Purpose of Miracles

Several writers have expressed scepticism about a miraculous cure from back pain following routine surgery. The patient himself, who happens to be a deacon of the Catholic Church, has attributed his cure to a picture of Cardinal Newman [BBC News 13 September 2010].

@mjrobbins asked Is God scraping the barrel for miracles? (Guardian 13 Sept 2010) and suggested that Vatican's latest miracle is evidence of a worrying decline in God's powers.

But clearly the purpose of this particular miracle was to allow Vatican to beatify a Cardinal whose own view of such professed miracles is expressed in the following passage from his first essay on Miracles:

"Much more inconclusive are those which are actually attended by a physical cause known or suspected to be adequate to their production. Some of those who were cured at the tomb of the Abbé Paris were at the time making use of the usual remedies; the person whose inflamed eye was relieved was, during his attendance at the sepulchre, under the care of an eminent oculist; another was cured of a lameness in the knee by the mere effort to kneel at the tomb. Arnobius challenges the Heathens to produce one of the pretended miracles of their gods performed without the application of some prescription." [Essays on Miracles]

Similar controversy surrounds the miracle attributed to Mother Teresa for the purposes of her beatification.

In 2002, the Vatican recognized as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, after the application of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture. Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the picture, curing the cancerous tumor. Critics — including some of Besra's medical staff and, initially, Besra's husband — insisted that conventional medical treatment had eradicated the tumor [Wikipedia: Mother Teresa].

In March 2010, the miracle cure attributed to the late Pope John Paul II, for the purposes of his beatification, ran into some difficulties.

The inexplicable cure of a young French nun from Parkinson's disease ... seemed difficult for the Vatican to certify as a miracle. According to the Vatican's own rules, the medically inexplicable cure must be instantaneous, complete, and lasting. Some are arguing that the world will have to wait her entire lifetime to determine whether it was lasting, in case the symptoms return. In addition, doubts have been cast about whether she had Parkinson's to begin with [Miracle under scrutiny in John Paul beatification Independent, 29 March 2010].

Within a year, Pope Benedict XVI formally approved this miracle [BBC News 14 January 2011]. Obviously he had no choice. "Nuns can be very useful." [Jesus and Mo, 16 April 2007]

During 2013, a second miracle emerged to enable Pope John Paul II to be canonized. This took the form of a mere memory of the late pope, which was able to emerge from somewhere (a diary perhaps) and cure somebody. (This sounds suspiciously like a horcrux. Clearly the Jesuits have been twisting the Harry Potter books for their own purposes.)

The Holy See has yet to reveal what the miracle was or where and when it took place but Vatican sources said it would “amaze the world”.

Nick Squires, Vatican to announce John Paul II 'miracle' (Telegraph, 19 Jun 2013). See also Barbie Latza Nadeau, After Second Approved Miracle, Pope John Paul II Likely to Become a Saint (Daily Beast July 2013). Pope John Paul II and the trouble with miracles (LA Times, July 2013).

Lacking the sophisticated theological thinking with which the Vatican is blessed, or the devious logic often associated with the Jesuits, popular journalism tends to describe all cases of unexplained recovery as miraculous. For example, an elderly widower appears to have regained his sight after kissing a photograph of his late wife.

It's a miracle! Daily Mail 17 Feb 2011. Obituary notice November 2009.

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Meanwhile Lourdes. In 2007, Pope Benedict offered special indulgencies for anyone visiting the site of the Virgin Mary's miraculous appearance in the 150th anniversary year. The BBC offered the following explanation for the spiritually unenlightened.

Indulgences became infamous in the 16th century for being sold rather than earned, helping, historians say, trigger the Protestant reformation. While some might consider indulgences an outdated concept, great spiritual importance have been assigned to them by Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. BBC News 6 December 2007

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If a dramatic and unexpected cure can be regarded as a miracle, what about a dramatic and unexpected death?

For example, an 80-year-old Spanish cardinal Agustin Garcia Gasco Vicente, in Rome for the beatification of late pope John Paul II in May 2011, died of a heart attack shortly before the start of the ceremony. [News24 1 May 2011].

