State Farm Syndrome Derail:Miracles.

[Gary]

Should you believe everything you read on the internet?

The link can be found here.

The text is as follows:

Can there be claims on the internet that aren't true? Let's plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Remember this State Farm commercial?

https://youtu.be/v_CgPsGY5Mw

We all laugh at the idea that if you read it on the internet, it must be true. Unfortunately, we also all know of situations that are just like this. We could say that the blessing of April 1st is that at least on that day, most everyone checks everything they read on Facebook before sharing it.

Then every other day, gullibility abounds.

So what do I see yesterday? I see a claim going around that the National Day of Prayer has been cancelled by Obama. Now readers of this blog know that I'm not fan of the Obamas. I am politically very conservative. What I am a fan of however is truth and that includes truth about my ideological opponents.

I really don't like that regularly when this comes up, I'm forced to defend the Obamas, but I am. The truth matters more. I want to take down our opponents, but we have to do that with truth and not falsehood. So what do we do?

First, ask yourself if the story you've seen has appeared on any major news network. If it hasn't, it probably isn't true. Nowadays, every controversial decision is blasted from the rooftops. Today, we'd have Clinton and Sanders being asked if they support that decision, Cruz would be decrying it as an example of liberal policies and our turn from God, and we'd know where Trump stands on prayer. Yet despite this supposed event, no one has said a thing about the National Day of Prayer.

Folks. This one is easy really. All you need to do after that step is go to a web search and type in something like "Has the National Day of Prayer 2016 been cancelled?" If it has, you will find out about it. If you think that's not enough, then you will need to do some more.

There are two more sources to check. The first is a site called Truth Or Fiction. I went there and put in "National Day of Prayer" for a search. It looks like according to them that this is an erumor that has circulated before and it's really bad that it gets people every year. You can find out about that here.

Another site I go to is Snopes. So what did I do? I went there and posted "National Day of Prayer" again and what do I get? This. Yes. These rumors abound constantly.

Please keep in mind this was not a large and in-depth research project. This would take at the most about five minutes worth of your time. Now if you're not sure on Facebook if something is true or not, let me give you a good policy to follow. It's awfully complex, but I think you can grasp it.

DON'T SHARE IT!
In fact, if you want to, put the burden on someone else. If they share it, ask them if they have checked it out. Ask them if they have done any searching to see if the account is true or not. Hopefully, something like this could get them to stop spreading false information.

Keep in mind also when I say false information, I mean something that can be said to be demonstrably false by anyone who just does five minutes worth of research. I do not mean "An opinion that disagrees with yours." It could be false. It could not be. There are some matters that do take time to determine the truthfulness of them, like scientific and archaeological claims.

Now why on Earth do I harp on this? Well let's start with Christians. If you're a Christian, you're supposed to be a person of truth. You're supposed to love the truth. When you claim Jesus rose from the dead, you're not claiming just that you've had some sort of personal experience as if you were a Mormon. You're claiming that this is a real event that happened in history. You're claiming a dead man went into a tomb and He came out alive again.
Now of course, I hold that's a true claim, but we should all agree on something. It is a remarkable claim. It is not an everyday claim. It is not a claim that you can do five minutes worth of research and verify or disprove. It is a claim that requires much in-depth study.

You when you say you are a Christian are saying that you hold this claim is true. Your friend who is skeptical is not sure yet. What do they see? They see you sharing a claim they can easily see is false just by a few minutes worth of checking. Why should they bother with the claim that would take much much longer to check? You've already shown you'll believe anything if it goes with what you already believe.

You see, by doing this, you have seriously damaged your reputation. You have shown yourself to be gullible and your non-believing friend will chalk up your Christianity to gullibility. If you have a habit of sharing stories that are false, why should anyone believe you on the grandest story of all that is true?

By the way, a lot of Christians share stuff on Facebook and think that by doing just that, they are doing something. You're not. If you want to look at how something can be done, consider what homosexual activists did with After The Ball. This was about how America would overcome their "hatred" for homosexuality in the 90's and come to love the gay movement. It was a brilliant success, and that group is a much smaller number of the population. They turned something most people found repulsive into something that we are now supposed to celebrate with a Gay Pride Month.

They're actually going out into the world spreading their message. Would that Christians would do the same thing! If Christians took Christ as seriously as the homosexual movement took homosexuality, we could really turn things around in this country. That requires more than just Facebook posting. Of course, what you do on the internet is important, but it goes beyond Facebook.

