Well, it’s that time of year again. Regular church attendees are going to have to share their pews with people who have finally decided to make it out for their second service of the year. Their belief that Jesus bled and died so they can gain eternal salvation might be unshakable, but it apparently isn’t all that motivating, considering how little these believers seem to do in response. Nevertheless, they can at least be counted on to show up for a retelling of Jesus’s miraculous birth.
But what version will they hear? More than likely, they’ll hear a “Hollywood” version of the tale that incorporates the most exciting elements of the two versions that we read about in Matthew and Luke. A quick Google search turned up this one, which illustrates my point perfectly. But what if someone tried to tell the full version? A version that included every detail that both Matthew and Luke provide?
Honestly, it just can’t be done. I had wanted to attempt it here, but there’s just no practical way to do it. For example, the version I linked to above goes like this:
The Standard Tale
- Mary’s visited by an angel who tells her about the pregnancy (Luke)
- She and Joseph live in Nazareth of Galilee, but are forced to travel to Bethlehem in Judea for a census commanded by the Roman authorities (Luke)
- They’re unable to find normal accommodations and are forced to room in an area intended for livestock. Mary gives birth there and is visited by local shepherds (Luke)
- Wise men far to the east see a star that somehow signifies the birth of the Jewish Messiah (Matthew)
- They travel for an unspecified period until they reach Jerusalem, where they inquire about the child (Matthew)
- These inquiries reach Herod, the ruler of the region, and he asks the wise men to send back word to him once they find the child, so Herod himself can also pay his respects (Matthew)
- The wise men make their way to Bethlehem, find the family, bestow their gifts, and return home via a different route (Matthew)
- An angel tells Joseph to hightail it out of Bethlehem, because Herod’s sending a posse to wipe out all the children 2 years old and under in an effort to stamp out Jesus (Matthew)
- Joseph and his family flee to Egypt and remain there until an angel tells him it’s safe to return, because Herod has died (Matthew)
- Joseph intends to go back toward Bethlehem, but after finding out that Herod’s son is in charge, he takes the family to Nazareth in Galilee (Matthew)
So what’s wrong with this story? I mean, it’s very cohesive, and it makes for a compelling tale. What’s not to like? Its only real problem is that the very books of the Bible that provide its details, contradict its overall narrative.
Two Very Different Stories
Let’s go back to Luke’s version. After Jesus’s birth and the visit from the shepherds, we don’t read about wise men or Herod’s animosity. Instead, Luke 2:22 says that after the days of Mary’s purification were over, the family went to Jerusalem. The “days of purification” are referring to Leviticus 12:1-4, where the Law of Moses stated that a woman was to be considered “unclean” for 40 days after giving birth to a male child. So when Jesus was about 40 days old, Luke claims that they all traveled to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices as thanks for his birth. While there, two elderly people see Jesus and begin proclaiming praise and prophecies concerning Jesus. And there’s no indication that an effort was made to keep any of this quiet, which is very different in tone to what we read in Matthew. Finally, in Luke 2:39, we read “And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” We’ll come back to this point in a moment.
The synopsis we looked at earlier incorporated most of Matthew’s version of the story. As we just read, his story ends very differently from Luke’s. However, it’s also significant to note that Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary are from Nazareth. Matt 1:18 through the end of the chapter talks about Mary’s pregnancy, even though she and Joseph had never slept together, but it never specifies where they’re living. Chapter 2 begins with the sentence “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?'” Of course, it’s possible that Matthew still knew they were originally from Nazareth and just doesn’t bother to tell us that or divulge how they got to Bethlehem in the first place. But there are three context clues that point against such a possibility. First of all, regardless of how far the wise men had to journey, it likely took them quite a while to make the trip. When Matthew says “the east” he certainly doesn’t mean “east Jersualem,” and travel being what it was back then, any journey would have taken considerable time. The second clue is that Herod supposedly kills all the male children of Bethlehem who are 2 and under. So it’s unlikely that we’re supposed to still be thinking of Jesus as a newborn. Finally, Matthew says that when the family was able to leave Egypt, Joseph wanted to go back to Judea (where Bethlehem is). But after finding out Herod’s son was ruling, he became afraid and “went and lived in a city called Nazareth” (Matt 2:23). This is a very strange way to refer to Nazareth, if it’s where Joseph and Mary were already living.
