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Nate_Gabriel comments on Questions on Theism - Less Wrong
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So, a few observations on miracles.
There are miracle stories in every religious tradition and plenty of not-exactly-religious traditions. Unless there's some big difference in credibility -- which I'm not aware of any reason to think there is -- if you think "no smoke without fire" about one set then you should think the same about the others too. Which means you either have to believe in lots of different gods, or believe in one god and lots of evil spirits (or something) that just happen to do more or less the same sorts of miracle. (Or, I guess, believe that miraculous things happen but they're brought about by people's latent psychic powers or something, but that's pretty far from any religion's account of these things.)
When miraculous stories are investigated carefully, they consistently seem to evaporate. This happens even when the people doing the investigation belong to the religion that claims responsibility for the alleged miracle. For instance, consider something commonly cited as evidence for miracles: the shrine at Lourdes, to which pilgrims in their millions trek in the hope of miraculous healing. The Roman Catholic Church has a process -- to its credit, not a completely ridiculous one -- by which it certifies some healings there as miraculous. Although the process isn't completely ridiculous, it's far from obviously bulletproof; the main requirement is that a bunch of Roman Catholic doctors declare that the alleged cure is inexplicable according to current medical knowledge. As an example, the most recent case is of someone who had a tumour that went away after she bathed at Lourdes. (My understanding is that this is a thing that occasionally happens, miracle or no.) So, anyway, they appear to certify about one miracle per two million pilgrims, and I think pretty much all the pilgrims are there in hope of healing. One per two million! (If you think the alleged cures are so improbable that they couldn't happen naturally one time in two million, I have a bridge to sell you.)
In some situations (those in which a lot of these miraculous healings tend to occur) it really isn't difficult to get people to think more has happened than really has. Consider, for instance, the case of Peter Popoff. Lots of miraculous healings at his meetings -- but the whole thing was a fraud.
In general, unfortunately, people do lie. And make mistakes. And see what they hope or expect to see. And tales "grow in the telling", so that after a few steps of Chinese Whispers something sounds far more inexplicable and impressive than it ever really was.
You might try the following experiment: Talk to some of your Christian friends, and ask them for the most impressive examples they have personally experienced of miraculous interventions by God. If in fact there are no miracles, what you should expect is that (1) the things they cite won't, on the whole, be all that impressive; (2) the more careful and intelligent of them will have less impressive experiences; (3) the most impressive experiences will be the least verifiable.
I have done this. The most impressive-sounding one happened to a friend of mine who had formerly been an athlete. She had to withdraw from sports for a year because of an unexpected muscular condition. (If this is obviously medically wrong, it's probably because I changed details for privacy.) As you probably expect, that year involved plenty of spiritual growth that she attributes to having had to quit sports.
At the end of that time, a group of church people laid hands on her and prayed, she felt some extreme acceleration in her heart rate, and her endurance was back the next time she tested it. A doctor confirmed that the muscular thing was completely gone, and she's been physically active ever since.
Now obviously this isn't bulletproof. You just need her to spontaneously recover at some point before the laying on of hands. (I have no idea how likely this would be; probably not very.) The rest is exactly the sort of thing that might happen regardless of whether there's a miracle. But it still sounds really impressive. If I weren't actively trying not to spin it to sound even more miraculous, it'd sound even more impressive.
But this is just the most miraculous-sounding story I've heard from a source I trust. I only know so many people. This account is probably well within the distribution of how miraculous anecdotes can get. I'd feel weird saying "you spontaneously got better a few months earlier, and so did anyone else with a similar story."
I recall reading--I forget where--that laying on of hands does have positive effects that outperform chance. (But cuddling probably does, too. Emotionally-charged human contact does tend to interact with body systems in interesting ways.)
My father (who calls himself a Buddhist) has done feats of hand-laying. Most notable was the instance when his mother was in the hospital, and the staff was convinced she was within hours of death (they put out a call to her (Christian) preacher, but he was busy). My father did his trick, and she got better enough to be discharged. (Things went back to awful not long thereafter, but this might be said to have bought her several months at least.)
I don't get the feeling that my dad really alieves in the abilities he claims to have. (For starters, he only ever tried it on me once, and was clearly non-serious about that one.) He has been serious in how he talked about using it on others, though.
I have a vague recollection of an article like this that referenced all that hand touching NBA players do with a teammate doing free throws.
The atheist/neo-pagan Eric Raymond claims to be able to do this semi-reliably.
Can you go in to more detail on the muscular condition? This might be relevant.
Regarding an increase in heart rate, that's pretty normal to experience as a result of a social situation (think public speaking, going on a date, laughing with friends, etc.) I imagine if atheism is true, the reason theists "lay hands" on one another is because it's a social situation that seems consistently provoke an interesting and intense feeling in the person who is having hands laid on them.
It wasn't actually a muscular condition. My friend is surprisingly unwilling to spread this around and only told me under the extreme circumstances of me telling her I might be about to become an atheist. I wanted to change enough that if she read this on the Internet she wouldn't know it was about her.
So there was a clear potential payoff to her desires in giving you a miracle story - keeping you in the fold.
I don't question her good will toward you, but I've found that the correspondence theory of truth is not as widely held as those who rely on it believe. One alternative is that truths are useful statements, whether or not they accurately model the state of the world.
Amusingly all the people I know who reject it are atheists (of the SJW type).
The real joke, that few have gotten the punchline for, is that SJWs aren't atheists, they're puritanical theocrats.
SJWs are special in terms of the correspondence theory of truth in that they'll explicity reject it, while many, many more of varying ideological persuasions only implicitly reject it, in failing to find it particularly motivating.
They may be special, but hardly unique -- it's not hard to find environmentalists who also reject it, for example.
What do you mean by "not atheists"?
For what it's worth, I think people can have very strong aliefs that affect their health, and powerful experiences can change the aliefs.