There are non-Christians of course reading this and you could be feeling pretty good right now about this. After all, here I am, a Christian apologist, going after my fellow Christians on this and saying "Yep. Too many of my fellow Christians are gullible." Brace yourselves. The group that describes itself as guided by reason and defines themselves by rationality can be just as gullible.

When I see internet memes by atheists making arguments, they are often some of the most ridiculous memes I see. Frankly, you should not make arguments by memes period. Memes can be illustrations or a bit of humor and such, but they are never to be arguments in themselves.

Yet if there is one area where atheists regularly fall prey to this gullibility, it is in the area of the historical Jesus. When I see arguments going around about Jesus being a copy of other pagan deities in the dying and rising gods motif or arguments that Jesus never even existed, I just roll my eyes immediately. These arguments are not taken seriously in the field of academia. This is not an open debate any more than evolution is an open debate with biologists or heliocentrism is an open debate with astronomers.

And yet, despite this, internet atheists share this regularly as if they've discovered some great new secret that has escaped notice.

"But Richard Carrier says"

Yes, I know what Carrier says. I also know that many scholars in the world have no idea who he is. The reason he's so hard for some to answer is the same reason people who say the moon landing was a hoax can be hard to answer. It's because the claims looked at are claims not paid attention to by scholars as they rely on esoteric theories that just aren't taken seriously. Carrier regularly goes with the most bizarre reading and most people don't know how to handle that. Mythicism is not taken seriously in academia and there's no sign that that's changing.

Readers of this blog know that I'm not a young-earth creationist (YEC), but if you happen to be a mythicist, you have no place making fun of YECs. There are more academics in the field who question evolution and/or hold to YEC than there are Jesus mythicists. Mythicism should be seen as a conspiracy theory for atheists. If you are a skeptic of Christianity, you owe it to yourself to stop your fellow skeptics who are spreading the idea of mythicism. Most Christians aren't answering any more not because the arguments are too difficult, but because they're too ridiculous.

Fact checking is something everyone should do and with any claim you're wanting to share. For much of what we're talking about, it only takes a few minutes to check a claim. Is it really worth risking having a bad reputation to avoid five minutes worth of checking? Be a person of truth. Check that claim before you share it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

I agree. Mythicism is stupid. Young Earth Creationism is stupid. Both of these belief systems reject scholarship and the overwhelming evidence against their positions.

If we want to live in a rational society, where everyone operates under the mantra that "evidence matters", then we must accept expert opinion. That is why we should accept that miracles are not real. Experts have never confirmed their reality. Proponents, such as Craig Keener, can write thick books giving long lists of miracle claims, but if they have not presented these claims to a panel of experts for review, their long lists of claims are nothing more than a collection of stories. A rational society must be built on evidence, confirmed evidence, not on unconfirmed, anecdotal, emotional claims.

Reject Mythicism. It is not based on evidence.
Reject Young Earth Creationism. It is not based on evidence.
And reject the existence of miracles. Their reality is not based on evidence.

[Sparko]

so you want experts in miracles to weigh in on whether miracles are real or not.

[Gary]

so you want experts in miracles to weigh in on whether miracles are real or not.

I want experts in Medicine to confirm the cause of unexpected and unusual health recoveries. I am unwilling to accept unusual recovery theories based on anecdotal, unconfirmed claims. In the same manner, I want experts in weather prediction (meteorology) to confirm the cause of a weather-related disaster. I am unwilling to accept that a natural disaster is the result of the ill temper of a celestial being without evidence confirmed by experts.

If one wants to believe in metaphysical entities by faith that is one thing, but if you want to claim that the metaphysical has interacted with the real world, you need to provide evidence; evidence that can be confirmed by experts in the relevant field.

[Sparko]

I want experts in Medicine to confirm the cause of unexpected and unusual health recoveries. I am unwilling to accept unusual recovery theories based on anecdotal, unconfirmed claims. In the same manner, I want experts in weather prediction (meteorology) to confirm the cause of a weather-related disaster. I am unwilling to accept that a natural disaster is the result of the ill temper of a celestial being without evidence confirmed by experts.

If one wants to believe in metaphysical entities by faith that is one thing, but if you want to claim that the metaphysical has interacted with the real world, you need to provide evidence; evidence that can be confirmed by experts in the relevant field.

so if a doctor said "his recovery is a miracle" then you would believe in miracles? I doubt it. you would just claim the doctor doesn't know what he is talking about. You will only accept testimony whether from experts or not, that agree with your already held positions. That much is clear from your posts on this site. So what you are really asking for is not "experts" to testify whether miracles are real or not, but "experts" that say they are not real.