For another example, an Italian man was killed when a giant crucifix toppled on top of him. The crucifix had been erected to celebrate the canonization of the late Pope John Paul II in April 2014. In a bizarre twist, the dead man is said to have been living in his home town of Lovere on a street named after Pope John XXIII, who was to be canonized on the same day. (BBC News 24 April 2014, Christian Today 25 April 2014, Huffington Post 25 April 2014).


Don't these deaths cancel out the miracles?

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Update 2019

A second miracle has been attributed to Cardinal Newman, which will allow Pope Francis to declare him a saint. "I was healed by Cardinal Newman" (Catholic Herald, 5 July 2019). This one seems less amenable to a conventional medical explanation, but how does it satisfty the cardinal's own notion of what might count as a miracle? After all, Newman thought it was "often very difficult to distinguish between a providence and a miracle". The key question seems to be about agency - to what extent can the cure be credited to Newman himself (because the woman cured had been praying to him) rather than to God alone (which Newman referred to as providential mercy).

Commentators have also observed that both the miracles attributed to Newman occurred in the United States. Newman's view was that miracles were more likely to occur "in a country in which faith and prayer abound".


See also

Adam Buick, Newman on Miracles (The Sceptic, 22 September 2010)

Christopher Howse, Cardinal Newman's miraculous bones (Telegraph, 23 Aug 2008)

Colbert I. King, This country is in need of a miracle (Washington Post, 19 April 2019)

Peter Le, David Hume and Henry Newman on Miracle (undated)

Garry Wills, Stealing Newman, (NYR Blog September 2010), Does the Pope Matter? (NYR Blog March 2013), Popes Making Popes Saints (NYR Blog July 2013).

Papal Canonizations a Lesson in Subtle Art of Catholic Politics (Newsmax 25 April 2014)

Wikipedia: Canonisation of John Henry Newman, Mother Theresa


Updated 7 July 2019

Trespassers Will

David McCoy complains about a sign reading "No Dumping - Violators May Be Prosecuted". He objects to the permissive and non-threatening implications of the modal verb "May", and is nostalgic for the unequivocal days of right and wrong, of firm laws and firm enforcement of the laws, when cardboard signs read "Trespassers Will Be Shot". [Modal Verbs: The Words Behind the Loopholes ]

I want to make two points here. The first relates to the purpose of the sign - what is it trying to achieve, and what kind of language is appropriate to this purpose. The second point relates the nature of ambiguity - is May really more ambiguous than Will?

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The purpose of signs like these is of course admonitory - they are designed to dissuade people from doing something. You might think that an uncertain sanction (may be prosecuted) is less of a disincentive than a certain sanction (will be shot).

But then which of the following warning signs do you find most persuasive? Perhaps it depends on your national culture. We British are a nation of accountants, so we like to be told what the maximum fine is.

• British: If you climb on this electricity pylon you will be fined £100
• German/American: It is a Federal Offence to climb on this electricity pylon.
• Italian: If you climb on this pylon you may die.

(I inherited this joke from my father, but I don't know whether it was his own observation or he got it from somewhere else. I think there may have been a French one as well. Please comment if you have a source, or any other nationalities.)

Based on the simple linguistic analysis David recommends, the possibility of death is not as strong a sanction as the certainty of a fine. Like Hermione's joke in the first Harry Potter book - "We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled."

David likes warnings to be proper threatening. When I was growing up, parents and teachers said things like "Don't do that or else": that was regarded as proper threatening in the days of "unequivocal days of right and wrong, of firm laws and firm enforcement of the laws". So we usually did what we were told and didn't find out what the punishment would have been.

Following David's logic, parents should say things like "Don't do that or else you will be grounded for three days and fined 2 weeks pocket money." But is precise specification of the sanction really more effective in encouraging good behaviour? Or does it merely encourage calculated risk-taking?

