Evaluating Miracles of God (Christian View)



Evaluating Miracles of God (Christian View)In a previous blog, I established that miracles of God can be considered plausible (or “equally possible/probable”) explanations for certain phenomena in some circumstances. In this blog, I wish to go about establishing how one might actually go about identifying miraculous events and possibly demonstrate that some such events may have in fact actually occurred in history.In the first place, when speaking of miraculous acts of God, it has to be said that insisting on using the rigid Enlightenment categories of “supernatural” vs. “natural” types of events, is a complete misnomer in my view (as surprising as that might seem given my attempts to claim supernatural events were plausible or equally probable in a previous blog). Instead, what I think is important in evaluating various miracle claims, is the question of intelligent design; specifically having a set of “divine design detection devices” or rather a set of sound criteria based on which one can go about detecting events that demonstrate a divine design plan at play. God uses “miracles” (whether extraordinary natural or supernatural events) for various purposes or end goals and such events can be identified as playing a part in fulfilling those said goals of God.Thus, asking questions about the nature of a given event or alleged “miracle”, trying to figure out whether it be supernatural or merely a natural anomaly, etc. is simply beside the point for me, I only care about identifying divine design and that is what really mattered to me in how I came to faith in Jesus.Detecting Intelligent Design (in General)- William Dembski’s “Specified Complexity” Criteria Since we are essentially concerned with identifying instances of intelligent divine design, it behooves us to first ask the question of how one might rationally infer such is the case in general; what criteria can one use to make such a conclusion?Intelligent Design (ID) proponent, Dr. William Dembski, has provided a notion deemed “Specified Complexity” as the criteria by which we as humans can be warranted (and/or minimally at least “rationally justified” as the minimal epistemic requirement that I base my own argument for Miracles) in making intelligent design inferences. Dembski himself is well known for applying his criteria to the Evolution vs. Creation debate in particular (see some of the sources below on that front), but for our purposes it is important to note that the criteria of “Specified Complexity”, by which one can identify and rationally infer intelligent design has a much broader application in applying to all potential instances whereby one might detect design. These general indicators can apply to any and all aspects of life and/or fields of study, including perhaps, the possible identification of “miraculous” events that are orchestrated by God and which are “designed” to achieve various divine purposes or goals.Let’s begin by considering various cases where “design” is readily identifiable and that virtually everyone on the planet agrees that intelligent design must indeed be present;A tourist travels to Mount Rushmore and wonders how the rocks came to have their current configuration. Did wind and erosion produce this modern marvel, no it was obviously designed by an intelligent designer/agent.The ancient Roman Senator Cicero (46 B.C.) wondered whether if the 21 letters of the Latin alphabet were fashioned from gold and thrown into a single receptacle, shaken up and then scattered onto the ground randomly, whether they would be able to reproduce his favorite verse from the Annals of Ennius. Of course not, only an intelligent designer can make that happen! As Oxford mathematician Dr. John Lennox likes to say, if one were to see the words “John loves Sally” etched into the sand on the beach, the semiotic dimension alone would be enough to tip us off that an intelligent designer must have written them and they could not possibly be the product of nature and chance alone.If one’s name is Bob and was born on Jan 5th, 1981 and, one year on their birthday, they receive a car with the license plate reading “BOB 1581”, one would have to be an absolute fool to think that plate number came about by sheer chance alone.The Encyclopedia Britannica once suspected others of plagiarizing their material via paraphrasing their work. To test this, they purposefully put bogus fake biographies of imaginary people to see what would happen. Sure enough, those rival Encyclopedias turned up with their own articles of the non-existent people. They were subsequently sued for violation of copyright laws. Does anyone think the courts were wrong to side in favour of the plaintiff, does anyone think it was all just one big coincidence?The murder mystery plot to the movie Double Indemnity entails a series of circumstantial facts that allow them to rule out an accidental death via the victim falling off the train and instead the hero concludes that foul play (aka. foul intelligent design) must have been involved in his death ((film) ). Finally, the SETI program is designed to detect Extraterrestrial radio signals of various types in order to prove that intelligent life exists. Let’s assume that one day they discover a signal which repeats a sequence of prime numbers. It would be at this point there would be no doubt that intelligent life exists (or existed) in outer space; who would deny it- only a sheer fool, that’s who! What is it that tips us off in all of these cases that intelligent design must be involved? Well, it is the presence of “Specified complexity” that undergirds the design inference in all these cases. It is common knowledge that, exhaustively speaking, there are a total of three possible explanations for the occurrence of any given event or phenomenon in the universe, either it is due to; i) Necessity (Regularity via the Laws of Nature- a high to absolute 100% probability of occurrence), ii) Chance (a random low to medium/intermediate probability of occurrence) and iii) Design (an intelligent agent “designs” a low/small probability event to occur). This is known as the “Trichotomy Rule”.Given this explanatory “rule”, Dembski proceeds to outline his “Explanatory Filter” for how one can eliminate regularity and random chance as explanations and arrive at a “design” inference; first one asks if the event has a high probability of occurring, if yes then it is ruled to be a “Regularity”. If no, then one must ask if the event has a medium or intermediate probability of occurring, if the answer is yes, then one may attribute its occurrence to random chance. If not, and the event has a sufficiently small/low probability of occurrence (thus, fulfilling the “Complexity” criterion of Dembski’s notion), then one may begin to assess whether the event in question is also a “Specified” event or not and depending on the answer to that question, one can determine if the event is due to chance or intelligent design. An event passing through the various levels of this filter represents the fulfillment of “Specified complexity”.The logic of this filter-based design inference is presented in the form of a 6-premise deductive argument on p.48 of Dembski’s book entitled, “The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities”; it is given as follows;Premise #1- The event in question has and/or can be proven to have occurred.Premise #2- The event is “specified”. Premise #3- If the event is due to chance, then it has a small probability of occurrence. Premise #4- Specified events of small probability do not occur by chance.Premise #5- The event is not due to a regularity (i.e. high probability occurrence) nor an intermediate probability chance event.Premise #6- The event is due either to a regularity, random chance, or design (the “Trichotomy Rule”). Conclusion: Therefore, the event is due to design.There is one final overall issue to resolve here, how exactly does one go from a “design” inference to inferring the designer was an “intelligent” one (i.e. an agent)? At face value, it might seem obvious that the detection of design entails intelligent agency and that assumption is in fact quite correct, but why?The reason is that one of the necessary traits of an intelligent agent is their ability to actualize “directed contingencies”; in other words, to make “deliberate/purposeful choices” (specifically “deliberate/directed choices” aimed at achieving a purpose or end goal as per the “Rationality” criterion whereby one makes a choice to eliminate various options by actualizing one possible option vs. others through a deliberation process so; the deliberateness is the “end purpose/goal” or specification aspect and the actualization/elimination is the “choice” or complexity part of the equation). Intelligent agents are able to discriminate amoung various possible options and actualize one contingent option over and against other various contingent options. Scientists and psychologists have shown that a rat often makes choices to go left or right in a maze all the time, but this alone does not indicate the rat’s movements are “intelligently designed”. For that kind of inference, one would also need to establish a specified pattern that the rat’s choices conform to before one can infer that the rat has in fact learned how to escape the maze and that their movements are “designed” to accomplish that goal as opposed to their just wandering around randomly and getting lucky (of course such inferences require the maze to be sufficiently complex as well to warrant the design conclusion). Thus, in recognizing intelligent agency, one tries to identify a triad of “Actualization-Exclusion-Specification” whereby the agent actualizes one state of affairs and thereby excludes other potential states from coming into being according to a specified end goal or purpose (i.e. they make a deliberate choice directed toward fulfilling an end goal/purpose). This coincidently, happens to cohere with the “Specified complexity” explanatory filter for identifying design as outlined above and hence why design, once detected, automatically entails the notion of intelligent agency.So, with that said, what exactly does it mean for a given event to indicate design, what does “Specified Complexity” mean?The Specification CriterionThe “Specification” criterion relates to the nature of a specific “pattern” whereby a description corresponds to some prescribed event (i.e. there is a “description-correspondence” pairing) and given this definition one can assess if a given event conforms or not to a given pattern. It is the presence of a “pattern” that allows us to “delimit” events in seeing if they conform or not. An example of this