Expect a miracle!

A village atheist who goes by the moniker of porphyryredux tried to leave some belated comments on some old posts of mine. After a post has been up for five days, comments are automatically routed to moderation, where they usually die of benign neglect. I'll respond to some of his comments (including some related statements he made on his blog). 

The critic’s basic argument is that, assuming god is the omni-everything that the bible says he is, the lack of medically verified regrowing of limbs among those who claim documentation of miracle-healing, is suspicious, given that the regrowing of a missing limb, clearly beyond the abilities of current science, would be the acid test of the miracle-healing claim. 

Since God never promised to heal amputees, there's nothing suspicious about God not doing what God never said he was going to do. 

I think my fellow skeptics are unwise to pursue this particular argument, since, as proven from the article at Triablogue, this particular criticism emboldens apologists to lure us into areas of pure speculation.

So even though he admits that it's unwise for atheists to pursue this particular argument, he persists in doing so anyway. Go figure. 

I argue in another post that the minimum expenses and and time lost from work/family necessary for skeptics to track down important evidence and otherwise do a seriously thorough investigation on miracle claims, make it absurd for apologists to saddle skeptics with the obligation to “go check out the claims”.  If the apologists at Triabolgue [sic] are serious, they would obligate a skeptic living in America to expend whatever resources necessary to get to southern Africa (‘Gahna), properly interview all witnesses and get back home.  Absolute nonsense.  

i) A classic strawman. I never suggested that evaluating a miracle claim requires you to reinterview the witnesses. If, however, an atheist is so irrational that he refuses to believe testimonial evidence unless he personally conducts the interview, then that's his self-imposed burden of proof.   

ii) I'd add that his complaint is very quaint, as if he were living in the 18C, and had to interview witnesses face-to-face. Has he never heard of email or telephones? In fact, even before the advent of airplanes, people wrote letters to solicit information. 

No Christian is going to travel half way around the world to investigate a claim that the ultimate miracle debunking has happened, so they have no business expecting skeptics to go halfway around the world in effort to properly conduct an independent investigation of a miracle-claim.

There's no parity between these two positions. Atheism posits a universal negative with respect to miracles. An atheist must reject every single reported miracle. By contrast, it only takes one miracle to falsify atheism. Therefore, the atheist and the Christian apologist do not share the same burden of proof. Not even close. 

Would it be too much to ask apologists to do something more with their claim of miracle healing, than simply provide references?

i) Actually, that would be asking too much. Just as we accept documentation for other historical events, we ought to accept documentation for miracles. Miracles are just a subset of historical events in general. 

ii) His complaint only makes sense if there's a standing presumption against the occurrence of miracles, so that miracles must meet a higher standard of evidence. But as I've often argued, that begs the question. 

iii) I'd also note in passing that if God exists, then it would be extraordinary if miracles didn't happen. If God exists, then miracles are to be expected. 

iv) I'd add that belief in miracles doesn't require prior belief in God. Evidence for miracles is, itself, evidence for God. 

If you seriously believe you have evidence of a modern day healing that cannot be explained by current medical science, set forth your case. 

Testimonial evidence is setting forth a case. 

All this stuff about what Keener said, what he didn't say, how critics misquoted him…

Where did I say critics misquote him?

...God having the sovereign right to avoid doing monster miracles, accomplishes nothing more than helping distract the less educated Christian readers from the simple fact that you have ZERO medically documented medically inexplicable healings.

That's just an empty denial in the face of explicit documentation to the contrary. 

Steve says Craig Keener has cited documented cases of body-part regeneration. Cf. Miracles The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. So there’s prima facie evidence that God heals some amputees (or the equivalent). Does Steve know of anybody who has attempted to obtain the medical documentation and/or witness statements that Keener has cited?

Do atheists make the same demand for cures in general? If a patient recovers from stage-1 cancer, do they refuse to believe it unless they can read the medical records for themselves and interview the patient? Notice the unexamined bias.  

