Dr Sean George’s miracle and the God behind it

On a recent edition of the Unbelievable show, the story of Dr Sean George was presented by Sean himself and then discussed with some sceptics. I’ve mentioned this story before when it was on the Hinge podcast, but this new show goes into the story in far more detail. To get the whole story, you’ll need to listen to the podcast. But, in brief, Dr George’s story goes like this:

He had a heart attack in a remote part of Western Australia, staff at a small medical clinic tried CPR, etc., to revive him for an extended time, but eventually gave up and declared him dead. When his wife turned up, she prayed for him and his heart restarted. Despite being dead for an extended period of time, and having multiple organ failures, he eventually made a full recovery with no brain damage. He is back to being a professional medical doctor. There are a few other details in the story about third parties receiving ‘revelations’ and knowing what would happen apparently in advance of the events.

So it sounds like a miracle happened. Dr George certainly believed that God did it. But let’s think about this.

Suppose, for a moment, that Sean George is right in his belief. God intervened, restored him to life and miraculously prevented all the problems, loss of brain function, etc., that usually follow from lack of oxygen flow to the brain for multiple minutes. What does this tell us about God? It tells us that God can intervene and over-ride human physiology, saving those who would otherwise die. It tells us that God can and does give direct revelation to individuals about the future, and about things happening elsewhere in the world. It tells us that God can do these things, but that most of the time he doesn’t do them. He can, but he doesn’t. Most people who experienced what Sean George did have simply died. Even though some of them had someone praying for them. What does this tell us about God? It tells us that he has power, but generally chooses not to use it. He probably won’t save you when you ask. He’ll probably let bad things happen to you, even when he could stop them. That doesn’t actually sound like a God worthy of worship. Would you worship and pray to a God who, most likely, will not act upon those prayers and will, most likely, let you suffer and die, even though he could intervene? Why worship a God like that?

I guess the reason most Christians worship a God like that is because of a future, post-mortem hope in the resurrection. The belief that God can and will raise them to glory, even after they have died. There’s a huge assumption here. We’ve already seen that God generally does not do the things that he can do. So even if he raised Jesus to a resurrection body and glory in heaven, this is absolutely no guarantee that he will do the same for them, or for you. Sure, some of the bible writers made statements that make the ‘evidence’ of Jesus’ resurrection sound like a promise to do the same for you, but a written document is no guarantee, even if it claims to be. The same document says that if the church elders pray for you, you will be healed. Time and time again this promise has been proven false.

So if Sean George’s miracle working God is real, this in no way guarantees anyone will get healing in this lifetime, or a glorious afterlife in the future!

But if that God doesn’t exist, isn’t Sean George’s story so remarkable that it must prove that something ‘supernatural’ is going on? Even if that God isn’t real, surely the truth is out there?

I guess that depends on what you mean by ‘supernatural’. Certainly something weird and unusual happened, but was it beyond natural? In other words, was it impossible by natural means?

The thing is, it certainly happened. I'm not a hyper skeptic. I think that enough people have confirmed the story to demonstrate its overall reliability as a real event. Sean George's heart stopped for an extended period of time. Most other people who have heart stoppages for that length of time do not recover and live fully restored lives. But was he properly dead?

I'm currently writing another blog post about what it means to be alive and what it means to be dead. It'll get published eventually. The problem we face is that it is actually quite hard to define life and death. Life is often defined in terms of death, and death is often defined in terms of life, it's confusing. Clearly, if you define 'death' as 'the state from which no return to life is possible', then Sean was never truly dead. He may have exhibited no bodily (or brain?) function, but that does not mean that return to life is impossible, and Sean is an example which proves that. Sean George's return to life and full health is certainly remarkable, definitely rare, but seems merely to be right at the tail end of the bell curve of possibility. As I say, it certainly happened. And because it happened, it is clearly not impossible. It was exceedingly unlikely, but still on the bell curve of possibility, so could be still within the remit of nature. We don't need to look for a supernatural agent, we simply need to redefine our bounds of knowledge of what is natural.

But. Other weird things happened around the extremely unlikely but still naturally possible resuscitation. People claim to have received revelations from God which seem to have come true, the resuscitation itself occurred coincidentally (as in, at the same time as) with Sean's wife turning up and praying, and so on. Does that not suggest something supernatural was going on?

I'm not going to go as far as 'supernatural', but I'll certainly go as far as 'not currently explained by science'. The problem with science is that it can only be used to investigate the repeatable and the fairly frequent. You can't form and test scientific hypotheses based on a one off event. Weird and rare things happen all the time. Charles Fort and the Forteans who came after him have chronicled loads of weird and inexplicable stuff. Is it supernatural? Probably not. Is it rare? Yes.

But I don't think you need to invoke an infinite, all powerful God to explain the inexplicable. For me, the key to this story is that Mrs George initiated the healing. Doctors and nurses couldn't do it, but she turns up and - wham - he is healed. Why do we need to invoke God here? At face value, Mrs George seems to be the one with the healing power (as I said before).

Maybe we'll never know what actually caused the healing. But one thing is clear to me, if it was a God who intervened here, and yet choses not to intervene in millions of other, similar situations, then that God is not a God worthy of our faith.

Hinge - Episode 8 - Miracles

I've been listening to the "Hinge" podcast and have been meaning to blog about my thoughts on it, but have been so busy recently that I've not managed to write any coherent thoughts down before I've forgotten what they were and have moved on to the next thing. I may revisit this podcast in the future and post some thoughts at a later date, but for now here are my thoughts on episode 8.