[Gary]

so if a doctor said "his recovery is a miracle" then you would believe in miracles? I doubt it. you would just claim the doctor doesn't know what he is talking about. You will only accept testimony whether from experts or not, that agree with your already held positions. That much is clear from your posts on this site. So what you are really asking for is not "experts" to testify whether miracles are real or not, but "experts" that say they are not real.

No. As I have stated previously, we must accept the expert opinion in the relevant field, based on the standards of evaluating evidence in that field. Just because one meteorologist believes that hurricanes are caused by the god Poseidon, does not mean we should accept his opinion. We must look at the consensus position of experts in the field. In the same way with unexpected health recoveries (cures), we should not accept one (or a few) doctor/s' opinion that unusual/unexpected health recoveries are due to the actions of a god. We must look to the consensus position of medical experts and evaluate all health recovery claims based on the standards of evaluating such claims by the expert consensus for Medicine. And the expert standards for medicine would be that an unbiased expert panel evaluate the evidence for an unexpected/unusual health claim, not simply accept the word of one or two doctors involved in the case.

If we want to live in a rational world, we must all agree to accept evidence.

This is the problem with the mythicists. They want to use a different standard of evidence for the historicity of Jesus than is used for other persons from Antiquity. Why do they do this? Answer: They have a bias. So instead of starting with the evidence and forming a conclusion based on that evidence, they do the reverse. Mythicists have decided that Jesus is a myth and have searched for evidence to confirm their preconceived position.

If they want to live in a rational world, they can't do that. Mythicists must look at the evidence for the historical Jesus in the same way they look at evidence for everything else.

And the same is true for miracle healing claims. We must look at the evidence, and examine the evidence for miracle healing claims in the same manner that medical experts evaluate all other health recoveries. We cannot use a different standard of evidence, and this is exactly what Craig Keener is asking us to do. Keener wants us to accept a lower standard of evidence for miracle health recovery claims than what medical experts use for other health recoveries.

If the believers in miracles want to live in a rational world, they must accept the evidence without inserting different standards for evaluating that evidence based on their preconceived beliefs.

[Sparko]

No. As I have stated previously, we must accept the expert opinion in the relevant field, based on the standards of evaluating evidence in that field. Just because one meteorologist believes that hurricanes are caused by the god Poseidon, does not mean we should accept his opinion. We must look at the consensus position of experts in the field. In the same way with unexpected health recoveries (cures), we should not accept one (or a few) doctor/s' opinion that unusual/unexpected health recoveries are due to the actions of a god. We must look to the consensus position of medical experts and evaluate all health recovery claims based on the standards of evaluating such claims by the expert consensus for Medicine. And the expert standards for medicine would be that an unbiased expert panel evaluate the evidence for an unexpected/unusual health claim, not simply accept the word of one or two doctors involved in the case.

You keep moving those goal posts, Gary.

How would all doctors weigh in on a case in a specific location? Wouldn't the doctors on the scene be a better judge of what happened than some doctors reading about it it in some other state or country? Basically you want to set up conditions so that the consensus always is what you want it to be, not what reality is. That much is obvious by your constant moving of goal posts.

Since most experts in Spiritual matters believe in God and the consensus among these experts is that God exists, you should then believe in God. Yet you don't. Because you reject their expert opinions because it doesn't match your own opinion.

[Gary]

You keep moving those goal posts, Gary.

How would all doctors weigh in on a case in a specific location? Wouldn't the doctors on the scene be a better judge of what happened than some doctors reading about it it in some other state or country? Basically you want to set up conditions so that the consensus always is what you want it to be, not what reality is. That much is obvious by your constant moving of goal posts.

Since most experts in Spiritual matters believe in God and the consensus among these experts is that God exists, you should then believe in God. Yet you don't. Because you reject their expert opinions because it doesn't match your own opinion.

My standard (goal posts) for evaluating claims in the real world are irrelevant. If I want to live in a world in which every individual sets his own standards (goal posts) for determining truth, the world will be chaos. I want a world where everyone respects evidence and respects the consensus position of experts in the related fields that study the natural world. And when it comes to Medicine, medical experts do not simply accept the claims of "the doctors present" as fact and close the book. That is not how evidence is evaluated and confirmed in Medicine. Medical experts have set that standard, not me.

