Let’s return, for a moment, to Hitchens’ god is not Great, for that nimble, eloquent mind, now forever silenced, still has much to teach us.
Hitchens ends his tenth chapter with these words:
Thus, dear reader, if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined — as I hope — I am willing to say that to some extent I know what you are going through. there are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave the hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking. [153]
He is referring in his own case, not to Christianity or any religion, but to the Trotskyist Marxism which coloured his early years, a source, one might think, of his irrepressible passion and intense commitment to those things that attracted his attention and held it. The chapter itself, though it ends on this note, is not really about authority and doctrine. Indeed, the ending of the chapter is, in a sense, “stuck on” to the end of his discussion of the miraculous, and seems at least partly out-of-place. In one sense the whole book is an argument against authority, and an affirmation of the transient and occasional nature of our conclusions. We are, after all, more like jumped up apes, Hitchens suggests, than like fallen angels. Our sympathies are limited and our ability to achieve reliable and stable truths about reality is more often claimed than achieved.
However, it would be mistaken to think that all has been in vain:
Was it all in vain, then: the great struggle of the theologians and scholars, and the stupendous efforts of painters and architects and musicians to create something lasting and marvelous that would testify to the glory of god? [150]
“Not at all,” he exclaims. And then, after saying that Shakespeare has more to teach us that the Koran or the Talmud, he says something that most people who have read this book simply ignore:
But there is a great deal to be learned and appreciated from the scrutiny of religion, and one often finds oneself standing atop the shoulders of distinguished writers and thinkers who were certainly one’s intellectual and sometimes even one’s moral superiors. Many of them, in their own time, had ripped away the disguise of idolatry and paganism, and even risked martyrdom for the sake of disputes with their own coreligionists. [151]
And while he goes on to say that we can claim to know more, through no merit of our own, than any of these giants of religious thought who preceded us, it is often not noticed that Hitchens did nod generously towards his religious predecessors, even though he thinks it is time to rip off the disguise of religion and show that, underneath, religion is like the wizard of Oz, mostly surface and little depth.
And this is where the tawdriness of the miraculous comes in. For the miraculous is all show and no substance:
Between them, [Hitchens writes] the sciences of textual criticism, archaeology, physics, and molecular biology have shown religious myths to be false and man-made and have also succeeded in evolving better and more enlightened explanations.
But the miraculous — that is, the idea that there is something more than human about our religions and our ideologies – upon which, even today, so much religion still rests, has now been shown to be nothing more than the overstretching of myth. It’s one thing to mythicise the mysterious, like the origins of the earth or humanity. It’s quite another thing to mythicise ordinary events, like the healing of a disease, or the coming back to life of someone known to be dead. Of the latter there are several examples in the gospels. In what way is Jesus’ “resurrection” to be privileged over the raising of Lazarus or the daughter of Jairus? People flock to places like Lourdes or other supposedly holy places where apparitions of the “Virgin” Mary are believed to have occurred, and expect to be healed of their ailments. The number of supposed miracles that have occurred there are pathetically small compared to the number of those who have pilgrimaged there full of hope. But even those can be safely attributed to natural remissions, which, while they may have no easy scientific explanation, occur in fairly stable percentages for many diseases. Carl Sagan pointed out that, of those who do go to Lourdes, such remissions occur at a lower rate than they do in populations which do not go to Lourdes seeking the miraculous. Of course, there is probably a good reason for this, since people often go to Lourdes as a last resort, and therefore are probably more sick than the general population of those with those particular diseases in which unexplained remissions naturally occur.
Hitchens spends a good bit of this chapter showing how unlikely the recorded miracles really are., pointing out that the miracles recorded in the New Testament are described, as he says, “in an almost commonplace way,” (142) and as though they raise no questions at all for belief. He points out, a bit hilariously, that while recording the raising of Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus, no one seems to have bothered with either of them, to find out about their experiences, or to describe how, in the end, they died. Besides, as Hitchens points out, after remarking that the gospel of Matthew records the opening of graves and the resurrection of many who went into Jerusalem and were seen by many, the surfeit of resurrections “can only undermine the uniqueness of the one by which mankind purchased forgiveness of sins.” (143) Of course, Christians, though they may read Matthew’s account at Easter time, do not take seriously this foretaste of the general resurrection, taking this to be a kind of mythicising that points to the significance of Jesus’ unique resurrection. But it is a strange way of trying to point to that uniqueness, and it of course raises the inevitable question about how it is known that this is the way the story must be read. If Jesus’ resurrection is to be taken seriously, then don’t we have to take the other resurrections seriously as well? How are we to distinguish the reliability of the one from the unreliability of the others?
In addition to all this is the problem of the idea of Jesus dying, if he did not, in the end, really die. As Hitchens says:
The action of a man who volunteers to die for his fellow creatures is universally regarded as noble. The extra claim not to have “really” died makes the whole sacrifice tricky and meretricious. … Having no reliable or consistent witness, in anything like the time period needed to certify such an extraordinary claim, we are finally entitled to say that we have a right, if not an obligation, to respect ourselves enough to disbelieve the whole thing. [143]
Notice how carefully that is expressed. Take the gospel stories all together, search as long as you like, and you will never be able to find a consistent story of either the trial of Jesus, his execution, or his resurrection. Making a virtue of necessity, some biblical scholars suggest that that is what makes the eye-witness testimony that much more convincing, since just this sort of inconsistency is to be expected from eye-witnesses. However, this won’t do. It may be true that, if witnesses all agree in the minutest of ways, there is evidence of tampering with the evidence, but when there is simply so little consistency between the stories, the likelihood that these are eye-witness accounts at all becomes less and less plausible, especially if you consider the fact that, in many respects, as Dominic Crossan points out, the stories look more like prophecy historicised than records of actual events, and that their differences depend on which Old Testament “prophecies” are thought to have been important for an understanding of Jesus’ life and death.
