Bill Dembski

Freedom, Technology, Education

Freedom, Technology, Education
Only the educated are free — Epictetus

The Faces of Miracles — A Serialized eBook by Bill Dembski and Alex Thomas

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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
5 William Nolen M.D. and the Face of Medical Scrutiny
6 James Randi and the Face of Expert Skeptics
etc.

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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

The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 3

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Chapter 3: Thurman Scrivner and the face of Bible extremism

Miracles are God’s reward for faithful, sinless living. If you have faith and turn from your sins, you’ll have miracles in your life. If you don’t, you won’t. Simple as that, according to preacher and healer Thurman Scrivner.

“Faith is what makes miraculous healing work,” Scrivner explains with quiet conviction. “If you’ve been praying and believing for more than two years and you haven’t gotten your answer yet, then you need to go ask God what’s wrong in your life. Because there’s some kind of a sin that’s blocking his miracle for you.”[1]

Many would argue that there’s no way to predict who will receive a miracle and who will ask in vain. The decision is God’s alone and God’s plans and reasons are beyond our ability to understand. Thurman Scrivner disagrees. He has no doubt that the Bible teaches us exactly what to do in order to bring a miracle into our lives. If we do it, we’ll receive that miracle without fail.

Scrivner says that miracles are a matter of faith, not of need. “If you don’t believe, you’re not going to get anything from a faith God,” he says. Faith, not need, moves God’s hand. “If need moved his hand, he would be following along behind the devil all the time trying mop up what the devil’s done. But God doesn’t follow along behind nothing or nobody.”

As founder and director of The Living Savior Ministries, Scrivner holds healing services around the country. He also teaches a monthly healing school and preaches weekly at his church near Dallas. Far from the image of the polished TV personality shouting to packed auditoriums about miracles and money, Thurman Scrivner is an unassuming grandfatherly type with silver hair combed straight back and a preference for dark shirts and light neckties. He has a folksy delivery that complements his soft Southern accent and a tendency to go his own way when it comes to grammar. Though he doesn’t get wound up in the pulpit like his more famous contemporaries, his quiet intensity and confidence in his interpretation of the Bible are unshakable. [Read more…] about The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 3

Faces of Miracles — Chapter 2

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Chapter 2: Benny Hinn and the face of high-octane faith healers

Love him or leave him, you’re likely to have heard of Benny Hinn. Benny’s TV program, This is Your Day, is syndicated in 200 countries around the world according to the ministry’s website, which is more countries than there actually are in the world (the U.S. Department of State counts 195). At the time of this writing, upcoming healing events are scheduled in Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, Ukraine, and the United States. Hinn claims to have preached to more than 1.5 billion people around the world. An event in Kenya attracted a crowd of 1.2 million. A service in Mumbai, India, drew more than 2 million. A three-day event in Bangalore hosted a total of 7.4 million.[1]

To his devoted followers, Benny has been ordained by God to heal in God’s name. Benny affirms that God has healed untold thousands through him, curing every disease imaginable — arthritis, depression, blindness, AIDS, cancer, heart conditions, and infections head a long list of maladies. He claims no power of his own, but says he has a special gift that makes him an instrument of God’s miraculous abilities.

Benny Hinn believes that his ministry fulfills Jesus’s promises in the Bible. As he explains, “Deliverance from sickness is provided for in the atonement [Christ’s reconciling death on the cross] and is the privilege of all believers.”[2] He quotes Matthew 8:16-17: “That evening they brought to him [Jesus] many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.’”

Benny has numerous followers around the world who believe in his ministry and support him generously with their financial giving. (Though as a nonprofit his ministry income is unreported, estimates run as high as $200 million per year.[3]) On the other side are detractors who dismiss Hinn’s ministry as a sham, his healing claims as bogus, and his motivation as nothing more than maintaining the flood of contributions that supports his luxurious lifestyle. [Read more…] about Faces of Miracles — Chapter 2

The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 1

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Chapter 1: Christopher Gunderson and the face of documented medical miracles

This year tens of thousands of people across America will claim they were miraculously healed. In many cases, somebody will be standing close by to take the credit. As an energized and expectant crowd looks on, the sick will rise out of their wheelchairs and walk across the stage, testify that their pain has disappeared, their sight or hearing is restored, their headaches are stopped, their arthritis, asthma, depression, or insomnia cured in an instant. Faith healers will broadcast their miraculous results as proof that God is working through them and they therefore deserve not only everybody’s prayers and support but also their financial contributions.

The same thing happened last year and it will happen again next year. Since the time of Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1920s, eager crowds have flocked to healing services where confident healers promise them that they can be restored to health. And for just as long, critics have questioned whether people who attend these services and seem to be healed have actually experienced a miraculous cure.

