What do you think?
Rate this book
The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified
There are many who believe Moses parted the Red Sea and Jesus came back from the dead. Others are certain that exorcisms occur, ghosts haunt attics, and the blessed can cure the terminally ill. Though extraordinarily improbable, people have embraced miracles and myths for millennia, seeing in them proof of the extraordinary potential of our world--and ourselves.
Helping us think more critically about our belief in the improbable, "The Miracle Myth" breaks down our mythmaking strategies to better understand how attempts to justify belief in the supernatural fall short. Through arguments and accessible analysis, Larry Shapiro sharpens our critical faculties so we become less susceptible to tales of myths and miracles and learn how, ultimately, our belief in them is counterproductive. Shapiro acknowledges that myths have value. They may even provide insight into our place in nature. Even so, if our understanding of reality is formed through the fallacy of myth, our ties to the world fray. Shapiro's investigation reminds us of the importance of evidence and rational thinking as we explore the unknown.
Helping us think more critically about our belief in the improbable, "The Miracle Myth" breaks down our mythmaking strategies to better understand how attempts to justify belief in the supernatural fall short. Through arguments and accessible analysis, Larry Shapiro sharpens our critical faculties so we become less susceptible to tales of myths and miracles and learn how, ultimately, our belief in them is counterproductive. Shapiro acknowledges that myths have value. They may even provide insight into our place in nature. Even so, if our understanding of reality is formed through the fallacy of myth, our ties to the world fray. Shapiro's investigation reminds us of the importance of evidence and rational thinking as we explore the unknown.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published August 30, 2016
5 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 14, 2020
A short and readable overview of the philosophical concept of justification - under what conditions may we regard a belief as justified? Applied to miracle claims, and specifically the miracle claims of Christianity (and Mormonism), Shapiro summarizes some of the attempts to justify such claims, and what sort of evidence would actually be required to justify them.
Shapiro discusses the nature of miracles, their (im)probability, and qualitatively describes the Bayesian approach, illustrating it with the base rate fallacy. Readers unfamiliar with Bayesian statistics might benefit from a more mathematical treatment (e.g. Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way), as Shapiro presents no formulas. But it's easy enough to follow Shapiro's example of medical diagnosis, that shows how a test for a disease having only a 1 in 1000 rate of false positives can actually be wildly inaccurate if the base rate of the disease is much lower, say 1 in 10 million. Shapiro then applies the lesson to miracle claims: given that miracles are extremely improbable events, we need exceptionally strong evidence to believe a miracle actually occurred.
Shapiro then examines the evidence for the miracle claims of Christianity and demonstrates that it is too weak to satisfy even the much weaker standard for non-miraculous historical events. That is, the kind of evidence that persuades historians that Julius Caesar really did cross the Rubicon is absent for all claims of miracles.
Shapiro draws on the work of Bart Erhman, Richard Carrier, David Hume, and Baruch Spinoza. Readers familier with them will recognize their influence in the book's pages.
I have just a couple of quibbles with this otherwise essential book.
1. After demonstrating that belief in miracles is unjustified, Shapiro seems overly generous when he nevertheless concedes the possibility of miracles:
"So miracles may have actually occurred despite everything I have said about whether you are justified in believing in them. I hope I have convinced you that you are not justified in believing in miracles, but my epistemological commitments prevent me from saying anymore. I have no arguments up my sleeves against the possibility of miracles. "
There may be such an argument up the physicist's sleeve: symmetry. Fundamental physics is governed by symmetries in the laws of nature - Einstein's point that the laws should be the same at all locations and all times. If Einstein is right, then the laws of nature cannot be violated, and thus miracles are not merely (highly) improbable, but actually impossible. Shapiro presents the view that science is merely an exercise in induction, a collection of generalizations scientists draw from their repeated observations. The mere fact that scientists observe a law to hold during thousands, millions, or billions of observations does not guarantee it will hold during the next observation (although that is certainly the way we normally bet - I'm not jumping off a bridge on the off chance that gravity will behave differently this time). However, from what I gather, the symmetry principle says we can say more than a law like gravity has worked every time we've checked it so far. We can say that gravity works the same way everywhere in the universe and at every time. Milton Rothman elaborates on this idea in A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism. See also: Symmetry: A Very Short Introduction. The symmetry principle allows the scientist to reject any claim that entails a violation of nature's laws. As a miracle would have to do that - even if we don't fully understand all of nature's laws yet, if it's a miracle, it had to violate them - finding that the evidence is insufficient to justify the miracle (the philosopher's bailiwick) is icing on the cake. The physicist kills the claim and the philosopher roasts its corpse.
