Good Question For Catholics and Others

[IronUnkind]

Okay.

What is the prior probability of said miracle?

[maurile]

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What is the prior probability of said miracle?

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Much lower than the prior probability that a Pope would lie.

[IronUnkind]

I'm looking for a specific answer. Too often Bayes theorem is invoked without any attendant mathematics.

[Zeno]

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What is the prior probability of said miracle?

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Much lower than the prior probability that a Pope would lie.

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I've read some ludicrous statements on 2+2 before. But this is one is tops. I tip my hat.

Popes are not only congenital liars; the edifice of the office and its complete history is a blackened blatant lie besmirched with thievery, avarice, human butchery, bloodthirstiness, downright silliness, intolerance, and the most gorgeous heaps of convoluted imbecility known in the annals of human idiocy.

Two links for your reading and viewing pleasure:

True Catholics

Antipopes?


The Yin-Yang Man

[imported_luckyme]

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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

[BluffTHIS!]

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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.)

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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.

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If the Pope told you that God told him to tell you to kill your family, would you believe him? (And would you do it?) Why or why not?

[BluffTHIS!]

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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.

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If the Pope told you that God told him to tell you to kill your family, would you believe him? (And would you do it?) Why or why not?

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This is obviously not what the OP's question is about, but rather about a miraculous event having already occurred. And I am not bound by injuctions, even from the pope, that are contrary to the moral law.

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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.

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If the Pope told you that God told him to tell you to kill your family, would you believe him? (And would you do it?) Why or why not?

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This is obviously not what the OP's question is about, but rather about a miraculous event having already occurred. And I am not bound by injuctions, even from the pope, that are contrary to the moral law.

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So, you'd believe the Pope if he said he performed a miracle, but you'd not believe him when he told you that God told him to tell you to kill your family. Because, obviously, the Pope would be lying then, right? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Oh, and if God says to kill your family, then the moral thing to do would be kill your family -- just ask NotReady.

[MMMMMM]

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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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Your first example was not only of the Pope claiming it, but of the astonishing event being witnessed by those in person and watching on TV.

One difficulty I would have with actually providing an answer to your question, is that ALL possible explanations (including even that of a charlatan Grand Magician Pope), would just appear extremely unlikely. It's harder to pick between a bunch of extremely unlikely explanations, than it would be to choose if even one of the explanations were moderately likely. Even though one might assign some ranking of likelihoods, it's still hard since all choices are just so implausible.

Minuscule probabilities can sometimes be hard to differentiate for real-world purposes, so looking for as-yet-unthought-of explanations might assume an additional importance. If all explanations are terribly unlikely, maybe there is an explanation nobody has thought of yet, so spending some time mulling along those lines and trying to gather any additional related information, no matter how seemingly insignificant, might be useful.

So maybe it's a bit of a copout, but I'd feel a lot better if I had the exact information of the event to go on in real life: having seen it on TV, watching reruns for any odd moves by the Pope, maybe getting a clue by the "type" of miracle performed, etc.--when dealing with something truly baffling, every little clue might help, and potentially might help a lot.

However, I would place the probability of a genuine miracle by God LOWER than some of the other potential explanations which I listed in my other post (such as a freak physical phenomena like "spontaneous combustion", if it exists, or a strange instance of super-telekinetic power, if it exists), or even the Pope doing an elaborate magic trick.