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Post by peterdamian on Apr 20, 2010 14:58:39 GMT
Peter, I feel that these three statements are not entirely consistent, that you are applying logic in one place that you are not applying in another. In the statements about miracles, you argue that it is rather improbable that miracles (events contrary to known natural laws) occur, therefore we should always prefer a natural explanation. Whereas in the history statement, you recognise that events contrary to probability do indeed occur, just infrequently. Miracles (the miraculous, that which we regard with wonder and amazement) are improbable practically by definition. I don't know what you understand by 'natural explanation'. I don't think I used that term. I said that, of two competing explanations, we should always choose the more probable. Whether different people have different views of probability, is another matter. We'll come to that. The statement 'somebody must win', which is a statement of necessity, ergo the impossibility of its being otherwise, contradicts the statement that the event is unlikely. A neighbour of ours actually was rumoured to have won an indecently large amount on the lottery. I was naturally sceptical and disbelieved the report. She later bought an expensive car so I was more inclined to believe. (For otherwise I would have had to explain how she came by an expensive car, when she is retired and has no other obvious source of income). Also, you seem to attribute to me the view that we should automatically reject any improbable explanation of reported events. I don't hold this view at all. I am saying we should not reject it if there is no more likely explanation. But if there is a more likely explanation, choose that. What exactly is wrong with this, in your view? In each case we have to look not just at the probability of the improbable having happened, but at the probability it is a fake, or an invention for personal gain. See above. I don't understand the meaning of 'natural'. And I don't say 'mostly', I say we should always prefer the more probable explanation, over the less probable. Forget 'natural'. Again, we look at the most likely explanation. If human deception is not the explanation, then we must invoke some miraculous (i.e improbable) explanation. This is an old argument. The fact that some inexplicable things happen does not logically require that we postulate an inexplicable cause of them. That is what is circular. As I have said, that is not the form of scepticism I have been arguing for above. I am not saying that 'breaking natural laws is impossible'. I have said that we should prefer a plausible and simple and more probable explanation, over one that is less so. That is a very sound principle. How is that? You have an argument or proof for the probable existence of God? OK, given your assumption about natural theology (which I don't understand), why does it make it more likely that it was Jesus that brought the power of God to earth, rather than some other Teacher? As I say, the view in question it doesn't start with naturalism, it starts with a view about probability, and a set of assumptions that all people share, such as the essential improbability of the miraculous. I may be that you don't regard something like e.g. resurrection or talking with people who have been dead for centuries as implausible or highly improbable. But in that case you don't regard these things as miraculous at all, and we have nothing to say to each other. But otherwise we start with the assumption that anything reported as miraculous is highly improbable. The 'sceptic' says: given that we are both agreed it is highly improbable, let's look for a more probable explanation. If we can find one, we will go for that. I don't see how this is 'circular'. It would be, I agree, if we had different views about the probability of the reported events. But the point is we don't. |
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Post by peterdamian on Apr 20, 2010 15:09:17 GMT
we are fortunately in a position where we can look at really early documents from within multiple traditions. As far as I can see, the transmission of the NT texts to today looks pretty good for an ancient document; good enough for reliability atmo. I would add that Hume did not make all the running at the time. George Campbell responded to him like so: "Campbell argues that the most important factor in determining the authenticity of testimony is the number of witnesses. Numerous witnesses and no evidence of collusion will supersede all other factors 1. Some people think that the reliability of testimony decreases with the number of witnesses. For a famous view on this, see here. etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/BonCrow.html2. Even if the testimony of multiple witnesses makes the truth highly probable on that side, Hume's principle says this must compete with the inherent improbability of the reported event on the other side. It is not true that "Numerous witnesses and no evidence of collusion will supersede all other factors". What if the 'other factors' are even more numerous witnesses on the other side. What if 100 people say they saw X, and 1,000 people say they saw Y, where X and Y are inconsistent? Do the 1,000 people supersede the 100, according to the principle you cite? 3. "we are fortunately in a position where we