Click here to subscribe to the Charisma News newsletter. James Fodor suggests, as an example, doing the prayer studies in different languages to help rule out some of the competing effects. It was easier for me for some cultures than for other cultures. Here PhD is in history. So I got what I could. Never miss a big news story again. I've written about this before about UFO claims, that they fall into two categories: There could potentially be a category 3 where the evidence does support the claim, but I have never seen it in any that I have personally investigated, either for UFO claims or for miracle claims. The entire approach of those arguing for miracles focuses on the (presumed) successes but in any real study for a treatment, we need to know all of the cases -- the ones that worked and the ones that didn't -- to provide evidence of efficacy. The fact that the best theists can come up with are so readily handled should be a caution to anyone trusting their claims. It's not the fullness. prayer, laying of hands, religious service, etc) where miracles are claimed to be happening but they happen in only a small part of those same contexts and there's not a good reason give for that difference. This one is obviously ludicrous, but I think undermines the theists claims quite a lot. You should receieve a confirmation email shortly. Wed 23 March 2022 Scott Rae: Welcome to the podcast Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture. So the first part of the answer is sort of true but trivial and also not what they've been doing but then the second part contradicts that by saying "just assume that it's true anyway and start praying for people." The timeline of the events from the paper is. I had to work harder to get stuff from Latin America because a lot of it's in Spanish. She worked as a teacher's aide for Headstart and was a member of St. Mary's Church in Elmira, NY. No one in medicine evaluates the effectiveness of a treatment from case studies alone, or even primarily due to case studies. I want to refer our listeners to your two volume series on miracles. In Steven Novella's post at Proximal Intercessory Prayer, he comments (on a different case, but applicable here). And now she has a Masters degree from the seminary in Cameroon. Here is her story. As she listened, she said that she heard a male voice coming from the corner of the room a voice she now believes was God. 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It is pretty clear that not much can be said confidently. But anyway, all healing is temporary because sooner or later we're gonna die unless the Lord comes back before then. I mean that would almost qualify as a resurrection. If someone gets healed, you often can't get back in contact with that person -- "it almost feels like if a miracle happens you have about 48 hours and then their gone". James: I'm not a fan of eliminating explanations because i think that that's almost impossible because you can always augment the hypothesis with further details, so the issue is going to be one of comparative plausibility and explanatory scope. Look, I have male pattern balding. Her blindness, too, had been instantaneously healed. So for example, if I just say oh well there was spontaneous remission you could say that's implausible given our medical knowledge but it's going to be very hard to establish that that's actually like impossible, to definitively rule it out and so the question of which is a more plausible explanation and not can you rule it out. Otherwise, not. Craig Keener: Yeah. She has extensive experience in reinforcing Case Western Reserves Then, on Pentecost Sunday, two of Synder's friends read her letters from those praying for her. It also points to placebo as a possible contributor to the perceived magnitude of the improvement -- the amount of improvement is likely to be perceived to be higher given the expectation. You're an expert on the life and teachings of Paul. It just really annoys me this is always conflated. Craig serves with me on the Board of Evangelical Theological Society. The treatment involves active physical intervention with the subject. This was in 1981 that this happened. Has it been confirmed? Her doctors have written about her seemingly impossible medical turn around. Millions of unique designs by independent artists. I wrote about some of these cases in another post and I've written about miracles many times. That said, before writing The Case for Miracles, Strobel was "ambivalent" about whether these miracles still happen today. The Mayo Clinic had diagnosed Barbara with multiple sclerosis. The analogy breaks down here because of a difference of information (we have some context for prayer but none in the analogy) and it seems out of place. for her new role. Even if you said it had to be supernatural, how could you rule out Loki doing it, just for fun? And so when she was healed, the first thing she noticed was her feet were flat on the ground. Couldn't the medical records have been earlier?) If you took our remedy, and improved, we want to hear from you. Bad Apologetics Ep 20 - Miracles & even MORE even NEWER Resurrection evidence, Unbelievable? He has a Ph.D. and M.A. Nathan's point here is interesting, especially in light of the idea that the murderer example is not being used in the right place, that Elijah has this set of standard "tools" that he pulls out but doesn't seem to understand their use or