Thus a person who believes in miracles does not only believe in something that is highly unlikely to be true and lacks justification. The miracle believer stakes an even more dubious position: that science is in fact false. Given that science has produced some near-miraculous results of its own (computers, atomic bombs, space ships, disease cures, etc.) I would like to know what the miracle believers have accomplished with their ostensibly superior belief system. Where's the beef? After all, even the bible says "By their fruits ye shall know them." Scientific theories based on the impossibility of miracles have transformed our existence - the fruits of science surround us, I'm typing on one of them. What have theories based on the possibility of miracles produced? What even are these theories?
2. Elsewhere Shapiro writes:
"Justification isn’t a mathematical idea, and so Bayes’s theorem doesn’t have anything directly to say about it. However, we can still use Bayes’s mathematical insight about how evidence supports a conclusion to guide us in our thinking about justification."
A better wording might be: Justification hasn't traditionally been framed by philosphers in explicitly mathematical terms. Philosophers generally aren't mathematicians, after all. But there might not be anything stopping them. See for example Bayesian Epistemology and The Probabilistic Foundations of Rational Learning. In a similar way, historians generally aren't mathematicians either, but that doesn't stop historian Richard Carrier from applying Bayes' theorem to evaluate historical evidence (Proving History). As the Foreword to the Oxford User's Guide to Mathematics says: "As subjects become more understood, they become more mathematical." To say that justification isn't a mathematical idea might be to say it isn't well understood yet.
Shapiro discusses the nature of miracles, their (im)probability, and qualitatively describes the Bayesian approach, illustrating it with the base rate fallacy. Readers unfamiliar with Bayesian statistics might benefit from a more mathematical treatment (e.g. Bayesian Statistics the Fun Way), as Shapiro presents no formulas. But it's easy enough to follow Shapiro's example of medical diagnosis, that shows how a test for a disease having only a 1 in 1000 rate of false positives can actually be wildly inaccurate if the base rate of the disease is much lower, say 1 in 10 million. Shapiro then applies the lesson to miracle claims: given that miracles are extremely improbable events, we need exceptionally strong evidence to believe a miracle actually occurred.
Shapiro then examines the evidence for the miracle claims of Christianity and demonstrates that it is too weak to satisfy even the much weaker standard for non-miraculous historical events. That is, the kind of evidence that persuades historians that Julius Caesar really did cross the Rubicon is absent for all claims of miracles.
Shapiro draws on the work of Bart Erhman, Richard Carrier, David Hume, and Baruch Spinoza. Readers familier with them will recognize their influence in the book's pages.
I have just a couple of quibbles with this otherwise essential book.
1. After demonstrating that belief in miracles is unjustified, Shapiro seems overly generous when he nevertheless concedes the possibility of miracles:
"So miracles may have actually occurred despite everything I have said about whether you are justified in believing in them. I hope I have convinced you that you are not justified in believing in miracles, but my epistemological commitments prevent me from saying anymore. I have no arguments up my sleeves against the possibility of miracles. "
There may be such an argument up the physicist's sleeve: symmetry. Fundamental physics is governed by symmetries in the laws of nature - Einstein's point that the laws should be the same at all locations and all times. If Einstein is right, then the laws of nature cannot be violated, and thus miracles are not merely (highly) improbable, but actually impossible. Shapiro presents the view that science is merely an exercise in induction, a collection of generalizations scientists draw from their repeated observations. The mere fact that scientists observe a law to hold during thousands, millions, or billions of observations does not guarantee it will hold during the next observation (although that is certainly the way we normally bet - I'm not jumping off a bridge on the off chance that gravity will behave differently this time). However, from what I gather, the symmetry principle says we can say more than a law like gravity has worked every time we've checked it so far. We can say that gravity works the same way everywhere in the universe and at every time. Milton Rothman elaborates on this idea in A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism. See also: Symmetry: A Very Short Introduction. The symmetry principle allows the scientist to reject any claim that entails a violation of nature's laws. As a miracle would have to do that - even if we don't fully understand all of nature's laws yet, if it's a miracle, it had to violate them - finding that the evidence is insufficient to justify the miracle (the philosopher's bailiwick) is icing on the cake. The physicist kills the claim and the philosopher roasts its corpse.
