I’ve been deluged with emails today from this same Mr. Feder, responding to my post below. In the first one, he writes, I fail to see how these two statements [from an email I sent to him-TMS] are consistent: 1. ‘There is no evidence of miracles ever having occurred in the history of the human race.’ 2. ‘You’re right that I don't have time to investigate every claim of miracles.’
If 2 is correct, then 1 is far too dogmatic and unwavering. It should say something like this, “I haven’t personally seen evidence of miracles in the few cases I’ve investigated, but there might be such evidence, for all I know, in the hundreds of thousands of cases that I have yet to investigate.” In other words, if 2 is correct, a hesitant agnosticism is called for, not a universal generalization about the entire “history of the human race.” Indeed, the blanket nature of 1 makes one wonder whether anything would ever count as “evidence.”
In any case, what Chesterton said is indisputably correct: If science does not profess to study the supernatural (as all sorts of scientists claim), then it cannot tell us whether the supernatural exists or not. Perhaps your confusion results from reading “rationality” wherever he said “science.”
To this I replied,
You really enjoy misusing the word “dogmatic,” but it doesn’t fix things. I have spent a great amount of my time looking for evidence of the truth of miracle claims and found none. I am confident that I would have encountered some in the time I’ve spent. Since I haven’t, it’s rational to conclude that there is no such evidence. However, you are correct that for me to assert that there is absolutely none is an overstatement. There might be some. This is why I asked you to provide me some: hence my position is not dogmatic. Yours, however, is, because you believe that you have a get-out-of-reason-free card: you claim that you are allowed to believe in supernatural foofery and don’t have to provide any proof that your foofery claims are correct. And then you provide none, as if to prove the point.
What, to you, is the difference between rationality and science? Do you believe that the sun stood still in the sky as the book of Joshua claims? If so, do you have any evidence for this other than the fact that the Bible says so?
To this, Mr. Feder wrote back, One more sentence struck me as wrong:
It no longer surprises me that religious folks assert that their beliefs are exempt from rational measurement and investigation—and then call us “dogmatists” when we say we want some rational measurement and investigation.
Consider this: The Roman Catholic Church is actually quite skeptical when it comes to claims of miracles (as when someone is proposed to be a “saint”). They investigate thoroughly; they require the testimony of doctors and bona fide medical records; they refuse to consider cases of “healing” where there was merely some vague assertion of back pain or the like. By far, most asserted “miracles” don’t make it through that process of investigation. But there is a rational investigation, and some miracles do make it through.
In this case, it seems that your statement should be reversed. It is the Catholic Church that is interested in rationality and investigation, whereas you assert—without any possibility of personal knowledge—that such evidence has never existed in all of history and that if it has, it could be believed only by a “madman.” This implies that you are the one who refuses to look at evidence because of your pre-existing belief that evidence here is never possible.
I didn’t reply to this, but two observations here: 1) It’s true that the Catholic church has a vetting process for miracle claims. This process is handled by the priesthood, which I believe is biased, and which at the very least is willing to appeal to magical explanations, which undermines its credibility as a rational tribunal. 2) Mr. Feder again misuses the concept of “dogma” by claiming that I’m being dogmatic when I say there’s no evidence of miracles. He doesn’t bother providing any such evidence. But, as I said in my earlier email, it is conceivable that there’s something I—and the entire scientific world—have missed.
Most importantly, Mr. Feder thinks that it’s dogmatic for one to be unwilling to appeal to magical explanations. Magical explanations aren’t really explanations at all; they simply move the Mystery to a higher shelf. When he was asked whether evolution didn’t just “reduce[e] human specificity itself merely to an accident,” Jacob Bronowski replied
On the contrary, it is those who appeal to God and special creation who reduce everything to an accident. They assign to man a unique status on the ground that there was some act of special creation which made the world the way it is. But that explains nothing, because it would explain anything: it is an explanation for any conceivable world. If we had the color vision of the bee combined with the neck of the giraffe and the feet of the elephant, that would equally be explained by the “theory” of special creation….
