Craig Keener: failing again to take the resurrection challenge

This is my reply to an article by Craig Keener entitled:

Real Raisings from the Dead or Fake News?

Falsified resurrection stories should not cause us to discount credible miracle accounts.

CRAIG KEENER| MAY 17, 2019

I offer here a challenge to Dr. Keener:  please quit playing in the little leagues with your numerous anecdotal stories of miracles, pick the ONE modern-day miracle claim you believe to be the most impervious to refutation or falsification, and explain why you think the only reasonable interpretation of it is to say it was a genuine miracle..and let's get started.

This is just an echo of a challenge I both posted here and emailed directly to Dr. Keener nearly two years ago, see here.  A challenge he still hasn't offered any reply to.

Around 1960, in the Republic of Congo, a two-year-old girl named Thérèse was bitten by a snake. She cried out for help, but by the time her mother, Antoinette, reached her, Thérèse was unresponsive and seemed to have stopped breathing. No medical help was available to them in their village, so Antoinette strapped little Thérèse to her back and ran to a neighboring village.
 According to the US National Library of Medicine, brain cells start dying less than five minutes after their oxygen supply is removed, an event called hypoxia. After six minutes, lack of oxygen can cause severe brain damage or death. Antoinette estimates that, given the distance and the terrain, it probably took about three hours to reach the next village. By the time they arrived, her daughter was likely either dead or had sustained significant brain damage.
 Antoinette immediately sought out a family friend, Coco Ngoma Moyise, who was an evangelist in the neighboring village. They prayed over the lifeless girl and immediately she started breathing again. By the next day, she was fine—no long-term harm and no brain damage. Today, Thérèse has a master’s degree and is a pastor in Congo.
 When I heard this story, as a Westerner I was naturally tempted toward skepticism, but it was hard to deny. Thérèse is my sister-in-law and Antoinette was my mother-in-law.
 Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and the author’s wife, Medine (left).
Image: Courtesy of Craig Keener
Thérèse (right), with her mother, Antoinette (middle), and the author’s wife, Medine (left).

I'm not seeing how you could possibly think this anecdotal evidence somehow renders miracle-skeptics unreasonable.  But I guess you were never writing this piece for skeptics anyway, correct?

And let's not forget that Christianity is full of "cessationists" (i.e., Christians who think the age of miracles ceased long ago...who therefore have their own biblical reasons to be suspicious of modern-day Christian miracle claims.  See Keener debating such a person here.

How much would a Christian cessationist push a skeptic to investigate modern-day miracles?

If even Christian scholars cannot agree whether the bible allows God to do miracles today, lets just say skeptics are more than reasonable if they choose to walk away from a confusing problem created and sustained by Christians.  We cannot be intellectually compelled to go investigating miracle claims until we first determine that the bible allows God to do miracles 2000 years after the 1st century.  Because if it doesn't allow it, then the modern-day miracle might actually be done by demon...and we wouldn't wanna play with fire or anything, would we?

And then there's the stupidity of thinking skeptics have an intellectual obligation to give two shits whether cessationism is biblical or not.  Yeah, maybe we are also unreasonable if we refuse to study the differences between Trinitarians, Unitarians and Oneness Pentecostals.  Yeah right.  Then maybe under Romans 1:20 we are required to care enough about bible inerrancy at least minimally enough to google Geisler and Licona for several weeks so we can figure out which of them has a more "biblical" position on inerrancy, and then for thoroughness, take the next two years to study all the loquacious input Lydia McGrew has to offer about that particular issue.   You are high crack.

By contrast, in February, a video of South African preacher Alph Lukau drew widespread attention for what appeared to be someone raised from the dead in his church. Lukau claims he simply prayed for the unconscious man in the coffin, but regardless of who is responsible, the situation was clearly designed to deceive. The coffin was purchased from one funeral parlor by customers allegedly posing as workers from another funeral parlor, and the hearse was borrowed from yet a third. Critically, none of the funeral parlors ever saw the body of the supposed deceased.
 The video of this apparent resurrection was quickly unmasked, and Lukau was condemned by numerous African church leaders. Nevertheless, questions and concerns remain.

Us skeptics have colleges to attend, jobs to work and kids to raise.  We are not unreasonable to say that because there are so many false miracle claims in the world, its better to toss the baby out with the bathwater, since the only alternative is to investigate (and thus fill up our lives with) a bunch of false bullshit.  Since we are limited, there MUST come a time when we decide for ourselves that we have done enough research to justify drawing conclusions about the ultimate issue, just like you don't know everything there is to know about pleasing a woman in bed, but you did some study and arbitrarily decided the point at which you thought you knew enough to justify ending your studies. 

I am no more open to miracle claims than I am open to archaeological claims asserting that artifacts unique to the Book of Mormon have been found.  So much fraud attends both investigations that I've decided other things in life are more important than pretending to be what I'm not...an objective robot eternally willing to change my mind about anything whenever anybody comes up with some new claim.  If you reached the firm conclusion that Mormonism is bullshit, at some point before knowing everything there is to know about the subject, you obviously agree with my closed-mindedness.

But my lack of openness doesn't mean I cannot be convinced otherwise.  how many Christians took a firm doctrinal stance and considered the matter closed, then changed their minds later anyway?  I won't be open to miracle claims until somebody comes up with something more convincing than unsubstantiated allegations about how doctors in third-world countries were baffled at some sort of healing.

And as I argued years ago, because Christians say the stakes are extremely high, we are thus perfectly reasonable to demand that their evidence meet the highest standards of authentication normally imposed on evidence by courts of law.  If God has no trouble parting the Red Sea, he should have no trouble producing evidence that would meet court-tests of authentication and admissibility.

I’m married to an African, have spent time teaching in Africa, and count many African Christians as relatives and friends. I’ve learned much from them and their approach to miracles challenges me in good ways. African Christianity has a tradition of prophetic leaders, and there is great respect among Africans across the continent for a “man of God.”