The metaphysical (spirituality) has no rules or laws to evaluate. That is why there are so many very different metaphysical views in the world, many of them polar opposites. The metaphysical cannot be evaluated by standards measures of evidence that we use for the natural world. Therefore someone like me cannot say that the metaphysical is non-existent, but someone like you cannot tell me that your version of the metaphysical is the one and only Truth in the universe.

The metaphysical is subjective, the natural world is not.

[Sparko]

My standard (goal posts) for evaluating claims in the real world are irrelevant. If I want to live in a world in which every individual sets his own standards (goal posts) for determining truth, the world will be chaos. I want a world where everyone respects evidence and respects the consensus position of experts in the related fields that study the natural world. And when it comes to Medicine, medical experts do not simply accept the claims of "the doctors present" as fact and close the book. That is not how evidence is evaluated and confirmed in Medicine. Medical experts have set that standard, not me.

The doctors would BE the medical experts, dumbass. If they say it is a miracle, then you should listen to them. You don't have to get a vote from every medical doctor on the planet. Just the ones who were there and know the case. Anyone else is just guessing and giving their own opinions. Yet you won't accept those expert's opinions because they don't agree with what you want. You want to live in a world where all experts agree with you or you will not accept them as experts. That is the truth of the matter.

The metaphysical (spirituality) has no rules or laws to evaluate. That is why there are so many very different metaphysical views in the world, many of them polar opposites. The metaphysical cannot be evaluated by standards measures of evidence that we use for the natural world. Therefore someone like me cannot say that the metaphysical is non-existent, but someone like you cannot tell me that your version of the metaphysical is the one and only Truth in the universe.

The metaphysical is subjective, the natural world is not.

There you go, moving the goal posts AGAIN. Now you reject metaphysics outright and won't accept any experts from that area at all. So how are you supposed to be fair in your evaluation if all you will accept are the opinions of people who don't believe in spiritual things? DERP.

You want to sound egalitarian and claim to want to know the truth and all that, but what you really mean is "since everyone who agrees with me says miracles and god does not exist, that proves god does not exist. "

[Bisto]

I want experts in Medicine to confirm the cause of unexpected and unusual health recoveries. I am unwilling to accept unusual recovery theories based on anecdotal, unconfirmed claims. In the same manner, I want experts in weather prediction (meteorology) to confirm the cause of a weather-related disaster. I am unwilling to accept that a natural disaster is the result of the ill temper of a celestial being without evidence confirmed by experts.

If one wants to believe in metaphysical entities by faith that is one thing, but if you want to claim that the metaphysical has interacted with the real world, you need to provide evidence; evidence that can be confirmed by experts in the relevant field.

Have you checked the links I gave you? They were about this very topic so I assumed you would be interested. You are the doctor here, so you're more qualified than I to say whether they looked credible.

By the way, I don't really think you expect doctors to conclude "the metaphysical has interacted with the real [or, natural] world". I don't see how they would conclude that. In the same manner, I can't imagine how a meteorologist could conclude a god is the cause behind a weather-related disaster (even if one truly was). Do medical and meteorological models have place for it? Do they have heuristics, methodologies, etc. to assess metaphysical hypotheses -- even related to their very areas?

Rather, these people might conclude that to the best of their knowledge, there's no reasonable explanation for a phenomenon in their field, or something like that. I suppose that's what you mean, right?

[Sparko]

Have you checked the links I gave you? They were about this very topic so I assumed you would be interested. You are the doctor here, so you're more qualified than I to say whether they looked credible.

By the way, I don't really think you expect doctors to conclude "the metaphysical has interacted with the real [or, natural] world". I don't see how they would conclude that. Rather, they might conclude that to the best of their knowledge, there's no reasonable explanation for a phenomenon in their field, or something like that. I suppose that's what you mean, right?

Gary is a doctor?


Yeah, right.

[Bisto]

Gary is a doctor?


Yeah, right.

So I've heard. I can't prove it in an absolute way, but I think it's the most reasonable conclusion. There's a small chance he isn't and it's all a lie (or pious embellishment, or cognitive dissonance of some sort, or...), but I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt and dismiss that small chance

[Gary]

The doctors would BE the medical experts, dumbass. If they say it is a miracle, then you should listen to them. You don't have to get a vote from every medical doctor on the planet. Just the ones who were there and know the case. Anyone else is just guessing and giving their own opinions. Yet you won't accept those expert's opinions because they don't agree with what you want. You want to live in a world where all experts agree with you or you will not accept them as experts. That is the truth of the matter.


