Tercel

Certainly, as you seem to agree, it seems sensible to regard a story which treats miracles as commonplace as most likely mythical or figurative or completely untrue.
I would certainly use the same system for assessing things outside Christian tradition. Thus with regard to your question: Yes, of course.

However, just because something passes the above described test doesn't mean it's factually true but simply that it's not an obvious myth. There are plenty of other considerations to be drawn when looking at the factual truth of an historical event vs how far it has been changed by legendary development. As I pointed out to Jaliet, the single most major consideration (though of course others do come into it) is probably the timespan between the recording and the event itself. Though there are no doubt exceptions where much legendary development took place in a comparatively short time, or very little occured over an extended period: In most cases the level of legendary development and change in the story is going to correlate roughly with the length of time between the event and it's recording. Other factors to consider of course are the existence of separate traditions, the level of publicity the events received at the time, the accuracy to the textual record since etc.
Certainly when these characteristics are looked at and compared to many other ancient writings, the New Testament record is somewhat impressive.

Tercel

John Page

I agree, see:
<a href="http://www.reconciliationism.org/time.htm" target="_blank">http://www.reconciliationism.org/time.htm</a>

We detect time by observing change, and regularize it through measurement of constants. The assumption that there must be a first cause (and that God may be involved in such event) is mistaken. In the context of this thread, we have no free will and people believe in God because a) such belief is a powerful agent in the formation of societies and development of common moral values and b) they are not thinking outside the box because they don't have free will. See also:
<a href="http://www.reconciliationism.org/religion.htm" target="_blank">http://www.reconciliationism.org/religion.htm</a>
and
<a href="http://www.reconciliationism.org/free_will.htm" target="_blank">http://www.reconciliationism.org/free_will.htm</a>
Anyone object?


[ February 21, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

Ted Hoffman

Amos
And what are our gender identities?
How do we identify our gender identities? How do you identify someones sex?
How do you define an illusion?
Ok, so you are introducing new words. This is a fallacy of shifting meanings. But I will play along. Are you saying that sex identity is synonymous with sexual orientation?
And that Gender identity id the physical, physiological aspect of gender?
[quote]You may disagree with my choice of the word "illusion" which really is not wrong because it makes hormone therapy and "sexual orientation" posssible. [quote]
This is your argument:
1. Some people have penises and some have breasts.
2. hormonal therapy can give a penis to everyone and a breast to averyone - irrespective of their previous sexual status/ identity and can also make them disappear(?).
3. Therefore breasts and penises don't exist (ie they are an illusion).

This argument fails because the fact that something is changeable does not mean it is an illusion. We dont say diseases are illusions because they stop when we take medicine.

Not everything that is transitory is an illusion.

Ted Hoffman

Tercel
"THIS IS GOD SPEAKING" STILL Does Not amount to God actually speaking. It could be Zeus, or Ra or Baaal, or Satan. Or some aliens from another planet.
Ignorant, most often equals stupid. Ignorant people draw wrong conclusions and make poor judgements. Thats why superstitions thrived in the early days. Scientific knowledge has taken apart religion and all other forms of superstitions bit by bit and now they lie to waste.
Look at Genesis. Now you say its symbolic. How many people believed that 100 years ago?
Menstruating women were considered unclean. Men who experienced wetdreams needed cleansing.
Jesus believed mentally ill people were posessed by demons. The son of God was ignorant of mental illness. It says a lot about Jesus, religion and all the people who were involved in coming up with the bible.
Fair on who? This is not about fairness. Its about being rational. Making informed and logical decisions and examining available evidence.
Do you have any personal experience that convinced you that God exists? Because I am sure of you do, we can provide you with a perfectly rational naturalistic explanation. Try us. Or try me.
Personal testimony needs to conform with human experience and knowledge, scientific knowledge and reason. If it does not, then it needs to occur consistently and needs to be observed by impartial and level headed people - both theists and atheists. And get subjected to rigorous scientific tests before it can be accepted as evidence of Gods existence.
For example you dont expect us to believe God saved you from a fatal accident yet other fatal accidents take place everyday. It would be in conflict with other God-associated attributes like all-loving etc and you would need to explain why you and not others etc.
The best thing to say for example is that it was a matter of probability that you did not die in the accident. To introduce a new subject God, in the accident, would require quite a lot of evidence in order to be acceptable.
Its not enough for people testifying to be of sound state of mind. Human perception has been known to be influenced by beliefs. Someone could be a great doctor but is ignorant of logic or is incapable of logical reasoning. The way they arrive at their conclusions must be examined carefully. We cant accept what they say merely because they were/ are of sound state of mind.
Especially if they are speaking of something incredible.
Like seeing God.
You will need to be more specific on what kind of miraculous events you are referring to. Was someone healed? Healings are 90% stage-managed (either an illness is faked to exist or an illness is imagined(by the healed) to exixt) 9% psychosomatic diseases. 1% unknown / unexplainable. Even atheists have medical experiences that are not explainable e.g turning seronegative? HIV negative after having tested positive. Or cancer cells disapearing.
Tell me of someone whose broken leg was healed miraculously and you will get my attention.
About the rest, most testimonies are naturalistic experiences interpreted in a self-centerd manner.

