Re: Wow, this might be the best question ever on this forum;-) ...
 

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I'd believe that I could fly if I suddenly found myself flying, and I'd be right to do so. That fact does not in any way challenge or discredit my current belief that I can't fly.

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There's a line in "A Beautiful Mind" where he states about his hallucinations .."They're not aging". If a person is in a full-blown hallucinating experience, it can strike them in two ways 1) the experience is totally real but they 'know' it's an hallucination . 2) the experience is totally real and 'at the time' they can't do anything but believe it's actually happening.

Hallucinating flying may fall in either of those, the test is whether one believes it next week or reason returns and a version of "they're not aging" decides the issue. I'm always amazed with how much we're aware about the ease of hallucination, false memory and other tricks our mind has in it's bag, that people put such credence is "well, it happened to me."

Sometimes it's even in other ! peoples experiences.. "My wife had this amazing experince so now I believe xyz.." Yet, experiences occur inside the mind, not outside. Even discounting false memory ( which is very common), the best we can say about an experience is that we experienced it.

Whether it 'happened' is a matter to be resolved as best we can - outside of the direct experience.

luckyme

Re: Wow, this might be the best question ever on this forum;-) ...
 

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I'd believe that I could fly if I suddenly found myself flying, and I'd be right to do so. That fact does not in any way challenge or discredit my current belief that I can't fly.

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There's a line in "A Beautiful Mind" where he states about his hallucinations .."They're not aging". If a person is in a full-blown hallucinating experience, it can strike them in two ways 1) the experience is totally real but they 'know' it's an hallucination . 2) the experience is totally real and 'at the time' they can't do anything but believe it's actually happening.

Hallucinating flying may fall in either of those, the test is whether one believes it next week or reason returns and a version of "they're not aging" decides the issue. I'm always amazed with how much we're aware about the ease of hallucination, false memory and other tricks our mind has in it's bag, that people put such credence is "well, it happened to me."

Sometimes it's even in other ! peoples experiences.. "My wife had this amazing experince so now I believe xyz.." Yet, experiences occur inside the mind, not outside. Even discounting false memory ( which is very common), the best we can say about an experience is that we experienced it.

Whether it 'happened' is a matter to be resolved as best we can - outside of the direct experience.

luckyme

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Yes, all fair comment, I wouldn't argue against any of that - scratch 'suddenly' and make it 'repeatedly, over time' if it's preferable. All that I was getting at, RE the original Pope question:

You can take any belief we have, nevermind flight - take gravity, time, anything. And you can concoct some scenario which, if it happened, would refute those beliefs. All that possibility establishes is that we're not idiots. We can and should change our beliefs based on new evidence.

But throwing a hypothetical into the mix in this example is useless. It's like saying 'what if the Pope was caught visiting a brothel'. The hypothetical already refers to a guy that doesn't exist, he's a different guy by virtue of that action and what it says about his personality, so we can't pull any conclusions from that scenario about our current guy.

Re: Good Question For Catholics and Others
 

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I agree if you mean that we cannot by reason alone know God's motivations. But we can claim to know such if He has told us in His divine revelation.

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The problem with that is the same as with the "I'm flying, I'm flying" experience. If one sets reason aside then there's no way to differentiate a 'son of sam' type message from any other, whether a personal recent revelation or an historical one. Iow, 'revelaton' is an experince that somebody had. Accepting an experience ( regardless of how vivid, or emotional, or unreal) is still accepting an experience and freezing out the "but they're not aging" part.

luckyme

Re: Good Question For Catholics and Others
 

Why is almost everyone ignoring my question? I am simply asking whether you would believe a respected Pope who claimed he did a miracle given the feat could be duplicated by non miraculous, albeit very sophisticated, means.

Re: Wow, this might be the best question ever on this forum;-) ...
 

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You can take any belief we have, nevermind flight - take gravity, time, anything. And you cascenario which,if it happened , would refute those beliefsn concoct some . All that possibility establishes is that we're not idiots. We can and should change our beliefs based on new evidence.

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The "we're not idiots" and "new evidence" approach deals with logic and rationality. My point is that the 'new evidence' can't be a mere 'experience', ..not after the movie :wink

I'm harping on the "if it happened" and what it takes to make us say it did. Evidence is built on something more concrete, testable, external. A anti-normal/expectation experience may start us looking at where and how we could find evidence that would give us a different view of some situation, but by the nature of experience, even repeated, we require more than acceptance of it as 'the explanation".
Else, I am going to think that Red Kings always lose.

luckyme

Re: Good Question For Catholics and Others
 

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Why is almost everyone ignoring my question? I am simply asking whether you would believe a respected Pope who claimed he did a miracle given the feat could be duplicated by non miraculous, albeit very sophisticated, means.

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I didn't ignore it, I gave you my answer so perhaps you'd return the favour. What is your answer before Randi's intervention?

chez

Re: Good Question For Catholics and Others
 

The answer is E, obviously. It's just a simple Bayes' Theorem problem.

Re: Good Question For Catholics and Others
 

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whether you would believe a respected Pope who claimed he did a miracle given the feat could be duplicated

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Well, huff, "I've" been answering that in great detail [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

Believing him is not the same as 'did it happen as it appeared'. Here are some scenarios -
a) He's in on some trick.
b) He's not in on it, just a pawn in it.
c) It's not a trick, just a weird situation, Randi illustrated only one explanation for it.

the OPs original question -
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After Randi's news conference how sure would you be, as a Catholic, that the Pope's astonishing feat was done without using an obvious trick?

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It's an excluded middle situaton. It's not two opposite posibilities - Pope pulling trick vs Divine. I'd temporarily assume a 'trick' by someone but I'd be open to some weird 'natural' cause also. There is nothing that would suggest the supernatural now, but there wasn't before Randi's suggestion either.

luckyme

Re: Good Question For Catholics and Others
 

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Why is almost everyone ignoring my question? I am simply asking whether you would believe a respected Pope who claimed he did a miracle given the feat could be duplicated by non miraculous, albeit very sophisticated, means.

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In the absence of evidence that the pope had cheated by using scientific means, or that another person had even without the pope's knowledge, then yes I would tend to believe him. Note that this belief of this act as miraculous cannot be compelled as it is outside of general revelation which ceased with the death of the last apostle.

The key factor though would be whether such a result could have occurred naturally even though rarely. However, praying for same and it occurring at a specified time or within a very short timeframe could to me be convincing evidence for same, though not to the point of 100% certainty.

The Church has made judgements that various miracles have occurred, such as the Marian apparitions at Lourdes and Fatima, as well as miracles experienced/performed by various saints. But again with the above doctrinal point, the Church merely says that such beliefs are worthy of belief and free from doctrinal error, not that believers are compelled to believe them which it can't compell. So one can be a good Catholic and refuse to believe in the Marian apparations of Lourdes and Fatima. (I personally believe in same.)

Re: Good Question For Catholics and Others
 

Okay.

What is the prior probability of said miracle?