For a start, let’s divide miracles into two types; the once-off miracle, which happens only once and cannot be reproduced under laboratory conditions, and the repeatable miracle, which happens every time the right conditions are in place.
I can see a couple of issues with this formulation, defining a miracle for the moment as a suspension of natural law by divine fiat. First, while a one-time miracle presumably wouldn’t be reproducible under laboratory conditions, most miracles that I can think of would leave an inconsistency with known physical law and could be analyzed by working backwards from the available evidence. Some would be more obvious or easier to evaluate than others; if the face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my cornflakes one morning, I’d have only until they got soggy to publicize the event, but if a volcanic eruption in Luzon generated a pyroclastic cloud that scoured the rest of a town down to bedrock but left every board of a flimsy wooden church unharmed, there’s still plenty of lahar sediments to analyze. You don’t need to grow evidence in a Petri dish for it to be real science.
(Though it’s worth mentioning here that lots of religions, plus Charles Fort, allege odd phenomena. Incorrupt corpses are alleged for a number of Catholic saints, for example, and the corpses in question certainly look less corrupt than I’d expect them to be, but they also show up among Buddhist monks.)
Then there’s the idea that miracles might show signs of agency, i.e. be directed at some goal; God’s motives in the context of Christianity are of course famously ineffable, but the miracles alleged in the Bible do show certain patterns (protection of the innocent or of a chosen people; glorification of God; etc.) and we might reasonably expect these to continue. We can pick these out with statistical methods: if preachers of one particular sect are indistinguishable from those of another in terms of habits and demographics and there’s enough of both to make a good sample, but the rate of lethal accidents for one is zero, that’s certainly suggestive.
Finally, many alleged miracles are persistent in time but limited in space: Lourdes water, weeping statues. These leave an inconsistency that’s laboratory testable (many have been tested, generally with negative results) but wouldn’t be factored into models of physical law, or which at least would lead to much less elegant physics than we observe.
First, while a one-time miracle presumably wouldn’t be reproducible under laboratory conditions, most miracles that I can think of would leave an inconsistency with known physical law and could be analyzed by working backwards from the available evidence.
That is an excellent point, and some analyses of the sort have been done. The Shroud of Turin being a famous example (conclusion: radiocarbon dating suggests it was likely from a thousand years or so too late, but it’s not yet quite clear how it was made; lots of argument and disagreement). Another, perhaps a little less well-known, would be the Miracle of Lanciano
Though it’s worth mentioning here that lots of religions, plus Charles Fort, allege odd phenomena.
It’s not impossible that God might respond equally to anyone who fulfills a certain list of criteria, regardless of what religion the person follows. A devout Buddhist may have as much chance of leaving an incorrupt corpse as a devout Catholic.
...which leads, of course, to the immediate question of what the relevant criteria are. I don’t know. I have a few guesses, but they’re speculative.
Then there’s the idea that miracles might show signs of agency
This is an excellent point. However; in order to detect the agency, it would be necessary to have some idea of the goal. Considering that omniscience and omnipotence are often considered divine attributes, the best idea that we can have for the goal is to consider that what is happening is what was intended; but that quickly becomes a circular argument, because it is trivially clear that if what is happening is what was intended, then it was successful.
if preachers of one particular sect are indistinguishable from those of another in terms of habits and demographics and there’s enough of both to make a good sample, but the rate of lethal accidents for one is zero, that’s certainly suggestive.
It would be very suggestive and, quite honestly, a little worrying. It would imply that there was nothing worthwhile in the preachers of one sect, and at the same time, that none of the preachers of the the sect joined for selfish motives (such as, for example, immunity to fatal accidents) and don’t really care about doing their duties correctly.
Finally, many alleged miracles are persistent in time but limited in space: Lourdes water, weeping statues. These leave an inconsistency that’s laboratory testable (many have been tested, generally with negative results) but wouldn’t be factored into models of physical law, or which at least would lead to much less elegant physics than we observe.
That is true. I guess that would fall under laboratory-testable. I imagine a number of them would be faked, or turn out to be a one-in-a-billion statistical fluke—the genuine ones may get lost in the noise.