But then consider, as Hitchens does, the incredibly inane and petty miracles to which the church often appeals: the flight of Mohammad to Jerusalem on his horse, Borak, whose hoofprint is claimed to be visible on the Temple mount, the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque; or the levitation of Jesus and his mother into heaven. These improbable stories, which have so little significance, are still believed firmly by so many. What is the point of them? Horses that fly, bodies that levitate into the sky, statues that weep, blood of saints that liquefy at certain periods of the year, bodies that rise, fake grave-clothes that are still exposed for adoration. Even supposing that these things happened — a dangerous assumption — what possible significance can they have?
Extend this [says Hitchens] to the present day, where statues of virgins or saints are sometimes said to weep or bleed. Even if I could not easily introduce you to people who can produce this identical effect in their spare time, using pig fat or other materials, I would still ask myself why a deity should be content to produce such a paltry effect.
These things are a bit like the one supposed miracle that Hitchens spends rather more time discussing. It happened in the “house of the dying” at Mother Teresa’s ashram for the dying in Calcutta. Malcolm Muggeridge was doing a documentary on Mother Teresa’s work which in the end was named “Something Beautiful for God,” but during the filming the cameraman said that it was too dark and dimly lit in the “house of the dying” to be able to film it successfully. Nevertheless, he had just taken delivery of some new Kodak film which was supposed to be usable in poorer light conditions, and, although he had not tested it, he agreed to use it. The result was surprising. Muggeridge said that “the part taken inside was bathed in a particularly beautiful soft light.” (quoted 145) Ken Macmillan, the cameraman, wrote sometime later about watching the rushes of the film taken inside the “house of the dying”:
… it was surprising. You could see every detail. And I said, “That’s amazing. That’s extraordinary.” And I was going to go on to say, you know, three cheers for Kodak. I didn’t get a chance to say that though, because Malcolm [Muggeridge]. sitting in the front row, spun round and said: “It’s divine light! It’s Mother Teresa. You’ll find that it’s divine light, old boy!” [quoted 146]
And so a miracle was born, and at the same time a woman, about whom there are so many questions as to motivation, practice and compassion to ask, was turned immediately into a figure of holiness. And it stuck. So now, when Mother Teresa’s name is mentioned, people go all weak at the knees, instead of asking some necessary, critical questions.
For awhile I was taken in by the hyperbole. As a result of a decision made at the Bermuda ministerial, I was asked to write to Mother Teresa to see if she would come to Bermuda to speak at a conference, if she happened to be making a trip to the US, and she very kindly and graciously answered, in a letter which I still possess. It is probably important to remember that this is from a woman who really doubted the existence of a god:
But surely the questions that Hitchens raises in his book about Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa: The Missionary Position, are questions that need answering. Her idea that pain is the kiss of Jesus, or her use of the millions donated to her to erect convents in other places rather than using it to improve care for the dying in her ashram in India, are issues of greater importance than Muggeridge’s rather vapid idea of her ashram as bathed in divine light. Of course, it is this aspect that is remembered now. She has already been beatified (on 19th October 2003), the first step on the road to sainthood. Now all that is needed is another miracle, to add to the fake miracle already recorded in her name. The whole process of making a saint is a bit of meretricious spiritual huckstering, which supposedly adds lustre to the place where the saint lived and worked. But the fundamental basis of it — the belief that a “miracle,” occurring after the invocation of the would-be saint’s name, shows that the saint is someone already favoured by god (and therefore had been ushered into god’s presence, and did not need to await the day of judgement), and that god responds to her pleas for mercy for the person prayed for — is a palpable piece of credulousness. Does the church not recognise how cheap and hucksterish this makes itself seem?
In other words, it’s not only Hume’s argument, which basically says that the miracle must be more likely than the probability that someone has either made the story up, or misreported or misunderstood events, that weighs here, but the simple point that the miracles reported are all so ordinary and expected in the normal run of things, or so silly, like the various levitations involved in Christian, Jewish (recall Elijah and the chariots of fire) or Muslim belief, or weeping statues, or magical film. Hume’s point is so obvious in the case of the film. Which is more likely, that Kodak produced a film that was sensitive to light in dimly lit spaces, or that the film actually recorded divine light? To ask the question is to answer it. Which is more likely, that the woman said to be cured by fastening a medallion once touched by Mother Teresa to the sick woman’s abdomen, was cured miraculously, or that she was cured after treatment by a doctor? Again, the question answers itself. Not only is the idea that a god should intervene in a process that he supposedly set in motion, and altered it for a very local advantage enjoyed by someone (or only a few), simply implausible, the reasons why god should have done any such thing, in the cases referred to, makes the miraculous look like a cheap trick. If this is the best that a god can do, why should anyone take belief in such beings seriously? On the other hand, if there is no sign that god intervenes, and thus makes himself known, then there is little reason to believe. Religion seems to be caught between two stools, and will have to do much better than this to make belief in the existence of their gods credible. But it is, as Hitchens says, the tawdriness of the miraculous that, in the end, defeats them.
I’ve often thought that a strong argument against the power of prayer and miracles was the inability to grow back amputated limbs. It seems a strange limitation for an omnipotent god.
Similarly ‘rising from the dead’ seems to be in abeyance, now that we understand more about coma and resuscitation.
Nobody should expect any great miracles from a god with as poor an aim as the god portrayed in the Old Testament. Sending a worldwide flood to destroy the earth and all living things but one family and whatever critters they could stow in their gopherwod boat is pretty low tech. Surely a god worthy of the name could have managed something a bit more discriminating of actual evil targets and leave all and everyone who were blameless (infants? animals? trees?) unscathed? If this god is incapable of or unwilling to inflict evildoers and only evildoers with some sort of fatal ailment that takes them out of he world, how can it be expected to release someone from such an ailment to keep them in the world?