Anyway, Miracles only happen in myths. Not in the world we live in. Get me someone who can walk on water, or turn water into wine.
No it would not be. Its the same concept used all the time. Innocent until proven guilty etc. People don't believe I have 899 kidneys until I prove it. Because its not natural that I have 899 kidneys. If someone claims their knife wounds just disappeared, no one should believe them, because, that is not conforming with human experience with knife wounds UNTIL they provide sufficinet evidence.
You would have a reason no disbelieve it and the reason is that IT has not been KNOWN to happen, or more precisely, it has not been perceived to happen.
Evidence should not be rejected EVER. Evidence is examined then judged as inadequate or unreliable or adequate etc. But not rejected outright. Because of the claims it is intended to support.
This happens all the time. Tired or drunk doctors or simply drunk people. Or hallucinations etc. Whatever the case if you wake up one in the morgue one day, its because you are not dead.
Because dead people dont wake up. And people make mistakes. Even qualified doctors.
And sometimes the stories are simply untrue.
They are not false. Just inadequate to make belief systems. Because of lack of evidence. And inconsistency with reason. To go beyond reason, we need to prove things beyond reasonable doubt.
Surely numbers are irrelevant. A few centuries back people believed demons posessed people. Salem with hunts etc. Hell, people even believed the earth was flat. Numbers cannot be used to test the truth or falsity of a claim. Because even rational, sane people can be wrong. Because of cognitive dissonance problems, belief systems, sloppy reasoning etc.
Personally, one miracle is adequate to make me a theist.
Which one convinced you? Was there adequate evidence that it took place?
Miracles makes you a christian? So you needed evidence? This I find very interesting.
I thought faith needed no evidence.
Still, what if all those so called miracles werent actually miracles but just extraordinary events? When does an extraordinary event become a miracle?
So to go beyond human ability our ancestors chose to believe insane people have been posessed by demons. They had no evidence but just chose it as an easy way of explaining madness away.
If not for science, which is based on proof and evidence, psychiatric cases would have no hope today.
I dont think its wise to abandon science because it does not give us the answers we want. If it cannot answer the questions we have. BECAUSE - whenever science has no answers, NEITHER does religion. What religion gives are not answers, but baseless claims. That is why faith is needed. Science does not need faith.
This should tell you something. Religion is used and interpreted in self-serving ways. For example if God is into giving people miracles, why cant he take away the HIV virus and all humanity will see. How come he works in some peoples homes and bedrooms only? Its all a self-centered mentality of thinking. Thats why the priests have perfected the phrase "God loves you". Not "God loves us". People are selfish. And they expect god to treat them selfishly.
They are self-fulfiling prophecies at work.
I would appreciate it however if you could tell us where Jesus' body went. Did he go to heaven with it?
A better analogy was given by Theodore M Drange.
If one were in a firing squad. With 6000 experienced and well trained marksmen aiming at him and shooting at his bagged head. The probability/ chances of that person coming out alive would be very minimal, even nonexistent
Then it so happens that not a bullet touches his body.
That would truly be amazing. It could even qualify as a miracle.
BUT if one later realized that the same day 1000 other executions happened with 6000 marksmen aiming at one person and eight people came unscathed, it wouldn't look so extraordinary would it?

