Why Miracles Should Not Be Used as a Reason to Believe in a Religion
Note: This is part of a series of shorter essays I plan to write exploring my thoughts and opinions on various topics relating to philosophy, religion, and science. I will try to keep things simple. Feedback is welcome.
Human testimony is not sufficient grounds for the belief in a supernatural event.
Why?
Because humans are not perfect.
Just because a large number of people believe in something does not mean that the event actually occurred, or that it was caused by a deity. The value of a witness to a miracle really boils down to a question of trust. If you trust the witness, you are more likely to trust his report of the miracle.
The issue here is that there are a number of reasons why we might not trust the accuracy of the report.
First, humans are fallible.
One such reason is that memories are often edited or changed over time, often unconsciously. This can be due to a number of factors, such as the desire to remember events in a certain way, the influence of other people’s memories of the same event, or the introduction of false information after the fact. In fact, research has shown that it is very common for people to have different memories of the same event, and that even eyewitness testimony is often inaccurate.
Another reason why people’s memories can be inaccurate is because of something called “confabulation”. This is essentially when a person fills in gaps in their memory with information that they believe to be true, even if it is not. This can be due to a variety of factors, such as the person not being able to remember the event clearly, or wanting to make themselves appear more interesting or heroic.
Third, we are often subject to confirmation bias—that is, we are more likely to overlook evidence that contradicts our beliefs, or to see evidence that supports it when it is not there.
The more we believe a thing to be true, the more likely we are to think we are seeing it, whether we are or not.
Finally, just as we are susceptible to confirmation bias, we are also susceptible to social pressure.
The more we believe a thing to be true, the more likely we are to downplay inconsistencies in reports from others, or to attempt to rationalize them away.
This is particularly problematic when the people we are trusting are people we have a strong positive relationship with, as this makes us even more likely to be less skeptical of their claims.
When we put all of this together, we see that we have a very hard time coming to trust a report that a miracle has occurred.
In order to believe that a miracle has occurred, we have to believe that someone was able to reliably observe it and report it accurately, and since humans are not perfect, it is almost impossible to prove that this has occurred.
We simply cannot know everything that the person observed, or how they interpreted it, and thus we cannot know if the report we have is accurate.
This is particularly problematic when the person reporting the miracle is someone we have a strong relationship with, as it means that we are more likely to trust their testimony, even if our trust is unwarranted.
So, what does this mean for reports of religious miracles? It means that, unfortunately, we cannot trust them as much as we would like to. This is because, due to the reasons listed above, it is very likely that many (if not most) reports of religious miracles are inaccurate. This does not mean that miracles do not happen, or that people never experience religious phenomena, but it does mean that we should be very skeptical of reports of religious miracles.
Would you agree with a person that told you that human testimony is not sufficient grounds for the belief in a natural event (say, that your friend was attacked by another, but there were no witnesses and it left no marks) because humans are not perfect, etc...?
If not, might that indicate the rest of your argument only holds in the case where the prior probability of miracles is extremely low (and potentially misses the crux of the disagreement between yourself and miracle-believing people)?
No, I would not agree with a person that told me that human testimony is not sufficient grounds for the belief in a natural event. There are many things that we believe based on human testimony that have not been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. For example, we take the testimony of our friends and family about their lives as sufficient grounds for belief. We also take the testimony of experts in various fields as sufficient grounds for belief. In both of these cases, we trust that the person is telling the truth to the best of their knowledge and we do not require perfect certainty. The same is true for testimony about supernatural events. We can never be certain that any particular event is a miracle, but we can weigh the evidence and decide whether or not it is sufficient to believe that a miracle has occurred.
Realized I was way too vague, should clarify what I mean is that human testimony is significantly less trustworthy than most believe it to be, even including mundane and non-spiritual subjects (like court testimony, for example—even well-intentioned people trying to be accurate are far more unreliable than one would naively expect). This means we should discount it suitably with regards to all subjects, perhaps a little more so if the testimony is similar to common delusions or religions with contradictory gospel or something. I would not rely on the testimony of a single human making any sort of extremely unusual claim, if I can help it (especially if there are significant negative downsides if they’re wrong).
So yes, if someone believes miracles are extremely common, this argument wouldn’t hold, though I don’t think most believers tend to, well, believe that.
I’ve read a number of books arguing for the truth of various religions (mostly Orthodox Judaism, though I have also seen some great Islamic and Christian stuff) and they tend to emphasize how incredible, how insane it is that God would choose to take a personal interest in us through miracles (and giving us prophets, etc.). Some books even specifically talk about how unlikely it is that anyone would lie about such improbable events, as the proof that such events must have happened as reported! After all, why would someone who is deliberately lying and afraid of being caught make up such specific and bizarre details like are seen throughout the Bible?…
The Catholic church requires a person to facilitate two miracles to gain sainthood. That makes miracles more common then those events in the bible.
It feels to me like a good portion of claims of miracles are also about people making bad inferences about casuality.
For example we have a lot of doctors who present the results of diagnostic tests for cancer very convincingly.
When there’s a false positive cancer diagnosis, the person then prays and survives it’s a miracle for them.
You should retitle this to “why you shouldn’t believe reports of miracles”. You’ve not provided reasons not to believe a religion base on miracles you personally experience. People who have direct religious experiences are surprisingly common (though the experiences aren’t compelling reasons to me, they seem to be to the believers).
Also, you now have a problem of whether to believe ANY reported experiences or results, including some pretty important mechanical and engineering beliefs that are hard to personally test with your own resources.