Hostile Corroboration Of Modern Miracles

I've written a lot in the past about hostile corroboration of the claims made by the earliest Christians, including their miracle accounts. Craig Keener's Miracles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2011) provides many modern examples.

In an earlier post, I noted that Keener argues for widespread conversion to Christianity on the basis of modern Christian miracles. For example, surveys and other sources have found that half or more of converts to Christianity in China claim healing, their own healing or somebody else's, as one of the reasons why they converted (264, 297, 300-302). He gives many other examples of conversion to Christianity on the basis of miracles, from a wide variety of cultures, including both individual and group conversions, among Hindus, Muslims, atheists, and other non-Christians (317, 323, 343-344). Keener often cites corroboration of miracle-related revivals and miracle accounts from noncharismatic Christian and non-Christian sources (nn. 140 and 144 on 287, 288, 291). A prominent Protestant theologian and critic of modern miracle accounts, B.B. Warfield, conceded that "genuine cures at Lourdes are undeniable", though he tried to dismiss the cures as "hysterosis", "anomalies", etc. (n. 203 on 681)

Keener cites corroboration of healing accounts in non-Christian mainstream media sources (428, 433, 460). One journalist was an agnostic and intended to write a book against faith healing, but converted to Christianity in the process of doing her research (476).

Regarding a doctor involved with another case:

"Her main physician, Dr. Ronald Kleinman, associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, was Jewish. He considered her cure 'miraculous,' reporting the cure both to the Vatican and in a 1997 interview with CBS Evening News." (479)

Another healing converted an agnostic doctor (527). Keener tells the story of a woman who had suffered from liver cancer and apparently was resuscitated shortly after dying. She was free of cancer afterward, and a non-Christian doctor she had gone to when she had the cancer converted after finding out about the healing (569-570).

Concerning Lourdes:

"One scholar skeptical of supernatural approaches readily grants that the healings occur. He affirms that 'some utterly extraordinary cures' have occurred there, noting that enemies of the Catholic Church and leading medical scientists like Alexis Carrel have been persuaded by the data. He concedes that some cases cannot even be explained psychosomatically; among examples, he lists 'the instant healing of a terribly disfigured face, and the instantaneous healing of a club foot on a two and one half year old child,' shown by non-Catholics to be permanent. Further, he cites a news article about a three-year-old with terminal cancer and the bones being eaten away; after the healing, even 'the bones in her skull grew back. Her doctor, a Protestant, said that 'miracle' would not be too strong a word to use.'" (685)

Keener writes:

"Patrick McNamara, director of the Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine, and Reka Szent-Imrey, research associate at the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, challenge the traditional intellectual goal of merely debunking miracle claims rather than learning from them. In this 'scenario the hero-scientist' informs the recovering person that no real cure is occurring, 'that instead he is gullible, stupid,' and should appreciate the heroic scientist for informing the patient of this truth. By contrast, these authors contend, extraordinary healings do occur, especially in religious contexts. While agnostic about supernatural causation, they insist that scholars should study and learn from these cures." (609)

Keener recounts the experience of one anthropologist:

"More astonishingly, in the Journal of Anthropological Research one anthropologist reported that during a shamanic funerary ritual in northwestern Ghana, he witnessed a corpse that had been dead for a few days dance and play drums for at least several minutes. 'I saw the corpse jolt and occasionally pulsate' in reaction to the shaman's movements; streams of light invaded the room, and 'the corpse, shaken by spasms, then rose to its feet, spinning and dancing in a frenzy….The corpse [of a drummer] picked up the drumsticks and began to play.' Soon it was again a motionless corpse, propped against the wall….Describing his experience thirteen or fourteen years later, he both continued to insist that it was a real experience shared with the other witnesses and tried to offer an impersonal, materialistic explanation for it, namely, a sort of group hallucination caused by the rhythmic drumming and his exhaustion. In view of scientific research about hallucinations, this explanation seems probably inadequate for an experience that various persons present shared. Still, something like this explanation is not impossible, given the intense ritual context. Whatever the explanation, it differs in any case from conventional Western categories of what should be able to happen." (540-541)

Elsewhere, Keener comments that "Some anthropologists have noted the transformation of a number of other anthropologists' beliefs through their anomalous experiences." (830) Concerning a study of anthropologists who experienced paranormal phenomena:

"Another article notes some forty 'anomalous experiences,' including healings, apparitions, and the like, reported by sixteen anthropologists, all highly educated persons from and trained in the West. Their reports display significant consistency despite the great variation in cultures and independence of the reports; independent evaluators of the material drew identical conclusions. They compared with the anthropologists especially one study of '1446 anomalous experience narratives' collected in rural North Carolina from 1988 to 1996. Whereas both anthropologists and others reported comparable anomalous experiences, the level of skepticism in anthropologists' reports of their own experiences (38 percent) was considerably higher than that in the other samples (7 percent). Nevertheless, the experiences transformed the belief structures of some anthropologists as well as others. Some anthropologists rationalized their experiences to reduce cognitive dissonance with their worldview; others accepted some elements of the experience as paranormal while questioning indigenous explanations; still others, who had multiple paranormal experiences, changed their worldviews and embraced explanations closer to the indigenous worldviews." (248)