AMAZING RECOVERY: A MIRACLE?

We live in such a modern age--computers and movies and iPhones, etc.--and yet many superstitions persist, apparently held over from Medieval times, before the rigorous logic and methods of science were widely known.

At times, we are not very different from primitive people.

One tribe in Africa, as I recall, believed that if a woman walked by a certain river on the night of the full moon, she would get pregnant. Those primitive tribesmen figured out the reason: The moon did it.

Now, of course, we modern people know better. We know she must have had a lover there, a vigorous young man who supplied the necessary ingredients.

But we don't always know better.

Today, I heard a story on NPR (my favorite news source) about a boy in Ferndale, Washington, who got a flesh-eating bacteria that seemed to be killing him.  

The boy underwent a dozen surgeries, and the doctors thought he was going to die.

Thousands of people around the world prayed for him, his mother prayed to the Pope, and the bacteria stopped. He didn't die and is alive today. A lot of people thought this was a miracle, that God intervened to save the boy.

Was it a miracle? Did God intervene? Is there anyway to know for sure? I don't understand why people jump to that conclusion. They don't understand it, therefore it has be God.

I think this is a good example of the post hoc fallacy, the idea that because one event follows another in time, the first one caused the second one.I forget to shave, then I stub my toe and fall. Did one thing cause the other? I walk outside and scratch myself, then a plane crashes in Nigeria. What power I must have.

Let's talk about causation. I forget to eat breakfast, then I get hungry. Did one thing cause the other? Yes. That is causation.

Why can't people tell the difference?

Here is a Wikipedia explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

Why do people believe in miracles? Are people that uncomfortable with not knowing? Are they unwilling or unable to live with an unsolved mystery?

Is everything we don't understand a miracle?

I was at a dinner party in Orange County some years ago, where a student in physics held up a candle and said of the flame, "This is not well understood."

Is the flame a miracle?

I don't understand why certain women I have known have fallen in love with me, or I with them. Is that a miracle? Sometimes it seems like it.

Once in a while, I have wonderful dreams and awake feeling inexplicably happy. Is that a miracle?

Sometimes, my car develops odd little problems, and those problems seem to fix themselves. Are those miracles?

I am so glad this boy survived. I think that is wonderful. Doctors don't understand the biological mechanism that saved him. They don't always understand everything that goes on in the human body.

But was it a miracle? Sweet Jesus. Why does anyone think that?

Maybe the moon did it.
  

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle