Miracles & Other Supernatural Thingamabobs in a Naturalistic Cosmos (Part 3 of 3)

21 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. 22 Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23 and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” 24 So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. [Snipped inserted miracle story of the woman with the hemorrhage.]

35 While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” 36 But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” 37 He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38 When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39 When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” 40 And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” 42 And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43 He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Mark 5:21-24; 35-43 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

A Polish woman who spent 11 hours in cold storage in a mortuary after being declared dead has returned to her family, complaining of feeling cold.

Officials say Janina Kolkiewicz, 91, was declared dead after an examination by the family doctor.

However, mortuary staff were astonished to notice movement in her body bag while it was in storage. The police have launched an investigation.

Back home, Ms Kolkiewicz warmed up with a bowl of soup and two pancakes.
BBC News Europe 13 November 2014

Subjectivity, Objectivity and Incommensurability

In this section I’ve shown the concentric platforms in reverse from 2 of 3.

This doesn’t really change my argument a great deal but it does serve to illuminate something: by visually moving from the subjective at the core to the objective at the periphery it shows that different people may have different understandings of core reality versus peripheral reality.

As I contended in 2 of 3, one can move from subjectivity to objectivity or vice versa, but one cannot completely cut the cord between the two without becoming either a corpse or a madman.

I suppose you can consider the diagram in 2 of 3 as the objectivist bias and the diagram in this post as showing the subjectivist bias. As a self-diagnosed INFP , who considers objective reality inconvenient at best and downright aggravating at worst, I retain my God-endowed “right” to putting my thumb on the scale of subjectivism (or, as it used to be known, idealism, just a bit. ☺

And to insist that anything of any significance can be boiled down to either divine revelation or a complex group of physics equations that can established beyond reasonable doubt - in principle if not in the current state of the art - by reason and experimental evidence is to engage in similar thumb-putting on the subjective / objective scale.

On the one hand, it commits to (what I believe to be though others may disagree) an untenable reductionism or - to put it another way - violates Einstein’s quote that things should be made as simple as possible… and no simpler.

But, whichever way one comes down on that, the problem of incommensurability remains, particularly with entities such as gods, miracles, etc. or assertions like “knowledge is justified, true, belief,” or causal explanations of events involving determinacy, indeterminacy or intentionality - or meaning and value.

When a jury determines that someone is guilty of a crime they are, in the context of the law, a criminal.

A chemist cannot speak as a chemist and say that the assertion that the person is a criminal is (or is not) a fact: those are not the facts of chemistry (though the facts of chemistry may lie within the context of law in the case of, say, forensic evidence).

As mentioned in 2 of 3, when someone says they “know” that E=MC2 and someone else says that they “know” that Jesus rose from the dead, can that possibly be that their respective  components of knowledge (belief, truth, justification) are the exact same?

Different circles all claim to explain events but they all have different definitions for the words they share in common and some circles lack the word in the first place.

This is why a physicist cannot say that there is no God or that all explanations from other arts, sciences and the humanities are just inaccurate and sloppy abstractions from the pure truth of physics and say so in their capacity as scientists. (Like the rest of us, they are entitled to their lay and hopefully more or less educated opinion - which is why colleges have us suffer through distribution courses in fields in which we have no interest. :-) )

By the same token, a theologian cannot make a scientific claim that the world - geological, biological, and human - came into being in six days, as that is actually a Trojan horse: a theological claim masquerading as a scientific theory.

Miracles & Other Supernatural Thingamabobs in a Naturalistic Cosmos (And a Discourse on Sponges)

This is what I believe… at least as of today. ☺

Simplified, a visual I find helpful in relating the natural to the supernatural is a soaked sponge floating in water.

The hardcore naturalist is primarily, if not exclusively, focused on the sponge.

The hardcore supernaturalist is primarily, if not exclusively, focused on the water.

The sponge is completely soaked in the water yet the sponge remains sponge and the water remains water.

But the sponge is a vessel or vector for the water just as the natural world is a vessel or vector for the supernatural.

And, as people - whether Jesus of Nazareth or other people - we share this sponge / water interaction.

(I’ll get into the distinction between Jesus Christ and other people in another post. And the sponge / water simile isn’t perfect - “water” and “sponge” sounds more dualistic than I intend whereas what I intend to emphasize is the supernatural being expressed via the natural rather than the water and the sponge being two completely separate things. The theological word closest to what I’m trying to express is incarnation. The philosophical word closest to what I’m trying to express is panentheism. But, for now, let’s stick to water and sponges. :-)

So, using specifically Christian rather than generic language, creation is the “sponge” immersed in the Holy Spirit of God in Christ. And it remains creation, created by yet distinguishable from God, porous to God’s revelation of transcendent meaning, value and purpose yet having its own cohesion and integrity. It is a worthy object of study in its own right by the arts, the sciences (both hard and soft), the mathematicians, and the humanities.

Returning to our watery sponge, a miracle is an extraordinary event in the water occurring in the midst of the sponge and bringing attention to itself. It says, in effect, “Hey, wake up and look over here!” It reminds us that there is water in the entire sponge all the time by drawing our attention to itself in one particular spot an extraordinary way.

Speaking of extraordinary events occurring, for me, with an uncanny sense of timing, as I was preparing this I read the BBC article cited above immediately below the biblical citation of Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead: Polish woman declared dead wakes up in mortuary .

This is an excellent opportunity for another look at incommensurability.

An avowed supernaturalist would maintain that both stories “prove” that miracles occurred in biblical times and occur to this day.

An avowed naturalist would maintain that neither story supports miracles as the “chain of custody” of the alleged eyewitness testimony is tenuous at the very best and the modern story no doubt admits of a naturalistic explanation at least in principle, whether or not sufficient theories and facts are available to fully provide such an explanation. (He or she wouldn’t, presumably, attack the credibility of the source. Hey, this is the BBC we’re talking about here, the gold standard of credibility. :-))

[For the record, contrarian that I am, I would maintain that the biblical story is true whether or not it stands up to historical criticism as factual whereas the BBC story tells the story in a “just the facts, ma’am” sort of way that certainly would classify the event as “extraordinary” but says nothing about any possible divine revelation in the event. What would make it a candidate for the Miracle Hall of Fame would be some interpretation on the part of the staff or the family that God communicated something to them about life in this world via the event. (Nowhere in the story do either the staff, the police or the family describe the event as “miraculous.”)]

The fact is that both the avowed supernaturalist and the avowed naturalist are engaging in a sort of positivism or reductionism or some other “faith” stance that both precedes and prejudices their reading of the story - a stance that cannot be derived from anything other than an appeal to revelation of some sort. Drawing outside of the lines of naturalism, the naturalist makes a claim that presumes naturalism rather than demonstrating it. And the supernaturalist, more obviously, also makes a claim that presumes supernaturalism rather than demonstrating it. It’s thoroughgoing theology and, in my opinion, bad theology at that.

So I believe that miracles occur, they are real, and that God acts in real ways in this real world but claims I make whose “home base,” as it were, is biology, geology, physics, chemistry or, for that matter, the historical-critical study of the Bible must be open to, engage and ultimately accept criticism from those sources so long as they are speaking from within the confines of their disciplines and not cloaking a philosophy or theology as scientific knowledge.

Let both supernaturalists and naturalists share what they know (that is, justified, true, belief) but be clear on the context  of what they know, and aware of what they don’t know in other contexts - and admit that reality is a very big elephant to attempt to eat with a bite from a single scientific discipline or faith stance.

[Continued in 4 of 3 - sorry, I have a bit more to say on this - on the Pauline / Marcan criticism of the miracle tradition. :-) ]