(My own guess with the flood story, is that it does record, however dimly, the folk memory of a particularly devastating (but local) flood which did in fact indiscriminately kill many people and animals. People would be left with the brute facts of random death and destruction to square with whatever god they believed in. I think survivors would have certainly tended to favour the “god had a temper tantrum” hypothesis to explain the destruction. Survivors would also be tempted to favour the “god spared us because we are good, have something special to accomplish in the world, etc.” hypothesis, too. How many of these explanations and rationalizations were trotted out in the wake of the tsunami of 2004?)
Weeping and bleeding statues, vague apparitions in stained walls and burnt toast are pretty low grade miracles when there are so many hungry mouths to feed. When helping a football team win wins out over saving lives, you know a religion has reached moral bankruptcy. The whole “miracle” thing really starts to touch on the problem of evil. If a god is willing and able to suspend the laws of physics to communicate to us through vague pareidolial visitation, why not do something actually useful instead? Instead of appearing to a few children at Fatima, would it not have been more humanly useful for the virgin Mary to have appeared to the hundreds of thousands of troops killing each other just a few hundred miles away in the mud and filth of the Western Front?
If you want your god to remain in control, you have to be able to explain away a lot of crap that happens in the world. Religionists have to have it both ways in today’s “disaster” miracles. The “miraculous” sole survivor of some plane crash, earthquake or whatever has been saved by a god, while those not so lucky were “taken home” to the god. Win-in for the god.
Just wondering Eric; what explanations (if any) did you give for the existence of seemingly random, senseless violence in the world? How did you explain the apparent scarcity of miracles, the lack of divine intervention on behalf of those in need? Were you ever in a position to have to provide such explanations? (Forgive me if you have answered any of these questions in previous posts.)
YNNB…. In answer to your question: I never really did have any answers, and it was the problem of evil that worried me most of all. It’s funny, though, the problem of evil does not loom nearly so large when it doesn’t happen directly to you. When it did happen directly to me and the one that I loved the most, then the problem became unsolvable. I worked at it…. Indeed, I decided, in the midst of my own pain, to try to understand how Jews who reflected on the Holocaust had been able to make sense of the Holocaust in the light of their faith, and spent several years studying the Holocaust and theological responses to it. In her journal Elizabeth said that that is what I was doing, and then she said (I only got to read it after she had died). “I think he will find, in the end, that there is no god, and that suffering cannot be accounted for.” And of course I knew this, but that’s not the way faith works. It works even though one doubts, and in the midst of doubt, until a doubt comes along that simply does not fit, and then faith itself drops by the wayside. Religious faith is a strange and beguiling phenomenon. I can understand why people refuse to give it up, or cannot give it up. It’s a crutch and a shield, and so much more besides. That’s why science is such a solvent of faith, and why people resist it so much, preferring to believe that there is, behind the scenes, a regular sequence of the miraculous, working unseen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbg_dhI4XCs
^Could you respond to that miracle? I have researched it extensively and have actually traveled quite a distance to investigate it, and it made me, very frighteningly, a Catholic after I simply could not deny it reasonably. Wouldn’t mind being an atheist again!
@Brian
I’ll say that its mostly likely complete BS. First he mentions no names of the original, independent scientists he talked to. Then, the man mentioned, Dr. Zugibe is not exactly an independent observer, since he seems to be knee deep in trying to prove that the Turin Shroud is real. And I’d say, if the Host could turn into real human tissue, why is this not demonstrated independently, and well proven and well known?
A more likely explanation is that bacteria can grow into large red cultures, and dissolving a communion cracker in water would produce delightful growth media for any bacteria that happened to be around. If you sterilized a host, consecrated it, and put it in sterile water, you’d probably never, ever see this. I bet a more detailed analysis of this video would show that its mostly just made up for the purposes of motivational speaking deals and books. When you look at these things with real double blinding, they always evaporate.
Those are reasonable first impressions to have, though I do think the video does provide enough glimpses, however brief, of relevant data to make one think that he may, in fact, be referencing actual data. And that is what caught my attention at first. Not many other alleged miracles even have the pretense of such scientific data. I also have a hard time simply dismissing entirely what the man says – I just do not think it reasonable (or charitable) to think he is lying through his teeth with, if that be the case, a needlessly elaborate ruse. He also mentions people and places that are real and that can be verified, so that’s something to note. In any case, more research is required, which, as I said, is exactly what I did.
Most of the eyewitness accounts, interviews, lab reports, and ecclesiastical documents are reproduced in several books, some by Dr. Castañon (the man in the video) and others not. Most credible to me are the lab reports, yes, but also the ecclesiastical documents that go straight to the top, to then Cardinal Ratzinger when he was the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. With the Church involved at that level, it’s very, very serious. Of course, a prejudiced a non-Catholic would not find that interesting, but when they are involved, there is clearly serious merit to the events. Whether they pan out or not to the genuine article, well, that’s for the individual to decide, but this is clearly not your wild-eyed friend telling you about something that bumped in the night.
Now, something I have not been able to verify (totally) yet is the claim he makes towards the end of the video – that the blood found in this Eucharistic miracle belongs to the same person as the one from the Lanciano miracle. He also makes the same claim wrt to a bleeding bust in the 90s in Bolivia, which I do have partial confirmation of. Now, if that is true, and it’s the same person, that’s something.
At this point, after what I have seen and researched, I cannot reasonably deny it, but I was hoping that perhaps someone with a skeptical bent could give me something to think about.
