A personal story.

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Writing this story is somewhat of a response to a discussion from another thread in which we were discussing miracles, reason, and some other topics, but hopefully it will be interesting and helpful on it's own...

Anyway, my grandpa and grandma's lives (on my dad's side) were some of the most important factors in why I believe what I do. Here I will share one short story, which though it is maybe the most clearly (IMO) supernatural event, it was not at all outside the scope of their other life experiences. They had (from my perspective) a vibrant, purposeful, life, and a relationship with God that was almost tangible. In fact, I believe that at times it was tangible, which is why it has been nearly impossible for me to ignore it. This story has also taken on a bit of new meaning for me now that I am in school to become a radiographer...

So here's the short version of the story: My grandpa fell 36 feet (about 11 meters) from a farm building headfirst onto the concrete floor, with nothing but his hand over his head for protection. Surprisingly, he lived, and eventually recovered enough go back to farming, but his hand was always a bit deformed after that, and more importantly his back was badly damaged. He was not a complainer, and had a family to care for, so he worked through the pain. As time passed, the pain grew worse, until eventually one day he collapsed and couldn't move. He was taken to the hospital, where he was x-rayed (he said that he hollered every time they touched him, which takes on a new dimension thinking about it from a tech's point of view as I do now...). He was in terrible pain, no position change helped, and the strongest pain-killers had no affect. Two days later, and still in severe pain, the doctor looked at the x-rays, and told him that his back was severely damaged. He said he would be put in heavy traction for six weeks, followed by six weeks of a neck-to-knee cast, and all this was without any guarantee that any of this would fix the problem; his back might never be able to support him again.

Later that day two friends of his, from different areas and unaware of the other's plans, visited him because each one felt that God had led them to come and pray for him. They arrived within 30 seconds of each other, said a short prayer and left. My grandpa had been asking God to heal him ever since the fall, and didn't expect anything to happen. During the evening hours, his pain lessened, and then disappeared all together. The next day he told the doctor that he had been healed, and the doctor obviously found that very hard to believe- just the previous day he had been in terrible pain. A team of doctors looked at the x-rays again, and couldn't believe it. But my grandpa got up and walked around the hospital completely free of pain, with a couple of employees pushing a wheelchair behind him for when he would fall. But he didn't fall. After a few days it was obvious even to the doctors that he was fine, and they let him leave. He never had a serious back problem again.

-I could say it's just one of those "whoa dude" stories, that in reality would have a very natural explanation. This again I can't do. That seems to trivialize a real event simply to fit a preconceived naturalistic worldview. The odds and probabilities involved don't let me ignore it, especially in relation to many other "unlikely" prayer/answer situations that happened in their lives. Not a rational response IMO. Given my current studies and work (I'm in school and doing radiography), I have a certain familiar trust in the accuracy of a series of radiographs, as well as in the ability of a team of trained doctors to read them correctly. So how could a destroyed vertebral column fix itself over a few hours? And for what it's worth, I don't see how any neurological response to "belief" could piece a vertebral column back together. It just doesn't make sense.

-I could believe that the healing was some ambiguous supernatural occurrence that could easily be mistaken for a response by God. This would leave the doors open for a deceptive god or spirits, humanistic spirituality, etc. etc. I wouldn't say that these seem necessarily irrational, but I have obviously chosen the former option.

Please feel free to comment, question, or doubt. I have done them all, I wouldn't expect anyone hearing 3rd hand (as you are) to do less.

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@NeitherExtreme,

If you take the part about the friends and God out of this account, it is not a particularly exceptional medical story. I've seen people recover from stuff that you would not believe. In the Appalachian Mountain Club Journal, which I used to subscribe to, I read about someone who fell 800 feet (well, bounced and fell) down a ravine on Mt. Washington and walked out.

What is exceptional is that it's someone that you care for and that his story provoked the whole range of emotions from preparation for loss to inexpressible relief and gratitude.

So to me I don't see anything especially miraculous about his medical course or recovery. I don't know the details, of course, but I do know that all you know about how bad it was was what the doctors originally said, and I cannot vouch for their medical or communication skills. My wife is a radiologist and I myself deal with x-rays all the time, and unless you've gotten a single radiologist to sit down and compare the two x-rays with one another, side-by-side, you have no idea what one shows compared with the other, including technical differences in the studies. All of us non-radiologists use X-rays, but frankly we suck at them compared with a radiologist, and because we're clinically correlating them with the patients we care for, we often just use the X-rays to convince ourselves. So I don't buy miraculous recoveries on X-rays unless a trained radiologist is the one sitting there comparing the studies to one another, I'm more likely to regard it as an amateurish reading by a non-radiologist.

Now, this apparent miracle is juxtaposed with friends arriving and praying -- which is exactly what people do when someone they care about is in the hospital. I saw 14 patients in the hospital yesterday and 10 or 11 of them were praying with a family member or talking to their pastor when I arrived.

Some will survive, some will die, many will pray. There are apparently miraculous recoveries, and there are apparently unpredictable calamities -- I had a 2 year old patient last year who died of a horrible, unpredictable, overwhelming infection, despite MANY prayers from friends and family. This is medicine -- good things and bad things happen and a lot of it is out of our medical control.

But whether the outcome is good or bad, there is usually someone praying -- and that's why an unexpectedly good outcome can certainly seem like a miracle.

So I know this is an extremely meaningful story for you that certainly affirms your faith. But I don't see anything outstanding about it that makes me even think about a medical miracle, let alone a divine miracle.

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@Aedes,

NeitherExtreme - Thank you for your family's story. Your grandfather's recovery may not be miraculous in the sense that it defies the natural world, but his recovery, and the range of emotions Aedes spoke of, certainly do help reaffirm our faith in the value of life, this life, every moment that we and others have.
Supernatural things are not necessary for events to be significant and meaningful.

There is a war story from my grandfather. He never told the story when he came back from Europe (he rarely talked about the war), but we do have the letter he wrote to his mother after the events happened. His unit landed at Normandy and pushed through northern France. In the process, he was wounded twice. Coming out of a tavern in France (while behind the lines recovering from his most recent injury, shrapnel) he saw an angel, and the angel assured him everything would be fine. I've read the letter, and he goes into great detail about how beautiful she was, ect.
War is something I've never experienced, and have no interest in seeing. But under the intense emotional and physical stress, having been shot, hit by a grenade, and later shot again, I imagine the thought of that angel was comforting, and may very well have helped him to remain the sort of soldiers his friends expected, and needed him to be.
Does it matter if there really was an angel? I dont think so - however he rationalized the notion, he needed something to help him rise above the horrible circumstances. Reading the letter, he uses the story of the angel, and then talks about his duty and responsibility to the younger guys in his unit, men with wives and children, that he should be there, and be brave for them. I'd like to say he was a brilliant writer, using the angel as part of a compelling narrative for his mother, but for some reason I doubt the sign painter was so skilled. I think the angel, and the imagery fit his notions of what is greater than himself, God, and he related that to principles greater than himself, honor, duty, courage, and in his mind came up with an angel to remind him that these are good, and greater than himself. Something for him to hold on to when bullets are flying and bombs falling.

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@NeitherExtreme,

Thanks for your both of your comments. And I agree with you Aedes that it is not "proof" until there would be a lot more documentation and specialists involved, especially for anyone removed from the story (like you). But, since my life is not science, and I have found no reason to disbelieve it other than pure skepticism, and many very good reasons to believe it (from skeptical witnesses to multiple doctors), so it is something I feel like I need to take into account. And as I said, there were many other circumstances in their lives that had similar results, though I don't feel like writing their whole life story here. Thanks for reading the story. Smile

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@NeitherExtreme,

Consider, if you will, that the friends who had visited had said that they were both thinking about how God doesn't exist and they were just thankful for doctors. Would this association then make you think that it was the magical touch of doctors who had healed your grandfather?

Or if the two of them had revealed that they had both been thinking about the Lord of the Rings. Would that mean that Gandalf had healed your grandfather?

I think the very common coincidence of people talking about God in the setting of a medical crisis has affirmed a pre-existing belief of yours. But as we we've talked about at length in the evolution thread, you have real difficulty regarding probabilistic concepts in a neutral way, and you're therefore imposing meaning on this juxtaposition of prayer (common) and apparently 'miraculous' medical recovery (also common).

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@NeitherExtreme,

If they asked the doctors to magically touch him, or if they asked Gandalf to heal him, I would have to think seriously about it. But I also noted that the obvious scenerio (God) was not the only one I considered, so likewise in that case Gandalf or magical doctors would not be the only thing I consider.

Also, to say that this event "affirmed a pre-existing belief" might be very accurate, but that doesn't mean it's irrational and certainly doesn't mean it's wrong. What does science ever do but affirm a hypothesis (a pre-existing guess)?

And I would ask you why you would look at this situation and rule out the simple and reasonable explanation that God had healed? Is it not your pre-existing belief that dis-allows you to believe it, so that you have to dismiss it as coincidence, even though you have no objective reason to dismiss it?

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@NeitherExtreme,

Quote:

And I would ask you why you would look at this situation and rule out the simple and reasonable explanation that God had healed? Is it not your pre-existing belief that dis-allows you to believe it, so that you have to dismiss it as coincidence, even though you have no objective reason to dismiss it?

I think the problem is you are going to have a hard time proving that God healed anyone, while demostrating the utility of medicine is fairly easy.

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@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

I think the problem is you are going to have a hard time proving that God healed anyone, while demostrating the utility of medicine is fairly easy.

First, just to split hairs here, you're using the word "prove" toward God and "demonstrate the utility of" toward medicine. Not exactly apples to apples...

I don't have any problem at all with the utility of medicine. I work in the field, and am happy to do so. The point is that there was no medicine involved here, except that it diagnosed a problem, and then saw it disapear inexplicably.

Also, I'm not trying to "prove" this to anyone. I'm sharing, in a snapshot sort of way, an expirence that has affected my life, and a little bit of how it has influenced my thinking. If anyone else chooses to give credence to the story, I would be honored, but I would not force it on them. At the same time, I will not change my own opinions based simply on their disbelief. If they except the story, even if just for argument's sake, and then want to demonstrate why I have applied it wrongly in my own life or irrationally misinterpreted it, I am open to this. Smile

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@NeitherExtreme,

NeitherExtreme wrote:

Also, to say that this event "affirmed a pre-existing belief" might be very accurate, but that doesn't mean it's irrational and certainly doesn't mean it's wrong. What does science ever do but affirm a hypothesis (a pre-existing guess)?

A scientific hypothesis is affirmed by repeatedly observable evidence according to a prospectively stated methodology that defines outcomes before the study is performed. That's what testing a hypothesis is. A belief is not a hypothesis if you cannot propose a method to test it.

Quote:

And I would ask you why you would look at this situation and rule out the simple and reasonable explanation that God had healed? Is it not your pre-existing belief that dis-allows you to believe it, so that you have to dismiss it as coincidence, even though you have no objective reason to dismiss it?

Uh no... I rule out the explanation that God had healed because it's neither simple nor reasonable. What's God? What do you mean when you say "God"? What, you tell me now that God can heal? But where does it say in your book that God heals orthopedic emergencies?

This divine explanation has no necessity at all.

All we KNOW about the situation is that God was spoken of by two people, and that this shortly proceeded an unanticipated medical recovery. This is known.

Well, what if you found out that both those guys ate at Bruegger's for breakfast that morning and had ordered poppy seed bagels, completely independently of one another. Would that mean that poppy seed bagels have some agency in healing the illness? At least we can all agree on what a poppy seed bagel at Bruegger's is. Do you even know that those two guys agree what God is, as opposed to using the same word?