might be if one were to stumble across an arrow stuck in a tree through the bulls-eye of a painted target; in this case the target/bullseye would “delimit” a given pattern in a way that finding an arrow sticking out of the ground, seemingly randomly, in the middle of an empty field would not.However, what should one conclude when seeing this sight, would they be warranted in thinking the bowman must be a great archer (aka. great designer of his arrow hitting the bullseye)? Not necessarily, delimiting patterns alone do not warrant something being a “specification” as there are two types of pattern. The first is the good type of pattern required to infer design called a “specification” and the other is a bad pattern that does not warrant the design inference called a “fabrication” (perhaps the archer randomly shot his arrow and only after the fact whatever tree it hit, he then painted the target around it).It is for this reason that specification not only requires one to prove the existence of a discernable delimited pattern, but also a “detachable” pattern. Detachability refers to the independence of the given pattern from the event’s occurrence, this requires the fulfillment of two conditions; i) conditional independence (epistemic probabilistic independence whereby knowledge or lack thereof of the delimited pattern does not affect the probability of the occurrence of the event conforming to it and/or our knowledge of the event’s occurrence), and ii) tractability (the event’s occurrence is “indeterminate” in the sense that one can hypothetically derive the same pattern independently based only on sufficient information alone without any need for the event itself to actually occur first before the pattern could hypothetically be discerned).Thus, “Specification” is a relational notion in that it relates particular types of patterns to events that have or at least hypothetically may occur, so long as a given event’s occurrence is delimited by and detached/independent from a descriptive pattern to which it conforms, than such an event may be said to be a “specified” event and the pattern itself can be said to provide a “specification” to which the event conforms. Prophetic prediction provides possibly the clearest illustration of what the “specification” criterion refers to as it is an universally acknowledged example of what it entails amoungst statisticians. Mathematicians and statisticians refer to predictive prophecies as “rejection regions” or some have called them “predesignations” (see the scientifically reasoned chance-elimination arguments of C.S. Peirce for example) and it is when an event falls within this “rejection range” that such experts will say that the chance hypothesis must be rejected in relation to an event description. Think about it, what is a prediction, it is a descriptive delimited pattern which is given prior to the event’s occurrence and is thus entirely detached/independent of the event’s occurrence itself; it is the very definition of a “specification”! That said, so long as the criteria for identifying a “specificity” can be established, then such patterns need not be identified prior to the event’s occurrence, but can indeed be established after the fact (though the latter does require more careful attention and due diligence to establish).The Complexity CriterionOf course, just because an event is specified in conforming to an independent/detached and delimited pattern, does not, by itself, entail that a design inference is warranted/rationally justified, the event’s occurrence must also likewise be shown to have a low or small probability of occurring; in other words, it needs to fulfill the “Complexity” criterion as well.A while back there was an interesting incident called the “Shoemaker Levy coincidence”. Shoemaker Levy was a comet that happened to crash into the planet Jupiter exactly 25 years to the very second of the day of the Apollo 11 moon landing- some might be tempted to see this event as being designed to indicate some ominously providential message for humanity, but does any rational person think that this is in fact the case? No, of course not, it was a random chance coincidence and nothing more. But, the mystical believers will object, there is only a probability of 10-8 (aka. 0.00001%) chance of such an occurrence happening, isn’t that a small enough probability to infer that some kind of design must be involved? Well, the answer is, it depends! It depends on various factors relevant to the specific situation under investigation, as improbable events (including ones with odds less than this) happen all the time in our universe, and in the particular case of the Shoemaker Levy comet, no rational scientists bat an eyelash in terms of inferring design from such an event, why? Well, the probability as seen within the lens of the event’s contextually relevant situation is simply not small enough to warrant such a conclusion.To understand why, we need to understand something about how probabilities work. Basic probability is simple, one simply states the ratio of obtaining a desired event divided by the total number of possible outcomes; there is 1/6 chance of my getting a “5” when rolling a die. Of course, things become trickier when postulating a desired outcome across multiple rolls for example and thus the probability naturally changes in such cases; for example, the probability of getting a “5” three times in a row when rolling a die is 1/216 (1/6 *1/6*1/6). However, it is not necessarily the case that the more factors are involved in a probability calculation the lower the odds will become, this is because the probability of an event also depends on the number of “probabilistic resources” at one’s disposal to produce the desired outcome.Probabilistic resources come in two fundamental varieties and both need to be kept in mind when making a design inference, the first refers to the “replicational resources”, which refers to the number of trials or replications one has available to obtain the desired result (so for instance perhaps I get to roll that die 20 times in my effort to get a “5” result just once of all the 20 rolls). The second and often neglected probabilistic resource refers to “specificational resources”, which refers to the number of opportunities there might be to “specify” an, as yet, undetermined event (an example of this might be the fine-tuning of the universe for life, by that we usually mean carbon-based lifeforms like ourselves, but perhaps one might also include opportunities for other types of life forms as well and throw that into the mix thereby increasing the number of specifications that allow one to claim a bulls-eye in terms of the universe being fine-tuned for life). Another example where this came up relating to miracles are the various Numerical Number Patterns in the Quran claimed by Muslim apologist to be miraculous proof for Islam, there is usually no accounting for the number of specificational resources let alone replicational resources that are available in coming up with these number patterns. Thus, in order to conclude that a given event’s probability of occurrence is sufficiently small, one needs to assess the overall probability relative to all of its available probabilistic resources in order to arrive at, what Richard Dawkins calls, the final overall “saturated probability”.Additionally, one must also take account of the specific context of the event for which one is trying to adjudicate whether design vs. chance is at play. One must achieve a less than 50% probability or ? likelihood of the event occurring as a “saturated probability”. To do so properly, one must determine whether one is inferring design based on a local or universal small probability bound. Dembski defines a “local” small probability bound as a small probability relative to all the relevant probabilistic resources for particular context or specific set of circumstances whereby the probability bound value may need to be augmented on a case by case basis. A “universal” small probability bound is the small probability value relative to all probabilistic resources that, irrespective of circumstantial or contextual factors, need never be augmented as it applies universally to every event in the universe. Dembski goes so far as to calculate the actual boundary value for the universal small probability factor, he puts anything less likely than 10-150 or 1/10150 to be statistically impossible to occur by random chance. This value represents the “Law of Small of Probability” and is rigorously proven by Dembski- unlike former unjustified efforts to derive a “Single Law of Chance” by mathematician Emile Borel, who in 1939, asserted that any event less than 1/1050 was mathematically impossible to occur (one still finds some Creationists today like Kent Hovind who still appeal to this outdated probability bound). Essentially, Dembski uses three fundamental numbers as disclosed by modern science to reach this probability bound; i) the number of elementary particles in the universe (valued at 1080), ii) the rate at which physical states can change (valued at 1045 per second) and iii) the length of time during which the universe can sustain specifying agents like ourselves (valued at 1025 seconds); 1080 * 1045 * 1025 = 10150 (note that Dembski’s values assume the truth of a non-inflationary big bang cosmology and thus a multiverse scenario, if true, could mean that there are far more than 1080 elementary particles to serve as probabilistic resources- Dembski sees such speculative “escape routes” as entirely ad hoc as there is no proof for the existence of such a multiverse and he thus dismisses such contrivances as such in his own calculations).Applying Dembski’s Intelligent Design Inference Criteria to Miracles (aka. Signs of God)- Identifying “G-Belief Authenticating Events”Miracles are events that are either directly and/or indirectly caused or orchestrated by God. When identifying a miracle/sign of God, it is important to note that detecting intelligent design (whether divine or otherwise) entails that the designer had an end goal or purpose for causing the event in question to occur. As such, the criteria aimed at identifying designed events may be different depending on the particular end/purpose the designer had in mind.God Himself performs miraculous “signs” throughout the Bible for various purposes, sometimes He uses them to test people (King Ahaz in Isaiah 7), other times He uses them to judge sinners (Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19) and/or other times God/Jesus uses them to compassionately heal someone afflicted by both sin and physical sickness and disease (Jesus and the blind in Matthew 9). However, the