I suppose I should briefly explain the setup of Hinge, in case you're unfamiliar with it. Basically its written and presented by two friends, one a pastor, one an atheist (former Christian) who decided to take a year off work and explore the big questions about God and Jesus properly, and then present it in ten podcasts, each about half an hour long. Its been interesting so far, but more than a little frustrating, because you simply cannot do justice to the questions they are exploring in only about five hours of audio.

This week's podcast is a perfect example of how the show doesn't really get to grips with the subject. The topic for this week was basically miracles; do they happen? In the half hour show they discussed three supposed miracles, which I will briefly summarise here:

1. A situation where a believer was really short of money, did her sums and wrote down exactly how much money she needed to pay the bills, then she prayed about it. Later that week a Christian friend of hers (who knew nothing about the financial difficulty) felt compelled to send a cheque for a specific amount to this woman. When the cheque arrived it turned out to be exactly the same amount of money the woman had calculated.
2. A situation where a man had a heart attack and the doctors could not resuscitate him, but kept trying for ages. When his wife arrived at the surgery, she prayed and the man's heart started working again. Despite being clinically dead for almost an hour, he eventually made a full recovery, with no brain damage.
3. A situation where a man was crushed by a car, severing five major arteries and destroying much of his lower intestine. Somehow he survived until the hospital, but his guts were severely damaged and much of them had to be removed. When in hospital, some Christian healer felt compelled to come and pray for the guy and he felt something change in his insides. Some time later an atheist surgeon operated on him and discovered that much of his lower intestine had regrown.

Items 2 and 3 on that list are discussed in Craig Keener's book on Miracles that I really should read some time, but it is massive, so I'll pass for now.

The options presented and discussed in the Hinge podcast were the following:

1. These were all miracle events, brought about by the Christian God.
2. These were not miracle events, and some natural (but not explained) process must be at work.

That's it. No third option was even considered. 

For me, the answer to these conundrums does not necessarily need an omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent God. Indeed, if there was such a God involved, I'd expect different outcomes in each case.

Take the first case, what role does God play here? He basically gets the magic number telepathically from the head of one character and inserts it telepathically into the head of another. And the two characters already know each other. You don't need an infinite God to link these two, if you're prepared to speculate, then a simple telepathic link direct between the two would explain it with no divine agent. In one scenario you have two telepathic links and an infinite God, in the other only one telepathic link is required. Occam's razor would prefer the option with no God. Of course, there is limited evidence for telepathy, but then again, there is limited evidence for God.

You think an infinite God is more probable than telepathy? Are you sure about that?

And what this show failed to even mention is what about the many (hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions) of Christians in financial trouble who work out their financial shortfall, pray about it, and then nothing happens? Nobody sends a cheque. What about them? One anecdote doesn't explain why most of the time God seems to do nothing, and occasionally (I've heard a similar story before) people get just the right amount of money given to them in mysterious ways.

Given the law of large numbers, this could simply be coincidence. According to the story, the financial shortfall was a very specific number, and the mysterious cheque had that exact (and obscure) value, but here I must question the reliability of human memory. Suppose the shortfall was $164.07 and the cheque that arrived was $167.95, I have no doubt that the recipient would think those numbers were close enough for it to be a miracle, and as the story was told and retold over many years, the actual numbers could have been forgotten, but only the 'fact' that they were the same was remembered. Or maybe I'm being a bit cynical. I know my memory isn't perfect, I can't assume that everyone else has a perfect memory.

Turning to the medical miracles (and as far as I can tell - without reading it - most or all of the miracles in Craig Keener's book are medical in nature; nobody seems to walk in water or turn water into wine these days), there is one feature of both stories that was not questioned in the podcast - why does God need to work through an intermediary? In story 2, above, no 'miraculous' healing happened until the guy's wife showed up, then things turned around. In story 3, the apparent miracle only happened after the Christian healer guy turned up and prayed. In both stories it appears that God chose to, or perhaps needed to heal through an intermediary. Why didn't/couldn't he heal directly? I've heard this in many other healing stories - some human healer is involved.

Lets speculate again. What if some people simply have innate healing powers, able to cause healing, regrowth, or resuscitation just by laying on of hands, or something like that? Its like the telepathy thing again, in one hypothesis we have a healing individual and an infinite God, in the other we simply have a healing individual. Just because that individual believes that the power comes from God, doesn't actually mean that any God is involved.

And again, the programme doesn't discuss the stories of those who had heart attacks and then died. Or those who were crushed by cars and then died. The stories presented are the tiniest minority of actual incidents. Most of the time miracles don't happen. Some of the time, people just get lucky. Maybe these miracles were just instances of people at the favourable end of the probability bell curve, who happened to pray at some point in the incident. Maybe they are wrongly attributing their good fortune to God, when there was actually no God involved.

The feedback loop of faith is involved here (which I first discussed in this post). We don't hear the stories of dying people who cried out to God and died anyway. Those stories should cause us to reduce our belief in a God who answers prayer, but we don't do that because we never hear those stories. We only hear the stories of the survivors.

And the other thing implied in the show, but the issue was never raised, is that only the Christian God answers prayer and heals in these ways. What about those who call out to Allah and don't die? We never hear about them. What about those who cry out to Krishna? What about the prayers of Mormans, or Moonies, or whatever? The narrow focus on only two possibilities in this show (i.e. option A "The Christian God exists" or option B "There is nothing supernatural") rules out a whole host of interesting possibilities ad speculations. Reality isn't black or white.