There you go, moving the goal posts AGAIN. Now you reject metaphysics outright and won't accept any experts from that area at all. So how are you supposed to be fair in your evaluation if all you will accept are the opinions of people who don't believe in spiritual things? DERP.

You want to sound egalitarian and claim to want to know the truth and all that, but what you really mean is "since everyone who agrees with me says miracles and god does not exist, that proves god does not exist. "

You are once again confusing my standards (my goal posts) with that of the experts in the field.

For example, if four doctors in rural China declare to the world that eating a particular shark cartilage will cure all forms of cancer, western medicine is not going to abandon current chemotherapy treatments and start all cancer patients on shark cartilage just because four "experts" think they should.

That is not the standard of evidence for the relevant field in question, Medicine. Medicine has very set standards for evaluating all treatment/cure claims. If we are going to insist that mythicists accept the standards of evidence for historical claims, based on the standards of professional historians and scholars of Antiquity, then we should also accept the standards of evidence for medical claims, based on the standards established by medical experts.

[Sparko]

You are once again confusing my standards (my goal posts) with that of the experts in the field.

For example, if four doctors in rural China declare to the world that eating a particular shark cartilage will cure all forms of cancer, western medicine is not going to abandon current chemotherapy treatments and start all cancer patients on shark cartilage just because four "experts" think they should.

That is not the standard of evidence for the relevant field in question, Medicine. Medicine has very set standards for evaluating all treatment/cure claims.

we are discussing YOUR standards because YOU are the one who seems to be making up the "rules" of what you and everyone should accept. derp.

Sure such a claim would be tested, and run some double-blind tests. But by the very nature of miracles, they are not going to be repeatable and testable. You can't say "gee, this person miraculously lived through braindeath, so let's test it by smashing in the heads of 20 volunteers and see how many come back."

Dang you are so stupid. Not worth discussing anything with you, Gary.

Are you actually claiming to be a physician? What kind?

[Gary]

Have you checked the links I gave you? They were about this very topic so I assumed you would be interested. You are the doctor here, so you're more qualified than I to say whether they looked credible.

By the way, I don't really think you expect doctors to conclude "the metaphysical has interacted with the real [or, natural] world". I don't see how they would conclude that. In the same manner, I can't imagine how a meteorologist could conclude a god is the cause behind a weather-related disaster (even if one truly was). Do medical and meteorological models have place for it? Do they have heuristics, methodologies, etc. to assess metaphysical hypotheses -- even related to their very areas?

Rather, these people might conclude that to the best of their knowledge, there's no reasonable explanation for a phenomenon in their field, or something like that. I suppose that's what you mean, right?

Do you believe that the people who predict the weather on your nightly news channel should base their forecasts on evidence obtained through the scientific method or should they include metaphysical claims, such as that Pastor B. over at such and such Christian Church says he received a message from God that a tornado is going to strike the center of town tomorrow, but, the mullah over at the local mosque says that it will be a glorious, clear day?

Do you really want to live in a world where the metaphysical is given equal (or inferior) credibility to evidence based on the scientific method and the opinions of experts in the field regarding every facet of life? What chaos!

So why use a different standard of evidence for miracle health recovery claims?

Present the health recovery claims to experts to determine their veracity based on the medical field's experts' own standards of evaluating health recovery claims, not based on each person's own standards, or each religion's own standards.

[Gary]

we are discussing YOUR standards because YOU are the one who seems to be making up the "rules" of what you and everyone should accept. derp.

Sure such a claim would be tested, and run some double-blind tests. But by the very nature of miracles, they are not going to be repeatable and testable. You can't say "gee, this person miraculously lived through braindeath, so let's test it by smashing in the heads of 20 volunteers and see how many come back."

Dang you are so stupid. Not worth discussing anything with you, Gary.

Are you actually claiming to be a physician? What kind?

ALL extra-ordinary claims must be evaluated by experts in the relevant field using the standards of experts in that field. This applies to Jesus-doubters (mythicists) and miracle-believers. You can't have one standard for one group and a different standard for another. All events which occur within the natural world must be evaluated in the same manner, using the same standards of evidence.

A case in which someone was allegedly brain dead and then fully recovered can be evaluated by medical experts without going to the extremes you suggest. The experts would review all the medical records and interview the patient, doctors, nurses, and family and friends. Although the expert panel would most likely not come to a conclusion that a miracle happened, they could come back with a statement saying that there is no known natural explanation for this person's recovery. The recovery defies all laws of medicine and science. Therefore a supernatural explanation/miracle would be within the realm of possible explanations.