main reason God performs “miracles” is to authenticate His religious message that He wants human beings to follow and He uses them to distinguish the truth from other false religious messages.In general, most philosophers who have studied the issue, conclude that there are essentially 3 major elements or conditions for recognizing an event as being “miraculous”; i) the event in question is proven to have occurred, ii) the event in question is unlikely or improbable to occur given the established laws of nature and/or random chance and, iii) the event takes place within a religious context. The second element obviously relates to the “Complexity criterion” mentioned above, while the third relates to the “Specificity criterion”, however depending on the divine purpose for the miraculous event, there may or may not be various versions of these general conditions that apply to one type of divine purpose but not to others and as such, one must always be alert to the contextual reason that God caused the event in question to occur.To illustrate, how this might work out, I have been concerned, over the past several years or so, with “miracles” that serve as signs to authenticate God’s chosen religious message for humanity; I call such events, “G-Belief Authenticating Events”, where the term “G-Beliefs” is defined as “matters about which it would be very beneficial for people on earth to be knowledgeable of. Included among them would be issues pertaining to God's existence and nature, God's laws, the nature of the afterlife, the requirements for achieving our salvation/self-actualization via fulfilling our ultimate purpose in Creation (the last of which is the one we are focusing on in this section- see ). That said, with some tweaking one may be able to use a more generalized term whereby belief in a traditional God as the “designing agent” is rejected, then one could simply expand one’s definition of “G-Beliefs” to incorporate non-God centric religious beliefs as well (call them “Religious Beliefs or “R-Belief Authenticating Events” or whatever other term you might like), obviously for our purposes, God is assumed to exist and is the one “designing” the miraculous events to occur, hence our use of “G-Beliefs” as opposed to “R-Beliefs”.As such, how might one go about identifying a “G-Belief Authenticating Event” in the light of the “Specified Complexity” criteria for detecting intelligent design. In other words, is there a way to detect “Divine” design for the purpose of authenticating a given religious message in particular?In answering that question, I have arrived at the following list of criteria:THE 4-5 CRITERIA (FOR IDENTIFYING A G-BELIEF AUTHENTICATING EVENT) INCLUDE, EVENTS WHICH;a) HAVE REASONABLY BEEN PROVEN TO EXIST OR TO HAVE OCCURREDAND,b) WOULD AT LEAST SEEM TO A REASONABLE PERSON TO HAVE BEEN DEMONSTRATED TO BE AN EXTRAORDINARY/PARANORMAL EVENT/S (AKA. CAN’T BE EXPLAINED IN TERMS OF ORDINARY OR CURRENTLY WELL-KNOWN ESTABLISHED NATURAL MECHANISMS AND LAWS (INCLUDES RANDOM CHANCE) OPERATING SOLELY ON THEIR OWN MERITSAS EVIDENCED BY: i) HAVE BEEN REASONABLY DEMONSTRATED TO BE UNIQUE IN TERMS OF THEIR OCCURING ONLY IN “EXTRAORDINARY” OR “PARANORMAL CONTEXTS”. This is a necessary falsification sub-criterion (as a falsification principle it is evaluated strictly on a pass/fail basis and one need not assign a probability value to multiply to ii) below).AND,ii) A REASONABLE PERSON WOULD HAVE REASON TO DOUBT THAT EXPLANATIONS INVOLVING SOLELY “ORDINARY” NATURAL MECHNISMS ARE EQUALLY POSSIBLE/PROBABLE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE EVENT:- SUCH A CONCLUSION COULD REASONABLY BE MADE BASED ON THE FOLLWING EVIDENCES;A. THE EVENT IS UNIQUE DESPITE THERE HAVING BEEN SUFFICIENT OPPORUTNITY FOR THE EVENT TO HAVE BEEN DUPLICATED WITHIN A “NATURALISTIC CONTEXT” (INCLUDES ANY AND ALL TYPES OF OPPORTUNITY- NATURAL AND/OR ARTIFICIAL- LAB OR FIELD EXPERIMENTS).AND/OR,B. i) ALL CURRENTLY WELL-KNOWN/ESTABLISHED “ORDINARY” NATURAL MECHANISMS WOULD AT LEAST SEEM TO A/MANY REASONABLE PERSON/S, TO HAVE BEEN DEMONSTRATED (EITHER PRACTICALLY OR THEORETICALLY), TO BE IMPROBABLE EXPLANATIONS AND/OR THE EVENT HAS BEEN REASONABLY PROVEN TO VIOLATE/CONTRAVENE AN ESTABLISHED LAW OF NATURE. AND/OR,ii) SOME OTHER REASON/S WHICH MAKE THE EVENT/S SEEM TO BE EXTRAORDINARY/PARANORMAL (SUCH AS BASED ON THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCES ASSOCIATED WITH THE EVENT)Circumstantial evidence such as the timing of the event might warrant us in thinking the event’s occurrence is extraordinary for example.AND,c) THEY ARE “SUFFICENTLY ATTACHED” TOO A PARTICULAR SET OF “G-BELIEFS”/RELIGION IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY SERVE TO ATTEST/AUTHENTICATE THE VERACITY (OR AT LEAST THE ENDORSEMENT BY GOD AS THE ONLY SET OF BELIEFS THAT HUMANS SHOULD FOLLOW TO AHCIEVE “GO-1”) & WHEREBY THEY ARE NOT “SUBSUMABLE” BY ANY OTHER SET OF “G-BELIEFS” AND/OR RELIGIONS.IS THE EVENT SUBSUMABLE TO OTHER RELIGIONS/G-BELIEFS?The event counts towards the original religious claimant (chronologically first) unless other religions can claim to subsume it. For example, the both Muslims and Christians believe in the virgin birth. This event if proven would by default count towards the original Christianity and not Islam unless the event can be proven to be subsumable under Islam via the below.i) Is the event mutually exclusive or contradictory to the religion that wants to subsume the event. For example, one might argue that the Quran and Islamic tradition contradicts the Resurrection of Jesus and thus it is improbable that such an event would be subsumable as a proof for the truth of Islam. If does that can’t subsume this event and the original religion is served not the subsuming one. I state this in positive terms for religion being studied= % proven this event contradicts the subsuming religion; (thus can prove the subsuming religion doesn’t affirm directly or indirectly the event (such as Quran directly saying it believes in the virgin birth or Christianity implicitly claiming all miracles in OT are true) and there should be some positive reason to affirm why the event could or should be subsumable such as claiming Jesus is a prophet in Islam or Christians claiming all the OT is truly from God and thus Moses parting the Red Sea is true given Christianity = thus we would expect subsumable miracles but by contrast with Buddhism- would not have positive reason to expect Jesus to do miracles as teaches there is a God (so even if no contradictions the religions do seem to be mutually exclusive and not have positive reason to affirm Jesus be resurrected if Buddhism is true -thus Buddhism can’t subsume Resurrection probably like the Bahai or Islam can????)and,ii) Does the subsuming religion have independent positive events/evidence in favour of its veracity. If not, can’t subsume this event and it serves to authenticate original religion. Otherwise Bahai faith or Daleism can say they subsume all miracles from every religion. and,iii) None of the further clarifying mechanisms apply to the subsuming religion (such as no other mutually exclusive/contradictory religion/s also have/has such an event independently and/or the subsuming religion has an overall total probability of over 50% whereas the original religion has an overall- positive and negative evidences combined of 50% or less.or,iv) Any other applicable reason why the event should not be subsumed to the non-original religion.Now, how do my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” criteria relate to the underlying rationally justified/warranted design inference via “Specified Complexity” as laid out and proven true by Dr. William Dembski? Well, it follows from passing through the various stages of “Chance elimination explanatory filter” as expressed in the “Actualization-Exclusion- Specification” triad which we mentioned above is used in detecting the presence of intelligent agency; 1. Criterion a) establishes that an event has occurred and requires explanation (this one is obvious). 2. Criterion b) establishes the “complexity” aspect via showing the event in question can be “reasonably” inferred to be “extraordinary” or improbable to occur given all of the available probabilistic resources that apply relative to the specific localized context and saturated probability bound. Now, it is important to note that on this front, I’m not a statistician and as a lay person, I simply have no way to calculate the probability bound values let alone the actual likelihood of a given “miraculous” event occurring, at least in terms of proper statistical/frequentist probability (others may have such a capability and good for them, they can do the “maths” then). It is for this reason that many historians refuse to use Bayes Theorem calculations in reaching their own historical conclusions about God’s acts in history; they deem such values to be “utterly inscrutable” and thus they don’t even bother assigning number values at all to this or any other event of history in terms of the probability of their occurrence. At best historians will use broad range probability judgements like saying some event is very probable, proven beyond reasonable doubt, improbable, etc. But that said, what about us laypersons not trained in statistics- does our lack of ability to properly calculate these odds entail that my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” criteria fail to provably fulfill the “Complexity” criterion for detecting design?Technically, yes, one would not be warranted in claiming the event’s complex improbability (or what I call it’s “extraordinariness”) is true; but even still, as we shall see later on, this simply is not an issue in this particular localized context as it involves notions to do with God (see next section below). Rather than go into the details of how God’s involvement makes a difference in overcoming my own shortcomings in terms of probabilistic calculations, for now, suffice it to say that this will simply not be an issue as all my criteria demand is that a “reasonable person” (defined legally as an average person, with average intelligence, average knowledge, taking average due diligence, etc.), act as a “real seeker” (to the best of their own relative ability) in subjectively assessing the normative probability values for the fulfillment of the various aspects of Criterion b); God does not require one to earn a PhD. in Statistics before one can recognize His miraculous “signs and wonders”.3) Criterion c) establishes the “specificity” aspect/condition in that the religious context provides a delimited pattern of possible divine action whereby God uses a remarkable and complex yet “sufficiently