Jayhawker Soule

If, in fact, someone "brain-dead" or "clinically dead" for some extended period of time recovers, I assume a mystery that will nevertheless lend itself to a scientific explanation, if not today, then tomorrow.

If, in fact, someone decapitated for some extended period of time recovers, I assume a miracle.

I have nothing but contempt for a god-of-the-gaps. I presume a scientific explanation because the history of both science and religion fully justifies such a presumption.

Ender

<a href="http://www.arn.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000534.html" target="_blank">originally posted here.</a> Due to a nasty confrontation elsewhere, I never returned to that discussion board.

Part II: ~WiGGiN~

Albert Cipriani

Dear ReasonableDoubt,
You argue:


You left out my qualifier "METAPHYSICALLY."

Allow me to illustrate your ruse. Let's say you believe in string theory. Then, IN TERMS OF PHYSICS, "everything for you would be various frequencies of subatomic strings, and atoms would serve no role in differentiating classes of matter." No? I didn't think so. So don't apply as true for me what would not be true for you.

To say that everything is a miracle is not a statement devoid of information. It means that from subatomic particles to flowers to consciousness, nobody knows and nobody can know how what's happening is happening. Or to allow Cat Stevens to say it for me: "No one knows how a flower grows." It's that simple. It's that complex.

You said,


Well, as you can read, your hopes have been dashed. Why you would hope for such a thing, I will leave for your examination of conscience. That you would hope for such a thing I will pass over without comment. – Disappointed, Albert the Traditional Catholic

bd-from-kg

Malaclypse the Younger:

At first sight, this seems to confuse ontology and epistemology. That is, it seems to be confusing the question of what it means to say that event X is a miracle with the question of how (or whether) we can know that event X was a miracle.

But in the case of miracles (defined simply as violations of natural laws) this isn’t so clear when we consider carefully what it would mean to say that an event is a “violation” of the “laws of nature”.

By a “law of nature” or “natural law” we generally mean a pattern or regularity in the “natural world”. For example, the “Law of Gravity” in its simplest form says that everything always tends to accelerate towards a massive body. But suppose that we observe Y accelerating away from a massive body? Is this a violation of the law? Well, first off, there may be some other force acting on Y, but suppose for the sake of argument that we can rule that out. There’s still a problem. It would seem to be more accurate to say that the “Law of Gravity” as stated is incorrect: everything does not always tend to accelerate toward a massive body. Of course, we can modify the Law to say that almost everything almost always tends to accelerate, etc. But then the behavior of Y is no longer a violation of the Law of Gravity. And it can hardly be objected that something of this form (which says that it is merely probable that things will work a certain way in any given instance) isn’t really a natural law, since the laws of quantum mechanics are of this form.

So it isn’t clear why it would ever be appropriate to say that a given event is a violation of natural laws rather than saying that the event shows that the “laws of nature” are not quite what we thought. And this, I think, is what you were getting at.

Albert Cipriani:

Whatever you mean by a “miracle”, it has nothing to do with the notion of a violation of natural law. It should be obvious that the meaning Macalypse had in mind when he started the thread had something to do with violations of natural law. I could define a “miracle” to be a navel orange, but I prefer not to be disruptive. I agree with ReasonableDoubt: if you aren’t willing to use the word “miracle” to mean something with at least a vague connection to the meaning the originator of the thread had in mind, you have nothing to contribute to the discussion.

jbussey:

Actually it would seem to be impossible to prove that anything is a “supernatural event” in the first place. But let’s suppose that we are willing to say that a given event is a violation of natural laws. What can we conclude? Only that some natural laws do not hold universally and without exception. Natural laws, after all, are just patterns or regularities observed in nature; it’s only because it appears, based on past experience, that there are patterns that hold uniformly, that we believe that there are any uniform patterns. If it turns out that some of these patterns aren’t uniform, the only thing that follows is that we were wrong: those particular patterns are not uniform. It doesn’t follow that “supernatural forces” (whatever that means) are at work.

Just so, except that you seem to have reversed “cause” and “effect”.

That’s highly debatable. God (as typically conceived nowadays) is infinitely complex. The principle of Occam’s Razor is that the simplest explanation is best. It’s hard to see how the hypothesis of an infinitely complex entity could ever be the simplest explanation of anything.

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Albert Cipriani

Dear Ender,
You're as thorough as ever... thoroughly wrong.

You flamboyantly assert:


Death qualifies. It is a single experience and it does carry more weight than the constant conjunction of all our other human experiences. A single diamond, weighing in at a mere pound, would carry more weight than any other pound of matter.

My point is that this is a hierarchical universe. Only democracy and consumerism makes a virtue out of the constant conjunction of fools and tastes. Truth and reality is dictated by less arbitrary standards.

In short, j’ accuse you of the argumentum ad numerum. Experiences, based upon the number of times they are experienced, carry no more or less weight. Frequency of experience may be likened to the frequency of light, which produces the colors we see. Ergo, the color of a thing is not related to that thing's weight.

I love what you say here:


This is so true. I completely agree with this assertion, differing only in the pejorative inference you draw from it vis a vis miracles.

Even from a materialistic evolutionary mindset, you should infer that our "love of wonder" is based upon beneficial realities that wonder leads us to. Otherdumb, all us fools who stupidly traipse down the blind alley of wonder would have, over the preceding centuries been left high and dry outside of the gene pool.

Sex, water, food, shelter, clothing, love, knowledge, humor, curiosity, even this message board, I can't think of a single thing humans are in love with that does not happen to also help ensure their survival. Our love of wonder is just one more of these things. To sneer at it out of intellectual pride as somehow being too far beneath you is to put your human existence at risk.

