I look forward to the day when articles like this are only accepted by specialist publications.

Here is "Spheres", which advertises itself as "Australia's Favourite Spiritual Magazine", and is enjoyed by people who believe in the "spirit realm".

http://www.spiritguide.com.au/

Discussions that flow within the highly self-identified readership of such magazines are conducted in a spirit (sorry!) of mutual understanding and common scholarship.

But venture into the mainstream, and put those views out in the open as it were, and it is almost impossible for an outsider not to mock the assumptions behind the words and thoughts that are expressed.

Which is terribly impolite.

We all look at the world in slightly different ways, and I completely understand and accept that some people feel the need to find "answers", rather than simply accept the idea that there are always going to be questions.

Articles in "Spheres" are very reminiscent of Andrew Hamilton's, who talks of "revolutionary miracles", and the way they "open a gap in the canopy that we build over our world".

Contributors to "Spheres" talk the same language. "[These] spirit children are still with me, they are my guides who... help me to link with the Spirit world."

I expect the same kind of other-worldly, open-mouthed wonder to also appear in the pages of periodicals dedicated to UFO sightings.

http://www.ufomag.com/

The symptoms are for all practical purposes identical.

It's just that for some reason, some quirk of history perhaps, the act of writing in hushed tones about Christian martyrs, and Christian miracles that are virtually indistinguishable from UFO sightings or spirit guides, has more "cred" with publishers.

For the moment, at least.

But I still can't take these "miracles" seriously, even though I know that many do.

In exactly the same way as spiritualists believe in talking to ghosts, and ufologists believe in alien abductions.

Bless.

Different faiths and beliefs for all of us; that is why I respect every person's faith and/or religion; unless it hurts or kills another.

My viewpoint from personal experiences...St.Anthony assists me and others to find every item temporarily misplaced stolen or lost [including my son's stolen wallet from his school].I prayed to St Anthony and Mary Mackillop as he was distraught and sentimental over the wallet given to him by a revered person he loves].

32 boys had their lockers and P.E. Change Rooms robbed across an oval last winter. Most of the boys had money, wallets, items of value in some of their bags taken by 17yr olds not attending the school. After they were spotted by my son and his friends on the oval. The police were called. Usual comment "there is no way your students' belongings will be recovered. Do not hold high hopes".

I informed my son that his wallet would be returned. His expression was that of sarcasm and cynicism [initially]. I also mentioned to my son that he would be required to carry out some more kind deeds as soon as the wallet was returned via St Anthony and Mary Mackillop's assistance. He nodded, grinned and agreed.

The next day a lady from a nearby shopping centre turned up at the school to return my son's wallet to the front office. Son arrived home shouting "guess what? You'll never believe what happened?". :Yes? Tell me" I asked, already knowing.

Q: why were the other 2-32 other classmates wallets not returned or found over the past 10 months?

Or perhaps the cynics could say "There was perhaps only one honest and kindhearted person in the shopping centre that week who returned a 15yr old's wallet". My response is that it is far too co-incidental.

My faith and experience for myself is the power of prayer.

pelican,
I agree with most of what you wrote: Faith is first of all a state of mind, in distinction to its underlying belief system, which has, or ought to have, a rational structure. There is no “evidence” for faith (only psychological explanation, if you disregard what one usually calls the spiritual, other-worldly, dimension of human experience, and what obviously does not make sense to an atheist). And there is also no “evidence” for the basic tenets (axioms) of a belief system: you accept them as formal axioms (as we now understand e.g. the axioms of geometry - including Euclidean - and as presumably an honest atheist would understand the basic tenets of a religious belief system) or as “necessary truths” (as Euclidean axioms were understood before the arrival of non-Euclidean geometry, and as most believers would understand the basic tenets of their religious system). In my opinion, it is the failure to make this distinction that calls for reactions like those of runner and Pericles.

>>a believer might perceive that God has deserted them<<
The emphasis here must be on “might”: My wife died of cancer some 40 years ago and I could witness how her faith helped her accept her fate (God’s will). Certainly no feelings of being deserted, but preparation for “the other life”. And today in Haiti they claim that the churches - or what is left of them - are even more attended than before the earthquake: people thanking God for having saved their lives and at the same time seeking “fortitude to bear the loss of their beloved ones”. You might claim that these are rather simple, people, but as far as the psychological level is concerned, this is irrelevant and only indicates that for a believer his/her faith puts him/her in a win-win situation even during such personal tragedies. Admittedly, not for everybody, there are those who react as you put it. (ctd.)

(ctd.)
Canonization means that the Church officially proclaims somebody “saved, redeemed” or “in heaven”; Catholics believe that many people have been saved and also that there are those who have been condemned (“in hell” i.e. deprived of “eternal life”). However, there is nobody - not even Judas or Hitler - whom the Church would have “officially proclaimed” as being “in hell” i.e. deprived of “eternal life”. This has something to do with a belief in God being more of a loving, forgiving, father than a strict, punishing judge, albeit a belief that the Church too often acted against.

The need for a “miracle” - i.e. a personal healing that the medical profession cannot (yet) explain, and that the healed associates with the candidate for sainthood - is only one necessary, certainly not sufficient or even most important prerequisite for canonization. In my opinion it is there mainly for reasons of tradition (remember, this is a two millennia old institution that is proud of its age) dating back to times when nobody could have had a clear distinction between science and religion, psychological and spiritual. The candidate for canonization must be seen as a priori worthy, before considering any “miracles”: nobody would investigate a healing claim at the intercession of the late Hitler. Also, as far as I know, nobody has yet offered a, say, laboratory discovery that science cannot explain in support of a canonization: the human, psychological (thus subjective), factor seems to be always there.

George wrote:

"In my opinion it is there mainly for reasons of tradition (remember, this is a two millennia old institution that is proud of its age) dating back to times when nobody could have had a clear distinction between science and religion, psychological and spiritual."

Dear George,

Possibly the words, "science and religion, psychological and spiritual" or their equivalents had not been invented, but I'm sure the different attitudes existed.

I think some human started to wonder as his or her fellows cowered at fear from the vengeance of the lightning of the gods. This human could have wondered why the sight of the lightning was followed some time later by thunder. Could it be that the light traveled faster than sound?"

The wondering human could have existed millennia ago, and later humans could have invented the tools to put numbers on the speeds.

Dear David f,

I am not sure what you mean by “different attitudes”: Surely we can differentiate now what in medieval thinking could count as some precursor of scientific thinking, and what was and remains just theology or even superstition. Today one of the criterions of what is science and what theology/religion is to ask whether an atheist considers the question as principally meaningful, worth of investigation or speculation (e.g. speculations about a multiverse belong to science, those about the Trinity do not, also for these reasons). The exception would be metaphysical speculations that might be meaningful also to some atheist philosophers.

During the Middle Ages there were no atheists to ask, everybody believed in the Christian, or at least Abrahamic, God who was indeed also the “God of gaps”: after all their knowledge of what we now call science was almost nothing but a huge gap. So everything that could not be explained by their very limited perception of what was natural, in agreement with everyday experience, was seen as a miracle, a supernatural intervention in the running of the world. Since there were so many “miracles”, so a special miracle was also needed as “evidence” of somebody’s sainthood.

Laplace’s reply “je n'ai pas eu besoin de cette hypotheses” to Napoleon became famous exactly because Napoleon (and those who thought this was a valid argument for atheism) did not have a clear distinction between what was science and what theology. As you know, today it would not occur to even the most pious student of Analytical Mechanics to ask for such a hypothesis.

I am not a historian of science but I am not sure whether the medieval man associated a concept like speed (of propagation) with light or sound.