NeitherExtreme wrote:

Also, I'm not trying to "prove" this to anyone. I'm sharing, in a snapshot sort of way, an expirence that has affected my life, and a little bit of how it has influenced my thinking. If anyone else chooses to give credence to the story, I would be honored, but I would not force it on them. At the same time, I will not change my own opinions based simply on their disbelief. If they except the story, even if just for argument's sake, and then want to demonstrate why I have applied it wrongly in my own life or irrationally misinterpreted it, I am open to this.

We all give credence to the basically neutral facts of the story, some of which I summarized above. These are all routine things in medicine. But you're sharing this story because it has particular meaning for you in a philosophical way, and because it provokes ideas about whether God exists and intervenes in this world. Thus, given the diversity of perspectives here, you must expect that we'll debate this from different points of view.

And I'll repeatedly argue here that you're being selective about which events you choose to focus on. A lot of other non-medical things happened around that time that you haven't brought up. What if your grandfather's doctor took a nice big dump that morning -- the morning in which coincidentally your grandfather began to recover? Is that causal? Maybe another old man on the opposite side of the world died unexpectedly that same morning -- and therefore his life force flowed into your grandfather giving him a second chance at life?

The problem is that there were only two physical processes going on to further your grandfather's healing process -- there was his body's own healing process, and there were the medical interventions; and furthermore, he might not have been as sick to begin with as everyone thought. Everything else, from discussions about God to the intestinal regularity of the doctor are equally unrelated unless you happen to hold the ARBITRARY prejudice that God was more important.

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@NeitherExtreme,

First, I'll try to clear up the science issue. I said before that this was not a scientific proof, and that it does not stand up to scientific criteria, and I am not trying to present it as such. My comment about science in my last post was only meant to point out that just because you have an idea before it appears to be supported doesn't invalidate the idea at all. Sorry, I think I wrote that in a confusing way...

Second, I'd like to ask a question to clarify things a bit: Do you think that only theories that can be developed scientifically are rational things to believe? I don't, as many things in life aren't science, nor is science built on "pure" reason alone, not to mention that itself has (nececary) limitations built into it. So reason and science are not equal terms to me. So to make arguments that "prove" that my story is not scientificaly verifiable is a mute point- I stated as much in my first post. I only used this particualar example because some of the details removed (IMO) some of the subjectivity, but obviously not to the point of being science. But we are in the religion forum...

Also, just because something does not appear to you to be a necessity, doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered or even believed. If I say that belief in a physical universe is not a necessity (it could all be an illusion), that wouldn't make you not believe in it would it? You believe in it (I assume) because it is a persistent experience, and that reasures you that it is worth believing in. IMO, their experience (life) with God was persistent to the point that to disbelieve it would have been cynicism rather than reason. Like I said before, this one experience was only one of many experiences that affirmed their belief in God, His personal communication with people, and His ability to answer prayer. And this event was not the only one of its kind either. If this event was removed, their life would still carry just as much of a challenge for me. This is not to say that it was "scientific" or "provable" or even under their control, but they participated and experienced. You would probably dismiss each event as further coincidences, and some things would be easy enough to dismiss. Other events not so easy. Though I'm sure they'd all be easy to dismiss for you, if for no other reason (as far as I can tell) you bring to the table the assumtion that they must be coincidences. (You accuse me of being selective, but I would ask if you are not also being selective, simply acting as if anything but God is a better explanation.)

And about the odd-ball explanations (like doctors dumping) that you keep bringing up... They do not fit into any reasonable world-view or explanation that I've ever thought of or heard of. If you want to develope a complete world-view based on one of those options, I will consider it.

Theism, on the other hand, I (and many intellegent and educated people all through history) have found to be a reasonable, or even the most reasonable, belief system known to man. And God healing in response to prayer fits very solidly in that belief system. If you need me to point out some Biblical passages or Theologans to show that, I can. I realize that theism may seem stupid to you. But if naturalism seems stupid to me, that doesn't automatically make your view point null and void, does it? Maybe a thorough discussion of Theism would be worthwhile (though maybe on another thread).

And, no, I don't mind questions and challenges. You are right that I expected that much when I posted this on a forum. But I did post it in the "religion" forum rather than the "science" forum intentionally.

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@NeitherExtreme,

NeitherExtreme wrote:

Do you think that only theories that can be developed scientifically are rational things to believe?

Just depends on the question being asked. Spiritual questions should be answered spiritually, scientific questions should be answered scientifically. But I'd ask you to define the word theory if the ideas in that theory are completely beyond any observation. If you're using the word colloquially, that's one thing, but that isn't a theory.

Quote:

I don't, as many things in life aren't science, nor is science built on "pure" reason alone, not to mention that itself has (nececary) limitations built into it. So reason and science are not equal terms to me.

To me either. I hold science far and away above reason, which is just one of many simultaneously competing psychological processes. We do science when we need an answer that we cannot trust to reason alone. Reason just allows us to communicate, to agree, and to solve problems using tools (some of which are irrational). The things in life that are beyond science are also beyond reason -- because spirituality, love, emotion, death, etc, are irrational at the level of our experience.

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But we are in the religion forum...

All the more reason to explore where religious beliefs come from, what they're grounded on, how to make sense of them when they viscerally contradict what we observe or what we think we know.

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Also, just because something does not appear to you to be a necessity, doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered or even believed.

True, but if we owe anything to William of Ockham and his eponymous razor, we should probably start our explanations using the things that are necessary (or at least patently obvious), and garnish our explanations with the supernatural only when we've finally given up on both parsimony and skepticism.

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Like I said before, this one experience was only one of many experiences that affirmed their belief in God

But don't you see how circular that affirmation is? That's why it's a miracle when someone sees the face of Jesus in the clouds, but it's a funny and forgettable association if someone sees the face of Winston Churchill in the clouds. Not that there is anything wrong with that kind of affirmation, but I'd argue that it happens in people who either already believe or who are primed to believe. Of course the Augustinian notion would be that it's God's grace that puts you in this state, i.e. of believing or wanting to believe, but that explanation also only works with certain presuppositions.