Your Name’s not Bruce? That post was superb, but there is much to add.
Modern magicians! One guy laid down on the ground, had some one drive an eighteen wheeler truck over him and then got up completely unscathed. This was certainly the equal of any of the pathetic miracles recorded in the Bible. In fact the truck was heavily weighted on one side and the tyres that passed over the magician looked real but were made of foam rubber.
Modern medicine! Jesus healed a few lame guys and a few lepers, big deal. Leprosy is now completely unknown in modern industrialised societies, smallpox has been completely obliterated and polio would have been eliminated as well but for the opposition of superstitious religious morons.
An ordinary horse is a piss poor form of transport compared with a modern car. A flying horse compared to a modern aircraft is equally pathetic.
Here’s something to think about: Why?
Presumably you believe these manifestations are carried out by a powerful supernatural being in order to demonstrate his existence: but in that case why are they so grossly inadequate? What’s preventing God, if he exists, from demonstrating the fact in a clear and unequivocal way that no skeptic or atheist could possibly deny — writing his name across the sky in letters of fire, for instance, or making a mountain appear in the middle of the Sahara Desert?
Let’s agree for the sake of argument that these manifestations occur — what is the point of them supposed to be? Clearly they don’t convince the vast majority of atheists, and they have no impact at all on the billions of believers in non-Catholic cults and religions, so why bother with them? What is God supposed to be playing at?
To me it sounds like a little boy boasting “My father can lift a mountain!” and when approached for evidence whipping out a photo that shows his father lifting a bicycle. Even if we assume — as you seem to — that ‘miracles’ like this occur, they clearly provide any reason at all to believe in a supremely powerful eternal Divine Being.
If God — or you — really want us to believe in an all-powerful being, then he or you need to provide some evidence that only an all-powerful being could produce.
Curse you, missing bracket! Back on! (Eric)
Sorry Brian, it seems you’re easily impressed and dazzled by the authority of this person. A sceptic doesn’t accept the authority of others, but thinks for herself.
I have thought about all of that, and a lot of my fellow skeptics give me responses like yours, but I guess I just don’t see why your questions are actually even relevant. As much as I try to understand why they are supposed to be important, I just don’t get “it.” “Why doesn’t he write his name in the sky?” seems to me, with all due respect, a petulant question at worst and unrelated at best. What, exactly, does that have to do with this event and with the evidences that can be judged to see if this happened or not? Maybe it’s just a failure of imagination on my part – this kind of response seems to be phenomenological, but I don’t put too much stock in phenomenology.
My approach was simple, I think. I neither believed that miracles occurred nor that they did not. I came to conclude that the evidence was very strong that a miraculous changing of bread to flesh and blood did occur, and that lead to a chain of logic which supported the Catholic Church (something like this: Transubstantiation -> Holy Orders -> Apostolic Authority -> Authority of the Papacy -> Divine Identity of Jesus). If you are familiar with the relevant Catholic doctrines, you will be able to more easily understand the jumps made in the chain. Now, unless the documentation and evidence was very, very, very cleverly forged, I just don’t see how my conclusion is not rational.
Come on, Brian, grow up! This is precisely what Hitchens means about the tawdriness of the miraculous. A host turning to flesh and blood!!! This is silly, completely and mind-numbingly silly. That’s what’s so wrong about it. What self-respecting god would do something like this? There’s a world of suffering out there, and what does he do? He proves that the Catholic Church is right about the eucharistic sacrifice. This is just meretricious nonsense, no matter how apparently confirmed it seems to be. Just ask yourself Hume’s question. Is it more like that this happened, or that it’s all made up? Obviously, it’s all made up. Ask Jon’s question? Why? In what way would something this stupid help us to understand the world?
You don’t base something like this on the apparent truthfulness of anyone. You say:
Nonsense, that’s the only reasonable thing to think under these circumstances. You start believing everything on this basis and before long you’re picture of the world will be more screwed up than it already is.
Egbert, do you think it was uncritical of me to accept the lab reports, documentation, eyewitness testimony and depositions?
btw, my previous message was directed an jonjeremy.
MacDonald, my response to you is the same as it was to jonjeremy. I guess I just don’t see the force of your point. Condescension and sneering do not strike me as valid responses in themselves to *any claim* . While you are there saying “How silly!”, how exactly is that supposed to help me evaluate the evidences? It’s seems like a total non sequitur.
“Is it more like that this happened, or that it’s all made up?”
Well, that depends on the antecedent probability and the evidence available, and it does not take a lot of evidence to overcome antecedent probability – otherwise, we would never be able to believe in super rare events that happen all of the time.
So yeah, I guess I just don’t understand the phenomenological approach you guys take. “But, but, but there’s suffering out there?” Maybe that has some kind of emotional force for you that I am not seeing, but in no way see how that relates to the evidences of this event. In the absent of evidence, that would psychologizing away the event, I guess, would be enough to dismiss it. But there is hard data that has lead me, at least, to the miraculous conclusion.
Of course, maybe it’s helpful to point out (again) that I am not merely basing my conclusion on the authority of Dr. Castanon, at least not merely on his authority. As I said, I am judging the data he draws from – and after a while, yeah, it is very much rational to trust him on his authority after he has demonstrated (through the aforementioned rigorous data) that he is a legitimate and credible authority. Many of the lab reports and so on can be found in Mas Alla de La Razon – they are found in the appendix and are just photo-copies of the originals. There are also other written and video sources where the lab technicians are interviewed. None of you having this data on hand, I totally understand your positions, but maybe you can offer some thoughts for me if you ever decide to dig deeper? If not, that’s fine.
