the claims that he made about himself.

I agree that there can be little doubt that the vast vast majority of miracle claims are false. However humans clearly have plenty of reasons for making up miracle claims, so the fact that they do do so can hardly be considered evidence that the truly miraculous does not happen.
Also, if you read the passage of mine that you quoted, you’ll see I’m talking about claims which upon being investigated have been found to have “reasonable quality evidence”. It is not the number of claims which amazes me – humans are good at ascribing anything and everything to God. It is the number of claims of what I perceive to be a reasonable quality.

The fact that reports of witchcraft appears to have been limited to a specific period of time suggests rather that it was the “fashion”, if you like, of the time rather than a truth.
Again it is not simply the number of claims. It is the number of reasonable quality claims. If I see a reasonable level of evidence for witchcraft I’d be happy to believe it. But I don’t so I don’t.

I remain open to the possibility of the existence of aliens. Although I have certain problems with the idea that they go around abducting people and sexually abusing them – especially when it turns out that the abductees’ have a history of being similarly abused.
Frankly as far as the existence of aliens goes: I couldn’t care less. My belief or disbelief is not going to change anything.
As for psychics I have yet to see any reasonable quality evidence. Much less the amount of quality evidence I’ve seen for Christian Miracles.

I think so. I’ve read some fairly convincing accounts.

No doubt, and my reply that I have yet to see a reasonable level of evidence for these things could be extended indefinitely also.

That is an important function of the religious context. The vast majority of miracle claims for which I have believed the evidence to be of a sufficiently reasonable standard have occurred inside the Christian tradition and the rest have been not contrary to it.

Tercel

HRG

Just one remark, and one request:

We should note that the specific period of time during which claims of resurrection were made was equally limited.

BTW, could you please support your stance that as soon as the words "religious context" are uttered, the Bayesian P(A) suddenly shoots straight up - and why this is not compensated by the corresponding decrease of probability that the event has been correctly reported ?

Regards,
HRG.

bd-from-kg

Tercel:

Another long post, this time necessitated by the fact that your last post of Feb. 18 was highly misleading in its insistence that “what we seem to be discussing here is the definition of the word ‘miracle’”. As it turns out, this has nothing to do with our disagreement; our real disagreement was exactly what I thought it was in the first place. Now I have to go over the same ground again.

You say that you have “already responded to what I felt were the important points in your post [of Feb. 16]”. But after examining your reply to this post I find that it has almost nothing to say in reply to these points beyond the fact that you define a “miracle” in such a way that a “religious context” is required for an event to qualify. Let’s review what you actually had to say.

Here’s my first example and your reply:

You can say that again. This should be obvious even to the most naïve and gullible from the paper <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/chap5.html" target="_blank"> Evidence That Demands A Mistrial</a> cited earlier. Richard Carrier’s essay <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html" target="_blank"> Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: a look into the world of the gospels</a> has even more information on this subject.

Needless to say, this reply did not refute my point very effectively; in fact it supported it. The best you could come up with by way of an answer was:

If you mean that one should not deny the very possibility of miracles, I agree completely. On the other hand, Hume is exaggerating only slightly when he says:

In other words, a miracle claim made in a religious context is even more implausible, if such a thing is possible, than one made outside any such context.

Now let’s see how you dealt with my second example:

Your response was:

In other words, aside from the irrelevant comment that so far as you are concerned a “religious context” is by definition a necessary condition for calling something a “miracle”, you are again agreeing with my point. (The point, by the way, is that if B is the testimony for the alleged miracle A, P(B|~A) is much lower if the testimony in question comes from a skeptical or unbiased source than if it comes from people inclined to be easily convinced, or even to lie about what they witnessed. As can be seen either from common sense or from a quick review of my discussion of Bayes’ theorem, this means that the a posterior probability of A - i.e., P(A|B) – is much lower in the latter case.)

I’ll leave aside for now the one and only, very short, argument, defending your position that a “religious context” makes a miracle claim far more plausible, that you made in response to the Feb. 16 post; I’ll deal with it in a following post. First I want to deal briefly with the points you made in your latest post.