Personally, I don't think these miracle claims are enough to demonstrate that the Triune God of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is the only way to explain the weird stuff discussed. But I also don't think that Hinge takes seriously the possibility that weird stuff can happen without there being a God. From observation and from reading I am quite sure that weird and inexplicable stuff happens all the time, and our current understanding of the universe simply cannot explain it. But that doesn't mean we need to jump straight to God as an explanation.

Magnificent Obsession by David Robertson (a response, Part 1)

Dear D,

I've been reading your book "Magnificent Obsession" and I'd like to make a few comments on it. I'm writing this "review" (OK, so really its a response) in the form of a letter, mostly because your book chapters are written in letter format, but also because I think its quite likely that (unlike most of the book reviews I do on this blog) you might actually read this and will probably respond. (Yes, your reputation does precede you!) 

You might not remember me, but I've been in your church in Dundee on a few occasions (not for quite a few years now) as I'm friends with some of your congregation, both current and former members. 

As you'll see if you browse the previous posts on this blog, I've been a practicing and committed Christian since my teens in the 1980s, but over the past decade or so I've wrestled with a lot of issues to do with faith, belief, God, Jesus, the bible, and how all of them fit into reality. I started with the agenda of simply wanting to know the truth, in the hope that the truth would, indeed, set me free. Over the past decade, however, I (along with the readers of this blog) have witnessed a progressive and ongoing erosion of my faith. This wasn't intentional from the outset, but is rather the honest re-evaluation of my beliefs in the light of my study of the bible, and various books, writings and discussions on both sides of the 'God debate'. 

Anyway, all this by means of introduction. Lets get to thinking about your book. 

You seem, at the outset, to imagine yourself to have a different agenda to other apologists, and perhaps a different audience too, but I have to say that, much like almost all apologetics, this book is most likely to be read by those who are already (Evangelical) Christians and will serve to reinforce their already established beliefs. Of course, I expect a small number of non-Christians and atheist/agnostic types might read it too, but mostly for the challenge of 'debunking' it; I'm not sure they'll be swayed too much. The book is also being read by folk like me, somewhere in the middle ground, who've heard you on the Unbelievable show a few times... 

In Chapter 1, "Man", you aim to show that Jesus is (not was) a real person. As real to you as your own wife is. I once expressed similar sentiments myself, but came to realise that the comparison is not good. I can (literally) see my wife, I can (literally) hear her speaking to me, I can (literally) touch her. Occasionally I trust my feelings regarding her and she has to point out that I've completely misread what she says or what she wants. My feelings can be wrong, and frequently are. But with Jesus, all we have is an (unchanging) book, our feelings and our interpretative framework. If our feelings or interpretation are wrong, we have no way of knowing this. If our feelings come entirely from chemical impulses in our physiology, we have no way of distinguishing this from the 'promptings' of the Holy Spirit, if such exist. This is not analogous to a relationship with a person. A person can correct you even when your feelings are wrong.

But considering that this is apparently the stated intent of Chapter 1, you move rather rapidly from the subjective experience of Jesus now to the (slightly) more solid ground of the historical Jesus. Your evidence and reasoning here are not new, or particularly compelling, and you do quite a lot of appealing to authority, but anyway, on to the evidence. 

You present three pieces of non-biblical evidence for the historical Jesus. You mention Serapion, without presenting what he said. Probably just as well, as the evidence is very weak. He (writing at an unknown time between the destruction of Jerusalem and the 3rd century) mentions the execution of a Jewish "wise king" and nothing else. No name, no location, and the text suggests this occurred immediately before the destruction of Jerusalem. This might have nothing to do with Jesus, yet you suggest this is evidence. You also quote the rather late evidence of Tacitus. All this really tells us is that, by the beginning of the 2nd century, there were "Christians" who believed in a Christ who had been crucified by Pilate. These beliefs were attested some three or four generations after the alleged event. Nobody doubts that there was Christian belief in the 2nd century. This isn't evidence for any actual events occurring some 90 years earlier than the document was written. Even supposing that Serapion was referring to Jesus, all these two sources really give us is evidence for two things:

1. that there was a man, known as "Christ", who was executed, and
2. that there was a Christian religion in the early 2nd century.

I have to say that neither of these facts is particularly controversial. Almost everyone who knows anything about Christianity, but is not a Christian, will happily endorse both these statements.

You also quote the disputed passage from Josephus. Most 'critical' scholars appear to think that this is at least partially a Christian forgery. Origen certainly knew nothing about this passage, so some suggest it was added after his time. Josephus, whose job more or less required him to consider Vespasion as "lord", would never have said that Jesus was the Christ or Messiah, so that line -at least- is a Christian insertion. Given that, this passage only really shows that later believers in Christ were willing to change documents they copied to fit their own agendas. It gives us no information about a historical person. And that's really all there is outside of the Bible...

I've read thorough and compelling analysis of these passages in the 'new-atheist' literature, and your brief mention of them here does not provide enough reasoning to make me reconsider these passages as having anything useful to say about the historical person of Jesus. So to find him we have to trust the New Testament.

Of course, you do trust the NT accounts, without really giving your readers much justification for doing this. A serious historian can't take a book which claims a man walked on water or transmuted water into wine as being a reliable historical document. Our first approach must be one of scepticism, but you jump over this and assert that there is "no substantive reason to doubt" that these documents are eye-witness testimony. Well, to even the casual observer there are loads of reasons to doubt this, firstly the outrageous claims in the books, then the fact that they appear to have copied each other and changed bits of the things they copied to fit their own agendas, and also the fact that Jesus in the 4th gospel sounds almost nothing like the Jesus of the other three.

Now I'm not following the "nineteenth century paradigm of 'miracles don't happen'" here, I began all this firmly believing in the miracles and it was through a study of the unreliable reportage in the gospels that I ever came to doubt them.

