I was almost certain that the Sun Miracle wasn't actually a miracle. After reading Scott's lengthy post I am still almost certain that the Sun Miracle wasn't actually a miracle, but I guess that almost is now a tenth of a percent weaker than it was before or something like that.
ironically, when he started citing other Sun Miracles, my credence that it was an actual miracle (already low) went lower. Very much in the species of Hume's "8 days of darkness"
I’m partial to the idea that an intelligent God with motivations beyond us, might affect actual miracles, but choose to leave no evidence to a third party observer that it happened.
What seems completely inconsistent with my view of reality is that God would effect miracles that there is maybe enough evidence to believe on rational grounds, but those miracles are all seemingly pointless stuff like the Fatima sun miracle.
I find miracles like “I prayed to God and he cured my alcoholism or depression or gave me a transcendental experience or healed some injury without consistent documentation” significantly more plausible (not plausible, but *more* plausible than Fatima) because they at least don’t seem to directly conflict with my world model.
To me it seems like either we get miracles that are undeniable, although maybe arbitrarily effected according to a motivation we have no chance of comprehending (why answer one person’s prayers on another another), but have a clear enough chain of evidence that they obviously happened and had no naturalistic explanation. Things like a whole limb regrowing overnight or someone coming back from the dead.
Or we get miracles that are personal and happen in a way that isn’t provable or replicable, so we are forced to take the claims of others on trust/faith.
The model least compatible with the world as I observe it, is that God does give us miracles that are maybe, possibly, demonstrable to a third party observer (like the Fatima sun miracle) but are all weird inconsequential stuff that happened a century or more ago and there’s definitely not enough evidence to demonstrate it conclusively. Or if this is what we are claiming then God’s motivations would be so alien to my understanding that I put even less credence in the people who claim to have an understanding of them.
We 100% agree. Not sure how much of Hume you've read, but the post I published about an hour ago basically outlines the Humean position you put up here (probably no rational foundation for religious miracles, but doesn't rule out direct perception of modern miracles). I agree that, to the extent I think miracles are plausible, their warrant has to personal and limited to the people perceiving them.
Good post, though a lot of this feels like common sense to me? And sorry if this is confrontational, I know you’ve argued for lowering the temperature of these discussions, and I respect you for that. However I need to get this off my chest and into the void.
I’m new to this corner of the internet (and lean firmly atheist), but I’ve heard some of these writers’ names before and didn’t expect them to be so open-minded that their brains fell out. The line you bolded from Scott actually made me scoff and stop reading, yet his post was met with what struck me as (frankly sycophantic) praise.
Evan’s response seemed excellent and more than sufficient—he covered essentially everything that needed to be covered and stopped where the claims became too ridiculous and the evidence too weak. Yet Scott and parts of this community criticized him for falling short of some unrealistic standard of “open-minded analysis.” Dylan, too, raised salient critiques but was faulted for not “doing his homework” and chasing every single philosophical rabbit hole raised by the other side. As you’ve argued, that strikes me as preposterous given the quality of the evidence and the nature of the claims.
Maybe it’s just the culture here to debate endlessly in circles about unfalsifiable, non-physical phenomena (which I suppose is much of philosophy…), but so much of it reads like word games and posturing to prove you’re not only more open-minded than everyone else, but also smarter and more virtuous. The whole “Bayesian reasoning” routine feels especially performative—it provides cover to assert sweeping claims about physical reality and how we ought to live, all built on made-up probabilities from an imaginary conceptual space.
Related note: the best piece of philosophy I’ve ever read is from Marcus Aurelius: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” That strikes me as far more powerful than any n+1 article about God, miracles, or shrimp. This discourse seems ridiculous and almost offensive given the state of the world.
Maybe I just take things too seriously. Or maybe that’s simply what happens when you believe there’s no cosmic safety net—no deity pulling the strings to tidy things up in the end—so the only option is to act responsibly and live well here and now. Or maybe I’m just a salty edgy atheist who’s been out debated.
