Of herrings and miracles

Never one to turn down an opportunity for learning, I took the opportunity to read VJ Torley’s analysis of a clip of Stephen Fry on the wonderful ‘miracle of the herrings.’

Since I already know that people (even game show researchers and VJ Torley) can get facts wrong, and I am confident that most at TSZ don’t give a flying fish about the infallibility of Stephen Fry or anyone else, I’ll stick to what Torley’s article reveals regarding miracles, canonization, the Catholic Church, life, and everything.

1. The miracles performed by a candidate for sainthood don’t have to be authentic miracles.
2. One “miracle” is not sufficient to be declared a saint. Two inauthentic “miracles” are the minimum.
3. The probabilty of an erroneous witness report isn’t too high.
4. If only Hume had realised that witnesses are generally reliable, he would never had made his argument against the authenticity of miracles.
5. From 3, the probability that the testimony of a reliable witness is in error is 0.001
6. It takes 8 independent witnesses to warrant belief in a miracle.

Allowing me to conclude:

Sensory illusions are rare.
The statue of Fortuna really did speak (Plutarch’s Life of Coriolanus 37-38)
Asclepius healed thousands.
Melinda Braithwate in the fourth year (eighth grade) really would have ‘done it’ for a pound.
Darren Clowes really was eaten by wolves (also eighth grade).
Belief in many manifestations of the divine is warranted.

…I am now a Hindu.

Thanks VJ Torley!

My only confusion is as to why saints have to be attributed miracles at all, if the miracles don’t have to be real ones.

11 thoughts on “Of herrings and miracles

  1. The miracles performed by a candidate for sainthood don’t have to be authentic miracles.

    Reminiscent of the most important premise of ID–you don’t have to show either designer or design (nothing like any design known) for design to be present.

    Glen Davidson

  2. I’ve just realised also that two inauthentic miracles are better than one authentic miracle.

  3. “Belief in many manifestations of the divine is warranted.” – Say christians, jews and muslims alike, right before they launch at each other’s throats for believing in the wrong god.

    *sigh*

  4. Actually, most violence is aimed at heretics and splitters rather than at other species.

  5. The many manifestations of the divine in which belief is warranted are all those witnessed by 8 or more people who don’t know each other. Neither Judaism nor Islam, nor most sects of Christianity, are that accommodating.

    Perhaps VJT will clarify, in the sense of adding a proviso.

  6. From vjtorley’s OP:

    As Father Edward McNamara, Professor of liturgy at Regina Apostolorum University, succinctly put it in an article titled, Canonizations and Infallibility, “the object of canonization is that the person declared as a saint is now in heaven and can be invoked as an intercessor by all the faithful.”

    I wonder why Vincent thinks that saintly intercessors are even necessary if God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

    As far as I can tell from my online research, Catholics are not bound to believe that the two miracles normally required for someone to be canonized as a saint were genuine miracles. What they are bound to believe – and I’m taking the common theological view that canonizations are infallible declarations, even though not all Catholic theologians agree on this point – is that even if it were to turn out that these “miracles” were not genuine, the person who was canonized is genuinely a saint, and is now in Heaven. (In other words, Catholics believe the Holy Spirit would somehow protect the Church from canonizing an individual who was not actually in Heaven.)

    If canonizations are infallible declarations, and if the Holy Spirit will intervene to prevent mistaken canonization, then there is no reason to bother with the miracles at all.

  7. Sorry, I meant that God, whose essence and energies are inseparable, is – in all His facets – ineffable, so His operations cannot ultimately be understood. We see through a glass darkly.

  8. I’ll never be able to look at a herring again without smiling fondly! Thanks davehooke for ‘ineffable’.

  9. I started to write a comment about one of the more absurd “evidences” they put out there but could not find the reference so I abandoned it. Luckily VJ provided it for me!

    But the most impressive case I have come across, in terms of eyewitness reports to a miracle, is that of the 17th century Italian saint, Joseph of Cupertino, who was seen levitating well above the ground and even flying for some distance through the air, on literally thousands of occasions, by believers and skeptics alike. The saint was the phenomenon of the 17th century. Those who are curious might like to have a look at his biography by D. Bernini (Vita Del Giuseppe da Copertino, 1752, Roma: Ludovico Tinassi and Girolamo Mainardi). The philosopher David Hume, who was notoriously skeptical of miracle claims, never even mentions St. Joseph of Cupertino in his writings. Funny, that.

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/jerry-coyne-and-stephen-frys-fishy-tale-about-st-thomas-aquinas/#comment-467489

    No doubt in 300 or so years the mere existence of a copy of Harry Potter will prove Hogwarts really existed!

    If miracles happen all the time as they seem to be implying it’s odd how in this day and age of cameraphones we’re still waiting on some actual evidence that does not depend on “they said they saw it!”. Much like evidence for ghosts – you’d expect given the number of people who say they believe in them and have seem then that we’d have some indisputable footage by now. But no. No ghosts, no flying people, no limbs miraculously regrown. Nothing.

    And as a side note the ever-reliable Wiki has this to say:

    After this point, the occasions of ecstasy in Joseph’s life began to multiply. He begin to levitate while participating at the Mass or joining the community for the Liturgy of the Hours, thereby gaining a widespread reputation of holiness among the people of the region and beyond. He was deemed disruptive by his religious superiors and Church authorities, however, and eventually was confined to a small cell, forbidden from joining in any public gathering of the community. He passed the last 35 years of his life following this regimen.
    As the phenomenon of flying or levitation was widely believed to be connected with witchcraft, Joseph was denounced to the Inquisition. He was transferred from one Franciscan friary in the region to another for observation. He practiced a severe asceticism throughout his life, usually eating solid food only twice a week.

    Yes, seen to fly on literally thousands of occasions as he spend those years in a small cell forbidden to join public gatherings. More of a miracle worker then I’d even imagined!

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