So Matthew gives no indication that Joseph and Mary were just visiting Bethlehem. He never mentions a manger; instead, he references a house that they were staying in. He never talks about the shepherds from the fields, but has wise men who visit the child. He includes a story about Herod slaughtering a town’s children, though no other historical or biblical source ever mentions this. He claims that the family flees to Egypt until Herod’s death, that they want to return to Bethlehem, but finally settle in “a city called Nazareth.”
Luke, on the other hand, says that Nazareth is their home town, and they’re only visiting Bethlehem. He has no story about wise men, but does talk about shepherds from the fields that visit the newborn Jesus. Instead of Herod attempting to hunt them down and a subsequent flight to Egypt, the family travels straight to Jerusalem, where Herod lives. And there’s no effort to keep Jesus’s identity secret while they’re there, as two elderly prophets begin proclaiming who he is. And after making their sacrifices, the family simply goes back home to Nazareth, far from Herod’s reach (not that Luke indicates Herod’s even interested).
Can These Stories Be Put Together?
The main sticking points between the stories are the flight to Egypt and the trip to Jerusalem. On the one hand, Luke is very clear about his timeline: Jesus was only about 40 days old when they went to Jerusalem and then went home to Nazareth. Matthew doesn’t give specifics on how old Jesus was when the family was forced to flee to Egypt, except that it must have occurred before he was 2 years old.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened before the trip to Jerusalem?
No. First of all, considering all the details Luke provides, why would he have left out such an important event? Secondly, this means Herod would have needed to die within the 40 day purification period, but Matthew tells us that this still wouldn’t have been good enough, because Joseph was determined to avoid all of Judea while Herod’s son was reigning. There’s simply no way he would have felt safe enough to travel directly into Jerusalem. That just makes no sense.
Could the trip to Egypt have happened after the trip to Jerusalem?
No. Luke 2:39 is clear that the family went straight back to Nazareth after their trip to Jerusalem. And considering Luke claimed that Nazareth was already their home, why would they have needed to go back to Bethlehem anyway?
In fact, Luke’s claim that the family was from Nazareth creates a lot of problems for Matthew’s account. Nazareth was far outside of Herod’s reach. So if Herod really had hunted Jesus in Bethlehem, the family could have simply gone back to Nazareth rather than flee to Egypt. But this isn’t a consideration in Matthew’s account, because for him, the family has never been to Nazareth until they simply can’t go back to Bethlehem anymore, even after Herod’s death (Matt 2:23).
Additional Problems
I don’t want to spend too much time here, but for completeness sake, I need to mention a couple of historical issues. Both Matthew and Luke say that Jesus is born during the reign of Herod the Great. Historians usually place his death in 4 BCE, which means Jesus would have been born sometime before that. However, Luke says that Mary and Joseph had traveled to Bethlehem, because Quirinius, the governor of Syria, had commanded a census. However, Quirinius didn’t become governor of Syria until 6 CE — 10 years after Herod’s death. You can find additional resources about these two issues here.
Finally, Luke’s claim is that this census required Joseph to travel back to his ancestral home of Bethlehem, since he was of King David’s lineage. But David would have lived some 1000 years before Joseph. It’s ludicrous to think that the Romans would have cared about such a thing, or that they would have wanted their empire to be so disrupted by having people move around like that for a census. It would have been an impossible feat and would have made for a highly inaccurate, and therefore useless, census.
What Do We Make of All This?