And if they aren't specifically 'Christian' in outlook, your bible would require you view such prophets as false.

But because miracles draw crowds, many leaders compete in miracle narratives.

So if my salvation is such a huge pressing issue, what should I prioritize?  Picking up the kids from school?  Or phone the school telling them to let the kids walk home so I can google Christian miracle claims originating in Africa?  According to your Christian logic, my eternal destiny is more important than temporal earthly desires, correct?  And didn't Jesus use promises of great material and spiritual riches to entice his followers to give up custody of their kids (Matthew 19:29)? 

Do you recommend that I follow Jesus' advice in Matthew 19:29, yes or no?

Or do you recommend that I pick up my kids from school, and only google African miracle claims whenever I decide I don't have anything better to do?  If that's the case, then apparently, you don't think my salvation is that important.

The internet democratizes access, so leaders who publicly demonstrate their miracle prowess can become wildly successful. Churches can control the setting and potentially any staging. The opportunity for fakery abounds and my miracle-believing, African Pentecostal friends lament the spread of fraudulent miracle-workers.

 I wonder how far a skeptic could milk the following excuse:  "Given your admission to many false miracle claims among Christians, I wouldn't wanna be misled by a demon-inspired miracle, so playing it safe would counsel that I just avoid looking at miracle-claims entirely...especially given that as an unbeliever, I'm even more prone to being deceived by demonic miracles, than Christians are."

NOW what are you gonna do? Quote that part of the bible where God promises atheists protection from demons as long as they are sincerely researching miracle-claims?

Is there a way we can distinguish between fabricated miracle reports and the genuine article?

Maybe.  But that means you'll have to devote your attention to a subject rife with falsehoods and demonic deceptions, and if you are an atheist, the apologist has to admit you run a greater risk of being deceived by demonic miracle reports, than any Christian would be. 

Misplaced cynicism
Christians use the word miracle in different ways. Because we believe that God works through his creation, we are right to thank God for recoveries from sickness or injury, dramatic or not.

Do you thank god for farts, burps, predatory birds who sadistically torture their prey, and other things because they too, ultimately originate with the miracle of god's creation?

When we offer thanksgiving for a successful surgery or an effective immune system, we don’t need to claim it happened only by miraculous means.
 Neither should we limit the term exclusively to what lacks possible natural causes. The Bible says that God parted the Red Sea using a strong east wind that blew all night (Ex. 14:21). But just because we recognize the natural components of this event, we would be wrong to conclude it was merely a fortuitous coincidence that allowed the Israelites to cross on dry ground.

Thanks for the strong sign that you aren't writing this for skeptics, but only for those who are already Christian.  If a skeptic wished to, she'd be perfectly reasonable and rational to disregard this article of yours in its entirety.  You know how to address skeptics with better arguments, but you typically choose to avoid doing so.

So how can we evaluate popular accounts of miracles?

Maybe you should have instead asked "Can skeptics be reasonable to avoid investigating miracle claims upon the basis that we Christians say many miracles are done by demons, and skeptics, not being Christians, are thus more prone to the danger of being successfully deceived by the devil?"

When we don’t know the witnesses and lack other evidence, we have to live with varying amounts of uncertainty.

Then, because you don't "know" any of the NT authors...

But examining credible examples can help us understand how to approach miracles while being neither gullible nor faithless.

Since you'd never wish to stumble a skeptic, I'll assume your miracle-investigation advice is limited to just Christians, not those who are more prone to being deceived by demonic and heretical imitations?

If some African Christians accept miracle claims too quickly, many of us in the secular West indulge the opposite cultural temptation. Our heritage of antisupernaturalism, stemming from 18th-century Deists and the naturalist philosophy of David Hume, predisposes us to dismiss all miracles.

It also predisposes us to be absolutely closed-minded to any fool who might seriously wish to prove the existence of fairies.

That way, at least, we cannot be embarrassed by claims that turn out to be fraudulent.
 Resurrection reports appear through much of church history. In the late second century, Irenaeus, for example, reproached Gnostics’ lack of miracles by noting an orthodox church in France where, he reported, raisings were frequent. Raisings were also among the documented miracles Augustine surveyed in book 22 of The City of God. John Wesley offered a firsthand account of an apparently dead man being revived through prayer, recorded on the day it occurred, December 25, 1742.

Anecdotal evidence you surely don't expect to impress atheists?

Most early 20th-century testimonies are impossible to verify today,

Makes you wonder how impossible it is to verify 1st century miracle reports.

but occasionally some evidence remains. For example, in 1907, one year after the beginning of the early Pentecostal Azusa Street Revival, the revival’s newspaper The Apostolic Faith reported the raising of one Eula Wilson, whose blindness was also healed in the process.
 I was initially skeptical, but The Apostolic Faith cited its source, The Nazarene Messenger, another newspaper that recounted the same story but left out the healing from blindness. My first instinct was to suppose that The Apostolic Faith was embellishing the initial report. While such embellishments happen, in this case The Nazarene Messenger also had a source, The Wichita Eagle. This report, from within days of the event itself, included testimony from the attending physician and included Wilson’s healing from blindness.

Any fool who attended a Benny Hinn crusade in the front row next to the stage,  could tell you, within the next two days, that they saw healings with their own eyes.  But this would not interest you in the slightest, since, like an atheist bible skeptic, you've reached the point wherein you believe your prior studies of Hinn's miracles are sufficiently complete to justify you in drawing the deduction that NONE of his miracle claims are true or worthy of serious investigatory effort.  How much attention do you pay to Hinn's thousands of miracle claims, Dr. Keener?

Or do you agree with atheist bible skeptics that where the subject is already known to be fraught with fraudulent claims, you eventually reach a point where it becomes reasonable to generalize that the present is likely nothing but a repeat of the past?  Like Benny Hinn, the general subject of modern-day miracles is full of fraudulent cases, and like you, I reached a point where I became reasonable to stop being open to the possibility of the tooth-fairy's existence, and drew the general conclusion that any future evidence is too likely to be similarly inconclusive or fraudulent to justify continued willingness to investigate.

Some recent Western raising reports have become Christian films, such as those of Annabel Beam (Miracles from Heaven) and Baptist minister Don Piper (90 Minutes in Heaven). Both stories are inspiring but neither is triumphalistic: Beam experienced incredible suffering before her remarkable healing, and Piper suffered greatly along the road to recovery. If a testimony is being used for fundraising or a particular minister’s glory, caution is the wiser instinct. But in cases like these, no obvious self-
aggrandizing motive is in view.
 Another raising film, Breakthrough, released this past Easter. Based on Joyce Smith’s book The Impossible, the film recounts the experience of Joyce’s teenage son John. Unable to revive John after the boy drowned, physician Kent Sutterer had abandoned hope when John’s desperate mother started praying. At that moment, John’s heart restarted. Doctors deemed his subsequent full recovery remarkable.
 The witness of a medical professional like Sutterer further pushes against knee-jerk skepticism about raisings. Chauncey Crandall, a cardiologist in West Palm Beach, felt led to pray for a man who had already been unresponsive for some 40 minutes. Crandall assumed the man, Jeff Markin, was beyond help.
 Although the death certificate had been signed and Markin’s extremities were already turning black, Crandall prayed aloud for Markin. Then he urged a colleague to shock Markin with defibrillator paddles one more time; after the jolt of electricity, Markin’s heart immediately began beating. Markin made a full recovery, became a believer in Christ himself, and now testifies alongside Crandall to what God did for him.
 This is an impressive story, but it has some important context. This was not the first time Crandall had prayed for a raising.

Why would the skeptic be wrong to conclude that the naturalistic defibrillator is what naturalistically caused this person's heart to begin beating?  Is that naturalistic conclusion somehow "less likely" than your miracle-conclusion, a conclusion that violates Occam's Razor by being the one hypothesis that carries the highest possible degree of complexity " (i.e, 'god')?

Previously, his own son, Chad, died from leukemia. Crandall prayed in faith for Chad’s raising. Chad did not revive. In the face of crushing disappointment, Crandall had to decide whether to distance himself from God or trust him no matter what. He chose the latter, and so he was ready when God called him to pray for Markin.

Yup, you aren't talking to skeptics.  Your miracle-investigation advice is limited solely to those who already believe and are therefore easily primed to cross the line and view anecdotal evidence as confirming their views.

And it’s not just that doctors witness raisings. Sometimes, they are the ones raised. On October 24, 2008, Sean George, head of general medicine at Kalgoorlie Hospital in Australia, suffered a fatal heart attack. He was in cardiac arrest for an hour and 25 minutes and even flatlined for 37 minutes. His wife, also a physician, arrived and prayed for him and, abruptly, his heart restarted. After recovering, he returned to his medical practice. George has the full medical documentation online.

I've reviewed that "documentation" and therefore sent the following message to this Dr. George:




After sending, the confirmation message said:




If the text is unreadable, here's what I requested:

Dr. Craig Keener, at https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/june/miracles-resurrections-real-raisings-fake-news-keener-afric.html?share=0VzDX1%2byFTTRU5sk76j9HayahHrRXwc4 

says your page at https://seangeorge.com.au/my-story/medical-details/
contains the "full medical documentation" of your resurrection story, but I noticed that this "documentation" is simply your "notes" regarding specific sub-topics related to the alleged miracle, along with a few "screenshots" of select portions of the medical documents.  

 Would you please provide a true, correct and unredacted copy of ALL of the original medical files (including but not limited to those which bear the signature of the medical technician or doctor) documenting all of your assertions and "notes" on this matter, along with a statement from each doctor involved as to hohw likely they think the miracle-explanation is.  Please send all documentation to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com, or provide a link to a cloud or google drive or similar if the documentation is more than what can be emailed.  Please also provide the telephone numbers and email addresses of all doctors and medical technicians or specialists who signed the above-requested medical documents, as I would like to interview them before I accept Keener's "miracle" interpretation of this event.

 Thank you,  Barry.

-----------------------------

Raisings in Africa
What about raisings reported outside the West? Are there credible African resurrection stories?

If non-Christians investigate modern-day miracle claims, are they more prone than a Christian to become deceived by a demonic imitation?

Lack of medical facilities in many locations makes miracles both more necessary and harder to document. Still, people in traditional cultures are often familiar with signs of death, such as rigor mortis or lack of pulse and respiration, because they are less insulated from it than Westerners are. So while we may not be able to say how dead a person was in a clinical sense, such cases still seem significant, whatever the terminology used to describe them.

Then you cannot seriously expect the skeptic to find any such miracle-raisings, originating in such context, to be sufficiently believable to put miracle-viability back on the epistemological map.   If it isn't strong evidence, we kick it to the curb.

One friend I worked with during my first three summers in Nigeria was Leo Bawa, a missions researcher who now holds a PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. When I was conducting research for a book on miracles, I asked Bawa if he knew of any. “Not many,” he replied, before giving me seven pages of eyewitness accounts.
 One experience in particular caught my eye: In a village where Bawa had been doing research, some non-Christian neighbors brought him their dead child, asking if he could help. He prayed for a couple of hours and then handed the child back to them alive. Reasoning it may have been a misdiagnosed death, I asked how often he prayed for dead persons. He said he had done so only one other time; he prayed for his best friend after his death, and the friend stayed dead. In this non-Christian village, however, Bawa believes God answered his prayer for the honor of Christ.

You don't provide his full name or the full account, so, dismissed.