Thus the fine tuning argument is argument from ignorance. Just because we dont know of other universes fine tuned to sustain life does not mean ours is so special.
Its like someone believing his mothers food is the best in the world while he has not tasted other foods cooked by other people.
In other words, we are not in a position to judge how fine tuned it is because we dont have comparative evidence to make that judgement.
In any case, earthquakes, heatwaves, deserts, floods, diseases, typhoons, tornados, the mammalian eye etc are evidence of a chaotic universe. A study of thermodynamics can also indicate this I believe.

[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: jaliet ]</p>

Amos

[quote]Originally posted by jaliet:
<strong>Amos

Ok, so you are introducing new words. This is a fallacy of shifting meanings. But I will play along. Are you saying that sex identity is synonymous with sexual orientation?
And that Gender identity id the physical, physiological aspect of gender?</strong>

No I am not introducing new words. Our sex identity (male/female) is not always synonymous with our sexual orientation because our gender identity can be opposite to our sexual identity. Our sexual orientation reflect our gender identity and our sex is the physical evidence of our sexual identity. To accomodate and accept the possible difference in our sexual orientation we have moved from an "opposite sex society" to a "gender society."<strong>

[quote]You may disagree with my choice of the word "illusion" which really is not wrong because it makes hormone therapy and "sexual orientation" posssible.

Tercel

Jaliet,

Ha, well you see, God would simply cause you to believe it’s him!

Seriously, there’s little point in arguing that it might be a deception. True, it may well be. But it equally may well be the case that the world itself doesn’t exist and Satan or someone is tricking our senses into thinking it does. We find it simply convenient to assume that we are not being deceived in any major way, and normally think no more on the subject. Similarly, an impressive example of God’s existence could be a deception, but there is no point in seriously considering it unless we have good reason to.

Many ancient peoples made up myths usually involving spirits or Gods to explain that which they did not understand. Whether they actually believed that these myths were factually true or whether they knew them for what they were is certainly a valid question. No doubt some of the more credulous among them believed them to be true, but some people of our day believe some pretty way out things too so that hardly tells us much. But I would suggest that, for at least some part, the myths were understood for what they were and the people did not really believe in the truth of their tales, but rather probably had great fun making up extravagant tales to explain the unknown.
Scientific advance has now rendered such tales unnecessary by filling the gaps in our knowledge. And left most of us with little appreciation for the subtleties of the ancient myths.

Quite a few, the developing “scientific method” filled everyone’s head with ideas that something could only be literally and factually true or literally and factually false. This change can be seen quite clearly with regard to Christian interpretations of Genesis: Go beyond the scientific era of the last few hundred years back to the earlier Church writers and you’ll find all sorts of figurative and allegorical interpretations. Just look at the 6 day creation part as an example – none of the early writers interpreted the six days as literal days and they were variously interpreted at representing thousand year periods, ages of the world, or being as figurative in their entirety.

My personal experiences have not been particularly special. That is to say, they convinced me, but there is certainly no reason they should convince you. I could be mentally unstable and hallucinating or whatever for all you know. I know I’m not, and so it convinces me though.
What I am however more interested in is the experiences of others, their testimonies of what has happened in their life. Now no doubt in all cases it is <strong>possible</strong> to explain it away. It is possible the people had a spontaneous hallucination despite appearing otherwise quite sane, it is possible the people for some random and unobvious motive decided to lie despite appearing extremely honest. It is thus possible to explain away all cases of personal testimony. But why should we??
I could if I wanted explain away all cases where people have told me that the speed of light is about 3.0*10^8 m/s, or I could explain away all cases of where people have told me that other planets exist.
Now these two examples are unfortunately slightly different because they are scientific observations which are verifiable by anyone and everyone who chooses to perform the experiments. But knowledge obtained by science is not the only valid knowledge (Note that “Knowledge obtained by science is the only valid knowledge” self-defeats because it is making a statement of knowledge that has not been obtained by science and therefore the statement is declaring itself invalid). But my point is: I have no more a reason to explain away these testimonies about miracles than I have cause to explain away any other thing that people tell me. Indeed if I am to trust the statistic that 99% of what we know comes from being told by other people (the statistic came itself from such another person) then I note that if I was to explain away everything other people told me then I would believe very little indeed.
So I conclude: I can explain away miraculous testimonies, but I have no valid reason to do so.

So instead I evaluate every testimony I hear, thinking of all the ways I might explain it, and decide whether it is more likely to be true or false.

Why does miraculous testimony fail this test? There are quite a large number of miraculous testimonies out there, thus you can hardly argue that this is a sole event which disagrees with a uniform human experience. I don’t see that it disagrees with knowledge or reason either: If there is a supernatural being (which we don’t know yet) then the being may well be able to cause a miracle. Hence the occurrence of a miracle is hardly contrary to reason.
But certainly the evidence needs to be reasonable before we declare something a miracle and base our belief on that. I do not suggest we cry miracle and start believing simply because one person somewhere claims a miracle. People have a fascination with the supernatural and the miraculous and we certainly need to rule out to a reasonable level lies and hallucinations etc as possible causes.

Certainly if the alleged event is not known or alleged to have occurred in the past, a question must certainly be raised of why the miracle is occurring now with no hint before.

Thus if someone tomorrow declared to me that god had appeared to him and told him many things which disagreed completely with all the world’s established religions I would be extremely sceptical of his claims unless he could provide a satisfactory answer to the question of why this god had not involved himself in the world prior to now.
On the other hand a miracle claim in a long established religious tradition does not suffer from the same problem.

Quite a few were claims of healings, yes. Others involved things such as demons, speaking in tongues etc.

Possibly, although I must wonder where those statistics were pulled from. After all, 95% of statistics are made up on the spot*. The purpose of my analysis of the claims I have heard is to evaluate which ones are most likely true and which ones are made up. I’ve certainly heard many many claims I think are most likely rubbish. But I’ve also heard many claims that sound convincing.

*This one included.

Indeed, in the world of medicine there are a number of diseases/conditions which are known to heal/change themselves upon occasion. This must of course be taken into account and we should be careful not to declare something a miracle which can be better explained as coincidence.

If there was only one claim of a miracle, then it would certainly be as outrageous and unbelievable as you claiming you had 899 kidneys: But there are lots of claims of miracles.

No single one convinces me. There is no single claim I can look at and say I am 100% sure that it is a miracle. After all, there are always other possible explanations however improbable. What convinces me is the large number of claims that seem to me to have a greater, often significantly greater, than 50% change of being truly miraculous. To me the cumulative case amounts to a sure and complete proof.

Yes and yes.

If someone wishes to have a random and unevidenced belief in God that’s their problem. I’m not very impressed with people who believe on blind faith.
In my understanding, the meaning of the word faith as it is used in the bible is trust. To have faith in God is to trust in God: To trust that he knows best and to trust him as your master. Christianity to me is about being servants of God, trusting and obeying, not simply expressing belief in the intellectual proposition that God exists. After all, as James points out “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that” (James 2:19). I think it is obvious that the demons aren’t an example of beings which impress God over-much. But rather, our rightstanding with God comes from trust (faith) in him (rather than trying to set ourselves up as knowing best) which shows itself through our actions - “Trust and obey, because there’s no other way…” as the old song goes.
You'll note that trust normally requires evidence, and the more evidence the greater the trust is going to be. Thus, rather than evidence being the opposite of faith, evidence makes faith stronger.

What do you mean “extraordinary event”? These aren’t just unusual events we are talking about, but events that run contrary to all known laws of nature.