You argued:

In rebuttal I offered two arguments. The first was:

You replied:

But it does justify extreme skepticism regarding any particular miracle claim, does it not? And as I pointed out earlier, by Occam’s Razor the most parsimonious explanation is to be preferred unless there is clear-cut evidence against it. The most parsimonious explanation is obviously that all miracle claims arise from the same source.

You continued:

But given the extreme unreliability of human testimony regarding alleged miracles (especially claims with a “religious context”), the only kind of evidence that could rationally be considered to be of “reasonable quality” would be physical evidence. Photos, videos, or something of the sort might be acceptable if they can be examined by unbiased observers trained to detect fraud. Do you have any such physical evidence to offer?

My second argument was:
Your response was to give your own personal assessment of each of these possibilities. This basically missed the point, which was that in each case there have been a great many reports, many of them from highly reputable people, claiming direct experience of the phenomena in question, so if the mere existence of such reports were enough to justify taking the phenomenon in question seriously, we must regard all of these as serious possibilities.

In some cases you simply deny that there have been such reports. Since I don’t want to get into a long-winded discussion of such nonsense as psychic phenomena, alien abductions, witchcraft and demonic possession, I can only suggest that you research the relevant literature. The existence of psychic phenomena, for example, besides being the subject of innumerable reports from reputable eyewitnesses over the centuries, has been “proven” by scientific studies every bit as rigorous and convincing as the ones you cited “proving” the efficacy of prayer.

But I was particularly fascinated by the diametrically different answers that you gave regarding witchcraft on the one hand and demonic possession on the other. On the one hand you dismissed the extremely well-documented phenomenon of witchcraft with the comment:

This argument is singularly unconvincing.

In the first place, the reports of direct, clear-cut Divine intervention in human affairs are also limited to a specific period of time. Does that also suggest that such reports were a “fashion” of the time rather than truth?

In fact, come to think of it, this is true of practically all miraculous and marvelous phenomena: reports of them tend to be limited to (or at least concentrated in) certain periods and regions. Oddly enough, these periods and regions tend to be the very ones in which belief in these phenomena is or was widespread. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Second, contrary to the premise of this argument, the belief in witchcraft, sadly enough, is still very much with us. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica “belief in witchcraft is almost universal in nonliterate societies.” And “moreover, reports of witchcraft practices and beliefs in the traditional sense still occur today in Western societies.”

Third, the Bible itself vouches for the reality of witchcraft: "You shall not permit a sorceress to live" (Ex. 22:18). Since this verse was largely responsible for the widespread practice in Christian countries of executing alleged witches, it is difficult to reconcile the idea that the Bible was divinely inspired with a disbelief in witches.

You then pointed out again:

What constitutes a “reasonable quality” claim would seem to be in the mind of the beholder. The reports of witchcraft over the centuries were found by a great many people of unquestioned judgment and probity, who [knew the witnesses and were in the best possible position to assess the evidence, to be of sufficiently high quality to justify executing a great many alleged witches. The EB reports that “victims of the witchcraft trials have been variously estimated to number from the hundreds of thousands to the millions.” Who are you to question the judgment of such people, especially when (unlike you) they were on the scene and were intimately familiar with the details of the cases and the evidence presented? The only difference between them and you, besides the fact that they were in a far better position to evaluate the evidence than you are, is that they believed in witches and you don’t.

Yet on the other hand, your response to the question of whether we should take the possibility of demonic possession seriously was:

In other words, unlike the case of witchcraft, where you remain unconvinced even by overwhelming testimony from reputable sources, you find human testimony of demonic possession to be quite convincing. And this despite the fact that, like the belief in witchcraft, belief in demonic possession (and the number of reports of it from reputable sources) has declined dramatically in the last few centuries (at least in Western countries). Why? I would conjecture that it’s because you believe in demonic possession. In other words, your evaluation of the strength of the evidence in both cases is strongly colored by your attitude (prior to examining the evidence) regarding the plausibility of the two phenomena.

But isn’t your willingness to take the possibility of demonic possession seriously inconsistent with your unwillingness to take this same attitude toward witchcraft? After all, if we live in a demon-haunted world, it is difficult to see any reason for disbelieving in witches. The idea that some people can, by entering an alliance with the forces of darkness, work evil that would otherwise be beyond human abilities, would seem to be an obvious corollary of the existence of demons that interact in intimate ways with humans. So if demonic possession is a real phenomenon, what possible reason could there be to doubt the reality of witchcraft in the face of such massive evidence?