Finally, in this first chapter, you (rather oddly) jump to the subject of the virgin birth. If this happened, as you say, it would define history. But two contradictory birth stories don't really make a very strong case. Yes, the authors of Matthew and Luke both appear to believe that Jesus was virgin born, but Mark, John, Paul and the other writers of the NT don't mention it, so it doesn't appear too foundational for them. You conclude with a couple of anecdotes of prodigals returning to faith. Yes, it happens. Hindus also become Muslims, Christians become Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. Anecdotes prove nothing.

So the odd thing in chapter 1 is that you don't support your main claim, that Jesus is real, with even a single anecdote from your own experience. We end this chapter having established that Jesus might have been a real person and that some people, some time after his lifetime believed outrageous things about him. What you haven't yet provided is any evidence that these outrageous claims are actually true.

In Chapter 2, you turn to the subject of "Miracles". You start off by poo-pooing the atheist caricature of blind faith. Fair enough. I know plenty of Christians who believe stuff because of the evidence of their experiences. You have a headache, somebody prays for you, the headache goes away, you have evidence that prayer for healing works. Of course the cause-effect chain might not be as clear cut as it appears to the believer, but to deny experience is pointless. But Christian faith is not, as you say, merely 'based on knowledge', it is based primarily on the bible and then, somewhat secondarily, on an interpretation of the evidence perceived through a biblical mindset. I've blogged before about the lack of a negative feedback loop in the Christian mindset. You pray, God answers, faith is boosted. You pray, no answer, faith is not diminished. Whichever way you slice it, if positive experiences boost faith and negative ones do nothing, then the net effect will always be to boost faith, even if the positives are only coincidence. Anyway, I seem to be straying away from what you said in your book.

The question at hand regards God. If there is a God (or there are gods) then miracles must be considered a possibility. Although, I must say even if there is a God, that doesn't necessarily imply that there must be miracles. So we can't simply assume that miracles can't or don't happen. Fine. I agree. Evidence for miracles amounts to evidence for God, not necessarily your God, but let's not go there just now.

Miracles might happen today. Miracles might have happened in the past. Either way, what constitutes evidence for a miracle? One thing that doesn't - in itself - provide any evidence for a miracle having occurred is somebody telling a story that a miracle occurred. By their very nature, miracles are rare events. Made up stories are rather common. So even if there are real miracles, the balance of probability is that any story claiming a miracle occurred is most likely fiction. The bible doesn't get special pleading here. The stories recorded here of miracles are probably fiction unless they can be verified somehow.

And there's the problem the apologist faces, we have no verification mechanism to prove miracles in the past. We could prove (some of) them if they occur now, but not the ones in the past. We have no evidence, only stories.

Did Jesus perform miracles? Well, the stories say so. His followers several generations later believed that he did. But that is no evidence. Throughout the 1980s and 90s there were hundreds if not thousands of people who believed that Elvis was still alive. Today there are thousands of folk who believe that the American government destroyed their own buildings on 9/11 2001. Widespread belief does not make a claim true. And holding a belief within a short period after the event does not make it any more likely to be true.

The historian only has probability to deal with. If something occurs today, there's a good chance it happened in the past. If miracles happen today, we can believe they happened in the past too. That is the 'principle of analogy'. We know that people are apparently healed by faith healers today, so we can assume that this happened in the past as well. We know there are exorcists who apparently cast out demons today, so we can assume this happened in the past as well. We know that people cannot walk on water, so we must assume that this cannot have been possible in the past. Jesus could well have been know as a healer and exorcist. He maybe even had a reputation as a miracle worker. But we have no access to what happened, so cannot conclude the truth of the stories.

I'm astonished that you take the words of Quadratus as true. He claims that there are 'some' (i.e. more than one) who had been raised from the dead by Jesus still alive some 90 years later. Unless they were infants at the time of their resurrections, it is almost inconceivable that this story is true, and even then it is highly doubtful. This first apologist is doing the same as many of his successors - exaggerating and embellishing his story to try and persuade his audience.

You do the same. You speak of 'hundreds' at the funeral of Lazarus. Where is that in the bible? In John 11v31 it implies that all those present for the resurrection of Lazarus had previously been in the house of Mary and Martha. They must have had a very big house!

Citing the 5000 who were fed or the hundreds who witnessed Lazarus being raised as evidence is just silly. We have no access to these people, we have no names, we have no independent testimony. They are just part of the story. As Robert M. Price frequently points out, using the characters in the story as supporting evidence is much like arguing for the existence of the Emerald City using the evidence of the Yellow Brick Road; of course there must be an Emerald City, where else would the Yellow Brick Road go? Even the first readers of the gospels had no way of finding any of the alleged witnesses, they were too late and probably too far away (some say Mark was most likely written in Rome, some claim Matthew was written in Antioch, almost everyone agrees that John was written late, and so on). If they couldn't confirm the miracle claims, what hope have we got?

The problem we face is that miracles don't happen today. Sure, healings happen, but not resurrections, walks on water, miraculous multiplications of food, etc. I've never seen good evidence for them. You don't claim they do. So we have a problem. We simply cannot verify unique events in history.

You build a theology of why Jesus might do miracles, but all this is built on the presupposition of the Christian God and Christian theology. Given that this is is the question we are actually trying to answer, your reasoning seems a bit circular, much like the accusation you point at some atheists out there.

Blimey, this response is getting quite long, and we're only 20% of the way through the book. Sorry about that, but you can't really respond to an entire book in just a few words.

