Thus far there have been two installments in The Faces of Miracles. Regarding the introduction:
i) It's very naive for them to appeal to James Randi. And "spontaneous remissions" are not the only examples. Moreover, "spontaneous remission" is not a medical explanation.
ii) I don't see the point of polling "attitudes" about miracles.
iii) They make the blanket claim that "of course, miracles are not limited to Christians or Christianity", as if that's self-evident.
iv)To my knowledge, reported miracles cluster around Christianity. It also depends on how you define a miracle. If we include possession by evil spirits or the power of witchcraft, then in that sense, miracles aren't confined to Christians or Christianity. But that's consistent with the Christian worldview.
iv) They cite Sai Baba, but in The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, evidence is presented that he was a charlatan. Likewise, there's evidence that Brazilian "John of God" is a fraud. So those aren't real counterexamples.
The first chapter is a decided improvement over the introduction. Dembski and his sidekick narrate two well-documented medical miracles:
However, I take issue with a prefatory comment:
Rarely, a case emerges that can’t be even remotely explained by medical science or any logical, natural means. Something happens that seems completely unexplainable according to physical law, and where a divine or supernatural hand seems impossible to discount. That is a miracle.
i) Although that's one kind of miracle, that's not the only kind. There's also the category of coincidence miracles.
ii) One wonders if Dembski and his sidekick are aware of the case-studies amassed by Robert Larmer and Craig Keener.
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