Other miracles seem to have happened without any prayer at all. I know Timothy Olonade from my time in Nigeria, a man who had a prominent scar that I never asked about. Years after I first met him, some mutual friends, including my doctor in Nigeria, told me Olonade’s story and I followed up with him.

Please provide this Nigerian doctor's telephone number, email address and website address, if any.  I'd like to interview him about this.

In December 1985, Olonade was killed in a head-on traffic accident. After being pronounced dead in the hospital, he was sent to the morgue. Hours later, as a worker went in to move some bodies, he found Olonade moving. Dumbfounded, the doctor at the hospital expected that Olonade would at least have irreparable brain damage. But he fully recovered, something his maxillofacial surgeon described as miraculous. Now an Anglican priest, Olonade is a leader in the Nigerian missions movement.

Please provide the telephone number, email address and website address, if any, of both this "doctor at the hospital" and and this "maxillofacial surgeon".  I'd like to interview them about this, and I'll be asking for all of the medical documentation that existed in 1985, so please prepare the appropriate medical releases.

Some stories have come to me unbidden. I was in an academic meeting with Ayodeji Adewuya, who has a PhD from the University of Manchester, when I shared some global miracle accounts. A few Western professors in the meeting understandably questioned me, then Adewuya stood up and shared his own experience. His son was pronounced dead at birth in 1981. After half an hour of prayer, however, the child was restored with no brain damage. This same son now has a master’s degree from University College of London and another from Cornell.

Contact details, please.

My wife is from the Republic of Congo (the smaller of the two African countries named Congo) and I’ve interviewed her friends and family with credible accounts, frequently corroborated by multiple, independent witnesses.

Take the one miracle claim among them, which you think is the most impervious to falsification, and lets get started.  That is surely a more efficient way to achieve your alleged goals, than simply constantly spouting these anecdotal stories.

Take, for instance, the story of Albert Bissouessoue. A deacon in the Evangelical Church of Congo, Bissouessoue is my wife’s brother’s father-in-law.

So, like Benny Hinn, he's already a Christian and thus already predisposed to see miracles when and if he sees something he cannot find a naturalistic explanation for.

When he was a school inspector in Etoumbi, in the north of Congo, people knew him as a strong Christian.

So he has a "strong" predisposition to seeing miracles where he thinks naturalistic explanations fail.  Ok.

A crowd brought to his residence a girl’s body, reporting that she died some eight hours earlier.

But we don't know whether their diagnosis was correct.  People's hearts stop all the time and start again, meaning heart stoppage is not a reliable sign of actual "death".  What symptoms did they find, that they interpreted as her death?

They had taken her first to traditional practitioners, who sacrificed animals and smeared blood on her in vain attempts to revive her.

Thanks for this clue about the degree to which they were able to discern actual "truth".

After reproaching them for not coming first to the living God, Bissouessoue prayed for half an hour, and the child revived.
 As you might expect, this caused quite a stir in Etoumbi.

If the people were gullible enough to seek out witch doctors, then yes, I can only imagine how anecdotal claims of resurrection from death would spread like wildfire in such communities.

So, when another child died, people came looking for Bissouessoue. Unfortunately, he was out of town, so they drafted his wife, Julienne, to pray. When she prayed, this second child revived immediately.

Why should the reader automatically assume gullible followers of witch doctors correctly diagnosed the child as "dead"?  You also don't tell us how LONG she was "dead" which leaves plenty of room for naturalistically-caused revival.

Julienne herself was shocked, reporting that God simply gave her faith in that moment.

Another sign that the people involved were of an emotional type quick to see the divine in their own feelings during moments of extreme duress.

When I asked Albert and Julienne if they had ever prayed for anyone else who was dead, they reported that these were the only two occasions. They consider it something special that God was doing for his witness in that community.

And once again, you aren't writing to combat skeptics, you are writing to edify Christians.  But just so that the reader is clear, you aren't making a rebuttal to the skeptical view by simply telling edifying stories to those who already believe.  I'm suspicious that if you were cross-examined by somebody like me after you came prepared with all of your medical documentation, you wouldn't last long.  I assume that the miracles you report after publishing your two-volume "Miracles" work are the exact miracles you think most impervious to falsification, since any smart Christian scholar would be quick to use only their very best evidence to support their beliefs. If this is the "best" you've got, let's just say I'm not exactly "unreasonable" to find wasting my money in strip bars more productive than miracle-investigation.

And of course, there is the story from my own mother-in-law and sister-in-law, Antoinette and Thérèse. Because of how well I know them, their story, more than any other account, forced me to reconsider my Western cynicism.

There's simply no denying the truth in conclusory allegations targeted to an already-Christian audience.

The place of miracles
The antidote to false miracle claims is not to reject miracles altogether.

Then apparently you think the antidote to Benny Hinn's false miracle claims is not to reject Benny Hinn's credibility altogether.  Well then what?  Are skeptics under some intellectual obligation to continue reviewing each and every miracle claim Hinn spews out?  If so, what is your epistemological basis for saying any such obligation exists?

We must take care when we hear of (or even experience) a miraculous event that we neither accept all miracles as true nor dismiss them all as fake. The reality is much more complex.

We must also make a decision about what's more important...going to work in the morning so we can keep our families housed and fed, or doing what Jesus said, and giving up custody of our property and our children so that we can have more time to follow him around (Matthew 19:29).  I LOVE committing the sin of blindly assuming that my need to hold a job and feed my family is more important than my "salvation".

But how do we exercise the appropriate amount of caution?