Brian, you don’t have any evidence. Reports of evidence do not constitute evidence. What you have is the claim that there is evidence, but not the evidence itself. You’re just taking the claims to be true. Why? A claim that it has gone to the top no more than that — a claim. There is no basis of proof, and any that there is claimed to be is in the supposed possession of people who have an interest in something like this being true. But still, the claim is made to support a dogmatic belief. The likelihood of it being true is much less, as Hume would say, than the likelihood that the story is a scam. It’s easier to believe that it’s a scam than to believe it true. You say how does calling it silly help you to evaluate the evidence. But where is the evidence? All you have is the claim, not the evidence itself. It’s still easier to believe that it’s a scam, and makes no sense to believe it on whatever “evidence” you have. Besides, just think what a silly miracle it would be if it were true!
If you are saying that I am only claiming to have evidence, well, yeah, that is true. But if you are saying that I really do not have evidence but only claims of evidences, that is just wrong.
“What you have is the claim that there is evidence, but not the evidence itself. You’re just taking the claims to be true. Why?”
^This seems to suggest that you mean that I am accepting claims of evidence as evidence itself. Well, after an authority has furnished credentials, I do think it is reasonable to accept claims from that authority. However, that is not what I am doing. You say that I am accepting the claim that it has “gone to the top” as evidence itself. No, I actually have a letter from then Cardinal Ratzinger on the investigations. I am no accepting the claim of lab results as evidence – I actually have the lab results. Obviously, since I cannot furnish them to you (at least not yet), maybe it was mistake to post here, lol
Brian. What authority has produced credentials? Have they been accredited by any other independent inquiry? You say you have a letter from Ratzinger. So what? He’s not an expert either, and has too much interest in something like this being true, and has every reason to keep the story going round and round in circles. As long as there is no definite proof stories like this can be kept going forever, and fool the faithful. It’s a great scam, but no miracle. There is simply no reason to believe it true. The lab “results” are not results unless they are confirmed by an independent investigation which has no interest in the truth of the claim. And why would anyone have such an interest in such a paltry and tawdry claim? This is just silly.
I was only speaking in passing when I wrote that about authority.
The lab tests were done blindly by prestigious labs in North America and in other continents – they had no reason to support the Church, but even if Dr. Castañon’s investigation did consult labs affiliated somehow with the Church, I am of the mind that their science is relevant and not their beliefs (besides, if they were done blindly, it should not matter at all). All of the testing done by the different labs produced the same results: real human blood and flesh from the heart. That kind of reproducibility suffices for independent verification. It is absurd to claim there is “simply no reason to believe it true” in the face of so much data – you are grievously overreaching there, for sure.
I think I have written too much already on the tawdry “argument.” It’s a non sequitur and utterly subjective besides. That you think it’s silly does not, in any way, matter to whether or not there was a miraculous manifestation. All that matter is Was there are supernatural event or not? is all that matters, and it is baffling why you think “it’s silly” does anything except to show that, hey, you think it’s silly.
Brian, this is a game you’re playing, you don’t have any evidence, only claims to evidence and anecdotes.
Egbert, you got me!
(Not really.)
No, it’s not a non sequitur, nor is it subjective. You haven’t provided a single reason for anybody to think the claims being made are true. The so-called blind testing must be done on something that is identifiably and reliably the same thing that originated in the original supposedly miraculous, supernatural situation. Maintaining the chain of custody of evidence in a criminal case is difficult enough. In this situation simply impossible. What is presented to a lab for testing would have to be the very same thing that originated in the supposedly miraculous situation. How is that chain of custody to be guaranteed? Who would guarantee it? And the only question that matters here is why people are making up such a far-fetched story. There is not one single reason to believe it. Blind testiing wouldn’t do if the chain of custody were compromised; it would prove nothing if there was anything at all questionable about the original occasion when the miracle was said to have occurred. There is simply no way to guarantee any of these things, and no reason to believe these people have not lied. The whole thing is ridden with problems from start to finish. And — Hume’s point — since there is more reason to think the whole thing is made up, than to believe that the laws of nature were somehow controverted, there is simply not enough reason to believe it. And nothing that you could produce could be convincing. Was there a supernatural event? Of course not. There’s no proof, and in the nature of the case, can be none. And besides all that, it’s a tawdry little miracle, trite and useless. All it does is prove a doctrine right, if true, and the doctrine itself is unimportant. If that’s what gods are up to, they’re not up to very much. We can dismiss them as the dreams of foolish men. Goodness, Brian, think about it.
I honestly think you are being unfair – I could rudely conjecture as to why, but I will not. Admittedly, I have not furnished the data, but, come on, you are drawing conclusions from data you have not seen! Where is the modesty that intellectual honesty demands?
The taking of the samples was photographed and videotaped in the presence of several witnesses who testify to the event. They were placed in two marked tubes, and the chain of custody was documented, with each exchange being noted by a notary and lawyer. This gives confidence, but you know that there could never be certainty about this. One could always posit some kind of deception at this or that point, but that does not paralyze us from forming a reasonable judgment, taking into consideration other motives of credibility which allow us to be reasonable in excluding the possibility of deception. At a certain point, the skepticism becomes unreasonable and turns into bigotry unless you have logical grounds for excluding miracles a priori. And I have not seen anything approach such a logical demonstration.
I do not agree with you on Hume, and I recommend reading Hume’s Abject Failure for a thorough undressing of his “point.” To determine the likelihood of an event, one must not only take into consideration the antecedent probability of the event itself (otherwise, we would never be rational in believing rare events that happen all of the time, such as winning the lottery), one also has to take into consideration the evidence of the event. All it takes is sufficient evidence to establish something. Again, unless you have an air-tight logic which excludes the possibility of miracles a priori, the truly neutral position is to neither believe that miracles occur nor that they do not. That position allows us to follow the facts without prejudice.
