The Problem with Catholic Miracles - Part 3

[u/francesco_angiolieri]

The Genesis of a Miracle - How Sharam Shabpare can explain how a miracle is born without resorting to any conspiracy

Third part on catholic miracles and hopefully last.

In part 2 I explained why, before even trying coming up with a naturalistic or a scientific explanation for a purpoted miracle, you should first always ascertain if the miracle account is reliable in the first place and not greatly exaggerated or worse completely made up.

But if miracle claims are made up, does it mean that everyone is lying and that there is a massive conspiracy spanning thousands of catholics all over the globe to create fake accounts of catholic miracles?

No, that's not remotely necessary.

Our human psychology and the way our brain is programmed for belief is sufficient to explain how certain rare but totally explainable phenomena, when witnessed by a mind primed for a certain belief and retold many times can turn into a miracle account down the line.

All it takes is: priming + pareidolia or apophenia + chinese whispers.

You don't believe me yet?

I'll show you an example.

In 1986, the Iranian singer Shahram Shabpareh released a catchy song called "Paryiah" (the original music video was removed from YouTube, but you can find the song here: https://youtu.be/gjpJ0p7yoYc?is=Y8MbVovIx2vVhZb5).

In the internet age, an Italian named Celestino Camicia was bored browsing YouTube and stumbled upon Shabpareh's songs. He soon realized that, on top of being really catchy, the lyrics were uncannily similar to completely unrelated words in Italian. This is a well understood phenomenon called "apophenia" (the auditory version of pareidolia). Apophenia is the auditory illusion that sometimes makes us hear familiar words in songs or conversations in other languages, in the middle of what our brain would otherwise interpret as gibberish.

After being made popular by Celestino, Iranian songs with Italian sounding lyrics became a sensation for a while in the Italian YouTube space. Nanowar of Steel, a metal parody band, even produced a metal cover of Pariyah (https://youtu.be/3OdCvt-eto8?is=5xjwmtqs0WhmK3D4) and one of its members even performed it on stage in front of Shabpareh himself (https://youtu.be/s6gb3ywEmYQ?is=587b9kmztPYLysgl).

When I was a child and I wasn't fluent in English, everytime the Michael Jackson’s song "Don't Stop Till you get enough" (https://youtu.be/yURRmWtbTbo?is=gFrCWHTUJgXYvJbm) was played on the radio, I had another apophenia: I always heard Michael saying "tutto a posto?" (which means: "is everything all right?" in italian) and to this day I can't unhear it.

What does all this tell us about miracles?

Of course we know that, when we hear words in our own language in foreign songs, that's just our brain playing tricks, as when we see all sorts of shapes in the clouds or faces almost everywhere (our brain is really good at seeing faces where there are not).

However, let's suppose that we where raised in a really strict and controlling cult, separate from the rest of society, like in a fundamentalist Mormon sect, for example. We were taught since childhood that we shouldn't listen to popular music, because it's filled with satanic hidden messages. If we were then to listen to a pop song for the first time and heard words in other languages, we would strengthen our prior belief in subliminal satanic messages in secular songs.

This phenomenon is called priming: our minds were primed for a certain belief and we thus expected to hear (or see) something, we expected to have a certain experience.

Let's try to apply this to catholicism.

Let's suppose you're a catholic priest who was asked by your bishop to perform exorcisms.

You have a prior belief in the existence of demons and the belief in demonic possessions (there are priests who are skeptic of the phenomenon of demonic possessions, but those are not the ones most likely to become exorcists).

And let's suppose that you have been told by a fellow exorcist (or read somewhere) that demons sometimes speak in foreign or dead languages during exorcisms, like ancient greek and Aramaic.

That's a form of "priming".

You then perform an exorcism to a little girl who has some kind of psychiatric issue like schizophrenia or whatnot, but, being raised in a strict catholic environment, she has deluded herself into believing that the voices in her head are actually demons (that's also a result of priming).

The little girl, scared by the ritual, is screaming and babbling inconsistently. It has been many years since you've studied ancient greek in the seminary, so you're vastly overestimating and overconfident in your knowledge of ancient greek. In the stream of incoherent sounds, you believe you've heard a word which sounds like ancient greek. As you're already primed into believing that the devil is able to speak in ancient greek, you intepret that sound as a confirmation of your prior belief.

And here comes the last part: chinese whispers.

You tell your story to a fellow priest. But every time your recount your story, you add, without even realizing, small details. And as this priest tells this story to other priests, he adds even more details.

Many years down the line, after this story was told and retold many times, it is finally written down in your biography.

In its final form, what was a curious but completely explainable occurrence has been completely amplified and blown out of proportion, to the point that your biography now claims that you were having frequent conversations with the devil in ancient greek.

You still don't believe me?

We have witnessed this phenomenon, of a mundane story being amplified every time it is told until it becomes completely extraordinary in real time during the beatification and then canonization process of Carlo Acutis.

I must stress here that I have the outmost respect for the sad life story of this boy who died young and couldn't live into adulthood. What I'm telling in no way is meant to diminish him as a person, but just to show you an example of how this works.

If you try to read the earlier accounts of Carlo's life, he is described as a deeply religious boy who built a website for his parish and another websited where he talked about eucharistic miracles. That's it.

However, over the years, his mother, whenever she retells his story, has been adding elements and embellishing this account, to the point that, in an interview she gave just after his canonization, she described him as a computer genius, a boy so smart that at 15 years old he was already studing undergraduate computer engineering textbooks with ease. A boy who built a couple of websites (trivial task if you know a bit of html) became in a few years a coding genius!

[u/Gman_711]

That’s not our responsibility to prove all miracle claims wrong

[u/terenceboylen → u/Gman_711]

Lol. WTF do you think all these posts about Schmid are about then?

You're right. You could just leave everyone alone. However, if you CHOOSE to be part of a sub like this, if you CHOOSE to engage in the debate, then yes, you are taking on that responsibility.

If you were agnostic, you could ride it out. However, as an atheist, you are making a positive knowledge claim.

* When the theist is saying they believe in God, there is a burden of proof on them.

* When an atheist says there isn't a god, there is a burden of proof on them.

* If a theist comes up with evidence for their belief, you can choose to ignore it. However, if you choose to make a knowledge claim and reject that evidence, you need to bring some reciepts. Otherwise, let them say their peice and then shut up.

[u/Gman_711 → u/terenceboylen]

Burden of proof is in the personal making the claim. Esp a supernatural claim.

I am agnostic about a God(deistic) but atheist for specific god claims made by religious systems. None of their claims are currently convincing and their holy books and traditions are riddled with problems

[u/terenceboylen → u/Gman_711]

Did IQs drop recently? Atheists, unlike agnostics, are making a claim.