Consciencebound

I have been going through old archives of one of my favorite podcasts, Reasonable Doubts and came aross Episode 21, Miracles with Guest Joe Nickell. The guest Joe Nickell is a paranormal investigator and the hosts discuss with Joe his approach to dealing with claims of the miraculous. They talk about visions, weeking statues, Speaking in tongues and other phenomenon which are said to be the miraculous work of the supernatural.

Miraculous claims abound today just like they did in the ancient world. We want to believe in the supernatural and in miraculous claims. It’s mysterious and exciting and it gives us hope that this natural world is not all that there is. For many, miracles are a proof for their faith, be it in God, Jesus, Astrology, UFO’s, Ghosts or whatever else. The interesting thing is that each group who believes that a miracle is a testament to the truth of their faith or beliefs looks with skepticism on other groups claims of the same thing. And if miracles are to be a proof of anything, it would seem that they are a proof of nothing since so many conflicting belief systems seem to be derived from them.

So how do we approach miraculous claims? Should we believe them at face value? It seems that as much as we would like to accept miracle claims, especially ones that seem to validate our current view of the world, we have to take them cautiously and skeptically since there are so many such claims that are made. And many (most?) of those claims contradict what our view or the world may be, whatever that may be. If you are a Christian, for example, there are many Muslim miracle claims which would suggest that Islam is true and vice versa.

The more that we learn about the amazing complexity of the human brain, the more, it seems, we are able to understand how and why these many miraculous claims exist. And there is an amazing amount of evidence today in human psychology that suggests that the most likely explanation for many of these claims lies in the nature of the human brain itself.

I found this episode to be fascinating and would welcome any comments about it.

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