The easiest way to understand why these accounts have such major differences in detail is to understand why either writer bothered with a story about Jesus’s birth at all. You have to remember that the writers of Matthew and Luke didn’t know one another and didn’t know that they were both working on the same material. They certainly didn’t know that their books would one day show up in the same collection. Both of them were working with two basic facts: Micah 5:2 seemed to prophesy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem; Jesus came from Nazareth (John 1:45-46).
Since those two facts were at odds with one another, it’s easy to see how both writers would have been compelled to explain how Jesus could be from Nazareth but still be from Bethlehem. Unfortunately for them, close comparison shows that both versions simply can’t be true.
How would people react if they showed up for church this weekend and were presented with the full details from both of these stories? I like to think it would spur many of them into deeper study. That it would possibly make them question some of the things they’ve been taking for granted. But 2016 has been pretty demoralizing when it comes to the number of people who seem concerned about what’s true, and I’m not sure how many of them would see this information as a call to action. I know there are people who can be changed by facts. Perhaps there aren’t as many of them as I once thought, but I know they’re out there. And with the way information spreads these days, I’m sure they’ll eventually find the facts they’re looking for.
Finding Truth 
KCChief1
I can’t speak to his other work, so please don’t take my skepticism as a fully informed opinion on the credibility of all of Parnia’s work. It’s just that a lot of the doctors who get into NDE research tend to be…..dubious. It’s the kind of work that attracts cranks. And Parnia has kinda flirted with pseudoscience.
See, for example: http://www.skeptic.com/insight/science-on-the-edge-of-life/
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Again, I gathered from Dr Parnia his interest in how long “the mind” was present after the body was dead in order to fix what killed the patient and resuscitate them.
I think Christians were reading too much into his work, IMHO.
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Hey Eric – I appreciate you keeping this last response to me general enough to where we’re not dragged much into further rounds. Some of the comments I write take me about 2 to 3 hours and that doesn’t even include the time I spend mulling things over in my head during the day so I usually don’t have enough energy to continue writing too long.
I probably shouldn’t have used the word judgmental – I think the only times your comments seem judgmental are due to the fact that the social dynamic here gets quite antagonistic toward your view and I certainly can’t blame you for reacting every once in a while. Even though we both expressed disagreement, I thought our conversation here was very respectful, which is pretty cool to me. You did mention before that you couldn’t understand why people like Nate and Jon disbelieve. My hope is that I helped a little in that. If for example you previously had 3% understanding and I helped you get to 3.000001% I’d be pretty damn happy. And if I didn’t, then it won’t bother me – at least I gave it a shot.
I don’t have much more I want to add in disagreement but did want to give some clarification so you can understand me better, and then I’ll probably give you the final word so to speak.
– my work example wasn’t meant to be that great of an analogy to our current conversation, but some ideas from it relate a little. I mainly wanted to get across that while sometimes skeptics may offer alternative views or probing questions that seem to come across very much like strong bias it may be that they are just desiring to apply similar epistemic guidelines that they are used to applying in other areas of their lives [I realize that’s not true for all skeptics]. I agree that the things we are talking about here have several differences mainly because we’re talking about the possibility of some kind of agency involved, which can be unpredictable. So while it’s quite different I think you agree that at least some similar kind of critical reasoning, probing and skepticism is fair. How far that’s taken and how it’s applied I know is where we differ.
– I am honestly quite humble about my own conclusions (at least when I am calm and reflective about my thoughts). I’m simply not an expert in philosophy of science and epistemology to have very strong feelings about whether my own methodology is correct. As with anyone else I do my best given my experiences and investigations, and I try to maintain some level of consistency as best I can across different areas of my life.
– As far as bias goes, confirmation bias is probably the most difficult one I deal with, but I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that. I’ve found ways to avoid it but it’s never easy. You may doubt me on this, but the idea of a completely benevolent God who wants everyone to choose love rather than hate and who will someday make things “right” is quite an attractive idea to me. I wouldn’t want to miss out on something like that. However, I do think there is some latent fear I have (that I’ve mostly gotten rid of) that there is a god that is not completely benevolent (one example being the one described by other people who believe in a hell of eternal torment). But overall, no matter what my biases are on this topic, by far my biggest desire is that I find out what reality truly is no matter how scary or wonderful that reality looks like. I think you share this last thing with me.
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Eric,
And I still have to go back to the issue of major limb amputation. We know that cures for major limb amputation are unheard of. But if there were reports of even two or three documented medical cases in which arms or legs were immediately reattached after prayers to Jesus, even though it could not be proven that it was the prayer to Jesus that caused the reattachment, it would generate tremendous interest in the medical community in regard to the power of prayer to Jesus.
So why don’t we see these kinds of documented cases in regards to major limb amputations?
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You will never get a truly honest answer to this question from a religious person like unklee … ever.
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This linked article,is written by a Christian.
Just to show that some believers can approach this subject with a reasonable degree of integrity and intellect.
And in the spirit of trying to be unbiased, I thought the writer’s closing comment quite astute.
”It frankly gives me much satisfaction that this study was a failure, because it strengthens my trust in a God that cannot be contained and who works toward our best, even if we do not agree that our best is.”
https://lunchboxsw.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/templeton-prayer-study-fail/
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And then there are these ….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-prayer-prescription/#
Stopping short of suggesting that the healing power of prayers by friends and family might reside in the personal connections rather than in the prayers, the authors stated that they have no plans for a follow-up study. This one, sponsored largely by the John Templeton Foundation, cost $2.4 million. ”
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12082681/ns/health-heart_health/t/power-prayer-flunks-unusual-test/
”In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.”
http://web.med.harvard.edu/sites/RELEASES/html/3_31STEP.html
”The STEP team, composed of investigators at six academic medical centers, including Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts; Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, Florida; Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C; and the Mind/Body Medical Institute, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery without complications. The study also found that patients who knew they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse. The paper appears in the April issue of American Heart Journal.”
Do we have a consensus yet?
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Hi Gary,
”shouldn’t we see a higher incidence of rare unexpected health recoveries among Christians than among non-Christians?”
I think we do, if we look at the evidence that addresses this question. But I haven’t seen any hard data either way on that. But a lot of the stats quoted are not relevant to the argument I am making.
”shouldn’t medical researchers notice a strange phenomenon that even though most people do not recover from this disease there are a handful of documented cases of full recover, all of which involve prayer to Jesus for healing?”
I can’t say what medical researcher “ought” to recognise, but this medical researcher found several cases of conditions that should not and do not normally improve, all being healed after prayer. Also, of the thousands of claimed cures at Lourdes, medical investigation has found about 70 met all their criteria and were inexplicable medically. So there ARE cases. Perhaps other medical researchers are as much unwilling to accept the possibility of a miracle as you may be?
”So why don’t we see these kinds of documented cases in regards to major limb amputations?”
I could give many answers to this question.
1. I don’t know. Ask God.
2. Do you KNOW that this never happens? (I don’t know, I can just say I don’t recall having heard of a case.)
3. I haven’t heard of any cases of people being hung, drawn and quartered and then being put back together either. But I have heard of other apparent miracles, so let’s address them.
In the end, we either address the evidence we have, or we don’t. Discussing evidence we don’t have is meaningless.
Thanks for your questions.
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I disagree. I think the point Gary is making is that the cases we're aware of often involve ailments that aren't immediately noticeable: a tumor, back pain, etc. If God is behind these healings, he can presumably cure anything, so why don’t we see healings that are more immediate, more obvious, and better documented?
You’re right that we have to focus on the data we have — but if one is using this data to argue for an omnipotent god, then I think it’s relevant that we don’t have examples of the kinds of miracles that would be more conclusive.