attached” miraculous event as a “sign” to authenticate one set of “G-Beliefs”/religious message (over and against other sets of “G-Beliefs”/religions) for the designed purpose of having humans follow those particular “G-Beliefs”/religious message. Thus, God (or even another intelligent agent) using remarkable vs. mundane events to serve as “signs” that a given religious message is true and/or should be followed is clearly a delimited pattern that most humans, both skeptic and religious, can and have almost universally recognized as a valid notion.Further, this delimited pattern is quite obviously independent of and/or “detached” from any miraculous events themselves as the same pattern can hold true for false religions that have no such events and/or be acknowledged even if God doesn’t factually exist to begin with. Remember, there were two fundamental criteria by which “detachability” was judged to be present; i) conditional independence and ii) tractability. In the first place, potential religious authenticating miracle patterns or “specifications” display “epistemic probabilistic independence” whereby knowledge or lack thereof of the delimited pattern does not affect the probability of the occurrence of the event conforming to it and/or our knowledge of the event’s occurrence”. Secondly, clearly the event’s occurrence (assuming such an event has in fact occurred) is “indeterminate” in the sense that one can hypothetically derive the same pattern based on sufficient information alone without need for the event itself to actually occur.In closing, apart from the “Complexity” criterion issue (i.e. my use of normative vs. statistical probability values), it seems fairly obvious that my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” criteria do indeed correspond to Dembski’s “Specified complexity” criteria for inferring intelligent design/agency. As such, any events that fulfill the criteria for being a “G-Belief Authenticating Event” can rationally be claimed to constitute proof for an intelligently designed event. In my own coming to faith, a total of 4 positive evidences have led to my concluding that Christianity is the one true and/or endorsed religion of God; this included 3 objective evidences (the scientific evidence from the formation of the images on the Shroud of Turin, the historical evidence for the Resurrection Appearance to the “12” Apostles and my “Vindication Prediction Argument”- see the sources section of the blog for my former shows on the Shroud of Turin and also restricted version of the “Vindication Argument” whereas my vase from the Resurrection appearance to the “12” will be forthcoming in the second half of the season in 2020 A.D.)- all of which I argue fulfill the criteria for being “G-Belief Authenticating Events”. Note: The 4th positive evidence leading me to Christ was a subjective properly basic belief induced via the inner self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit.However, one will immediately notice that nothing about the fulfillment of my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” criteria in themselves say anything about who or what the intelligent designer of such an event might be; how do we know the “miracles” in question we not “designed” by someone/something other than God, perhaps Satan is playing a clever trick on us, or aliens/ghosts are behind “designing” the various so-called “G-Belief Authenticating Event” occurrences? This is where one needs to put my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” criteria in the proper perspective of an overall argument that allows one to conclude that it is fact God who has designed the said events for the express purpose of fostering humanity’s achievement of our ultimate purpose in creation (what I call “GO-1”)- thus, enter my 11-Premise Deductive Argument based on Divine “Undue confusion” prevention!Applying Dembski’s Intelligent Design Inference Criteria to Miracles- Putting Things in Perspective (God’s Necessary Prevention of “Undue Confusion”)I once argued with Islamic apologist Dr. Shabir Ally that the Shroud of Turin’s images (and their formation) constituted a “G-Belief Authenticating Event”, after some back and forth on this over many months of debate, I remember he ultimately ended by saying that maybe I was right and the images are supernatural signs, but then he simply dismissed the event as a trick from Satan. As this episode illustrates, the identification of the “miraculous” events from God designed to authenticate the desired religious message that God wants us to follow, requires an overall contextual argument to establish its truth. This is where I have developed an 11-Premise deductive argument which, if sound, establishes, not only that God is the ultimate cause of such events, but that we can identify the specific purpose for which God did it, namely to authenticate a religious message facilitating humanity’s fulfilment of their ultimate purpose in creation (“GO-1”) (See the Sources in the blog for the attached document with the skeletal version of my 11 premise argument, I’m working on writing a book whereby I provide the detailed warrant for each and every single premise that I use in the argument).Various Atheists and skeptics such as Theodore Drange, Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier have long since recognized that, if God and “G-Beliefs” exist, then God has an obligation to facilitate humanity’s discovery of the truth of such beliefs via some kind of reasonable means; God’s supposed failure to do so represents a mainstream skeptical objection against the truth of various Theistic religions like Christianity, Islam and Judaism and even of God’s existence altogether (see Atheistic version of the Argument from confusion here = ). As such, it stands to reason that the reverse is also true, if God does provide reasonable means to know the truth about the various “G-Beliefs” then this would prove that He does exist and/or that a given religion is true and/or should be followed.My argument has taken this skeptical notion and tweaked it into the service of the truth of Christianity (and/or any other religion that God may want us to follow). The first 6 premises in my argument establish that God does indeed exist and that God has certain outcomes (what I call “God Outcomes”). One of these God Outcomes is “GO-1” which refers to the maximum number of human beings achieving their ultimate purpose in creation as possible (God obviously freely chooses to create humans directly or indirectly for a purpose that is consistent with His essentially nature as a “Maximally Great Being”). One way that God could facilitate “GO-1” is by revealing to humans what their ultimate purpose is and how they can go about achieving it; this is typically what religions claim to be, a divine revelation or disclosure in this regard. Unfortunately, there is a lot of religious confusion in the world, humans don’t always seem to know which set of religious truths have been revealed by God and as such God is then obligated to provide humanity with a reasonable means of adjudicating which religious propositions/truths regarding our ultimate purpose do in fact derive from Him and which ones don’t. I submit that God’s providing a “reasonable person” with a “G-Belief Authenticating Event” is one such way that God can allow humans to make such a judgement.The second half of my 11-Premise argument (from Premises #7-11), is where I lay out my criteria for how we can identify “G-Belief Authenticating Events” and argue that with events that fulfill these criteria (in conjunction with the truth of the other premises), entails that God would and could not allow for any “undue confusion”. Undue confusion is defined as God’s allowing for confusion about humanity’s ultimate purpose in creation amoung any reasonable person, whereby they being a real seeker (relative to the best of their ability), may unjustifiably fail to achieve that ultimate purpose as a result of that confusion. As a Maximal Great Being, God simply cannot allow for such confusion to exist. It is in this way, that my argument gains its warrant despite any short comings in terms of the criteria themselves and/or any relativistic short comings amoung “reasonable persons” in terms of their personal abilities to assess these matters; one can have complete confidence that in whatever situation beyond our control we find ourselves in, God is obligated to prevent one’s deficiencies from causing “undue confusion” before the “point of no return” is reached (the “Point of No-Return” refers to the moment when one’s confusion or ignorance, etc. of any essential “G-Beliefs” would result in them unjustifiably not achieving their ultimate purpose in creation). Thus, the mere rational justification of a “reasonable person” (relative to each individual’s best efforts to be a real seeker), can be converted into warrant via invoking God’s essential obligation to intervene and prevent “undue confusion” from obtaining.Practical Case Studies- Potential Miraculous Healing Accounts as the “Compassionate Design” of GodAs I mentioned before, my main interest in studying the “miracles of God” is as a design plan or blueprint for authenticating a particular religious message (aka. a set of “G-Beliefs” including what the ultimate purpose for humanity is and how one can go about achieving it), however many skeptics today are interested in modern “miracle healing” claims and thus I wish to focus on God’s “compassionate” designs beyond His trying to facilitate the fulfillment of “GO-1”. Does God “miraculously” heal people today based on compassionate grounds and if so, can we prove any such accounts? Category #1- Video Taped EvidenceDelia Knox was said to have been “miraculously healed” from her paralyzed legs on Aug 30th, 2010 via first walking with the support of others after prayer and then several days later another video showed her walking with no support for several feet. Initially, she walked only haltingly but another video dated Oct 27th, 2010, showed her walking unaided and entirely normally as she prayed for others on stage. Now, the impressive thing about this account is that her prior paralyzed condition is entirely documented even with news reports two years earlier showing she was organically paralyzed due to nerve damage from a car accident and where she said she has not walked for over 22 years.Now, what does one make of this example, well one shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand, various people confirmed that she was indeed paralyzed due to nerve damage for 22-23 years prior (since Dec 25th, 1987) and its absurd to believe she and her doctors faked it all of that time just to do a