There's saying, people have walked from wheelchairs, but nobody has ever regrown an amputated limb. If all the supposed miracles are vague and likely misinterpretations, that tells you something about the quality of the evidence.
You'd think Mary might come over and have a chat with all the worshipers, instead of appearing and flying around all the time.
They've done some convincing studies on how easily influenceable eye-witnesses are in the recalling of certain events in the context of witnessed crimes. Eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable, and a little suggesting upon their first recall can drastically alter the nature of how events are recalled, and lock in that altered memory as the "real" one.
According to the Innocence Project, 69% of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA evidence involved eyewitness misidentifications.
Eye-witness accounts of events are indeed evidence, and more people all claiming to have witnessed the same thing is even stronger evidence, but that heuristic breaks down under certain circumstances. When there's a notable thing that has only eye witness accounts as evidence, it seems more likely that it's one of these exceptions to the rule, rather than something actually bizarre.
Yea. I understand how someone who thinks in Bayesian probabilities could interpret thousands of testimonies as evidence, but it’s deeply flawed.
I grew up in the bible belt, and I have endless experience with speaking to deeply religious people, especially those in the middle and lower half of the bell curve. The extent to which they exaggerate even minor events is astounding. Outright lying is not only common, but expected given the social dynamics at hand.
Taking their accounts at face-value is a fool’s errand. You simply need to have secular organizations investigating these things. The church is a poor source of objective information and the incentives for fact finding are backwards.
Besides the miracles, which you argue are sociological phenomena (collective deception), everything in Bentham's "boss list" is equally applicable to Islam or Buddhism:
>The disciples being willing to suffer and die.
-- Which religion doesn't have martyrs? How many pagan soldiers have died to defend their religion?
>Christianity lasting several hundred years despite facing intense persecution, even without a state.
-- This is false. Christianity began, at earliest, 33 AD. More realistically, Rylands Library Papyrus P52 could be dated to 100 AD. Prior to this, there was no such thing as organized institutional Christianity -- the Romans just saw a bunch of Jewish cults. Outside of the horrors of the Roman-Jewish Wars, Jews were granted citizenship; part of the Roman state; were made into officials. The Severan Dynasty began in 193 AD, and they began promoting the worship of Levantine Black Cube Idols in the Senate. The idea that Christians were being persecuted for "hundreds of years" is propaganda, made up by the victors. The "miracle" here is that Rome was so tolerant toward a cult which was so hateful toward the Roman Gods, not that Christians "survived" persecution. This is like arguing that hippies "survived" the Kent State shootings. Total lack of proportionality.
>Christianity producing a profound moral transformation across the world.
-- I would argue that Rome produced a greater moral transformation than Christianity. Does this mean that Zeus is real?
>Christianity becoming the largest and most diverse religion.
-- The diversity of Christianity is an argument against its "divinity," and an argument in favor of memetic capture. See the George Mason theory of wokeness:
I believe you used some of the info I provided when I was editing the Our Lady of Zeitoun wikipedia page lol. This was a minor obsession of mine for a bit, glad you've given some of my work broader exposure and explanation!
A bit busy, so I can't write out a long response, but ping me in a week, and I'll have it be more comprehensive. A few comments:
1) I am far, far less confident in the miracle stuff than the philosophical arguments. Don't use them as litmus tests for how much you should trust my religious arguments, as they're the religious arguments I'm least confident in. Much more confident, for instance, in the expected efficacy of the shrimp welfare project than the Zeitoun stuff--I probably only have a credence of a bit below .5 in the miracle of Zeitoun being veridical.
2) Seems consistent with the miracle report that God would miraculously make a light appear and would have people's perceptions of it be influenced by their precepts and culture. The miracle doesn't have to involve Mary appearing looking as she normally did.
First of all, I appreciate the kind words and the willingness to read my stuff, despite disagreeing a lot. I appreciate it when people rule others in not out. I haven't read your blog much, but looks good!
Second of all, even if we grant Nelson's account, it's wildly unclear where the lights came from. This is what's most puzzling--that the lights continued to appear only over the Church over the course of years, even though all the streetlights and so on were disconnected. What would explain it? The police investigated--they found nothing!
Doesn't seem that surprising on the divinity explanation that a skeptic from very far away wouldn't see anything--there was already a giant crowd. Your theory, aside from leaving the lights unexplained (lights do not ordinarily continually reappear over the same spot for three years despite every plausible light source being disconnected) also fails to explain the early sightings, wherein people mistook the light for Mary. This is not a typical property of lights.
As far as the light itself, I think in your mind you picture the scene as having been pitch black at night with no nearby sources of light? This isn't how I picture it as having went down.
