donnerkeil

So... what you are saying then is that we can never in reality, use the word "miracle"?

What confuses me though is that why could God not use natural processes to perform cures (which would be termed miraculous by believers)? Does this somehow invalidate God's power to interact with humankind? Must every interaction be accompanied by a bevy of angels carrying harps, or some Bach playing mysteriously in the background?

Seems to me that God could answer my pray for a miracle through natural means just as easily as He could through the supernatural.

bd-from-kg

David Gould :

This definition fails to capture what is generally meant by a “miracle”. This can be demonstrated with two examples.

1. Suppose that a voice from the sky announces that it is God, and that to demonstrate His power He has split the moon clean in two. You look at the moon and sure enough, it has been split clean in two: you can see a star between the halves. Then the voice says that He is going to put it together again, and sure enough, when you look again the moon is back to normal. Millions of other people report hearing and seeing the same things, and the event is recorded on tens of thousands of home videos and by many of the best telescopes on earth as well as the Hubble.

I think you’ll agree that most people would call this a miracle. But while it meets your first criterion, it fails to meet the others.

2. Suppose that a thousand people (all true believers) go to Las Vegas with the intention of winning lots of money. All of them are sure (and tell all their friends) that they’ll win because they have an inside track with God, so God is sure to help them. According to probability theory all but one of them will fail. Sure enough, all of them do fail but one: call him Smith. Now for Smith, this was an unlikely event, it had good consequences for him, and it was predicted by him, so it meets all of your criteria for a miracle. But is it a miracle? I hardly think so. And I suspect that very few people would call it one – at least if they knew about the 999 losers and the fact that the overall outcome was exactly what was predicted by probability theory.

doubtingt

However one defines "miracle" the existence of miracles can never provide evidence for God's
existence.
The reason is that there are literally an infinite number of potential ways to explain a miracle that are no less plausible than the
acts of an undetectable God who violates law of nature.
If it is an unreplicable event then the possibility that no miracle occured and it was
all mass hallucination or there were material
causes that were undetected can never be ruled out. In addition, since we know that such hallucinations can and have led to the seeming wittness of miracles this explanation is far more
plausible than one that assumes the existence of
an entity for which there is no independent evidence.

In fact, aliens that can manipulate natural laws is always an alternative to God. I submit that such an alternative can never be rationally dismissed in favor of the God hypothesis.

These are just a couple, but the alternatives to God are innumerable, thus to accept miracles as evidence in support of the God hypothesis in inherently irrational.

Ender

Coincidence.

As well as convictions about the same topic, so disappointment should be viewed as a sign of a particular emotion, not of failure.

You are responsible for what you perceive as a "disappointment." So instead of shuffling off accountablity to ReasonableDoubt....

In repetition one may glean something new.

~WiGGiN~

Kachana

To label event A as a miracle, as I currently see it, is to make a statement of the sort:

'The probability that event A could have occured given the laws of physics (known and unknown) is lower than the probability that a supernatural force intervened and caused event A'

Sound fair?

I see severl problems here:

1) We do not know the a priori probabilities of supernatural forces existing and intervening (by virtue of them being supernatural).

2) We do not know the probability of the laws of physics being broken as, unlike being able to check the probability of a dice landing on 1 1/6th of the time by rolling dice, we have no way of confirming whether past events broke the laws of physics or not, being stuck in the physical world.

2) The statement assumes knowledge of unknown laws of physics.

3) All we know about probability theory is derived solely from our experience within the physical world. Does it make any sense to turn our probability theory derived from nature against nature itself? Can we use a method to invalidate itself in this way?

So I consequently think that to label something as a miracle comes down to a faith based metaphysical choice, given that we are comparing 2 totally unknown probabilities and then using them to refute the very framework that gave rise to our whole notions of probability in the first place.

HRG

Good points. Note also this dilemma:

If we observe something which seems miraculous, how should we decide between the two following explanations:

1) We observed an actual miraculous event;
2) The event was not miraculous, but our perception of it was miraculously influenced.

Regards,
HRG.

bd-from-kg

It seems that very little progress has been made here in coming up with an adequate definition of “miracle”. Although some, like Albert Cipriani, define “miracle” in such a way that practically anything qualifies, it seems clear that the OP was asking for a rigorous definition of “miracle” in the sense, roughly, of a violation of natural laws - possibly with other conditions that an event would have to satisfy to qualify as a “real” miracle.

Part of the problem is that the question has been confused with the questions of (1) how we would know whether a miracle occurred and (2) whether and under what conditions a miracle would constitute evidence for the existence of a supernatural entity. Once these questions have been properly answered the answer to the original question will be so obvious as to be trivial. So let’s look at these questions.

Q.: How would we know whether a miracle occurred?

A.: We wouldn’t. It is impossible in principle for any perception(s) to constitute evidence of a violation of natural laws.

This is clear if we keep in mind what “natural laws” are. They are part of an ontology: a complex conceptual scheme by which we organize and understand our perceptions. Such a conceptual scheme normally involves certain patterns and regularities whose existence is consistent with our observations. Some of these regularities are ascribed to entities that are hypothesized to exist (like the sun); others to hypothetical forces (such as gravity); etc. Certain types of regularities (like universal gravitation) are called “natural laws”.

Natural laws are descriptive, not prescriptive. They are generalizations based on observations of the natural world. Anything that “violates” such laws is not properly considered a “miracle”, but as evidence (possibly conclusive) that the natural law(s) in question are not completely accurate descriptions of the natural world. The correct response to any such evidence is not to exclaim “Look! A miracle!”, but to modify one’s description of the natural world accordingly. It would be highly desirable to find an “explanation” for the phenomenon in question, but if this proves impossible (or pending such an explanation) one can simply modify the “law” to say that the description it gives is usually or almost always valid rather than always valid. In other words, like any other event that does not fit into one’s current ontology, the appropriate response to a “miracle” is to modify one’s ontology. But one’s ontology defines what one means by the “natural world”, so any such modification changes our conception of the natural world and in particular what one means by the “laws of nature”. Once our ontology has been modified appropriately, the event in question no longer constitutes a violation of natural laws.

Q: When would a miracle constitute evidence for a supernatural entity?

A: Never. It is impossible in principle for any event in the natural world to constitute evidence for the existence of anything but natural entities.

Again, this is clear once we get straight what we mean by saying that something “exists”. For example, in my ontology the house next door “exists” because I repeatedly, under certain predictable conditions, have sensory impressions that I attribute to the existence of this house. The same goes for the sun, my friends, my favorite TV shows, etc.

More elusive things “exist” in my ontology for similar, if more complicated, reasons. Thus gravity “exists” because the hypothesis that it does (and has certain well-defined effects) has a great deal of explanatory and predictive power. Quarks “exist” for the same reason and in the same sense.

Thus to say that an entity “exists” is to say that the hypothesis of its existence explains and predicts certain kinds of perceptions better than any simpler hypothesis. But by definition any such entity is part of the “natural world”. I do not ponder whether gravity is “really” a natural or supernatural force, because the question is meaningless. The only meaningful question is whether the “gravity hypothesis” is useful – i.e., whether it has enough explanatory or predictive power to justify making it part of my ontology. If it does, gravity is automatically “natural”; if it doesn’t, gravity doesn’t “exist”. There is no third option. This is not because I have arbitrarily ruled out other options, but because the logic of what it means to say that something exists rules out other options.

Thus we have the following conclusions: (1) No possible perceptions can constitute evidence of a miracle. (2) No possible perceptions can constitute evidence of a supernatural entity. In fact, the concept of a “supernatural entity” is meaningless.

At this point the answer to the original question should be obvious. The concept of a “miracle”, in the sense of a violation of natural laws, is also meaningless. Clearly it is meaningless to ask whether a type of phenomenon exists for which there can in principle be no evidence. Or to put it another way, it is meaningless to ask whether “the” description of how the natural world works is false. It may be asked whether a specified description is false, but if it is, we can conclude only that that description is false. And it is absurd to ask whether the true description (supposing such a thing to exist) is false. Thus the question of whether miracles exist is logically incoherent. Which means that no meaningful definition of “miracle” is possible.

[ March 04, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Albert Cipriani

Dear Bd-from-kg,
Ooooh, how I love your thought. I've saved your post as a testimony to clear reasoning. I agree with its every syllable, save for the following conclusion:



A concept, by definition, cannot be meaningless. In any case, this conclusion does not follow from your perfectly valid prior conclusion: "No possible perceptions can constitute evidence of a supernatural entity."

From this, you attempt to prove too much. If your first conclusion is correct, that perceptions can't evidence a supernatural entity, AND your second conclusion is correct, that the concept of "supernatural entity" is meaningless, then your first conclusion is reduced to nonsense or a tautology:
1) Perceptions can't evidence what is meaningless.
2) We can't see what does not exist.

But outside of that quibble, of you reaching for more conclusions than your argument will bear and falling out of the apple tree, you've provided an excellent explication.

Tho you are correct to say "that no meaningful definition of ‘miracle’ is possible," you would be incorrect to therefore suppose that no practical definition of miracle is possible.

When a perception violates one's ontology to such an extent that one psychologically despairs of objectively ever fitting it together in one's lifetime ("All the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t fit Humpty Dumpty together again."), then one is rationally free to subjectively ascribe to that perception miracle status. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ March 04, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

I thought that you ascribed all perception miracle status.

Albert Cipriani

Dear ReasonableDoubt,
What I said was: "metaphysically, every quantum moment is a miracle." Every quantum moment is a re-creation of the universe.

Our perceptions of each "Magic Moment" are just that, perceptions of a miracle, not the miracle itself. Like a cousin once removed, our perceptions are related to reality as but a subjective interpretation is related to the Truth, or as a word is related to the concept it is meant to express. (Which is to say, poorly!) Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ March 04, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>