Q&A: The Gadera Miracle
The Gadera Miracle
Question
Hello,
The conclusion that emerges from the series on faith (in the trilogy and on YouTube) is that the reasonable conclusion is that there is a God and that He has an interest in communicating with His creatures, especially with us.
In light of that, I want to examine the case of the miracle in Gadera that happened to the Rabbi.
The Rabbi has mentioned this case several times as a (possible) illustration of a failure in statistical analysis known as the law of small numbers. But maybe one could actually see here failures in the opposite direction: sticking to prior knowledge and to the theory that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave up over the generations on the path of maintaining contact.
It seems to me also that although observations of miraculous cases usually were not convincing, since the possible gain is enormous, the expected value is still significant (something like Pascal’s wager).
I know this is not really a question directly about the issue, and nevertheless.
Shabbat shalom,
Nati Naftalis
Answer
The possible gain is not a relevant consideration. The claim regarding Gadera is statistical. You can always argue that there was a miracle there, but there is no indication of that whatsoever. If you believe this a priori, then of course you can apply that there too.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t know how one would check the probability of something like this, and I neither have nor could have information about how many times this did or did not happen in the past. So the examination is only hypothetical. My claim is that without such a check, the assumption is that there is no miracle here, and the burden of proof is on whoever sees this as a miracle.
What I meant was that there ought to be motivation to check the probability and see whether this was a rare and/or special case, and consequently the conclusion would be that there was some sort of appeal to me.