Miracles: Is There a Christian Double Standard?
Miracles: Is There a Christian Double Standard?
Life is short, and there are crazy miracle stories popping up everywhere, in every nearly religion. Who has the time (or frankly, the energy) to chase down every single one? Even super-faithful Christians usually stick to investigating miracles within their own tradition. So why should non-believers be expected to dive headfirst into every single claim, and why start with one religion over another?
It’s a fair question. Let’s talk about it.
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These are excellent videos. I saw the thumbnail and I went
“You know this guy has some good other videos I wonder how he answers this one” and it was very satisfying
Since the Jesus resurrection story is based on the Romulus one. If Jesus really rose from the dead, then so did Romulus. lol
As a Christian, who believes in a God who is the God of all, "non Christian " miracles are absolutely possible.
Not to mention super natural phenomenon from the other side
This video did not address any actual other religions miracles. It talked about the DOUBTS, and that’s fine, i think that it’s a perfectly fine filter, but it didn’t address any of the miracles
The Resurrection is an obvious example of meeting this DOUBTS framework, but I recommend anyone interested in well-documented miracles to check out the miracle of Calanda. "A sign for Non-Believers" by Vittorio Messori is a great book on it, but if you can’t grab hold of it even Wikipedia does a fair job of summarizing it (and even as an "objective" source it can’t help but conclude that key objections raised by skeptics fall flat).
Two quick things.
(1) How many of the miracles in the Jewish Scriptures (Genesis through Chronicles) would pass through your filter? For example, the Creation—by far the most important of all biblical miracles—is incalculably distant in time from its recording. And for academic non-believers (which I am not) there is no hard proof that the primary biblical miracles of the Exodus or Mount Sinai were written less than 700 years after the supposed events.
(2) The criterion of "self-serving" would tend to disqualify all reported miracles occurring in documents of faith, such as the JS and NT. From an outside perspective, they all serve to bolster or validate the religious claims and authority of the texts themselves. There is no neutral testimony concerning things like God speaking to Israel at Sinai or Jesus’ empty tomb. "Self-serving" accounts do not have to be for very crude or materialistic reasons.
Why a trivial miraculous event should be ruled out. That criteria seems to be arbitrary to me. How can we say what is trivial or not trivial? Let’s grant that there are supernatural beings, but why assume that one category of miracles is trivial and the other is not? Who are we to say that a supernatural being should perform this specific category of miracle to be believable?
John 3:16-21; John 14:6-7; Ephesians 2:8-9
When you hear an atheist say, "That’s impossible." Completely disregarding what all powerful means.
How can God heal some random believer but not heal children with cancer?
Love how you bunched Catholics, with their own Mary symbol, with the other religions.
No-one wanta to talk about Balaam’s talking donkey. Kind of a big deal if you ask me, and we all glaze over it, I am as guilty as everyone else.
Distance: good
Opinions: bad (what if faith contributes to miracles)
Undetailed: has some potential as a back up
Belated: good
Trivial: bad (it would still be a miracle)
Self-serving: bad (same issue as opinions)
Good video. It’s cool you’re up front about the arguments and address them in logical way
mega junge!
unterstütze das total, der marsch war etwas übertrieben aber sonnst ist auch bis zu winzigen details alles wirklich verdammt gut gewesen, dieses stampfen ist etwas in der neuzeit dazugekommene, preußen oder allgemein deutsche haben ihre waffen auch nicht auf den boden knallen lassen genausowenig wie unnötig laut die füße ufkommen lassen, hat was damit zutun das man lieber die haltbarkeit erhöhen wollte anstatt etwas nur für das vergnügen zu machen und danndie waffe neu kalibrieren zu müssen
Catholic Chruch spends so much time in order to check the miracles, coz in their own world it would be scandalus to lie about miracles. Ppl belive every1 this is a miracle, but Catholics check them with doctors, scientins etc. And as everything in modern times, if itis christian it is evil or bias xd
Doesn’t the resurrection fail because there is basically no testimony of contemporary Jews who should have been very aware of Jesus’s existence and miracles, and the first testimony of Jesus’s resurrection wasn’t until hundreds of years after the event?
The thing about your "doubts" framework is that the person using the framework can be biased in applying it.
Great stuff!
yes of course nearly everything is biased towards Christianity in the west, especially in America. You’d be hard pressed to divorce yourself from it entirely, it’s very anger inducing but they’re starting to fall out of fashion.
I disagree with the T in DOUBTS. While I can see why you would not want to look into a trivial miracle, I find it unreasonable to use this as a metric to discredit one.
Thanks for being reasonably accurate about the arguments. Too often I see them butchered and used as a way to assume things and attack atheists.
But I still don’t think that witnesses alone can overcome being lying or mistaken as being less probable than an actual miracle.
For example, suppose a report of a miracle with 1,000 eyewitnesses – specifics of the miracle not really important here. All it would take to have "mistaken" perfectly explain the event is just a lack of understanding of what actually happened. It’s pretty mundane for a large group of people to not have a more accurate understanding of what actually happened, but to attribute it to the supernatural.
As a concrete example, I forget the details, but there’s a story of an eclipse during a war. It was taken as a supernatural sign by both armies (I think). But today, since we know how orbits work, we can predict when and where they’ll occur and we mostly don’t think there’s anything supernatural about them (though there’s still the occasional person ranting about the world ending, unfortunately).
Point being, it’s usually not the mere happening of an event claimed to be a miracle that’s not accepted, but rather the specifics and the thing(s) attributed to causing them. Humans are fallible and prone to errors, misunderstanding, misremembering, finding patterns that don’t exist, priming, etc.
Eyewitness testimony is actually a rather weak form of evidence.
To put the acronym in points:
D. O. U. B. T. S.
Distance: The miracle happens far from the first to tell it.
Opinions: Basically confirmation bias.
Undetailed Events: Basically one sentence description of what happened.
Belated Reports: The first story happens centuries after the initial event.
Trivial Miracles: It doesn’t change life too much.
Self Serving: It directly benefits the one telling it.
(I feel like T is a weird standard because penicillin affects many lives but we had to discover fungi as a species first and I’m certain no one was deeply affected by fungi upon its initial discovery. We never know what information will be useful or when it will be useful.)
Miracles are ridiculous but other religion’s miracles are more ridiculous than christian ones therefore christian miracles are real
Two quick points to avoid confusion:
1. I believe Balaam’s donkey talked because I think Jesus is God, rose from the dead, and he believed the Old Testament was inspired by God. The point is I would not ask a skeptic to begin their inquiry into miracles by starting with this particular miracle.
2. Here’s how the resurrection passes the filter, and so is worthy of investigation: The original claim was reportedly made in Jerusalem just weeks after the crucifixion. It was preached to a hostile audience that would have been eager to disprove it. This is a significant claim since Jesus was a prophet who came to fulfill the law and bring in the new covenant, which shows us how our sins can be forgiven, how God no longer lives in temples but human hearts, and how we can have eternal life. He also was the Messiah and claimed to be God. Jesus and his disciples did not live for self-gain; they were willing to endure suffering, hard work, dangers, and even death. They weren’t seeking power, fame, personal glory, or any other worldly rewards.
Hi, former Christian here. I started having doubts around the age of 17. Then I discovered people like J. Warner Wallace and William Lane Craig. They laid my doubts to rest for a couple years. I claimed I believed in the resurrection because of the evidence. I remember my brother asking me something I’ll never forget (he had left the church by that time). He asked me "what do you want more, to be right, or to know the truth?" As I started learning more and more about what evidence we actually have, I realized there’s a lot less to stand on than what William Lane Craig or J. Warner Wallace would have you believe. I realized that almost every reason I used to reject other religions, I could also use to reject mine. It was the hardest thing I had done in my life up to that point. But I left the church. And boy am I glad I did! Now having been out of it for around 5 Years, my perspective had shifted drastically. I no longer deny science, and am a lot nicer to gay people to name a few.
I like how each letter has an example.
First Corinthians – Inspired Version 13:2 "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing."
This is the difference between miracles.
Hi, man interesting video. Thank you for the points that you have made.
I want to ask you two questions.
