Billions of people have HD video cameras in their pockets: why aren't we seeing lots of miracles on video?

[JapaneseKappa]

Oh, I didn’t say you are not going to claim superior competence.

And I also was not claiming that the second analysis was performed, but that we do not know if it has been performed.

Ah, I see. You thought that when I said that I was more skeptical I meant that I was a complete philosophical skeptic. This is not the case. I do not require some sort of absolute certainty to believe claims. It is certainly true that we can’t and don’t have 100% certainty that there was no second analysis. I believed that the claim in the article is a bald-faced lie not because I was absolutely certain, but because I was sufficiently certainty.

Now I notice that you have still failed to provide a link to the second analysis. I therefore still stand by my claim of competence (i.e. that my chosen level of certainty was adequate to arrive at the truth) and that the claim in the article is a lie.

 

[inocente]

You repeat the same points, not grasping what I’m trying to say. It would appear to be the case that one has to know before the words make sense. Only then can one hear. What the study tells me is that it’s not about us being in control. He inspires, assisting us in communicating with Him our needs which He has always known. It’s not about random slot-machine events. The order is miraculously brought into existence for the good by Him, He who is Goodness, Beauty, Exiatence itself. I suppose since you have figured it all out, there would be no point praying, just sitting there with the living Ocean of compassion, out there, inside, holding infinity in His hands. Sometimes He winks and smiles at us in time, from eternity.

If you’re correct, and the Church really does teach that anonymous prayers can retrospectively change history, I wonder why Popes haven’t led prayers in St Peter’s Square that the Holocaust never happened, or the Black Death never happened, or for that matter that the Reformation never happened.

Perhaps they did. Perhaps this weekend Pope Francis will lead prayers to try to make this week’s central Italian earthquakes not have happened.

Please cite the vatican.va documents on this teaching. Meanwhile I’ll carry on believing you made it up, if it’s all the same to you.

 

[Aloysium]

If you’re correct, and the Church really does teach that anonymous prayers can retrospectively change history, I wonder why Popes haven’t led prayers in St Peter’s Square that the Holocaust never happened, or the Black Death never happened, or for that matter that the Reformation never happened.

Perhaps they did. Perhaps this weekend Pope Francis will lead prayers to try to make this week’s central Italian earthquakes not have happened.

Please cite the vatican.va documents on this teaching. Meanwhile I’ll carry on believing you made it up, if it’s all the same to you.

There no point carrying on this discussion as I did not say anywhere what you evidently have understood.

 

[PumpkinCookie]

You see, you are not the first man who doesn’t believe miracles.

You hold a belief that miracles are impossible. When you look at a miracle claim, you simply apply that belief. Naturally, you prefer any other explanation. If such explanation had to be somewhat detailed, you might run into a contradiction, but in fact you’ll accept “Maybe someone will think of something.”, which cannot appear to be obviously wrong. You might note you did just that in case of miracle of St. Januarius.

Of course, that’s circular: supposedly, you are testing a set of beliefs (let’s say, Catholic doctrine) that includes the belief “Miracles can happen.”, but then you add a belief “Miracles cannot happen.”, get a contradiction (note that actual evidence doesn’t matter here) and conclude that “Miracles cannot happen.” (and “Catholicism is false.”) - which just so happens to be one of the premises. But you look at the things one step at the time, thus you do not notice the circularity.

Now, of course, conversion is not impossible. But it has little to do with evidence. Your physical and mental shape is far more important.

By the way, all that is common knowledge. If you want an illustration (with the sceptic being portrayed rather sympathetically), just watch an episode “Feeling Pinkie Keen” from the first season of “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”.

Similar points have also been made by Edward Feser in blog post “Pre-Christian apologetics” (edwardfeser.blogspot.lt/2014/05/pre-christian-apologetics.html). Speaking of which, maybe you could look at outline in there and point out at which point do you stop agreeing?

The “miracle” of Januarius is so obviously fraudulent it’s embarrassing! A severed limb regrowing captured on video would not so easily be dismissed. I never said I reject “miracles” on principle, just that for something to be properly considered a miracle, it must defy naturalistic explanation. A limb regrown in a minute would do this. Stars arranged in the sky with a message from God in multiple languages would do this. A person speaking in tongues on youtube would do this.

