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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 28, 2009 9:51:27 GMT
I think this forum needs a thread to connect all the strands of discussion. I will attempt to do so now.
Obviously, I am writing as a Catholic and my primary intention is to create a debate on alleged supernatural and preternatural manifestations. But I am also conscious that the contribution of people who are not Catholic nor Christian nor believers to be very valuable.
Dostoyevsky said somewhere (I think in the Brothers Karamazov, but it could well be in the Idiot) that when it comes to miracles, believers take it as confirmation of their beliefs, but that an atheist would rather disbelieve their own senses. I choose the word 'confirmation' rather than 'proof' (that's how I remember the book, but I did not read it in Russian) as I think that is the sense Dostoyevsky meant it. Believers see a report of a mystical occurance or an apparantly inexplicable cure and see the work of God. Non-believers look for another explanation. Very few people become believers as a result of the mystical unless it touches them very personally.
The point about this topic is that it is all accidental. It is not central to the faith. Public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Anything further is private revelation. Some of this, the Church accepts, confirms to be consistent with the Catholic faith and permits the faithful to incorporate it into their personal faith life, but never requires them so to do. It is possible to be a good Catholic and believe that Our Lady did not appeared at Lourdes, Fatima or Knock and no Pope or bishop may demand you do otherwise. In another context, I think it a weakness in the traditional movement that so much emphasis is placed on the Fatima apparitions. I say this as someone who personally believes in those apparitions, who has been influenced by them and who has been to Fatima. But Fatima is subsidiary to the Magesterium of the Church. For example, to say that Our Lady requires the Pope to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart with all the Bishops in the world and that he and they must obey is false: Our Lady is subject to the Pope and diocesan bishops and may not order them around. Yet many traditionalist Catholic attribute the troubles in the Church and the World to this lapse on the part of Popes since Pius XII. It is interesting that the enduring apparitions tend to follow rather than lead the Church: Lourdes came some years after the declaration of the Immaculate Conception; and for all the talk of the conversion of Russia in Fatima and its anticipation of the revolution, papal interest in Russia's conversion goes back Leo XIII in the 1890s and the prayers after the traditional Low Mass, including the well known prayer to St Michael Archangel, instituted by him were for the conversion of Russia from Orthodoxy to Catholicism and for the emancipation of Catholics in Russia (which largely happened when Peter Stolypin was prime minister under Nicholas II).
But any way, if there be principles here, the first one is that when a plausible natural explanation exists for a miraculous event or a diabolical possession or a purported prophecy, it should be always accepted rather than claim the work of God or devil; that nobody's faith should be predicated on the miraculous or on manifestations of these kind - this is evident in the episode on exorcisms over the alleged film of Anneliese Michel - Guillaume may well have been right that this was the voice of the devil on film, I find it credible that the film was authentic and the girl was possessed, but I don't believe that this constitutes anything near like objective proof. I think the intervention of Harris bore that out - with the advance of scientific knowledge, particularly in medicine and psychiatry, the bar for demonic possession or miraculous cures is significantly higher. For all that, events do occur which are inexplicable - I have heard that cases judged to be miraculous at Lourdes include restoration of parts of organs in individuals which medical records testify to have been missing (I am a bit obscure - the case I recall is of someone who had a substantial section of their small intestine removed due to cancer and was then found on examination to have had a complete healthy small intestine). Later medical advances may come up with reasons why this might happen, but at the moment there is no explanation, so we can say miracle.
I remember a discussion I had with a secular Jewish friend of mine when I was at my 'searching' stage and he mentioned St Francis of Assissi whom he found inspiring. I mentioned St Francis' stigmata, which he found intriguing. I cited the example of Padre Pio, now St Pio, as a twentieth century example of the same (we were still in the last century). My friend (though not a practicing Jew, he did believe in God) answered that seemed to him to be a proof for Christ's divinity. My response was that it was not so of itself - it rather showed how powerful the mind is, that it may have been possible through intense meditation on the Passion to bring the wounds of Christ onto one's own body. We are talking about para-psychology here, which probably hasn't much of a scientific basis either, but what I am saying is that the stigmata in an individual is not of itself evidence of the supernatural either.
Anyway, this is an attempted start and I would like to hear your opinions too.