Moving on we get to Chapter 3, "Messenger". Handily enough, after playing the nazi card, you begin this chapter with a summary of the book so far. You admit you're building a cumulative case, and assume the reader has accepted that Jesus was a real historical person, the bible accounts are accurate history and that miracles are possible. As you can tell from what I've said above, I don't accept these foundations of your cumulative case. 

You assert that the message of Jesus is the same as the message of the Old Testament, without discussing any specific passages, which is a bit sloppy. If you're making a case for something, you actually need to make the case. Then you cite Richard Bauckham as if that settles the 'eyewitnesses' argument. It really doesn't. I've read Bauckham and remain unconvinced. 

But the question remains, where did the teaching come from if not from Jesus? True, this is a problem for the skeptic. Maybe it originates from one man. Maybe Jesus, maybe someone else. Maybe it's a collection of sayings from multiple sources. There is no compelling reason to assume it all must have come from one man. And your argument that it couldn't have been the disciples as they were 'unlettered men' is fallacious - none of the gospels claim to be written by anyone in particular and only church tradition links the names to the gospels. It is clear that some of the gospels were written by very educated men, perhaps men who could have fabricated an inspiring central character for their writings.

You assume (rather than demonstrate) that the teaching attributed to Jesus originated from him. You briefly discuss the 'problematic' passages and talk about interpreting the bible with the bible. Basically this means you can explain away the bits of the bible that you don't like or are plainly nonsense, using the bits of the bible that you like, or which seem more reasonable. If the bible is an edited collection of various sayings by diverse people it would make perfect sense that there would be some disagreements in the text and some contradictions in there. It is only your presupposition that won't let you view it this way. 

There is an exceptionally clear command from Jesus in the gospel - give everything you have to the poor. It is clear and unambiguous, so why do I not know any Christians who have done this (yes, I know of one or two, but these are the exception rather than the rule)? It is because most Christians find ways to get around this by reading stuff into the context (so it doesn't apply to me!). All Christians 'pick and choose' the verses they like and 'interpret' the verses they don't like accordingly. If your starting point is the gospel of Matthew, you end up in a very different place than if your starting point is the letter to the Romans. This is why there are so many different denominations - they each hold a different set of passages as 'primary' and let those interpret the 'secondary' passages, but the choice of primary versus secondary is rather arbitrary.

But what is the message? Well, you side-step this and ask the reader to read the bible. Then you stop being an apologist for a bit and turn into a preacher - rather than defending the gospel message, you simply present it. So there's not much more to say about this chapter. I'll move on to the next chapter, which is pretty meaty, in the next post.

Cheers,

R.

Unbelievable Miracles

The Radio show 'Unbelievable?' had two shows looking at miracles earlier in the year - the first show looked at miracles in the bible and the second one looked at miracles today. OK, I'm a bit late in commenting.

The guests on the show were:

• Craig Keener, a theologian who has just written a huge book on miracles and miracle claims, which concludes that miracles happen today and therefore it is legitimate to believe the biblical miracle accounts. And
• Geoff Lillis, an atheist who is a regular contributor to the Unbelievable forum, Facebook page, etc. I must say, he presented himself and his case very well.

Keener did a good job of demonstrating, with examples, that miracle claims are made within a Christian context all over the world today. And that many of these miracle claims are made by reliable witnesses. And that, in some instances, the miracle claims can be supported by medical evidence.

Lillis did a reasonably good job of questioning the evidence and suggesting non-miraculous explanations for some of the alleged miracles.

What I found frustrating, listening to the show, was that all of the contemporary miracle claims which were discussed involved medical healings or resuscitations from apparent death-states. I don't mean to dismiss these as irrelevant, and I'll get back to these below, but what about other kinds of miracles? Biblical miracles include the multiplication of food (feeding of 5000, etc.), turning water into wine, walking on water, cursing fig trees, and so on. No contemporary claims of anything like these were discussed - does nobody claim anything miraculous like this anymore?

Faith healers do what it says on the tin - apparently heal people using 'faith'. There's no point in denying this, it happens all over the world, to many people, in many different faith contexts. And I suppose that is the point. Christian faith healers certainly seem to be able to heal some medical complaints. But Hindu faith healers also do. And so do some African 'Witchdoctors', and so on.

Is there any evidence that proportionately more faith healings are successful in Christian faith contexts than in those of other religions? If the healing was due to the actions of the one, true God, who is only found in Christianity, then you would expect that you would only find healings in Christian contexts, and not in others. The fact (and I'll admit I haven't done much research on this matter beyond a quick Google search) that faith healings occur in all faith contexts actually serves to underline the non-special nature of Christian faith healing. Or, to put it more bluntly, to emphasise the fact that the apparent healing does not come from any particular God, but rather from 'faith' itself.

Believing that there is a God who can and will heal you is, in many cases, the source of enough hope, or whatever, to effect healing. Which is why claims of faith healing are generally limited to non-visible ailments, from back pain through to cancer. Faith healers cannot make limbs grow back, although, there still is the issue of the leg-lengthening thing, maybe that has more to do with muscle relaxation than bone growth, I don't know.

But what about the non-medical miracles? Has anyone multiplied food miraculously in recent years? Turned water into something alcoholic? Walked on water? Parted seas or rivers? Miraculous catches of fish? People carried up to heaven in fiery chariots? This is a serious question, I want to know if anyone claims these things today. Because if not, then why should we even entertain the notion that any of the biblical miracle claims are anything other than myths?

Jesus the Magician?

I've just read a fascinating article online about the depictions of Jesus and the apostles in early Christian carvings on sarcophagai. The most surprising thing, well surprising if you accept the orthodox views on the beliefs of the early Christian church, is that a great number of such carvings depict Jesus and Peter (the 2nd most common character depicted) as using a wand to carry out miracles.

