And, in fact, one doctor described her as being one of the most hopelessly ill patients he'd ever encountered.. She was healed just suddenly. It was assumed that Stargardt's disease was the best fit for her symptoms, but she has no family history for this genetic condition. He encountered scores of healings and other claims of the miraculous along the way, but there was one case in particular that truly blew his mind: the case of Barbara Snyder. Look, I have male pattern balding. So that, I mean that would almost qual, I mean three hours. And we'll have a way that you can access that in the transcript of this. That is directly below. Barbara Rook "Babs" Snyder is an American academic and president of the Association of American Universities. 2023 Robert L. White All Rights Reserved. I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Real Seekers podcast and discussing / debating miracles with Matthew (atheist) and Dale (Christian) last week. View the profiles of people named Barbara Snyder. So we understand it's not, it's not saying that somebody has lack of faith. Jonathan McLatchie vs Jonathan Pearce, documentation for the Barbara Snyder case, https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=control&category_name=&submit=Search, this woman was healed of Parkinson's with "Energy Healing". If you enjoyed our conversation today, give us a rating on your podcast app. So as you've cataloged these different stories and different accounts, what's been the sort of the breath of the geography that's been involved? No one in medicine evaluates the effectiveness of a treatment from case studies alone, or even primarily due to case studies. "So, we know that at least 450 Christians began praying for her, because they wrote letters saying, 'We're praying for you.'". episode says, if i'm not mistaken the one that Herbert Benson conducted was that when they were trying to recruit people they were having trouble getting certain participants that all the protestant participants were from the unity school of christianity which actually doesn't believe in miracles and so you know they had a limit it's not the ideal way to conduct a prayer study, if there's a pattern like nine times out of ten where this happens it's in the context of prayer that that should say something again we we need a whole lot of a whole lot of cases to be able to to examine that. If you are willing to believe the Barbard Snynder case, then you should be willing to believe this woman was healed of Parkinson's with "Energy Healing" or you should believe in the Golden Plates of Joseph Smith (making you a Mormon). And he went to a retreat for the healing of the mind. You can see why these stories are powerful and you can see why people really get motivated by them nd so i think it is important to respond to them because of that. Kamil points out that there is a mismatch between the magnitude of the claim and the attention they pay to documenting it. Advertisement. James: Shermer's essential point is how do you distinguish charlatans from real miracles and the answer is well you weigh up the evidence and you look at the best explanation. It was easier for me for some cultures than for other cultures. I, sometimes I'll joke it's obvious looking at me that healing doesn't always happen. AfghanistanWhere Faith Is a Matter of Life and Death. I mean I, at the beginning I was expecting to find some reports of different kinds of healings that had already been collected in the booked. He's effectively asked "look, according to your explanation we would expect miracles to occur actually in many more cases because god apparently has the the reasons and the motivation and the context for him to perform miracles there but he doesn't, so there's a plausibility issue there with with your explanation" Shermer's identified one aspect that seems to be accounted for poorly on the miracle explanation. But if it hasn't been after so many years people say, "Ah, it might just be temporary.". Although MS can come in milder forms, Barbara's condition deteriorated quickly. She's on her deathbed,'" Strobel explained. She is the former president of Case Western Reserve University. A lot of these things were published in Asia. A document going through these particular medical statements with citations can be found here. So she basically pulls the tube out of her throat, says, Go find my parents [and] jumps out of bed.. It is suitable for those who love nice illustrations. Well she couldn't walk. So, we know that at least 450 Christians began praying for her, because they wrote letters saying, 'We're praying for you.. Indianapolis, Indiana. Likewise, Americans are quite prone to believing in the potential occurrence of miracles. Back home it happens. Case Western Reserves Board of Trustees After a year or two of investigation they finally concluded, and we have all of the medical documentation, that no, he had, the way they put it in their letter from the Social Security Administration, "You have received a remarkable return of your visual acuity, therefore, you are no longer qualified for disability." And the way we proceed is that we use medical science to eliminate the six and we can't really confirm or disconfirm the last remaining one but because we eliminated all of the alternatives that must be the one right or at least it's reasonable to believe that this is the one -- it's the best explanation. Following her M.S. I am confident that Case Western Her energy, integrity, and powerful commitment to collaboration have led to progress and partnerships that would have been unimaginable when she first arrived.. So we're talking about something like hundreds of millions of people. Not at all, given that all of the facts of his case fall within the known bounds of what is possible and observed, even if rare. Given Keener's habits of simplifying and distorting the actual original claims, and the demonstration throughout all of this that his standards for evidence are terribly low, it calls into question is entire 1300 