Remember when millions of people were arguing vociferously about whether a dress was blue and black or white and gold? How silly, how vain! A mere curiosity. Don’t you think that if something miraculous happened, it would be all over the place?

I am open to “miracle” as an explanation, but the event in question has to be explained better by appeal to the supernatural then by competing natural explanations.

I read most of Feser’s blog. He seems to be saying, in order to accept Christianity, a person must 1) buy into extremely baggage-laden neo-platonic/scholastic metaphysics, 2) buy into a controversial understanding of history 3) accept a controversial understanding of Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures and 4) be won over by truly convincing apologetics. Sounds like a tough sell. No wonder 6 people leave for each 1 who joins!

I can’t say I disagree with his points at all. I don’t accept that neo-Platonic metaphysics is the final word on the subject. I also disagree with current Catholic understandings of the history of late antiquity, and I think the Christian interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures are misguided. I find contemporary apologetics to be intellectually bankrupt, and so I’m not Catholic.

None of these things have to do with miracles. I would be willing to accept that my opinions on 1) metaphysics 2) history 3) theology 4) scripture are TOTALLY WRONG if I saw a miracle on video like the one I described.

My dear, you are checking if something is compatible with Catholicism. In order to do so, you have to temporarily throw out all your beliefs and make a temporary assumption that Catholicism is true. And if you make a temporary assumption that Catholicism is true, you get belief that demons exist for free. If you cannot bring yourself to make such assumption even to show it to be false, your reasoning on this point won’t be worth anything.

OK…

I tried assuming (pretending?) that Catholicism was true for decades. I find it internally contradictory as well.

LOL “If you assume Catholicism is true, then my arguments to show that Catholicism is true do the right amount of work!”

 

[Bradski]

If you’re correct, and the Church really does teach that anonymous prayers can retrospectively change history, I wonder why Popes haven’t led prayers in St Peter’s Square that the Holocaust never happened, or the Black Death never happened, or for that matter that the Reformation never happened.

Perhaps they did. Perhaps this weekend Pope Francis will lead prayers to try to make this week’s central Italian earthquakes not have happened.

Please cite the vatican.va documents on this teaching. Meanwhile I’ll carry on believing you made it up, if it’s all the same to you.

I: What are all those people doing with the Pope?
A: Praying about the earthquake in Peru.
I: Don’t you mean Italy? There wasn’t an earthquake in Peru.
A: Exactly!

 

[Aloysium]

I: What are all those people doing with the Pope?
A: Praying about the earthquake in Peru.
I: Don’t you mean Italy? There wasn’t an earthquake in Peru.
A: Exactly!

Wow! Simply wow!

Actually this response, along with others, demonstrates what happens with miracles. They are understood by the faithful to whom they speak. Otherwise, if seen at all, they are denied and misinterpreted.

We here see a failure to understand how the unexpected results of a particular experiment fit together. Within the context of God who exists outside time, knowing and loving us, speaking to us and influencing the course of history, it all makes sense. When the only interpretive model is a one dimensional atheistic view of material interaction, it cannot be comprehended. Any such evidence is discounted because it makes no sense. Again, how many times need it be stated, retrocausality, which is how some quantum events are explained, is a very poor and inadequate way to explain the results of the experiment. But that distortion has been offered as an understanding of the result. It masks the truth. But it is shared, and as we see here above, ridiculed. This in the tradition of Richard Dawkins. Empirically, the study appears to reveal a truth in the context of one’s relationship with God.

So, Pumpkin, you are out of luck. Miracles are everywhere. If you don’t see, you don’t see. Either one has a relationship with God or one doesn’t. As we see here, even empirical findings will be denied because of the incapacity to integrate them within a mindset that excludes God.

Oh well

 

[inocente]

I: What are all those people doing with the Pope?
A: Praying about the earthquake in Peru.
I: Don’t you mean Italy? There wasn’t an earthquake in Peru.
A: Exactly!

And let’s not forget the great dinosaur war of 2006.

