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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   32467 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them… it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed.

No. This implies that everyone has evidence for miracles, and only by faith can they be denied. This is just plain false. Likewise, many who believe in miracles have only books to go on. This feels like a slightly less awful version of the "how can you not believe, when God is clearly pumping divine sensation into your system?" argument.

Evidence and proof are different things. The Eucharistic miracles, the healings given by the saints, the holy tilma, etc- these are individually weak arguments for the truth of the Catholic faith(and even non-Catholic Christians retreat to the evidence for the Catholic faith to try to prove the Christian religion in general). But when you combine them they become a pattern.

The 'it's just witnesses' argument is also spurious because this is how we know about every other historical event. Some of them had too many witnesses, some of them skeptical, to just be made up. And no, people in 1917 couldn't have faked the miracle of the sun. Nor could Joseph of Cupertino have caused himself to levitate using stage magic. Padre Pio couldn't have caused a woman's eyes to regrow. Legions of incorrupt saints come before modern embalming techniques.

This does not mean, of course, that every purported miracle is miraculous- the Roman Catholic Church itself regularly dismisses them as fake.

Uh huh, now step aside, every other religion in the world is in line behind you waiting to give the same speech.

No. This implies that everyone has evidence for miracles, and only by faith can they be denied. This is just plain false. Likewise, many who believe in miracles have only books to go on.

Chesterton argues (quite rightly) that everyone does have evidence for miracles: the evidence of testimony. People have been writing about miracles and testifying to having witnessed miracles since as far back in history as we have records for. People report the supernatural and miraculous all the time. Chesterton's point is that theists can take each miracle claim and accept it based on the evidence: is this person a reliable reporter, how likely are there to be natural explanations, how probable is it that it was a trick, etc. But the atheist must begin by dismissing the possibility that the miracle could have happened at all, because the atheist is committed to the "doctrine" that miracles do not happen. Even if the evidence was very strong that a miracle occurred, the atheist would alternative explanations to be more probable from the get go, since he "knows" that miracles do not happen.

Here's the full quote, which captures the nuances a bit better:

Any one who likes, therefore, may call my belief in God merely mystical; the phrase is not worth fighting about. But my belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism— the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence—it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, "Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles," they answer, "But mediaevals were superstitious"; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But peasants are so credulous." If I ask, "Why credulous?" the only answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland. It is only fair to add that there is another argument that the unbeliever may rationally use against miracles, though he himself generally forgets to use it.

That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy

Democracy is a system of government, not a scientific method.

In the book the quote is from (Orthodoxy) Chesterton uses the word "democracy" to generally mean the liberal idea that ordinary people should have a vote, as opposed to aristocracy where only the elite have a say in things (which was a live issue at the time in Britain). Here's where he defines his use of the term:

I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions....This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves—the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.

the atheist would alternative explanations to be more probable from the get go I would argue that most rational theists act and believe this way too. Don't most religious believe that true miracles, ones that clearly defy natural laws and are direct intervention by some higher power, are rare?

Sure the atheist is more sure that miracles don't exist, but that's kind of the definition of an atheist. They've seen less evidence that miracles are true, and no direct evidence, only testimony. And testimony is weak evidence, especially for questions core to people's identity and upbringing, where even if the person can be trusted, there's also clearly incentive avoid skepticism.

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