Finally, my last point was:

You replied:

What a surprise! From your point of view within the Christian tradition, you find evidence “of a sufficiently reasonable standard” for a good many miracles within that tradition, very little for miracles outside it, and none at all for miracles contrary to it? Quick, get the smelling salts!

Oddly enough, Muslims come to the very same conclusion, except that all of the miracles for which they find the evidence to be “of a sufficiently reasonable standard” happen to lie within the Islamic tradition.

Anyway, your response basically concedes the point of my argument. You originally gave no indication that you thought that nearly all miracle claims for which there was reasonably good evidence were concentrated almost entirely within the “Christian tradition” (a convenient way to lump together things like the Jansenist and Catholic miracle claims, by the way, which I pointed out before is illegitimate). My point was that it wouldn’t be enough to have lots of “plausible” miracle claims; only claims that occurred in the same “religious context” can be lumped together in this way if we are to be able to draw any useful conclusions. And of course, although you dismiss them (without having bothered to examine the evidence for them seriously, I suspect), the existence of “pretty good” evidence for Islamic miracles, for Hindu miracles, and for that matter for pagan miracles in the ancient Roman empire, has to count against the Christian miracle claims, not for them. The claims of the various religions tend to negate one another rather than provide a cumulative case for the existence of the supernatural.

As Robert Ingersoll once said, each of the hundred religions in the world is 99% true, in that each one claims that the other 99 are false.

[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Tercel

HRG,
I choose not to discuss your analogy because in my experience such discussions have a tendency to degenerate into: “false analogy”, “is not”, “is too”, “is not”… etc. None of which is particularly helpful. But if you really want to argue it...

I think your analogy has a problem in that you are confusing the existence of God with the existence of a religious context. Now a religious context -such as a prayer to a specific deity, or say an alleged miracle as proof of a specific doctrine- clearly is possible whether or not the appropriate deity exists. I therefore propose the following analogy as more true than the one presented by you.
The analogy key is as follows:
PHI field of a specific type = a specific religious context
DEI = a supernatural being or some sort of specific deity
M = a “miraculously” unusual result
N = the “normal” result

Analogy:
Theist:
“I claim that a certain DEI exists. My DEI’s existence can be rationally deduced by empirical observation because in a PHI field relating to my religion, DEI will sometimes cause M to happen instead of N.
Atheist:
“I performed a test to evaluate this hypothesis. I performed an certain experiment thousands and thousands of times and always got N. Therefore the hypothesis is falsified and DEI does not exist.”
Theist:
“You forgot to have a PHI field! I’m making the claim that DEI will cause M only in a PHI field. Since you had no PHI field your results are completely and utterly irrelevant.”
Atheist:
“So what if I had no PHI field in my experiments? It doesn’t matter. It still disproves your theory.”
Theist:
“ No it doesn’t. My claim required the presence of a PHI field to test it. I *know* N happens without a PHI field, that is not being argued!”

Tercel

Happy Wonderer

Well, this is an ommnipotent being that we are considering. If we are to accept a miracle as proof of this being's existance, then by definition there must be no naturalistic explanation for the miracle. Given the billions of people in the world, fairly unlikely things are going to happen to some of them every day. So defining a miracle some particular unlikely event doesn't cut it -- it has to be something that is impossible except for an omnipotent being. The bar is pretty high, but surely God should be able to do it, don't you think?

Given the tremendous problems that mankind has faced and is still facing without any hint so far of Divine intervention, I don't think there is too much percentage in holding our breaths waiting for a miracle to come. You'd think that if the Prince of Peace had really made itself manifest in the Middle east, we wouldn't have such an intractible conflict there...

HW

HRG

Thanks for the answer. It was probably my fault that I did not make my point clear. But I'll try again:

Assume that 999,999,999 reported data lie on a straight line, while one doesn't. What is the more plausible explanation, IYO:

1. The PHI-field was switched on during this one time.
2. The data point was misreported.

I submit that preferring 1. (in the presence of various scenarios for misreporting) means that all statistical error analysis is thrown out of the window. For any outlier we could postulate a PHI-, CHI-, XI- etc. field.

