Evidence of miracles

[Paul2]

Over at http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/ a commenter wrote:

RCC has two miracle committees that investigate such claims: (1) Lourdes; (2) saint making commitee. These are basically the same committees and they go by the same rules.

The rules are well known to be very strong. Lourdes miracles are the best documented in the world. they use medical experts from all over the Europe, the top medical people on that continent. They use skeptics on the committee. They have their own pier reviewed academic journal.

The have rules designed to screen out possible remission, so for example they don't allow certain kinds of cancer for ten years after the alleged healing because they know the remission rates and take them into account.

The patienter cannot have treated the condition with medicine before, which cuts way way down on who they can even look at.

these strident rules are why they only have 65 official miracles, and 4,000 "remarkable" cases. The remarkable are those who almost make it but just don't squeak by the technicalities.

Anyone care to start a serious, substantive critique? Particularly regarding the nature of the scientific/medical review of the literature. The thread was discussing a case at Lourdes in which the patient's diseased lungs were "replaced" with new, healthy ones.

[Mister Agenda]

Does the committee work by consensus or vote?

[MG1962]

I cant comment on the inner workings of the review panel, but I do know it is not required to be Catholic or even Christian to be on it.

There are three levels a suspected event has to pass through

The initial Lourdes Medical Bureau. If they get through this, they go to the next step, which is the International Lourdes Medical Committee. Usually a specialist in the particular field, example lung cancer, examines the case in minute detail. I am not sure how membership to this group is decided

If the examiner is happy with what they see, the committe then sends it to the Catholic Church for evaluation. If the Church is happy there is no possible chance of a natural cure, they will pronounce it a miracle.

[Puppycow]

I googled a couple articles about Lourdes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/02/religion.france
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/09/france.religion

These "miracles" seem to be of the medical variety, where someone is alleged to have an incurable condition which "miraculously" goes away. I'm very skeptical of such miracles, but as a layperson with no specific knowledge of any of these supposed cases, it would be beyond my capabilities to debunk them. I think it would at least require a lot of time and research.

But I'll throw out a couple alternative hypotheses:
1) The alleged condition was misdiagnosed or never existed in the first place.
2) The alleged condition was not, in fact, "incurable." The human body does have self-healing capacities that may not be fully understood.
3) Witnesses are unreliable.
4) The committee is invested in the idea that there are at least some miracles, and is biased toward finding at least a few.

[paximperium]

So what happens if an "unexplained" miracle is discovered to have natural cause a few years down the line like...oh just about all of modern medicine?

Miracles seem to only exist in the gaps of human knowledge...very sad.

[Paul2]

Thanks for the replies. The specific case of lung disease is remarkable, as the new, improved lungs replaced their seriously diseased originals *overnight*! That would seem to be a miracle if it happened.

I was hoping for a debunking, but, as Puppycow notes, that may be difficult for us armchair debunkers. Although a debunking of the general miracle-proclaiming process might be out there, waiting to be found.

[MG1962]

But I'll throw out a couple alternative hypotheses:
1) The alleged condition was misdiagnosed or never existed in the first place.
2) The alleged condition was not, in fact, "incurable." The human body does have self-healing capacities that may not be fully understood.
3) Witnesses are unreliable.
4) The committee is invested in the idea that there are at least some miracles, and is biased toward finding at least a few.

Whats the pay off for the non religious affliated members of the boards? And the Church does not give an automatic pass to every unexplained cure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Traynor

His cure has never been acknowledged by the Church

[MG1962]

So what happens if an "unexplained" miracle is discovered to have natural cause a few years down the line like...oh just about all of modern medicine?

Miracles seem to only exist in the gaps of human knowledge...very sad.

Well in a 150 years, there have only been 64 miracles acknowledged by the Church. The biggest problem is the literally thousands of other claimed cures that are thrown around. I suspect many of these would fall directly into your critisim

[Bikewer]

As I recall, Randi devoted a chapter of The Faith Healers to Lourdes, and debunked several of these "miracles".

Been quite a while since I read it....