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Post by hibernicus on May 28, 2009 13:58:06 GMT
I am not altogether sure that this is so simple as Alasdair makes out. It is certainly the case that running around looking for signs and wonders is not to be recommended; God vouchsafes these as He chooses. It is also the case that a Humean sceptic would not believ in miracles if one occurred in front of him; the question is whether a consistent Humean sceptic could believe in anything at all. This is the point I have been trying to get across to Hazel, and which he constantly evades; if he really employed the sort of all-the-way-down scepticism in his daily life as he claims to apply to religion and metaphysics, he would never get out of bed in the morning. To equate the possibility that God exists with the possibility that we are dreams in the minds of trolls with apple pies for heads and bananas for toes (a self-contradictory point, for apple pies cannot sustain cognition and bananas are not toes, and entities with those properties would be so different from bananas and apple pies that the terms could not be used to describe tem) is exactly the same as declaring that miracles are impossible a priori - a proclamation that the speaker's mind is so tightly closed that no evidence can open it. At the same time, there is a long tradition of seeing ecclesiastical miracles as Divine testimony in favour of the Church; this is why Newman (with his strong sense of the Church) was so interested in them. Catholic apologeticists (particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) used to argue that the persistence of miracles in the Catholic Church, while the mainstream Protestant denominations generally held that miracles ceased with the Apostolic Age, was evidence that Catholicism and not Protestantism was the true form of Christianity. (Of course an exchange with Protestants who accept the authority of the Gospels will discuss this on somewhat different terms from an exchange with those who do not and are therefore not bound to the autheniticity of the miracle-narratives.) In particular, the reason why formal canonisation has traditionally been held to be infallible is because of the requirement of miracles in the process of beatification and canonisation; the rationale for this requirement was that such miracles were a sign of divine endorsement of the person's Cause, and to cast doubt on authenticated miracles was to cast doubt on God's decrees. I confess this view makes me slightly uncomfortable because our ability to discern natural and supernatural causes has improved so tremendously since the first formal canonisations in the eleventh century. Is this view simply a predominant theological opinion, or is it definitive?
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Post by hazelireland on May 29, 2009 7:06:44 GMT
Hibernicus,
I am not sure if you continue to misunderstand me or just enjoy lying about me in an attempt to either make your self look good. However I equated no such thing as you suggest above and last time you made this false claim I explained my position a second time. The fact you continue to mis-represent me is a failing on your part, not mine.
No, I merely said that the sceptic acknowledges that anything is possible, from gods to trolls as stated above. They are not equivalent in any way OTHER than the fact I have been shown Zero evidence for either.
This is the only level at which I equate them, so please get off your high horse and stop lying about what I have said. Or is what I said SO powerful that you find it easier in your mind to cope with things you put in my mouth instead?
In essence no, a sceptic would not accept a miracle that happened in front of him without complete inquiry into the matter. In other words we do not just believe just because we can. We look for reasons to believe.
However it is possible what you are trying to say is that a sceptic will in essence pre-suppose that no matter what he sees he will NEVER accept it as a miracle. This would be wrong. There is a large different between not accepting something until given reason to do so, and pre-deciding what you will or will not accept. The latter is NOT true. I will personally happily accept miracles and gods upon being given reason to do so. I promise you that.
I do agree that running around looking for signs is not to be recommended however. At least on this one thing you are correct. Too many people do that based on the assumption they are right but that they then must find what fits this. The bible however admonishes you to do just that and tells us “Seek and you shall find”. However the faults of such an approach are clear, and one need look no further than the people who think the number 23 controls everything (yes they are a real group) to see just how and why this is a bad plan.
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Post by hazelireland on May 29, 2009 7:16:55 GMT
I would disagree with that. The definition of science I hear most subscribed to is that in science we “seek natural explanations” for things. This does not pre-negate the supernatural; it just says “Let us see if there IS a natural explanation first”.
If it were in my power I would therefore write your comment like this:
“when it comes to miracles, believers take it as confirmation of their beliefs, but that a sceptic would rather check for a natural explanation first”.
A few lines later you did say this:
which is more correct but it is hard to tell which you actually subscribe to.
The best example I heard was a man telling me of having a beer in his neighbours. The neighbour was always big into ghosts. Suddenly they noticed a lampshade vibrating and moving around and around and up and down by itself. “How can you not believe now, the very evidence is before you!” cried the neighbour, “you choose to deny your own sense now rather than Believe???”.
The man however was unperturbed and circles the room many times, looking at the lamp shade and the room from all directions. Eventually he stopped down and unplugged a small electric fan they had been using to keep cool. The lampshade came to a stand still.
The sceptic here did not choose to “disbelieve their own senses” and be close minded. In fact it was the “believer” who was close minded as he had decided on one explanation and would hear of no others. The sceptic in fact stayed open minded, and used his senses to search for an explanation.