Maybe the CHI-field was on when Romulus ascended to heaven to become the god Quirinus, as reported in Livius' Ab Urbe Condita ? The religous context of the alleged event cannot be denied.

IOW, in the absence of an independent criterion *) for the on/off- state of the postulated PHI-field, I think that 2. should be preferred as an explanation.

Regards,
HRG.

*) I.e., the following is not an independent criterion:

"When the PHI-field is on, things are different and miracles can happen; thus experiences when it is off do not count"

"How do I tell that the PHI-field is on?"

"Easy. Watch for claims of miracles"

[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: HRG ]</p>

bd-from-kg

Tercel:

In this post I want to confront head on the idea that a “religious context” makes it more likely that a violation of natural laws occurred. Here are several arguments against this idea.

1. An elementary misunderstanding of probability theory.

This notion violates a fundamental principle of probability. For any two hypotheses A and B, P(A&B) is always less than or equal to the smaller of P(A) and P(B). So if A is the hypothesis that a specified violation of natural laws occurred and C is the hypothesis that a certain state of affairs obtains in the supernatural realm which makes the occurrence of A more probable, then P(A&C) cannot be greater than P(A), and will almost always be less. That is, the addition of a supposed supernatural explanation (aka “religious context&#8221 must produce a hypothesis that is, at best, no more likely to be true than the original one.

We can look at this in another way. For an appropriate C, no doubt P(A|C) &gt; P(A). But the maneuver that you are attempting here is to propose such a C (say, Christianity) and suggest that P(A) should be replaced by P(A|C) in the Bayesian formula (with B representing some actual evidence for A). There’s nothing wrong with this idea formally. As I pointed out earlier, P(A) has no fixed meaning in the Bayes formula; it’s just the estimated likelihood of A prior to factoring in the evidence represented by B. And if we knew that C was true, this move would be completely appropriate. But we don’t. And in that case the correct move (if we want to consider only the possibility that A occurred in the “context” of C) is to replace P(A), not with P(A|C), but with P(A|C) * P(C). And since P(A|C) * P(C) is never greater than P(A), this move, if it has any effect at all, can only reduce the value of P(A|B) yielded by the Bayesian formula.

Most of the plausibility of your claim that the existence of a “religious context” makes it more likely that a violation of natural laws occurred is result of certain built-in, systematic biases in thinking about probability that produces certain predictable patterns of errors in our probability estimates. Many such biases are explained very nicely at <a href="http://www.csr.city.ac.uk/people/norman.fenton/bbns/Details/subjective_prob.html#Introduction" target="_blank">this page</a>. The one most relevant to the “religious context” issue is called the conjunction fallacy. The page just cited gives the following example:

While we’re on the subject, it may be worthwhile to look at another widespread perceptual bias in evaluating probabilities that clearly often enters into the evaluation of miracle claims even though it isn’t directly relevant to the “religious context” issue. This bias in question is “Insensitivity to prior probability of outcomes”. The page cited gives this example:

Here’s another example of the same kind:

The relevance to miracle claims should be obvious.

2. The universality of religious contexts.

You say that in the absence of a “religious context” Hume’s argument serves to rule out violations of natural law. But the problem with this is that there are no events that do not occur in a religious context. In every society one or more religions are fairly widespread, and even everyday, mundane events are routinely interpreted in terms of them. Any event that’s at all out of the ordinary is very likely to be interpreted by many in religious terms, and an event that appears to be inexplicable in naturalistic terms is certain to be. In fact, for any such an event there will typically be an embarrassment of riches in terms of “religious contexts”.

More to the point, what do we find in cases of false reports of violations of natural laws? Why, in every case it turns out that there is a “religious context”. Charlatans and con men have long since figured out that, if they want such reports to be believed, they had better invent religious contexts for them.

And finally, what about reports of violations of natural laws that are actually legends that developed well after the (alleged) events in question? Once again, such reports are invariably accompanied by a “religious context” – in other words, the reports are of miracles in your sense. This, of course, is exactly what anyone who has any knowledge of human nature would expect. After all, legends naturally develop in ways that make them meaningful to those who are involved (in some cases unwittingly) in creating them. The interpretation of the events – their religious significance – is the whole point from the start.