The Biblical passages with regard to the ascension are normally interpreted as meaning that Jesus passed out of our universe into “heaven” wherever and whatever that exactly might be.

I have always found Drange’s analogy quite funny actually. If it works at all, it is only against a very bad (normally strawmaned) fine tuning argument.

However, like Drange, I think you’re somewhat missing the point here. The Fine Tuning argument should be noting that fine-tuning exists and asking for the most likely reason for it existing. This is perfectly legal and hardly an argument from ignorance. In Drange’s analogy given above it equates to the person being fired at asking afterwards “what is the most likely reason I wasn’t hit?”. It is a perfectly legitimate question. In the case of Drange’s analogy, if I was the person being shot at the most obvious explanation that would occur to me would be that there was a conspiracy and all the squad members had been ordered not to hit me. Certainly, the probability that they all missed by chance seems extremely small unless I was to find out that they were all drunk, untrained, had defective guns, the distance was too great etc.
Finding out that 8 out of a thousand of other people had escaped unscathed would probably have little effect on the most likely causes which I suggested above.
But there is nothing statistically wrong with a sample size of one: We can still legitimately ask “Given the sample, what is the most likely reason it is the way it is?”

Tercel

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

Ted Hoffman

Hi Guys,
I am sorry, gotta go away for two weeks. I hope this thread will remain alive.
Thanks for all ur contributions thus far.

Theli

Tercel,
I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. I've had some computer problems. My modem dissapeard from device manager, just because I upgraded the firmware on my CDRW-writer. Have you ever heard such a stupid thing?

So you don't think they exaggerated the stories abit?
Yes, not being scientifically advanced can very much be interpreted as being stupid. And being superstitious is also a side-effect. Seeing normal natural occurances as omen. Like in norse mythology when people thought that thunder was caused by the god Thor chasing giants with his hammer mjölner. That's one example.
I mean, how would a caveman react if you would show him fireworks? He would probably be scarred out of his mind, drawing all sorts of crazy conclutions from what he had witnessed.
Of course people are still superstitious and can act really irational, but atleast they have better knowledge now, and that helps alot.

