Skeptics Answered: How can we Identify Miracles?

***SUPER DUPER LONG POST ALERT!!!*** Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

For the context to this conversation, see the comments section in the original evidence for God post.

Bino’s latest response, like Bruce’s, deserves its own post.

Bino,

First, I need to ask you a question:

1) Do you think miracles are possible? I’m not asking if you think they actually have happened. I just want to know if you think they are possible at all.

Secondly, it seems to me like you have missed the point of my Particularist approach. Let me give you a fuller explanation. Hopefully, you will understand what I was trying to do. This is going to be a bit long winded, but it will pay off in the end.

So just relax, ok? Attend carefully to what I say. Be sure you understand what I’m claiming before you respond again.
I will respond directly to your latest comments after this. Here goes:

There is a very gnarly problem in epistemology called “the problem of the criterion.” Basically, the problem arises any time you ask, “how do I know, in any specific instance, that I have genuine knowledge?” What are the criteria for knowledge? Some, called Methodists, start with list of identifiers for knowledge. He insists that before you can know anything (example: Tom is playing video games right now), you must first have a general criterion and you must know that it is a good criterion. Locke and Descartes are famous Methodists.

Others, called Particularists, start with clear, common-sense cases of knowledge (“I seem to see a table” and “2×2=4,” “torturing babies for fun is wrong,” for example) and use them to generate a basic list of criterion. They insist you can know some things sans criterion. People know all sorts of things without being able to prove so and without fully understanding the ins and outs of their knowledge.

They then use that list and apply it to other less-clear cases. The list, though, is justified by it matching specific common-sense cases of knowledge. Roderick Chisholm, G.E. Moore, and Thomas Reid are famous Particularists.

Skeptics, on the other, hand, are agnostic with regards to knowledge.

These are the three basic answers to the problem. For some, the first is unacceptable because it smacks of circularity. The second, however, is unacceptable to more because it gets one into an infinite regress: if I have to have a criterion for X before I can know it, then that means I must have a criterion for the criterion; if the criterion for X serves as a basis for X, then it must be an instance of knowledge. For it to be an instance of knowledge, I must have a criterion for it…and I’m off on a regress.

The third option is untenable because it runs against common sense, is untenable for other reasons (for instance, a) do you know that knowledge isn’t possible? b) skepticism doesn’t follow from the possibility of doubt), and it guts almost every enterprise that seeks the truth (science, history, philosophy, etc).

This is quite an intractable problem, and it arises not only in epistemology, but any time anyone asks, “how do I know, in any specific instance, that I have X?” The problem shows up whenever criterion shows up. Here is a good illustration that I borrow from worshipfulthoughts:

Dr. Tim wants to know how he can tell a newborn boy from a girl. In other words, he asks, “how can I know, in any particular case of a newborn, whether its a boy or a girl?” Either way he goes, he’ll run into “the wheel” or “the regress:”

The Wheel

1. If Dr. Tim is able to tell boys from girls, then he must have some criterion for distinguishing boys from girls.
2. If Dr. Tim is able to tell whether her criterion is good, then he must be able to tell whether it succeeds in distinguishing boys from girls.
3. If Dr. Tim is able to tell whether her criterion succeeds in distinguishing boys from girls, then he must be able to tell boys from girls.

The Infinite Regress

4. If Dr.Tim is able to tell boys from girls, then he must have some criterion for distinguishing boys from girls.
5. If Dr. Tim is able to tell whether her criterion for distinguishing boys from girls is good, then he must have a criterion for distinguishing criteria that properly distinguish boys from girls from criteria that don’t.
6. And Dr. Tim is off on an infinite regress.

Two questions arise here:

A. “Is this baby a boy or a girl? Which babies are boys and which babies are girls?”
B. “How are we to decide whether a newborn is boy or girl? What are the criteria of gender?”

