Opening Prayer - Ps 118

Quiet and Loud Miracles

• Let's say there are two kinds of miracles; quiet miracles and loud miracles

• Quiet miracles tend to be personal and fantastic experiences

• A loud miracle, by contrast, is a public experience, "an extraordinary operation of God, against the known course, and settled laws of nature, appealing to the senses."

Some personal Quiet Miracles

• Patricia T at TRW - I was thinking about her on a Saturday morning at work, the phone rings, it's her asking for prayer

• Nathen C in Seal Beach - I was in crisis, in therapy, Nathan's used bookstore suddenly had the books I needed. As my crisis resolved over a few years, the books stopped coming

• Graham Kerr of Galloping Gourmet - Out of the blue, I wondered to myself, what is Graham Kerr doing, soon I found out he in a ministry

Here are the 7 signs in the Gospel of John, Loud Miracles

1. Changing water into wine, John 2:1-11

2. Healing the official's son, John 4:46-54

3. Healing the lame man, John 5:2-9

4. Feeding the multitude, John 6:1-13

5. Walking on water, John 6:17-31

6. Giving sight to the blind, John 9:1-8

7. Raising Lazarus from the dead, John 11:1-45

The quiet miracles we experience might help up us believe that loud miracles can happen to us and others as well

Craig S Keener's Two Volume Book on Miracles

Gary Habermas mentions Craig Keener at minute 28 of his video. Habermas: "Don't call the New Testament stories of Miracles naive or call greco roman writers naive because they record miracles. He has a two volume book on Miracles." Craig S Keener's two volume book entitled "Miracles" is an overwhelmingly comprehensive collection.

The two main subjects of the book he mentions on page 7 are:

• "This first argument is that the miracle stories in the Gospels and Acts are generally plausible historically and need not be incompatible with eyewitness tradition."

• "This second point is that we are not obligated to begin with the a priori assumption that none of these events could involve intelligent, suprahuman causation"

From the many examples of miracles listed in the book ...

• Healing of lower spine degeneration from prayer. Vol p495

• 95 other healings listed in this one chapter.

"As noted above the main focus of the book is to persuade readers skeptical of NT miracle accounts that such accounts can stem from eye witnesses and potentially report phenomena that happened. I believe that the evidence in this book, uneven as some of it, is more than sufficient to sustain this claim." p 16

Here's the books: "Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts"

https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525/

David Hume May 7, 1711 to Aug 25, 1776

• If anyone is going to make the case for miracles, they must get by Hume first

  • Hume's statement against miracles, "That 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 endeavors to establish"

  • Hume says the evidence for miracles comes from outside testimony of others

  • Hume says evidence against miracles is experienced personally every day through the unchanging laws of nature

  • Hume says the testimony for miracles must be more convincing and reliable than the laws of nature themselves

• David Hume "was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism"

Craig Keener devotes 120 pages to discussing David Hume!

Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning reasons from the general to the particular. Here is a syllogism for deductive reasoning.

P1 All men are mortal

P2 Socrates is a man

Conclusion: Socrates is mortal

If all the propositions are true, the conclusion is valid.

Inductive reasoning reasons from the particular to the general.  Here is a syllogism for inductive reasoning.

P1 This squirrel has a bushy tail

P2 That squirrel has a bushy tail, and so on, and so on ...

Conclusion: All squirrels have bushy tails

If all the propositions are consistent, the conclusion is provisionally true, but never certain

Most of our scientific and every day reasoning is inductive. Our voice of experience is informed by inductive reasoning.

Hume's Circular Reasoning Error

David Hume says he employed inductive reasoning to make the case that miracles cannot happen. For Hume, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. 

P1 I see nature here

P2 I see nature there, and there, and in space

Conclusion: Everywhere I look, I see nature operating without the need for miracles

But really, he actually used deductive reasoning.

P1 Miracles can't happen

P2 This supposed miracle did not happen

Conclusion: Miracles can't happen

This is called circular reasoning since the conclusion is the same as the premise. This is one of Keener's focus areas.

Bayesian Thinking (for Geeky extra credit)

• Start out with a certain level of belief, it could be very low, low, medium etc

• After setting your belief, you obtain good evidence for it. Evidence could be validated testimony of witnesses

• Therefore, you increase your level of belief

• As time goes on, you obtain more good evidence and further your level of belief. And so on ...

• You finish up with a much higher level of belief than when you started

Reasonable person bayesian example

• You sit in a chair and it falls apart under you

• Later on you see it all fixed up and you decide to sit on it again

• Your belief that it will support you right now is low, so you are very careful sitting down on it the first time

• But every time you get up from it and sit down on it again, your confidence increases

• By the 8th or 9th time you try it, you are not even thinking about it any more as your belief about it is very high now. Low-belief improves to take-it-for-granted-belief

Close minded person bayesian example

• You get stuck in an elevator for an hour and a half

• Afterwards, in spite of all the safety evidence presented and the fact that millions of people use elevators without incident, you vow never to go in an elevator again

"A Bayesian quest to find God - Bayes’ theorem and the probabilistic answers to the most fundamental question of all: “Does God exist?

https://towardsdatascience.com/a-bayesian-quest-to-find-god-b30934972473