fake miracle 20 some years later. That said, before and after medical documentation has not been provided and thus, I’m skeptical on this myself, I simply have no way to tell if this is real or if it involves fraud in some way. Irrespective of the truth of this example, the point of citing it is to establish that one should not be so quick to skeptically “assert and assume” the evidence is faked, one must actually attempt to retrieve the evidence rather than mindlessly dismissing such healing claims. Category #2- Evidence from LourdesMany people are skeptical of the so-called “miracle hot-spots” around the world, one of which is Lourdes in France. Lourdes has attracted millions people looking for miracle healings and many of which have claimed to have been healed with their experiences being meticulously documented over the course of more than a century now- literally thousands of people (the Lourdes Sanctuary officially claims to have evaluated “more than 7000 cases of unexplained cures”) have claimed to have been healed by going there; it stands to reason that such a place is worth our time to consider.By way of general overview, Lourdes is a Roman Catholic site, but it has not only been Catholics who have been healed there, many people who had theological predispositions against the miracle claims of Lourdes such as Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and even hard-core Atheists and Skeptics who were openly antagonistic of Lourdes have all been healed there. The skeptical Atheists Gabriel Gargam, Elie Auclair and Louis Olivari are just some of the many who, being skeptical of Lourdes at first, after their cures renounced their foolish false religion of Atheism and converted to the truth of Christianity. Such examples help to eliminate many of the automatic assumptions of lay skeptics that any and all provable cures must always involve some kind of psychosomatic element (this is further bolstered by the various healings of infants and toddlers who were too young to understand what was going on).What’s even more incredible is that it is not only the patients who come from all walks of life, but many of the investigators and medical experts involved in studying and evaluating these miracle claims also come from non-Catholic and/or non-Christian backgrounds. The Medical Bureau in charge of evaluating the “miracle” claims at Lourdes, is independent of the Catholic church and prefers having non-Christian and/or minimally non-Catholic medical experts make the evaluations of “medical inexplicability” whenever possible. As a matter of fact, more than 1500 doctors and medical experts from over 30 nations around the world and who came from all religious walks of life (Protestant, Atheist, Muslim, Jewish, etc.) were all invited to participate in various examinations of miracle claims (and this was just during the 1950’s alone). Currently, the International Medical Committee has a permanent membership of 27-30 medical experts and doctors from around the world of mixed religious backgrounds and they often consult other medical experts regardless of religious stance whenever they have need.Various Skeptics who were totally antagonistic toward the Catholic Church, Lourdes and the very notion of supernatural healings like Alexis Carrel and more recently Dr. Diamond (whose written a book entitled “Miracles”) all admit that remarkable medical healings do undeniably authentically take place there and have conceded that some of them are indeed “medically inexplicable” (for example, Diamond reports the instant healing of a terribly disfigured face of a two and a half year old child before the eyes of various non-Catholic/Christian medical professionals being proven beyond reasonable doubt despite it being medically impossible for that to ever happen). Despite the powerful evidence presented before their very own eyes, some skeptics like Dr. Diamond, remain steadfast in their Atheistic faith that “some sort of naturalistic interpretation would arise if only we had sufficient evidence or knowledge of the laws of nature”. Lourdes is an interesting case study in that it employs some of the most rigorous standards in the world in terms of “miracle healing detection”, even many skeptics and Atheists who get healed and come to believe in Jesus afterward, have their “healings” dismissed by the Lourdes Medical Bureau and subsequently by the Roman Catholic Church because the account simply fails to fulfill the rigorous standards the Catholics have put in place to accept a given “miracle healing” account as genuine. In point of fact, despite the thousands and thousands of reported healings, Lourdes actually has a lower percentage of healing claims than the proportion of such in other settings such as the normal “cure rate” through medical science (as would be expected as Lourdes serves a theological sign or beacon of hope based on faith in God’s mercy/compassion rather than as an official medical institution). One might be surprised to learn that of all the various “miraculous healing” claims from visitors to the site, less than 1% of them are deemed worthy of being recorded for posterity by the Medical Bureau and an even smaller number are deemed “medically inexplicable” after evaluation and thereby proceed to pass the various criteria set forth by the medical experts and religious authorities for approval in being considered truly “miraculous”; incredibly, only 70 such cases have ever passed muster in terms of being recognized as a “miraculous healing” by the Roman Catholic Church. Before, providing a couple of cases for consideration, it behooves us to mention just what exactly these “strict criteria” for admission by the Church are, they include the following;Full medical documentation of one’s prior condition must be provided (including any and all hospital records if any). Also, the Medical Bureau must be allowed to document the post condition.Contact with multiple eye-witnesses to confirm/corroborate the prior medical condition and various details pertaining to the person’s character.The cure must be certified to be “organic” in that no medicine and/or medical technology that can potentially naturally cure the prior condition was used before or after the healing and the healing must be deemed to be “medically inexplicable” by the medical professionals on the Medical Bureau.Finally, the cure must endure or persist over time, typically they follow up for years afterward to ensure the cure has persisted (and often require further medical documentation to confirm this fact).As you can see, the rigorousness of these demands explains why so few of the healings reach official “miracle” status in the Church and/or even get officially reported to the Bureau for consideration in the first place. That said, let us now take a look at just a couple of dramatic examples of “miracle healings” that do qualify under these strict standards:a) Vittorio Micheli was a soldier in the Italian Army who developed rapidly increasing pain in his left buttock region. “X-rays of the left hip showed osteolysis involving the ilium and the roof of the acetabulum. A biopsy of the gluteal muscle showed cells of a sarcomatous character. He was not deemed to be a candidate for medical intervention, so neither radiotherapy nor chemotherapy was offered to him”. On May 24th, 1963, racked with pain and unable to walk, he made a pilgrimage to Lourdes, following which he was cured of his sarcoma. His case was reviewed by the International Medical Committee of Lourdes in 1969 and in 1971 and subsequent X-Rays confirmed that the bony reconstruction of the parts of his pelvis that were destroyed was steadily progressing; an event that is not naturally possible according to our current knowledge in medical science! There was unanimous agreement that this was a “medically inexplicable cure” ( ). A report of this case has even appeared in the secular and prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal, the Canadian Medical Association Journal (see that peer-reviewed journal article in CMA JOURNAL/DECEMBER 7, 1974/VOL. 111 pp. 1254-1264 with X-Ray photos here = ).b) Danila Castelli was from Bereguardo (Italy) and lived a more or less normal life until the age of 34 when she started having spontaneous and a severe blood pressure hypertensive crisis. In 1982 some Rx and ultrasound tests detect a right para-uterine mass and a fibromatous uterus. Danila is operated for hysterectomy and annexectomy. In November 1982 she underwent a partial pancreatectomy. A scintigraphy the following year proved the existence of “pheochromocytoma” (a tumor that secretes high amounts of catecholamines) in the rectal, bladder and vaginal region. More surgical interventions followed in the attempt to stop the triggers of the crisis until 1988 but with no improvement at all. In May 1989, during a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Danila got out of the Baths and feels an extraordinary feeling of wellbeing. Shortly after she reported her instantaneous alleged cure to the Lourdes Office of Medical Observations and after five meetings (1989, 1992, 1994, 1997 and 2010) the Bureau finally certified the cure with an unanimous vote : proclaiming that, “Mrs. Castelli was cured, in a complete and lasting way, from the date of her pilgrimage to Lourdes -- 21 years ago -- of the syndrome she had suffered and with no relation to the treatments and surgeries she received. Danila Castelli has since gone back to an absolute normal life”.Category #3- Other Medically Documented Evidences (Outside of Religious Healing Locations) There are dozens and dozens of examples of miracle healings that have occurred that happen with accompanying medical documentation to confirm the before and after states of the patient and thereby demonstrate that “medically inexplicable” cures have taken place in history. Such events have happened all over the world and in many different contexts. That said, these types of examples are the minority and not the norm unfortunately, this is due to the fact that most people are not trying to prove a miracle in advance and sometimes doctors don’t wish to cooperate in sharing records for their own reasons. That said, Dr. Craig Keener has provided dozens of examples of such cases in his book entitled “Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts” (see esp. Vol. 2, p.713-724), whereby Keener himself has been given personal access to verify the medical documents and/or still has them in his own possession to make available upon request. Some such cases include the following;1. Joy Wahnefried provided Keener with detailed medical documentation that her vision was abysmal (having severe light sensitivity) due to an “organic” cause and, even with corrective lenses, her situation was so bad that it caused her to have severe disabling migraines over a period of several years (prior condition confirmed). One night after prayer, her eyesight was instantly and completely healed (to perfect 20/20 vision). The vision specialist Dr. Bill Heth provided Keener with corroboration of the cure by providing document certification of the completeness of the healing saying that she no longer required corrective lenses for driving purposes and was dated Oct, 16th, 2009 based on a test conducted on May 27th, 2009 (shortly after the healing had taken place).There are no natural analogies for such an “organic” and “immediate” healing of her condition and as such it is currently “medically inexplicable”.2. Another eye example as I know this type of healing to be important to both David and Andrew as they both have eye issues personally and have requested healing proof in this department several times, is that of Anna Gulick who suffered from very poor eyesight due to macular degeneration ( ). Her prior condition was thoroughly documented prior to the healing and yet one night after praying for healing she was suddenly and instantly healed being able to see again. Documents of the before and after tests confirm the healing and even note physical changes in her eye, and partial yet dramatic reversal of most of the macular degeneration- all of which is “medically impossible” to occur so rapidly and such documents were sent to Keener by Anna’s eye doctor and optometrist independently and were received on June 17th, 2010 and July 6th, 2010 respectively (with additional details sent to Keener on Sept 11th, 2010).3. Lee McDougald was healed of Parkinson’s Disease so thoroughly that Dr. William Lightfoot said “Parkinson’s is generally a progressive neurological disorder… I can only say that I have never seen a Parkinson’s patient healed as completely as Lee was = ( ).4. Ben Godwin’s bones were fully restored without the planned bone graft surgery after prayer one night (this included a restoration of an entire missing bone about 3 inches from his tibia). This was thoroughly documented by Ben’s orthopedic surgeon via various medical reports on prior and post healing states (including an updated report dated Jan 9th, 2009) and detailed X-Rays proving the claim that he had missing bones enitrely (See interview transcript with Ben on the Supernatural show with Sid Roth = ). “Bones do repair themselves to some extent, but they can't regenerate or replace themselves fully for the same reason that we can't grow ourselves a new lung or an extra eye. Although the DNA to build a complete copy of the entire body is present in every cell with a nucleus, not all of that DNA is active” ( ). Hence, this medically documented healing is every bit as amazing as having proof that an amputee grew back his entire arm.5. A patient suffering for years from Sj?gren's syndrome; an incurable autoimmune disorder that affects moisture-producing glands in the eyes and mouth, after prayer and without any medication at all, was healed and suddenly began producing salvia normally again. The medical documents covering the period from June 2005-Feb 2009 are still in Keener’s personal possession and were sent to him in May 2009 by the medical professional involved (with patient approval so long as his name was not publicized), Dr. David Zaritzky.Miracle Healings as Potential “G-Belief Authenticating Events”?As I mentioned above, my main interest in studying miracles for the past decade or so has been to identify what I call “G-Belief Authenticating Events” so that I can know what religious message God wants me to follow in order to achieve my ultimate purpose in creation. As such, what might one make of the various modern-day “miraculous healings”, could these constitute a “G-Belief Authenticating Event” for the truth of Christianity?Many modern Christian scholars and apologists such as Drs. Gary Habermas, Michael Licona and Craig Keener (just to name but a few), definitely seem to think so and far be it for me to question these world’s experts who’ve studied the matter much more thoroughly than I have. That said, I personally did not use the evidence from modern miracle healings in coming to knowledge that Christianity is ture and/or the religion God wants me to follow and I wish to raise some of the reservations that I have in that regard to explain why I have chosen to exclude them from my own personal evaluation of Christianity.In the first place, one of the “G-Belief Authenticating Event” criteria that I use in identifying these kinds of events is what I call the “uniqueness falsification criterion” and to be honest I think modern miracle healings fail to pass this test (or at least haven’t be demonstrated to pass it yet). Most of the scholarly level work in the department of proving modern miracle healings has been done by Christian scholars and as such they tend to focus exclusively on Christian healing accounts while neglecting to evaluate non-Christian religious healing claims. In discussing the issue with Dr. Craig Keener years ago via personal email, he admitted that more work needs to be done on that front and he didn’t deny that other religions may have comparable evidence as far as he knows. Given that he knows of many non-Christians who seem to have been miraculously healed (at least within Christian contexts like at Lourdes), then he would not rule this kind of thing out until he knows more. What’s more, I was lucky enough to have had a brief email discussion with former Muslim turned Christian apologist Dr. Nabeel Qureshi before he tragically died on September 16th, 2017 and he told me that he is aware of some Islamic-contextual miracle healing accounts that he thinks could be true. Now, it was at this point that I became intellectually lazy (or perhaps just judicious) in moving on to study other potential “G-Belief Authenticating Events” (such as the Shroud of Turin or Resurrection of Jesus) as I felt they would have more of a chance of bearing fruit (which they did). Not having looked into the matter of modern Christian miracle healings any further, I realize that perhaps this may have been an error, maybe if I had investigated more fully, I would have discovered that Nabeel and Keener were wrong in saying other religions have comparable miracle healings. All I can say is that I certainly have yet to encounter any substantive compare and contrast treatment of the matter in the Christian scholarship thus far. By way of note, I personally have subsequently evaluated some of the non-Christian miracle healings in the context of evaluating God’s endorsement of other religions and have not found anything comparable to Christian miracle healings; that said, my investigation was far from exhaustive and I wasn’t doing a comparison analysis at that point- I was more just looking for any such claims that I could say were “extraordinary” or “miraculous” to begin with and I repeatedly fell short of that mark, thus obviating any need to compare and contrast them in relation to Christian claims.Another issue I have with using modern miracle healings as “G-Belief Authenticating Events” has to do with the fulfillment of Criterion c) [the religious context/Specificity criterion]. The Bible makes it clear that Satan, demons and other supernatural agents can and have utilized various “miraculous” events (including healings) to fool people for certain nefarious purposes. Exodus 7-8 records that Pharaoh’s magicians were able to duplicate some of the miraculous “signs” performed by Moses (some think these were supernaturally duplicated through the power of Satan, see here = ), Matthew 7:22-23 says, “22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” and Galatians 1:8 says, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse!”. Obviously, to be a “G-Belief Authenticating Event” the event has to be ultimately caused by God (with His positive approval and not just permissive allowance for the act) and the healings in question must also serve a particular purpose, namely that of facilitating the design plan for authenticating one religious message above all the other false mutually exclusive ones.As to whether God or Satan might be behind any given miracle healing account, perhaps Jesus’ statement in Matthew 12:22-28 might be useful; it says, “22 Then one was brought to Him who was demon-possessed, blind and mute; and He healed him, so that the [a]blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 23 And all the multitudes were amazed and said, “Could this be the Son of David?” 24 Now when the Pharisees heard it they said, “This fellow does not cast out demons except by [b]Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.”25 But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges. 28 But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you”- of course, it might be argued this verse is speaking of demon exorcism specifically and thus may not be applicable to all miracle healings in general.In terms of the discerned purpose or “design plan goal” of modern miraculous healings, I tend to think it is rather ambiguous as to whether they are meant to serve to attest to the truth of and/or endorsement by God of a given religious message or whether these healings occur as acts of divine mercy and compassion (there are many non-Christians who seem to have been healed in this way as well). There seems to be nothing in the context that clearly delimits a specified pattern about authenticating a religious message as opposed to God having compassion on those who are suffering. Perhaps if a person was healed in a context whereby a Pastor prayed for a healing as divine sign of “authentication” for the religious message he preached explicitly (i.e. prayed for God to please heal this person as proof that Christianity is true and/or should be followed by humans and then that person was instantly healed afterward, that might qualify). Having worked with biblical scholar Dr. Graham Twelftree, another potential avenue related to miracle healings being a “G-Belief Authenticating Event” is to distinguish healings done by and/or for random people vs. those done by or to people with religious significance in ways related to authenticating a religious message. A miraculous healing done by a religious founder and/or an authoritative emissary of that founder who has made claims to be inspired by God to pronounce His divine religious message to mankind for example, Could definitely fit the bill for being a “G-Belief Authenticating Event”. Believe it or not, Dr. Twelftree has done excellent scholarly work on proving historically that about 22-24 miracles of Jesus are in