A Real Miracle?

Great Debates
21

How many people asked for help, and didn’t get better? How many got better without asking for help?

For us to truly and definatively know whether this is significant, we’d have to know the true PETWHAC: Population of events that would have appeared coicidental. Remember that you didn’t come upon this story by randomly sampling the population. You came upon it because, out of billions and billions of people that have lived and died, who have had diseases go in and out of remission, a coincidence happened to this woman and the story sparked interest and became publicized.

Remember that medical knowledge is empirical, not absolute. I the disease went into remission, then remission IS possible with this disease. The question is simply: was remission some sort of spiritual intercession or not? So the fact that the disease “never” goes into remission is falsified by this very instance, and can’t be so easily used to support the idea that the remission was miraculous, let alone miraculous in the EXACT way that we are supposed to believe it was. I mean, i you want to chalk it up to some unexplained intercession, you could just as easily support the idea that a powerul vampire cured her with a powerul mental compulsion, just to have some fun with her.

22

My understanding of a ‘miracle’ is that it is an event that could not possibly occur without divine intervention. Miracles are things that flout the laws of nature (at least as we know them). Recovering from what has been deemed a terminal illness does NOT contradict any laws of nature, rather it attests to the remarkable ability of the human body to heal itself (or perhaps our lack of understanding about how our bodies/disease really work).

Now, if she’d had her leg amputated and a new, fully functioning one grew back in its place, I’d start going to church…:wink:

23

I do not doubt there are sometimes unexplained healings (by the way, this is as likely to be reported after a visit to some saint’s grave than after the visit to some shaman). I rarely doubt the word of the catholic church on these healings, since before being accepted as “miracles” they are put through a very thorough examination ( the cured illness must be well documented, have been considered as incurable, for instance, and in particular the person must not have been following a treatment which could have cured him/her). For instance, you won’t get much luck if you try to have your healed cancer considered as a miracle by the church, though you might personnally think it was indeed a miracle.

So, what’s my opinion? Things happen. Very rarely, someone will recover from a disease usually considered incurable by the medical science. Amongst these people, some will have prayed whatever god(s) they can believe in, will have visited some healer who has performed whatever magic he’s fond of on them, etc…Amongst them, a lot will attribute their recovery to the saint’s intercession/shaman’s friendly spirits/healer’s mystic talents, etc…And amongst those, some will make public claims about it, and will try to have their story known. In the case of the catholic church, it’s quite practical, since they actuallly officially recognize miracles and study the cases, something which is quite unique
So, Perhaps this woman recovered in an unexplainable way from an usually incurable disease. I’ve no reason to assume she’s lying. I just don’t consider any very uncommon unexplained event as a proof. Or else, I would have to believe in essentially everething at least some people believe in. In essentially all the religions, since there are “miracles” happening in pretty much all cultures. In essentially all the mystical stuff, since there always is some weird and unexplained (at least unexplained at this moment) stuff. You could throw in diviners, UFOs, ghosts, etc…
IOW, for me to believe there’s something to enquire seriously about, or to consider believing in the (christian, in this case) god, I would need some consistent trend. For instance numerous document miracles happening exclusively in relation with a particular religion/belief. As long as it isn’t the case, the fact that something exceptionnal happens to one person amongst millions (and given the enormous number of living humans, there are to be some exceptionnal, quite incredible cases, situations, and coincidences) and that this particular person happens to held a particular belief won’t convince me in any way.
If it does the trick for you, then you should probably inquire into the very numerous cases of “miracles” and “unexplained recoveries” (and many other things) and you should also wonder why you accept a given miracle as an evidence of the truth of your religion’s teachings, and not the others as proofs of the beliefs you happen not to buy in. Perhaps you should also buy a plane ticket for the Mecca and pray Ganesh, just in case…

24

Dan,

I understand. But if God exists, and He decides to let those innocent millions suffer, yet heal this one person, then there must be a very good reason why He has done so. We cannot understand this reason, but that is only because we cannot see life and suffering from the viewpoint of eternity like God can. If we had an understanding of what eternity is really like, then our view of life and suffering would probably be much different.