Quote:

Though I'm sure they'd all be easy to dismiss for you, if for no other reason (as far as I can tell) you bring to the table the assumtion that they must be coincidences. (You accuse me of being selective, but I would ask if you are not also being selective, simply acting as if anything but God is a better explanation.)

First, I don't dismiss the experience's meaning to you personally. I can take that for granted, and I value that.

But I'm not saying that anything but God is a better explanation. I'm saying that of all the coincidences that happened on that day, God does not deserve any more value than any other. So I'm not selectively excluding it -- I'm just speaking on behalf of all the poor, neglected coincidences, all the itches and untied shoes and wistful songs on the radio that you haven't put on the table. Why is it that you put God above all the other coincidences? (And by coincidence I simply mean things with a temporal association whose causality is unknown). How do you rank the potential explanations? What would you do if two different friends came in practiced ancient Norse polytheism and said that they coincidentally had sacrificed to Odin for your grandfather's recovery? That's a divine explanation, but it's inconsistent with your personal beliefs -- so would you puzzle over which God was responsible for the healing, or would you quickly dismiss the religion that you disbelieved?

Quote:

And about the odd-ball explanations (like doctors dumping) that you keep bringing up... They do not fit into any reasonable world-view or explanation that I've ever thought of or heard of. If you want to develope a complete world-view based on one of those options, I will consider it.

Just rhetorically, I could argue that no religious explanation is a reasonable world-view, and they're just anachronistic mythologies that have somehow survived to modernity. And I could also argue that ANY explanation is reasonable if we're going to give agency to "God" (the quotes to emphasize skepticism). What separates the God explanation from some silly explanation of mine? Only mass appeal -- you've got numbers on your side, but does that make it true?

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Theism, on the other hand, I (and many intellegent and educated people all through history) have found to be a reasonable, or even the most reasonable, belief system known to man.

-How so?
-How is it reasonable?
-Is it reasonable only insofar as with belief you will see (and rationalize) the entire world as being consistent with that belief?
-Is all theism equally reasonable, including polytheism?
-Would it be reasonable to say that God is responsible for all evil in the universe, because he created it? Therefore is it reasonable to call God ultimately responsible for genocide, suffering, and anguish? If God is NOT responsible for these, is it still reasonable to call him an ultimate cause or to call him omnipotent?
-Can you separate the historical figures you mention from their historical times, and the religious ideas that they inherited?

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And God healing in response to prayer fits very solidly in that belief system. If you need me to point out some Biblical passages or Theologans to show that, I can.

Not needed. The Bible says a lot of things. That's why Christians can look at the Torah, and read it as a Christian document, whereas Jews read it in a completely different way. Scripture affirms belief -- that's how it's used. But how specific is it for spinal injuries? How specific is it for x-rays? In my Jewish tradition we aren't supposed to eat pepperoni pizzas because the bible says not to cook a goat in its mother's milk -- so a lot of belief comes from extrapolating out of scripture, not reading it literally.

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I realize that theism may seem stupid to you. But if naturalism seems stupid to me, that doesn't automatically make your view point null and void, does it?

Theism doesn't seem stupid to me. It just isn't explanatory for me. It has symbolic, cultural, anthropologic, and artistic importance. It's also a human invention, which is undeniable -- all you need to do is look at all the human decisions that have made modern belief what it is. I mean you really think that God's revelation through scripture equally validates everything from Roman Catholocism to Eastern Orthodoxy to Calvinism to Mennonite Anabaptism (not to mention all the non-Christian traditions)? I'm completely with Spinoza here, that religion and religious texts need to be regarded in relation to the people (including the place and time) who believe, not in the absolute.

As for naturalism, I don't know what you mean by that, and I'm still not entirely convinced that you know what you mean by that. I reject the label and I reject your idea behind it as having anything to do with science, so I question its relevence.

Quote:

And, no, I don't mind questions and challenges. You are right that I expected that much when I posted this on a forum. But I did post it in the "religion" forum rather than the "science" forum intentionally.

Again, discussing it in religious terms need not invoke a scientific counterargument. Aside from discussing the medical aspects, all I was really talking about were the probabilistic elements. That's not science -- it's just common sense.

I was just on a flight back from Hawaii a couple days ago, from Honolulu to Chicago. I live in North Carolina now, but on that flight I ran into a former classmate from both high school and med school who lives in Boston -- and we went to high school and med school in Connecticut. What were the odds? Better yet, I learned he was on the flight because my wife (who never knew him) was sitting next to his mother-in-law (who never knew me). It turns out I've lived in Boston for the last 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the same medical school as him, and I never saw him once during these 3 years (we were based at different hospitals, but still...)

Those are astronomically small odds. If I take 12 flights per year (about accurate), and there are an average of 150 people on each flight, and I see 50% of the people on those flights, then what are the odds that I'll randomly run into someone I know when I'm not even travelling to / from a city where either of us lives?

Coincidence is a well-established statistical concept. If you do something enough times, coincidental things will happen by random chance even if the probability is low. If you have a quarter and you flip the quarter 10 times, you'll eventually get 10 consecutive heads if you repeat the experiment enough -- maybe the first time, maybe the 10000th time.

But we're very good at making associations, especially ones with personal meaning to us, and it's very easy to superimpose meaning onto a coincidence if it is affirming for us in a highly emotional time. That doesn't disprove a real association -- but it also means that we need to consider coincidence too if we give our reason any credit at all.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

But I'd ask you to define the word theory if the ideas in that theory are completely beyond any observation. If you're using the word colloquially, that's one thing, but that isn't a theory.

The word theory is not regulated to science, nor to objectively provable ideas. I looked it up on dictionary.com, and a number of the given definitions fit my use to the word quite well. You can substitute the word idea or conjecture if you want.

To me either. I hold science far and away above reason, which is just one of many simultaneously competing psychological processes. We do science when we need an answer that we cannot trust to reason alone. Reason just allows us to communicate, to agree, and to solve problems using tools (some of which are irrational).
[/quote]
Why do you hold science above reason? The have different uses and different values, but I would not put one over the other. Well, maybe reason over science, but that just because I don't think science could exist without reason, while reason can exist without science. I'd rather just call them different but both valid and move on.