Honestly, great comment, and I agree with a lot of it (all of it?). I like engaging with these arguments because I genuinely like thinking about them because they are stimulating and exercising my writing and reasoning “muscles.” Like literally, this comment is longer than it would otherwise be because I randomly spree wrote a post that may go up tomorrow and my brain is stimulated after midnight. I love that!
But this dynamic of elitism, arguing in a certain bayesian manner (that precludes many skeptics and non-believers of their primary tools), and demanding an unrealistic level of literature knowledge is something I’ve definitely noticed, called out, and will continue to call out. To be clear, I don’t think the perpetrators are being malicious or intentionally bad, so much as they conform to the norms they are used to, in academia or otherwise. I’m not fully equipped to play those games, which is why I don’t, and go at it the way I do here. There’s a demand for it!
I think these frustrating tactics you’ve outlined are like the modern equivalent of the Courtier’s Reply. I think it’s way too high of a standard for non-believers to meet, and so I share the frustration.
Good post, one observation: you mentioned, perhaps jokingly, whether we could say it was God and Mary and not aliens; my point is a generalization of this: I think that at most the miracle of Fatima could convince a naturalist that supernatural things exist, but I don't think it would convince people of other religions to Catholicism;
When I was a Protestant Christian, my response upon learning of this miracle would probably be that, if there is no natural explanation, then it was demons, and I would follow my faith without much effort, probably using Galatian 1:8 as a basis; Eastern Orthodox Christians might also say the same thing. Similarly, Muslims would say it is the activity of evil djinns leading people to disbelieve the message of Islam; followers of Indian religions might say it is a soul lost to the cycle of Smasara, etc.
Nice post! I like the point that “ more likely” doesn’t mean true. Just like in science being the best explanation isn’t by itself enough for acceptance until rigorously tested, etc. Thanks for the post.
He's my guilty pleasure haha tbh the quote/bit I used here is one of the more niche Humean opinions that I've internalized for a long time and no one really gives it time of day to think of the implications.
I was almost certain that the Sun Miracle wasn't actually a miracle. After reading Scott's lengthy post I am still almost certain that the Sun Miracle wasn't actually a miracle, but I guess that almost is now a tenth of a percent weaker than it was before or something like that.
ironically, when he started citing other Sun Miracles, my credence that it was an actual miracle (already low) went lower. Very much in the species of Hume's "8 days of darkness"
I’m partial to the idea that an intelligent God with motivations beyond us, might affect actual miracles, but choose to leave no evidence to a third party observer that it happened.
What seems completely inconsistent with my view of reality is that God would effect miracles that there is maybe enough evidence to believe on rational grounds, but those miracles are all seemingly pointless stuff like the Fatima sun miracle.
I find miracles like “I prayed to God and he cured my alcoholism or depression or gave me a transcendental experience or healed some injury without consistent documentation” significantly more plausible (not plausible, but *more* plausible than Fatima) because they at least don’t seem to directly conflict with my world model.
To me it seems like either we get miracles that are undeniable, although maybe arbitrarily effected according to a motivation we have no chance of comprehending (why answer one person’s prayers on another another), but have a clear enough chain of evidence that they obviously happened and had no naturalistic explanation. Things like a whole limb regrowing overnight or someone coming back from the dead.
Or we get miracles that are personal and happen in a way that isn’t provable or replicable, so we are forced to take the claims of others on trust/faith.
The model least compatible with the world as I observe it, is that God does give us miracles that are maybe, possibly, demonstrable to a third party observer (like the Fatima sun miracle) but are all weird inconsequential stuff that happened a century or more ago and there’s definitely not enough evidence to demonstrate it conclusively. Or if this is what we are claiming then God’s motivations would be so alien to my understanding that I put even less credence in the people who claim to have an understanding of them.
We 100% agree. Not sure how much of Hume you've read, but the post I published about an hour ago basically outlines the Humean position you put up here (probably no rational foundation for religious miracles, but doesn't rule out direct perception of modern miracles). I agree that, to the extent I think miracles are plausible, their warrant has to personal and limited to the people perceiving them.