It’s not impossible that God might respond equally to anyone who fulfills a certain list of criteria, regardless of what religion the person follows. A devout Buddhist may have as much chance of leaving an incorrupt corpse as a devout Catholic.
On the other hand, it’s also quite possible that the phenomenon of incorrupt corpses occurs regardless of the virtues of the individuals in question, but then corpses of the particularly virtuous are held up as examples of divine grace, while the incorrupt corpses of ordinary people, not being seen as evidence of anything in particular, are ignored.
You mentioned before the possibility of militant atheists cherrypicking evidence to support their position. This is certainly a consideration that has to be accounted for, but so is the possibility that the evidence favoring religion only appears compelling because it is cherrypicked. This also occurs to a considerable extent with nigh-certainty. Consider, for example, the healing miracles of Lourdes, which Nornagest mentioned above, which have made it an international pilgrimage destination, despite the fact that statistical analyses of the recovery rates of pilgrims do not suggest that the location has any particular healing power. Counting every unexplained recovery, while not counting the nonrecoveries, can create the appearance of persistent miracles.
Hard-to-explain things happen all the time, and we’re much more likely to notice them if they seem indicative of something important to us than if they don’t.
On the other hand, it’s also quite possible that the phenomenon of incorrupt corpses occurs regardless of the virtues of the individuals in question, but then corpses of the particularly virtuous are held up as examples of divine grace, while the incorrupt corpses of ordinary people, not being seen as evidence of anything in particular, are ignored.
That is also a possibility. And it can be tested for; if it is true, then the percentage of incorrupt corpses should be constant whether the people were virtuous before dying or whether they were legally executed for crimes committed (and not later exonerated by, say, DNA evidence).
...I have no idea what the results of actually checking that would be, but it would certainly be interesting.
You mentioned before the possibility of militant atheists cherrypicking evidence to support their position. This is certainly a consideration that has to be accounted for, but so is the possibility that the evidence favoring religion only appears compelling because it is cherrypicked. This also occurs to a considerable extent with nigh-certainty.
That is a very strong possibility that must be borne in mind, yes.
Consider, for example, the healing miracles of Lourdes, which Nornagest mentioned above, which have made it an international pilgrimage destination, despite the fact that statistical analyses of the recovery rates of pilgrims do not suggest that the location has any particular healing power. Counting every unexplained recovery, while not counting the nonrecoveries, can create the appearance of persistent miracles.
From the Wikipedia article on Lourdes:
An estimated 200 million people have visited the shrine since 1860,[4] and the Roman Catholic Church has officially recognised 69 healings considered miraculous. Cures are examined using Church criteria for authenticity and authentic miracle healing with no physical or psychological basis other than the healing power of the water.[5]
Both references were retrieved on 5 May 2009, though the second was dated 21 October 2003. There we have a rate; 69 miraculous cures, out of 200 million people (and any number of non-miraculous cures as well, of course).
If there is nothing to Lourdes, then this should be similar to the number of miraculous cures among a random sampling of 200 million people with various illnesses.
(Sixty-nine out of two hundred million is low enough to give the appearance of statistical noise; that’s odds of close to one in three milllion)
I can see a couple of issues with this formulation, defining a miracle for the moment as a suspension of natural law by divine fiat. First, while a one-time miracle presumably wouldn’t be reproducible under laboratory conditions, most miracles that I can think of would leave an inconsistency with known physical law and could be analyzed by working backwards from the available evidence. Some would be more obvious or easier to evaluate than others; if the face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my cornflakes one morning, I’d have only until they got soggy to publicize the event, but if a volcanic eruption in Luzon generated a pyroclastic cloud that scoured the rest of a town down to bedrock but left every board of a flimsy wooden church unharmed, there’s still plenty of lahar sediments to analyze. You don’t need to grow evidence in a Petri dish for it to be real science.
(Though it’s worth mentioning here that lots of religions, plus Charles Fort, allege odd phenomena. Incorrupt corpses are alleged for a number of Catholic saints, for example, and the corpses in question certainly look less corrupt than I’d expect them to be, but they also show up among Buddhist monks.)
