Articles tagged with "miracles"

I was scrolling through my emails today, looking to see if I had received any Why Are You A Skeptic responses from any of you. Sadly there was nothing I'd missed; no stories of how you'd found skepticism after an all-night bender where you'd snorted ketamine and met God, or how you've always been skeptical since the age of two.

Christian fundamentalists usually come to the notice of the Skeptics when they make pronouncements on scientific matters, as with creationism. But, as Ross Miller indicates, fundamentalism results in junk religion, not just junk science.

A friend of mine once visited a faith-healer, one of the religious variety from the United States who periodically come to New Zealand to swell their bank balances. She attended the meeting because of a persistent pain in her elbow. Despite my suggestions that it was only tennis elbow, she was worried and thought perhaps the pain was serious. She had an aisle seat near the front and during the proceedings the "healer" approached her and asked about the pain in her arm. Apparently she hadn't told anyone why she was there. She was impressed.

This article is an abridged version of the fourth article in a series on philosophy and the paranormal. Here Dr Grey discusses David Hume's analysis of miracles and his view that belief in miraculous events is always unjustified. He also investigates the nature, virtues and dangers of different skeptical viewpoints.

I had intended to make this issue one devoted to the conference and was going to reprint all the talks and discussions there. However the conference was such an overwhelming success and there was such a fine attendance, that it would be a waste to reprint what so many had heard in person. I therefore asked all those who spoke to give me their second thoughts on their talks, the things they meant to say but forgot, the replies they would like to have made in the discussions, the witty rejoinders that came to them in the middle of the night after we had all gone home. Most of the speakers have had nothing to add but I should like to make a correction to the impression left with my hearers.