George Derfer, Science, Poetry, And Human Specificity: An Interview with J. Bronowski, 43 American Scholar 386, 400 (1974). See also Carl Zimmer Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea 332 (2002) (Quoting Richard Dawkins: “If you’re allowed just to postulate something complicated enough to design a universe intelligently…[y]ou’ve simply allowed yourself to assume the existence of exactly the thing which we’re trying to explain…. You’re simply not providing any kind of explanation at all.”)
That’s right—an appeal to supernaturalism is not an explanation because it doesn’t explain anything in the realm of nature, but blocks the inquiry by saying “then a miracle occurs.” What’s great about evolution by natural selection is that it explains our existence without simply shifting the Mystery around: it’s what Nozick calls a fundamental explanation. See Anarchy, State And Utopia 19 (1974). As Daniel Dennett puts it, “Darwin’s dangerous idea is reductionism incarnate, promising to unite and explain just about everything in one magnificent vision. Its being the idea of an algorithmic process makes it all the more powerful, since the substrate neutrality it thereby possesses permits us to consider its application to just about everything.” Darwin’s Dangerous Idea 82 (1995).
When Mr. Feder says we’re being closed-minded when we eschew appeals to magic, what he’s saying is that we should be satisfied with pseudo-explanations that say “well, it’s just magic,” and then refuse to explain the process involved on the grounds that the process just can’t be explained. He is therefore the one being closed-minded, because he’s not interested in finding explanations that actually explain anything. Instead, he’s interested in “authoritative…assertion[s] of unproved or unprovable principles,” which is the definition of dogmatic.
After not getting an answer from me, Mr. Feder wrote: …Well, fine. It is impossible to prove a negative. That is precisely what Chesterton said: That people do assert universal negatives, and when they do so, they are speaking from their philosophical beliefs rather than from “science.”
Again, you mistakenly assume that the point here is whether the supernatural exists. That is not the point. The point is whether “science,” speaking purely as “science,” can claim to have authoritatively disproven it. And as you point out, it can’t claim any such thing. Which means that you agree on this point with Chesterton.
In my original post, Mr. Feder, I said just that. The problem is, if Chesterton is making the point that science can’t disprove the existence of God, then his point is utterly trivial, because science can’t disprove my claim that Santana albums are secretly recorded by purple unicorns who hum in a perfect merengue tempo. But the onus of proof is not on our side. It is on your side, because you’re the one making the claim that God exists. As Dawkins points out, Mr. Feder’s argument goes roughly like this: You can’t prove a negative (so far so good). Science has no way to disprove the existence of a supreme being (this is strictly true). Therefore, belief or disbelief in a supreme being is a matter of pure, individual inclination, and both are therefore equally deserving of respectful attention! When you say it like that, the fallacy is almost self-evident; we hardly need spell out the reductio ad absurdum. As my colleague, the physical chemist Peter Atkins, puts it, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbit around the planet Pluto. We can’t disprove it. But that doesn’t mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn’t.
Again, it is true that one cannot say for absolute certainty that there is proof that God does not exist. But there is also not proof that extraterrestrial teapots don’t exist. Thus if Chesterton is saying that we can’t authoritatively disprove something, his point is a logical fallacy. (Or two.) I’ve made this point so frequently in my comments to Mr. Feder that his ignoring it must be intentional.
Once more I did not reply, but Mr. Feder wrote Forgot to answer your questions:
1. I don’t think the sun stood still.
2. Rationality is obviously much broader than science. Science applies to a relatively narrow set of questions about the physical universe. Rationality or irrationality can apply to every thought about every subject ever imagined. I believe in representative government. This may be rational, but it is not a matter of “science.” I believe in free speech. This may be rational, but it is not a matter of science. And so forth.
