The God of Convenience

[Esquilax]

Here's a very short article about the catholic church's process for verifying miracles. As you will read, objective testing is done by scientists and medical experts.

http://sciencenordic.com/pope%E2%80%99s-...y-miracles

Did you read the article? If you did, I'm surprised you thought I wouldn't spot the obvious flaws with the methodology right away; despite the lip service being paid to science here, the church's methods go against the very basis of the scientific method. It's an argument from ignorance: they call in these scientists- whom the article also states could be influenced or pressured by the church to give the answers they want- and then if the scientists can't find a scientific explanation, they assume supernatural causation and hand the case over to theologians, who use more presupposed claims and lacks of evidence to decide whether the thing they've assumed based on a scarcity of evidence is satan based or god based.

That's not proof. "We don't know," does not mean "god did it." That's an argument from ignorance coupled with a god of the gaps fallacy. When I ask for scientific testing and verification, what that entails is positive evidence for godly intervention, not simply a lack of conclusive proof for natural means. This is exactly the problem I had earlier, when I said these miracle claims resist actual testing; here we have a smokescreen of scientific legitimacy good enough to fool guys like you who don't really understand how science works and want to believe in miracles, but which is transparently just another part of the con game when examined by anyone who can actually name logical fallacies. I wonder, how long are these scientists given to test these claims, before the catholic church just uses their lack of conclusive results to lift the case out of their hands.

"Oh, what's that, you have no answer yet? Oh, no need to keep looking, don't bother yourself with those other tests, it's clearly a miracle, just take your paycheck and go. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain..."

No objective testing of Jesus' miracles was accomplished at the time. Nor were Jesus or his followers concerned about that. There were so called miracle workers all over the place in the area at the time. Jesus was just a lower class wandering preacher as far as the Roman and Jewish officials were concerned. Just as the government today doesn't go out and investigate miracles, even though the Vatican does, I'm sure that the Roman and Jewish officials didn't either. I contend that most unbelievers would just dismiss them in their minds, the same as they do today.

There are more ways to test a claim than either the government or biased church officials. The James Randi foundation will do it for you, and even give you a million dollar prize if you can demonstrate supernatural causation for your supposed miracle. That's the James Randi foundation that's run by James Randi the atheist skeptic, by the way.

And you're talking to another atheist whose first question, when confronted with miracle claims, was to ask for more details. Your little accusation of dismissal is a common theistic defense mechanism when their claims aren't immediately accepted, but it's not going to work here; finding the evidence and methodology behind your claims to be insufficient is not the same thing as dismissing them, no matter how much better it makes you feel to just pretend that we're all close minded to the obvious truth of your proposition.