Good Question For Catholics and Others

[DrButch]

As a Catholic I would have to say:

E. Highly Doubtful

The history of the Church clearly demonstrates that the Pope and other Church leaders are human. The role of revelation and Faith in the Catholic religion makes any mircle suspect.

Alas, many believers do not share this skepticism.

[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.

[Sifmole]

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The change in belief (before and after Randi's explanation) would be interesting as well.

Personally, when someone does something that appears impossible on tv then I'm highly doubtful of its veracity even without an explanation. It's reproducibility that is persuasive.

chez

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So, basically, you deny the once-in-a-lifetime miracle based on the inherent aspect of that miracle not being reproducible. Because if it is reproducible -- it ain't a friggin' miracle any more is it?!

[chezlaw]

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The change in belief (before and after Randi's explanation) would be interesting as well.

Personally, when someone does something that appears impossible on tv then I'm highly doubtful of its veracity even without an explanation. It's reproducibility that is persuasive.

chez

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So, basically, you deny the once-in-a-lifetime miracle based on the inherent aspect of that miracle not being reproducible. Because if it is reproducible -- it ain't a friggin' miracle any more is it?!

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Yep, I seriously doubt any miraculous claim even if I can't currently explain it.

chez

Hume's Maxim: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish."

I think this miracle would be more miraculous than the Pope lying, or being deceived by someone else.

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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?

[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.

[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.

[IronUnkind]

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

[chezlaw]

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

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Questioning the veracity of the pope is fine but you go too far if you bring Bayes into question [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

chez