It is a common tactic to accuse those who disagree with you of being pre-biased against you. As if no amount of argument or evidence will sway you, because you are close minded and hostile to what you think is the truth. The opposite is, as I said, true. To decide your explanation is right and to hear of no others is the close minded approach.
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Post by hazelireland on May 29, 2009 7:27:45 GMT
Yes, I will concede that point to you. It is indeed possible that just because we find a natural explanation for something does not mean that it is NOT god doing it.
For example the lamp shade I mentioned above. Who is to say 100% that the “ghost” did not just decide at that moment to stop anyway?
Remember: Nothing in science is proved 100%. Nothing, anywhere. It has just never happened.
It is this very thing Occam was talking about with his “razor”. People think that what he said was “The simplest answer is always the right one”. This is in fact erroneous. What the razor says is that when you have an answer that works, why introduce extra elements to further complicate it?
In other words it could have been a ghost, and it could have been god, but if we cut out such assumptions and the model/explanation still works then go ahead and cut them out.
One is reminded of Laplace saying “Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" or “I had no need of that hypothesis”, when replying to Napoleon who askes why there was no god in his work on astronomy.
Remember Science has not and may never disprove gods. This is true. However the discourse between Science and Religion has only ever gone in one direction. Ask yourself if you can think of a single thing for which we have had a scientific explanation for which now we have a replacement religious one. Ask the question the opposite way around too. You will see instantly Science erodes the areas religion has held on to but never has it gone the other way.
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Post by hibernicus on May 29, 2009 10:26:21 GMT
Hazel praises Occam's Razor but he does not observe it himself. He declares not only that I am mistaken in my interpretation of the views which he has expressed, which is a hypothesis that I am prepared to entertain for the sake of argument, in the same way that St. Thomas Aquinas begins the SUMMA THEOLOGICA by stating the arguments against God's existence before refuting them, but that I am lying - that is to say, stating something that I know to be false. In doing this, he has said something which I know to be false, for I have direct knowledge of my own motives and he has not. If my statements are false they are false whether I am a liar or not, if they are true they are true even if I believe them to be false. Thus he has unnecessarily multiplied the entities. This is why direct accusations of lying should be excluded from debate unless the party who makes them is prepared to prove them, because once they are made the argument is no longer about the subject matter of the debate but about the bona fides of the persons making the assertions. This is why I was wrong to accuse Noelfitz of being a spoofer on insufficient evidence, and why I would have apologised to him even if he had not threatened to destroy this board with a libel suit.
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Post by hibernicus on May 29, 2009 11:36:38 GMT
Hazel is also confusing Occam with Hume (whether Hume's position logically follows from Occam's is matter for debate). His case of the fan mistaken for a ghost would only hold true if we said that ALL reported miracles are really such, or that it was wrong to investigate the possibility that they had natural causes. We never denied any such thing; I have repeatedly pointed visitors to this board in the direction of the works of Fr. Herbert Thurston SJ, which display a searching scepticism towards many alleged miracles (it was he, for example, who discovered mediaeval testimony that the Shroud of Turin was a forgery which, although it does not settle the matter beyond doubt, certainly imposes a heavy burden on those who claim its authenticity; and he wrote extensively on the likelihood that many alleged mystics were actually neurotics who consciously or unconsciously induced their own supposedly miraculous symptoms) while at the same time affirming the possibility of miracle and declaring that by all the rules of historical testimony many of those which he investigated appeared genuine). Hazel is extrapolating from a case where a natural explanation is quite clear to assert that where there is no clear natural explanation (I would adduce for example the miraculous cure of a man with a withered leg, described, complete with photographs, by Ruth Harris, herself an agnostic, in her book on Lourdes) there is probably one somewhere and therefore the possibility of miracle can be ruled out. Hume's extension of Occam holds that explanations which posit supernatural entities are ALWAYS examples of unnecessary multiplication of entities; that we can safely assume that any apparently supernatural event has a natural cause, that if a possible natural cause exists this should always be assumed to be the real cause and that if no natural cause can be found it is safer to assume that there is an undiscovered natural cause, or that the witnesses are lying. Clearly someone who believes this will NEVER accept the possibility of a miracle, no matter how much evidence is adduced in its favour, because he has decided in advance that no such evidence can exist. I don't like posting chunks of text in these boxes, but as I am not a philosopher and have not studied this question in depth I went over Wikipedia's entry on Occam's Razor and use it to make a few relevant points: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor and draw on it in making