Such a thought is totally alien to Christians today. This clearly demonstrates just how far Christian perceptions of Jesus have shifted over the centuries.

Miracles today?

Just listened to last week's 'Unbelievable' radio show on Miracles in the bible - did they happen? Tomorrow's show is on Miracles - do they happen today?

I'm thinking these issues through at the moment, and will blog about them in due course. So just out of interest, please leave comments below regarding any miracles - other than medical healings - that have happened to you or those you know.

I know that healings happen today. Its the other stuff I'm unsure about, so please tell me if you know any good stories...

12 baskets?

Don't know where this (minor) doubt came from, but I was listening to someone talking about the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 yesterday and it occurred to me just how fictional the story sounds.

Leaving aside the central miracle, the other details just don't ring true.

Matthew 14:

15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

18 “Bring them here to me,” he said. 19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

The disciples and crowds didn't have any food with them but they did have 12 baskets? That sounds a bit funny. Beyond that, in a remote place, having distributed food to 5000 people, the disciples felt the need to collect the rubbish from the ground? It was just bread and bits of fish - the birds would have dealt with all that soon enough, and its not as if they needed it, they've just seen Jesus multiply food.

So even allowing the miracle as a possibility, it still seems pretty unlikely. More like a 'just so' story than a recollection of a real event.

Somewhere in the light greys...

In the article I posted last week called "The skeptical position and the apparent miracle" I probably gave the impression that I had concluded that the healer guy who came to our church was a fraud.

Let me just state for the record that I did not come to that conclusion. It was one of the possibilities which I considered, but is certainly not the belief that I finally landed on.

At present, and unless further relevant information presents itself, I believe that he was doing what he was doing out of an honest and God-inclined heart. And people were healed.

Of course, I still have questions, and some of those questions are big ones, but it would appear that people have been genuinely healed through this guy, so I'm unable to conclude that he is a fraud. Quite the opposite.

This news story on a BBC web page was one of the factors (see also the YouTube clip below, which the story refers to), and the dramatic improvement in eyesight of someone I know who was prayed for was another.

The clip in itself proves nothing, that sort of visible effect can be faked. But the testimony of the healed person two weeks later (as recorded on the BBC web page and the embedded audio clip) is far more compelling.

There were also testimonies of healing at our church last week. And I hope there will be more. I still haven't heard if either of those folk who had a visible leg inequality before they were prayed for have now got balanced legs or not. Will let you know.

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Update: The younger of the two folk who had a visible leg inequality (more than 2cm, it was really quite obvious) now has, since being prayed for a week past on Sunday, two legs the same length. Awesome. In all senses of the word.

The 'if' doubts about healing end here.

The 'how', 'why' and 'when' questions continue, as well as the big 'why not's...

What would I have become?

Where do you go when you've lost the keys
When all is dark and you're on your knees?
And in a world where it's love betrays
There is a light that will save the day
Don't go away
What would I have done if it wasn't for Jesus?
What would I have become if it wasn't for Jesus?

"What would I have done" by Delirious?

Following on from my previous post, I found myself questioning what sort of person would become a fake faith healer. And I realised, it could have been me.

What would have I become, if...?

I can't remember if I've ever given my full testimony on this blog, but here's a potted version of it:

I used to be a fake Christian.

From the age of 11 to the week before my 18th Birthday, I appeared (to some observers) to be a Christian, but I wasn't. I spoke Christianese fluently, I could pray in prayer meetings, I could lead bible studies, I could discuss most issues relevant to Christian life, I said the right things, went to the right meetings, read the right books, but I wasn't a Christian.

You see, I was raised in a Christian home, went to church every week, and believed the right stuff. If you'd asked me (aged 10) if I was a Christian, I wouldn't have really understood you. What else was there to be? But then, at an Easter holiday houseparty (run by the organisation that is now 'Action Partners') in 1981 I realised, for the first time, that there was such a thing as 'conversion', and furthermore that I hadn't done it. I realised that Christianity was not about believing certain things, but about making the choice to act on those beliefs. While I did believe that Jesus was the son of God, I had not made the choice to follow Him.

Things came to a head on the second last day of that houseparty. Someone preached an evangelical message and loads of the kids there made the decision to follow Christ.

Now there were quite a few kids who were Christians already, and these kids (in a very mature way for kids ranging in age from 10 to 13) took the new converts back to the dorms and prayed with them. I can't really remember how it happened but I ended up being back at the dorm with two established Christian kids and three who had just made the decision. So I joined in the prayer group. It seemed the thing to do at the time. But obviously, I didn't join as a 'new convert' I was playing the part of the established Christian. And then someone asked me "So when did you become a Christian?" and I made the choice, there and then, to lie. "A couple of years ago" seemed a good answer as nobody there had known me for that long. Furthermore, I made the choice to let that lie stick. I also made (for the first time) the choice not to follow Christ.

From then on I lived a double life. In certain groups (i.e. family, church, SU groups, etc.) I played the part of a Christian, made the right noises and did the right stuff. I did it really well. I was very good at faking Christianity. In other groups, of course, I was a regular secular kid who listened to quite unchristian rock music and traded dubious magazines with his friends. For years it was easy, as the two groups did not overlap at all.