"Slightly"? I'm not sure I know what you mean by "slightly". If you are expecting me to draw a line where I would believe a statement or not based on personal experience, I can say that that's quite impossible. I suppose I would believe it if it was trivial, but I would not see the statement made as "proof" or "evidence".
If a simplier, more plausable explaination to the information I've recieved is presented by me or someone other, I would rather consider that explaination.
True, and it is this informormation that someone has to compare (if they contradict each other). Most info must be processed by your own mind, before you should consider it your own official position on the subject at hand. If you don't process the info, the most plausable reason for this is that you have been brainwashed (probably by TV, hehehe).
Yes, if another more plausable explaination is at hand and if someone's testimony can't be confirmed, even by the person who said it, I have no reason to see the testimony as truth.
Most people that have had religious miracles, has not been in a sound state of mind when it happens. Most of them are on their deathbed, or are really sick in wich they envision a spirit/religious figure healing them. What I find strange about this, is that no muslim ever sees jesus come to heal them, neither does any christians envision any muslim religious figures.
When more then one person has been present, the usuall "miracle" is miraculous recovery from an illness. But I don't think that any doctor who deserves a degree in medicine will write "Miracle" in his report.
Then, why call them miracles?
Who's truth?
Your truth?
The witnesses truth?
How do reach the conclution that your "truth" is sound?
No, you should not. Keeping your mind open is important, but not TOO open ofcourse.
Not blindly reject it, but that much "miracles" can be proven to be frauds is something you should keep in mind.
You mentioned the example on the lottery. Note that someone winning the lottery CAN be confirmed (he's rich) afterward. If he however claimed to have won a lottery wich apperantly doesn't exist, other explainations comes to mind explaining his sudden wealth.
You are saying that there is no reason to disbelieve someone who claims they won the lottery. Well... that depends on alot of things. If the person refuses to show you his winnings without any real explaination, you should asume that he MIGHT be lying about it. If he shows you his winnings, only one other explaining exists to compete with his "lottery winning statement". That is that he might have stolen it. However, this comes down to trust, and other factors...
About miracles, they are not merely as trivial as lottory winnings, they can't be confirmed (that a certain god performed them) and they are mostly depending on belief.
Even when 2 seperate texts (or even the same text) contradict each other (itself)?
Even if the earth is round? I'm quite certain that many of the people who thought the earth was flat, actually was intelligent, honest and sane.
Then you believe in UFO's also? And, what about muslim miracles?
Yes, religions are very quick when it comes to put a stamp saying "christian miracle" on unexplained happenings.
I agree
"Known evidence"? You lost me there... When was this proven as an evidence?
I agree, to judge a persons teachings or logic based on the person himself is wrong. If his teachings or logic is good, it doesn't really matter if he was a serialkiller or a saint. However, if it was an eyetestimony, the person behind it would be a large factor.
I disagree with this though. His teachings could very well be good, even if he though he was messiah. Of his eyetestimonys would be highly questionable.
That's why I won't automaticly take the opposite side of religion on every argument just because I'm an atheist. I question their testimonies, not all their teachings.
I would think that the chance for life in the universe is not that insignificant at all. Life could have taken all sorts of forms, not neccesarely carbon-based lifeforms such as us. And ofcourse, you can look at it from another point of view.
How large is the chance that we would exist in a universe that supports life? If life couldn't exist in our universe, we wouldn't be here to have this conversation now. :- )
Where have you read this? From what I've read, the probability of stars existing is way larger than 10^50 to 1. There is also the theory of the multiverse, in wich new big bangs is imploded all the time. All with random characteristics. This question can only be answered with assumptions though.
But who "tuned" the creator? What if the creator would be slightly different in nature, we might not have existed at all.
Ooops, should have read the whole message before replying... Sorry. This is the argument I presented above.
I don't know about invisible or undetectable, if more universes exist it's not impossible they should emit energy such as light. And if they would react with matter from "our universe" they would be detectable. This argument is more plausable when it comes to creation Ex Nihilo and the point of singularity. And it also states that the "laws" of the universe was set after it's initial implosion, and not before. And ofcourse that they are not governed by a conscious entity.
The old "meaning of life", huh? I don't know why some insists that life has a purpose. About truths, truth (as an opposite to falsehood) doesn't need conscious beings in order to exist.
"Meanings"... I'm sorry. but I have no idea what this word means in this subject. Do you mean "purpose"?

[ February 26, 2002: Message edited by: Theli ]</p>

Tercel

Theli,
No problem. I haven’t had much time myself to post and what time I have had has been spent on some other threads. Since I don’t have much time now, I’ll only cover what I feel are the important points in your post. If I skip anything you think is important, point it out and I’ll discuss it. My home computer’s stuffed too – but I should have a new one up and running within the next few days.

Sounds pretty crazy to me.

Of course. Obviously, it is sensible to believe to most plausible explanation. However, what happens when all the obvious or normal explanations are rendered unlikely to the extent of implausibility?

Certainly, most healings take place on sick people! But with regard such occasions, you might perhaps doubt any “vision” the person had and perhaps attribute it to their unsound state of mind at the time as you point out here. But if they actually do recover in a spectacular way or at apparently inexplicable speed, I don’t see that this can be attributed to their unsoundness of mind.
What about when a vision coincides with a healing. That is to say, a person has a vision of being healed and then finds that their sickness has indeed gone?

I don’t think it’s suprising. If a Christian sees a angelic-type figure in a vision they’ll probably interpret it as Jesus, although a Catholic might interpret it as Mary, while a Muslim would interpret it as Mohammed. Given exactly the same vision the subjects would draw different interpretations depending on their culture and religion.

No, I would imagine they simply write that the cause of recovery was unknown. For the most part, doctors probably aren’t worried about exactly how their patients recovered so long as they did. The main exception being, of course, where the doctors explicit task is to perform an investigation into an alleged “miracle”.