page book on miracles. Converted to Pelican theme by Brian Blais. So even when, you know it doesn't happen to all of us. Make sure you see our stories daily directly to your inbox. We will be fully healed with our resurrection bodies. None of us would say that all of those are authentic, but still we're talking about an awful lot of stories. These theists are in fact arguing for a lower level of evidence than we demand of the universities and pharmaceutical companies for their claims. If you want to, for our listeners, if you want to read a little bit more about it Craig's written a fairly lengthy book on the whole, the whole narrative of that called Impossible Love. So miracles aren't meant to be [inaudible] for the world's problems. She said she'd been curled up like a pretzel. Sometimes running for their lives. Elijah: I also think we in the west have a bias toward poor people as not having knowledge of when something's dead or an arm is broken or something of that nature and so I think when people put themselves in situations where they pray for the sick and a whole village knows this child was born blind from birth they're 15 years old and that person sees gets their sight back and this is a different religion and that village testifies he was blind now, he sees that is a different scenario than we're talking about here and the lens of science really can't speak to that. It was a prospective, randomized, double-blinded, controlled study of four hundred subjects. Nathan: I think what we're seeing here are the fruits of apologetics in some ways. The Mayo Clinic had diagnosed Barbara with multiple sclerosis. Craig Keener: In Matthew 11 and Luke Chapter 7, John the Baptist sends to Jesus because he hears the works of Jesus, he hears of these healings taking place and he says, "Are you the one the come or shall we wait for somebody else?" This one is much like the previous one, but there is no study -- just the stories. However, it is a fallacy to say that, because we could in principle have better evidence, we therefore do not have good or sufficient evidence. It is justified to demand better evidence, because we do that for even more modest claims, and we have centuries of data on the failings of human reasoning in inferring causes from effects. She graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law, where she served as executive editor of the law review. Earlier in her career, she served as provost of Ohio State University. Keener: in terms of anomalies whether they're anomalies or whether they're explainable in some way it helps if there's a pattern. It's always possible to ask for more (Couldn't more doctors have seen it? And around 39% of them claimed to have witnessed or experienced divine healing. I wear glasses. As James says, "God really needs to up his game.". ", "CWRU President Barbara R. Snyder is highest-paid private college president in Ohio", Office of the President: Case Western Reserve University, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barbara_Snyder&oldid=1129564651, Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences alumni, Presidents of the Association of American Universities, Articles with dead external links from October 2016, Articles with permanently dead external links, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 26 December 2022, at 02:48. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. And that was, that was really hard. Listen to Strobel describe his journey and the most memorable miracle hes encountered below: Strobel said that he has long believed thatJesus performed the miracles described in the Gospels. And sometimes there's also a catch-22 because after so many years the medical documentation has been discarded. Secondly we're talking about these things objectively, put yourself in situations where you can have experiential knowledge: pray for sick people that you know they would not be healed unless God showed up. Taking the story as the evidence is problematic. God can heal us through exercise or just the things he's placed in our body. If you complain that the standards are too high, then you don't belong on the playing field and you don't deserve to be taken seriously. Craig Keener, Michael Shermer & Elijah Stephens and a video with Sean McDowell interviewing Craig Keener called Latest Evidence for Modern Miracles. We should celebrate that. prayer, laying of hands, religious service, etc) where miracles are claimed to be happening but they happen in only a small part of those same contexts and there's not a good reason give for that difference. She never quotes her doctors about her condition, and provides no documentation whatsoever -- there is simply nothing to work with. There isn't anything that could tie the prayer as the causal element, given that she was most likely prayed for often an we're picking out the one case before a claimed recovery. How can I help? To learn about us and today's guest, Dr. Craig Keener and to find more episodes, go to biola.edu/thinkbiblically. Even her muscles were unatrophied. To contact us or to submit an article, click here. Barbara Rook "Babs" Snyder is an American academic and president of the Association of American Universities. I don't understand how it's possible for both those things to be true. I said "I'm doing well" and he said "Well listen this may sound odd to you, but could you use a pool table?". The institution that is referenced for the work is Global Medical Research Institute (GMRI) and the documentary about miracles referenced is Send Proof. And remember Think Biblically about everything. perhaps a misdiagnosis of Stargardt's disease, and a gradual improvement for other reasons. I love this Bible study!" A Barbara Sent Home to Die Let me tell you now about a different Barbara, Barbara Cummiskey.2 When she was a teenager, doctors diagnosed Barbara with multiple sclerosis (MS). But Greg Spencer had been going blind due to macular degeneration. Barbara Snyder arrived at a That we all will be ultimately healed if we have