High-profile healings under the TV lights are often for medical problems that eventually resolve themselves anyway: for conditions like arthritis or asthma that are cyclical and naturally improve from time to time; stomach trouble or headaches that often have a psychological component; or chronic pain that can be subjective and alleviated temporarily by placebos.

Even if some of these healings are miraculous, it’s far more likely that the overwhelming majority happened without special supernatural intervention, instead boosted by the power of suggestion and the excitement of the moment. Faith healers can rarely point to cases of healing where the medical evidence is startling, inexplicable, and incontrovertible. They never seem to cure broken bones or gall stones, or do away with documented organic sickness.

Except when they do.

Rarely, a case emerges that can’t be even remotely explained by medical science or any logical, natural means. Something happens that seems completely unexplainable according to physical law, and where a divine or supernatural hand seems impossible to discount. That is a miracle. And that is the story of Christopher Gunderson. [Read more…] about The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 1

Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019), Some Reflections

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My friend and colleague Phil Johnson died this past Saturday, November 2, 2019. It was with sadness that I learned the news. I’d like in this post to reflect on his life and work, as well as to relate some more personal interactions that I had with him. I was privileged to organize the festschrift volume in Phil’s honor, titled Darwin’s Nemesis, which came out in 2006. Let me start this reflection with my introductory remarks about Phil from that volume. I’ll then add some further reflections afterward.
 

===INTRO TO DARWIN’S NEMESIS (lightly edited)===

Early in the morning on April 22, 2004, Phillip Johnson’s wife, Kathie, led him, unsuspecting, into a Biola University conference room where he was greeted with a standing ovation from people who were his friends from all over the world. One by one, these people thanked Phil for his pivotal role in their lives and went on to deliver speeches summarizing their written contributions to what now has become this festschrift volume in his honor, Darwin’s Nemesis.

Later that evening, Phil was again surprised to be the guest of honor at a large banquet, where he was the inaugural recipient and namesake of The Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, an award honoring the lifetime achievements of an individual who has radically expanded the scope of academic freedom and truth seeking. The banquet also kicked off a two­day conference at Biola University titled “Intelligent Design and the Future of Science.” Hundreds of scientists, teachers and lay people attended this conference. [Read more…] about Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019), Some Reflections

Is a DIY Mint Possible: Money Creation in a Purely Informational World

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This proposal for a radically decentralized informational cryptocurrency was first presented at the COSM Conference (https://cosm.technology) in Bellevue, Washington on October 23, 2019.

Back when money was gold coin, an economically sound DIY mint was possible. By a DIY mint, I mean a do-it-yourself mint where the individual, acting purely as an individual, could create money from scratch without any insult to the economy. Thus an individual could mine for gold, purify it to the government’s standards, and then, with a suitably engraved coining press, manufacture coins indistinguishable from those of the realm. 

Such coins would be perfectly legitimate except for one small detail, namely, the government, to profit from the making of coins, insisted on minting all coins themselves. Thus the government would charge a premium (or tax) on top of the gold brought to the mint. Such a tax, called seigniorage, ensured that coinage remained a government monopoly. 

Yet except for this small detail, the DIY coins and the government coins would, for all economic purposes, be equivalent. True, to the overly scrupulous, the DIY coins would be “counterfeit.” But precisely because the government mint would otherwise have taken the same gold and turned it into identical physical coins, such a concern is devoid of economic significance (even if it has moral significance). 

In consequence, a DIY mint that uses gold to form coin indistinguishable from government coin is economically legitimate. Not so a DIY mint that uses a printing press to form currency indistinguishable from government paper money. Any such DIY mint is a counterfeiting operation whose economic impact is deleterious. 

Why is a DIY mint legitimate in one case and not the other? With gold, value is intrinsic, embodied in the currency. With paper, value is extrinsic, depending on the trustworthiness and authority of the governing body issuing the currency. Counterfeiting undercuts the latter, but not the former.

With the stage thus set, I want to inquire whether an economically sound DIY mint is possible in a purely informational world. At the same time, I want to see what lessons we can draw from such an inquiry for our own world. In the hybrid world of information and matter that we inhabit, gold has proven monetarily convenient, allowing for an economically legitimate DIY mint of the sort just described. But absent matter, is a DIY mint still possible?

What if gold were merely as an accident of geological history? What if rather than being rare it were abundant? More radically, what if all commodities were abundant and economic value resided in the arrangement of matter rather than in matter as such? More radically still, what if all value henceforth resided in information? What could money look like then? What should money look like then? Would an economically sound DIY mint be possible in such a world?  [Read more…] about Is a DIY Mint Possible: Money Creation in a Purely Informational World