Bill Dembski

André Kole and the face of professional stage magicians

World-renowned magician, illusionist, and skeptic André Kole believes that the faith healers who promise miracle cures to millions are in the same business he is — magic and illusion. They use the power of suggestion, distraction, sleight-of-hand, and emotional appeal to create the perception of healing when all they’ve done is play tricks on the audience’s senses the same way magicians do. The key difference is that magicians freely admit they’re there to entertain while the healers insist their powers are real and use that false claim to deceive desperate people.

Kole knows all the tools the miracle healers use to create the impression that they’re healing the sick. A key tool is the power of suggestion. In an interview with the authors, Kole explained, “People get caught up in the excitement, the entertainment, the methods used to lead people down that road that what they are witnessing is legitimate and real. Add that to the fact that many of these people are actually healed! But as most doctors will tell you, somewhere between 80 percent and maybe even 90 percent of sickness is psychological. When there is real legitimate organic disease involved, those people are not healed by these fakers, and what may be worse is what they then go through trying to figure out why others were healed and why they were not.”[1] [Read more…] about The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 7

The Faces of Miracles is an eBook written by Bill Dembski and Alex Thomas. It will be presented on this blog, BillDembski.com, over the next five months (November 2019 thru March 2020), with new installments typically appearing every week or every other week.

Table of Contents

0 Introduction [below, posted 11/4/19]
1 Christopher Gunderson: The Face of Documented Medical Miracles [posted 11/11/19]
2 Benny Hinn: The Face of High-Octane Faith Healers [posted 11/27/19]
3 Thurman Scrivner: The Face of Bible Extremism [posted 12/4/2019]
4 Eben Alexander: The Face of Near-Death Experiences [posted 12/15/2019]
5 William Nolen: The Face of Medical Scrutiny [posted 1/6/2020]
6 James Randi: The Face of Expert Skeptics [posted 1/22/2020]
7 André Kole: The Face of Professional Stage Magicians [posted 3/2/2020]
8 Danila Castelli: The Face of Healing Shrines
9 Eric Metaxas: The Face of Miracles Next Door
10 Matt Stanford: The Face of Faith-Science Integration
11 Hank Hanegraaff: The Face of Careful Bible Reading
12 Joni Eareckson Tada: The Face of Patient Endurance
13 John MacArthur: The Face of Cessationism
14 Craig Keener: The Face of Overwhelming Evidence
15 C.S. Lewis: The Face of Christian Apologetics
16 Epilogue
A1 Appendix 1: What People Believe
A2 Appendix 2: Miracle Survey
A3 Appendix 3: Hume and Spinoza

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Introduction

Most books on miracles reach one of three conclusions: Miracles happen. Miracles don’t happen. Miracles can’t happen.

This book takes a different tack. Rather than settle the existence or nonexistence of miracles, we ask why we’re talking about miracles in the first place. Why do we make such a big deal about them? What makes them an endless topic of debate? If miracles do indeed happen, why isn’t the evidence for them more convincing and obvious? If miracles don’t happen, why isn’t their absence equally convincing and obvious?

Miracles are neither like horses nor like unicorns. Horses have made themselves so clearly evident that no one can deny their existence. Unicorns have hidden themselves so well that no one is justified asserting their existence. Miracles occupy a middle ground that gives reasons to think that they exist but also raises doubts to question whether they exist.

Miracles cannot be dismissed as the ravings of an unhinged or uneducated or unscientific fringe. Many normal, feet-on-the-ground, well-informed people believe that they or their loved ones have personally experienced a miracle, that they have good reasons for believing in miracles, and that miracles play an important role in the world.

As just one of countless examples, take Nobel laureate writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s description of his cure from cancer while a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag:

In autumn 1953 it looked very much as though I had only a few months to live. In December the doctors—comrades in exile—confirmed that I had only three weeks left… I did not die, however. With a hopelessly neglected and acutely malignant tumor, this was a divine miracle. I could see no other explanation. Since then, all the life that has been given back to me has not been mine in the full sense: it is built around a purpose. [Solzhenitsyn 1975, pp. 3-4]

Solzhenitsyn lived another fifty-five years. [Read more…] about The Faces of Miracles — A Serialized eBook by Bill Dembski and Alex Thomas

James Randi and the face of expert skeptics

James Randi resists being labeled a “debunker.” The legendary magician prefers “scientific investigator.” As he explains, “If I were to start out saying, ‘This is not true and I’m going to prove it’s not true,’ that means I’ve made up my mind in advance.” Instead, he tries to start from a neutral position with an open mind toward the claims being made: “I just don’t know what I’m going to find out. That may end up — and it usually does — as a complete debunking. But I don’t set out to debunk it.”[1]

On top of the world-wide fame that comes after more than seventy years as a magician (including escaping from a straightjacket suspended upside down over Niagara Falls), The Amazing Randi is also famous for his cash offer to anyone who can demonstrate supernatural powers. He raised his original award of $1,000 to $10,000 in 1964, matching the prize (which was never won) established by the legendary Harry Houdini in 1923. In the 1990s Randi raised his offer to $1 million.[2] [Read more…] about The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 6

William Nolen and the face of medical scrutiny

William Nolen, like most surgeons of his generation (he earned his medical degree in 1953), was wary of treatments outside traditional medicine. At the same time, he was frustrated when his patients had ongoing problems like asthma, arthritis, or paralysis that he couldn’t cure. He hated having to tell patients there was nothing else he could do and they would just have to live with their condition.

Nolen recognized that this sometimes drove desperate people to non-traditional practitioners who promised to help them when doctors had failed. But Nolen believed no one without a formal medical education should be dispensing medical advice. It was a waste of time and money that would only lead to more disappointment.

He changed his mind in 1971 after reading an account by New York Times editor and columnist James Reston on Chinese acupuncture. “Now,” Nolen wrote, “it appeared that there was at least a possibility … I might sometimes have been wrong. Maybe — sometime, somewhere — I’d had a patient beyond my help, but not beyond the help of a Chinese practitioner or of someone else.”[1] [Read more…] about The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 5