LeonMire

My question is this: Is there any situation in which miracles could, in principle, be verified by historical methods? I think this is a question that isn't very well-addressed by us nonbelievers.

The reason usually given is that miracles are by definition extremely improbable, and the most that history can do is establish what probably happened. Another variation of this is "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." If people came back from the dead on a regular basis, or even occasionally, then Jesus' resurrection wouldn't be much of a problem for historians. It wouldn't be an extraordinary claim; it'd be an ordinary one. But since that sort of thing has never happened, it's extremely improbable that it happened, and so historians as historians cannot say it probably happened.

Now, this makes a lot of sense for one-time miracles like the Resurrection, but what about more common miracles? When the author of Acts claims that the apostles miraculously healed the sick, why shouldn't we believe him? After all, people have claimed the very same thing throughout history, so it seems to be the sort of thing that does happen on a regular basis. It seems to be quite an ordinary claim, in fact. What exactly is the difference between this and an ordinary claim? Am I overlooking something? Why should we take a medieval historian at face value if he claims that a priest healed a wound naturally, but then turn around and be all skeptical when he claims a priest healed a wound supernaturally?

Please give a more thoughtful response than "The burden of proof is on those who claim miracles happened." My question is, WHY is the burden of proof on them, at least in cases where miracles are commonly reported? We have a large number of independent, otherwise trustworthy medieval historians claiming that priests healed the sick miraculously. Why isn't that good evidence?

While I'm at it, I may as well pick the collective atheist mind on a related issue that I've been chewing over for some time. In The Case for Christ, under "The Evidence of the Missing Body: What About Alternative Theories?" William Lane Craig makes this claim: "I would argue that the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead is not at all improbable...What is improbable is the hypothesis that Jesus rose naturally from the dead. That, I would agree, is outlandish...But the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead doesn't contradict science or any known facts of experience. All it requires is they hypothesis that God exists." I don't think Craig is right, but I'm not sure what's wrong with his argument. So tuck away your objections about God being improbable and imagine you're a Christian, or otherwise theistic, historian. If you already take God as a given, is it still uncalled for, from a strict historian's point of view, to hypothesize that God raised Jesus from the dead?

I'm looking to understand these issues, so pithy one-liners or snide remarks probably won't do me (or anyone else) any good, especially since I'm already an atheist myself.

Toto

As far as the miraculous healings, the argument is that they were psychosomatic, which means not really miraculous.

This is what's wrong with Craig's argument about Jesus rising from the dead:

Craig would have you believe not just in God, but a God who intervenes in the natural course of events and violates the laws of physics. This sort of God does contract our experience, which is that the laws of physics are constant, and we have no evidence of a God who fiddles with his creation.

neilgodfrey

My first questions before engaging in any discussion like that would be to ask the Christian for a clear working definition of "miracle" and exactly what they mean by "god". Only then would I bother to start. Just discussing "miracles" and "god" is inviting a never-ending discussion that will only go on and on in strobe spirals.


Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

Huon

A few days ago, we (in France) heard of a miracle which was performed by John Paul II, after his death. A relatively young nun, Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, working in a Catholic maternity hospital in Paris was allegedly sick of Parkinson’s disease since 2001. She prayed many times and very hard, especially during the night of April 2005, 2, when JP II died. And on the next morning, she had no more Parkinson.

Can this miracle be verified ? most neurologists shake their head. Was it a Parkinson ?

Berthold

It's a similar thing with the "confirmed healings" at Lourdes. The state of the patients afterwards is very thoroughly examined, but next to unknown by any standards of reliability is the state they were in before.

John Kesler

The reason that the burden of proof is placed on the one asserting something contrary to ordinary belief (Aristotle's discussion of "endoxon"), which would include, but is not limited to, supernatural phenomena, is frankly because this approach works. What is regarded as an ordinary claim is given presumptive weight, and what goes against this is considered unlikely--yet neither position is regarded as anything more than provisional (open to future refutation or disproof).The conventional wisdom before Copernicus was that the earth was stationary. The extraordinary Copernican claim, therefore, required a great deal of compelling evidence to supplant the millenia-old belief in the earth's stability--and rightly so. Anecdotal stories about miraculous healing don't rise to the level of compelling evidence, but the minute that reasonable challenge is provided (healings are verifiable), the burden of proof shifts.

I suppose that if one's God is a being who could perform resurrections, then you would necessarily conclude that resurrections are possible, but this seems like a tautology: A God who can perform resurrections can perform resurrections. However, the presumption of such a deity seems in tension with the "strict historian's point of view" that you require.

Steve Weiss

What about Lourdes?

Steve Weiss

You state a good policy. It seems that a fair number of intelligent people live in OZ. The answer, by the way is no. God cannot be order at the same time that he overturns it on a whim.

Huon

Same thing, plus commercial involvement of the local people. You can get holy-water for some euros.

Huon

By its definition, a miracle is outside a normal verification.
Miracles are one of three possibilities :

1 - They are fakes, magic well executed.
2 - Or they exist only in the imagination of the witnesses.
3 - Or they have natural causes, which we did not catch, but these causes exist, because nothing exists, nothing happens without a natural cause.

These statements are the summary of a book written around 1520 by a certain Pomponazzi. The book was published only in 1556 after the death of Pomponazzi, title :
De naturalium effectuum admirandorum causis, seu De Incantationibus liber.
About the causes of admirable natural effects, or, the book of the Incantations.
Pomponazzi was probably afraid of burning on a stake, and I will not criticize his caution.

There is also a work of Cicero, intitulated "De divinatione" which says the same things. That means also that miracles belong to other religions known to Cicero, but these religions have probably no believers presently.