Any reflection or refraction of light could have come from any of the sources of light in the area that I'm sure they used to even see their surroundings? Sure, they turned off streetlights. But since we don't have detailed accounts of the rate of the light appearing or duration, or any metrics that would be common in a study of this phenomenon, we can't know if the apparition appearances decreased as they turned off nearby light sources.
This is the problem with analyzing something without any data or detailed accounts confirming it. The one actually detailed account we have of any repute is Nelson's, and even she was describing something very different from what others said.
The reason that the police can't find anything is fundamentally the same reason why Dr. Nelson didn't see much - nothing is happening. What are the police going to do? "Alright, we're up here by the dome. From what we can see, this is definitely a dome." Investigating and finding nothing is consistent with nothing having occurred.
My question would be why wouldn't some secular organization or scientific group simply stake out for a few days to study what would certainly be one of the greatest findings of all time?
My guess is that out of the numerous people that went, at least some of them were scientists or skeptical people of some stature who decided that it was a nothingburger. The NYT was at least aware of it since they reported on it, so ignorance wouldn't be an alibi.
Miracles and apparitions are never going to be a proof - Catholics aren't required to believe eg in Marian apparitions, even those approved by the church. But the catholic church in particular has a bureaucratic process and a very high bar for accepting miracles and apparitions - have a look at the relatively small number of approved miracles at Lourdes, for example. I don't think the fact that not everyone at Zeitoun was convinced is that compelling. If you arrive with a prior that this is an incident primarily of anthropological interest, this is probably what you're going to see (and even then, there are clearly unexplained physical phenomena at Zeitoun, eg the source of the light). After all, according to the gospels, Jesus miraculously fed 4000 people only for the sadducees and pharisees to come immediately afterwards, asking for a sign.
There wasn’t a consistent, golden human shaped figure of light is what I’m saying. Zeitoun was a tourist attraction for years because of this event, and we don’t have consistent photos or videos of this occurring.
All you would need to do is have US embassy workers show up at midnight when Mary supposedly appears, and record evidence. I would even accept a written record from a reliable source, which we don’t have, so this didn’t happen.
This event is more of a tall tale. It’s not literally real.
"So You are the Christ
You're the great Jesus Christ
Prove to me that You're divine
Change my water into wine
That's all You need do
And I'll know it's all true ..."
(King Herod's song, Jesus Christ Superstar)
There's saying, people have walked from wheelchairs, but nobody has ever regrown an amputated limb. If all the supposed miracles are vague and likely misinterpretations, that tells you something about the quality of the evidence.
You'd think Mary might come over and have a chat with all the worshipers, instead of appearing and flying around all the time.
They've done some convincing studies on how easily influenceable eye-witnesses are in the recalling of certain events in the context of witnessed crimes. Eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable, and a little suggesting upon their first recall can drastically alter the nature of how events are recalled, and lock in that altered memory as the "real" one.
According to the Innocence Project, 69% of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA evidence involved eyewitness misidentifications.
Eye-witness accounts of events are indeed evidence, and more people all claiming to have witnessed the same thing is even stronger evidence, but that heuristic breaks down under certain circumstances. When there's a notable thing that has only eye witness accounts as evidence, it seems more likely that it's one of these exceptions to the rule, rather than something actually bizarre.
Yea. I understand how someone who thinks in Bayesian probabilities could interpret thousands of testimonies as evidence, but it’s deeply flawed.
I grew up in the bible belt, and I have endless experience with speaking to deeply religious people, especially those in the middle and lower half of the bell curve. The extent to which they exaggerate even minor events is astounding. Outright lying is not only common, but expected given the social dynamics at hand.
Taking their accounts at face-value is a fool’s errand. You simply need to have secular organizations investigating these things. The church is a poor source of objective information and the incentives for fact finding are backwards.
Besides the miracles, which you argue are sociological phenomena (collective deception), everything in Bentham's "boss list" is equally applicable to Islam or Buddhism:
>The disciples being willing to suffer and die.
-- Which religion doesn't have martyrs? How many pagan soldiers have died to defend their religion?
>Christianity lasting several hundred years despite facing intense persecution, even without a state.
-- This is false. Christianity began, at earliest, 33 AD. More realistically, Rylands Library Papyrus P52 could be dated to 100 AD. Prior to this, there was no such thing as organized institutional Christianity -- the Romans just saw a bunch of Jewish cults. Outside of the horrors of the Roman-Jewish Wars, Jews were granted citizenship; part of the Roman state; were made into officials. The Severan Dynasty began in 193 AD, and they began promoting the worship of Levantine Black Cube Idols in the Senate. The idea that Christians were being persecuted for "hundreds of years" is propaganda, made up by the victors. The "miracle" here is that Rome was so tolerant toward a cult which was so hateful toward the Roman Gods, not that Christians "survived" persecution. This is like arguing that hippies "survived" the Kent State shootings. Total lack of proportionality.