Aedes wrote:

True, but if we owe anything to William of Ockham and his eponymous razor, we should probably start our explanations using the things that are necessary (or at least patently obvious), and garnish our explanations with the supernatural only when we've finally given up on both parsimony and skepticism.

OK, I can easily and skeptically call the physical expirience irrational just as easily as the ideas of free will, emotions, thought, and any other part of the human expirience. Explainations of the physical universe are absurdly complicated and beyond reason or experience, so to simiply call it an illusion seems like the only purely rational thing to do. Of course the human response to rejecting the physical world (or any of those other key experiences) is insanity. So for you to tell me to hang on to skepticism as long as I can is essential asking me to accept the fate of insanity. I have travelled far enough down that road on my own, so I know where it leads and I'm not interested. By the way, IMO the key phrase you use in there is "patentely obvious" which is a complete injection of the subjective, and no one who accepts that phrase can pretend that their viewpoint is wholely rational or objective. All world views (science included) therefore depend on a set of "arbitrary" judgement calls. I think a good discussion of reason and rationality could be in order...

Aedes wrote:

But don't you see how circular that affirmation is? That's why it's a miracle when someone sees the face of Jesus in the clouds...

Certainly the line between coincidence and miracle is a ticklish thing in the modern wester mindset, and it is frustrating for me as well. I won't pretend that I can draw a line for you (or me), but I will simply say that this event we're talking about (but not only this event) seems "miracle material" to me, while seeing Mary in your breakfast pancake does not. Yes, it is subjective, but the human experience is subjective. Reason can not remove all subjectivity, it can only guide it.

Aedes wrote:

But I'm not saying that anything but God is a better explanation. I'm saying that of all the coincidences that happened on that day, God does not deserve any more value than any other. So I'm not selectively excluding it -- I'm just speaking on behalf of all the poor, neglected coincidences, all the itches and untied shoes and wistful songs on the radio that you haven't put on the table.

Your problem is that you think coincidences are what I'm talking about. I'm talking about what I believe to be a miracle in response to prayer (not a coincidence), and only secondarily saying that coincidence seems highly unlikely. So if you believe that there are no significant coincidences involved, then we really should be on the same page.

Aedes wrote:

How do you rank the potential explanations?

Through reason and through the eyes of my previous experience (which is all anyone can ever claim).

Aedes wrote:

What would you do if two different friends came in practiced ancient Norse polytheism and said that they coincidentally had sacrificed to Odin for your grandfather's recovery? That's a divine explanation, but it's inconsistent with your personal beliefs -- so would you puzzle over which God was responsible for the healing, or would you quickly dismiss the religion that you disbelieved?

I would consider it, and not be quick to dismiss it. I don't feel like getting into what I would actually do with that scenerio, as it would be a whole other topic, but it was a valid question.

Aedes wrote:

Just rhetorically, I could argue that no religious explanation is a reasonable world-view, and they're just anachronistic mythologies that have somehow survived to modernity.

Just rhetorically, I could argue that no world-view is reasonable, including those that have been born in modernity.

Aedes wrote:

-How so?
-How is it reasonable?
-Is it reasonable only insofar as with belief you will see (and rationalize) the entire world as being consistent with that belief?
-Is all theism equally reasonable, including polytheism?

-Through reason, thought, and experience.
-It can be supported by reason.
-No.
-Not in my opinion.

Aedes wrote:

-Would it be reasonable to say that God is responsible for all evil in the universe, because he created it? Therefore is it reasonable to call God ultimately responsible for genocide, suffering, and anguish? If God is NOT responsible for these, is it still reasonable to call him an ultimate cause or to call him omnipotent?
-Can you separate the historical figures you mention from their historical times, and the religious ideas that they inherited?

-IMO, yes to the first two questions. If you're interested in discussing that more, I'm willing to.
-No. Can you separate yourself from your historical times, and the ideas that you've inherited?

OK... I'm running out of time, so I'll have to be quick with the rest of this-

First, the question of whether God revealed himself to man, or if man invented God is not one with an objective answer as you seem to assume. We come at that question with very little first hand observable knowledge, and a lot of pressupositions instead. It's the nature of the beast...

Second, I don't think that all forms of Theism are "equal". Nor do I assume that I somehow have the absolute "best" version. It is a journey and a quest to constantly move my perceptions closer to reality, and perception is never perfect or complete.

Third, small odds do not prove miracle, though it might give extra reason to believe that there was one. At the same time, the fact that the bus came today (as always) might be a miracle and I will never know it.

Sorry, got to go...:eek:

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@NeitherExtreme,

I asked "How so?" in response to your claim that theism is the most rational worldview. Your response was "Through reason, thought, and experience." Is this really an answer? Similarly, I asked how religion is reasonable. You answered "through reason."

I asked if it only appears reasonable if you have a preexisting supportive worldview, and you said "No." Well, I'm pretty reasonable, so you have to do better than these three answers if you want to convince me of these points. So tell me how you'd take someone who has no worldview, if that were possible, and show him how reasonable theism is.

You said theism is the most reasonable worldview, but you exclude polytheists -- even though that to me seems far more reasonable since there are many forces and phenomena that one experiences in the world. Is this because your religion is rationally superior to other people's religions?

I cannot separate myself from my historical times, you are correct. And I'm glad, because I live in a time in which I'm free to reject religious dogma -- and if I so choose (and much of me does) I'm free to reject "God" as appallingly disgusting in a world that I see as riddled with suffering and injustice; and I see God's mercy and goodness as infinitely trivial next to any human suffering -- so why bother to celebrate him, let alone bother myself with belief in something I find to be a character out of ancient mythology? I'm free to look at ancient stories as just that, ancient stories, and not take their truth for granted just because thousands of years of fear has prevented humanity from questioning them. And I'm free to look at our understanding of the world as a human project that ebbs and flows with our experiences, including but not limited to scientific ones. For instance, there is no scientific experiment to help us understand the period from 1900-1945 in which there were multiple genocides, catastrophic wars, and a complete collapse of a centuries-old order in European civilization. This is something that we need to examine and learn from, and that science cannot touch. But religion cannot touch it either -- what good does it do us to call regimes evil? None -- because the idea of evil gets some people to fight unjust wars and it doesn't necessarily motivate people to fight just wars.

This, my friend, is one take on modernity and modern thought. People see the world in whatever way they want to -- this is just psychology. And I see it through a lens in which nothing that we collectively know is sacred or immutable, because we've been disappointed by preconceptions again and again through history. This is what makes me a skeptic, and helps me grade the difference between good evidence, poor evidence, and no evidence. Alternatively, if you're a theist, or you're attracted by theistic ideals, then you're going to pull data out of the world through that lens. So I can't accept that anyone's theism is remotely reasonable unless one can articulate conditions in which one would reject God.

Finally, you've said that you believe this event was a miracle in response to prayer. And again I'm not challenging your belief or its personal importance -- I'm just expanding upon what it means to the rest of us and to the rest of our conversation. Do you think miracles are reasonable? I can give you stories about prayer that my grandparents told me, like when my grandmother was hiding in a wall chanting the sh'ma (the holiest Jewish prayer) in Lodz during the deportation to Auschwitz -- theism probably seems reasonable when the world is completely bereft of hope. But whether or not theism is reasonable, God sure isn't.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Hi again!

Aedes wrote:

I asked "How so?" in response to your claim that theism is the most rational worldview. Your response was "Through reason, thought, and experience." Is this really an answer? Similarly, I asked how religion is reasonable. You answered "through reason."

Yes, my answers were short, I was in a bit of a rush, not to mention we have picked up a very involved topic... :rolleyes: Also, I didn't try to claim that I know that theism is the most reasonable (I can not possibly test it against everything else), but that many have found it to be the most reasonable to them. Splitting hairs I know... but it makes a difference I think.

Aedes wrote:

So tell me how you'd take someone who has no worldview, if that were possible, and show him how reasonable theism is.

Good challange. Smile

Lets see if I'm up to it... (I never tried this before, so I'm sure it won't be perfect.)

First, we'd have to wander through the nearly endless quagmires of epistemology. :eek: (Skipping ahead...) Hopefully we could agree that nothing can be based on pure reason (meaning skeptical reasoning alone), but that reason is still a usefull tool and guide (that should not be abandoned), along with many other tools and guides that are inately human. Also, not all of these guides are subject to reason, but should be compatible with it. (This is not an rationalization of the irrational, because reason itself demonstrated that itself is not a base for belief, but a tool by which to judge it.) A basic and relevant example of this is the "guide" that belief ought to be reasonable. This "ought" can not be justifed by "pure" reason... this does not make it irrational, it is simply another guide- one that must be accepted before reason.

This also does away with any hope of complete objectivity, and with it the idea that we can choose our beliefs based on what is (objectively) rational. There are always things "deeper" than reason at work in us, which we can not get rid of. And since reason alone leads to no understanding whatsoever, I will not assume that any attempt at maximizing reason while comprimising all the other "guides" will lead me to the most correct understanding of the truth. It must be used as it is usefull- no more but no less.

Also, the process is further subjectified (?!?) by the process of faith. I'm not going to go into that much now, but faith (IMO) is simply believing one seemingly justified belief vs another seemingly justified belief, something we all do all the time. And it is also easy to see (if we look at our lives) that to have faith in an idea based on trust in another source instead of our reason is often the reasonable thing to do. But not always... So again it's a balance act with no gaurantees.

So... We must decide what obligation to reason there should be for any system of belief before we can call it reasonable. I would say that it ought to be internally coherant (it does not contradict itself), and externally coherant (it does not contradict the human experience / is supported by the human experience). I would also say that in general if a system failed to meet these, it would not be reasonable.

With that as my (very loose) working definition of "reasonable", I would describe the basics of my beliefs: There is one self-existent, all-powerfull, all-knowing, and good Being (God). He created the material universe, with all it's laws (including time/space), and is both outside of them, and free to interact with them. Truth exists because He is true. Reality can exist because He is real. Life can exist because He is alive. Morality exists because He is good. Also, God revealed (and reveals) Himself to man, both by creating man to have an intrinsic understanding of many basic truths, and at times by "stepping into" the human experience in a personal way (including the physical world). I also believe that He gave us the choice to obey or reject Him and His values (the choice of evil), and that our physical lives are to some degree a test of our character, and that our hearts (not minds or actions directley) will be judged. Thus guilt and shame exist, and thus forgiveness is possible. And much more could be said... But that is a begining, and I think it is a coherent understanding of the total human experience. And my grandparents story would (IMO) be one tiny piece of support as well.

You asked on what grounds I would reject God, and though I obviously don't take reason as my only standard, but if the system was not reasonable (as described above), it would be much less credible to me. But IMO, when examined, I believe it to be coherent "internally" and "externally", and therefore reasonable, though as I said before, I think that a system of beliefs should satisfy more than just "reason", as my experience is more than just reason, and I simply can't change change that fact.

Aedes wrote:

I cannot separate myself from my historical times, you are correct. And I'm glad, because I live in a time in which I'm free to reject religious dogma --

First, I'm also glad you have a choice, and that you live in time that you can recognize it. I would not take that choice from you... Even from "my" worldview I would say that it is a God-given right and freedome. I would, however, note that people have been rejecting the dogmatic beliefs of their time (including religious) for as long as I have learned about. (And most of "modern" phillosophy IMO is not all that new or original.) Anyhow, I think that we live in a time that (in spite of the good prevelance of choice) people have by in large abandonded the search for wisdom for reliance on "reason". and I would unfortunately would put myself in that category. From my experience I've concluded that a skeptic's disbelief and a fanatic's belief are often equally unfounded IMO. (And I'm still learning that lesson!)