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Meanwhile, “Trespassers Will” is still pretty indefinite. Does it mean ALL trespassers or SOME? Immediately or later? If I trespass and I am not shot, is that a counter-example or a stay of execution? If no trespassers have ever been shot, what should I conclude from that? Do I want to be the first?

Perhaps it would be better to have a sign, like road safety signs, saying “341 trespassers have been shot this year. Some of them survived. Please take your litter home.”

Or perhaps this …

Next to his house was a piece of broken board which had: “TRESPASSERS W” on it. When Christopher Robin asked the Piglet what it meant, he said it was his grandfather’s name…it was short for Trespassers Will, which was short for Trespassers William. And his grandfather had had two names in case he lost one—Trespassers after an uncle, and William after Trespassers.

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I agree with David that the English language is tricky. But I think he is wrong to blame modal verbs - may, can, shall, might, etc. - which he identifies as "the words that power loopholes." These words tend to be used consciously, not to create inadvertent loopholes but to deliberately underspecify some outcome. In David's example, the rule is pretty clear ("No Dumping") but the sanction is underspecified ("Violators May").

Meanwhile, "Trespassers Will" is a false universal, with no modal word to draw your attention to the ambiguity. In my opinion, this kind of ambiguity is much more dangerous - both when used deliberately, to mislead or persuade, or when used inadvertently.

Some people find the NLP metamodel useful for identifying structural ambiguities in English speech. (Other people think NLP is the work of the devil, but of course the devil is in the detail.) All structural ambiguities, or just some? I suspect there is no assured method for eliminating all possible ambiguity.

See also Unambiguous Threat (September 2005), Good Ideas from Flaky Sources (December 2009)

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Update: Here's a great example, found by @ShawnCallahan


Updated 8 June 2014

Enchanted Coins

Inspired by Hermione Granger (who distributes magically enchanted coins to the members of a secret society in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), someone has been passing technologically enhanced Canadian coins to United States defence contractors. [ABC Money, Yahoo]. Or perhaps not [Globe and Mail].

The coins (dubbed "spy coins" by some journalists) contain tiny transmitters, and we may guess they are intended for something to do with espionage or surveillance.

Bruce Schneier thinks the story sounds implausible. "There are far easier ways to track someone than to give him something he's going to give away the next time he buys a cup of coffee. Like, maybe, by his cell phone."

But Bruce's criticism makes three questionable assumptions.

Firstly, it assumes we know exactly what the other side wants to track. [Note 1] Maybe they want to find out whether the coins are spent on coffee or cocaine. Maybe they want to track the circulation of hot money. [Note 2]

Secondly, it assumes that the coins were deliberately planted on the defence contractors. Maybe the real espionage targets had already spent the coins in the coffee shop, and the defence contractors merely chanced to receive the coins in their change. [Note 3]

And thirdly it assumes that there is a relatively small number of these coins. But if there were millions of these spy coins in circulation, it wouldn't matter if some of them were spent in coffee shops.

Meanwhile, what is the purpose of publishing this story in this form? One effect is that patriotic US citizens will get the message that Canadian coins (like Canadian drugs) are to be distrusted. Obviously the bad guys wouldn't dare to doctor US coins would they?

Note 1. Bruce is assuming the purpose and then evaluating whether a given mechanism will satisfy this purpose. The POSIWID alternative is to infer the possible purpose from the likely effects of a given mechanism. In other words, reasoning in the opposite direction.

Note 2: A Nonny makes a similar point. "RFID tags in coins is a stupid way to spy. It is, however, an excellent way to track currency (especially through vending machines and the like). Everything that makes it a weak spy tool makes it a good tool for a mint that is trying to assess coinage usage patterns." clvrmnky disagrees. "I seriously doubt Canada would spend the time and money coming up with tech to track currency usage. They already know how currency is used." This disgreement yields another example of the different kinds of reasoning discussed in Note 1.

Note 3: Perhaps defence contractors have exceptional capability for detecting unusual coinage. Or perhaps the coins were detected when they entered a secure facility. Defence contractors therefore serve as markers for the population as a whole.