fact probably true and I studied them to see if perhaps one could prove that one of Jesus miracle healings fulfilled the other criteria in my argument (the nature miracles being of most interest to me but of course those were the hardest to prove historically). I encountered various issues in trying to apply my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” criteria to the provable miracles of Jesus (including his healings) and as such I tended to dismiss the evidence but remain open to further considering them again in the future and I would be more than happy to include these as proofs for the endorsement of Christianity by God should they ever fulfill my criteria (same deal if Muhammed did miracle healings, or if hypothetically Dale, the founder of the claimed inspired religion of “Daleism” did likewise). Unfortunately, as it stands, I find the religious contexts of most modern-day miracle healings, even if those healings have been demonstrated to be “miraculous” on a balance of probabilities, nevertheless remain ambiguous either in regards to who the agent involved in the healing was and/or what exactly God’s motive was for doing the healing (i.e. was it to authenticate His religious message or to show compassion and mercy on the suffering). Perhaps someone more inclined toward this line of positive evidence for the truth and/or endorsement by God of the Christian faith/religion will do the hard work of ironing out these issues and I wish that person “God’s speed”, but in the meantime, based on the above issues, I remain “ify” on the usefulness of this line of evidence for Christianity. Conclusion- A New Perspective on Miracles of God (Bridging the Supernatural vs. Natural Divide)Ever since the Enlightenment in the late 1700’s A.D., it seems as though Skeptics and Christians/Theists have been doomed to a never-ending debate whereby both sides simply talk past each other regarding whether a given event should be placed in the supernatural vs. natural category. The supernatural seems to the modern scientifically-minded skeptic or Atheist to refer to an unproven class of events/things that have no bearing or basis in reality and epistemology and thus, the conversation seems to be over before it has even begun. In this blog, I have made provided what I think is a radically simple yet effective solution to this “supernatural vs. natural divide”, a massive chasm that continues to separate the more rational and open-minded Christians from more irrational and closed-minded Atheists. Let’s turn the clock back and have a do-over by regaining some of the lost wisdom that we had prior to the Enlightenment whereby divisive debates narrowly centering on being able to use nice and neat categorizations to classify various “acts of God” as belonging either to the “supernatural” or “natural” camps never existed. In the ancient and medieval worlds, God was seen to be at work in everything that occurred in the world, from the boring and mundane everyday experiences to the extraordinary “signs and wonders” that served to signify God’s divine providence in a more remarkable way. What was important was being able to detect God’s hand at work in the various events that took place in the world, as though most people had in-built automatic “divine design detectors”, humans have always seemed to have an intuitive ability to make “intelligent design inferences” based on God’s intervention in the world in certain remarkable ways; these were called the “signs and wonders” of God. It is this “divine design detection” ability of human beings that I put forward as the best way to bridge the supernatural/natural divide and allow us to finally make some progress toward evaluating the various “miracle” claims of God.Even the most hard-nosed skeptic in the world does not deny that there are indeed many provable/demonstrable instances of “intelligent design” that exist in the world and that humans are able to know such examples in most contexts (for example no one denies a painting is designed or that a building is designed, etc.). Well, it is by extrapolating from these examples that one can come up with a set of universalized general criteria that can then be applied inductively/abductively to make logical intelligent design inferences in a variety of cases, including “God-designed” miracles. Using modern intelligent design theory, Dr. William Dembski provides the best set of widely applicable design inference criteria via his scientifically and mathematically verified notion of “Specified Complexity” to help us out in this regard (which by the way is fully consistent with a naturalist understanding of the universe and doesn’t depend on any special pleading or foreign supernatural reasoning processes to derive it from). Essentially, by piggy-backing off all of Dembski’s hard work and research, I argue that we can apply his notion of “Specified Complexity” design inferences to the issue of miracles of God as well and in this way, humans can readily detect any divine intelligent design (or lack thereof) in relation to the various miracle claims that religious proponents have put forward to prove the truth and/or divine endorsement of their respective religions. I call events that fulfill these design inference criteria, “G-Belief Authenticating Events”. Now, let’s finally stop with all the skeptical prattling and whining about the absurdity of the supernatural and get on with trying to identify the various “divinely designed” events of our world! Recommended Sources (for further study);a) Intelligent Design Theory (in General and in the Evolution vs. Creationism Debate):i) See the article by Dr. William Dembski explaining his own theory of “Specified Complexity” = . Bill Dembski’s own website with a free E-Book on Miracles by him and Alex Thomas= . Also, see various videos of varying lengths of Dembski explaining his notion “ID” notions = (3-MINS ON CLOSER TO TRUTH) OR 30 MIN VIDEO = &/OR a 45 MIN VIDEO = .Also, an article by Dembski on “Why Evolutionary Algorithms Cannot Generate Specified Complexity” = , by his great book, “The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities”, that proves he is right and I found it hugely influential myself (I own it and so can vouch for it), see here = ) Dr. Peter S. Williams writes a 6-page scholarly article defending Dembski’s notion of “Specified Complexity” in contexts outside of the Intelligent Design Movement at the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) in the peer-reviewed journal Philosophia Christi - Page 1 starts here = ) The Discovery Institute (the major scholarly source for the Intelligent Design Movement & the Creation vs. Evolution Debate)- various free resources including secular peer-reviewed science journal articles, see the main “ID” website here = Also, see the following associated links;Various Peer-Reviewed Sources = OR see the full bibliographical list here = or here (insert attachment here).Various Scholarly level Responses/Rebuttals to Skeptical attacks on Intelligent Design = ) Dr. William Lane Craig (Intelligent Design side via Dembski’s Specified Complexity) vs. fellow Christian Dr. Francisco Ayala (Naturalistic Evolutionist)- Debate transcript, see William Lane’s opening speech for popular level explanation of how Dembski’s notion works in showing intelligent design = , see the debate live starting with Part 1 here = ) A skeptical 9-page article outlining by computer scientist Jefferey Shallit who reviewed Dembski’s article, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot be Purchased Without Intelligence where he outlines 6 problems he has with Dembski’s notion here = OR here (insert attachment here).Also a wiki write-up on Emile Borel who in 1939 suggested a false universal probability bound value of anything less than 1/1050 for some event being mathematical impossibility to occur = ) Identifying Divine Design via Miracles (and/or “G-Belief Authenticating Events”):i) My 11 Premise Deductive argument in skeletal form (the premises without the warrant provided as that will be put in my book) = Attach my 11-Premise Argument .Also see our prior S&S blogs and shows on Criterion c) [the Specification or Religious Context aspect], in particular David and Dale, through the lens of evaluating the historical case for the Resurrection miracle of Jesus specifically, debate the aspects of “Sufficient Attachment” here = and “Subsumability” here = .ii) The Shroud of Turin (Positive Evidence for Christianity- G-Belief Authenticating Event #1); See my approx. 300-page Shroud Chapter detailing how I apply my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” to a successful example, namely the image formation for the body and bloodstain images on the Shroud of Turin- see attachment here = (insert here). Also see my various Shroud lectures from Parts #4-10 where I detail the evidence in the light of these criteria (though I’m not fully finished the series yet)- see esp. Part #4 for a general overview of my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” notion and how the Shroud evidence fulfills Criterion a) [i.e. The event in question actually exists or has occurred] and Part #6 (the first half of the show] where I outline how the Shroud can fulfill Criterion b) [i.e. the event in question is complex or “Extraordinary”]. The links are (Part 4) & (Part 6).iii) Dale’s Vindication Argument ((Positive Evidence for Christianity- G-Belief Authenticating Event #2);David and I debated my Vindication argument. Note that my real argument is broader than what we discuss in this episode as I argue the Bible predicts that God will give us proofs that Christianity is true and/or should be followed so this would include the Shroud of Turin, the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit and any other provable “G-Belief Authenticating Events”. That said in this show, for simplicity sake, we only focused on the Vindication argument in relation to the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus, see the blogs and show here = .iv) Also Dr. Gary Habermas’ book “Risen Jesus” where Gary’s analyzes “Miracles” in terms of their plausibility and how to identify them (via using Richard Swinburne’s take on that front) in Chapters 1-3 (insert attachments) v) Dr. Michael Licona’s presentation of the basic elements of identifying miracles (improbable + a context charged with religious significance ), see his 4-part lecture = Starting in Part 1 (has his definition of miracle and how one can identify one has occurred = ) Dr. William Lane Craig also gives the same elements for identifying miracles = (Audio or written) or YouTube video of same = . Also, read his scholarly writing on the “Problem of Miracles” here = ) Skeptical Argument from Confusion and Bible Defects that I tweak to say God can’t allow “Undue Confusion” in my 11-Premise Argument (also includes our working definition of “G-Beliefs” = ) See a great debate on the alleged Miraculous Numerical Patterns in the Quran in relation to Dembski’s “Specified Complexity” between Dr. Shabir Ally (pro-Muslim side) vs. Richard Lucas called “Debate: Numerical Miracles in the Quran, Shabir Ally vs. Richard Lucas” = ) Miracle Healings:i) Video Taped Example; Original healing video on August 30th, 2010 and all videos after that = fuller video with everything in it = (45 mins- she walks normally). Times of India newspaper write up = ii) Lourdes;The Lourdes Medical Bureau of the Sanctuary main website = ; also the list of 70 officially recognized healings here = .Also see, Vittorio Micheli’s case = OR Attachment (insert here); also see the Peer-Reviewed Journal with X-Ray photos and details = OR attachment (insert here) .Also see, Danila Castelli’s case (the 69th officially recognized miracle at Lourdes)- she is from Bereguardo (Italy). Date of recognition: 20th June 2013 and involves an Italian woman who in 1980 was healed = see short 10 min video by medial expert = or short write up = or iii) Other Medically Documented Examples;Lee McDougald healing of Parkinson’s Disease= Godwin’s full bone restoration = (interview transcript with Ben on the Supernatural show with Sid Roth) & missing bones can’t grow back medically or naturally speaking, its impossible = ) Jesus’ Healing Miracles Historical (and therefore potentially “G-Belief Authenticating Events”):Dr. Graham Twelftree Sources; = 10 MIN VIDEO OF DR. GRAHAM TWELFTREE- JESUS’ NATURE MIRALES = The Nature Miracles of Jesus | Graham H. Twelftree. – 45 MIN VIDEO ON HISTORIAN AND MIRALES . HIS BOOK ON THIS = . GET SOME FREE ONLINE PORTIONS OF HIS BOOK ON JESUS MIRALES HERE = . HIS MAIN WEBSITE WITH Articles = Official Blog on S&S VERSION (BELOW)Miracles: The most over-promised and under-delivered Christian claimEnjoy;Anchor Audio Link =?Dale will post a solo introduction show tomorrow or by Thursday to go over his blog’s info fully.? Then on Sat we will have our normal debate/discussion show format as well (so look out for 2 Audio shows on this week’s topic).Identifying &?Evaluating the Miracles of GodHere it is, the big event, the ultimate showdown on the Miracles of God! How does one go about identifying such incredible events and have any been identified to have actually happened in history?These are the issues that David and Dale will be addressing in their own way in this week’s show. Both of our blogs are massive (David’s being 12 pages and Dale’s being 21 pages long)and as such David wants to post them as “E-Books” on the Reason Press website =? addition, while that is waiting to be put up there, I wanted to post the blogs early as available as attachments in this blog (as per our normal S&S procedure) as well to give people time to mull over everything in them seeing how they are so much larger than our usual blog posts.? I have opted to put them in as blog attachments rather than copying and pasting the full blogs as that will help make the page look cleaner.So without further ado;David the Skeptic’s Attached 12-page Blog for this week =?Miracles ebook (Skeptic’s Blog)&Dale the Christian/Seeker’s Attached 21-page Blog for this week =?PART 2 EDITED- Evaluating Miracles of God?Recommended Sources (for further study);a) Intelligent Design Theory (in General and in the Evolution vs. Creationism Debate):i) See the article by Dr. William Dembski explaining his own theory of “Specified Complexity” =??. Bill Dembski’s own website with a free E-Book on Miracles by him and Alex Thomas=??.? Also, see various videos of varying lengths of Dembski explaining his notion “ID” notions =??(3-MINS ON CLOSER TO TRUTH) OR 30 MIN VIDEO =? a 45 MIN VIDEO =?, an article by Dembski on “Why Evolutionary Algorithms Cannot Generate Specified Complexity” =?, by his great book, “The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities”, that proves he is right and I found it hugely influential myself (I own it and so can vouch for it), see here =?) Dr. Peter S. Williams writes a 6-page scholarly article defending Dembski’s notion of “Specified Complexity” in contexts outside of the Intelligent Design Movement at the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) in the peer-reviewed journal?Philosophia Christi?– Page 1 starts here =?) The Discovery Institute (the major scholarly source for the Intelligent Design Movement & the Creation vs. Evolution Debate)- various free resources including secular peer-reviewed science journal articles, see the main “ID” website here =?, see the following associated links;Various Peer-Reviewed Sources =? see the full bibliographical list here =? here?FULL LIST OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN PEER-REVIEWED WORKSVarious Scholarly level Responses/Rebuttals to Skeptical attacks on Intelligent Design =?) Dr. William Lane Craig (Intelligent Design side via Dembski’s Specified Complexity) vs. fellow Christian Dr. Francisco Ayala (Naturalistic Evolutionist)- Debate transcript, see William Lane’s opening speech for popular level explanation of how Dembski’s notion works in showing intelligent design =?, see the debate live starting with Part 1 here =?) A skeptical 9-page article outlining by computer scientist Jefferey Shallit who reviewed Dembski’s article,?No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot be Purchased Without Intelligence?where he outlines 6 problems he has with Dembski’s notion here =? here =?NO FREE LUNCH- ATHEIST REFUTES DEMBSKI SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY.Also a wiki write-up on Emile Borel who in 1939 suggested a false universal probability bound value of anything less than 1/1050?for some event being mathematical impossibility to occur =?) Identifying Divine Design via Miracles (and/or “G-Belief Authenticating Events”):?i) My 11 Premise Deductive argument in skeletal form (the premises without the warrant provided as that will be put in my book) =?Dale’s 11 Premise Argument for Miracles based on Undue Confusion- inlcudes Premise 8 criteriaAlso see our prior S&S blogs and shows on?Criterion c) [the Specification or Religious Context aspect],?in particular David and Dale, through the lens of evaluating the historical case for the Resurrection miracle of Jesus specifically, debate the aspects of “Sufficient Attachment” here =? “Subsumability” here =?) The Shroud of Turin (Positive Evidence for Christianity- G-Belief Authenticating Event #1);See my various Shroud lectures from Parts #4-10 where I detail the evidence in the light of these criteria (though I’m not fully finished the series yet)- see esp. Part #4 for a?general overview of my “G-Belief Authenticating Event” notion?and how the Shroud evidence fulfills?Criterion a) [i.e. The event in question actually exists or has occurred]?and Part #6 (the first half of the show] where I outline how the Shroud can fulfill?Criterion b) [i.e. the event in question is complex or “Extraordinary”].? The links are??(Part 4) &??(Part 6).?iii) Dale’s Vindication Argument ((Positive Evidence for Christianity- G-Belief Authenticating Event #2);David and I debated my Vindication argument.? Note that my real argument is broader than what we discuss in this episode as I argue the Bible predicts that God will give us proofs that Christianity is true and/or should be followed so this would include the Shroud of Turin, the historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus, Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit and any other provable “G-Belief Authenticating Events”.? That said in this show, for simplicity sake, we only focused on the Vindication argument in relation to the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus, see the blogs and show here =?) Also Dr. Gary Habermas’ book “Risen Jesus” where Gary’s analyzes “Miracles” in terms of their plausibility and how to identify them (via using Richard Swinburne’s take on that front) in Chapters 1-3 here =?RISEN JESUS BOOK CH 1?&?Chapter 2 (NEW?&?Chapter 3 NEW?v) Dr. Michael Licona’s presentation of the basic elements of identifying miracles (improbable + a context charged with religious significance ), see his 4-part lecture = Starting in Part 1 (has his definition of miracle and how one can identify one has occurred =?) Dr. William Lane Craig also gives the same elements for identifying miracles =??(Audio or written) or YouTube video of same =??. Also, read his scholarly writing on the “Problem of Miracles” here =?) Skeptical Argument from Confusion and Bible Defects that I tweak to say God can’t allow “Undue Confusion” in my 11-Premise Argument (also includes our working definition of “G-Beliefs” =?) See a great debate on the alleged Miraculous Numerical Patterns in the Quran in relation to Dembski’s “Specified Complexity” between Dr. Shabir Ally (pro-Muslim side) vs. Richard Lucas called “Debate: Numerical Miracles in the Quran, Shabir Ally vs. Richard Lucas”?=?) Miracle Healings:?i) Video Taped Example;Original healing video on August 30th, 2010 and all videos after that = fuller video with everything in it =??(45 mins- she walks normally).? Times of India newspaper write up =??) Lourdes;The Lourdes Medical Bureau of the Sanctuary main website =??; also the list of 70 officially recognized healings here =? see, Vittorio Micheli’s case? =? Attachment here =?Vittorio Micheli- The Miraculous Cure of a Sarcoma of the Pelvis; also see the Peer-Reviewed Journal with X-Ray photos and details =? attachment here =?Vittorio Micheli – Pelvis Healing at Lourdes- Peer-Reviewed Write Up?.?Also see, Danila Castelli’s case (the 69th?officially recognized miracle at Lourdes)- she is from Bereguardo (Italy). Date of recognition: 20th June 2013 and involves an Italian woman who in 1980 was healed = see short 10 min video by medial expert =?? short write up =?) Other Medically Documented Examples;Lee McDougald healing of Parkinson’s Disease=? Godwin’s full bone restoration =?? (interview transcript with Ben on the Supernatural show with Sid Roth) & missing bones can’t grow back medically or naturally speaking, its impossible =?) Jesus’ Healing Miracles Historical (and therefore potentially “G-Belief Authenticating Events”):Dr. Graham Twelftree Sources;??? = 10 MIN VIDEO OF DR. GRAHAM TWELFTREE- JESUS’ NATURE MIRACLES = The Nature Miracles of Jesus | Graham H. Twelftree.??? – 45 MIN VIDEO ON HISTORIAN AND MIRALES .? HIS BOOK ON THIS =? SOME FREE ONLINE PORTIONS OF HIS BOOK ON JESUS MIRACLES HERE =???. HIS MAIN WEBSITE WITH Articles =? ................
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