Aedes wrote:

I see God's mercy and goodness as infinitely trivial next to any human suffering -- so why bother to celebrate him

I can empathize with your feeling. I have lost nights of sleep and months of peace over the question of God's supposed character vs. the very real painful and excrucitating human experiences that can simply make my blood run cold and tears run hot. Even now I will fully agree that the two feel at indescribable odds- In terms of the previeous discussion, utterly incoherrent.

That said, when talking about subjects like why God would let one person suffer while blessing another, or why such evil should exist at all, I would rather just shut my mouth and walk away looking like a fool than to try to share my beliefs when they could be taken as compassionless mental exersizes done for the sake of argument. If you want to hear where I'm at (other than my tiny intellectual blip in my description of theism), I'll be happy to do my best with it, but if not, no harm done.

This though I feel is worth saying about where I'm at, and it negates none of the human experience:

I believe that God grieves most of all, and suffers with every sufferer.

1 Reply

@NeitherExtreme,

NeitherExtreme wrote:

First, we'd have to wander through the nearly endless quagmires of epistemology.

Been there, done that.

Quote:

This also does away with any hope of complete objectivity, and with it the idea that we can choose our beliefs based on what is (objectively) rational. There are always things "deeper" than reason at work in us, which we can not get rid of. And since reason alone leads to no understanding whatsoever, I will not assume that any attempt at maximizing reason while comprimising all the other "guides" will lead me to the most correct understanding of the truth.

Agreed.

Quote:

Also, the process is further subjectified (?!?) by the process of faith. I'm not going to go into that much now, but faith (IMO) is simply believing one seemingly justified belief vs another seemingly justified belief, something we all do all the time.

Not necessarily. People have faith in things without justification all the time. When they have groundless faith in something good, we call it denial. When they have groundless faith in something bad, we call it paranoia. But this very possibility shows that faith need not be justified at all, let alone justified well.

Still, let's accept that through rationalization people can justify faith. That I'll accept, even though the justification comes out of their own mental acrobatics.

Quote:

So... We must decide what obligation to reason there should be for any system of belief before we can call it reasonable.

Well said.

Quote:

I would say that it ought to be internally coherant (it does not contradict itself), and externally coherant (it does not contradict the human experience / is supported by the human experience).

Doesn't this depend on how hard you look? People find contradictions to some degree within scripture, as well as contradictions with human experience such as miracles, the lifespans of Noah and Methuseleh, people turning into pillars of salt, etc. In particular in the Tanach (what Christians call the Old Testament) there is clearly multiplicity of authorship -- so it's not even necessarily a single source. In other words, it's not so simple to say whether it's got internal or external coherence and therefore whether or not it's reasonable.

Quote:

With that as my (very loose) working definition of "reasonable", I would describe the basics of my beliefs: There is one self-existent, all-powerfull, all-knowing, and good Being (God). He created the material universe, with all it's laws (including time/space), and is both outside of them, and free to interact with them. Truth exists because He is true. Reality can exist because He is real. Life can exist because He is alive. Morality exists because He is good. Also, God revealed (and reveals) Himself to man, both by creating man to have an intrinsic understanding of many basic truths, and at times by "stepping into" the human experience in a personal way (including the physical world). I also believe that He gave us the choice to obey or reject Him and His values (the choice of evil), and that our physical lives are to some degree a test of our character, and that our hearts (not minds or actions directley) will be judged. Thus guilt and shame exist, and thus forgiveness is possible. And much more could be said... But that is a begining, and I think it is a coherent understanding of the total human experience. And my grandparents story would (IMO) be one tiny piece of support as well.

You're reiterating a lot of basic Christian belief here, but not justifying how it meets or does not meet your criteria for it being reasonable. I mostly agree with the criteria you've set. But I don't see any explanation of how Christianity meets that standard. Or why Christianity instead of Judaism? Or why the Bible as opposed to the Epic of Gilgamesh which is just as old?

Quote:

You asked on what grounds I would reject God, and though I obviously don't take reason as my only standard, but if the system was not reasonable (as described above), it would be much less credible to me.

You still don't justify why that's the case and why this case should be exclusively made for theism (as opposed to, for example, Aristotle's Physics, which seems to me the most reasonable of all ancient texts in terms of coherence).

Quote:

And most of "modern" phillosophy IMO is not all that new or original.

Whoa, you're going to get a big fight from me on this point. Modern philosophy has given us a clean break from the dreadful subservience to ancient Greece and in particular to metaphysics and pure reason.

In modern philosophy we have brand new worldviews -- Existentialism, which rejects any transcendence other than existence itself, and the various critiques and rejections of metaphysics by Hegel, Nietzsche, and others. We have a brand new logic, put forth by Frege, and Russell, and Wittgenstein, showing that metaphysics is built on nothing but logical arguments, and logical arguments break down into linguistic vagaries and atomic thoughts. I guess the extreme of this is Derrida. We have the advent of psychology, showing that the actual human mind does not think rationally. And this is the tip of the iceberg. Early modern philosophy, from the metaphysicians like Kant and Descartes to the empiricists like Hume, was barely different than the debate between Platonic versus Aristotelean philosophy. Modernity has thrown all of that upside down and finally presented us with something new, with a true sidestepping of the old, traditional ways of asking these questions, and all the mental gymnastics they entailed.

Quote:

I believe that God grieves most of all, and suffers with every sufferer.

But God is the only one who can do something about it. It's not we who owe God anything -- God owes us. We're the vulnerable ones. We're the weak. We're the flawed. And lacking omniscience, it's ridiculous for us to watch the world get worse and somehow still maintain "faith". I'm not posing this as a challenge to God, seeing as I don't really believe. I'm posing this as a gesture of sympathy for humanity -- it's really ok to get angry at God for the shitty world we have. Why should we be satisfied with him working in mysterious ways? Why should we be like Abraham? Why should we be asked to kill our child as a test of submission? Why should we see Jesus' death as somehow unique from all the other people who have suffered and died in complete innocence -- aren't they martyrs to humanity's sins as well?