limitations and is prone to misapply them. But you've written a two volume set over, excess of a 1000 pages on the subject of miracles. It's not the consummation. This miracle claim never came up in the episode. He has served in a variety of teaching and leadership roles, including a term as president of the Evangelical Theological Society in 2015. AfghanistanWhere Faith Is a Matter of Life and Death. It's not enough to show an effect that's really rare, maybe that's your first motivation, like "oh wow, this is a weird case. Like that's just assuming what you wanted to establish. What surprised you? Her feet and fingers were suddenly straight and normal again. Craig Keener: Probably what surprised me the most was the real evidence for it. And then the book that tells the story of your relationship to your wife called Impossible Love. I mean it's only a fraction of what's out there, but there was a Pew Forum Study done in, I think, 2006 of Pentecostals and Charismatics in 10 countries that concluded Well if you look at the percentages of Pentecostals and Charismatics who claimed to have witnessed divine healing and then the hard numbers of those in those countries, it comes out to somewhere around 200 million people in those 10 countries alone, who claim to have witnessed are experienced divine healing. This is incredibly compelling stuff. I mean I tried to get accounts from all sorts of different cultures. We see this with homeopathy, where well-controlled studies are negative and then dismissed because treatments were not individualized. The statements about being brain dead are all unsubstantiated -- there was oxygen both from the chest compressions and when he was hooked up to machinery. Or even the most dramatic story I found from somebody that I or my wife knows, but this one was particularly mind blowing to me because Antoinette Malumbay was my mother-in-law and Terese is my sister-in-law. Barbara Snyder's healing from MS shocked doctors. But I heard this one from somebody who worked with Craig Evans, followed up with Barbara Snyder and her doctors and passed this onto Lee Strobel, who followed up on this too. Well she couldn't walk. In his most recent book, Strobel decided to look at miracles. She was doing her work in history. Since these diseases are genetic, it makes it a lot less likely that she had this condition. A comparison of base-rates is needed and Keener doesn't seem to care about this when it comes to miracles. Snyder, who became president of Case Western Reserve Barbara spent years paralyzed, but stood up in an instant. The outcome was either a change in vision or hearing. The James Randi foundation did this as well, with a preliminary test before the more in-depth test. We only have the stories. Plus these were not from people who burned child witches or anything like that. If you enjoyed our conversation today, give us a rating on your podcast app. Partly, because we are human and have many biases. I am delighted that the board selected Barbara to lead AAU So we understand it's not, it's not saying that somebody has lack of faith. [3] Before Snyder became president of CWRU in July 2007, she was formerly the executive vice president and provost of Ohio State University. The good news will be preached to the poor. Once you admit that getting a pool table after prayer is a miracle, then you've admitted that your standards of evidence are outrageously poor. We use cookies to better understand website visitors, for advertising, and to offer you a better experience. Case Western Reserves Board of Trustees This last part is the reason we set up replication, controls, and other processes to minimize the effects of the limitations. Kamil makes the interesting point that the testimonies of different religions only reflect what that particular religion has as a theological component. What about single cases? "It was really the miracle of the resurrection and the historical evidence for that that ended up bringing me to faith many years ago," Strobel told Pure Flix Insider and "The Billy Hallowell Podcast." After his conversion, Lee worked briefly as a pastor before moving into an apologetics ministry focusing on writing and video productions. This explores some of the rarer causes, but more importantly, the study they reference for the viral cause for the condition had cases that resolved in as long as 2 years (N=11). In And Coco [inaudible] prayed and Terese started breathing again and the next day she was fine. My initial thought was that , A physics problem from a practice AP test came to my attention, when my daughter was in AP physics this past spring. We can also ask how the miracle believer handles the many cases where seemingly miraculous things happen and no reported prayer, with disapearing disease without treatment? The primary studies here are Case Studies, which are some of the lowest and least informative types of studies in medicine (see https://guides.library.stonybrook.edu/evidence-based-medicine/levels_of_evidence) with Meta-studies, Systematic reviews, and Randomized Controlled Studies being the most effective forms. And then if so, then how do you account for that? And, in fact, one doctor described her as being one of the most hopelessly ill patients he'd ever encountered.". I said "I'm doing well" and he said "Well listen this may sound odd to you, but could you use a pool table?". The one-on-one treatments, when they show an