This thread has its origins in some comments of in-the-gobi Kirk about the descendants of David, virgin births, and miracles

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Suppose the water-to-wine story is true. We would agree that it happened in the first century AD. May I ask, what would be proof to a skeptic of a miraculous historical event like this miracle purports to be? 

Last week Easter and this week, the first Sunday after Easter, had the story of Doubting Thomas John 20:19-31 in the cycle of Episcopal Sunday Bible readings.  [Wikipedia link for background of the story]. This Sunday is called “Low Sunday” by Anglicans since it immediately follows Easter.

If you Google on “doubting” “Thomas” “sermon” “science” you will find a lot of discussion, an example is this one from 2007, 2002, etc:
.[April 15, 2007]

In the story, Thomas wasn’t present when Jesus appeared to the other disciples, and when they told him about it, he didn’t believe it. He said he would have to put his hands on Jesus’ actual wounds to believe it was the same person. Then a week later Jesus reappeared to the disciples, with Thomas present, and invited Thomas to put his hands in the wounds. And Thomas believed.

The points that I heard raised in the sermon today, which had a little bit of fresh perspective and some answer to Kirk’s “what miracle would make you believe”, are these:
a. In the story, The other disciples accepted Thomas’ doubts. He was not cast out of the fellowship because he didn’t believe. He was with them the following weekend. Nowadays in America there is an increasing emphasis on orthoxdoxy of all kinds (religious orthodoxy, humanist orthodoxy, perhaps even atheist orthodoxy—but certainly religious orthodoxy) and this story teaches tolerance.
b. In the story, Jesus accomodated Thomas’ doubts.  This story reassures doubters.  It wasn’t mentioned in this sermon but it has been observed many times that it would have been inappropriate for the other disciples (who had in fact received a personal revelation) to criticize someone who did not believe based on their word - since they themselves were not believing based on faith alone.
c. The rector emphasized that there was a place in our parish for a full spectrum of belief. The Episcopal Church is striving to hold together with factions disagreeing on gay rights, the role of women in the clergy, and variety of other issues.  It was emphasized that all of us had at one time or another wished for a concrete revelation which would remove all our doubts. 

I think the point that the other disciples continued to accept Thomas is a nice perspective on the story.

I’m really new to these boards, in fact this is my first post ever.  I was just wondering about the topic of “miracles”, and other natural phenomena.  I’m an atheist, but I’ve had trouble explaining natural phenomena, or what some might call “miracles”.  For instance, situations where someone happens to lose their keys and can’t get to work on the day the crazy man comes in and shoots the place up.  Or when you’re visiting a foreign country on the other side of the world and run into a childhood friend whom you haven’t seen since you were 10.  The kind of things that just seem to defy all odds.  I admit I’m tempted to want to believe in some unknown, supernatural, or yet undiscovered reason for this.  I was just wondering if anyone had any insight.

There’s lots of good discussion of this problem. Basically, we by the nature of how our brains work underestimate the liklihood of rare events and attach far more significance to coincidence than it warrants. We slectively pay attention to and remember the wierd coincidences that happen and forget all the times we lost our keys and nobody shot up our workplace. I like to tell people that if the odds each day of something happening to 1 person in California are 10 million to 1, well with 16 million people it’s going to happen 6 times a day to somebody!

For more reading, try Thomas Kida’s Dont’ Believe Evrything You Think or check out some of the articles on Skeptick’s Dictionary (Like THIS One).  Or look at THIS post on a similar topic.

mckenzievmd - 13 April 2008 05:44 PM

There’s lots of good discussion of this problem. Basically, we by the nature of how our brains work underestimate the liklihood of rare events and attach far more significance to coincidence than it warrants. We slectively pay attention to and remember the wierd coincidences that happen and forget all the times we lost our keys and nobody shot up our workplace. I like to tell people that if the odds each day of something happening to 1 person in California are 10 million to 1, well with 16 million people it’s going to happen 6 times a day to somebody!

For more reading, try Thomas Kida’s Dont’ Believe Evrything You Think or check out some of the articles on Skeptick’s Dictionary (Like THIS One).  Or look at THIS post on a similar topic.

Brennen is spot on here. I suggest Googling “innumeracy” and “miracle” to track down other examples.
Here is a with a link to his first site:
http://www.innumeracy.com/coincidence.htm
As a side note—the WWW page is explaining why many “miracles” are only “coincidences”, but Google is placing ads for “miracle testimonies” on the same page…

In general the probability of something happenining is about 50%—that is, it tends to happen about as often as you’d ‘expect’, if you do the numbers right. The page Brennen highlights used that example of the first person to win a lottery twice—it seems like you should take the probability of winning and square it—but that is the probability of YOU winning two weeks in a row. Once we take all the tickets purchased over the number of years public lotteries have been going on, the 2nd winner shows up ‘about’ when they should.

However I also agree with your initial post—there are all of these amazing coincidences.

Wow, thank you all very much....

It’s improbable that a planet formed that could sustain life but here we are.  Improbable but not impossible.

Maybe it was all cooked up by the Improbability Drive.

I think I’m going to like this website.....

MountainHumanist - 14 April 2008 01:34 PM

It’s improbable that a planet formed that could sustain life but here we are.  Improbable but not impossible.

Maybe it was all cooked up by the Improbability Drive.

Ahem. That’s the Infinite Improbability Drive.

Don’t Panic!

To those of us who actually WORKED on its design and assembly, it’s just Improbability Design....yeah, that’s it.