Would you counsel Christians to pray to God about it?  If so, why?  How the hell would they ever know what answer God was giving, or if God was even giving an answer at all?  Yet pray you must, as a bible-believing Christian.  Nothing fails quite like prayer, but your bible-based beliefs forbid you from the obvious and constrain you to see answers to prayer even when there's no empirically detectable link between the actual answer and the phenomena you subjectively think is the answer.  If God lived in the real world, he'd make known to me his desire to save me, no less directly than my neighbor notifies me that he wants to borrow a hammer.  God's "hiddenness" is a real son-of-a-bitch that you aren't fixing by merely carping about God's mysterious ways.  People are always reasonable and justified to walk away from a leader, when the leader insists he has instructions for them to follow, but instead of giving them directly, forces the followers to learn dead languages and enter the fray of endless debate by scholars on the subject, as the only means they have of discerning the meaning in his list of instructions.

While no formula allows us to verify all miracle stories, I have noticed a pattern.
 Fraudulent miracles tend to flourish where they profit their purveyors.

When Jesus ran around doing "miracles", he begged for money.  What other purpose was there for the "money-box" that Judas used to allegedly "steal from" in John 12:6?  See also John 13:29.

After Jesus died, the apostles demanded their follows give the apostles control over all money and property, and to hold anything back and lie about it was to ensure one's death, Acts 5.

Apostle Paul convinced his churches to put together a large bag of money he said would be used to help the starving Jerusalem church.  1st Corinthians 16:1-3.  The deliverers likely knew it would be shameful for the Jerusalem church to count it to make sure it agrees with how much Paul's certification said was in the bag, so they must have been tempted to grab a few handfuls, to spend on themselves as they traveled, especially in light of Paul's advice, see next sentence:

Paul, like any good politician, insists that those who rule the church well are worthy of "double" the expected wages (1st Timothy 5:17-18).  Today we call it cronyism.

This is what we see in the Lukau story from South Africa. Yes, some Christians downplay miracles too much, but others need to stop exalting them as the highest ministry or as a sign of divine approval, especially where leadership and teaching are concerned.

Another complication in the study of modern miracles, thus giving the skeptic, if they choose to employ it,  yet another reason to consider the subject too fraught with peril and misunderstanding to be considered worthy of any serious study.

When Paul lists spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:28, he actually ranks teaching higher than miracles.

And as we saw, Paul turned Christian teaching into a money-making venture, and we don't really know whether his claims to "suffering" were as fearful as he describes.  If prayer was so good and powerful, why didn't mere prayer solve the Jerusalem church's poverty problem, sort of like God said his miracles ensured that the children of Israel continued to have food and water as they lived 40 years in the desert?  George Carlin was right:  God has an on-going problem with money, and he cannot do much without it.

The Greek text of Ephesians 4:11 links pastors with teachers, and the Pastoral Epistles make teaching ability a prerequisite for ministry (1 Tim. 3:2, 2 Tim. 2:24, Titus 1:9). Miracles are nowhere a biblical requirement (or necessary endorsement) for ministry. Someone might even have a gift of miracles but not be a good teacher. One can have both kinds of gifts (Acts 19:9–12), but one does not necessarily entail the other.
 By contrast, credible dramatic signs are most frequent where the gospel is breaking fresh ground—as in the Gospels and Acts. In these situations, the miracles tend to advance the cause of faith, not the will or needs of a particular person or group.

BULLSHIT!  The miracles advance the cause of Jesus and later the apostles no less than miracles advance the cause of Benny Hinn!

Miracles are a wonderful foretaste of the coming kingdom.

The fact that you aren't a preterist thus makes the Christians who are preterists wonder how you could be such a smart good Christian and yet God apparently cannot enlighten you about the obvious.

Thus Jesus’ exorcisms revealed the kingdom’s nearness (Luke 11:20),

A kingdom that obviously failed to arrive as promised.  Ask any Christian who is a preterist, they will tell you what's obvious, that Jesus intended this "comming soon" screed to mean "soon" according to the human sense of time, not God's sense of time.  He could hardly spur them on to do good works in fear of being found lazy by the master, if he meant "you better keep busy, or the master of the house might return after a few thousand years..."

and Jesus describes his healings in language that invokes Isaiah’s description of the ultimate restoration (Luke 7:22). Nevertheless, the kingdom’s fullness remains future.

How much time do you think skeptics are intellectually obligated to spend learning about why other equally knowledgeable Christian scholars disagree with your eschatological views, before we become justified to start drawing ultimate conclusions about who is right, or whether the biblical data are fatally ambiguous and worthy of ignoring?

Even genuine gifts are limited: Paul says that we know in part, and we prophesy in part (1 Cor. 13:9).
 When God acts in our lives, we should testify about it, but when possible we should also offer verification.

You mean like when I asked you almost two years ago for you to verify whatever modern-day miracle you thought most impervious to falsification?  I'm still waiting.

If Jesus urged a leper to follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark 1:44), it is appropriate for us to verify miracles when possible.

If Jesus urged a leper to follow the scriptural prescription to verify his healing with a priest (Mark 1:44), and if in the Great Commission Jesus insisted his apostles convey "all" of his teachings to the rest of the world (Matthew 28:20), then Paul's relaxing the rules for Gentiles was one big fat heresy.  I am quite aware of that divided portion of Christ's body called "dispensationalism", and I have no sympathy for such a desperate way to get rid of the soteriological inconsistencies in the bible.

This way open-minded people who do not know the witnesses well enough to take their word for it can still experience the awe of seeing God at work.

be sure you remind Dr. George of this, as I sent him a request for verifying medical documentation.

Additional layers of evaluation help. For example, false teachers often exploit people for money (Jer. 6:13, Micah 3:11, 2 Pet. 2:3)

Like the apostles did in demanding they take charge of their followers' money and property.  Acts 5.

and tell them whatever they want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3–4).

Like Paul who thought circumcision to be nothing, but coddled the scruples of the Jews anyway (Acts 16:3), or the Paul who thought the law was fulfilled and faded, but who, when coming to Jerusalem, pretended to believe the same way the Jews did about the continuing divine significance of the ceremonial system (Acts 21:18-24).

