So this was going to be the topic of my dissertation under my then grad director Carlos Eire was at UVA and now at Yale. He has written a really nice volume entitled A History of the Impossible focusing on Theresa of Avila and Joseph of Cupertino - the Flying Fryar. I was at the time looking at exchanges between English Catholics and Anglicans in the 17th century. What many of the Anglican arguments boiled down to was ridicule of Catholic miracle claims (such claims were used as an apologetic to support Catholicism as the True religion. It became obvious to me that this same criticism would ultimately be aimed at Protestant dependence on the Scriptural miracles (and post-biblical miracle claims). In the Anglican criticisms the post-biblical Catholic miracles were just ridiculous - I found a work that was originally by a French Catholic that was a collection of animal miracles - most of them focused on venerating the Host - an Anglican priest translated the document into English and then added a lengthy preface that in essence said - look at how stupid and gullible these Catholics are they will believe anything. Of course my research was going to expand on the topic of miracles - especially the miracles of the Saints - whose miracles were done post mortem and were viewed as evidence (actually part of the evidence used in the 'trial' to prove the sanctity) that this person wasn't if Purgatory but was in the presence of God in Heaven and as such could directly intervene on a person's behalf. Anyway Carlos left UVA where I was a student - I was taking to long and didn't complete - mainly because there was no one left in the UVA religious studies department to support my efforts...and the job market sucked...
I read his book a couple of years ago! It’s part of what got me considering this topic more carefully. I hope you can continue your research in some form if you desire to — there’s much to be done in this area.
I also had the great privilege of studying with Gary Habermas - one of the great Resurrection scholars out there...he doesn't get enough credit for his work through the years. I think I might have made Carlos think about why flying and levitation were miracles. I asked this question in a seminar with him and the other students used stain glassed window depictions of the transfiguration to say that was the reason - I just laughed at them. Finally Carlos said - it was right around the same time that the claim that witches could fly - so this was an important counter miracle to Satan's empowering his minions to fly!
Jeffrey Kripal, in his scholarly book, The Flip, writes about “superhuman” phenomena experienced by scientists and scholars, people who he considers less gullible on average than the general population. He would support your argument that naturalism is unlikely to explain all of them. In “The Kitchen Episode” of my novel I posit one reason why God, if God exists, might not intervene in our world. In my epilogue and afterword I describe what sort of God would comport with our current understanding of cosmology. My arguments do not support the existence of a God of any religion. But they strongly suggest that there is room for some sort of Divine presence in our universe. I’m sure that you’re aware that the “observable” universe is estimated to be 93 billion light years wide and expanding at the speed of light (faster than light according to some). Recall that one light year is roughly 5.8 TRILLION miles. I would look favorably at any concept of the Divine that puts it in charge of the entirety of existence, but not on some demigod in charge of just a small part of it. Excerpts are posted on my profile, so that you don’t have to buy the novel to be part of the conversation.
So this was going to be the topic of my dissertation under my then grad director Carlos Eire was at UVA and now at Yale. He has written a really nice volume entitled A History of the Impossible focusing on Theresa of Avila and Joseph of Cupertino - the Flying Fryar. I was at the time looking at exchanges between English Catholics and Anglicans in the 17th century. What many of the Anglican arguments boiled down to was ridicule of Catholic miracle claims (such claims were used as an apologetic to support Catholicism as the True religion. It became obvious to me that this same criticism would ultimately be aimed at Protestant dependence on the Scriptural miracles (and post-biblical miracle claims). In the Anglican criticisms the post-biblical Catholic miracles were just ridiculous - I found a work that was originally by a French Catholic that was a collection of animal miracles - most of them focused on venerating the Host - an Anglican priest translated the document into English and then added a lengthy preface that in essence said - look at how stupid and gullible these Catholics are they will believe anything. Of course my research was going to expand on the topic of miracles - especially the miracles of the Saints - whose miracles were done post mortem and were viewed as evidence (actually part of the evidence used in the 'trial' to prove the sanctity) that this person wasn't if Purgatory but was in the presence of God in Heaven and as such could directly intervene on a person's behalf. Anyway Carlos left UVA where I was a student - I was taking to long and didn't complete - mainly because there was no one left in the UVA religious studies department to support my efforts...and the job market sucked...
I read his book a couple of years ago! It’s part of what got me considering this topic more carefully. I hope you can continue your research in some form if you desire to — there’s much to be done in this area.
I also had the great privilege of studying with Gary Habermas - one of the great Resurrection scholars out there...he doesn't get enough credit for his work through the years. I think I might have made Carlos think about why flying and levitation were miracles. I asked this question in a seminar with him and the other students used stain glassed window depictions of the transfiguration to say that was the reason - I just laughed at them. Finally Carlos said - it was right around the same time that the claim that witches could fly - so this was an important counter miracle to Satan's empowering his minions to fly!
Jeffrey Kripal, in his scholarly book, The Flip, writes about “superhuman” phenomena experienced by scientists and scholars, people who he considers less gullible on average than the general population. He would support your argument that naturalism is unlikely to explain all of them. In “The Kitchen Episode” of my novel I posit one reason why God, if God exists, might not intervene in our world. In my epilogue and afterword I describe what sort of God would comport with our current understanding of cosmology. My arguments do not support the existence of a God of any religion. But they strongly suggest that there is room for some sort of Divine presence in our universe. I’m sure that you’re aware that the “observable” universe is estimated to be 93 billion light years wide and expanding at the speed of light (faster than light according to some). Recall that one light year is roughly 5.8 TRILLION miles. I would look favorably at any concept of the Divine that puts it in charge of the entirety of existence, but not on some demigod in charge of just a small part of it. Excerpts are posted on my profile, so that you don’t have to buy the novel to be part of the conversation.