can look at really early documents from within multiple traditions." Is that true? I thought the reverse was the case. I think Paul mentions 500 people who witnessed Christ resurrected. But how do we know he was being honest about this? According to Hume, we must weight the probability that he was not telling the truth, or embellishing a report, or was under a delusion, none of which are particularly improbable, with something that we all agree is practically impossible. Questions of probability aside for the moment, I'm interested to know where exactly you're coming from here. Do you hold to the view that Jesus never existed at all, or that the miraculous aspects of his life were later additions? I rarely speculate. My interest is more in logic and argumentation, and the reasons that people hold certain views. If I see an argument that seems invalid, or a reason that seems specious, I will point that out. As it happens I am an Anglo-Catholic and I still regularly go to church. (Our church is very much in the liberal Catholic tradition, and most of our clergy tend to avoid the 'miraculous' element, indeed some of them regard it is a kind of cheap trick (e.g. the Bishop of Durham, famously). Their message is more on the spiritual side which science has difficulty with. E.g. science has great difficulty explaining consciousness. But that is another subject. |
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Post by eastshore4 on Apr 20, 2010 20:04:43 GMT
Hi Peter, I wanted to throw my two cents into the argument as well:
I don't really have any qualms with the argument that we should prefer the more probable explanation to more incredible one, but I think there's some telling remarks in your argument that make me a bit skeptical. In your example of the lottery winner, you didn't begin to trust your neighbor until you actually saw their new car. When discussing history, you remarked that even reliability can't be well established amongst sources, since it could be a put-up job by confidence men. If we can't trust the sources, and can't believe anything until we see it with our own eyes, then does the miraculous have ANY probability factor at all?
I think this is where we are all butting heads here... you say that the miraculous is not impossible(although naturally we should not prefer it to more likely explanations), but at the same time this argument can be flexed to make miracles as improbable as you wish. Right now there is no real distinction between saying "this is the better explanation instead of a miracle" and "ANY explanation is a better explanation than a miracle" I'll admit I'm no historian, so I wouldn't fare well at all in a discussion of NT reliability anyways, but I think before the discussion even gets to that point it needs to be established just what kind of criteria needs to be met in your opinion for a miracle to be probable.
I am curious as well as to where you stand on the issue of the Jesus myth. Was this discussion about miracles originally started with any relation to the myth? I figured you were going to segway into a sort of "if we can't trust these miracles, then how can we know that Jesus existed?" discussion but we all just sort of ended up talking about miracles.
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Post by peterdamian on Apr 20, 2010 20:43:07 GMT
When discussing history, you remarked that even reliability can't be well established amongst sources, since it could be a put-up job by confidence men. My point was that if the source is aware of the techniques used to determine reliability, these techniques can easily be counterfeited. If you have ever been 'pitched to' by a salesman, you will notice they often disarmingly throw in some negative comment about the product they are selling. This makes you trust them: they wouldn't be saying that unless they were honest. So naturally you believe the rest of what they say. Perhaps we can trust the source, but this has to be part of the overall judgment. Generally if the source has a conflict of interest in what is being claimed, then it is probably wise not to trust it. I begin with the assumption that we both agree on a key feature of the miraculous, namely that it is highly improbable. If we disagree on that, then my argument goes nowhere. No, any explanation that is more plausible or possible than the miraculous one should be preferred. By definition a miracle (literally, 'that which causes wonder or astonishment') is improbable. I came into this discussion with the observation that if we are to take a scientific approach to history and 'primary sources', then we must take a view on the inherent plausibility of the events described in the primary source. As well as evaluating the reliability of the sources, their independence etc., we should take a view on the likelihood that what is described is true. Or rather, part of our test of reliability should include: what the source is actually saying. |
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Post by eastshore4 on Apr 20, 2010 22:16:36 GMT
Thanks for your reply!
You did not really need to clarify this, I understood what you were saying, I'm just asking how, based on these assumptions, we should trust any sources. You responded to that in the next quote though, and I can agree with what you said, from there it would need to be shown that the overall judgment works in either side's favor.