Apos,

Thanks for the post. I too had wondered before about the disease being unable to go into remission. It didn’t click right away.

Kam,

Yes, it would be amazing if she sprouted a new leg. I would join a monastery. :slight_smile:

Clairobscur,

Thanks.

25

One more thing.

No one has mentioned the voice of St. Faustina speaking to Maureen. Maureen claims to have heard (presumably) Faustina’s voice, which said that she would have help given to her if she asked. I know it would be ridiculous to put faith in the account of someone hearing voice, but I was just wondering what a skeptic would say. Delusion, perhaps? I suppose it would help to know if Maureen had been accustomed to hearing voices. I don’t know. Any response would be nice.

26

Auditory hallucinations are as common as dirt. I’ve had them myself. I didn’t think it was a miracle.

27

Oh good, another ‘miracle cure’ story.

  1. I’m pleased if someone who was in a bad way got better. That’s always good news and I’m happy for them, if it’s true. But this has nothing to do with accepting or rejecting the notion of a miraculous cure. This kind of good news happens all the time, to people who have every different kind of religious belief or no religious belief at all.

  2. You cannot explain or evaluate an anecdote! This cannot be emphasised too strongly. This anecdote itself refers to scientific and medical evidence, and if we could get to that, then we might be able to start assessing it and testing it and evaluating it. But at this point we only have the anecdote, and it may or may not be accurate. We won’t know unless we decide to look into it and check out the facts. And by the way, it’s pretty much a formula ‘miraculous healing’ anecdote.

  3. Medical science doesn’t work the way this anecdote suggests. Doctors do not go round saying ‘this can never be cured’ or ‘you only have 3 months to live’. This is the tidied up, simplified and dramatic version which makes a story seem more dramatic. In real life, doctors deal with probabilities. They can say that on the basis of experience, this is more likely to happen than that, or this is the most probable outcome. But anyone who has worked in medicine for a while knows that ‘always’ and ‘never’ are hard words to use intelligently.

There are always exceptions and surprises - sometimes nice (the person gets better who wasn’t expected to) or not nice (the opposite). That’s because the human body is extraordinarily complex and we’re still finding out how it works, and because medical knowledge isn’t complete. Also, not every diagnosis is accurate! Sometimes, the fact that the person with the ‘incurable illness’ gets better serves only to show that the initial diagnosis was wrong, and that the person didn’t have an incurable illness after all. This is at least as easy to accept as the notion of a miraculous cure.

  1. The acceptance or rejection of a ‘miracle cure’ story is always a matter of faith and belief, which comes down to subjective choice, and never a matter of independent, corroborated and objective fact. This is because the notion of a ‘miracle’ is itself a metaphysical construct, and not one which can be subjected to the process of empirical scientific evaluation.

By its very nature, religious faith involves choosing to believe in that which cannot be proved objectively. If you could prove objectively that God exists, it wouldn’t be a matter of faith any more and there’d be no debate. Ultimately, those who believe in God or a god believe they have (or have had) an inner personal experience, which is real to them, and which constitutes a viable reason for pursuing the faith that they do, and cultivating the relationship they believe they have with a deity or supra-natural entity. But that’s not the same as proving the existence of God or a god to me or anyone else.

What’s more, my inner personal experience - as an atheist - is just as valid as anyone else’s. And since I don’t believe in an afterlife I don’t believe in saints, and therefore I don’t believe in cures attributed to them. What’s more, to say to me ‘she was cured through the intercession of a saint’ is essentially meaningless - it’s an ‘explanation’ that doesn’t explain anything. To me, it’s like saying there are no lions near where I live because the oompaloompas eat them. This just begs the question of whether the oompaloompas exist, and I’d want that issue settled first before we start worrying about their effects on lions.