Then there’s the idea that miracles might show signs of agency, i.e. be directed at some goal; God’s motives in the context of Christianity are of course famously ineffable, but the miracles alleged in the Bible do show certain patterns (protection of the innocent or of a chosen people; glorification of God; etc.) and we might reasonably expect these to continue. We can pick these out with statistical methods: if preachers of one particular sect are indistinguishable from those of another in terms of habits and demographics and there’s enough of both to make a good sample, but the rate of lethal accidents for one is zero, that’s certainly suggestive.
Finally, many alleged miracles are persistent in time but limited in space: Lourdes water, weeping statues. These leave an inconsistency that’s laboratory testable (many have been tested, generally with negative results) but wouldn’t be factored into models of physical law, or which at least would lead to much less elegant physics than we observe.
That is an excellent point, and some analyses of the sort have been done. The Shroud of Turin being a famous example (conclusion: radiocarbon dating suggests it was likely from a thousand years or so too late, but it’s not yet quite clear how it was made; lots of argument and disagreement). Another, perhaps a little less well-known, would be the Miracle of Lanciano
It’s not impossible that God might respond equally to anyone who fulfills a certain list of criteria, regardless of what religion the person follows. A devout Buddhist may have as much chance of leaving an incorrupt corpse as a devout Catholic.
...which leads, of course, to the immediate question of what the relevant criteria are. I don’t know. I have a few guesses, but they’re speculative.
This is an excellent point. However; in order to detect the agency, it would be necessary to have some idea of the goal. Considering that omniscience and omnipotence are often considered divine attributes, the best idea that we can have for the goal is to consider that what is happening is what was intended; but that quickly becomes a circular argument, because it is trivially clear that if what is happening is what was intended, then it was successful.
It would be very suggestive and, quite honestly, a little worrying. It would imply that there was nothing worthwhile in the preachers of one sect, and at the same time, that none of the preachers of the the sect joined for selfish motives (such as, for example, immunity to fatal accidents) and don’t really care about doing their duties correctly.
That is true. I guess that would fall under laboratory-testable. I imagine a number of them would be faked, or turn out to be a one-in-a-billion statistical fluke—the genuine ones may get lost in the noise.
On the other hand, it’s also quite possible that the phenomenon of incorrupt corpses occurs regardless of the virtues of the individuals in question, but then corpses of the particularly virtuous are held up as examples of divine grace, while the incorrupt corpses of ordinary people, not being seen as evidence of anything in particular, are ignored.
You mentioned before the possibility of militant atheists cherrypicking evidence to support their position. This is certainly a consideration that has to be accounted for, but so is the possibility that the evidence favoring religion only appears compelling because it is cherrypicked. This also occurs to a considerable extent with nigh-certainty. Consider, for example, the healing miracles of Lourdes, which Nornagest mentioned above, which have made it an international pilgrimage destination, despite the fact that statistical analyses of the recovery rates of pilgrims do not suggest that the location has any particular healing power. Counting every unexplained recovery, while not counting the nonrecoveries, can create the appearance of persistent miracles.
Hard-to-explain things happen all the time, and we’re much more likely to notice them if they seem indicative of something important to us than if they don’t.
That is also a possibility. And it can be tested for; if it is true, then the percentage of incorrupt corpses should be constant whether the people were virtuous before dying or whether they were legally executed for crimes committed (and not later exonerated by, say, DNA evidence).
...I have no idea what the results of actually checking that would be, but it would certainly be interesting.
That is a very strong possibility that must be borne in mind, yes.
From the Wikipedia article on Lourdes:
Both references were retrieved on 5 May 2009, though the second was dated 21 October 2003. There we have a rate; 69 miraculous cures, out of 200 million people (and any number of non-miraculous cures as well, of course).
If there is nothing to Lourdes, then this should be similar to the number of miraculous cures among a random sampling of 200 million people with various illnesses.
(Sixty-nine out of two hundred million is low enough to give the appearance of statistical noise; that’s odds of close to one in three milllion)