My point here is: just how objective is "improbability"? My contention is that improbability to me could be something like getting 18 hole-in-ones, wheras improbability to you could be only a shade away from impossibility, like dropping a golfball out of a spaceship and having it fall into the hole. "Improbable" is a rather loose term here, we can agree that miracles are highly improbable, but with this humean line of thinking I can basically dismiss anything and everything if I wanted to as improbable when compared to a miracle. Jesus could've been an alien, or when I saw a virgin Mary statue wave at me it could've been a hallucination(although I was perfectly lucid) or a quantum misfire. That's my problem with this sort of argument, it's rationally irrational.
That was bad phrasing on my end. I'm asking if we can establish a criteria that allows the possibility for the improbable to even happen.
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Post by unkleE on Apr 20, 2010 23:21:35 GMT
G'day Peter, You seem to be in the position I sometimes find myself in on other forums, of discussing with several different people at once. I hope it doesn't wear you out! I don't know what you understand by 'natural explanation'. I used "natural" in the normal sense of obey natural laws, not miraculous. So when confronted with an apparent miracle, there will be several possible explanations. The "natural" ones would be coincidence, fake, etc. I disagree. It is virtually certain that someone will win, but unlikely that a neighbour of mine will win. By Hume's logic we should disbelieve the report, even though it will be true for someone's neighbour. So if we were all Humeans, most of us would draw the correct conclusion but one of us would wrongly disbelieve the newspaper. This leads me to what I think is the most important point .... If we know that an event is improbable, but that it definitely sometimes occurs (as in the neighbour winning the lottery), we cannot just address the matter individually and say we will always conclude the most probable explanation which is that our neighbour didn't win. We must also look at the overall situation and conclude that nevertheless someone will win, and it could indeed be our neighbour. If an event has a low probability, then sometimes, albeit infrequently, it will occur. So unless we argue that a miracle is impossible, taking the approach you take would mean we would mostly correctly disbelieve in an alleged miracle but sometime incorrectly disbelieve. So while your approach seems logical, it will inevitably fail to recognise a real miracle when/if one occurs. I suggest therefore that we recognise this fact of probability, and even if we say of each alleged miracle "I think it is unlikely to be genuine", we should add (if the evidence merits it) "but this could just possibly be one of the few that may be genuine". And then we come to what evidence is necessary. Like I said before, if I believe in "an interventionist God", I will require somewhat less rigorous evidence than someone who doesn't (if they are a true sceptic, they in fact are likely to be unconvinced by any evidence). If there are several reports, if the witnesses are reliable, or if the events fit into a context where God's action is believable because it fits into God's known character, then I would be quite happy to believe it may have been a miracle. An example. Here is a story of a well respected, experienced and qualified heart surgeon in the US who worked with an expert emergency team to revive a man for 40 minutes, unsuccessfully, and he was pronounced dead. But after he felt prompted to pray for the man, he tried the "paddles" again and the man recovered, when all medical science said he should not. What do you make of it? My feeling is that, yes, medical coincidences and amazing recoveries do happen, but on the other hand, the best medical science in the world could not revive him and the revival after prayer is highly coincidental. I can only conclude that it probably was a miracle but I cannot be 100% sure. What would you conclude, and why? I have no secret knowledge! : ) I just find the classic arguments for God's existence very convincing. Some people do, some don't. For example, considering the existence of the universe and its apparent design (the standard cosmological and teleological arguments), I conclude that the God explanation is much more probable and believable than any of the others, by quite a long way. I think the story of Jesus satisfies the requirements of belief more than any other story. i.e. it has good historical credentials (we have several reports, the witnesses seem reliable and have no motivation to lie, the following events cannot be easily explained on any other hypothesis, etc), Jesus is a believable and admirable character, his actions and resurrection "fit" with him bringing divine revelation, the God he revealed fits better with the conclusions of natural theology than other teachers, he both claimed more and delivered more than other teachers. I don't claim other teachers didn't bring truth, only that I believe Jesus brings more truth and greater (divine) authority. I disagree here too (sorry). I think there are two definitions of miracle, and we are confusing them here. One defines a miracle as an improbable event, the