We wouldn't conclude that these things actually happened as reported, especially given the gaps in the timelines. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky. Then, on Pentecost Sunday, two of Synders friends read her letters from those praying for her. That's for when the Lord returns. in social ethics from the University of Southern California, a Th.M. My oldest grandson loves to run and is always racing ahead, scampering up hills and sliding down ravines faster than the rest. Keener: in terms of anomalies whether they're anomalies or whether they're explainable in some way it helps if there's a pattern. And Coco [inaudible] prayed and Terese started breathing again and the next day she was fine. A document going through these particular medical statements with citations can be found here. It is quite clear that once you allow one miraculous healing in, using evidence of just one person, then one has to let in a whole host of others. But it's a wonderful volume. And Jesus answers him with words from Isaiah 35 and Isaiah 61 saying, "The disabled will walk. University (CWRU) in July 2007, will join the Association of American Universities (AAU) by the So Craig thanks so much for being with us. What is missing are the controls -- how often does the "treatment" happen and there is no effect, and how often is there an effect but no treatment. Here I look into the papers he references in response. diagnosis by the Mayo Clinic, her condition declined over the next 15 years. If you enjoyed our conversation today, give us a rating on your podcast app. I mean I can explain theologically the already not yet of the Kingdom why it doesn't happen to everybody, but why this one and not that one? And even after CPR is stopped, there is an observed phenomenon of spontaneous recovery of heart activity after as much as 15 minutes, and his recovered after 10 minutes. She earned her bachelors degree from OSU. In fact, history is full of bizarre coincidences that get downright creepy . And as a Christian I naturally did believe in miracles. He had asthma all his life. But in some places Like I had a student from India, a doctor of ministry student, who said almost everybody that he prays for in India gets healed. I want to refer our listeners to your two volume series on miracles. become the next leader of the organization that represents the 63 leading The problem is trying to determine whether a particular action or treatment actually causes the subsequent (positive) results. Indianapolis, Indiana. Intercessory prayer commences and one day he awakes to find his or her arm back on their body, intact. Of course, it's possible her sight was perfect and declined in the 2 years between the "healing" and the measurement which would call into question the miraculous nature. It also includes the audio recording of Duane Miller as he is being spontaneously healed of his permanent, severe vocal chord damage. Her doctors have written about her seemingly impossible medical turn around. successor. What is more striking, especially for people who don't like Pentecostals or Charismatics, what's more striking is that the survey also in those 10 countries dealt with Christians who didn't consider themselves Pentecostal or Charismatic. Otherwise, not. Here's my comment. We have seen this with acupuncture after well-controlled trials were negative, some proponents decided that pragmatic (i.e. Couldn't the medical records have been earlier?) So they investigated him for fraud. And so that's kind of what prompted me to investigate this issue.. Craig Keener: Greg Spencer is a case of this. It is suitable for those who love nice illustrations. We can also ask how the miracle believer handles the many cases where seemingly miraculous things happen and no reported prayer, with disapearing disease without treatment? It will be life-changing for those individuals, for sure, even under the condition where there are no miracles. That we all will be ultimately healed if we have trust in Jesus because we'll be with him forever. The way people like the stories highlights their way of thinking and provides a teachable moment about like why don't we trust claims just from the claims, even if it has a peer-reviewed journal article. Stories of recalled past memories from past lives only occurs within religions that support reincarnation. [] why are they not healed if the context matters and we're defining a miracle as you know divine intervention not just a highly improbable event then how come there's no divine intervention there and if the answer is well god works in mysterious ways who knows well you know that's kind of a hand wave, Elijah: i think also calling a handwave kind of undermines something is imagine you caught a murderer and uh you saw him shoot a guy and he goes well i i haven't shot anyone before in my life um is that what we're trying to show is these are real examples i can't explain the soldier coming home that that makes perfect sense but what i can say is there was a blind lady and she got prayer and her eyes opened up and she had macular degeneration they can verify that before and afterwards and i'm not sure it's rational to call those uh uh just coincidences. Keener: what is specific about that data that suggests it isn't just a fluke you know one of those one in a million things that just happens sometimes yeah anomalies occur so it's important to look for an accumulation of anomalies so you don't just have what could be a coincidence. He wasn't praying for healing of his physical vision, but when the Lord healed his mind, he opened his eyes and he could see. It's the same reason large careful studies aren't done -- they simply don't care enough, and are already believing, so why bother? After a quick intro, the episode plays in full. How can I help? By counting these as "hits" and ignoring the deaths of starving children because they are "misses" and don't support their narrative is an indictment of the entire mode of thought. Just, was it last night I think, we were talking and David Dockery was sharing about Grant Osbourne, a scholar friend of ours who passed away just this past month after an amazing career of scholarship, but when he was young he had asthma. Yeah, I think of my friend Nabeel Qureshi. That is directly below. God could choose methods that are not so easily confused with memory biases, measurement errors, and other distortions and it is suspicious that he doesn't operate that way. It was from a different Congo so the person who did that doesn't