It only really got problematic in my final year at school. The two groups began to have slight overlaps. As the only sixth year in the school Christian group, I was expected to take on the leadership of the group. I managed to avoid that (just) and dumped the responsibility onto one of the 5th years (sorry Ewan). But as the year went on, the 6th years were expected to be involved in all these community events and when church based events came along it got increasingly hard to wriggle out of them, especially as one group of people I knew expected that I would be part of them. Actually, once I had to wriggle so hard to avoid doing a reading at a 'World day of prayer' meeting that a rumour was started that I was a satanist!

So, 6th year was crunch time and over the course of the year I realised that I had to make my choice and just be one thing or the other. It was an impossible choice, but I had to make it. And eventually I did. But the reasons I made the choice for Christ will have to come in another post.

The point here is that I was a fake Christian for 6 years. And played the part very convincingly.

But, I was a fake Christian in a very conservative evangelical setting. Raising hands in worship was frowned on. Nobody talked about healings, miracles or the like happening today. That was all considered as being in the past. Biblical teaching, right living and prayer. That was all that it was about.

But. What would I have become, as a fake Christian, if I'd been in a church where people raised hands in worship, spoke in tongues, prayed for healings, expected miracles, and the like?

I'll tell you. Because I know. I would have been very good at faking all that too. Fake speaking in tongues would have been easy. Fake praying for others? No problem.

And I'm reasonably sure I'd have been able to fake some 'miracles' like the leg lengthening trick.

If I could have done it, I know that others could have. And do. And are perpetuating fake Christianity right now.

There are fakes out there who are leaders in the church. There are fakes who are well known preachers, there are fakes who are pastors of big churches and there are fakes doing the rounds as healers.

Occasionally one of the big, high profile televangelist fakes is found out, but they're just the tip of the iceberg.

The thing is, even though I (as a former fake) am generally quite good at spotting other fakes, there is no real way of knowing. You can't always separate the sheep from the goats.

Oh, and just as an aside, there are also people who are or were genuine Christians but who 'backslide' in their faith whilst still maintaining a 'sound' mask. But I'm not talking about them here. I'm talking about those who have never made the choice for Christ and simply play the part of being a Christian, probably - like me - initially for the sake of an easy life, but who then keep it up for personal gain, as an ego-boost, or for other self-centred reasons.

If there are any Christians reading this who have slipped internally, while still maintaining the facade of a good Christian, I recommend you read "Buck Naked Faith" by Eric Sandras - because he was just like you...

The skeptical position and the apparent miracle

I've been meaning to state my skeptical position on this blog for a couple of weeks now, but hadn't found the time to write it down before I was overtaken by events yesterday, and now feel I have to comment on what I saw yesterday, but prefix it with a brief statement of my position.

The Skeptical Position

I've noticed in a few discussions online and in the real world recently, that the idea of taking a 'skeptical' position on an issue is frequently perceived as meaning taking a 'non-believing' stance. But this is not the case.

Suppose that something 'miraculous' happens, or appears to happen. The 'believer' will tend, by default, to see it as an act of God and will dismiss other theories. The 'non-believer' will tend, by default, to see it as a fake and will dismiss all possibility of 'supernatural' activities. One side sees the event as white, the other sees it as black. The true skeptic, however, must remain open to the possibility that either side could be true, or even that there are more possibilities out there. The skeptic should remain agnostic on the issue unless there is good evidence (not necessarily proof) to support one hypothesis over the other(s). The skeptic, therefore, sees the issue not as black or white, but only in shades of grey.

This is where I often find myself. For example, in the discussion on miracles which went on last week [here and here on my blog, and here on Chris's], I find myself stuck in the grey area in between two opinions [within the church!], that of:

1. The Meeting House: "big, obvious miracles and healings, of the kind performed by (or through) the Apostles in the book of Acts, are not possible today." [my paraphrase]
   
2. The 'Modern Evangelical' View: "God has not run out of "miracle-juice", nor has it become watered down over the millennia. He is the same awesome miracle working God today that he was two-thousand years' ago." [quote from Chris's blog]

The grey area I find myself in is that I can see no reason (biblical or otherwise) why opinion 1 should be the case, but I see little or no evidence to support opinion 2. So I remain skeptical of claims of healing, but open minded.

That is my position. Now my experience and observations from yesterday...

"Healing on the streets"

Our church (that's the Almond Vineyard in Edinburgh) were host to a couple of visitors from the Causeway Coast Vineyard in Northern Ireland this weekend. Both have been involved in their 'Healing on the streets' initiative, one of them started the initiative in 2005. Basically, a team from their church goes out onto the high street in their town -every Saturday- and offers prayer for healing to anyone who wants. They say the public response has become quite favourable and the claim to have seen quite a number of people being healed of various ailments.

Now while I am skeptical (as in open minded, but unsure) about what can be achieved through prayer for healing in this way, I am convinced that - at the very least - people can sometimes experience relief from pain, reduction of symptoms and occasional remission through this activity. A few folk from our church are involved in this kind of ministry in Edinburgh on a semi-regular basis, and I support them in this. It is a good thing. I haven't been brave enough to participate yet, but I might in the future.

So, the guy from 'Healing on the streets' preached at our church yesterday, spoke a bit about his experience 'on the streets' and in the church in Northern Ireland, and then offered to pray for healing for people. Several people were ministered to and prayed for. He specifically called for anyone who has 'one leg longer than the other' to come for prayer, and invited 'anyone who wanted to see a miraculous healing' to gather round and watch. I watched. Something appeared to happen.

This left me inclining toward the lighter greys, I have to say. It was convincing.

But then, when the next two people who came for healing, claiming back pain, appeared to also have one leg slightly longer than the other, my inner skeptic alarm bells started ringing. Having one leg longer than the other is not particularly common. If you counted the number of people who apparently had this complaint at church yesterday, it would appear to be about 5-10% of the gathering, but most of them were unaware of this 'complaint' before the healer identified it.

And I began to remember hearing someone talk about 'debunking' a 'leg lengthening miracle' before. The skeptical needle began to incline towards the darker greys.

The 'Leg Lengthening' Scam

Later on I Googled it and was reminded that it was (professional magician and paranormal fraudster debunker) James Randi who I'd heard talking about it. He even discussed the 'scam' at length in his book "The Faith Healers" back in the 1980s.

If done well, the person being 'healed', as well as the audience, are completely unaware of the scam. The trick is, when getting the patient seated and settled, to gently pull the heel of the shoe on the 'longer' leg. Now, when the audience is gathered around, they will clearly see a small difference in the relative positions of the person's two heels. As the healing takes place, the focus of the interest of the audience (and the patient) is on the 'short' leg, so they're not looking at the foot on the long leg as the healer slowly slides the shoe back to its original place, making the 'short' leg apparently grow relative to the long leg.

That is the scam. I'm still not sure if that's what I saw yesterday, but I'm inclining toward believing that that is what was going on.

Its interesting that in all cases, the 'short' leg was made to grow, the 'long' leg was never made to shrink. That would be a harder one to pull off...

What I now find myself wondering is whether it is possible for an entirely genuine person to have stumbled onto a 'technique' which seems to work for people during prayer ministry and remaining entirely unaware that they are perpetuating a fraud. Or is it always a deliberate fraud? In other words, was the guy misguided or a charlatan?

I really don't want to believe the latter, as the guy appreared to be a nice enough guy. And he works in a Church full of good people. But, of course, a good con-artist will never appear to be a con-artist.

There is one way of possible verification, of course. Someone was there yesterday who I know has one leg a bit shorter than the other. She was prayed for by the guy. If her leg did get longer, I'll have to stop being so skeptical. I'll be keeping my eyes open...

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Apostolic authority...

Hmmm. In my former post, Theophilus, I wrote about an issue I have with the current teaching from The Meeting House in Canada.

I don't go to that church, I'm on the wrong continent, but ever since I discovered them, over a year ago, I've been really impressed with their teaching, their theology and their overall view of Christian life, the universe and everything. If I lived in Canada I'd certainly have tried going there a few times.

So I'm slightly miffed that they have been emphasising a point recently that I'm not totally in agreement with. Although, having said that, I've still not made up my mind on this issue one way or the other...

Last week's sermon touched on the same points as the previous ones, but went one step further, or actually, two steps further.

The points are:

• There is a difference between miracles and healings carried out by the Apostles in the book of Acts from what is possible for believers today.
• Apostolic miracles were immediate, dramatic and unambiguous. Miracles & healings today are, at best, ambiguous and leave plenty of room for skeptics to remain skeptical.
• The Apostles were those who were directly commissioned by Jesus, there have been no further apostles since the first generation died out.

Chris has pointed out that even Jesus's miracles were sometimes ambiguous and that some were skeptical of those miracles.

I doubted about what Jesus said about future generations of followers doing 'greater things' than him.

Obviously this came up in the house groups at the Meeting House as this was raised in last week's sermon. The two new points raised by the Meeting House are:

1. Looking back over history, there is no evidence of successive generations of Christians doing 'greater' miracles than Jesus did. So either Jesus was lying (which we assume he wasn't) or he didn't mean 'greater' in that sense. Maybe he meant 'greater' in the quantitative sense? More believers = far, far more miracles and healings than one man, even the Son of Man, could have done.
2. What the Apostles had, which we don't have, is authority. They could command a healing or a miracle, we can only ask.

I'm really not sure about point 2!

In 'the great commission' Jesus asserts that he is the one with the authority. He didn't pass it on, he retained it, so that all of the folk who carried out the commission - on his behalf - would be people under authority. If we're still carrying out the same commission, we have the same access to authority as the first generation of disciples did! Sometimes I think we don't see the working of the authority, because we haven't been brave enough to behave like commissioned people.

Having said that, I suspect their reasoning in point 1 is fairly good. We haven't seen Christians doing 'greater' things than Jesus (healing blind, walking on water, raising dead, turning water into wine), indeed we rarely hear of things of that level of greatness and I (for one) am pretty skeptical of some of the semi-great stories I hear.

But the doubting goes on... I still need to wrestle with this a bit longer...

The Apostolic Miracle

I've been listening to the current sermon series on Acts from the Meeting House. One of the points they've made a couple of times so far in the series is that there is a difference between the miracles and healings that the 1st generation apostles performed, from anything that has been or is possible for subsequent generations of believers since the first century.

They assert that the healings and miracles of the first Apostles were clear and unambiguous - everyone, even sceptics, could not deny that a miraculous event had occurred. For example, the healing of the cripple at the gates of the temple in Acts 3. Even the Sanhedrin could not deny that the cripple had been healed.

However, they go further and assert that this is not possible today. They state that such 'healings' and 'miracles' which apparently occur today tend to be ambiguous, with the sceptics left with plenty of room not to believe them at all.

I'm guessing that this is a derived theology, I can't see this teaching in the bible. But I can see where it could come from - big obvious miracles happened back then, smaller, less obvious 'miracles' (if any) seem to happen these days. Anyone got any insight here?

I also guess that they don't believe in apostolic succession. That is, that after the first generation of Apostles, there were no further apostles.

The thing is, from observation of the way the world appears to be, this seems like perfectly sensible reasoning to me. But its not the way I want the world to be. I want it to be possible for the big miracles still to happen. I want apostles to be walking among us.

Discuss.