trust in Jesus because we'll be with him forever. READ ALSO: Are the Biblical End Times Upon Us? Craig Keener: Thanks. I mean these were mainstream Evangelical Christians and anyway, some of the critiques, and actually some of the praises from the Christians showed that they hadn't actually read the book either. Eventually I found some of it, but what surprised me was the dramatic nature of some of this. That is the definition of supernatural. Craig serves with me on the Board of Evangelical Theological Society. It involves Barbara Snyder and took place nearly 30 years ago. I had a lot of connections with Africa, different parts of Africa. A comparison of base-rates is needed and Keener doesn't seem to care about this when it comes to miracles. And this is not by any means the most dramatic story I found. Recently, there was some data indicating possibly faster-than-light neutrinos. I confess I haven't made it through all 1000 pages. He didn't see any fire so people are getting [inaudible] what's this about? You've done tremendous work on it that is a huge benefit to the Kingdom, not only with your technical biblical scholarship, but with this incredible stuff you've done on miracles. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Prayer, in her house, probably occurs even more frequently. The story is that this person had a condition where they couldn't eat normally, were fed with a tube, and this persisted for 16 years. However, after analyzing several miracles Strobel is convinced they are. She actually had to have a breathing tube because even her diaphragm didn't work on its own. Adding to that, he had some skepticism about some of the charlatans who have been exposed for making false claims about healings and the like. In particular, it includes an interview with Barbara Snyder, who was instantaneously healed from advanced multiple sclerosis, as also attested by her two physicians. And even after CPR is stopped, there is an observed phenomenon of spontaneous recovery of heart activity after as much as 15 minutes, and his recovered after 10 minutes. It's in American History, which is not, well there's a lot of Americans who can teach American History, so she especially teaches French. It is quite clear that once you allow one miraculous healing in, using evidence of just one person, then one has to let in a whole host of others. Yes, I'll look for these mundane explanations first before jumping to agency, because those are the most common explanations of extraordinary claims. We're talking about a lot of evidence. So if I'm dealing with historic, historiographic questions, historical reliability questions, I needed to deal with the issue of whether these kinds of things could happen. Anyway, so it's the story of how we got together. How can I help? And sometimes, well it's wonderful when God does it and when he doesn't we still know that we have that hope. We're here at the meetings at the Evangelical Theological Society talking with Dr. Craig Keener. ), This was an instantaneous healing of all of her symptoms and all of her illness to the point where 31 years later she's completely healthy, Strobel said. As Nathan puts it, it's telling believers who doubt "stop those naughty thoughts." And also, a lot of my African friends say, "Look, life in Africa's a miracle. "[5], In 2011, Cleveland.com reported Barbara R. Snyder's total compensation for the year of 2009 was $778,874.[6]. The way people like the stories highlights their way of thinking and provides a teachable moment about like why don't we trust claims just from the claims, even if it has a peer-reviewed journal article. And she began dancing around. Honestly, this mistake is primarily due to sloppy reporting -- if you are reporting a set of numbers in a study, especially if you are establishing a timeline of events, you need to make it clear when some numbers are not comparable. I think people sitting back and watching kind of don't take into account that this is life-changing stuff that's happening to these people. However studies also show about 80% of ER nurses and 64% of ER doctors believe lunar cycles affect patients' mental health, even though the data do not support such an effect. President Barbara R. Snyder announced today that she will become the next leader of the organization that represents the 63 leading research universities in the U.S., as well as two in Canada. They're not replicable but if there's a pattern like nine times out of ten where this happens it's in the context of prayer, that should say something. And of course there's no way to test medically because there was no medic op available. This example is a category 1 miracle claim. There is a second video interview with the woman herself that reports completely different medical history, and differs substantially from the details Keener gives. All subjects demonstrated improvement from the intervention. Scott Rae: So how did, how did she become a war refugee? it's hard to trust someone who says things like this, when we know that the measurement afterward was 20/100 -- far from perfect. also understands AAU and the broader university and scientific communities I misspoke in the episode for the next one, thinking the name was Barbara Snyder, but Barbara's case is an MS case. He encountered scores of healings and other claims of the miraculous along the way, but there was one case in particular that truly blew his mind: the case of Barbara Snyder. You should watch Pinecreek's reaction here -- it pretty much sums it up. So I guess, what surprised you the most as a result of your study from when you set out to do this to when you got to the end? And in each case, it's a witness to God's Glory where God gives grace to overcome in different kinds of situations. It's not just about the priors, it's the fact that to be consistent, once you raise your prior for one sort of claim you're doing it for many others -- many claims that you probably don't want to accept.

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