this reply. The first point is that Occam's razor is a methodological tool for use in investigations, not a means of arriving at certainty, and what counts as a "simple answer" will itself be shaped by the analyst's expectations. This is why it is so important to spell out the assumptions behind your arguments when you are challenged to do so, because it allows others to explore the possibility that your results have been shaped by your expectations and to be guided by this when looking for flaws in your argumentation:- (WIKIPEDIA) The problem of deciding between competing explanations for empirical facts cannot be solved by formal tools. Simplicity principles can be useful heuristics in formulating hypotheses, but they do not make a contribution to the selection of theories. A theory that is compatible with one person’s world view will be considered simple, clear, logical, and evident, whereas what is contrary to that world view will quickly be rejected as an overly complex explanation with senseless additional hypotheses. Occam’s razor, in this way, becomes a “mirror of prejudice.”[17] [END OF EXTRACT] The second is that the misuse or misunderstanding of it in this way has been shown to obstruct understanding - it's not a simple conflict between religious credulity and secular wisdom; not only may misuse of Occam obscure the possibility of genuine supernatural occurrences, but it has led observers to adopt apparently simple natural explanations (usually fraud) of apparently supernatural phenomenon and then to assert that anyone who failed to accept this explanation was a fool or a party to the fraud, with the result that the discovery of the real natural explanation (considerably more complicated) was delayed. For example, eighteenth-century philosophes declared that only superstitious fools could believe meteorites fell from the sky, since this APPARENTLY contradicts the law of gravity, and had many meteorites thrown out of museums as worthless: [WIKIPEDIA] However, on many occasions Occam's razor has stifled or delayed scientific progress.[17] For example, appeals to simplicity were used to deny the phenomena of meteorites, ball lightning, continental drift, and reverse transcriptase. It originally rejected DNA as the carrier of genetic information in favor of proteins, since proteins provided the simpler explanation. Theories that reach far beyond the available data are rare, but General Relativity provides one example. In hindsight, one can argue that it is simpler to consider DNA as the carrier of genetic information, because it uses a smaller number of building blocks (four nitrogenous bases). However, during the time that proteins were the favored genetic medium, it seemed like a more complex hypothesis to confer genetic information in DNA rather than proteins. [END] As this post is getting very long I will continue the argument in another when I find time. Thinking through an argument and replying to it is a time-consuming process; it's far simply to snark and sulk.
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Post by hazelireland on May 29, 2009 12:26:08 GMT
Hibernicus,
If I believe you to be lying I will point it out. I am not admonished to leave it out of anything. In the post above, like many of your posts about me, you have outright lied.
I am also not mixing up Occam and Hume. I was talking of Occams Razor, nothing of Hume. I am perfectly aware of who I am talking about.
“it's far simply to snark and sulk” – That explains why you do it so often then! Judging by how you act you also find it simpler to argue with people in your head rather than argue with what they actually said.
Example:
I at no point, no point _at all_ said this. Not once. Not ever. Never. It just did not happen.
Just like I did when you said I “equate the possibility that God exists with the possibility that we are dreams in the minds of trolls” you have whole sale invented something I NEVER said and claimed I did. In fact, here is me saying the exact opposite:
How many times must I ask PLEASE STOP LYING ABOUT WHAT I SAY?
I ask for the second time is what I said SO powerful that you find it easier in your mind to cope with things you put in my mouth instead?
Or do you even read what I write? Do you just find a few key words and just decide what it is I am saying despite or, or often as above IN spite, of what I actually said?
It is like you have a record you want to keep playing and you say what you intend to say regardless of how untrue it is, how irrelevant it is, or what the other person has... in fact.... actually said.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 24, 2009 9:54:53 GMT
One response to Hazel above is that Science and Religion is not about competing teams but parallel leagues. Science is debating with itself, constantly and it has revised its opinion many times. Religion is informed by science, and always has been, but its point of reference is totally different. In the case of Judaeo-Christianity and Islam, it proceeds from revelation.
Religion always had a problem with contemporary science and sometimes adopted views which science itself later discarded. St Boniface, for example, condemned St Fergal in the 700s because he appeared to believe men lived in the Antipodes. At the time, the consensus of science was to follow Ptolomy's view that the equator was so warm that man couldn't cross it. So Boniface inferred Fergal was a heretic. Pope Zachary refused to condemn Fergal, mainly because Fergal said he was following the authority of St Jerome, who was familiar with Greek texts which spoke of a great southern continent. Likewise, the confrontation of Gallileo and the Church would have been greatly ameliorated if the Church did not accept the scientific consensus of the day that the universe was geocentric. Gallileo pushed things a bit by attempted to teach Cardinals theology though.