And nowhere is there any basis to say that there is no reason to believe the event occurred – there are plenty of reasons. Holding out for a deception with the chain of custody does not ipso facto throw out the remaining ocean of evidence – epistemology is much more subtle than that.
Now, all that being said, I do think that calling into question the chain of custody is the strongest argument a skeptic has, but I ultimately think it becomes tenuous when we have so many other motives to take the investigation seriously. At that point, the onus is on the “skeptic” to show there is reason to think there is deception. I also think there are other reasons to dismiss that hold-out position pending some actual rationale for it. Namely, if the aforementioned claim is true, that the blood from the Buenos Aires event is the same as the Bolivia event, which I do have partial confirmation of, it become extremely tenuous to say to hold-out for deception. The odds go down significantly, for the skeptic would have posit an even grander deception than the first one to hold-out, and that is just arbitrary and weak.
And, again, the event may be silly to you, but it does nothing to show that it did not occur. Period.
I do appreciate the exchange, though, since it does show where I have to look closer into the evidence and sharpen my presentation of them.
Brian has many characteristics of the common internet troll. His opening salvo was the first tell: it’s preposterous.
He “researched it extensively”. Well that settles it! He researched it. Sorry, that’s just faux-scientific talk. You don’t research a supernatural claim, you require it be reproduced under tightly controlled conditions. To Brian, research apparently means gathering up all the bogus doc a scammer can produce and allowing yourself to be convinced by it. A worthless waste of time, if indeed he did it at all, which, given how unconvincingly he narrates his story, I’m not at all inclined to believe. He says he “actually traveled quite a distance to investigate it”. Puhleeze. I don’t care if he had to go to Pluto, the length of his purported journey is irrelevant to the truth of the matter. My favorite was this bit: “it made me, very frighteningly, a Catholic”. How insincere can he get? He isn’t frightened to be a Catholic. I’d bet a good unconsecrated bottle of non-communion wine he’s a Catholic of long standing. “I simply could not deny it reasonably” – so to Brian it’s entirely unreasonable to deny the unsubstantiated supernatural claims of a “lab report” put out by a true believer. “Wouldn’t mind being an atheist again!” – more fatuous insincerity, yeesh.
That’s the “hook”. Typically, a troll’s next efforts are much longer and tries to establish his bonafides with politeness, faux-reasonableness and plenty of weasel words when making his defense of the indefensible. Brian doesn’t disappoint:
“Those are reasonable first impressions to have, though I do think the video does provide enough glimpses, however brief, of relevant data to make one think that he may, in fact, be referencing actual data. And that is what caught my attention at first. Not many other alleged miracles even have the pretense of such scientific data.”
Oh Brian, silly boy, that’s all your miracle has – the pretense of scientific data. Real scientific data is reproducible. When it’s not reproducible by the scientific community, there’s a word for that – hoax. Not two sentences go by in his second post that don’t set me to wincing or snickering. Brian tries so hard to convince us that he could be converted back to skepticism, if only we had the goods. But Brian is the judge, and he is so reasonable, so you must not have them. He wants you to give him “something to think about”. Something Brian deems “relevant”. But unfortunately, all your arguments are just “phenomenological” or “petulant” or a “total non sequitur” (as opposed to a partial non sequitur?). Brian has “hard facts” in the form of “lab reports” and an internet video from Argentina, and all you have is a little common sense and probability on your side? Brian knows “it does not take a lot of evidence to overcome antecedent probability” (another troll marker: sophisticated-sounding, but obviously false statements) but even that’s no help to Brian, since Brian does not actually have any evidence he cares to share. And if quality of evidence is something valued by Brian, I certainly could not detect it in his writing. Leaving aside Brain’s claim to have evidence, as well as his claim that his claim of evidence is not just a claim of evidence but somehow should count as real evidence to us, all I really know is that Brian has actual internet connection available to him, and that (an a mild form of derangement) are all he really needs to be as insistent as he is that in vitro transubstantiation exists.
I could go on, there’s so much more to deconstruct, but it’s growing tedious even to me. He digs in his heels. He pretends he’s the rational one, the truth seeker, and you are all just mocking him. All very typical troll behavior.
The final mark of the troll is the way he backed out at the end. A classic troll move:
“Obviously, since I cannot furnish them to you (at least not yet), maybe it was mistake to post here, lol”
Oh, no Brian, don’t go . Let’s see. He has “evidence”, the “lab results”, but can’t find a way to scan & email or fax them to you. Riiight. But it’s the “lol” that says like nothing else “Hey, it was fun, but it’s time to stain another atheist site with my patented mix of BS, bad faith and unctuousness. See ya!”
Brian really has no idea how unconvincing he is. He is a religio-troll. I have met and read too many like him to not recognize the type. I believe the proper response is “bugger off, troll, you’ll find no takers here”. Everyone here showed him more respect than he deserved. You guys are terminally decent.
Well that was some word vomit. Admittedly, though, it is kinda strange to be arguing over evidence that has not been furnished. For me, it’s interesting trying to see where there possible holes that do no lead to the miraculous conclusion. I just do not see them.
You know all about “word vomit”, I’m sure.
Bugger, troll, you’ll find no takers here.
Brian;
Would you accept claims that a marble statue of Ganesha drank milk?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_milk_miracle
If not, why not? If so, why? Stone statues do not usually drink anything. On the face of it, such a claim is not credible. You might have a look at this, too
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/29/islamic-science-has-come-to-this-pitiful-end/
On the face of it the claim you are accepting for the host in question is also incredible. Bread products do not behave in this way. To overcome the incredible nature of this claim would require some pretty extraordinary evidence, as well as replication by independent observers in truly double blind experiments.
