This has mostly been my line with the never-ending debate about the resurrection of Jesus. Well, whether or not that seems plausible to you depends upon the prior belief in God. Once you believe in the God - let's just say the God of classical theism, despite the also never-ending debate about the problems therein - getting a so-called miracle is really a 'so what' affair.
The real trouble occurs with the gates this opens up. It becomes increasingly difficult to deny the miracle claims of others who also have theories based on a similar kind of deity (or deities).
Things then move on to an attempt to establish how much more rational your miracle claims are, but interestingly, in order to have that debate requires arguing from the basis of a different epistemology. How do you objectively determine a way of comparing the likelihood of this miracle versus that miracle without importing criteria that undermine the epistemic basis for your belief in miracles in the first place? For example, many Christians will want to say that their miracle claims (e.g., the death and resurrection of Jesus) have a much more 'rational justification' than other miracle claims. But look at their arguments. The arguments are always (or often) some Bayesian cumulative case about the probabilities of this or that thing making the resurrection likelier. Well, if we're going that route, now tell me what the probability is for the Christian belief system as a whole to be true. What's the probability that your version of God is the right one? What's the probability that a creator God exists that personally interacts with the universe, or who performs miracles? It's likelier because the tomb was empty! Wonderful, but now deal with the fact that if we are arguing on the basis of physical facts (like empty tombs), someone can easily say that sort of analysis makes the probability of a resurrection zero. "But, an empty tomb!" says the believer. To which someone can say, "But the impossibility of bodily resurrection!"
CHIRO 0 points 1.8 years ago
I would agree.
This has mostly been my line with the never-ending debate about the resurrection of Jesus. Well, whether or not that seems plausible to you depends upon the prior belief in God. Once you believe in the God - let's just say the God of classical theism, despite the also never-ending debate about the problems therein - getting a so-called miracle is really a 'so what' affair.
The real trouble occurs with the gates this opens up. It becomes increasingly difficult to deny the miracle claims of others who also have theories based on a similar kind of deity (or deities).
Things then move on to an attempt to establish how much more rational your miracle claims are, but interestingly, in order to have that debate requires arguing from the basis of a different epistemology. How do you objectively determine a way of comparing the likelihood of this miracle versus that miracle without importing criteria that undermine the epistemic basis for your belief in miracles in the first place? For example, many Christians will want to say that their miracle claims (e.g., the death and resurrection of Jesus) have a much more 'rational justification' than other miracle claims. But look at their arguments. The arguments are always (or often) some Bayesian cumulative case about the probabilities of this or that thing making the resurrection likelier. Well, if we're going that route, now tell me what the probability is for the Christian belief system as a whole to be true. What's the probability that your version of God is the right one? What's the probability that a creator God exists that personally interacts with the universe, or who performs miracles? It's likelier because the tomb was empty! Wonderful, but now deal with the fact that if we are arguing on the basis of physical facts (like empty tombs), someone can easily say that sort of analysis makes the probability of a resurrection zero. "But, an empty tomb!" says the believer. To which someone can say, "But the impossibility of bodily resurrection!"