  1. Please note that even for those who hold religious beliefs, the notion of a ‘miracle cure’ holds profound theological difficulties. If evidence of a cure is evidence for a benign God and benign intercession, then to be fair every instance of someone praying for a cure and not getting one must be accepted as evidence for God’s indifference, unwillingness to help, or actual desire to see someone’s physical suffering continue.

The only way around this is to be selective about the evidence you accept (the cures are good evidence, the rest we can forget), or to simply say ‘these are mysteries we don’t fully understand’. To adopt either position is to achieve a closed system of thought (one in which you get the same conclusion all the time, no matter what) and abandon the notion of belief founded upon evidence anyway, in which case there’s no point offering the ‘miracle cure’ story as evidence of anything because that particular option - belief based on evidence - has been abandoned.

  1. Please also note that cures which seem at odds with prevailing medical wisdom and expectations are also seen among atheists, heathens and skeptics; among adherents of every creed and faith that has ever found a place in human culture; and among people who attribute the cure to fairies, pixies, lucky bracelets, snake oil and any other manifestation of a decision not to apply the reasoning of which the wonderful human mind is capable.
28

You indicate one problem yourself - Maureen wouldn’t have any idea what this woman sounded like. And they apparently didn’t speak the same language in life. But that’s very tangential. The real point is this: this one woman says she heard a voice. Nobody else was there, and nobody else heard it. Why do I have to explain that this is false? There’s no evidence whatsoever that it’s true. She could think she heard it, she could be lying, I have no idea. Why does it matter? On top of which, I have no idea if a word of the story is true anyway.

29

Maybe she never had the disease in the first place? Can we all say “misdiagnosis”?

30

Though, to be honest, my money is on the whole story being made up.

31

Diogenes,

Yeah, auditory hallucinations are as common as dirt. I have had a lot of them. In fact, this subject really interests me. I have read that it is not uncommon for schizophrenics to hear their voices say “wise” things. I wonder how this happens. Anyway, I am sort of digressing here.
Ianzin,

Good post. Thanks a lot. But I would object, as I think many theists would, to what you said here: “If evidence of a cure is evidence for a benign God and benign intercession, then to be fair every instance of someone praying for a cure and not getting one must be accepted as evidence for God’s indifference, unwillingness to help, or actual desire to see someone’s physical suffering continue.”

I don’t think that it “must” be accepted as evidence for God’s indifference, unwillingness to help, or actual desire to see someone’s physical suffering continue. There could be a lot of reasons – and certainly not limited only to 3 reasons – why God chooses to help some people and not others. And what appears to us to be His not helping someone could actually be His helping someone (I hope that made sense).

32

Ianzin,

I forgot one thing. You said: “And by the way, it’s pretty much a formula ‘miraculous healing’ anecdote.” I didn’t know there was a formula. I’m interested. If you have time, could you please outline the formula so I can spot it when I read about these things? Thanks.

33

The problem is that if you’re going to use that metric, then it’s pretty much impossible for us to percieve God’s hand in anything, and possible to percieve it in everything, because virtually any excuse can be made for any situation as to why this person was helped and this other person was not: without any true falsifiable criteria to work with in sorting out what was what.

The real problem is in distinguishing the miraculous from the as-of-yet-unexplained-but-wont-seem-very-miraculous-when-it-is. And the fact of the matter is, if something is of the sort that we’d call miraculous, there is NO WAY to rule out the latter possibility purely BECAUSE a miraculous event is by definition unexplainable by us.

34

“The problem is that if you’re going to use that metric, then it’s pretty much impossible for us to percieve God’s hand in anything, and possible to percieve it in everything, because virtually any excuse can be made for any situation as to why this person was helped and this other person was not: without any true falsifiable criteria to work with in sorting out what was what.”

Yes, a problem for the skeptic.