Even if this particular wafer was found to exhibit the properties in question, that would not count as confirmation of the existence of Jesus, his resurrection, the miracles ascribed to him, his alleged fathering by a god, etc. Without further evidence supporting these further claims, it would only mean that this was a really strange cracker.
And as noted above, what would be the point of such a miracle? What would it accomplish? Messing around with bread products isn’t really that much better than my football game or Fatima “miracles” noted in my post above.Something actually helpful to human welfare (as opposed to simply confirming Catholic dogma) would be much more impressive and convincing. A god performing such low grade miracles would not be worthy of worship.
@ Ed #25
Exactly. To prove that a miracle of transubstantiation occurs every time the host is blessed (is that how it works?), we need several blessed wafers and several unblessed wafers, randomly tested under proper double blind conditions by reputable labs. The results should then be peer-reviewed and published, with full trial details, so that we can sit back and wait for someone else to replicate the trial and get the same results.
Forgive me for not holding my breath.
Brian must surely agree that it would be unreasonable for any sceptic reading his testimony to accept it? As many have pointed out, we can simply ask ourselves which is the more likely: that the laws of nature were suspended in this one rather singular way; or that he is wrong about the story in some particular. Without even needing to think him dishonest, to conclude that he is credulous, a common enough feature of most us at different times, is no stretch, whereas considering a few comments on an internet blog as sufficient to persuade us to Catholicism, of all the bizarre things, would be the hallmark of the unreasonable. Unless, for example, one already had pre-existing background beliefs leading one to think miracles in the service of Catholicism were possible, or one is simply extraordinarily gullible.
So, Brian is in a cleft stick: either he thinks it would be reasonable for us to accept his testimony, in which case we should conclude he is a credulous person, for whatever reason. Or, he agrees it would be unreasonable to believe him, in which case he should acknowledge he is on a fool’s errand, and, further, he should consider how reasonable he is being in accepting the testimony of others. Does he have any pre-existing background beliefs, for example, or is he simply a notoriously gullible chap?
As far as I can see, that cleft stick is impossible to escape for any miracle report.
Ed Peters, since we are depending on evidence here, I think there is evidence that, whatever else he is, Brian is not a troll. I say this because the following quoted paragraph, at least, is a reasonably stated position, and needs to be taken into consideration:
I think it also needs to be pointed out that, in fact, miracles, as things unlikely to occur, cannot be required to fulfil the scientific requirement of repeatability. Otherwise, we are simply, as Brain says, ruling out the miraculous a priori. I don’t think that Hume wished to do that, and whether we agree with Hume or not — as Brian does not, having taken Earman’s book as an adequate reply to Hume — if a claim to the miraculous is to be defeated, it must do better than merely make the claim that the laws of nature forbid it, since a miracle is, even by Hume’s definition, a violation of a law of nature.
I do not think, by the way, that Earman succeeds, nor, interestingly, since he spends so much time showing us that Hume is not original, is Earman original either, since he uses Baysean arguments against Hume which were used by Hume’s contemporaries. Are these arguments successful? I don’t think so. All they show is that Hume was right. We need overwhelming evidence that a miracle has occurred, and this is simply not, in any known case, what we have. As Hobbes said: “All the Miracles consisteth in this, that the Enchanter has deceived a man; which is no Miracle, but a very easie matter to doe”. And we can see this in Brian’s case, for the evidence that is offerred, even supposing the lab results to be reliable, is insufficient, for the contamination of the evidence is more likely than that such a ridiculous thing should have taken place. It is quite simply a fact, given the description in the video, that we can put no reliance on the evidence not having been tampered with.
There is another thing. If, in two cases, as the video says, the communion wafer has been tested and shown to be real flesh and blood, and if this is taken as a demonstration of the truth of transubstantiation, then, in this case, repeatability should be possible as Haggis points out, since the Catholic claim is that this always takes place. Every time the host is consecrated the miracle happens, and Christ’s body and blood are present. If this is true, and the supposed miracle takes place, then we should have an unlimited supply of instances for confirmation. I take it that this is not the claim that is being made.So, what would this miracle prove if it were true? Certainly, not that transubstantiation is true, but that it was true in these two cases. Here’s where the tawdriness comes in too. The response is: So what? Is this really something that proves the existence of the Christian god? What a trite thing to do to a couple of pieces of “bread” (for the unleavened tasteless bread is scarcely bread at all).
As to Brian’s claim to have been frightened into being a Catholic. This really is silly. What it does show is that Brian is credulous, and, if he’d rather be an atheist, all he has to do is to recognise that, as Hobbes said, deceiving a man is an easy thing to do, and he was deceived.
Yes, You’re right. If transubstantiation were true, then no doubt proof would already have been provided by scientists. So not only does it not normally happen, but in fact the one time it happens is when the wafer is not consumed in the usual way. Not only is this tawdry, but I thought that the point of communion was the fact of transubstantiation (for Catholics). So the only time god lets it happen is the time the host has been dropped on the floor. Way to go, god!
What are some of the natural alternatives?
There could have been contamination in the factory that produces the hosts.
The priest could have eaten a beef sandwich before the Mass and not washed his hands, and contaminated the host.
Dr. Castañon could be a conman.
Dr. Castañon could be an honest dupe.
Ninja Jesuits could have snuck in and contaminated the soggy hosts.
The samples could have been switched on the way to the testing laboratories.
The laboratories could be in on the scam.
Militant Atheists could have corrupted the tests so that they can latter be revealed as a hoax.
…it’s so easy to come up with natural alternatives. Why does the incredible have a greater appeal?
Why does the incredible have a greater appeal?
