On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 11:30:29 -0700 (PDT) Chris Doss
<lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
>
> --- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> In the case of (A), positive evidence for a
> categorically
> metaphysical entity, strictly speaking, cannot be
> provided, and
> claims for positive evidence for its manifestations in
> nature are
> either easily debunked hoaxes (like claims of
> miracles)
>
> ---
>
> How do you know all claims of miracles are easily
> debunked hoaxes? Have you studied them all? No, you
> haven't. You're just assuming it a priori because your
> worldview says such things don't exist. This is a
> faith-based claim. It is a claim I tend to agree with,
> but that does not mean it is not a faith-based claim.
Well there is David Hume's famous critique of the miraculous, "Of Miracles" in his *Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding* http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Dye/HumeOfMiracles.html
As I understand Hume, he was not arguing that miracles, per se, were impossible. In fact given his analysis of causality and such, I don't think he could have framed such an argument. Rather, he was arguing that there were no good reasons for us to accept as valid, any reports of alleged miracles. For Hume, it was always more probable that for any such a report, we were either dealing a a purely natural event that was not well understood by its obervers, or the reports in question were due to fraud or delusion. The probability that any given event was a genuine miracle was always less than the probability that the event in question was either a misunderstood natural phenomenon or was due to fraud or delusion. All the evidence on behalf of miracles, according to Hume, paled in comparison with the totality of evidence for a universe of natural laws.
>
> Doesn't the Roman Catholic Church have a pretty
> rigorous (whatever that means in this context)
> miracle-hoax-debunking process? They're not morons.
As I understand it, what they do is have physicians and scientists scrutinize an alleged miracle to see if there is a natural explanation for it. If no such explanation can be found, then depending on the Church's agenda, it may or may not then be declared a miracle. But of course, the fact that a good natural explanation may be currently lacking does not mean that such will be the case in the future. Indeed, one consequence of the progress of science, is that there is a lot less room for miracles now a days, since events, that in the past would have been labeled as being miraculous are now scientifically explicable. The Church might make the argument that the scientist's confidence that unexplained events might eventually be explained in naturalistic terms, is as much a faith-based claim as the Church's claim that there are events that will never be understood by science. Maybe so, but it is the Church's stance that promotes superstition and obscurantism, and thus constitutes an impediment to inquiry, whereas the scientist's confidence in the possibility of a natural explanation that promotes further inquiry, even if we are never able to attain a full understanding of the universe.
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
>
>
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