1. Have you ever heard of the testimony by Charles Colson ( Who was a member of Richard Nixon’s cabinet and was questioned during Watergate) . He made a very good argument that you can see here on a YouTube short for Christianity.
2. As I was watching your video, It reminded me of the factors surrounding the miracle of Fatima during the year 1917.
I highly recommend you research that because there are just so many elements supporting it according to your logic here. Including how the mayor was a Freemason who had every reason to deny everything. And how it set the stage , or at least hinted at, World War 2.
We acknowledge that signs and wonders can be performed by spirits that are not aligned with God in order to deceive men.
the resurrection fails on the S in DOUBTS. You claim "Jesus and his disciples did not live for self-gain; they were willing to endure suffering, hard work, dangers, and even death. They weren’t seeking power, fame, personal glory, or any other worldly rewards" and sure, it isn’t self serving in the obvious way the Mormon Joseph Smith miracle is self serving, but it is self serving in the fact that it advances the religion that they believe in to spread the miracle. Maybe they really did see someone and thought it was Jesus that was resurrected.
Joseph Smith was not self-serving. He had to endure a lot of persecution for sticking by his claims. Also, he ran for president in an attempt to preserve religious freedom, because the Latter-day Saints kept getting attacked by mobs.
If it happened in a cave after questionable herb use I’d call it questionable.
I enjoy it when apologists make videos about comparative religion, and I learned some new things! But respectfully, I don’t see how you can even call DOUBTS a filter. A filter would imply there is some cutoff. DOUBTS is just a list of axioms about what makes things more or less probable. I know it was a short video just explaining an idea but I still would have liked to see more discussion around what the cutoffs are. It seems to me like you simply selected miracles that were less probable than certain core Christian miracles for each filter and simply stated that they didn’t meet the cutoff, but that the Christians ones do.
For example the time between event and first report looks good for the resurrection when compared to the story of Romulus. But I could just as easily find some miracle where the reports started a week after the supposed event, and say that by comparison, the decades in between the resurrection and its first reports means we should throw it out.
The axioms themselves may not be biased, but the way you are selecting the cutoffs is.
Can you explain how the Book of Mormon and other revelations Joseph Smith claims to have received are self-serving? From the history, it seemed more like those things hurt him, his family, and his followers more than anything
Why is it an assumption that the miracles don’t follow the laws of nature? Why can’t an event happen exactly as it was recorded and also be within the laws of nature?
prophet Mohammad and Joseph smith have far too much in common
Search for the Eucaristic Miracles, and other Catholic Miracles.
I know a Hindu guru who has caused miracles. They are written about in his official biographies. According to former members, at the time the events occurred nobody talked about them being a miracle caused by him. The first time they were touted as miracles was in the book. ………….. And, thus you are to believe he is legit and the miracles are 100% true cause they’re in a book! That last sentence is the mantra now.
A very interesting opinion orthodox church has on holy fire. While Russian Orthodox Church says that holy fire igniting every year in the same place is a real miracle, divine intervention and so on, other orthodox churches say that this is just a symbol of faith, and priests ignite holy fire LOL. So be careful while believing all miracles. (Also this miracle is kinda pointless, it just shows people who already believe things they already know. It really changes nothing, looks like God simply displays his might)
As a fact. The Church dose not deny the reality of other paranormal activities at all. It just states that all are in work with devils.
of course there’s a Christian double standard, to be religious is to have double standards.
"My book of extraordinary claims is real because it says so and anyone who says the same about their book is wrong, because my book says only it can be true"
literally every religion
Now I’m curious where/who fabricated other religions. Ex: greek gods, Indian gods, etc
3:23 Ok I don’t want to claim that Romulus really ascended, but you should keep in mind that because of the Sack of Rome in 390 BC the majority of written texts was destroyed, and someone could have written about it not too long after it’s supposedly happened, but we have no way of knowing.
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Jesus warns of signs and wonders. “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
I think miracles can only really make sense if you already believe in God. Not a particular God of a particular religion necessarily, but just some sort of omnipotent being who’s running all of existence. So you lay down the arguments for the existence of God first, and then you use your miracles to prove that a particular religion is true.
Anyone who doubts miracles can visit a weeping icon at any time.