Good post, though a lot of this feels like common sense to me? And sorry if this is confrontational, I know you’ve argued for lowering the temperature of these discussions, and I respect you for that. However I need to get this off my chest and into the void.
I’m new to this corner of the internet (and lean firmly atheist), but I’ve heard some of these writers’ names before and didn’t expect them to be so open-minded that their brains fell out. The line you bolded from Scott actually made me scoff and stop reading, yet his post was met with what struck me as (frankly sycophantic) praise.
Evan’s response seemed excellent and more than sufficient—he covered essentially everything that needed to be covered and stopped where the claims became too ridiculous and the evidence too weak. Yet Scott and parts of this community criticized him for falling short of some unrealistic standard of “open-minded analysis.” Dylan, too, raised salient critiques but was faulted for not “doing his homework” and chasing every single philosophical rabbit hole raised by the other side. As you’ve argued, that strikes me as preposterous given the quality of the evidence and the nature of the claims.
Maybe it’s just the culture here to debate endlessly in circles about unfalsifiable, non-physical phenomena (which I suppose is much of philosophy…), but so much of it reads like word games and posturing to prove you’re not only more open-minded than everyone else, but also smarter and more virtuous. The whole “Bayesian reasoning” routine feels especially performative—it provides cover to assert sweeping claims about physical reality and how we ought to live, all built on made-up probabilities from an imaginary conceptual space.
Related note: the best piece of philosophy I’ve ever read is from Marcus Aurelius: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” That strikes me as far more powerful than any n+1 article about God, miracles, or shrimp. This discourse seems ridiculous and almost offensive given the state of the world.
Maybe I just take things too seriously. Or maybe that’s simply what happens when you believe there’s no cosmic safety net—no deity pulling the strings to tidy things up in the end—so the only option is to act responsibly and live well here and now. Or maybe I’m just a salty edgy atheist who’s been out debated.
Honestly, great comment, and I agree with a lot of it (all of it?). I like engaging with these arguments because I genuinely like thinking about them because they are stimulating and exercising my writing and reasoning “muscles.” Like literally, this comment is longer than it would otherwise be because I randomly spree wrote a post that may go up tomorrow and my brain is stimulated after midnight. I love that!
But this dynamic of elitism, arguing in a certain bayesian manner (that precludes many skeptics and non-believers of their primary tools), and demanding an unrealistic level of literature knowledge is something I’ve definitely noticed, called out, and will continue to call out. To be clear, I don’t think the perpetrators are being malicious or intentionally bad, so much as they conform to the norms they are used to, in academia or otherwise. I’m not fully equipped to play those games, which is why I don’t, and go at it the way I do here. There’s a demand for it!
I think these frustrating tactics you’ve outlined are like the modern equivalent of the Courtier’s Reply. I think it’s way too high of a standard for non-believers to meet, and so I share the frustration.
Good post, one observation: you mentioned, perhaps jokingly, whether we could say it was God and Mary and not aliens; my point is a generalization of this: I think that at most the miracle of Fatima could convince a naturalist that supernatural things exist, but I don't think it would convince people of other religions to Catholicism;
When I was a Protestant Christian, my response upon learning of this miracle would probably be that, if there is no natural explanation, then it was demons, and I would follow my faith without much effort, probably using Galatian 1:8 as a basis; Eastern Orthodox Christians might also say the same thing. Similarly, Muslims would say it is the activity of evil djinns leading people to disbelieve the message of Islam; followers of Indian religions might say it is a soul lost to the cycle of Smasara, etc.
Nice post! I like the point that “ more likely” doesn’t mean true. Just like in science being the best explanation isn’t by itself enough for acceptance until rigorously tested, etc. Thanks for the post.
Great piece, particularly on explaining induction and the hypothesis testing (though I have a hatred for Bayesian probability).
And a Hitchens reference! Always a fan of anything Hitch-related.
He's my guilty pleasure haha tbh the quote/bit I used here is one of the more niche Humean opinions that I've internalized for a long time and no one really gives it time of day to think of the implications.