effect, are confounded by the more intense experience, the one-on-one attention, the group pressures, etc You are adding a lot of psychological elements which make it harder to establish causation. None of us would say that all of those are authentic, but still we're talking about an awful lot of stories. He encountered scores of healings and other claims of the miraculous along the way, but there was one case in particular that truly blew his mind: the case of Barbara Snyder. Both great books that I encourage all of our listeners to get hold of and to digest. Sure. Stay up-to-date with current issues, Christian teachings, entertainment news, videos & more. I don't believe Barbara Snyder was cured by the intervention of some agent outside the natural world. If miracles are real then these steps -- while possibly inconvenient -- would be easy to demonstrate. She was born on April 10, 1930 in Beverly, MA, a daughter of John A. and Irene (Walsh) Burns. For example, if you take the population of people who go to Rome on pilgrimage each year, you can calculate the fraction of those with diseases that will go into remission. But even with miracles, life expectancy is higher here than in Africa. The response we get is to say "Well what you have to do is you have to compare explanations and see which one's the best" and it's like "Right! Share it with a friend. It is quite clear that once you allow one miraculous healing in, using evidence of just one person, then one has to let in a whole host of others. Craig Keener: Yeah, I could give you a 1000 pages worth of examples, but I'll tell you one that really blew my mind and that was, because it was something so close to us. These theists are in fact arguing for a lower level of evidence than we demand of the universities and pharmaceutical companies for their claims. If the Anchor.fm widget isnt showing up above, click here to listen. Really? I asked. READ ALSO: Columbine Survivor's Powerful Lessons After Facing Terror. It was really the miracle of the resurrection and the historical evidence for that that ended up bringing me to faith many years ago, Strobel told Pure Flix Insider and The Billy Hallowell Podcast. But my skepticism didn't go away.. We really appreciate your taking the time to come be on the podcast with us. And that was, that was really hard. I want our listeners to be totally aware, Craig Keener, just the two volume entitled Miracles. President Barbara R. Snyder announced today that she will Chris Gunderson who was born with an incurable disorder called Chronic Pseudo Obstruction Syndrome, which was cured by prayer. It's just his Baptist church group from just like maybe a half a dozen people to 600 members from, almost all from non-Christian backgrounds. We have seen this with acupuncture after well-controlled trials were negative, some proponents decided that pragmatic (i.e. You just wonder how legitimate are these miracle claims in the 21st century? Strobel said. My oldest grandson loves to run and is always racing ahead, scampering up hills and sliding down ravines faster than the rest. Craig Keener: Yeah. Scott Rae: So how did, how did she become a war refugee? You need to collect the records, have a medical professional who can actually make sense of that data, and have a medical specialist who is willing to look at the data. And this is not by any means the most dramatic story I found. He is, let's just say he is one of the most prolific biblical scholars that I'm aware of and is so productive. It makes it very hard to investigate these claims because you have to spend so much time trying to work out what is actually established. Brian: Essentially Shermer's complaint about prayer being done and nothing happening is part what you would have in any kind of controlled study because you would have the case looking at all prayer events and which ones had effects and which ones didn't, that's the basic thing they seem unable to even grasp that idea and it shows a certain unwillingness to actually try to find the truth and to rule out these actual alternatives. We know God worked many and mighty miracles throughout biblical times, but for many Christians, we dont see as much evidence for miracles in our lives as there was in biblical times. 2021 - All rights reserved. On the one hand they use the excuse of "it's not replicable" when asked about how to test it, and on the other hand they want to also say that miracles are common -- more common than people realize. In response, Snyder said, "I am proud to be president of Case Western Reserve and intend to continue in this role for many years to come. It is interesting the Elijah seems to understand that we need evidence to believe a claim, that we need to weigh alternative hypotheses, but he seems to have no idea what a controlled study is or why it is necessary. Barbara was married to the late Robert L. Snyder. We also can't rule out that he was prayed for many many times in 16 years, and only at this particular time for some other reason he recovered. There is a second video interview with the woman herself that reports completely different medical history, and differs substantially from the details Keener gives. One of the remarkable stories recounted in Lee Strobel's book "The Case for Miracles" involves a hopelessly ill woman named Barbara Snyder, who had suffered for many years with multiple sclerosis. 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