Thus a person who believes in miracles does not only believe in something that is highly unlikely to be true and lacks justification. The miracle believer stakes an even more dubious position: that science is in fact false. Given that science has produced some near-miraculous results of its own (computers, atomic bombs, space ships, disease cures, etc.) I would like to know what the miracle believers have accomplished with their ostensibly superior belief system. Where's the beef? After all, even the bible says "By their fruits ye shall know them." Scientific theories based on the impossibility of miracles have transformed our existence - the fruits of science surround us, I'm typing on one of them. What have theories based on the possibility of miracles produced? What even are these theories?
2. Elsewhere Shapiro writes:
"Justification isn’t a mathematical idea, and so Bayes’s theorem doesn’t have anything directly to say about it. However, we can still use Bayes’s mathematical insight about how evidence supports a conclusion to guide us in our thinking about justification."
A better wording might be: Justification hasn't traditionally been framed by philosphers in explicitly mathematical terms. Philosophers generally aren't mathematicians, after all. But there might not be anything stopping them. See for example Bayesian Epistemology and The Probabilistic Foundations of Rational Learning. In a similar way, historians generally aren't mathematicians either, but that doesn't stop historian Richard Carrier from applying Bayes' theorem to evaluate historical evidence (Proving History). As the Foreword to the Oxford User's Guide to Mathematics says: "As subjects become more understood, they become more mathematical." To say that justification isn't a mathematical idea might be to say it isn't well understood yet.
October 8, 2020
The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified by Lawrence Shapiro is a look at the justification of what we believe. Shapiro is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of The Mind Incarnate, Embodied Cognition, which won the American Philosophical Association’s Joseph B. Gittler Award for the best book in the philosophy of the social sciences, Zen and the Art of Running. He is also the editor of The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition.
Shapiro presents an interesting argument not so much in changing beliefs but looks at justification for beliefs. He frequently turns to Caesar's crossing the Rubicon as a historical example of an event in the past and why it should be believed. Before turning to historical events Shapiro sets some guidelines and definitions. Miracle, for example, is a word with many meanings from the"Miracle on Ice" to medical reversals to water into wine. Evidence shows stage four cancer kills a person almost all the time, but not every time. Remission is a remote but possible outcome. Chance, coincidence, and plain luck are mathematically possible and do not indicate a miracle or the supernatural.
Another idea along the same medical lines is an imaginary disease the author creates. It will cause a painful death if it is not caught early enough. The patient in the story has been tested and found to have the disease. The doctor says not to worry there is a cure with side effects that are permanent and very unpleasant. The patient asks the doctor if he is sure of the test results. The doctor said the test is 99.9% accurate. If the patient wants to risk a 1-1,000 shot he can. A helpful friend who happens to be a statistician busts into the office and asks "What is the baseline?" Seemingly an unimportant question since a 1 in 1,000 shot is always a 1-1,000 shot. But it's not. The imaginary disease infects only 1 in 10,000,000 (baseline). That means testing the 10,000,000 people does not present one positive, but 10,000. The actual chance the person who tested positive for being positive for the disease is 1-10,001. Much better odds than 9.99% positive.
The idea of belief and justified belief is a matter of examination and evidence. A person can believe in whatever they want, but it depends if that belief is justified. Growing up in Cleveland I believed that the Indians would win the world series next year every year. How many years can a team go without winning the World Series? It is at least 68 years. Belief in a change doesn't make it happen or justified.