Ahhh, but not just any old “incredible” will do. Theists of whatever stripe have already subscribed to a particular “brand” of incredible that precludes the incredible features of other brands of religion. Christians and Muslims will dismiss Hindu “miracles” out of hand, while giving those of their own believers a much more sympathetic hearing. Muslims will reject Christian miracles that come about from prayer to anyone but Allah. A stain on a wall that looks somewhat like some people’s idea of the “Virgin Mary” will go unrecognized in a community that doesn’t know who she is. I don’t imagine the wafer investigators would be at all interested in looking into the miracles of faith traditions other than their own. And nobody accepts the miracles of defunct religions which no longer have any adherents.
This could be framed into the difference between magical thinking and rational thinking. Magical thinking finds its appeal in a special status and life force above nature. Miracles are part of the magical thinking, and to associate with it is to take some of that power, and raise y our own status, which is what faith is. Now if you were to add a death force, as opposite, so that people are cursed and demonized, well, now you have your complete religion.
This is really bad news for vegetarian catholics
Brian, if you’re still reading I urge you to look up the history of Cold Fusion in Wikipedia. This provides a wonderful example of how science investigates claims and sifts evidence until the truth emerges. At one time many influential scientists believed that cold fusion had demonstrably taken place — and that there was plenty of evidence for it — just as strongly and sincerely as you believe in your miracle. The difference is that they didn’t then sit back and shut their minds to other possibilities, or stifle the opportunity for further investigation. They considered other options, explored the possibility of those, and worked out the implications of each different approach.
Science is the only investigative process we have which takes into account the human capacity for self-delusion and controls for it. That’s why it usually comes up with the goods in the end.
Good suggestion Jon. As I was reading your note about cold fusion, a thought occurred to me, a very Humean thought. This is the reason why evidence for miracles needs to be so enormously strong, indeed unquestionable, because miracles, being one-off events — not like lottery winners, because, while one-off, there is a one-off winner nearly every time — they do not give us the luxury of going back and checking the evidence. That’s why Earman’s Bayesian probability calculations won’t do the trick, because you can’t really calculate the probability of something you already believe has happened. If you believe it, it has a probability of 1. If you don’t, a probability of 0. But no way to check. So, miracles must bear their evidence on their face, and this they cannot do, except for those who believe they have witnessed the miraculous. Others have no choice but to take it on trust, and no one should trust this much when reason itself is at stake. This is what my brother does. He makes far-fetched claims about himself and his experience, but the only way that I could accept it as true is to accept it on authority, and that’s simply not good enough.
Eric, re #31.
“Brian is not a troll. I say this because the following quoted paragraph, at least, is a reasonably stated position, and needs to be taken into consideration” – Eric
Trolls can use reasonable or unreasonable arguments, what makes them trolls are their intentions. While I was composing my first post, Brian wrote, inadvertantly, what, I believe is his real purpose here: “I do appreciate the exchange, though, since it does show where I have to look closer into the evidence and sharpen my presentation of them.” Yes. To sharpen his presentation. Where better than a good skeptical blog comment section? He has no intention of accepting the possibility he is wrong. All that is just pretense to keep the conversation going so he can sharpen his presentation.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” – Carl Sagan
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” – Christopher Hitchens
Brian’s claims fail on both counts. Not only is his evidence, as described, not extraordinary, being ripe with the potential for fraud, as others have written above, but he doesn’t even offer anything more than his assertion that the evidence exists, and a video of a man telling a good ghost story. He says ‘the onus is on the “skeptic” to show there is reason to think there is deception’. No Brian. The onus is on the person who makes extraordinary claims. See the Sagan quote above. The bad faith Brian repeatedly exhibits is a tr*ll signature trait, IMO, Hume or no Hume. Still, reasonable people can disagree on what Brian’s purpose is here.
“miracles, as things unlikely to occur, cannot be required to fulfill the scientific requirement of repeatability. Otherwise, we are simply, as Brian says, ruling out the miraculous a priori.” – Eric
I disagree that the second sentence follows necessarily from the first. If something happens that violates the laws of nature, then what exactly prohibits it from happening again, given the same circumstances? Not the laws of nature, that’s for sure, for if they didn’t bar it from happening once, how could they bar it a second time? If an event can be detected, it is amenable to scientific inquiry. This claimed event was detected, or we wouldn’t be discussing it. There was even a methodology provided which can be followed. So I say run the experiment again. Successfully repeated, it would still be a miracle. Nothing about the requirement that it be repeated under controlled conditions precludes a miracle from happening. Defending miracles by saying they are not likely enough to be repeatable is special pleading. Until someone tries to repeat it, how do we even know it isn’t quickly repeatable? Once they’ve tried to repeat it, we can discuss the results. Until then, what are we discussing? Claims. Just claims. I’m not prepared to give anything, especially miracle claims, a free pass on the requirements for scientific validity. That does not rule out miracles a priori. Rather, I’m inclined to believe that if there is a god, and if she’s interested enough in us to create miracles, she’s probably not malicious enough to just be messing with our heads by making miracles happen only when the already converted are looking, and never when scientists are.
After all, if the point of a miracle is to garner more believers, who better to convince than skeptical scientists? Of course, believers always counter with the Doubting Thomas story. But if you already believe, why care about pointless miracles like this one? Apparently the intended audience for miracles are those in between, whose disbelief is so weak as to be overcome by the merest claim of a miracle.
Brian, you said: ‘Now, something I have not been able to verify (totally) yet is the claim he makes towards the end of the video – that the blood found in this Eucharistic miracle belongs to the same person as the one from the Lanciano miracle.’
Why would this be so hard for you to verify? AFAIK the only way to say that two samples came from the same person would be if the DNA matched. What lab and what technician did the sequencing? The Church investigated the miracle. They must have this information on file.