 

[MPat]

Ah, I see. You thought that when I said that I was more skeptical I meant that I was a complete philosophical skeptic. This is not the case. I do not require some sort of absolute certainty to believe claims. It is certainly true that we can’t and don’t have 100% certainty that there was no second analysis. I believed that the claim in the article is a bald-faced lie not because I was absolutely certain, but because I was sufficiently certainty.

No, I didn’t think you were claiming to be that kind of sceptic.

Now I notice that you have still failed to provide a link to the second analysis. I therefore still stand by my claim of competence (i.e. that my chosen level of certainty was adequate to arrive at the truth) and that the claim in the article is a lie.

As you wish.

 

[MPat]

The “miracle” of Januarius is so obviously fraudulent it’s embarrassing!

Your position on this point is clear.

A severed limb regrowing captured on video would not so easily be dismissed.

Oh, it would. Call it “Spontaneous regeneration of tissues” - it is just a “sciency” description, but now it sounds as a naturalistic explanation. If that doesn’t work, claim that science will find the explanation. And at worst you can always claim to be insane and hallucinating. It is very easy to make this explanation completely immune to any argument, and it sure is naturalistic.

I never said I reject “miracles” on principle, just that for something to be properly considered a miracle, it must defy naturalistic explanation.

Of course you never said that.

You also never said what “defy naturalistic explanation” really means. None of those three words is perfectly clear.

Remember when millions of people were arguing vociferously about whether a dress was blue and black or white and gold? How silly, how vain! A mere curiosity. Don’t you think that if something miraculous happened, it would be all over the place?

You mean you think that all that arguing happened in spite of the matter being “silly”, “vain”, “a mere curiosity” and not because of that…?

I read most of Feser’s blog. He seems to be saying, in order to accept Christianity, a person must 1) buy into extremely baggage-laden neo-platonic/scholastic metaphysics, 2) buy into a controversial understanding of history 3) accept a controversial understanding of Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures and 4) be won over by truly convincing apologetics. Sounds like a tough sell. No wonder 6 people leave for each 1 who joins!

I can’t say I disagree with his points at all. I don’t accept that neo-Platonic metaphysics is the final word on the subject. I also disagree with current Catholic understandings of the history of late antiquity, and I think the Christian interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures are misguided. I find contemporary apologetics to be intellectually bankrupt, and so I’m not Catholic.

I see. Would you like to discuss those issues in some other thread?

None of these things have to do with miracles.

Of course they are related. I’ll cover that later.

I tried assuming (pretending?) that Catholicism was true for decades. I find it internally contradictory as well.

So, you are saying you were successfully deceiving yourself and avoiding truth for tens of years? Are you sure that has completely changed?

Also, if you think Catholicism is self-contradicting, why are you writing this:

I would be willing to accept that my opinions on 1) metaphysics 2) history 3) theology 4) scripture are TOTALLY WRONG if I saw a miracle on video like the one I described.

If you have found a real self-contradiction, why do you worry about evidence? It would be completely unreasonable to accept a self-contradiction, no matter what is the supporting evidence!

Or is that not really a self-contradiction?

LOL “If you assume Catholicism is true, then my arguments to show that Catholicism is true do the right amount of work!”

That sure looks like a good example of strawman.

 

[tonyrey]

Because the study proves that years after the patients were in hospital, someone who has never met them, but only has a list of their first names, prays that they got better more quickly, and the statistics prove that God changed history so they left hospital a few days earlier?

But if God had them leave hospital earlier, wouldn’t God have to make all manner of other changes to history? Aunt Bettie was now able to go to that birthday party and drove home drunk and killed that kid, when she would still be in hospital if her first name hadn’t been on that future list?

Does the Church teach this? Are there Catholics everywhere earnestly praying that God changes history so their loved ones didn’t die in road accidents?

There may be just a few little theological issues with this multiverse slot-machine God. What was wrong with the God of order?

God exists in the eternal present and transcends time and space. Far from being a “multiverse slot-machine” our heavenly Father intervenes whenever He knows it is in our interests to do so because His love is not dominated by the natural laws He has created.

