The main prediction that comes to mind is that if Christianity is true, one would expect substantially more miracle claims by Christians (legitimate claims plus false ones) than by any other religion (false claims only). If it is false, one would expect similar miracle claims by most religions that believe in them. Does anyone have data on this one way or the other?
The main prediction that comes to mind is that if Christianity is true, one would expect substantially more miracle claims by Christians (legitimate claims plus false ones) than by any other religion (false claims only).
That seems to assume an independence of the base rate of false claims, which is unlikely if the religions have different doctrine on miracles. Miracles might be a big part of one religion, and not even believed in by another. I’d expect “miracle friendly” religions to have a higher base rate.
Also, given the prevalence of miracle claims, it would take quite a high base rate of actual miracles to even be detectable among the false claims.
Also, given the prevalence of miracle claims, it would take quite a high base rate of actual miracles to even be detectable among the false claims.
High compared to what, exactly? With an interventionist Deity as a given, I can’t think of any immediate reasons to exclude regular interventions- here I’m thinking of something like Hell is the Absence of God by Ted Chiang.
The model he was working with seemed to be that only Christians get the real miracles, and everyone, including Christians, also have a base rate for falsely reporting miracles.
So, high, compared to the base rate of falsely reported miracles, and high compared to my perception of how common even believers think miracles are.
No doubt there’s a wide range of that, and for some people, God’s starting their car every morning. Maybe he starts my car every morning. It’s almost 30 years old, and it’s a minor miracle that it keeps on chugging.
I looked around a bit, and there are a few things challenging this measurement. Buddhism and Hinduism explicitly conflate miracles with supernatural human powers, and seem to take a dim view of both (they’re also not theistic in the relevant sense anyway). Islam reports many miracles (starting with the Holy Quran itself, of course), but since Al-Ghazali seems to reject material causality entirely in favor of everything being miraculous- the challenge here will be reporting events that a Christian would also interpret as miraculous or supernatural, which the religion tends to see as superstition. Judaism is probably insufficiently distinct from Christianity for your purposes. Wiccans certainly report many spirit communications and magical experiences, more often than most Christians- the invocation of these events is core to the faith, although again you might not consider these miraculous as such due to the lack of monotheism (an equivalent might be transubstantiation during the Catholic communion ceremony). Same with many new age spiritualists.
In other words, most world religions don’t even really have false claims of contemporary miracles in the theistic sense you mean, for the same reason that Christians rarely report remembering their past lives. Islam and Wicca come closest, but these are both religions that were influenced by Christianity at the time of their founding. So even the ‘Christianity is false’ universe would predict a preponderance of miracle reports to exist within Christianity.
I looked around a bit, and there are a few things challenging this measurement. Buddhism and Hinduism explicitly conflate miracles with supernatural human powers, and seem to take a dim view of both (they’re also not theistic in the relevant sense anyway).
In what way is Hinduism not theistic in the relevant sense? It is, in one sense, monotheistic, and on that scale it posits an effectively non-interventionist deity, but on the level on which it’s polytheistic, the deities tend to be highly interventionist.
It can also be atheistic, depending on the school. The Brahman is not necessarily thought of in anthropomorphic terms; this religion has a lot going on under the hood.
That said, looking at the population shares of each of the important schools of Hinduism, it looks as if by far the more common forms of worship invoke a particular, personified supreme being. So I suspect that you’re more correct than I was, and we can include most mainstream forms of Hindu worship under ‘monotheistic, with expected miracles’ banner. Happily, that gives us an example not substantially influenced by western Christianity.
The main prediction that comes to mind is that if Christianity is true, one would expect substantially more miracle claims by Christians (legitimate claims plus false ones) than by any other religion (false claims only).
This also assumes there isn’t some saturation point of people only wanting to talk about so many miracles. (Ignoring buybuydandavis’ point, which probably interacts with this one in unfortunate ways.)
If people only forward X annoying chain emails per month, you’d expect X from each religion. The best we can hope for is the true religion having on average slightly more plausible claims since some of their miracles are true.
I certainly can’t say this is the best we can hope for; the best case scenario would be one where practically nobody talks about the value of miracles as evidence for an interventionist deity the way practically nobody talks about the value of working automobiles as evidence for our models of thermodynamics; the evidence is simply too obvious to be worth belaboring.
Only anecdotal, but it’s hard to get good hard data on this because it would require collecting data in so many different languages.
You might be able to get better data by narrowing the field somewhat. For instance, by looking at the comparison in reported miracles between Mormons and conventional Christians (I recall from an earlier discussion on the topic here that Mormons reported a higher rate of answered prayers than any Christian denomination, except possibly devout Pentecostalists depending on how the measurement was taken.)
Interesting. Mormons getting answered prayers wouldn’t be too surprising-they aren’t conventional Christians, but they’re trying to pray to the same God-maybe it works? Getting higher rates of answers is unexpected though.
