The "science" of Miracles

How is it a false equivalence? With tentative explanations. We're talking about a story that you made up. The "scientific evidence" is made up.The Wikipedia article that contains your tweaked definition gives examples that don't support your definition. The real-life observations are not "inexplicable" to scientists. How can you have evidence for miracles? The statements you quote are not me claiming to know something independently. They're about what we know about scientists. If I say the "we" have a pretty good understanding of how evolution works, that is not a statement about my personal level of knowledge.We do know that scientists don't use "insert miracle here", don't we? I've asked for evidence of scientists invoking miracles and got none, so I'm assuming that you do understand that they don't. Feel free to correct that assumption.

I've already said it's a stupid game. That's my move. If you don't like it, throw the game board on the floor and run away. That's the observation. No gods have been detected. No flying pigs have been detected. No miracles have been detected.If flying pigs, etc. are detected, scientists will offer explanations. That's what they do. According to all of our observations, they always can. Actually, no. We don't agree on that. Miracles have been found - by people who believe in miracles, not by scientists. It's a case of you gotta believe it to see it.

Have you ever heard of analogies?I'm saying that attributing UFOs to alien technology is equivalent to attributing miracles to magic. In both cases, the attributor is drawing a different conclusion than scientists would.I am not in any way, shape or form suggesting that the two different examples should be mixed together. If I say that dogs prefer meat in the same way that rabbits prefer lettuce, I am not saying that dogs prefer lettuce. Indeed. And scientists don't like to use the same terminology as people who are habitually wrong.

Because it wasn't miraculous like the other scenarios that have been presented. So Bigfoot turns out to be real with political aspirations, what's miraculous about that? But your frying pan "what if"? Pure miracle! You're getting repetitive again. What if no explanations are forthcoming? How would science react? More repetition. Of course it's made up. That's the nature of a "What if..." You don't say what particular examples you're referring to, but this just repeats your argument that no scientific miracle has ever been found to occur. We're asking what if an event occurred leaving behind scientific evidence that *was* inexplicable to scientists? You're repeating yourself again. The evidence is part of the "What if..." You didn't claim "to know something independently." You said you "never claimed to know what scientists think," yet it was easy to find tons of statements of you claiming knowledge of what scientists think. "What you mean we?" In the excerpts from your 12 messages you only used the word "we" twice. Where in this thread is anyone arguing that scientists would merely "insert miracle here"? It's been described many times how hard scientists would work to understand the phenomena and develop explanations. This is just another way of saying what you just said, that it's being suggested that scientists would "insert miracle here" - it's still false. And as already told to you many times, the "what ifs" describe unprecedented events, so of course there are no miraculous events in the history of science. We do understand that they *haven't* found any miracles. But what if one of the described scenarios occurred? Should we assume you'll just repeat your non-answer of, "With tentative explanations," which doesn't address the actual question posed by the scenarios? Consider yourself corrected.--Percy

I say that it would truly be a miracle if ringo agreed with anything said in this discussion by his opponents.He apparently never knows when to stop arguing.Reminds me of this:

The true puzzle is why you believe no one's allowed to play a game you find stupid. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Though science has not yet encountered a miracle, that does not mean it never will. You mean according to past experience, not observations, and past experience shows that while many phenomena can be understood and explained, some scientific phenomena have resisted explanation for a very long time. Why is there something instead of nothing? What explains quantum behavior? What explains entanglement? How do we unify Einsteinian and quantum physics? What is dark matter? What is dark energy?Now of course none of these questions concern miracles because they don't involve violation of known laws of nature.
Science has not as yet encountered any miracles, but what if it did encounter an event that violated known natural or scientific laws? How would science react? And again, please, don't ignore the true question being asked with non-answers like, "With tentative explanations." How many times do you have to be told this is a science thread? A lot, apparently.Look at the top of the page. See where it says "Science Forums"? That tells you that this thread is in one of the science forums. We shouldn't have to pepper the adjective "scientific" all over the place just so you remember that we're talking science here. Tangle was obviously stating that we only agree that science has found no miracles thus far.Your frequent return to old already-addressed arguments and refusal to address actual points seems purposefully obtuse.--Percy

Ok. 'bye for now.