>Christianity producing a profound moral transformation across the world.
-- I would argue that Rome produced a greater moral transformation than Christianity. Does this mean that Zeus is real?
>Christianity becoming the largest and most diverse religion.
-- The diversity of Christianity is an argument against its "divinity," and an argument in favor of memetic capture. See the George Mason theory of wokeness:
https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-origin-of-woke-a-george-mason
I believe you used some of the info I provided when I was editing the Our Lady of Zeitoun wikipedia page lol. This was a minor obsession of mine for a bit, glad you've given some of my work broader exposure and explanation!
A bit busy, so I can't write out a long response, but ping me in a week, and I'll have it be more comprehensive. A few comments:
1) I am far, far less confident in the miracle stuff than the philosophical arguments. Don't use them as litmus tests for how much you should trust my religious arguments, as they're the religious arguments I'm least confident in. Much more confident, for instance, in the expected efficacy of the shrimp welfare project than the Zeitoun stuff--I probably only have a credence of a bit below .5 in the miracle of Zeitoun being veridical.
2) Seems consistent with the miracle report that God would miraculously make a light appear and would have people's perceptions of it be influenced by their precepts and culture. The miracle doesn't have to involve Mary appearing looking as she normally did.
Yea I figured you valued the philosophical arguments more, I just don't understand them.
Okay, part two of my comment.
First of all, I appreciate the kind words and the willingness to read my stuff, despite disagreeing a lot. I appreciate it when people rule others in not out. I haven't read your blog much, but looks good!
Second of all, even if we grant Nelson's account, it's wildly unclear where the lights came from. This is what's most puzzling--that the lights continued to appear only over the Church over the course of years, even though all the streetlights and so on were disconnected. What would explain it? The police investigated--they found nothing!
Doesn't seem that surprising on the divinity explanation that a skeptic from very far away wouldn't see anything--there was already a giant crowd. Your theory, aside from leaving the lights unexplained (lights do not ordinarily continually reappear over the same spot for three years despite every plausible light source being disconnected) also fails to explain the early sightings, wherein people mistook the light for Mary. This is not a typical property of lights.
As far as the light itself, I think in your mind you picture the scene as having been pitch black at night with no nearby sources of light? This isn't how I picture it as having went down.
Any reflection or refraction of light could have come from any of the sources of light in the area that I'm sure they used to even see their surroundings? Sure, they turned off streetlights. But since we don't have detailed accounts of the rate of the light appearing or duration, or any metrics that would be common in a study of this phenomenon, we can't know if the apparition appearances decreased as they turned off nearby light sources.
This is the problem with analyzing something without any data or detailed accounts confirming it. The one actually detailed account we have of any repute is Nelson's, and even she was describing something very different from what others said.
The reason that the police can't find anything is fundamentally the same reason why Dr. Nelson didn't see much - nothing is happening. What are the police going to do? "Alright, we're up here by the dome. From what we can see, this is definitely a dome." Investigating and finding nothing is consistent with nothing having occurred.
My question would be why wouldn't some secular organization or scientific group simply stake out for a few days to study what would certainly be one of the greatest findings of all time?
My guess is that out of the numerous people that went, at least some of them were scientists or skeptical people of some stature who decided that it was a nothingburger. The NYT was at least aware of it since they reported on it, so ignorance wouldn't be an alibi.
Miracles and apparitions are never going to be a proof - Catholics aren't required to believe eg in Marian apparitions, even those approved by the church. But the catholic church in particular has a bureaucratic process and a very high bar for accepting miracles and apparitions - have a look at the relatively small number of approved miracles at Lourdes, for example. I don't think the fact that not everyone at Zeitoun was convinced is that compelling. If you arrive with a prior that this is an incident primarily of anthropological interest, this is probably what you're going to see (and even then, there are clearly unexplained physical phenomena at Zeitoun, eg the source of the light). After all, according to the gospels, Jesus miraculously fed 4000 people only for the sadducees and pharisees to come immediately afterwards, asking for a sign.
There wasn’t a consistent, golden human shaped figure of light is what I’m saying. Zeitoun was a tourist attraction for years because of this event, and we don’t have consistent photos or videos of this occurring.
All you would need to do is have US embassy workers show up at midnight when Mary supposedly appears, and record evidence. I would even accept a written record from a reliable source, which we don’t have, so this didn’t happen.
This event is more of a tall tale. It’s not literally real.
And the catholic church is not a scientific authority on miracles. They don’t prove that anything actually happened. It’s just a series of interviews.