To take one of the more recent science/religion controversies - Darwin found himself confronting the Protestant Churches rather than the Catholic Church on evolution and one early supporter of his was the Abbot of Brünn (now Brno), Father Gregor Mendel OSA who is the father of modern genetics. Pius XII's encyclical 'Humani Generis' outlined that evolution was not incompatible with Catholicism long before Vatican II reforms. Which outlines the by-word we need here. It is not a question of competition but compatibility. And as you know, science is constantly changing. So today's consensus may have to be radically altered tomorrow.
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Post by hazelireland on Jun 24, 2009 10:14:29 GMT
Alaisdir6, thanks for this response. Of course Science will change it’s opinion. This is a given. Science merely is the current best explanations for the data we have to hand. As new data comes in, science will by that very definition change. This is in fact one of Science great strengths, although many would like to put it forward as a weakness.
I also agree that religion often adopts views with science has later disregarded. I think this is a very important statement you make. It should be noted, and I said it many times before but I will always repeat it, that the dialogue between Science and Religion only ever goes in one direction. There is nothing in our discourse for which Science once had the best explanation for which Religion now has the best explanation. However there are many things on the converse attitude. History is littered with areas of our knowledge for which Religion was once the best explanation we had, for which now the scientific one is the best one.
I think that dichotomy alone says so much of importance that it is worth considering deeply and at length.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 24, 2009 11:41:22 GMT
I think the point is that both religion and science are subsets of philosophy - science seeks to explain the natural world, religion expounds both on the supernatural and the moral realm. From the very beginning, it was somehow linked with science, however primitive. When Christianity embraced Greek philosophy and science in its early generations, it was inevitable that Christianity would follow science, even if from time to time, there were apparant contradictions between revelation and scientific discovery. The definitive rule seems to be that Christianity reads its scriptures in the light of scientific consensus rather than teaching science subordinate to its understanding of scripture - though the popularity of the intelligent design movement or creation science is taking hold among certain evangelical Protestant Churches. By and large, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, mainstream Protestant and Judaism do not challenge science on its ground. Controversy that emerges, vis-a-vis Catholicism, often regards what Catholicism takes from science - eg, that human life begins at conception and than once conceived, a right of life exists. But the issue of rights is not scientific, but legal and/or moral and at that point the discourse enters a different sphere.
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Post by hazelireland on Jun 24, 2009 14:31:23 GMT
Indeed alaisdir, and there is a reason why there is "somehow" a link between science, philosophy and religion. Science seeks to explain the natural world and philosophy to explain the workings of our mind within it. Religion was both of these things too.
Essentially Religion is just a failed Science and a failed Philosophy. It was our species first, and worst, attempt to explain the natural world (Science) and our place within it (Philosophy).
Now however, as I said above, the conversation between them and Religion is only going in one direction, with a steady erosion of the place of Religion in either.
This of course does not prove gods real or not, but it does prove them superfluous to requirements. "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" as Pierre-Simon Laplace was reported to have said when asked why god was not present in his work on Astronomy. This notion, of course, explains perfectly why "Christianity would follow science". It follows logically from my definition.
You may say that a moral argument on the human right to life leaves the realm of science, but that does not mean we require religion by default. We are perfectly capable of establishing and defending moral rules without it.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 26, 2009 12:17:20 GMT
They must, to keep their certitude, accuse All who are different of a base intent - WB Yeats. This reminds me of Hazel.
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Post by hazelireland on Jun 29, 2009 20:59:31 GMT
If you have something relevant to the thread to say Hibernicus I am agog to hear it. If you instead wish to keep up this campaign of personal attacks, lies, wholesale invention of comments from me that I never said, and side comments about me and what reminds you of me, may I suggest you mature up a bit and act your age? Some decorum please, you represent yourself horribly here which not only demeans yourself, but any argument you present or any position you propose to hold on this board by proxy.
In other words if you do not want to act maturely for the sake of politeness to me or of general decorum, then at least do it for the faith you propose to hold as you rubbish not only yourself but it too in this petty campaign.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 30, 2009 11:06:19 GMT
OK, let's see if Hazel accepts this as relevant to the issue under discussion. Hazel says that Occam's Razor can be used to eliminate the plausibility of supernatural entities, but Occam's Razor itself is based on the concept of divine economy - that God is perfectly simple and can therefore be assumed to work by the simplest methods. How well does it work without this underpinning?
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