So where does this leave us? It’s very simple. Virtually all reports of violations of natural laws are accompanied by a “religious context” – in fact, sometimes by competing religious contexts.

Let’s analyze this once again in Bayesian terms. Let A be the hypothesis that a specified violation of natural law occurred, let B be the evidence for it, and let C be the “religious context”. As I noted earlier, the “religious context” argument is really a proposal to replace P(A) with P(A|C) in the Bayesian formula for P(A|B). IN other words, the idea is to use the formula

P(A|B) = P(B|A) * P(A|C) / P(B)

in place of the “standard” one. (As I commented earlier, this is a legitimate maneuver in appropriate circumstances.) Let’s put aside from the fact that, as I pointed out earlier the correct procedure here not to substitute, P(A|C), but to substitute P(A|C) * P(C), and see what this would buy us. We have:

P(A|C) = P(C|A) * P(A) / P(C)
P(~A|C) = P(C|~A) * P(~A) / P(C).

But as we have seen, both P(C|A) and P(C|~A) are essentially 1 – that is, it is virtually certain that there will be a “religious context” whether A really occurred or not. And of course this means that P(C) will also essentially be 1. So we obtain:

P(A|C) = P(A) , and of course
P(~A|C) = P(~A)

In other words (as one would expect intuitively) since a “religious context” invariably accompanies reports of violations of natural laws, the existence of such a context has no effect whatsoever on the likelihood that the event really occurred.

3. The irrelevance of an “explanation”

The basic idea behind the notion that a claim of a violation of natural laws is more plausible if there is a “religious context” is that otherwise the event is inexplicable, and therefore implausible. As you put it:

But we do have a good reason to believe it was caused by supernatural intervention – namely the fact that it was a violation of natural laws. (If this is not a “good reason” it can only be because it is plausible that an event might have no explanation. But in that case there is no reason to consider an alleged event implausible merely because it has no explanation.) The only difference between having a “religious context” and not having one is that in the latter case no specific theory has been proposed as to the nature of this supernatural intervention.

The only thing that would constitute evidence against the alleged event would be a demonstration that no supernatural explanation is possible – i.e., that no conceivable supernatural agent would intervene in that particular way. But of course, no such demonstration is possible in principle.

4. Can common sense be applied to miracle claims?

In two different places you argue that it is inappropriate to apply ordinary, common-sense, empirical reasoning to miracle claims. At one point you said:

But “previous observations” include any evidence for resurrection of any kind, whether by natural causes or otherwise. It is a reasonable conjecture that any actual resurrection would have been noticed, and possibly a record of it might even have been made. So the lack of any such record is pretty good evidence that no resurrections from any cause have occurred. (I leave aside, of course, the one alleged Resurrection being debated, since the whole question is how P(A) for that event should be estimated.)

And elsewhere you made essentially the same point a little differently:

On this point Hume’s answer can hardly be improved on, so I’ll give him the last word.:

[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Tercel

Bg-from-kg,
Your February 23, 2002 06:49 PM post -as promised- first. Have I ever mentioned btw, how much I hate long posts?

Hume didn’t know they were false. All Hume knew is that there was very very good evidence for them, amounting to what he seems to have believed was the best possible evidence human testimony could provide. So, yes, I’m criticizing him for not believing them. He had what he believed was good evidence and rejected it out of hand because of bias that miracles didn’t happen. Stupid. The fact that in this given case his position may have happened to be the correct one is incidental.

Don’t worry, I see you and others here on the Sec-Web advancing arguments of this quality regularly. Some professional philosophers respect Hume’s argument, I am apt to agree with one of the critics I read on the subject that this is because they like the conclusion rather than because of any great merit the argument possesses.

I was under the impression that I did. I understand it to refer to the idea that rather than arguing from specific empirical evidence –which would be an a posteriori argument-, an argument proceeds purely by logic reasoning and analysis of the concepts involved. Part 1 of Hume’s argument is a priori because it argues that by simply understanding the concept of a miracle we see that personal testimony will never be sufficient to establish that the miracle has occurred. I note that a priori can be used in other senses, however this seems to be the traditional usage for talking about a priori arguments.
Part 2 proceeds pretty much a posteriori, though not quite a perfect example of such, and really acts as a “Not to mention…” and Hume proceeds to outline why personal testimony is hardly ever up to scratch at any rate, and why what evidence we have isn’t particularly good. However, in the occasion of the Jansenist miracle claims Hume can find nothing wrong with the evidence he can throw doubt on so he simply notes that since his logic in part 1 of his argument was so good (~choke~) he doesn’t need to throw doubt on the evidence before disbelieving it.