“The real problem is in distinguishing the miraculous from the as-of-yet-unexplained-but-wont-seem-very-miraculous-when-it-is. And the fact of the matter is, if something is of the sort that we’d call miraculous, there is NO WAY to rule out the latter possibility purely BECAUSE a miraculous event is by definition unexplainable by us.”

I suppose then that every claim (or nearly every claim – who knows?) of a “miraculous” healing or a “miraculous” whatever will not convince a hardcore skeptic of the supernatural or God’s existence. I don’t know if God will give us irrefutable proof of His existence. To the theist, faith is a virtue, afterall. God wants faith.

And I wonder how the world would be if God decided to give us irrefutable proof of His existence and which, if any, religion is the true one. Or maybe it would be better if He did not reveal himself. Of course, I don’t see how it would be better, but I’m not God.

Thanks for the posts.

35

It’s not really a problem, it’s just a very annoying tendancy. It’s not in the least bit convincing to any skeptic, in fact it just goes to show that people who pass on ‘miracle’ stories like these aren’t interested in proof or discussion, only in stories and statements (often twisted or wrong) that can fit their worldview. The failing is with people who use those kind of arguments.

36

No: quite the opposite. It is predictable, simple things that are problems for skeptics: because they are easy to prove, even against skepticism. But the more inexplicable the claimed actions of God are, and the more they could be imagined to apply to everything, the less we can really prove them at work in anything.

No no: that’s not the problem. The problem is not the miraculous aspect, in the sense of an intercession from god, the problem is the “unknown” aspect of it. This isn’t just a problem in issues of religion, but is rather a much more general epistemological issue. If a thing is ultimately unknown, then it’s pretty much impossible to know that it is unknowable.

37

I consider myself a skeptic, but not a “Skeptic.”

Some people would consider me an annoyance.

The SDMB is well-stocked with people who don’t distinguish between the “likelihood” card and the “possibility” card, to the detriment of the deepest sort of discussion on matters of miracles, gods, the paranormal, and such.

It seems to me that if a (real) miracle were to (really) happen, under no circumstances would its being a miracle be the most likely explanation. The event would still involve various arrangements of atoms and molecules, light and sound, human speech, human memory, etc. Consider the putatively miraculous portrait associated with the vision of Guadalupe: it’s a physical object of a certain age, reflecting photons, affecting the sense of touch, having a certain weight and chemical composition. Given the reliance of the story upon (possibly faulty) human testimony, it is clearly more likely that the object came about in some natural way, then that it was provided supernaturally.

Which proves absolutely nothing in a logical sense.

Because the only thing that absolutely can not be–the existence of which thus constituting a miracle self-evidently–is the thing incorporating a flat logical contradiction: the invisible color, the nonsquare square. In other words, entities the descriptions of which are meaningless, entities that one cannot possibly conceive of encountering. Not peculiar paintings or radically unexpected cures.

So, RichardC, I think this report leaves the situation exactly where it began. If YOU YOURSELF discover that your contemplation of the story has moved you closer to affirming something about the universe that you were otherwise moving away from, then that willingness-to-affirm was already in you, and was the lens through which the story was interpreted. If not, not.

Miracles, if any there be, may relate to “faith” in just that way.

38

If she is the same Maureen Digan (and I think she is) as on RSDhope.org, she was certainly not cured.

http://www.rsdhope.org/ShowPage.asp?PAGE_ID=27&PGCT_ID=2332

39

I see that this has been addressed but it really is the kind of baiting that begs for a response. If you say that it is “a problem for the skeptic” the implication is either “skeptics will go to any lengths to disbelieve” or “there is something there that a reasonably skeptical person might take issue with.”

The skeptics, of course, are likely to take the latter interpretation and will not be too bothered by it. The other interpretation, however, implies a sort of prejudice against reasonable exceptions as if each exception were merely an excuse to deny a self-evident truth. Perhaps if we were talking about a mathematical proof the “truth” might be self-evident but that is hardly the case here.

40

A late reply.

Thanks, everyone.