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Friday Fun Thread for August 28, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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If someone has been a philosopher for decades at the PHD level, they are probably not going to be convinced by the one specific formulation of the argument from causality or whatever. They have seen the argument go back and forth so many times, what might seem foolproof will get some kind of rebuttal that seems half plausible within a year. I think that's also why Schmid described himself as an agnostic, instead of an atheist, after he started exploring philosophy.

Given that, if anything was going to break the stalemate, it wasn't going to be a philosophical argument.

There is the problem of "miracles might be evidence against Naturalism, but not evidence for a specific religion." (I'm not quoting you or pseudo quoting you, just using quotation marks as a way to organize the sentence.)

There are all sorts of miracle claims ranging from "coincidence that felt too perfect" to "I didn't have a leg and now I do" to "thousands of people miles apart saw the same unexplained phenomena." I think there are some miracles we would expect God to do even outside of a specific religious tradition. Things like healing, or coincidences that lead someone into closer relationship with Him, even if it doesn't take them all the way to the One True Religion.

Vindicatory miracles, miracles that vindicate specific truth claims, is a whole subject of inquiry. What would you expect to see different in these in comparison to general miracles of healing and safety? I think at the least, they would need to be public and come with a message of some kind. A miracle that is only intelligible to one person cannot be vindicatory. A miracle that does not come with an obvious message would likewise not vindicate any particular truth claim. This article goes into the distinction between an "ordinary miracle" and a "vindicatory miracle."

I think agnostics and atheists assume that there must be numerous "vindicatory miracles" that can draw people to any number of religions. But if that is the case, I would like for them to put in the work to show this. Most of the time there is an appeal to a general mysticism or healing ministry, which I wouldn't consider vindicatory in the same way Lanciano or Fatima were.