I don’t think this requires an assumption that it’s real at all; a higher level of commitment could very easily lead people to be more lax in their standards for whether a prayer has been “answered,” if we’re looking at it in psychological rather than supernatural terms.
The main prediction that comes to mind is that if Christianity is true, one would expect substantially more miracle claims by Christians (legitimate claims plus false ones) than by any other religion (false claims only). If it is false, one would expect similar miracle claims by most religions that believe in them. Does anyone have data on this one way or the other?
That seems to assume an independence of the base rate of false claims, which is unlikely if the religions have different doctrine on miracles. Miracles might be a big part of one religion, and not even believed in by another. I’d expect “miracle friendly” religions to have a higher base rate.
Also, given the prevalence of miracle claims, it would take quite a high base rate of actual miracles to even be detectable among the false claims.
High compared to what, exactly? With an interventionist Deity as a given, I can’t think of any immediate reasons to exclude regular interventions- here I’m thinking of something like Hell is the Absence of God by Ted Chiang.
The model he was working with seemed to be that only Christians get the real miracles, and everyone, including Christians, also have a base rate for falsely reporting miracles.
So, high, compared to the base rate of falsely reported miracles, and high compared to my perception of how common even believers think miracles are.
No doubt there’s a wide range of that, and for some people, God’s starting their car every morning. Maybe he starts my car every morning. It’s almost 30 years old, and it’s a minor miracle that it keeps on chugging.
Maybe some satanists and/or neopagans get something from Satan.
I looked around a bit, and there are a few things challenging this measurement. Buddhism and Hinduism explicitly conflate miracles with supernatural human powers, and seem to take a dim view of both (they’re also not theistic in the relevant sense anyway). Islam reports many miracles (starting with the Holy Quran itself, of course), but since Al-Ghazali seems to reject material causality entirely in favor of everything being miraculous- the challenge here will be reporting events that a Christian would also interpret as miraculous or supernatural, which the religion tends to see as superstition. Judaism is probably insufficiently distinct from Christianity for your purposes. Wiccans certainly report many spirit communications and magical experiences, more often than most Christians- the invocation of these events is core to the faith, although again you might not consider these miraculous as such due to the lack of monotheism (an equivalent might be transubstantiation during the Catholic communion ceremony). Same with many new age spiritualists.
In other words, most world religions don’t even really have false claims of contemporary miracles in the theistic sense you mean, for the same reason that Christians rarely report remembering their past lives. Islam and Wicca come closest, but these are both religions that were influenced by Christianity at the time of their founding. So even the ‘Christianity is false’ universe would predict a preponderance of miracle reports to exist within Christianity.
In what way is Hinduism not theistic in the relevant sense? It is, in one sense, monotheistic, and on that scale it posits an effectively non-interventionist deity, but on the level on which it’s polytheistic, the deities tend to be highly interventionist.
It can also be atheistic, depending on the school. The Brahman is not necessarily thought of in anthropomorphic terms; this religion has a lot going on under the hood.
That said, looking at the population shares of each of the important schools of Hinduism, it looks as if by far the more common forms of worship invoke a particular, personified supreme being. So I suspect that you’re more correct than I was, and we can include most mainstream forms of Hindu worship under ‘monotheistic, with expected miracles’ banner. Happily, that gives us an example not substantially influenced by western Christianity.
This also assumes there isn’t some saturation point of people only wanting to talk about so many miracles. (Ignoring buybuydandavis’ point, which probably interacts with this one in unfortunate ways.) If people only forward X annoying chain emails per month, you’d expect X from each religion. The best we can hope for is the true religion having on average slightly more plausible claims since some of their miracles are true.
I certainly can’t say this is the best we can hope for; the best case scenario would be one where practically nobody talks about the value of miracles as evidence for an interventionist deity the way practically nobody talks about the value of working automobiles as evidence for our models of thermodynamics; the evidence is simply too obvious to be worth belaboring.
Only anecdotal, but it’s hard to get good hard data on this because it would require collecting data in so many different languages.
You might be able to get better data by narrowing the field somewhat. For instance, by looking at the comparison in reported miracles between Mormons and conventional Christians (I recall from an earlier discussion on the topic here that Mormons reported a higher rate of answered prayers than any Christian denomination, except possibly devout Pentecostalists depending on how the measurement was taken.)
Interesting. Mormons getting answered prayers wouldn’t be too surprising-they aren’t conventional Christians, but they’re trying to pray to the same God-maybe it works? Getting higher rates of answers is unexpected though.
Mormons tend to be more committed, so that could explain the higher rate of answers, assuming it is real.
I don’t think this requires an assumption that it’s real at all; a higher level of commitment could very easily lead people to be more lax in their standards for whether a prayer has been “answered,” if we’re looking at it in psychological rather than supernatural terms.