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Not necessarily. People have faith in things without justification all the time. When they have groundless faith in something good, we call it denial. When they have groundless faith in something bad, we call it paranoia. But this very possibility shows that faith need not be justified at all, let alone justified well.

Still, let's accept that through rationalization people can justify faith. That I'll accept, even though the justification comes out of their own mental acrobatics.

Now this will just be hair splitting, but I'd say that every belief a person has seems/feels justified to them, even if they can't verbalize it beyond "Just because". And sometimes this intuitive belief turns out to be the more accurate than one that was rationally justified... Is this always because the intuitive believer was just lucky, or is there possibly a part of our nature that can detect some truth regardless or even in spite of cognitive reason? Obviously you know my answer to that question. Wink

So again I will say reason has it's place in helping decide where to place faith. But, it should not be the only (or even always the most important) factor when choosing. (And I personally believe that what I just said is quite reasonable.) So I do not think that reason is the only good justification for faith. Of course taking this idea seriously (applying it) is unnerving for those of us who want gaurantees, but I see no other way around it. And a person can still choose to put their faith in reason, but in my opinion it is still faith believed against another justified belief (the one I've just outlined).

Aedes wrote:

Doesn't this depend on how hard you look?

I'd say how hard you look matters, but also how you look. Rational justification can be use to defend and destroy almost any (IMO any) system of beliefs that man can have, and this is due in part to the nature of humanity and reason itself, not only on the truth of the belief in quesiton. In the end, a person could be constantly swayed their whole lives by the latest and most convincing argument (which is a sure way not to believe the truth). Or, they can find one that they can (and believe they should) commit to, and do so. I'm not suggesting dogmatic fanaticism that will never examine itself or make an honest atempt to be self-aware, but I am suggesting that actually deciding what they believe and being able to commit to it is a good thing (even if not an easy thing for skeptical personalities). And choosing what to commit to is more than a rational exersize by necessity. I still think that what I choose to believe should meet the "obligation to reason" that I have outlined. But at the same time, I don't believe that to simply let loose the hounds of skeptical reason is going to lead anywhere good either. So it must be a balance.

As for me and the Christian faith, I did not start to believe it after examining all other faiths, constructing the most logical case, and then picking the belief closest to it. For me it started at the very begining, and I learned the basics from my parents, and saw their faith lived out. And it was good, so I accepted it. I also had the influence of my grandparents and their lives (of which the OP was just a drop in the bucket), and many others who have impacted my life. As I have lived and grown and experienced, I have continued to find it to be good, and through (sometimes painful) application as well as questioning have discovered faith for myself, and have hopefully grown to know more of the truth and reflect it in my beliefs and actions. (Though I don't believe I have done even a nearly perfect job at this.) So the basics of my faith were not built by me, but I have accepted them. And really, given the life and experiences I've had, I feel that I have done the reasonable thing.

And why this vs another particular... I could make arguments "for" my faith and "against" any other system I've come across. That could be very time consuming and I would expect it to be somewhat fruitless. I think that reasoning can easily simply become a way of defending belief, and it become a subjective test of wit vs wit, leading to nowhere. (Though I don't think it has to become that. If you want me to take up one particular system or another, I'd do it for the fun of it, but maybe only one at a time.)

A few guides as to what I would consider believing... Not a comprehensive list at all.

1. Should have "real life" support. For me, my faith has this.
2. Must include a base for morality and the concept of "ought". Yes, I know that isn't "rational" criteria, but I will include this on the basis of intuitive "knowledge" that I choose believe beyond any rational system that would undermine it. (Anyway, if morality doesn't exist, why shouldn't I believe it does?)
3. It should be rationally coherent. Again, the application of this will include a good deal of subjectivity, and I don't see any way around that.
4. It should help me understand my experiences, including other world views.
5. It should "ring true". This is completely subjective (and probably sounds silly) from a "modern" standpoint. But it's there nontheless.

(Personal sidenote: I feel like this thread has been good for me in forcing me to come to grips with my own epistemology and belief sytem. For what it's worth, the skeptical part of me cringes in pain as I write these things. But honestly, the skeptical part of me is not the part I love most, and if it is given free reign, my life becomes pretty worthless. So I'll let it grieve for a bit, and hopefully it can get used to it's role as a "team member" rather than "leader" in my quest to live and believe truth.)

Aedes wrote:

Whoa, you're going to get a big fight from me on this point.

Ok, then I'll leave that one alone! Wink

Aedes wrote:

But God is the only one who can do something about it. It's not we who owe God anything -- God owes us. We're the vulnerable ones. We're the weak. We're the flawed. And lacking omniscience, it's ridiculous for us to watch the world get worse and somehow still maintain "faith". I'm not posing this as a challenge to God, seeing as I don't really believe. I'm posing this as a gesture of sympathy for humanity -- it's really ok to get angry at God for the shitty world we have. Why should we be satisfied with him working in mysterious ways? Why should we be like Abraham? Why should we be asked to kill our child as a test of submission? Why should we see Jesus' death as somehow unique from all the other people who have suffered and died in complete innocence -- aren't they martyrs to humanity's sins as well?

I understand you're position, and have had, and sometimes still have, the same feelings (or at least similar ones). So I have no interest in an intellectual debate. Really, the ideas you've just experessed have been my biggest struggles with my own faith, and I have yet to hear an argument that proves it wrong (and I have heard lots of arguments). That said, I have come to a peace on the issue after working through it for a long time. It does involve for me a drastic shift in perspective, but not one that reduces the painful depth of the issue. I have no interest in deminishing one ounce of human suffering, or the idea that God has allowed every bit of it by his own choices. It seems senseless to me to believe in an all-powerfull, all-knowing God and then try to shift the blame around to try to make it so that that God is not responsible for the act of creating a universe so cabable of Evil. And there are many examples in the Bible of people getting confused and angry at God, and God does not seem to be upset about it, though the "wise" characters in the Bible choose to trust in His character anyway, although sometimes only after God gives them more reason to do so (though not always the reasons they were looking for- Job is a great example). So anger towards Him will not surprise Him- "He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust."

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