It would be helpful for apologists to provide the one case of body part regeneration they feel is the most compelling, and lets get the ball rolling on the subject of just how good the medical documentation, diagnosis and witness statements really are.

Demanding evidence of body-part regeneration is an artificial litmus test for miracles. I never took that demand seriously in the first place. I'm just calling their bluff.

Atheists who refuse to consider evidence for miracles in general, and instead resort to this decoy, betray their insincerity. Logically, the case for miracles is hardly confined to one artificial class of miracles. 

Apologists think they score big on the objectivity scale by insisting that skeptics and atheists do their own research into the claims for miracles that appear in Christian books.  A large list of miracle-claim references may be found in Craig Keener’s two volume set “Miracles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2011)”.
But if we are realistic about the time and money required to be expended in the effort to properly investigate a single modern-day miracle claim, it becomes immediately clear that the apologist advice that skeptics should check out those claims, is irrational for all except super-wealthy super-single super-unemployed super-bored skeptics.

That's ironic, considering the obvious fact that Keener isn't "super-wealthy, super-single, or super-unemployed." Indeed, as Keener said in the introduction, "I have no research team, no research assistants, and no research funds; nor have I had sabbaticals to pursue this research" (1:12). What hinders an atheist from doing what Keener did?  

Apologists, desperate to cut the skeptic’s costs as much as possible so as to leave them “without excuse”, will suggest ways to cut the costs as described above...

Another strawman. Atheists are already without excuse. 

What bright ideas do you have for the married miracle skeptic whose wife homeschools their children, who has only one job?

Since when did atheists join the Christian homeschooling movement? 

If skeptics need to stay open to the possibility of miracles merely because they cannot rationally go around investigating each and every miracle claim, then must you, the Christian apologist, stay open to the possibility that miracles don’t happen, on the grounds that you don’t have the time or money to investigate every single naturalistic argument skeptics have ever come up with?

Once again, these are asymmetrical positions. It only takes on miracle to exclude atheism, whereas atheism must exclude every miracle. 

And the bad news is that it doesn’t matter if we investigate a single claim and come up with good reasons to remain skeptical of it….there are thousands of other miracle claims complete with identifiable eyewitnesses and alleged medical documentation that we haven’t investigated.

i) That's the dilemma for atheism. A position with an insurmountable burden of proof. Good luck with that. Not my problem. 

ii) Atheists are like paranoid cancer patients who refuse treatment until they can verify the treatment for themselves. They make irrational, time-consuming demands on the oncologist to prove the efficacy of cancer therapy.

But the oncologist is under no obligation to accede to their unreasonable demands. He's not the one with the life-threatening disease. He has nothing to prove to the paranoid patient. It's the patient whose life is on the line. It's the patient who has everything to lose. 

If the patient is diagnosed with stage-1 cancer, but refuses treatment for 8 months while he conducts his own "independent" investigation–by interviewing other patients–then even if he succeeds in satisfying his personal curiosity, and is now amendable to therapy, by that time he will have stage-4 cancer–at which point therapy is futile. 

If the apologists here saw video footage of a dog flying around a room using biological wings sprouting out of its back, would they insist on making sure all other alternative explanations were definitively refuted before they would be open to considering that this was a real dog with real natural flying ability? Then skeptics, likewise, when confronted with evidence for a miracle healing, would insist on making sure all other alternative possible explanations were definitively refuted before they would start considering that the claimed miracle was genuinely supernatural in origin. 

i) That's an argument from analogy minus the argument. Where's the supporting argument to show that miracles are analogous to flying dogs?

ii) Instead of dealing with the actual evidence for actual miracles, atheists deflect attention away from the evidence by floating hypothetical examples. But that's a diversionary tactic.

iii) Moreover, it's self-defeating. If an atheist concocts the most ridiculous hypothetical he can think of, then, yes, the example strains credulity. But that's because he went out of his way to concoct an artificially ridiculous example. That's a circular exercise. Unbelievable because he made it unbelievable.