You’re lucky! If it’s only the argument from miracle keeping you from becoming a better thinker, then that’s easily solved. It’s really brittle.
First, “account of a miracle” is very, very different from “evidence of a miracle”. The only datum here is someone saying “A miracle has happened to me!”. From a Bayesian point of view, to assign a probability you must take into account all different models that could produce that statement, including:
a real, honest miracle
deception, inflicted on the witness
deception, self-inflicted
mistakenly reporting a perfectly natural phoenomenon for a miracle
etc.
Having had some experience as an amateur mentalist, I’m always amazed at the degree at which people want to believe in the supernatural. Even when you tell them explicitly that it was all a trick, they still might argue you have power you don’t know to have, and things like that. Anyway, the simple fact that there are many ways to account for a witnessing of a miracle, automatically reduces the probability of such an event really happening.
Second, as others have pointed out, a miracle might point in the direction of the divine, but which divine? Islam, Induism, Buddhism… all have instances of miracles happening. Can you remember for example the case of the hindu milk drinking statues? It was famous all over the world. It even has its own Wikipedia page.
The third point I will explain with an analogy: suppose you travel back in time bringing with you a pair of walkie-talkie. Lo and behold, miracles can happen: suddenly people are capable of talking to one another even if they are very far apart! Simply the fact that something very unusual has happened cannot confirm or deny any model of reality per se.
Bayesian statistics sum it all up pretty neatly: if you consider reporting a miracle as an outlier in an otherwise pretty standard distribution, you must decide the probability that the outlier is the indicator of some unusual model of the world by comparing it with all the other models. In math notation:
P( Christian god | miracle reported ) = P( miracle reported | Christian god ) * P( Christian god ) / P( miracle reported )
Assuming P( miracle reported | Christian god ) to be pretty much 1 and P( Christian god ) to be somewhat low but not fantastically so, the problem lies in the term P( miracle reported ), because it can be decomposed in this way:
P( miracle reported ) = P( miracle reported | Christian god ) P( Christian god ) + P( miracle reported | no Christian god ) P( no Christian god ).
Since we already estabilished that P( Christian god ) is low, then P( no Christian god ) must be high, but the real weight is in the term P( miracle reported | no Christian god ). As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity, and so P( Christian god | miracle reported ) is pretty close to P( Christian god ). This does not refute the existence of the Christian god, it simply says that, since witnessing can happen with equal probability whether a Christian god exists or not, then you cannot take that witnessing as evidence for a divinity. But since you already hinge only on this for your belief, then you’re pretty solved.
As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity...
This is the crux of the matter. If this is true, I can safely let go of my faith. But how certain are we of this? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
This is the crux of the matter. If this is true, I can safely let go of my faith. But how certain are we of this?
That’s an important matter, but I don’t think it’s difficult to estabilish. The key ingredient is deception, the appearance of a miraculous event without a miracle effectively happening, and the key question is: “Can somebody be tricked into believing that a contrieved situation is supernatural?” If we answer positively, then the conclusion is that there’s no correlation between the belief in a miracle and its actual happening, so that the term P(miracle reported|no Christian god) remains very high. Otherwise, we are asserting that in a world devoid of god(s), it’s impossible for a person to believe in miracles.
So, can someone be deceived into believing in a miracle? In my experience, that’s pretty easy. On one side, there are studies that show not only that humans have a propensity into believing in the supernatural already encoded in their brains, but even chimps may exhibit religious behaviour! Add to that pareidolia, not only on faces but on significance in general: for example, the natural remission of an illness mistaken as a sign of divine significance. But the tendency to strongly believe in the supernatural is even more easy to elicit if you design an experience just for that: as I already told, this attitude is endemic in the field of mentalism, where even when the performers explicitely declares he is using tricks, there will still be someone to claim that he is using power he doesn’t know he has. Not to mention when the performer deceives purposefully someone as a mean to gain his trust and his money. Let’s however say that we have eliminated any possibility of a deception, however improbable: how can we be sure that what is left isn’t just an unknown natural law, instead of a phoenomenon flowing directly from a supernatural entity?
This is a summary of what I know and how I know it. Now I ask to you: do you believe that people can be easily deceived into believing in a miracle? Or that people believing in miracles is an exclusive feature of a universe with a god?
It is not sufficient to say “can people be easily deceived into believing in a miracle?” or “do people believe in miracles in a universe without God?” It is necessary to consider ALL of your evidence, which includes particular miracle claims that you know about in their particularity.
