NPR on miracles

by Massimo Pigliucci

“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; 
and as a firm and unalterable experience has
 established these laws, the proof against a miracle,
 from the very nature of the fact, 
is as entire as any argument from experience 
can possibly be imagined.” (David Hume, On Miracles)


Well, I guess it was bound to happen: it is Easter weekend, and even National Public Radio had to broadcast some cheesy story about religion. Even so, I was not prepared for the amount of sheer nonsense that I heard from Barbara Bradley Hagerty over at Morning Edition.

The basic story was in fact heart wrenching: an 11-yr old boy, Jake Finkbonner of Ferndale, WA, back in 2006 experienced a terrible infection from flesh eating bacteria that his doctors thought would spell certain and painful death. Dr. Richard Hopper, Jake’s physician at Seattle Children's Hospital, told Hagerty that he had never seen such a serious case, that no matter how fast the surgeons were removing the boy’s skin to try to stop the infection, the bacteria kept spreading, at the alarming speed of up to half an inch in an hour.

The doctor did say some strange things during the interview for a medical practitioner, like “The infection was like it had a life of its own,” well, yes, it literally did! And understandably — if irrationally — the parents resigned themselves to the fate of their son by seeking comfort in their religion. As Jake’s mother put it, after having called a Catholic priest for the last rites, “Donny [the father] and I went off to the chapel and just surrendered Jake back to God. We just said, ‘God, he is yours. Thy will be done, and if it is your will to take him home, then so be it.’”

As I said, so far this is a tragic story which, remarkably, had a quasi-happy ending. The infection stopped as suddenly as it began, probably because of a combination of running its course and of the excellent medical treatment that Jake had received for two weeks (and a dozen surgeries).

The boy’s mother's comment, however, was “There's no question in my mind that it was in fact a miracle.” Why? Because in the meantime she had enlisted the prayers of parishioners at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, who in turn had appealed to “Blessed Kateri,” a woman who lived 350 years ago and had apparently died of a disease that disfigured her face (my guess: Seattle and its excellent medical facilities hadn’t been built yet). In the hospital, Jake was visited by a representative of the Society of Blessed Kateri (!) who promptly gave Jake’s mother a pendant with the image of Kateri on it. That, apparently, is all it took (forget the two weeks of surgeries), a miracle was accomplished.

Here is where the story turns bizarre, casting a serious shadow on NPR and Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s professionalism as a journalist. She asked whether the Catholic Church will accept the miracle “explanation” as genuine, and said: “To qualify as an authentic miracle, the Vatican has to determine that Jake’s recovery was unexplainable and that it occurred because people prayed to Kateri to intercede with God on Jake’s behalf.”

Well, I’m sure you are all curious to see how exactly the Vatican might go about accomplishing such a, ahem, miraculous feat! No worries, Father Paul Pluth — who is doing the “investigation” of Jake’s case on behalf of that international nutcase, the Pope, elaborates: you see, according to the good Father, Kateri has special access to God, “[which] means we have received assurances that this person now stands in heaven before the throne of God. One of the evidences of that has been miracles of healing.” Clearly, the good Father didn’t take Logical Fallacies 101, or he would have recognized this as what philosophers call begging the question. But never mind, let us proceed with this increasingly ridiculous story that has brought NPR, temporarily one hopes, down to the level of Faux News.

Father Peter Gumpel, a Jesuit, explains that “these days, the bar is pretty high” (I swear, I’m not making this up!), as demonstrated by the fact that the Church dismisses 95% of the cases of miracles it receives. Such rigor is necessary because, you see, “the Vatican does not want to approve miracles lightly, thus misleading people or looking foolish if the miracle turns out to have a logical explanation.” You don’t say, Sherlock.

Gumpel assured NPR that “we do not want to submit to the Pope a statement unless we are absolutely, morally certain that this case merits to be approved by him as a miracle by God.” I’m sorry, did you say morally certain? One may wonder what morality has to do with ascertaining matters of facts, but the Jesuit was probably making a rather obscure reference to the Aristotelian concept of probabilistic certainty, which has little to do with morality as we understand it today. Regarding the latter, though, it is worth nothing that surgeons are still working on reconstructing the boy’s face, let us therefore thank God the infinitely merciful and moral.

Enter Eusebio Elizondoas, the Vatican’s “Devil’s Advocate” (these days his role is known with the more positive title of “Promoter of Justice”). This guy, in Hagerty’s story is — again, I kid you not — a “skeptic”! A well deserved title, considering the scientific approach used by Elizondoas: “I’m trying to really push every single witness [and asking] ‘Really, are you sure? Are you positive that there’s no other way to explain this, a logical explanation or a scientific explanation or it was a pure coincidence?’”

Now just imagine for a minute that you were investigating a UFO appearance, likely caused by a bright satellite in orbit around the earth. You ask the witness: “Really, are you sure? Are you positive there is no other way to explain this?” And he says “No, I’m sure, it was Martians,” and you smile and go home, secure that your job as a skeptic had been carried out and that once more truth, evidence and logic had triumphed. Holy cannoli!

Even Dr. Rubens, Jake’s physician, despite his obvious accomplishments as a surgeon, displayed an incredible amount of faulty logic. He was impressed by the Devil’s Advocate and his assistants: “They took a very hard look at whether this really was something beyond what they described as the wonders of modern medicine.” And how on earth would they know, Doctor?

This is the only time in the story where a real skeptic, CSI’s Joe Nickell, finally makes a brief appearance (we are near the end of the segment, but now we have Fairness and Balance!). Joe gets to say what everybody else ought to have figured out from the beginning: “When the Catholic Church confirms miracles, it's using what is called an argument from ignorance.” Yup, once again, Logical Fallacies 101, which apparently they don’t teach in journalism school.

But Hagerty couldn’t possibly leave it at that, it wouldn’t make for a good religion-friendly story. So she ends instead by again quoting Dr. Rubens: “I can't explain why he would survive over someone else,” and of course the boy’s mother: “It would be disappointing if [Kateri] didn't get to be a saint.” Well, that will be for the Pope to decide. He has a solid background in these matters, considering that before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was the Prefect of the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — what used to be known as the Inquisition.