If Dr. Tim is a Particularist, he starts with an answer to A, and this gives him the basis for attacking B. If he is a Methodist, he starts with an answer to B, and this gives him the basis for attacking A. If he is a skeptic, he would say that if he needs an answer to A to get to B, and he needs an answer to B to get to A, then we can answer neither and we cannot reliably determine boys from girls.

While worshipfulthoughts does provide another way of answering the problem (I’m not sure he succeeds in his quest), by and large the three avenues above are the only games in town. While one is the best?

The skeptic answer is out; how could one say with a straight face that he can’t tell boys from girls? The Methodist answer is equally untenable, for an infinite regress would lead one to the same skepticism. The Particularist, however, can resist the skeptic’s challenge by pointing out that for the skeptic’s argument to work, it must be reasonable. For it to be reasonable, the skeptic must possess knowledge. J.P Moreland chimes in by saying, “If one did not know anything, how could he reasonably doubt anything? (Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 100).” For example, the reason for doubting my senses is the knowledge that they’ve misled me in the past.

Also, the Particularist can respond by noting that mere logical possibility that he is wrong does not mean he is wrong or has good reason to think so.

The skeptic tries to charge the Particularist with circularity, but by responding with the points above, the Particularist shows that the burden of proof is on the skeptic for justifying his skepticism in common-sense.

This, by the way, is how much in philosophy proceeds; philosophers, in making a worldview, start with a raw data and ask how they can make sense of it, not the other way around.

In answering your question, Bino, I took a Particularist take on your question of identification of miracles. I started with a datum, an event, and asked, “if it happened, how would we explain it?” Secondly, “what qualities in the event would lead us to stand by that explanation?”

A man dies. Certified. 24 hours later, his family prays intensely for him to be raised from the dead. He comes back alive. People try to repeat the circumstances later with someone else, and nothing happens. It’s reasonable to assume, that if such an event happened, it would qualify as a miracle.

Now, what characteristics present themselves to us such that we call it a miracle?

I gave a few characteristics, namely: 1) it happened in a certain religious context at a momentous time (i.e., soon after much prayer), 2) natural law explanations cannot penetrate it, and 3) it is not the result of pattern–the event does not happen again when the circumstances are repeated (for example, if, 15 out of 20 times someone said, “be healed!” to a cancer patient, the patient was healed, that would be suspicious, to say the least).

That’s a list of characteristics. Maybe not the characteristics you are looking for, but Bino, I did answer your question.

Now, as to what you specifically said:

I said:

> I think its best to take a particularist
> answer to your question of
> observable characteristics.
> around.
> ….Trying to start by making a
> list can get you into all sorts of
> problems.

You said:

There’s no trouble making a list for camels. I see a camel, I make a list. Hump. Fur. Desert.

But you can’t do that for miracles. You have never observed an event whose cause you can reasonably identify as not natural. So you can’t list the observed characteristics miracles.

My response:

All you do here is postulate a denying assertion of the characteristics I did list. You merely assert that I have never observed an event whose cause I can’t reasonably identify as not natural.

Plus, Bino, what I said above is that starting with a list of criterion can get you into trouble, not that you can’t have a list of criterion at all. There is a difference.

I said:

> Might we take the same attitude
> towards identification of miracles?
> That is, lets start with an event that
> pretty much everyone would agree
> would be a miracle if it happened,
> and use that event to come up with
> our list of observable characteristics.

> Lets go with the Resurrection of
> Jesus. What do we observe here?
….
> If all those earmarks are present, the
> probability a miracle has occured is
> increased.

You said:

Your analysis is circular. “The resurrection is a miracle. Miracles look like the resurrection.”

My response:

No, that is not what I said. You are brushing over crucial details. I said, that if it happened, pretty much everyone would agree that it would be a miracle. That is not circular; it’s counterfactual, an “if…then” statement.

You said:

I agree that if our resurrection legend were true, it would be a story about something that couldn’t happen by natural causes. But it does not follow from that that a real miracle event must look like our resurrection legend event. It could be that events do happen by non-natural causes, but that our resurrection legend event isn’t one of them. Our story may just be a story.

My response:

True, could be. True, I haven’t established that the resurrection really happened. But that’s not what I was trying to do in answering your first question. Go back and read my words carefully. Again, all I’m doing with the resurrection is giving us a potential event to examine so we can start to generate a list of criterion. You need not assume the event is real to do this. Any hypothetical example will do just fine as well.

Answering whether or not X miracle did happen, well, that’s separate issue entirely than coming up with a list of characteristics to identify a miracle. That is your second question, which I actually did get to near the end. I didn’t offer an exhaustive explanation, but I did give you some considerations to think about that properly framed the issue.

I said:

> About your second question–how do
> we determine that X event actually
> happened:

> This is a straightforward historical
> question,

You said:

If you want my opinion, the reason the number of self proclaimed unbelievers in the US has doubled in 20 years is, believers keep bringing up silliness like W. L. Craig’s “You can’t prove it’s not true”. Makes you look unserious.

My response:

Bino, this is frustrating. This is the third time in this post alone that you have run with something I or Craig never said. Where does Craig say “you can’t prove it’s not true”? What he argued is

1) You cannot define miracles out of existence a priori. You must examine any purported events in a historical manner on a case by case basis,

and

2) Purported miracle events are assessed historically, just like any other “normal” historical event.

I said:

> This is a straightforward historical
> question,

You said:

I can’t believe that is true. Otherwise, when I asked the direct question…
“Tell me how to calculate the probability God suspended the laws of cause and effect and made someone walk on water. What measurement shall I make?”
…you would have given a direct answer.

Instead you just repeated your earlier analysis. …
The more we learn about decomposition of cells, the more it seems natural law won’t allow a resurrection. Much more reasonable to attribute it to supernatural causes.

But since you fail to answer the simple direct historical question, we now know “much more reasonable” is not true. You have no basis whatsoever to make this claim.

My response:

Really, how in the name of all that’s green could you explain away something like that? Think about it. A man predicts his death and resurrection. He claims to be God. He dies a horrible, excruciating death. There is proof of death (see the narrative of the soldier stabbing Jesus in the side. Blood and water flowed out.). He is laid in a cold, damp tomb. A huge bolder is put over the entrance. Guards stand by. Three days later, He is seen alive…several times. In various circumstances to various groups of people. What possible natural law explanation would even begin to cover this?

Heck, take half of those things out. Say a man died of heart attack today, and he lays in the morgue for 24 hours. He is certified dead, but turns up alive after much direct prayer and intercession by his loving family. Are you gonna tell me that we can’t reasonably know that’s a miracle if the event, as I’ve told it, happened (I have been clear on the counterfactual all along.)?

And I’m the one that’s not reasonable?

As far as doing an in-depth historical analysis, I really hope that you are genuine in asking about that. As a good test of your sincerity, go to the link I provided earlier on the resurrection or read Jesus Under Fire, by Moreland and Wilkins.

You said:

You were asked how you might measure this probability, and you failed to answer. Because it can’t be done.

My response:

You are right about one thing: calculating an exact probability can’t be done. But this is no big deal, for it can’t be done for *any* event in the course of history! If you are going to be that stringent, you’d be skeptical in regards to a whole swath of history. What do you want me to do, say, “well, the probability that x event is a miracle is 43.8%”? That is an unreasonable demand. This is history, not math.

You said:

The truth is you want the magic story to be true. You believe the magic story must be true. So you make up facts as if it were true. You are creating myth.

Which is, no doubt, how the magic story got told in the first place.

Relaaaaax, Bino! Man, you get so excited and worked up trying to shut me down. In so doing, you rush to judgement and skip over important details. It’s almost like you want there to be no God.

***another post examining other arguments against miracles is forthcoming.

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