other as a supernatural event. The first definition is statistical only, and we all know that the statistically improbable happens occasionally. But some people flatly dismiss the supernatural, some don't. For those who don't accept the possibility of the supernatural, miracles are not improbable but impossible - the most they can believe is that an event occurs due to some as yet unexplained natural phenomenon. So to say "resurrection or talking with people who have been dead for centuries as implausible or highly improbable" is really an incorrect statement. If there is no supernatural, those events are, as far as we know, impossible. If there is a God, such events are possible or plausible, but not common statistically, as far as we know - and so we make a judgment based on the other factors I have mentioned such as reliability of witnesses, several reports, "fitness", etc. Sorry this is so long, but there was a lot to cover. Best wishes. |
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Post by peterdamian on Apr 21, 2010 9:05:50 GMT
It is virtually certain that someone will win, but unlikely that a neighbour of mine will win. By Hume's logic we should disbelieve the report Two points here. 1. As I keep saying, that is not Hume's logic. Hume's logic is that we should always weigh the probability that the report of an improbable event is true, against the probability that it is not, and particularly the probability of some deliberate or unconscious deception going on. In the case of the neighbour, the report came via some workmen who were decorating her house. I was sceptical for that very reason. If it had come via the newspaper, which has no obvious axe to grind, I would have been less sceptical. To this day I am not sure whether to believe the story. 2. All probability is relative to a description. The probability of someone falling under the description 'ticket holder' winning the lottery is virtually 100%. The probability of someone falling under the description 'known to me' is actually quite high, for reasons connected with probability theory. I know of two other people who have won the UK lottery, both of whom got the 5 numbers prize, but not the 6 numbers one (which the neigbour reputedly got). No, it may be very probable, given the information we have, that they won. The point is that the quality of the information itself is a factor. For any report about an improbable event, we should always weigh the probability of the report being incorrect, which includes an explanation of why it is correct, which further includes probabilities about human nature, and so on. Not at all, for the reasons I have just said. It won't inevitably fail, so long as the reports of the miracle pass certain tests of reliability. Agreed, but then we come back to my point in a previous post that my argument depends on our agreeing on the intrinsic improbability of the miraculous. If you have other reasons for believing in the miraculous, my/Hume's argument fails to apply. However (important point) this weakens the idea that the reports themselves are convincing evidence of the miraculous. Resuscitation of victims of heart attack happens routinely, and regularly, in emergency rooms across the world. Examples of people who have been buried alive are quite frequent. I don't think there is a strict definition of 'dead'. Rather a continuum between normal living and symptoms of 'death' which suggest a return to normal living is impossible. As a scholar of the scholastic period (high middle ages) I am fascinated by these arguments. I agree there are different definitions of the miraculous. If we define it as a 'supernatural event', and if you already believe in the supernatural, then fine. But then don't expect that people who require convinving evidence of the supernatural to be convinced by reports of the miraculous, given what we know of human nature and the propensity to report the marvellous and fantastical. On the statistical definition, and the idea that the statistically improbable happens occasionally, note again that it is reports of the statistically improbable that we are concerned with, and the probability of those reports being correct. I agree the events as described can hardly be explained in any other way than by miracle. But the question is how likely the description is to be accurate. Note that the only foolproof description, which involves the Roman guards, is in Matthew. We must assess the probability of a human being returning to life and escaping from a guarded tomb, against the probability that Matthew's account is an attempt to rebuff Jewish claims that the disciples stole the body, as scholars L. Michael White and Helmut Koester have argued. How likely is that the story of the guards is an invention? Is it more or less likely than a man being resurrected from an entirely dead state? What do you think? |
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Post by perplexedseeker on Apr 21, 2010 10:21:43 GMT
Another way of putting this would be, suppose that you are convinced based on philosophical arguments, beyond all reasonable doubt, that metaphysical naturalism is false and that the supernatural is real. You therefore accept the possibility that miracles, perhaps even violations of the laws of nature, can take place. So far, so good.