From this point on, your post gets silly:


Define "unsophisticated." Define "relatively" as in relative to what, us? the gold standard for sophistication? Yeah, we throw nearly 2 million babies in dumpsters per annum. The Australian bush people ain't that sophisticated.

You say:


Define "good" religion. Define "equally," as in equally good to Catholicism? No way. Besides, miracles are not the domain of religions, they are the domain of individuals that are often not religious.

Especially silly are your sillygisms:


Again, religions do not produce miracles. If miracles occur, they occur in spite of the religion one is affiliated with.

For example, Jesus, a Jew, rose from the dead in spite of being put to death by the Jewish High Priest. Ditto for the miracle of St. Joan of Arc's heart, which could not be burnt tho she, a Catholic, was burnt at the stake by Catholic apostate bishops.



To the degree one overlooks your equivocation between "evidence" and "repeatable" this is a valid argument that proves nothing. You might just as well say that miracles, by definition, are rare. Who would contest that?

I might add, you were only born once. It was an event that is unrepeatable. Ergo, according to your equivocating syllogism, you are either a miracle or there's not enough evidence that you exist. -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Ender

Proof apologia intercedes rational thought is as follows:
Incorrect. You haven’t experienced death, unless you’re willing to stretch the definition of death to absurdity in order to save your hide. It isn’t a single experience unless you’ve died. When I said experience I was distinctly referring to the subject’s own experience, not that of an inference of someone else's final experience. Too easy. Next.
False. Your platonic plea that this is a hierarchical universe was done away when neo-platonism died a slow death along with scholasticism in the 16th century. Actually, it is human nature that makes a virtue out of the constant conjunction of “fools and tastes.” That is, my friend, a strawman. Do you want to know about the uniform theory of nature? Truth and reality are contingencies dependent upon the observer.
Were that a valid counterargument then the entire corupus of science is victim to “argumentum ad numerum.” Push this accusation to its logical conclusion and you will have no choice but admit that empirical knowledge leads to probability, but certainty is the dream of holy fools- be it philosophers or fanatics- which is why they demand it so much.
Let’s not get too disingenuous here.

Of course, it’s your fairy tale I’m pissing on. This all-too-human foible shall prove to be cumbersome as man continues on evolving onto something else.
Such as?
Love of wonder does gets us up in the morning, perhaps but it is an impediment to truth, rather than a means to it- no matter how much you mix all the ‘pragmatic’ attributes of humanity in it- no more does it make that “desire” true. If I wished that my love of wonder necessarily implies that there is a thing, such as there are aliens, then there must be aliens. Sloppy inference based on illogical grounds. Freud's hermeneutics of suspicion would most certainly apply here.
I smell the “semantics ploy” a mile off. Why are you still here exploiting the resources of this ‘sophisticated’ country as opposed to working in what you would deem as more ‘sophisticated’ 3rd world country? Why don’t I call you on your false implications? At least you do agree with that statement. Care to cite any miracles that have taken place lately in industrialized countries? The ratio of education rises while their gullible nature falls. As for abortion, that’s a value call. As a slave to God’s commands you have no choice but to protect the “aborted” whereas my own personal judgment dictates that life is dictated by pure chance.
Since you rule out other religions a priori, your reasoning is biased and invalid. I should have left out that subjective qualifier “good” given that it was dependent upon the value judgment of the individual/perspective of the beholder. There are no miracles that a religion has NOT sprung up about and cloaked in mysticism to appropriate power over people, unless you are willing to back up that assertion and cite a few examples?
You misunderstand everything, as is your wont Albert. The word ‘produces’ indicates that the religion offers, not CREATE, miracles. Perhaps i could have been a bit more concise. And since you do readily believe in the miracles a priori, you miss the point of the syllogism- it is directed against the fundamental claim that whatever religion’s miracles are true. You choose to believe in the testimony of resurrection and Joan’s heart over your constant conjunction of experience that has never ever happened before in your life!
Irrelevant. You’re not really trying here Albert. Births do occur all the time, and I can infer safely that my birth was no different from theirs. Your latest post is disheartening and utterly disappointing.

~WiGGiN~

((edited to tweak grammar))

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Ender the Theothanatologist ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

... then disappointmemt is one thing we share.

Albert Cipriani

Aw Shucks Ender,
First ReasonableDoubt disappoints me. Then I disappoint you. And now ReasonableDoubt says: "disappointment is one thing we share."

Yuk! Like sharing someone's toothbrush! I'd much rather he or you could share a conclusion or two with me instead. Hell, at this point I'd even settle for sharing a premise... or the pointy end of a bottle. But the only points we're sharing is our disappointments.

And the worst of it is that, in the process, ReasonableDoubt's hopes that I've "exhausted my contribution to this thread" have now been realized. That, amid our cesspool of disappointments, is what disappoints me the most. Calling It Quits, Albert the Traditional Catholic

critical thinking made ez

That's a great list, let me add a number 4 to the above list.

4.The event is proven not to have been possibly achieved by deception, psychological manipulation, or through written (recording) error or exaggeration of a verbal tale after the fact.

Albert Cipriani

David says a miracle:


But the miracle of Saul the Christian slayer getting knocked off his donkey, blinded, and hearing the voice of Jesus saying: “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?”:
1) was not predicted.
2) did not lead to a result predicted by the believer.
3) the result was his being scourged 4 times, shipwrecked several times, imprisoned innumerable times, beaten and left for dead once, and beheaded. Hardly "good consequences" for the believer from either the atheistic or Christian perspective.

-- Albert the Traditional Catholic