know their geography. Elijah: I also think we in the west have a bias toward poor people as not having knowledge of when something's dead or an arm is broken or something of that nature and so I think when people put themselves in situations where they pray for the sick and a whole village knows this child was born blind from birth they're 15 years old and that person sees gets their sight back and this is a different religion and that village testifies he was blind now, he sees that is a different scenario than we're talking about here and the lens of science really can't speak to that. The Mayo Clinic had diagnosed Barbara with multiple sclerosis. Sure. It is justified to demand better evidence, because we do that for even more modest claims, and we have centuries of data on the failings of human reasoning in inferring causes from effects. Hey, thanks for listening. The video of the miracle itself doesn't show much, and seems to show potentially abusive behavior of people lifting her out the chair, and supporting her as she attempts to walk in a far from medically controlled environment. Prior to that, she served as president of Case Western Reserve University from 2007 to 2020, where she encouraged interdisciplinary excellence, catalyzed institutional collaboration, and reinvigorated alumni engagement and fundraising. The fact that someone can come up with a simple idea like that, and none of the studies include these sorts of considerations, show that the theists aren't even trying to test their ideas. What do atheists think of Barbara Snyder, who was healed of all her symptoms and all her illness to the point where 31 years later she's completely healthy? One day, one of her friends called WMBI, which is the radio station in Chicago run by the Moody Bible Institute, and said, 'Pray for Barbara. It doesn't matter whether the claim is religious or scientific, the same rules apply. She wanted to be with her family even though there was a war going on. I'm just wondering, is it possible to do it the other way around? Also we need to know what happens when there is no treatment as a control. Synder's miraculous healing , which unfolded more than 30 years ago, was apparently so shocking that even her doctors have written about her seemingly impossible medical . Don't presume what I'll believe, show me evidence of an arm growing back first, then perhaps we'll see -- but I'd need the proper controls. If miracles are real then these steps -- while possibly inconvenient -- would be easy to demonstrate. What would happen if two people out in space a few meters apart, abandoned by their spacecraft, decided to wait until gravity pulled them together? Bizarrely, her calves were inflated and her once-atrophied muscles worked again and thats not all. This explores some of the rarer causes, but more importantly, the study they reference for the viral cause for the condition had cases that resolved in as long as 2 years (N=11). Jonathan McLatchie vs Jonathan Pearce, documentation for the Barbara Snyder case, https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=control&category_name=&submit=Search, this woman was healed of Parkinson's with "Energy Healing". Is it possible to start by eliminating the theistic hypothesis? Is it possible that there was MS and something else, in which case looking for a full recovery from MS is misdirected? These are both testable, yet there seems to be little effort by theists to improve the studies, they seem to rather prefer falling back on case studies. So if I'm dealing with historic, historiographic questions, historical reliability questions, I needed to deal with the issue of whether these kinds of things could happen. Scott Rae is professor of Christian ethics and dean of the faculty at Talbot School of Theology. And then I said "In Jesus's name, Amen" and so we moved on. Medine was a war refugee for 18 months in her country of Congo. As Nathan puts it, it's telling believers who doubt "stop those naughty thoughts." I mean these were mainstream Evangelical Christians and anyway, some of the critiques, and actually some of the praises from the Christians showed that they hadn't actually read the book either. A good response to this particular study is by Steven Novella at **Proximal Intercessory Prayer: Lets take the following hypothetical study: The study included 24 subjects who were all treated openly with the intervention in question. partnerships that have drawn national acclaim. The 1974 measurement is 20/100 compared to legally blind at 20/200 (uncorrected) which is still quite poor and far from being "restored", but still a large improvement from her measured 7/200 mentioned earlier. She's had no recurrence. Also, the theists show a profound lack of imagination in coming up with studies that can test the involvement of an agent, while ruling out other effects. Anyway, so it's the story of how we got together. I wear glasses. It got to the point where she was dying. Could you imagine a similar claim written about, say, a homeopathic remedy for cancer? Meanwhile, her muscles were atrophied. As an Atheist, of course it didn't. "And so that's kind of what prompted me to investigate this issue.". Plus these were not from people who burned child witches or anything like that. James rightly points out that the most these people ever seem to provide is: The timeline definitely matters, especially if you're claiming a causal relationship. It involves Barbara Snyder and took place nearly 30 years ago. Has it been confirmed? Barbara Rook "Babs" Snyder is an American academic and president of the Association of American Universities. Thinking about the Snyder "miracle", I do wonder why in these cases there isn't much more extensive medical documentation? Her blindness, too, had been instantaneously healed. That's biola.edu/thinkbiblically. ago So how much evidence really is enough? We use cookies to better understand website visitors, for advertising, and to offer you a better experience. How can I help? The point is to first establish that there is some interesting effect there, regardless of the cause, and only after passing that threshold do we get to consider a more in-depth investigation. It was a prospective, randomized, double-blinded, controlled study of four hundred subjects. View the profiles of people named Barbara Snyder. Adding to that, he had some skepticism about some of the charlatans who have been exposed for making false claims about healings and the like. 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