You can disagree if you like of my assessment of the nature of Hume’s argument, but everything I’ve read seems to agree with me.

Sort of. My greatest objection is that Hume, -after noting the fact that if something is called a “miracle” it means past experience informs us that this is not the usual course of events-, proceeds directly to the conclusion (without any of the required premises or valid logic – indeed I allege that such do not exist and that is why he doesn’t have them) that this means the evidence for a miracle must be played off against past experience. The conclusion being pulled, apparently, straight out of thin air.

A relevant passage, though he restates it several times throughout the argument is as follows.
Why must these opposite experiences destroy each other? What exactly is wrong with one thing happening most of the time and then something else happening if it had a different cause (eg God)? Furthermore such reasoning as Hume puts forward here would seem to suggest that if an event of which I was certain of it’s truth occurred now which contradicted past experience, they would “destroy the other, as far as [their] force goes” and the recent event would win out not only proving my experiences false but also being greatly diminished itself in certainty and “only operat[ing] on the mind by the force, which remains”. Where any reasonable person would accept both past experiences and the current event as true and look for a reason why they differed, Hume would apparently have us play the events off against each other until we believed in a uniform experience but weren’t very sure of it.
Now frankly it sounds quite dumb when spelled out like this, but as I see it this is exactly what is being suggested here if we are to use the same ideas Hume is using to destroy the testimony of miracles. The only way I can construct the premises to make Hume's argument valid is to add the assumption that things must be uniform, which amounts to materialistic presuppostion and hence begs the question.

ie irrational people who disbelieve in the face of evidence and will explain anything away in every way possible to sustain their materialistic presuppositions. Sad but –in my experience- true.

Good, good. I am already perfectly aware of what Bayes’ Theorem is and how to use it. And I have used it myself plenty in defending the Fine-Tuning argument.

Good, good. I do agree with that point of Hume’s argument. I question whether it warrants being called an “intuition” rather than “common sense” though.

”quite rationally” is certainly debatable. However, in my experience sceptics have a tendency to ignore evidence rather than seriously investigating and finding it doesn’t meet these standards. There may be sceptics out there who do actually investigate evidence and use such standards, but I have yet to meet one who impressed me with their expertise in the area.

Of course, but my position on miracles isn’t. The Jansenist’s are still Christians as are the Catholics. I’m a Protestant, but that doesn’t mean I have to deny that God would perform miracles for the Catholics or the Jansenists. I can thus accept both miracle claims without any contradiction.

I did note that God probably isn’t interested in doctrine beyond the fact that they're Christians. I’m sure that however, is of interest to Him. God may indeed favour non-Christians as well as Christians, but lacking a religious context such interference is more likely to receive a naturalistic explanation.

The Catholic Church is the “One True Faith”? Interesting…
Of course the Jansenist’s were using the miracles to suggest that they were in the right, everyone does. However, we do not need to listen to them. Indeed the Scripture says "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” (Matthew 7:21-23)

Supposedly. It is perfectly reasonable to accept the medical evidence of Lourdes as evidence for the miraculous without having to accept a rather dubious vision supposedly had by some girl over a century ago! On the other hand, I don’t see a problem with the vision, and you’re welcome to believe it if you want to.

Of course it’s evidence for Catholicism. But is it evidence for specifically Catholicism over and above it being evidence for Christianity in general? Did the angel/Virgin Mary say perhaps “Catholicism is the One True Faith and all other Christians are wrong!”?
Catholicism might be a corrupt version of Christianity, but that doesn’t mean it’s followers are all corrupt or less Christian! Indeed, especially with regard to the girl who had the vision, many of them probably aren’t learned enough in theology to appreciate what the differences are between the Catholic Church and other Christian groups. Certainly I doubt your averagely ignorant Protestant could outline more than a couple of the disagreements between the two groups.

Tercel

[ February 24, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>