Of course. People in general seem to be quite gullible and have a fascination with the miraculous and supernatural,

But I am happy to believe the statement that X has won the lottery without even investigating the claim. The a priori chance of X winning the lottery was tiny, but there are so many people that enter the lottery that the chance of someone winning is not very small at all. I hence am happy to believe the truth of a statement that X has won the lottery without any proof whatsoever.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we do the same thing with miracles. Experience suggests that people are in the habit of making up miracle claims to a far far larger degree than they are of making up lottery winning claims. But what this examination does suggest, is that even if reasonable evidenced cases of miracles are extremely rare, even perhaps there being only one per million people, it gives no reason to ignore such cases.

That would certainly be something to take into consideration. I was not referring to Gospel miracles here but rather miracles in the present day. With regard to contradicting texts, one must also distinguish between: small contradictions but with the central features in tact –which suggest separate testimonies and thus is actually better evidence; and serious contradictions which cast serious doubt on the truth of the entire accounts.

But they were not in a position to have sufficient knowledge to come to that conclusion. Such must also be considered.

I’m not sure about UFO’s. There seems to be some evidence and there seems to be ways of explaining it which aren’t too unreasonable. Probably what it comes down to is Pascal’s Wager. That is to say: my belief or disbelief in UFO’s is not going to affect my life significantly one way or the other so I simply don’t bother seriously examining the evidence.

When I read or hear of a Muslim miracle which sounds to me reasonably believable, then I’ll reconsider. Until then I can only say that I’ve not yet heard of any remotely-convincing claims of Muslim miracles. However, I am not against Muslim miracles per see. I have no objection to God doing miracles for the Muslims – after all we do pretty much believe in the same God, even if they haven’t managed to get all their beliefs about Him quite right in my opinion.

Hmm. I’m not sure I’d agree. Certainly the Catholics have some very very strict criteria on what they are allowed to call a “miracle”. And historically they have not declared several healings miracles that were declared inexplicable to science by doctors.
On the other hand, most people like calling things they don’t understand miracles and most religions are quite happy for a bit of extra supposed support from their deity in the way of the alleged miraculous.

”Known evidence” being the evidence that we know… as opposed to that which we don’t know. Okay, so “known” is redundant here.

Your first point can be rendered unimportant by the consideration that if there are other constant regions where more constant combinations allow intelligent life then probabilistically the chance hypothesis predicts that we will be in one of those regions. Hence the fact that we aren’t serves as a probabilistic disconfirmation of that hypothesis. If that’s over your head, forget it. The Fine-Tuning argument is perhaps my favourite argument, but it can get a bit complex if it is to be made really rigorous.
As far as your second point goes: it is known as the Anthropic Principle. It will defeat badly presented Fine-Tuning arguments, but it is not particularly difficult to circumvent it.

There is. That is a valid solution to the Fine Tuning argument - of course you’d need to devise some sort of ultimate mechanism for the creation of these multiple universes etc, but that’s not too much of a problem.
The purpose of a good Fine Tuning argument is not to prove a divine creator, it is rather to force the atheist in to a completely un-evidenced position or to show their view is contradictory as it stands.

If they are detectable, we have yet to find them. Currently there is zero evidence for such an idea.

A “Meaning” is the idea of what something means: A concept, an understanding of a specific thing. In language we represent ideas or concepts using words and sentences. The sentence itself, made up of it’s letters and symbols, is not the concept but rather a representation of the concept. The “meaning” of a phrase, is the corresponding concept that the phrase it representing. These concepts, though we can not touch them or give them a physical location, are no less “real” insofar as we can perceive, understand and manipulate them. Ultimately, these concepts do not seem to “boil down” to materialistic things. There is no way a concept can be constructed out of atoms. These concepts/ideas/meanings/truths are not material things, but rather rational things. They have no physical existence, yet the still exist all the same.
Platonic dualism posits that these things truly and really exist in and of themselves. While Materialists will deny this and argue that these things are only constructs of physical reality.

Tercel