Shapiro creates a religion that is obviously ridiculous, then moves to Mormonism, and the resurrection of Jesus and holds them to equal scrutiny. He uses historical tests to comparing Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon to the above examples -- Historical written records both from supporters and enemies, physical evidence, reliable accounting, and implicating consequences. Needless to say, the results fall into what can be expected. When incredible reports are made, all explanations need to be looked at before accepting that it is a miracle. An advanced race of aliens can be equally credible as the supernatural.
As Arthur C Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Supernatural could easily replace the word "magic." Shapiro uses reason and evidence to make his point and holds miracles in history to the same standards as one would any other historical event. Evidence of the supernatural and supernatural forces acting in the natural world is nonexistent in reason or logic. Faith in the supernatural is different because it requires no physical proof. Shapiro's goal and purpose of the book are studying the justification of the belief miracles. He treats all the historical events with the same standards so there is a repeating of steps throughout the book. The reading is enjoyable as Shapiro breaks up the philosophy and historical tests with humor. For those expecting a Richard Dawkins attack on religion, you'll be disappointed. Shapiro writes without malice and looks to reason and the evidence to make his points.
Shapiro presents an interesting argument not so much in changing beliefs but looks at justification for beliefs. He frequently turns to Caesar's crossing the Rubicon as a historical example of an event in the past and why it should be believed. Before turning to historical events Shapiro sets some guidelines and definitions. Miracle, for example, is a word with many meanings from the"Miracle on Ice" to medical reversals to water into wine. Evidence shows stage four cancer kills a person almost all the time, but not every time. Remission is a remote but possible outcome. Chance, coincidence, and plain luck are mathematically possible and do not indicate a miracle or the supernatural.
Another idea along the same medical lines is an imaginary disease the author creates. It will cause a painful death if it is not caught early enough. The patient in the story has been tested and found to have the disease. The doctor says not to worry there is a cure with side effects that are permanent and very unpleasant. The patient asks the doctor if he is sure of the test results. The doctor said the test is 99.9% accurate. If the patient wants to risk a 1-1,000 shot he can. A helpful friend who happens to be a statistician busts into the office and asks "What is the baseline?" Seemingly an unimportant question since a 1 in 1,000 shot is always a 1-1,000 shot. But it's not. The imaginary disease infects only 1 in 10,000,000 (baseline). That means testing the 10,000,000 people does not present one positive, but 10,000. The actual chance the person who tested positive for being positive for the disease is 1-10,001. Much better odds than 9.99% positive.
The idea of belief and justified belief is a matter of examination and evidence. A person can believe in whatever they want, but it depends if that belief is justified. Growing up in Cleveland I believed that the Indians would win the world series next year every year. How many years can a team go without winning the World Series? It is at least 68 years. Belief in a change doesn't make it happen or justified.
Shapiro creates a religion that is obviously ridiculous, then moves to Mormonism, and the resurrection of Jesus and holds them to equal scrutiny. He uses historical tests to comparing Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon to the above examples -- Historical written records both from supporters and enemies, physical evidence, reliable accounting, and implicating consequences. Needless to say, the results fall into what can be expected. When incredible reports are made, all explanations need to be looked at before accepting that it is a miracle. An advanced race of aliens can be equally credible as the supernatural.
As Arthur C Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Supernatural could easily replace the word "magic." Shapiro uses reason and evidence to make his point and holds miracles in history to the same standards as one would any other historical event. Evidence of the supernatural and supernatural forces acting in the natural world is nonexistent in reason or logic. Faith in the supernatural is different because it requires no physical proof. Shapiro's goal and purpose of the book are studying the justification of the belief miracles. He treats all the historical events with the same standards so there is a repeating of steps throughout the book. The reading is enjoyable as Shapiro breaks up the philosophy and historical tests with humor. For those expecting a Richard Dawkins attack on religion, you'll be disappointed. Shapiro writes without malice and looks to reason and the evidence to make his points.
October 24, 2023
Primer on Epistemology and sufficient justification for beliefs.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews