Kvalhion

I can't get the mental image out of my head that the one finger held up is the middle one.

Sci_Fidelity

I don't suppose it has occurred to you that we can actually test new scientific discoveries?

Typhon

The Question of Miracles:

Hello half-life,

Welcome to the board by another semi-newbie. I'd like to suggest that regardless of your faith, you approach the presentation of miracles with some simple rules. Otherwise, even if the miraculous did exist, you would liable to be fooled frequently by false ones (stands to reason).

1. Evidence: What is the real evidence for the miracle? Is it a story? Is it a legend? Did happen recently, or long ago?

These all matter. People make up stories all the time, especially religious or superstitious people. Sometimes the make up stories with good intentions, other times they are just lies. Good people, especially religious people, will lie for what they think are good reasons, sometimes, they lie because they really, really want that thing to be true, so even lie to themselves until they believe it.

Stories are unreliable. If you tell a story to one friend in class, and have them tell the same story, or even write it down, and then have that person tell it to another, and so on, by the time that story gets back to you, it's likely to be changed, embellished, or even totally wrong.

Things that happen in the past, especially in times when science was still new and people didn't really understand how the world worked, not only could be lies, stories that got changed, but they could describe things as miraculous, that we would understand to be just natural, today. Miracles happened all the time in the Middle Ages. Partly this was due to the fact that most people all thought that common, everyday things were more mysterious and the product of supernatural forces (such as sickness, famine, floods, and mental illness to just a name a few). Faith and ecstasy in religion was part of the culture, and as a result, there are LOTS of miracles that occur in Medieval times (such as saints talking to animals, healing lepers, flying, doing battles with serpents and dragons, bodies uncorrupted by fire, etc.) that we never hear about today, because people really don't believe in a lot of those things anymore, just like they don't believe in faeries and goblins or that witches spoil the cream or put hexes on your cattle.

2. Source: Unfortunately for proving what is and isn't a real miracle, you really have to look closely at the source. Who is the person claiming the miraculous?

People can be very biased about things that they want to believe, based on religion or personal hopes. If religious people, who have a lot to gain by reporting a miracle, are the only ones who witnessed the miracle, and the event can't be repeated, and there isn't any other proof, then you really are risking believing in a lie or a mistake, rather than a true event that defies science. People do this out of faith, but they also do it frequently out of more human emotions, such as pride, greed, and straight up craziness. In the past, just claiming to have had a miracle or a piece of someone's body's like a saint who was said to have worked miracles, was enough to bring tons of people and more importantly, tons of money to your church or abbey or site of the miracle. Pilgrims, priests, and just curious folks would all come from far and wide to be blessed and be near. This meant that you didn't need to be right, you just needed to have people believe you, and you could get wealthy, famous, or just do a better job spreading your religion. This was very tempting for people, and made them less worried about being very careful to make sure it really was a miracle before they claimed it was.

3. Naturalistic Explanation: Most miracles can't get past the first two points, almost all of them fail to past a reasonable test of evidence and source. Those that do, it is important not to forget to look first for a more naturalistic explanation of what happened. Nature is pretty amazing, so is it a miracle, or just something really weird, but totally accidental and/or natural?

Bodies have been taken out of peat bogs (these are swamps where the chemicals and lack of oxygen in the water keep organisms, like the kind that eat dead things, from growing) that are thousands of years old, and yet still have clothing, hair, skin, and everything, very well preserved, as if they had only died a few years ago. Sometimes animals or people will be born with two tails or heads, or any number of strange, but natural, deformities. People used not understand what caused eclipses, but while it's weird, it's just the shadow of the moon or another body getting in the way. Sometimes people call, right when you're thinking of them, it's not magic, it's not miraculous, it's just a coincidence, and such things are actually more common than you might think. The world is filled with the amazing, the unusual, and the just plain strange sometimes. But all of these, are almost always easy to explain and understand if we take the time and effort to look closely, and figure out what is really going on. Most people don't have the patience, the knowledge, or the skill to do so, and its no surprise that unless you're a scientist or someone trained to look for clues, like a detective or a doctor, you might jump to the wrong conclusion, just because you can't figure out what happened or how it happened. Even if we can't figure something out, it doesn't make it necessarily a miracle anyway. We just may be missing something, it may be really hard, or we just don't know enough yet to know why it happened the way it did. We never used to know how genes worked, or a lot of things that we understand better now, and are learning more about all the time.

In the end, it pays to be skeptical of so-called miracles. Few of them can pass the test of these three simple problems with what people frequently label as the unexplainable. And most importantly of all, don't ever take someone's word for it, just because they say so.

Ask them where the evidence is, and what are the details, or better yet, do your own research. You'll get more out of it, and learn more about the world in the process.

.T.

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

DarkBronzePlant

Assuming that this tale is true, what reason at all is there to believe that she was holding up her fingers to make such a statement? To me, it's pretty obvious that she was just keeping track of the number of centuries that she'd been buried..

sighhswolf

Hi Rod,
Welcome.
I think the very first thing you need to learn when dealing with non-believers is:
Extraordinary claims....require extraordinary proofs.
This little line of thought will help you greatly in your discourse with the people in this forum.
Next:
There is no "supernatural"....the term supernatural means something outside of reality.
Outside of our plane existence, the moment you identify something or someone as "being" as "existing", you automatically assign to it characteristics, attributes and a "nature".
As you have identified the said entity/action/inaction, it becomes part of the natural universe in which we live and so disqualifies itself from the "Supernatural".
In order to prove something is supernatural in nature, you must identify it and in some way document the event, effectively destroying the evidence for it being "supernatural."
Wolf

Pomp

DarkBronzePlant,

Assuming that this tale is true, what reason at all is there to believe that she was holding up her fingers to make such a statement? To me, it's pretty obvious that she was just keeping track of the number of centuries that she'd been buried..

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!

Bill Snedden

Hehehehe....

I wonder how many of us actually got that one?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: Bill Snedden ]</p>

cydonia

Wow, Typhon, what a great, common sense post on the nature and study of miracles!

[ April 11, 2002: Message edited by: cydonia ]</p>

beachbum

No one has hit the obvious

She belonged to the 13th Street Crips and was throwing her gang sign.

Godless Dave

In all seriousness:

If her coffin was airtight or the burial conditions were right she wouldn't decay. There's nothing miraculous about that. When I was an exchange student in Bremen, Germany, we visited the city church, where they had unearthed several bodies that were mummified naturally - something about the soil not letting any microbes in.

As for the fingers, that's less than a coincidence. If she had been holding up one finger on one hand and two on the other they would have said the one was the Father and the other two the Son and Holy Spirit. Five fingers total, they would have made up some other story to fit it.