 

[inocente]

inocente;14128636:

Because the study proves that years after the patients were in hospital, someone who has never met them, but only has a list of their first names, prays that they got better more quickly, and the statistics prove that God changed history so they left hospital a few days earlier?

But if God had them leave hospital earlier, wouldn’t God have to make all manner of other changes to history? Aunt Bettie was now able to go to that birthday party and drove home drunk and killed that kid, when she would still be in hospital if her first name hadn’t been on that future list?

Does the Church teach this? Are there Catholics everywhere earnestly praying that God changes history so their loved ones didn’t die in road accidents?

There may be just a few little theological issues with this multiverse slot-machine God. What was wrong with the God of order?

God exists in the eternal present and transcends time and space. Far from being a “multiverse slot-machine” our heavenly Father intervenes whenever He knows it is in our interests to do so because His love is not dominated by the natural laws He has created.

Please tell me why you think a single article published for humor in the festive edition of the BMJ, illustrated with a picture of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, proves that God changed history in response to a short prayer years afterwards.

(And if memory serves, it’s not stated whether the person praying even believed in God).

Also, please link news articles in which ordained members of the Church share your view about this one-off piece. And as I asked before, please cite the vatican.va document which teaches that God alters history on the basis of short anonymous prayers. No point in you guys posting further platitudes, I’m not buying the Eiffel Tower or Brooklyn Bridge from you either.

 

[Aloysium]

Please tell me why you think a single article published for humor in the festive edition of the BMJ, illustrated with a picture of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, proves that God changed history in response to a short prayer years afterwards.

(And if memory serves, it’s not stated whether the person praying even believed in God).

Also, please link news articles in which ordained members of the Church share your view about this one-off piece. And as I asked before, please cite the vatican.va document which teaches that God alters history on the basis of short anonymous prayers. No point in you guys posting further platitudes, I’m not buying the Eiffel Tower or Brooklyn Bridge from you either.

I was going to stop responding to this nonsense. How many times need it be said that the study did not attempt to prove we can change the past. That was the joke. The very real fact is that prayers at a future date were correlated with better health for randomly selected persons in the past. This is empirical evidence that there is more going on than the clockwork reality that is believed to exist by yourself and other atheists. You keep repeating a conclusion that no one believes. What is true are the findings, the empirical evidence, which everyone agrees including the skeptics who later commented in a subsequent article; the Statistics are a valid finding. Again, the conclusion was a joke. The fact that the study appears in the festive edition with “Rudolf”, to me displays God’s sense of humour; He is in on the joke. Again, for some inexplicable reason you seem to want to argue a point that was a joke, that people agree was a joke, and actually no one but yourself and Bradski, seems to take seriously. God does not change was he has already created in time. What He does do is bring everything, all times, all places into existence. And, He is with us in each and every moment as Father, through the grace of Holy Spirit and one with us in Christ. It is consistent with my understanding that God might inspire the researchers to conduct the study and be responsible for the correlation. The joke is that He knows our needs and wants, we need not worry. He knows what is good for us, and that is to be loving persons. To live a month, a year, a decade longer and not to have progressed along that path is to render all that time meaningless. The entire reason we are here is to find Him. It is important to talk with Him and to do His will. Those who believe that God is some sort of powerful being to be placated, a magical force, a best buddy who will get you a Mercedes Benz, to rival your friends with Porches, and to those who come here to make the point that He is not, well, the joke is on You. An encounter with God can bring us to our knees, make us hide our faces in shame; it can also come with uproarious laughter. It is all good.

 

[MPat]

Also, please link news articles in which ordained members of the Church share your view about this one-off piece. And as I asked before, please cite the vatican.va document which teaches that God alters history on the basis of short anonymous prayers. No point in you guys posting further platitudes, I’m not buying the Eiffel Tower or Brooklyn Bridge from you either.

Have a look at ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/HOW2PURG.htm (the relevant part is given the number 8).

You also have a wrong idea of position you attack. No one is saying that God changes the history - as if we had one history before the prayer and a different history afterwards. But God can take into account prayers that, from our point of view, will happen in the future.