I would ask 1) why not? But I’m afraid he’d answer. 2) This is actually an interesting issue. I know most people use the term “science” in the narrow sense of “the studies of physics, biology, geology, astronomy, and perhaps economics,” but I don’t think that’s right. I think science is, as Carl Sagan called it, “a way of thinking.” The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle in The Dark 27 (1996). It’s a method of understanding. It’s not just measurement of particular areas of inquiry. Representative government and free speech can be defended in terms of science properly defined—as Jacob Bronowski did, for instance, in Science And Human Values. (But I don’t want to go further into this side topic.)
Finally, Mr. Feder wrote: To repeat for the umpteenth time—the point of Chesterton’s quote is not to “prove” that there is a supernatural realm. It is to highlight the ridiculousness of saying that “science” has “disproved” it. And you appear to agree on that point. So I’m not sure why you have ginned up a disagreement here.
Because, Mr. Feder, that was not really the point of Chesterton’s quote. If that were the real point, then it would have been utterly trivial and not worth writing. The reason he wrote that passage was as part of a campaign to convince readers to believe in an invisible Man hiding in the sky running the universe. Not I, nor any scientist, has claimed that science has disproven anything, because no person interested in truth would suggest that the onus of proof lies on anyone but the person asserting the claim. Mr. Buck posted the Chesterton quote as part of his attempt to defend his belief in an irrational proposition. He may claim now “no, no, I wasn’t,” but if that’s the case, why did he post it to begin with? Nobody is saying that science has disproven God’s existence. Rather, he’s trying to pull one over on readers. It’s not the first time.
Mr. Feder continues—and here we finally get to the meat of the issue: But…there most certainly is “evidence” of various miracles and healings. (Not to mention ghost stories, which are far too common for me to think that they are all hallucinations or delusions.)
This is a logical fallacy called argumentum ad populem, not to mention the fact that it overlooks wide differences between various “ghost stories.”
Here’s one example: Rita Klaus, who was healed of advanced multiple sclerosis. According to the recent book The Miracle Detective, by Randall Sullivan (he’s a former skeptic who has reported for Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal), here’s what happened: She spent nearly all her waking hours in a wheelchair, had warped legs, degenerated muscles, etc. She began praying in 1986:“A prayer welled up inside here, followed by an electric jolt that ran through her entire body. She awoke the next morning and for the first time in years felt sensation in her legs; the feeling increased all day long. During the afternoon, Rita unbuckled the keeper on her right leg brace and discovered that her twisted limb was perfectly straight. A moment later, she took off her left leg brace and stood up. That evening, without assistance, she walked up the stairs to her bedroom. The next morning, she ran down those stairs, then ran back up. Later that day, she walked more than a mile to the home of the friend who first had told her about Medjugorje.
“Rita Klaus had seen any number of doctors at an assortment of clinics during the years of her illness, creating a large body of medical documentation. What astounded the succession of doctors who had examined her both before and after her healing, was not that her recovery had been total, but that it had been immediate. A spontaneous remission of multiple sclerosis was not inconceivable, the physicians agreed, but the degeneration of the muscles in Rita’s legs had been so extreme that months of physical therapy would have been required for her to even walk across a room, let alone run up and down stairs.
“When I looked through the Rita Klaus file in Medjugorje, I found the remarks of the various physicians who had examined her to be more perplexing than enlightening. One after another, they seemed to conclude that what had occurred was a miracle, and then in the next breath to insist that it couldn’t be. One doctor had felt certain that there was a scientific explanation, though he couldn’t offer even an implausible theory of what this might be.”
Now that’s dogmatic: Insisting that there simply must be a scientific explanation even when all the evidence points the other way.
Get that last line—it’s dogmatic to expect a scientific explanation, but not dogmatic to say “it’s magic!”
