I’m not going to claim they were lying or deceived as such (although documentation of the event would of course help with my confidence), mostly to approach this conversation in the spirit of skeptical inquiry. If there are miracles, I want to believe that there are miracles. If there are not, I want to believe that there are not. So I think there are a number of things that this might be, one of which is a miracle, most of which are not.
But if it is a miracle, I would say it’s a particularly confusing one. Take a step back for a moment and ask: if the God of your understanding were to interfere with natural law in such a way as to heal someone, would you expect that ear to be like a normal ear, i.e. full healing? Or would you expect it to be a partial fix? I don’t mean ‘could God do the partial fix thing’, since the answer is obviously yes per the definition of God. I mean, “does this match your prior expectations of God’s behavior, as a prediction?”
On the other hand, we could take an even bigger step back, and assign this account equal validity with other miracle claims, conservatively saying that this description is parsimonious with God as presently understood. Since you only described one example, can I assume you found very few examples of somebody claiming that miracles restored a limb- and none fully functioning or articulated. So let’s just think about it statistically. Why almost never, even compared to other miracle claims? Why should we expect a massive bias in miracle claims away from amputation-related healing?
Interesting example! Is a link readily available?
I’m not going to claim they were lying or deceived as such (although documentation of the event would of course help with my confidence), mostly to approach this conversation in the spirit of skeptical inquiry. If there are miracles, I want to believe that there are miracles. If there are not, I want to believe that there are not. So I think there are a number of things that this might be, one of which is a miracle, most of which are not.
But if it is a miracle, I would say it’s a particularly confusing one. Take a step back for a moment and ask: if the God of your understanding were to interfere with natural law in such a way as to heal someone, would you expect that ear to be like a normal ear, i.e. full healing? Or would you expect it to be a partial fix? I don’t mean ‘could God do the partial fix thing’, since the answer is obviously yes per the definition of God. I mean, “does this match your prior expectations of God’s behavior, as a prediction?”
On the other hand, we could take an even bigger step back, and assign this account equal validity with other miracle claims, conservatively saying that this description is parsimonious with God as presently understood. Since you only described one example, can I assume you found very few examples of somebody claiming that miracles restored a limb- and none fully functioning or articulated. So let’s just think about it statistically. Why almost never, even compared to other miracle claims? Why should we expect a massive bias in miracle claims away from amputation-related healing?