It means that prayer for event that we know hasn’t happened is rather unreasonable (we already know God hasn’t chosen to allow it), and prayer for event that we know has happened is, in effect, a “thank you” hidden under “please”. But often we do not know if the event has happened.

And yes, from your point of view the situation is indistinguishable from a very strange and improbable artefact of sampling.

 

[tonyrey]

Please tell me why you think a single article published for humor in the festive edition of the BMJ, illustrated with a picture of Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, proves that God changed history in response to a short prayer years afterwards.

(And if memory serves, it’s not stated whether the person praying even believed in God).

Also, please link news articles in which ordained members of the Church share your view about this one-off piece. And as I asked before, please cite the vatican.va document which teaches that God alters history on the basis of short anonymous prayers. No point in you guys posting further platitudes, I’m not buying the Eiffel Tower or Brooklyn Bridge from you either.

You have the wrong end of the stick and that is why you have stumbled! God does not change the past. He transcends time and space and exist in the eternal present - as one might expect from the unique insight “I AM WHO AM” - which you should accept as a Christian. He knows our prayers “before” (from our point of view) we make them and acts accordingly. Why is that so difficult to understand? Do you doubt His power? Or His omniscience?

 

[tonyrey]

Have a look at ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/HOW2PURG.htm (the relevant part is given the number 8).

You also have a wrong idea of position you attack. No one is saying that God changes the history - as if we had one history before the prayer and a different history afterwards. But God can take into account prayers that, from our point of view, will happen in the future.

It means that prayer for event that we know hasn’t happened is rather unreasonable (we already know God hasn’t chosen to allow it), and prayer for event that we know has happened is, in effect, a “thank you” hidden under “please”. But often we do not know if the event has happened.

And yes, from your point of view the situation is indistinguishable from a very strange and improbable artefact of sampling.

Exactly! I hadn’t read your post before I submitted mine but our arguments converge.

 

[Bradski]

Exactly! I hadn’t read your post before I submitted mine but our arguments converge.

Y’all seem to be missing the very obvious point that although God is meant to exist outside of time, we are not.

So…if you decide to do such an experiment as has been described and a group of sick people will be prayed for at some future time you need two groups. One that isn’t going to be prayed for and one that will.

So you pick some people who have had some illness in the past and arbitrarily divide them into two groups. The ones that improved and the ones that didn’t will be equally divided between the two groups. Write that down, so we have a record of it and call one group A and one group B.

Keep that in mind - the two groups will be identical at this point. Now here comes the exciting bit…decide which group is going to have prayers said for them. Let’s say you decide to go with A.

What happens to the reports you have in front of you? A few seconds ago there was no difference. But you are saying that if you decide at that moment that at some future time, the people in group A will be prayed for, they will show an improvement.

Do the reports change at the moment ypu make you decision?

 

[MPat]

Exactly! I hadn’t read your post before I submitted mine but our arguments converge.

Yet it looks like we’ll still have to repeat all that…

Y’all seem to be missing the very obvious point that although God is meant to exist outside of time, we are not.

No, we are not missing any points. But we’ll see what points you have missed (hint - you have practically ignored everything that was said).

So…if you decide to do such an experiment as has been described and a group of sick people will be prayed for at some future time you need two groups. One that isn’t going to be prayed for and one that will.

So you pick some people who have had some illness in the past and arbitrarily divide them into two groups.

So far so good…

The ones that improved and the ones that didn’t will be equally divided between the two groups.

And that’s just false. It is not how random sampling works. In fact, such precise distribution is not just not certain - it is highly unlikely.

If it wasn’t so, there would be no need for hypothesis testing.

You know, you can easily perform some experiments to test this your claim yourself. Will you?

Or would you prefer to take a whole introductory course in probability theory and statistics?

Naturally, everything that goes after this your claim is also wrong:

What happens to the reports you have in front of you? A few seconds ago there was no difference. But you are saying that if you decide at that moment that at some future time, the people in group A will be prayed for, they will show an improvement.

Do the reports change at the moment ypu make you decision?

As you can see, there could have been a difference all along - and there was.

 

[tonyrey]

Y’all seem to be missing the very obvious point that although God is meant to exist outside of time, we are not.