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Since we have drifted a little “off topic”, I would like to say that if miracles were real, they are so infrequent as shown by unkleE, that I doubt they have much effect on the over 7 billion people living on the planet.
Almost half the planet lives on less than $2.50 per day. Almost a billion people don’t have enough to eat .
If the God of the Bible thought enough of a few thousand Israelites to rain manna from Heaven this would be a “Just Miracle” to perform today. “crickets”
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But we do have evidence. Evidence that, in your ignorance and arrogance you simply choose not to acknowledge.
The Templeton Foundation has provided the most comprehensive evidence to date.
Intercessory prayer is a failure. It does not work.
And where the patient was aware of prayers, they became worse.
Every case of unexplained healing can quite easily be attributed to some form of spontaneous recovery. And why not? The human body is a marvelous machine.
Really?
What the hell do you think the likely outcome would be if there was a report of a limb regeneration as a direct result of prayer?
I’m sorry, but this is the sort of asinine remark that gets right up people’s noses and simply makes you come across like a pompous arse!
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Hi Jon,
”Do the variety of experiences people have with magicians or psychics point to something supernatural? Or do they just point to our capacity to fool and be fooled? I think human psychology provides plenty of explanation for these experiences.”
Jon, this is a worthwhile question, but surely the answer is clear? Each type of evidence should be assessed on its merits, not by analogy. If there are psychological explanations for psychic experiences or alien abductions, then assess them for plausibility. Likewise with healing miracles. I am saying that I think the evidence shows that some healing miracles don’t have plausible natural explanations. That is the claim, and that is what we should assess, surely?
”If “A” and “Not A” produce the same spiritual experience, then the experience cannot be said to be a reliable source of knowledge.”
I have already said I think this is faulty logic. What we can surely say that there are some things in common between religion A and ~A, and those things CAN be said to be valid conclusions. There are other things that are not in common, and those things become more problematic.
Now I say, if people pray to a divine, non natural being, and their prayers are answered, that may be seen as evidence for the existence of a divine non-natural being. If one prays to Jesus and one prays to Krishna, then unless we find one report more plausible than the other, we cannot choose between these two divine beings on the basis of that evidence.
”Lots of natural outcomes are unlikely. Spontaneous remission of cancer is very unlikely…and yet it happens. If somebody only has a .01% chance of recovery, then recovery is not a miracle. It’s a rare, but natural, outcome.”
I this is getting to the guts of the matter. But I am a little surprised at your wording, because you are usually vary careful. How do you KNOW it’s a natural outcome? I have tried to be careful in my wording, not to claim a miracle, but to claim the possibility of a miracle. I think it is the same the other way too.
So the question is, do more “remissions” occur after people have prayed for this? We don’t have stats on that, but it has been estimated that 300 million people claim to have observed or experienced a miraculous healing after praying to the christian God, so that’s a lot of spontaneous remissions! A lot more than the normally quoted remission rates – yes, I have looked them up (obviously they are different for different conditions). But when a medical researcher or medical commission looks at some of these cases (as documented in the references I have just given Gary) and finds them to be not of a type that are known to have spontaneous remissions, we have some useful evidence.
”I think it would be more difficult to find people who don’t have anybody praying for them. When close to 100% of sick people have somebody praying for their recovery, then it’s hardly surprising that recoveries will be credited to the prayers.”
Yes, that may be true, or may not be. But it doesn’t alter the apparent fact that healings apparently occur that are not easily explained medically. These appear to be facts worthy of further investigation.
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I guess what I am trying to point out, Eric, is that medicine (and science in general) has very specific criteria for collecting evidence to determine cause and effect. Medicine and science do not base cause and effect on anecdotal claims.
Let me give you an example why not. Let’s say that there is a witch doctor who claims that once during his sixty years of practice, western medical doctors had done everything they possibly could for a patient but without success. The patient was dead. They left the room. The family immediately called in the witch doctor to come in and perform a miracle. He said a chant, shook his tom toms, poked pins in his voodoo dolls, and within five minutes, the patient had a pulse and was breathing.