Jesus warned us to discern prophets by their fruits, not by their gifts (Matt. 7:15–23).

Then the mere fact that a miracle proves the supernatural and thus refutes the atheists, is all the more reason for atheists to stay away from such discussions.  The devil appears to be a really convincing deceiver, even many Christians fall into his snares, right?.  Probably best to avoid the risk entirely by entirely avoiding investigating anything that might turn out to be one of his clever imitations. 

Christian apologists who insist that atheists examine modern-day miracle claims are stupid know nothings who have no interest in protective spiritual good and all interest in soulless unedifying bickering back and forth academia. 

What is the outcome of a particular miracle? God’s gifts are good, but their main purpose is building up Christ’s body, not our reputations (note 1 Cor. 12–14). Most of Jesus’ miracles, such as healing sickness, expelling spirits, and stilling storms, demonstrated compassion as well as power.

They also tended to build up his reputation, sort of like miracles tend to make Benny Hinn appear in the eyes of his followers as having a stellar reputation.

Moreover, genuine gifts should honor Jesus (1 Cor. 12:3, 1 John 4:1–6). The Book of Acts shows that Jesus’ name should get the credit for miracles, because they attest to his gospel, not the miracle worker (Acts 3:12–13; 14:3).
 Indeed, Scripture offers many examples of those gifted by God’s Spirit who were disobeying God, such as Balaam and Samson. One of the most striking examples is Saul, who, on an errand to try to kill David, ended up falling down and prophesying. This was not because Saul was godly, but because God’s Spirit was strong in that place (1 Sam. 19:20–24).

So God sees nothing philosophically wrong with use his strength to prevent evil.  This can only result in the hypothesis that if any evil exists, it is because God does not wish to stop it.  If a little girl is raped for 15 minutes straight, this is because God didn't want to stop it.  In other words, if we were as godly as god, and saw this rape, we would just walk on by and, like god, do nothing about it.  Aren't god's omissions just as "godly" as his actions?

Not every claim to a miraculous raising today is authentic.

But because so many are false, that's quite sufficient to justify the skeptic, if they choose to deny the viability of miracles while also refusing to examine them.  You stopped being objectively open to the possibility of Mormon truth long ago, despite your not knowing everything there is to know about that religion.  You have no room to pretend that non-Christians are wrong when they imitate your logic and draw firm conclusions about the ultimate issue of miracles before they've learned everything about the issue.

Everywhere in the world, most people who die stay dead. Even those resuscitated miraculously, such as Lazarus, die again;

you don't have any biblical evidence that Lazarus ever died again, while in John 11, Jesus makes explicit that what happened to him was "resurrection" and thus something more permanent than "resuscitation"...unless you admit that between the time of Jesus and the career of Paul, "resurrection" evolved in meaning?

Cold Case Christianity: Dear Mr. Wallace, luck does not constitute "miracle"

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Woman Says It’s a Miracle Her 

Wallet Blocked Bullets – Why Not Believe Her?

Posted: 28 May 2018 01:34 AM PDT

In a recent incident in Tennessee, a woman claimed her purse and wallet were used miraculously by God. As the woman and her husband were pulling into the parking lot of their apartment, they heard “popping” sounds. After getting out of their car, they saw several bullet holes on one side of the vehicle. A few minutes later, the woman discovered a hole in her purse and a bullet lodged in her wallet. When reporting the incident to the press, she told them she believed God used her wallet as a shield: “Just by the grace of God. It`s a miracle to keep me or him from getting hit.”

When I was an atheist, I would roll my eyes at statements like this.

You were correct to do so.  In this case, the women is not reporting a phenomenon for which it is difficult to find a naturalistic explanation.  She is reporting something that is on the order of "luck".  I've also been shot at and managed to avoid the bullet. 

In my mind, Christians were always attributing accidents, coincidences, and chance events to the “miraculous” work of God.

That wasn't just in your mind.  They do.  If they lose $50 at the casino, God must have wanted them to do without that $50.  If they win $50, surely the creator of the universe wanted them to have the extra $50.  There's no talking to committed religious freaks like you, who insist God is the basis of all "luck", but who are still unwilling to embrace 5-point Calvinism.

I rejected such nonsense. I was a “philosophical naturalist,” and as such, I believed that every event (including this one in Tennessee) could be explained with purely “naturalistic” explanations. The bullets that entered the car took a trajectory that was dictated by the material properties of the vehicle and the laws of physics. Nothing more. The bullet just happened to land in the woman’s purse. Unusual – perhaps – but no big deal, and certainly not an act of God.

Now, many years later, I’ve reconsidered my position.

Why?  Do you suppose that perhaps something more than naturalistic laws were responsible for the causes that led to the bullets finding their way into her purse?  How much time do you suppose a non-Christian should spend checking up on this story?  5 minutes?  One hour?  Several days?  Your Fox News source even admits

The woman, who was not identified, was on her way back from the hospital with her husband on Thursday, when the couple suddenly heard gunshots.

 You don't understand why a skeptic would have difficulties believing the miracle explanation provided by an anonymous source?

Your Fox News source has her being intentionally ambiguous about whether or not the bullets that hit her purse would have hit her had the purse not been in the way:

"I was like, 'Oh my God, honey! Here's another hole that came through my purse!'" she told the station. The woman's bag was sitting in the back seat, and she credits the location with possibly saving her life.

But most people would expect that if the woman wishes to make a miracle-connection, she would provide a bit more detail, such as her body being in line with the purse, so that the purse did, IN FACT, prevent the bullets from hitting her.

I admit that I also believed in miracles – of a sort – when I was an atheist. Dictionary.com provides the following definition of a “miracle”:

“An effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”

They also provide this definition of “supernatural”:

“Of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.”