So…if you decide to do such an experiment as has been described and a group of sick people will be prayed for at some future time you need two groups. One that isn’t going to be prayed for and one that will.

So you pick some people who have had some illness in the past and arbitrarily divide them into two groups. The ones that improved and the ones that didn’t will be equally divided between the two groups. Write that down, so we have a record of it and call one group A and one group B.

Keep that in mind - the two groups will be identical at this point. Now here comes the exciting bit…decide which group is going to have prayers said for them. Let’s say you decide to go with A.

What happens to the reports you have in front of you? A few seconds ago there was no difference. But you are saying that if you decide at that moment that at some future time, the people in group A will be prayed for, they will show an improvement.

Do the reports change at the moment ypu make you decision?

Of course not. God **knows **we were going to pray and takes that into account when making decisions. People do not always recover because it may not be in their best interest. It is often better to let a person die instead of having to endure a worse fate in the future. As many unfortunate people have discovered, death is not the worst of all evils. Prayer also has a good effect on us and on others because we express faith, hope and love rather than being cynical and fatalistic. That in itself is a miracle because it demonstrates the power of our mind to transform life solely by good will and positive thinking - in stark contrast to the negativity of the sceptic who attacks, destroys and drives others to despair and commit suicide after being convinced they have nothing to live for…

 

[tonyrey]

I was going to stop responding to this nonsense. How many times need it be said that the study did not attempt to prove we can change the past. That was the joke. The very real fact is that prayers at a future date were correlated with better health for randomly selected persons in the past. This is empirical evidence that there is more going on than the clockwork reality that is believed to exist by yourself and other atheists. You keep repeating a conclusion that no one believes. What is true are the findings, the empirical evidence, which everyone agrees including the skeptics who later commented in a subsequent article; the Statistics are a valid finding. Again, the conclusion was a joke. The fact that the study appears in the festive edition with “Rudolf”, to me displays God’s sense of humour; He is in on the joke. Again, for some inexplicable reason you seem to want to argue a point that was a joke, that people agree was a joke, and actually no one but yourself and Bradski, seems to take seriously. God does not change was he has already created in time. What He does do is bring everything, all times, all places into existence. And, He is with us in each and every moment as Father, through the grace of Holy Spirit and one with us in Christ. It is consistent with my understanding that God might inspire the researchers to conduct the study and be responsible for the correlation. The joke is that He knows our needs and wants, we need not worry. He knows what is good for us, and that is to be loving persons. To live a month, a year, a decade longer and not to have progressed along that path is to render all that time meaningless. The entire reason we are here is to find Him. It is important to talk with Him and to do His will. Those who believe that God is some sort of powerful being to be placated, a magical force, a best buddy who will get you a Mercedes Benz, to rival your friends with Porches, and to those who come here to make the point that He is not, well, the joke is on You. An encounter with God can bring us to our knees, make us hide our faces in shame; it can also come with uproarious laughter. It is all good.

Indeed. Scepticism is also in direct contradiction of the clear teaching of Jesus that we should pray for all our needs and those of others to our loving Father in heaven. What could be more direct and down to earth than “Give us this day our daily bread”? It is simple and childlike without “Please” because we are His children and He loves us more than we can ever imagine…

 

[PRmerger]

Of course not. God **knows **we were going to pray and takes that into account when making decisions.

Indeed.

As Pascal stated, paraphrasing, God gives us the Dignity of Causality.

The human person has been given the profound and magnificent ability to actually cause an action to occur through our prayers.

Just as we have the ability to physically work/create an action, so too can we spiritually work/create an action.

i.e.
Physical work = plant a corn seed.
Result = corn on the cob on our dinner plate.

We wouldn’t have had that corn on the cob except that we planted that seed.

No one ever asks (at least, no sane person asks): why doesn’t God just put that corn on our plates without making us go through the action of planting the corn seed?

---

Spiritual work = saying a prayer.
Result = boy is cured of cancer

We wouldn’t have had that cure except that we said that prayer.

No sane person asks: why didn’t God just cure this boy without making us go through the action of praying for his cure?