Assessing Lourdes

This is a post on Lourdes. Lydia McGrew kindly provided feedback on a draft version, so I'm including our exchange (with permission) at the end. 

1. It seems to me that there are two different ways we might classify the cures at Lourdes as coincidental. One way, championed by atheists, is to say that in any sufficiently large sample group, it's statistically inevitable that some medical conditions will natural resolve themselves. This will happen anyway, regardless of prayer. The cliché example is spontaneous remission from cancer. 

2. However, atheists don't think just any cure is susceptible to that explanation. Take the cliché example of amputees. They don't think the spontaneous regeneration of organs or body parts is something that naturally happens in a sufficiently large sample group. They concede that if that occurred, it would be naturally impossible. That would be a bona fide miracle.

3. But there's another sense in which the cures might be coincidental. And that's whether it's coincidental in place. According to the official site, only 70 cases have been formally confirmed as miraculous healings by the Catholic church:

https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/miraculous-healings/

In addition, I've read from 3 different sources that the total number of pilgrims is over 200 million:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-pope-lourdes-history/factbox-the-roman-catholic-pilgrimage-site-lourdes-idUKLB15892820080911

https://www.lourdescenter.org/bernadette.html

https://sacredsites.com/europe/france/lourdes_facts.html

Assuming that estimate is approximately accurate, the question it raises is whether, in any sample group of 200 million people who pray for miraculous healing, there will be a comparable percentage of naturally impossible cures. If so, the geographical association with Lourdes is random. That concedes a genuine miracle, but the location is an adventitious variable. Miraculous healings happen at the same rate in answer to prayer regardless of locality. 

4. Mind you, that may oversimplify things. Perhaps this happens more often in a Christian context, and not, say, when Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhist pray for miraculous healing. That's another variable. 

5. In fairness, the comparison (3) may be misleading in another respect. The same official site lists 7000 unexplained cures:

https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/miraculous-healings/

And unpacks that category is a bit more detail:

The members of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes have the task of assessing and, as may be the case, “certifying” that the course of the cure, which has been declared “unexplained” by the Bureau des Constatations Médicales of Lourdes, is indeed “unexplained” on the basis of current medical knowledge” (4). 

https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/medical-bureau-sanctuary/

So that changes the percentages by changing the standard. Put more precisely, that raises the percentages by lowering the standard. The question is whether in any sample group of 200 million people who pray for miraculous healing, there's a comparable percentage of unexplained cures. That's a less stringent standard. And it may be impossible to draw a comparison if we lack a relevant survey of the respective sample groups.

Since "7000" is obviously a round number, I wonder where that number comes from. Where's the source? 

Lydia

I'd be very surprised if those 7000 are on the order of the restoration of amputated limbs. Verified not to have been hoaxes, as well. It's important to remember that plenty of people aren't going to suffer any serious consequences for perpetrating a religious hoax. Nobody is going to crucify them.

Hays

It might be argued that the official figure (70 miraculous cures) is artificially low because the criteria are artificially rigorous. Since the Catholic church is putting its reputation on the line, it has stringent standards to vouch a miracle (in the past it wasn't so scrupulous). 

If so, then the actual number of miracles is probably higher than the official figure, but because "unexplained" is so vague, without further information about specific cases, we can't judge if the real figure is at the low end of the 7000, high end, or somewhere in the middle. 

Lydia

I think you are suggesting that God might cure them because they prayed or because he has some other reason to perform a miracle, not because of anything to do with Mary. That's a legitimate possibility, but it has some problems since God presumably knows that such a miracle will be credited to Mary's intercession. He could just have cured the person before he left to go to Lourdes.

Hays

i) It raises difficult issues regarding providence however we slice it. I wish to avoid a double standard. As you know there are cessationists and "anti-Catholics" who set the bar low enough so that every biblical miracle gets over the bar, but then reset the bar impossibly high so that no Catholic or Pentecostal miracle gets over the bar. Yet that's textbook special pleading.

ii) Mind you, a Catholic apologist might accuse me of special pleading because I detach the miracle from Marian claims. But a Catholic apologist is in the same situation, only in reverse. Because there are well-documented Protestant and/or charismatic miracles, a Catholic apologist must be able to distance those cases from Protestant claims. So both sides have the conundrum of conceding a miracle but denying that it verifies a sectarian claimant. 

iii) There's also the question of whether providence will avoid situations that cause some individuals for form a false impression regarding the religious significance of the incident. Given the complexity of historical causation, it's hard to see how providence can achieve certain goals without some intervening events having the incidental consequence of leading some people to draw the wrong conclusion. 

Take popular perception of Marian apparition in a  bank window. As you know, that's a real case. God knows that if the bank is built in that location, then natural lighting conditions will generate a visual pattern or "image" that recognizably corresponds to Marian iconography. But that's arguably a coincidental side-effect of natural processes that have a different purpose entirely independent of that result. Yet for those predisposed to Marian apparitions, on the lookout for Marian apparitions, that will have a predictable result.

Now, it might be argued that that's different from miracles at Lourdes, a site explicitly linked to a purported Marian apparition, and further linked to the Immaculate Conception. Indeed, it probably contributed to the elevation of that folk tradition to the status of dogma.

At the same time, that's a matter of degree rather than kind, compared to the bank window. Both have the same effect.

iv) In addition, if a Catholic prays to Mary at home or in church, then undergoes a remarkable cure, she will attribute that to the intercession of Mary. And she will share her testimony with friends and family. So it's still similar to Lourdes, although it doesn't have the official certification.  

Lydia

I can't remember if you consider the distinction important between God's performing a miracle and God's refraining from preventing something from happening. I do consider it important. It seems to me less likely that God would refrain from intervening to prevent someone from happening to have an amazing healing at Lourdes (by secondary causes) than that God would perform a miracle to heal someone at Lourdes. So that may be a difference between us.

Hays

Even if we grant the distinction in principle, that breaks down in relation to a healing that is naturally impossible, circumventing secondary causes and natural processes. At best that might apply to a subset of healings that are preternatural or coincidence miracles rather than something contrary to nature that bypasses secondary process. 

Lydia

Oh, I agree. If one granted that God had deliberately performed a real miracle (one might say a miracle-miracle) at Lourdes, one would have to deal with the implications of that. I would say in that case it would have some evidential value in favor of Marian doctrines, for the reason I have already given. Because it is not akin to the case of a reflection in a bank window or a pattern on burnt toast or whatever but rather a real miracle.

Of course, we have some evidence for all kinds of things that are false! I think sometimes it's difficult to bear in mind that "some evidence" doesn't mean "strong evidence" or "evidence to which there is no counterweight." I'm quite willing to say that there is probably some evidence for Catholicism in the form of reported miracles, visions, etc., but that it is strongly counterbalanced by the evidence against. Of course, the theoretical arguments for Catholicism are extremely bad, as many of your posts show. The empirical argument is really the basket into which Catholics should place their eggs, as it were. 

I would even go so far as to say that the conversion story of Wright (he's a sci-fi author, I can't remember his first name–John?) is some evidence for Catholicism. He was an atheist. IIRC, he prayed one of those "atheist prayers" (such as "If you're there, God, show me"). Very shortly thereafter, he had a heart attack and was in a coma or something for a while. During that time he claims that he had visions of the Virgin Mary. I think he says Jesus as well, but my memory is a little hazy. I found his blog increasingly weird and coarse and stopped reading it several years ago. Anyway, he recovered and promptly became Roman Catholic, which I suppose is understandable under the circumstances.