You’re lucky! If it’s only the argument from miracle keeping you from becoming a better thinker, then that’s easily solved. It’s really brittle.
First, “account of a miracle” is very, very different from “evidence of a miracle”. The only datum here is someone saying “A miracle has happened to me!”. From a Bayesian point of view, to assign a probability you must take into account all different models that could produce that statement, including:
a real, honest miracle
deception, inflicted on the witness
deception, self-inflicted
mistakenly reporting a perfectly natural phoenomenon for a miracle
etc.
Having had some experience as an amateur mentalist, I’m always amazed at the degree at which people want to believe in the supernatural. Even when you tell them explicitly that it was all a trick, they still might argue you have power you don’t know to have, and things like that.
Anyway, the simple fact that there are many ways to account for a witnessing of a miracle, automatically reduces the probability of such an event really happening.
Second, as others have pointed out, a miracle might point in the direction of the divine, but which divine? Islam, Induism, Buddhism… all have instances of miracles happening. Can you remember for example the case of the hindu milk drinking statues? It was famous all over the world. It even has its own Wikipedia page.
The third point I will explain with an analogy: suppose you travel back in time bringing with you a pair of walkie-talkie. Lo and behold, miracles can happen: suddenly people are capable of talking to one another even if they are very far apart!
Simply the fact that something very unusual has happened cannot confirm or deny any model of reality per se.
Bayesian statistics sum it all up pretty neatly: if you consider reporting a miracle as an outlier in an otherwise pretty standard distribution, you must decide the probability that the outlier is the indicator of some unusual model of the world by comparing it with all the other models. In math notation:
P( Christian god | miracle reported ) = P( miracle reported | Christian god ) * P( Christian god ) / P( miracle reported )
Assuming P( miracle reported | Christian god ) to be pretty much 1 and P( Christian god ) to be somewhat low but not fantastically so, the problem lies in the term P( miracle reported ), because it can be decomposed in this way:
P( miracle reported ) = P( miracle reported | Christian god ) P( Christian god ) + P( miracle reported | no Christian god ) P( no Christian god ).
Since we already estabilished that P( Christian god ) is low, then P( no Christian god ) must be high, but the real weight is in the term P( miracle reported | no Christian god ). As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity, and so P( Christian god | miracle reported ) is pretty close to P( Christian god ).
This does not refute the existence of the Christian god, it simply says that, since witnessing can happen with equal probability whether a Christian god exists or not, then you cannot take that witnessing as evidence for a divinity.
But since you already hinge only on this for your belief, then you’re pretty solved.
As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity...
This is the crux of the matter. If this is true, I can safely let go of my faith. But how certain are we of this? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
That’s an important matter, but I don’t think it’s difficult to estabilish. The key ingredient is deception, the appearance of a miraculous event without a miracle effectively happening, and the key question is: “Can somebody be tricked into believing that a contrieved situation is supernatural?”
If we answer positively, then the conclusion is that there’s no correlation between the belief in a miracle and its actual happening, so that the term P(miracle reported|no Christian god) remains very high. Otherwise, we are asserting that in a world devoid of god(s), it’s impossible for a person to believe in miracles.
So, can someone be deceived into believing in a miracle? In my experience, that’s pretty easy.
On one side, there are studies that show not only that humans have a propensity into believing in the supernatural already encoded in their brains, but even chimps may exhibit religious behaviour! Add to that pareidolia, not only on faces but on significance in general: for example, the natural remission of an illness mistaken as a sign of divine significance.
But the tendency to strongly believe in the supernatural is even more easy to elicit if you design an experience just for that: as I already told, this attitude is endemic in the field of mentalism, where even when the performers explicitely declares he is using tricks, there will still be someone to claim that he is using power he doesn’t know he has. Not to mention when the performer deceives purposefully someone as a mean to gain his trust and his money.
Let’s however say that we have eliminated any possibility of a deception, however improbable: how can we be sure that what is left isn’t just an unknown natural law, instead of a phoenomenon flowing directly from a supernatural entity?
This is a summary of what I know and how I know it.
Now I ask to you: do you believe that people can be easily deceived into believing in a miracle? Or that people believing in miracles is an exclusive feature of a universe with a god?
It is not sufficient to say “can people be easily deceived into believing in a miracle?” or “do people believe in miracles in a universe without God?” It is necessary to consider ALL of your evidence, which includes particular miracle claims that you know about in their particularity.
Exactly. But you still need a prior on those, from models of the world and first principles.