Did the witch doctor raise this person from the dead?
Answer: We have no way of knowing!
The only way to know if this witch doctor has the power to raise people from the dead is to conduct a double blind study. For instance, every dead patient coming into that ER would either be assigned to traditional medical care or assigned to the care of this witch doctor, all other factors would be kept the same. If over a months period of time, the witch doctor had a much higher rate of resuscitation than the doctors providing standard emergency care, then we would have to conclude that there is something to the powers of the witch doctor. And the same is true with Christian prayer. In order to determine the effectiveness of Christian prayer, we would randomly assign every other patient coming into an emergency room to prayer or standard medical care.
Basing the effectiveness of prayer on anecdotal claims, regardless of how amazing they may sound, is not rational. It is not how educated professionals make decisions in advanced societies.
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HI Howie, I think you have pretty much nailed it, and I have no “final word” I need to say. We are agreed about a lot, including our attitudes, but we have so far come to different conclusions. Thanks for your friendship and interaction.
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And this is what the Templeton study did …
Yet, unklee claims he is using careful wording :
”I have tried to be careful in my wording, not to claim a miracle, but to claim the possibility of a miracle. ”
And then he says:
”We don’t have stats on that, but it has been estimated that 300 million people claim to have observed or experienced a miraculous healing after praying to the christian God,”
Careful wording?
Pftttt!
So if he is not claiming these healings are miracles as a result of praying to the christian god, then just what the hell is he saying?
But of course, this form of healing by prayer is not the same as the healing by prayer conducted by Templeton involving nearly 2000 participants in a controlled study.
Nah … screw that. Who the hell are the Templeton Foundation anyway, right?
Let’s all ignore their evidence and jump on board with unklee’s ”evidence”
Yeah, right.
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Hi Nate,
I’ll come halfway Nate, if that’s any help. I agree that the questions of why doesn’t God heal more people and why he doesn’t give us more conclusive evidence are good questions to discuss. (Although I don’t think anyone can possibly answer them with more than speculation.)
But let’s take a hypothetical. Suppose someone was beheaded by ISIS on video, and you were present and so was Gary, and he as a doctor examined the decapitated body. And suppose then we saw a white figure come down from the sky and the head rejoined to the body and the person stand up and walk away. If that occurred, we would have incredible evidence of something we would say was naturally impossible. And if that person was a christian who said they had a whole church praying that they would survive, etc, etc. We would then all be forced to conclude that something amazing had happened that looks like a miracle.
And yet your questions would still remain. Why this miracle and not others? Why not everyone healed, all the time?
So I think it is clear they are two separate questions.
One of the dangers, I think, is to wipe out one question and one set of evidence by posing a different question and different evidence. I think a far better methodology is to consider both sets of questions and evidence, come to separate conclusions, and then try to draw conclusions from the whole set of information.
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In all likelihood, even you think your ISIS example is simply ridiculous, and you are merely stretching the credulity of the point for you own ends, and yet, you consider putting your hands together, mumbling a few words to the same deity pleading to cure someone’s kid of cancer is perfectly legit and if the kid recovers … well, there is no reason not to beleive that this could be a miracle.
Truly, I am flabbergasted and I am not sure any more if you are being continually disingenuous on purpose or are so indoctrinated, so blind that you simply cannot see how stupid your argument is.
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“Basing the effectiveness of prayer on anecdotal claims, regardless of how amazing they may sound, is not rational. It is not how educated professionals make decisions in advanced societies.”
Eric,
Please do not take this statement to mean “anyone who disagrees with this statement is stupid”. Not at all. I believe you can be very intelligent and disagree with this position but you are disagreeing with A LOT of very intelligent people (the entire medical and scientific establishment which believes that cause and effect cannot be determined simply by anecdotal evidence).