Given the way these terms are defined, nearly everyone believes in one kind of miracle or another, including those who reject the existence of a supernatural God. Even as an atheist, I too accepted the reasonable reality of at least one supernatural event.

I embraced the Standard Cosmological Model offered by physicists to explain the origin of the universe. It is known as the “Big Bang Theory,” and it proposes that all space, time, and matter (the attributes we typically think of when describing the natural realm) had a beginning.

That's where you went wrong.  The Big Bang is total bullshit.  The universe and matter have always existed.  But regardless, most physicists who accept the Big Bang, do not think it points to god. 

And the bigger problem for you is that the originally intended audience of Genesis 1-2 were mostly illiterate Israelite farm hands.  Moses' story of creation neither expresses nor implies some giant cosmic explosion, and it is highly unlikely the original Israelites under Moses would have read such a concept into the text, or added an explosion to the story in their mind as they heard a storyteller speaking the story to them.  If you must be a Christian before being a detective or scholar, you need to worry about how the Big Bang contradicts your own bible, before you pretend that it refutes atheism.

And one of fundamentalist Christianity's most vocal "creationist" think tanks, ICR, who require their members to uphold biblical inerrancy, entirely deny the scientific validity of the Big Bang theory.

Everything came into existence from nothing at a point in the distant past.

That's illogical.  Zero wouldn't have the function in math that it does, if it could ever produce anything.

"From nothing" is nonsense.  Yes, the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics says virtual particles can appear from nothing and disappear out of existence, but that's just one school.  There are several schools of quantum mechanics, and not all of them espouse indeterminism.

I accepted this model of the universe’s origin, even though it presented me with a problem.

If all space, matter and time came into existence at some point in the past, whatever caused them to leap into existence cannot (by definition) be spatial, temporal or material.

That's also foolish, the explosion of the singularity in the alleged big bang did not create dimensions.  Dimensions were the necessary implication of there suddenly being at least two bits of matter separated by some distance.  You may as well say time didn't exist until clocks were invented.   Worse, you posit the existence of the "immaterial" by denying the cause was material, when in fact you couldn't demonstrate the existence of any non-physical thing to save your life.

The same with your "temporal" word: you are implying that what set off the big bang set it off from within the realm of eternity, when in fact your own bible represents the passing of time in heaven no less than it represents time passing on earth, in fact, it always presents the acts of God as having a before and an after, up there in heaven:

 24 Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven, (Gen. 19:24 NAU)

What?  Was God throwing down fireballs on Sodom from the realm of eternity, and somewhere along the way down, those fireballs switched dimensions and continued coming down in the realm of time?  No, the author, obviously not concerned about biblical inerracy or systematic theology, felt free to talk about God as if his abode were in the same dimension, just higher in the sky, as man's.

In other words, the cause of the natural universe does not possess any of the attributes of the natural realm (i.e. space, time or matter). See the dilemma? My naturalistic belief in “Big Bang Cosmology” required an extra-natural “Big Banger.”

Then perhaps you were a stupid atheist and you didn't know what any fool knows, that plenty of scientists who accept the big bang, do not think it implies god.  You simply characterize it that way because of how easily such a childish view can be sustained (i.e., the bumper sticker "The Big Bang Theory:  God spoke and *bang*, it happened").   Like the toddler who thinks an invisible person causes the car to move forward.

The non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial first-cause of the universe clearly fits within the definition of “supernatural” we’ve described. The cause of the universe is, by definition, “above or beyond what is natural” (in that it does not possess the attributes of the natural realm) and cannot be explained “by natural law.”

After becoming a Christian, I eventually wrote about this in a book called God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe. The beginning of the universe from nothing is actually evidence for the existence of an all-powerful, non-spatial, a-temporal, immaterial God.

Dream on.  Being omniscient or "all-powerful" is refuted by the question "Can God make a box so heavy that he cannot lift it?".  People make boxes too heavy to lift every day, so doing this does not require a logical contradiction, therefore, if God can do all logically possible things, he should be able to make a box so heavy that he cannot lift it.  Furthermore, God regrets his own choice to make mankind in Genesis 6:6-7, and since you think everything else in the immediate context there is real and not figurative, you cannot escape this problem by pretending that God's remorse is mere anthropomorphism.  The originally intended audience for that passage were illiterate Israelites around 1300 b.c.  They would have no contextual, historical or linguistic reason to think God's regretting his own prior choices was any less literal in v. 6 than the wickedness of men mentioned in v. 5, or Noah's finding favor with God in v. 8.

And the more you talk about things non-spatial and a-temporal, the more you justify the skeptic to write you off as babbling incoherently. I don't listen to such talk any more than I listen to desperate idiot scientists who talk about "dark matter" or how worm-holes area shorter distance between two points than a straight line is.

The most spectacular and impressive miracle recorded in the Bible is recorded in the opening line of Genesis, Chapter 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Christians believe the beginning of the universe was a supernatural event.

And Christians like you add a gigantic "explosion" to the biblical record of creation, which the record itself neither expresses nor implies, and explosion other inerrantist creationist Christian scholars insist is wholly fictitious and unbiblical.  But you live in a day where religion is dismissed if it doesn't account for scientific truth.  So apparently you've chose to adulterate the biblical creation account just to make the bible sound more impressive to modern day people.

As a skeptic investigating the claims of Christianity, I eventually had to admit that I also accepted the origin of the universe as a supernatural, miraculous event, and if God had the power necessary to create everything from nothing, he could probably pull off the miracles described in the New Testament. In fact, He might even be able to use a wallet to stop a bullet.

But the claimant didn't claim anything that couldn't be accounted for by naturalistic explanations.  She didn't claim the bullet bounced off her skin, for example, or that it created a fatal wound which immediately healed because she immediately prayed over it.