However, you now have an additional problem to tackle. You also know that humans are prone to inventing fantastic tales, or misinterpreting unusual phenomena as divine intervention. Indeed, if one is a Christian exclusivist (not that I am implying you are, if you are not one), then this must play an important part in explaining the existence of other religions.
What reason, therefore, would you have for accepting the veracity of miracles reported in the religious literature of any one tradition, and not others? Clearly they would have to meet a burden of proof that the others did not. If you can give reasons why the Resurrection meets this and no other competing miracles do, then fair enough.
But what if, having set an acceptable burden of proof, after a thorough investigation, you find that multiple miracles do meet this burden, but originate from religious traditions which make incompatible truth-claims dependent on these miracles. How, then do you decide which really happened?
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Post by peterdamian on Apr 21, 2010 10:46:28 GMT
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Post by unkleE on Apr 21, 2010 11:00:36 GMT
Peter, I'm not sure if we are making any constructive progress, so I will try to limit this post to answering questions and touching on a few points.
And my point is that if we consider each alleged miracle one at a time in that way, we will reject them all whether they are in fact true or not. As I understand Hume (which isn't very well I admit), his approach would always result in considering the breaking of a natural law to be less likely than any other explanation. "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as could possibly be imagined." (from "Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals")
So I think (1) you may not be viewing Hume in the way I have been led to believe is correct (but you may be an expert on Hume and can show me I'm wrong in this?) and (2) Hume's argument is an ambit claim that stifles the debate before evidence can be considered, and any gambit that decides the answer before looking at the evidence claims too much.
This is another point I have made before, concerning the life of Jesus. Jesus apparently did and said things which suggest he thought he was was at the very least the Messiah, God's representative on earth. Many people believed him, many still do; many didn't and don't. I think he offers reasons to believe God exists and hence the miraculous is possible. Even if someone doesn't believe that, it begs the question to apply blanket scepticism about the probability of natural laws being broken to assessing Jesus.
Surely a neutral open-minded observer has to respond to the miracles in the accounts of Jesus' life with something like: "If Jesus was just another human being then it is difficult to believe any of the miracle stories. If he was an extremely charismatic person who inspired great faith, some of the miracle accounts may be explained by "mind over matter". And if he was who he implicitly claimed and many believe him to be, then the miracles are quite consistent with that conclusion." But that is not a Humean approach, on my understanding.
I'm sorry, but I think this statement mis-states the issue. Yes, rescuscitation does occur, that's what the emergency team was trying for 40 minutes to achieve. But rarely are people resuscitated after they are worked on by such a team for 40 minutes and pronounced beyond resuscitation and certified as dead. And even less does the highly unusual resuscitation occur after the leading surgeon prays for it.
But I think this story clarifies our criteria. I don't claim it was a miracle, I just think it looks like it was. You interpret the story in a way that makes it easier to conclude that it was a normal event. When I discussed it with atheists on a forum, no-one really wanted to consider it at all.
Why is that?
To me they are very important, not academically, but practically, for they give an insight into the nature of the universe.
I have never relied much on the story of the guard. I regard Matthew as the most fanciful of the gospel writers by our standards today. I don't men that he is unreliable or dishonest, but rather that he writes in a more Jewish way, and the jews at that time (on the evidence of the NT) didn't think in such literal ways as we do today. So I think there may well be some aspects of Matthew that we misunderstand.
And I don't think a description of the actual resurrection is very important either. But I think we have what is most important:
1. The assessment of classical historians that the NT is a set of good historical documents for that period, and that we can know as history many aspects of the life and teaching of Jesus.
2. Clear statements that the majority of scholars accept as factual that (a) Jesus' burial place was empty, (b) people reported seeing him and apparently had some experience of this nature, and (c) these beliefs were part of christian belief from the beginning and were fundamental to early evangelism and the success of the church.
3. Statements by Jesus (and by Paul and others) about his death and resurrection that put all this in context.
To accept the truth of the resurrection, I simply have to put together my conclusions from natural theology, the historians' conclusions, my willingness to believe that the gospel writers told the truth as they saw it and my willingness to not only believe what Jesus said but to trust him. With that background, it is easy to believe God raised him from death, and much more difficult to believe that he wasn't who he purported to be, his followers lied about what they saw (even the writer of John's Gospel, a very believable character in my view) and good old honest Luke got all his facts totally wrong, and yet they all felt moved to make up a story that has hung together to this day, die for their belief and never recant. I think that assessment is true to the facts and probabilities, but following Hume (as in the quote above) would never allow that conclusion to be drawn.
I'm not sure where this discussion is going now. What do you reckon?
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Post by peterdamian on Apr 21, 2010 13:03:04 GMT
Of course, the rules of historical methodology do require that I make no judgements about miracle claims. That's not the same as saying they can't have happened, merely that the question is outside the remit of historical enquiry. I think this is precisely what I am disagreeing with. A historical methodology should make a judgment about any claim made, if the claim is obviously fantastical or improbable. For example, if a source claims to have seen giant sea serpents, we would tend to discount that source as unreliable. I'm not saying this on 'naturalistic' grounds, whatever that means. I'm saying that if any source claims something that we all agree is improbable or fantastical, we should treat it with more caution than if it were something prosaic or mundane or everyday. |
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Post by perplexedseeker on Apr 21, 2010 13:23:00 GMT
And the truth of Christianity, which teaches there is only one god, precludes the truth of Hinduism, and so on. Not meaning to disagree with your basic point, but you seem to be assuming the polytheistic variant of Hindiusm. Alternative forms exist which are monotheistic, or even absolute monists ( everything is part of God). As for the links, I tend to class writing appearing on clouds together with "the Virgin appearing on a fried burrito" kind of miracles. More to the point, are there any miracles in the Qu'ran itself? Where's Zameel when you need him? |
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Post by peterdamian on Apr 21, 2010 13:23:54 GMT
As I understand Hume (which isn't very well I admit), his approach would always result in considering the breaking of a natural law to be less likely than any other explanation. "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as could possibly be imagined." (from "Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals") But then he says that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the miracle itself, which was exactly the point I was making. Which is more miraculous: that a dead man came to life and escaped a guarded tomb, or that someone made up the whole story? There are several of these. There is Anselm's ontological argument, there is the Kalam or causal argument. There is the argument from design. The first two are reckoned by most philosophers to be defective. On the third, it is commonly supposed that Darwin refutes it. You ask at the end where the discussion is going. I think our disagreement is not about logic (which is my only real interest). I think you concede the possibility that Matthew was fictionalising (perhaps not deliberately so - not telling the truth is consistent with not lying). And you seem to concede the possibility of the other accounts being false also. But despite that you also seem to think that a dead man coming to life has a greater probability, and it is there perhaps that we would disagree. |
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Post by peterdamian on Apr 21, 2010 13:25:34 GMT
And the truth of Christianity, which teaches there is only one god, precludes the truth of Hinduism, and so on. Not meaning to disagree with your basic point, but you seem to be assuming the polytheistic variant of Hindiusm. Even the monotheistic variety would still presumably be inconsistent with Christianity, unless it were agreed that it was the same god. |
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Post by perplexedseeker on Apr 21, 2010 13:36:51 GMT
There are some Hindus I have encountered who would deny there is any difference between their God and the Christian one which is not a product of human-manufactured dogma, though I have no idea whether or not these views are common or rare (unlike Christianity, Hinduism has never had a central authority, so it is practically impossible to find definitive opinions on these questions).
However, I have certainly noticed that the reverse is very rarely the case, except perhaps amongst Christian Universalists.
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