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Hi Gary, I don’t think we are as far apart as you might think, judging by these comments:
“Medicine and science do not base cause and effect on anecdotal claims.”
We agree. But the examples I quote are not anecdotal claims, but as well researched as possible, with good documentation.
“Basing the effectiveness of prayer on anecdotal claims, regardless of how amazing they may sound, is not rational.”
I agree again. But (1) basing definite disbelief on such claims is also not rational – the correct response would be an open mind and agnosticism, and (2) I am not using anecdotal claims.
“Did the witch doctor raise this person from the dead?
Answer: We have no way of knowing!”
Again I agree. We have no way of knowing so we don’t say any more. But in my cases, there is documented evidence that something very unusual happened.
“Please do not take this statement to mean “anyone who disagrees with this statement is stupid”. Not at all. I believe you can be very intelligent and disagree with this position but you are disagreeing with A LOT of very intelligent people (the entire medical and scientific establishment which believes that cause and effect cannot be determined simply by anecdotal evidence).”
Thanks for this. I am not actually disagreeing with the entire medical and scientific establishment because (1) I don’t claim the evidence proves miracles, only that there is something inexplicable here, and (2) I am using more than anecdotal evidence.
Please note, the very definite claims in this discussion are not coming from me (or Howie!), but from disbelievers. All I am suggesting is that you and others take seriously the evidence that something very unusual has happened and a medical explanation isn’t forthcoming. That’s all.
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Unklee
I don’t intend to pile on. I know it’s difficult trying to respond to multiple people, so I’ll just say this and we can agree or agree to disagree.
When I spoke of “spiritual experiences”, I was referring to the kind of “revelation” mentioned in the video I linked earlier — the “self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit” kind of affirmation that William Lane Craig cites as the most fundamental reason to believe in Christianity.
I do agree that veridical claims should be considered and examined separately. However, “we can’t explain…” does not justify a conclusion of “therefore, it was supernatural.” First, the mere fact that the claims tend to be second-hand hearsay makes them mostly useless for such examination. What second-hand hearsay claim cannot be dismissed with either “it was made up”, “the witness was fooled” or “the witness was mistaken”?
This is what is meant by “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” If you want me to believe you went to the store yesterday, fine. I don’t require evidence to take your word for a trivial claim with no significant implications for me. If you want me to believe you stopped a murder at a store yesterday, I may require some modest evidence — say, a newspaper report — but I would be willing to believe you without demanding videotaped evidence. It’s unusual, but not implausible. However, if you want me to believe that you personally flew up 200 feet into the air, under your own power, and stopped the assailant by shooting lasers from your eyes — a series of actions that are utterly incompatible with laws of nature and human biology — then I’m going to need something more than a second-hand story and “you can’t prove it didn’t happen.”
I certainly don’t know that a natural occurrence is not supernatural, but I lack reason to believe it is supernatural. My computer turned on this morning. Was that supernatural? I can no more prove there was not supernatural intervention in my computer’s operation this morning than I can prove a healing was not supernatural, but the presence of a reasonable natural explanation makes a supernatural one unnecessary.
It seems to me you are conflating Keener’s estimate (guesstimate?) about Christians claiming to have seen or experienced a miracle with the number I put forward about cancer remission. I’m reasonably certain that Keener’s 300m number was not about cancer remission. Given how many people attend Peter Popoff and Benny Hinn shows — and given how loosely people define miracles (I asked god for help finding my car keys and then I found them!) — the 300 million figure seems rather meaningless.
When there’s smoke, sometimes there’s fire. And sometimes there’s just people blowing smoke.
Absolutely! I would hope that medical doctors and scientists would research unexplained phenomena further. I just don’t think “unexplained” remotely implies “supernatural.” For one thing, it gives doctors far, far too much credit for having complete and reliable information. Doctors make mistakes. Equipment and labs err. Patients give inaccurate information. An Doctor’s off-hand “I don’t know” becomes “doctors could not explain…” becomes “there was no medical explanation for…” becomes “Doctors said it was a miracle.”