Are you seriously suggesting that scientists would propose no explanations at all? I thought I mentioned the Miracle of the Sun. No, it repeats my argument that scientists don't call something a miracle and they're not at a loss for explanations. In Message 266 you said:

quote:

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And there most certainly can be a consensus that something was a miracle. The George Washington Bridge moving 50 miles up the Hudson River. A leg lost in Afghanistan being suddenly restored. The water in the Nile River suddenly turning to blood. A consensus of scientists would most certainly concede they're miraculous.

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There's no equivocation about terminology there either. If you say, "They would certainly call their daughter Suzan," there's no implied, "or something else."So, what's the difference between, "no explanations are forthcoming," and "insert miracle here"? Everything is unprecedented until it happens. There are no miraculous events because scientists don't consider anything inexplicable. Of course it does. It would be business as usual for scientists. Do you seriously not know that?

What puzzles me is that you think I can prevent somebody else from playing. Is there a "Suppress Other Posters" button that I'm missing?I don't see a lot of people rushing to discuss your flying bridges. You can't blame that on me. Sometimes it is. That has been discussed in other threads. Are you suggesting that scientists have not proposed explanations for all of those things? I'm sorry if you don't like the answer but that is the answer. You're the one who is making the positive claim that scientists would react differently, so you are the one who needs to back up your position. I'm saying that if pigs were confronted by an entirely new kind of mud, they'd react as they always do and wallow in it. You're saying that they'd put on suits and ties or some such thing. You have to back up your claim.

quote:

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Come all of you cowboys all over this land,
I'll teach you the law of the Ranger's Command:
To hold a six shooter, and never to run
As long as there's bullets in both of your guns.

​

-- Woody Guthrie

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And also something about, "cold dead hands."

Responding to your last two messages to me...Regarding your Message 488: By "no explanations are forthcoming" I obviously meant explanations that worked out. For example, the scientists that hauled a magnetometer and a gravimeter about a helicopter obviously had some ideas for areas to explore (which is what I think you really mean by "explanations"), but what if nothing panned out?We already discussed the Miracle of the Sun, and it doesn't support your contention. Are there any examples in the Wikipedia article on miracles that do? This is like Hicks walking back a Trump tweet, but you're seriously responding to someone noting that you're only repeating old already rebutted arguments by saying it wasn't that old rebutted argument but this other one? How many times are you just going to forget or ignore the many descriptions of how hard scientists would work to understand things. Obviously during a discussion no one's going to repeat their entire argument in every post, and you're seizing upon this with false "Aha!" moments as if what's not said in a particular post was never said in any post. Bad on you. You have to ask? "Insert miracle here" is from a comic and implies no effort was made to study the phenomenon. "No explanations are forthcoming" means that the phenomenon was studied and none of the ideas and hypotheses panned out. Obviously false. The sun will rise tomorrow. Unprecedented? I don't think so. Scientists don't follow some set of rules, and in particular they don't follow the set of rules you're laying down for them. They follow the evidence where it leads. The scenarios we've described leave behind evidence that when scientists follow it they are led to the inexplicable according to natural and scientific laws. Of course it doesn't, and this is just another repetition of "tentative explanations" with the same answer. The "tentative explanations" don't pan out. Now what. Do you seriously not know that your inability to move beyond your original arguments makes clear how bereft your position is?Regarding your Message 489: My, aren't we literal. What do you care whether people discuss things you think stupid? Tangle, Phat, Stile and I are discussing this. And it's all your fault. If you were doing your job right no one would be discussing this. Well, sure, but staying on topic about miracles, is that what you think, that absence of evidence is evidence of absence? Obviously from context (see the sentence preceding your cut-n-paste) I was not. Your analogy has a couple flaws. First, without defining how the new mud is different from the old mud, how do you know pigs would wallow in it? And second, your analogy doesn't really fit. A more fitting analogy would be to ask what pigs who only knew mud would do were they one day confronted by snow?As already explained many times, scientists would react differently because they have evidence of something unprecedented in the history of science, violations of known natural or scientific laws.--Percy

As you seem to understand, there is no point at which scientists stop. Nothing panned out yesterday but they keep looking today. Explain why you think it doesn't support my contention. It's called a miracle by the Catholic Church but it's explained by scientists. My contention is that scientists don't call events miracles. I'm not ignoring it. I'm trying to figure out why you don't understand your own words. You say that scientists would work very hard to understand the phenomenon and than you say that they would stop working and call it a miracle.Or are you saying that they would call it a miracle and go on working anyway? in that case, why call it a miracle at all? Why not just call it something they're working on? No it doesn't. The comic shows a lot of figures on the blackboard which clearly took a lot of effort. Huh? The sun rising is not unprecedented. When they come to the end of the trail, they don't just stand there. They ask, "Where to now?" More tentative explanations.Please make up your mind. Do they stop looking or not? It indicates my inability to move you forward. But you're the guy who denied that the word "attributed" was there, even though you quoted it. And you're the guy who refuses to acknowledge that attribution is important in miracles even though it's mentioned in virtually every definition. And you're the guy who doesn't see that actual events are called miracles by believers but not by scientists. That's exactly the point. I don't care. The people who aren't discussing you flying bridge scenario decided on their own to not discuss it. I'm like the janitor here. I clean up your mess. If you make the same mess tomorrow, I have to clean it up again tomorrow. That's the nature of the job. Like the scientists, I don't at some point decide that the mess is a miracle and can't be stopped. Like the scientists, I just keep going. Absence of evidence for fairies, absences of evidence for the Loch Ness Monster, absence of evidence for UFO abductions, etc. Yup, sometimes. Then why are you suggesting that scientists would run out of possible explanations for your flying bridge? From previous experience with pigs. They see mud and they wallow. They don't need a definition.Scientists see questions and they propose answers. I would expect them to wallow in that too. I would not expect them to care whether it was "unprecedented" or whether it violated any pig laws.

Lets review the Bridge Analogy and fill in some details. Indeed. There would be loads of data to consider. The moorings where the seperation occurred would be examined to determine how the break occurred. Any and all witness testimony would be taken into consideration in order to see if any additional facts, such as a low flying aircraft could be found. The atmosphere and the weather would be reviewed at the time of the event. The bridge itself would be thoroughly examined and likely even dismantled for further study from its new location. The media would of course go nuts, and there would be a lot of fake news among the real news reports on the event.The media interviews with qualified scientists with appropriate credentials would likely have most of them cautious as to what they would say on the record. They likely would say that they were baffled and explain why it was that they arrived at this conclusion.Ringo is correct in that they likely would not go on record publically using the word Miracle but that the media would freely use it as the reality became apparent that there were no natural scientific explanations for what had occurred. As for off-the-record, it would be likely that the scientists involved with the ongoing two+ year study and followup on the event would have individual opinions as to what they would call this unprecedented event.

Following up on my last post, the study would likely take no longer than a few months or at most a couple of years. There is only so much that can be studied. some scientists would state that they were baffled and at a loss for any explanation. Others would, as you likely would, say that if it took them their entire career they would eventually solve the mystery.You must concede, however, that a fair number would actually give up further research and go on with their lives. What they privately chose to call the event would be as unique and individual as their very different lives and experiences.

There's only so much that can be invented, so let's close the Patent Office?Or, as we often tell creationists, questions usually produce more questions than answers. Or their grandchildren would solve the mystery. It isn't as if every scientist on earth would be studying the phenomenon in the first place. The vast majority of them would leave it to somebody else to figure out - which is another reason why there could never be a consensus calling it a miracle. They could privately call it Pinocchio. That has nothing to do with the topic.