What's next, Wallace?  If a Christian credits God with their winning the lottery, will you write a blog piece asking why we shouldn't believe them?

Why don't you ascribe to God's miraculous doings, the opposite type of events, that is, where poverty and injury are created?

For example, when a foreign power invades and they rape the women and beat the children to death.  After all, Isaiah 13 says it is God who will stir up the pagan Medes to do all these things to the Hebrews.

Here's the entire chapter for your convenience.  Maybe someday you can tell the Christians why it is that you refuse to speak as bluntly about God's causing evil as the biblical prophets did.  Common sense says you so refuse because you don't agree with what those prophets taught:

 1 The oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw.
 2 Lift up a standard on the bare hill, Raise your voice to them, Wave the hand that they may enter the doors of the nobles.
 3 I have commanded My consecrated ones, I have even called My mighty warriors, My proudly exulting ones, To execute My anger.
 4 A sound of tumult on the mountains, Like that of many people! A sound of the uproar of kingdoms, Of nations gathered together! The LORD of hosts is mustering the army for battle.
 5 They are coming from a far country, From the farthest horizons, The LORD and His instruments of indignation, To destroy the whole land.
 6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty.
 7 Therefore all hands will fall limp, And every man's heart will melt.
 8 They will be terrified, Pains and anguish will take hold of them; They will writhe like a woman in labor, They will look at one another in astonishment, Their faces aflame.
 9 Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, To make the land a desolation; And He will exterminate its sinners from it.
 10 For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not flash forth their light; The sun will be dark when it rises And the moon will not shed its light.
 11 Thus I will punish the world for its evil And the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.
 12 I will make mortal man scarcer than pure gold And mankind than the gold of Ophir.
 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger.
 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.
 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.
 19 And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans' pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
 20 It will never be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation; Nor will the Arab pitch his tent there, Nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.
 21 But desert creatures will lie down there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches also will live there, and shaggy goats will frolic there.
 22 Hyenas will howl in their fortified towers And jackals in their luxurious palaces. Her fateful time also will soon come And her days will not be prolonged.  (Isa. 13:1-22 NAU)

 If Wallace wishes to be "biblical", he would have to add "rape" and "child massacre" to the "miracles" that God does.

And because all of God's judgments are good and righteous, Wallace would not see the slightest sign of psychological problems in the fools who praise God for ALL of His works....which would thus mean praising God for his causing of rape and child massacre.

My questions to Dr. Craig Keener concerning atheist investigations of miracles

Over at Keener's contact page at Asbury Theological Seminary, I sent him the following questions
-----------------
Dr.  Keener,

I'd like to get your comments on a couple of issues related to miracles:

1 - Which modern day miracle claim do you believe is most difficult to explain on naturalistic grounds?  Amateur Christian apologists who support you abound on the internet, yet I cannot find any who are willing to direct atheists to any specific modern-day miracle mentioned in your books.  They mostly choose to just sit on the sidelines and carp about the fallacies of of naturalism.

2 - What is your advice to atheists who say that the only reasonable miracle investigation is the one that takes apologist J. Warner Wallace's advice and guides the process by the rules of evidence used in American courts of law (i.e. documents must be authenticated by witnesses, hearsay excluded in most cases, eyewitnesses subjecting themselves to cross-examination,  etc, etc.)?

3 - At what point in the miracle investigation has the atheist done enough research to justify drawing ultimate conclusions about the event?  Does that point come after he has downloaded all supporting materials the miracle-claimant made available on the internet (if so, that's difficult to believe, you don't authenticate documents by simply downloading them from the internet)?  Does that point come sometime after a certain amount of exchange between investigator and miracle-claimant via email?   Does that point come only when he has personally interviewed the alleged eyewitnesses?

4 - Does the plethora of confirmed false miracle claims in the world and in history justify the atheist to insist on using only the highest standards of investigation when analyzing miracle claims (i.e., the standard of evidence used in American courts of law)?    Does the seriousness of the spiritual issues at stake allow any room to say that a less intensive investigation is acceptable?

5 - What is your opinion of the atheist who gets so worried about going to hell, that he divorces his wife, quits his job, never sees his wife or kids again, and does little more in life than sleep, eat at a bum shelter and spend all day at his local library using the internet and library services to examine and investigate Christian miracle claims?   Does the bible allow you to say that an atheist "should" decide where in the day to stop worrying about God and transfer his attentions to his family?  Isn't it true that spiritual concerns are infinitely more important than the concerns of this life?  Didn't Jesus encourage parents to give up houses and kids with a promise that such parents would receive salvation and more (Matthew 19:29)?

6 - Some atheists say refusal to investigate miracles is reasonable, because full comprehensive investigation of them requires a quantity of time, money and resources that the average atheist simply doesn't have.   What is your response to such excuse?   Is there anything irrational about the atheist's desire to investigate miracle claims equally as thoroughly as a criminal investigator, so as to avoid the possibility of being deceived by fraud or mistake?  If you get rid of the cost-problem by suggesting a less stringent investigation, the possibility of successful deception increases.  If you agree the highest standards of investigation are reasonable, you agree that atheists have an excuse, since they simply don't have the time, money and resources to do such comprehensive inquiry.   I don't see any way to balance these concerns in a way that allows for objective investigation within the limits of the average family man's income.

7 - What is your advice to atheists who say that because even spiritually alive Christians cannot agree on the biblical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, nor on whether and to what extent miracles happen today (charismatics v.  cessationists), it is most certain that spiritually dead atheists are only going to fare worse should they join the fray?   If conservative NT scholars like James White, Norman Geisler and Mike Licona cannot agree on how best to argue the miracles of Jesus' resurrection and biblical inerrancy, doesn't it make sense to say that those with even less connection to God are only going to fumble the ball worse if they dare try to run with it?

Thank you,

Barry Jones
barryjoneswhat@gmail.com