Faith promoting rumors are absurdly common. Keener’s own book had a good example of this: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/06/science/
The fact that a doctor can’t explain something does not, in itself, tell us much.
We certainly cannot prove that there is no supernatural intervention. But we can never disprove a God of the Gaps approach. All we can do is keep pointing out the diminishing gaps, and continue asking for evidence of God rather than evidence of gaps.
All that said, while I don’t find the arguments persuasive, I understand belief and how it causes us to weigh things differently. I’m sure I do the same with unexamined beliefs that I hold about, say, economics or politics.
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“All I am suggesting is that you and others take seriously the evidence that something very unusual has happened and a medical explanation isn’t forthcoming. That’s all.”
Ok. I’m willing to do that, but first you would need to produce a case that:
1. Has no possible medical explanation.
2. Has adequate verified documentation of the facts it asserts to be true.
The case of the surgeon in Florida who prayed and applied the electric paddles forty minutes after someone’s heart had stopped would not meet this criteria. Medical experts would say that this patient obviously just needed one more “shock” of the paddles to be resuscitated.
This is why the witnessed, televised/videotaped, reattachment of a severed major limb would be such excellent evidence for the effectiveness of prayer. There is no known medical cure for this condition and it would be very difficult to fake the reattachment of a major limb.
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I would like to know how many times this same Florida Doctor has felt led to pray for and resuscitate other patients ?
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Hello all, here’s some other info to consider regarding the two links UnkleE provided (comment, supra, January 27, 2017 @ 4:37 PM) as data of possible medical miracles.
The first link concerns cases from a book by Dr. Casdorph who examined 10 cases of faith healing. What isn’t mentioned in the article is that all of these cases involve one faith healer, Kathryn Kuhlman (she has a Wikipedia page). According to that page, millions of people have claimed healing from her. One doctor (William A. Nolen) examined 23 people who claimed healing at one meeting and found none of them were actually healed. At the least, there are millions of claims out there, and not much in the way of verified changes in medical condition.
Similarly, the second link is to another article detailing alleged healing at the French town of Lourdes. That article asserts three cases (which might or might not be part of the 68 verified cases of healing; the article lists people but none of the cases are on that list of people) of healing. Two of which involved some sort of anointing. One person got cured of paralysis.
In both of these articles, there is no causal connection specified between any acts of a deity and the remission of whatever ailments exist. Rather, there are simple assertions that by proximity to Lourdes or Ms. Kuhlman, divine healing occurred. Thus, the data presented in these articles cannot rightly be said to make the instance of divine healing more or less likely to occur (and by extension, not evidence of divine healing or a divine agency at work).
I would be quite interested to find any information on the rate of spontaneous recovery from the types of illnesses alleged in these articles. One article in Wikipedia alleged a rate of 1 out of 100,000 cases of cancer might end up with a spontaneous remission. Given the millions of people who flocked to Ms. Kuhlman, the four cancer cases cited in the first article fall well within that ratio.
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Hi Jon, yeah, I think it’s good to know when to take a break. I read what you wrote, I have a few comments, but I’m happy to call it a day for now. Thanks.
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Hi Gary, we have already agreed that the Florida case is very unusual – it is very rare, perhaps almost unprecedented, for an expert team with all the right gear to pronounce a person as dead, and then the person recovers.
I have given several other cases where documentation was available to the researchers. The documentation doesn’t prove anything 100%, but it is interesting evidence and I think it is smart not to be closed minded to it. Like I said already, framing the issue as needing “no possible medical explanation” is a way of ensuring you get the sceptical answer, but it is extreme. Simply asking for one where there is no ready medical explanation, or an improbable medical explanation is being more open to the evidence.
But that is your choice and my choice. I think we may have exhausted the possibilities for now. Thanks.
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