Now, of course, I’ve never heard of Rita Klaus before. (I’d be interested in hearing from readers who have.) But let’s assume that the story is entirely true—she really did just get entirely cured from this awful disease. Is it rational to conclude from this that the cause of her cure was magic? We know that in a population of billions of people some extremely odd coincidences will occur on a regular basis; moreover, at any one point, science will lack an explanation for many phenomena which, years later, turn out not to be so magical after all. People with cancer sometimes go into remission. Other people will suddenly die for no discernible reason whatsoever. A mysterious “cure” of a deadly disease is much more likely to be one of these strange instances where the explanation is not yet known than proof of magic. There are therefore four possible explanations: 1) this Rita Klaus story is a lie; 2) the Rita Klaus story is a mistake of some sort. 3) the story is true, but the cause is a natural cause of which we know nothing as yet. 4) the story is true, and Rita Klaus was cured by magic. We appear to have roughly equal reasons to believe all four of these possibilities, except that under item 4 we have some qualifications: first, claims of miracles are very often lies or misunderstandings, second, item 4 brings to mind several potential logical fallacies. Third, item 3 has frequently turned out to be the case in the past.
Now, again, it is possible that it’s magic. But being such a seriously earth-shattering claim, we’d expect more evidence than just Rita Klaus. As Philip Kitcher explains in chapter 2 of his marvelous Abusing Science (1982), a single instance that runs contrary to well-understood, long-standing scientific observations does not immediately disprove those observations. If I drop a rock and it hovers over the ground, it would be inappropriate to cry out “Look! The law of gravity is wrong!” The reasonable response would be to investigate this mysterious new phenomenon to see what new principle is at work. In the end, we might indeed conclude that the law of gravitation is wrong. But after such a long time of such routine, predictable evidence of its rightness, it is pretty unlikely that it will turn out to be wrong. It’s much more likely that there’s some new, as-yet-undiscovered phenomenon at work (usually, cheating!)
But people don’t like the “we just don’t know” answer. They much prefer, like Mr. Feder, to come in with the presumption that miracles are a perfectly valid “explanation,” and then go around searching for something to back up their predisposition to believe in ghost stories.
After quoting more stuff about Rita Klaus, Mr. Feder concluded, “Now, maybe there is a naturalistic explanation for this after all. Maybe. But it is nonsense to say that this sort of thing doesn’t even count as evidence in the first place. It most certainly does.” Not necessarily. Perhaps it is sloppy of me to say “no evidence” when I mean “nothing but flimsy, unsubstantiated assertions riddled through with logical fallacies.” I did this earlier with regard to Dave’s arguments, as well. My point is, there is no evidence that has stood the test of a serious investigation, of the existence of some supernatural realm. Miracle claims are frequently made and frequently debunked. It’s true that I cannot as yet debunk Rita Klaus (the cited book was published only last month)—and have neither the time nor the interest to do so at present—but I feel pretty darn confident that her case won’t prove that there’s an invisible Man in the sky controlling the universe…
…who, by the way, allows thousands of good, innocent people and animals to suffer and die from awful diseases like multiple sclerosis every day.... You know, I don’t usually point that out, because it is not a logical argument against the existence of God. But it is interesting that a single instance of an unexplained cure proves the existence of God, while the inconceivable suffering that goes on every day is, well, not exactly explained. There’s someone very dear to me who is going through some of the worst suffering imaginable right as we speak. This person is, simply put, the finest human being alive—a person absolutely incapable of imagining doing a bad thing. Yet we are told that this God, who loves us, don’t you know, has saved Rita Klaus from multiple sclerosis, and condemned countless others to unimaginable suffering—people like my dear one—and millions of others, who suffer from things like African hemorrhagic fevers, or malaria, or AIDS…. Again, this is not why I believe God is a myth—I believe that God is a myth for perfectly logical reasons—but this is an compelling side observation.
Anyway, this is probably the longest post I’ve ever written. It is also the last post I intend to write regarding Mr. Feder’s arguments. I’ve given him his fair hearing. I’ve given Erik Peterson and Dave their fair hearing. I gave them several days to reply, and they didn’t. It’s a boring subject. I’m sure I’ve convinced nobody. I’d really rather go back to law. Thank you, and good night.
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