Bill Dembski

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

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
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

***

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

Eben Alexander and the face of near-death experiences

For most of his life and career, Eben Alexander was skeptical about any world there might exist beyond the reach of a materialist science. His professional credentials are outstanding. He graduated from Duke University Medical School, trained at Massachusetts General Hospital, completed a fellowship in cerebrovascular neurosurgery in England, and spent fifteen years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School before returning south to Virginia with his wife and two sons. Alexander helped develop and refine leading-edge surgical procedures, including stereotactic radio surgery (surgery using radiation beams) and MRI-guided neurosurgery. He has contributed to more than 150 scientific publications and made presentations at more than 200 medical conferences around the world.[1]

This was a man confident in his knowledge. And one of the things he knew for many years was that stories of near-death experiences were nothing but fantasy. When the brain stops working during a medical emergency or as death approaches, consciousness stops. With no brain function to process thoughts or remember them, there could be no near-death experience (NDE). As Alexander put it, “Pull the plug and the TV goes dead.”[2]

A quick survey of the medical literature confirms that Alexander’s colleagues agreed with him. The consensus was that near-death experiences have normal, organic explanations. A 2011 paper in Trends in Cognitive Science gives away its viewpoint in the title: “There is nothing paranormal about near-death experiences: how neuroscience can explain seeing bright lights, meeting the dead, or being convinced you are one of them” (yes, that’s the title). Noting that three percent of Americans claim to have had a near-death experience, the authors conclude, “Taken together, the scientific evidence suggests that all aspects of the near-death experience have a neurophysiological or psychological basis.”[3] [Read more…] about The Faces of Miracles — Chapter 4

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

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