Thoughts on Larry Shapiro’s “Don’t Believe in Miracles”
  • Mackensie
    7
    Shapiro’s Regimented Argument:
    1. If miracles are highly improbable, then no one has been justified in believing in miracles in the strict sense.
    2. Miracles go against the natural of order of things, indicating their rarity and improbability.
    3. Therefore, no one has ever been justified in believing in miracles in the strict sense (1,2 MP).

    My counterargument regimented:
    1. In order to determine that miracles are highly improbable, then there must be a very large sample size or the entire miracle population must be surveyed.
    2. It is very difficult to conduct a survey of an entire population or very large sample size, and there are most likely some miracle claims that we do not know about which makes the sample/population size unknown.
    3. Therefore, miracles are more probable than Shapiro claims.

    Statistically speaking, it is incredibly difficult to prove that an entire population is rare and highly improbable. Surveying an entire population would take immense time and resources, so gaining the absolute certainty that something is improbable or not going to happen could be more trouble than it’s worth. Sampling is a more feasible way to reach conclusions via inductive reasoning. However, the margin of error arises as a result of sampling rather than surveying an entire population. While Shapiro makes the disclaimer that he is not claiming that miracles never happen, I think that miracles happen more often than he thinks as a result of the margin of error when sampling the miracle population.

    What I mean by the miracle population is all of the miracle claims, ranging from the different miracles in the Catholic Church (for example, the Luminous Mysteries) that have a lot of cultural prominence to a more covert miracle claim that happened in a place with some witnesses and few means to circulate the miracle claim worldwide. From this entire supposed population, not all of the miracles could be known for a full examination and statistical calculation as to what percentage are justified as being true.

    Also, it is of my personal belief that there have been some justified beliefs in miracles. Our Lady of Guadalupe is a prime example. The image of Mary appeared on a cloak in the sixteenth century, and the fibers of the original cloak were tested centuries later in an attempt to find a match with different fibers on this Earth. Scientists were unable to prove that such a fiber that the image appeared on.
    Mackensie Options
  • tim wood
    9.3k
    Belief in miracles? Sure, why not? What is more miraculous than God - whether yours or mine or anyone else's?

    And if you deny any god, then what more miraculous than the universe and the things in it?

    So much for belief in miracles. Was that your topic? Or something else?
    tim wood Options
  • Jjnan1
    8
    ↪Mackensie

    Hi Mackensie, thanks for your argument. I am inclined to say, however, that I do not think that it works. Your argument, which you have kindly regimented, is the following:
    1. In order to determine that miracles are highly improbable, then there must be a very large sample size or the entire miracle population must be surveyed.
    2. It is very difficult to conduct a survey of an entire population or very large sample size, and there are most likely some miracle claims that we do not know about which makes the sample/population size unknown.
    3. Therefore, miracles are more probable than Shapiro claims.
    I think that premise two may actually prove particularly thorny for your argument. If indeed we are unable to survey those who have witnessed actual miracles, then how would we come to better know that miracles have actually occurred? Does this not threaten to keep miracles as nothing more than hearsay and humans attributing false causes to otherwise regular and natural causes? Doubting the powers of population statistics would not help make the case of miracles more probable. I think that it would just keep people believing whatever they believed about miracles. In my mind, if population statistics were able to survey those people who have experienced miracles and found that they were abundant in the population, then this would be of tremendous help for the miracle advocate. I think that the premise, more fundamentally, betrays an unwarranted sense of skepticism towards population statistics. While population surveys and samplings are not one hundred percent accurate and do have their deficiencies, at the very least, I wager that they do give us an accurate glimpse of what is in fact the case among groups of people. I think that when the Pew Research Center releases its finding concerning, say, religious affiliation in the United States, the findings do speak some truth as to what is the case.
    Jjnan1 Options
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