Religion V: Utopianism, Fundamentalism, Apothesis

[Magnar of Skagos]

I believe what I believe because I believe it, not because I believe it's the superior form of belief. You're projecting here. The arrogance is veritably palpable.

Sure, most people would in fact agree "preservation and value of culture is a good thing..." except you, where that culture includes religions you happen to dislike.

I did not say that lacking a belief in god is flawed. "Flawed belief system" is the phrase you used to describe what a majority of people in the world think.

They're not the only ones. You're doing a fine job of demonstrating that you don't need religion, let alone 'Abrahamic' one, to believe in one's own superiority.

People like what they like, and fear and hate that which is different. That's always how it's been. The fact that people do not, in fact, throw fits about eating shrimp or mixing fabrics the way they do about homosexuality shows that homophobia does not stem from some adherence to religious principle (or else they would). Bigotry needs no excuse, but people will offer excuses, and it's a fool who thinks the excuses are actual reasons.

I'm not getting into the secular vs state-religion argument, because that's a no-brainer. But you're talking about much more; you're saying the entire religion has more negative than positives, and that in general religious beliefs are flawed (compared to your own belief, of course) and cause most problems in the world. No?

1. I believe in the preservation of all cultures. Not once did I suggest burning Christian holy books or literature, as I would have said if I didn't believe in the preservation of their culture.

2. The majority of the people in the world believe in religions derived from holy books rife with contradictions and harmful ideologies. There is talk of peace, yes, but each verse of peace is followed by another detailing the justification for raping women, the slaughter of innocent people. Thank God most people don't actually follow all of them these days. But they did back then. In the time period I'm talking about.

3. I do not believe I am superior to anyone. I believe Christianity brought a lot of unnecessary strife to the European continent and ultimately crippled a once flourishing culture. Don't see how superiority comes into play, but to each his own.

4. This actually makes sense, and I agree to a point. However, while you say homosexuality causes fear and hate primarily because it is different, it was Christianity that all but removed it from society for centuries. If Christianity did not make it a crime, it never would have been oppressed and different, and the result would be not fear or hate because it is a familiar, natural occurrence in the world.

5. I am saying that in all of Europe's history, the period in which Christianity was the dominant religion was the worst time to be alive.

[Ormond]

It has been well established that this human sacrifice was in fact the execution of criminals. The only mention of human sacrifice I have heard is from some the accounts of Christian monks who also mention 7 foot tall Norse raiders who worship a devil they've never even heard of. .

I'm sorry, the above statement simply is not true.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/human_sacrifice_01.shtml

https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/18435

http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/practice-sacrifice-iron-age-britain-002152

http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/bog/

As with the interpretation of any archaeological evidence from non-literate cultures, it's often hard to know for sure why a particular person was killed. But there seem to be plenty of scholars who still believe that some of the bodies found in bogs in northern Europe were sacrifices. And it's definitely wrong to blame the idea that ancient Germanic and Celtic groups practiced human sacrifice on Christians, because there are claims in the writing of pagan Roman historians about this.

[Jo498]

3. I do not believe I am superior to anyone. I believe Christianity brought a lot of unnecessary strife to the European continent and ultimately crippled a once flourishing culture.

Which flourishing culture do you mean? The Celtic and Germanic cultures? The Roman Empire was not crippled by Xtianity and it heavily influenced the regions under its control (like Gaul) and at the fringes (like Britain and parts of today's Germany and Austria) for a couple of centuries or more before Xtianity became a major cultural factor.

For some of the achievements of the Christian Middle Ages I refer you to the link from Tim O'Neill's blog

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.de/2009/10/gods-philosophers-how-medieval-world.html

5. I am saying that in all of Europe's history, the period in which Christianity was the dominant religion was the worst time to be alive.

It still is!

There is no Europe without Christianity. The very concept of Europe and the "fusion" of the Northern/Western parts with the Mediterranean South arose in the Middle Ages when it formed (to some extent) one culture with one Emperor, one Pope, one Creed and one language (Latin).

So you'd prefer to have lived before the 4th century in the Mediterranean or before the 9th or so in Norway to any later date? Good luck, methinks you have a very idealized picture of those time periods... they were deemed barbarians for a reason...

[Sci-2]

A Philosopher Defends Religion

Plantinga’s religion is the real thing, not just an intellectual deism that gives God nothing to do in the world. He himself is an evangelical Protestant, but he conducts his argument with respect to a version of Christianity that is the “rough intersection of the great Christian creeds”—ranging from the Apostle’s Creed to the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles—according to which God is a person who not only created and maintains the universe and its laws, but also intervenes specially in the world, with the miracles related in the Bible and in other ways. It is of great interest to be presented with a lucid and sophisticated account of how someone who holds these beliefs understands them to harmonize with and indeed to provide crucial support for the methods and results of the natural sciences.

It seems to me that almost any theist can use the arguments to defend their own faith, and that a defense of Christianity's exclusive hold on Truth would require the kind of historical proof we not only lack but that Christianity cannot necessarily produce for itself? (Thinking about the historical veracity of Jesus, the theological problems presented by the Gnostic Gospels, the way scripture parallels mythology that precedes it.)

God endows human beings with a sensus divinitatis that ordinarily leads them to believe in him. (In atheists the sensus divinitatis is either blocked or not functioning properly.)² In addition, God acts in the world more selectively by “enabling Christians to see the truth of the central teachings of the Gospel.”

If all this is true, then by Plantinga’s standard of reliability and proper function, faith is a kind of cause that provides a warrant for theistic belief, even though it is a gift, and not a universal human faculty. (Plantinga recognizes that rational arguments have also been offered for the existence of God, but he thinks it is not necessary to rely on these, any more than it is necessary to rely on rational proofs of the existence of the external world to know just by looking that there is beer in the refrigerator.)

It is illuminating to have the starkness of the opposition between Plantinga’s theism and the secular outlook so clearly explained. My instinctively atheistic perspective implies that if I ever found myself flooded with the conviction that what the Nicene Creed says is true, the most likely explanation would be that I was losing my mind, not that I was being granted the gift of faith. From Plantinga’s point of view, by contrast, I suffer from a kind of spiritual blindness from which I am unwilling to be cured. This is a huge epistemological gulf, and it cannot be overcome by the cooperative employment of the cognitive faculties that we share, as is the hope with scientific disagreements.

Of course sometimes contrary evidence may be strong enough to persuade you that your memory is deceiving you. Something analogous can occasionally happen with beliefs based on faith, but it will typically take the form, according to Plantinga, of a change in interpretation of what the Bible means. This tradition of interpreting scripture in light of scientific knowledge goes back to Augustine, who applied it to the “days” of creation. But Plantinga even suggests in a footnote that those whose faith includes, as his does not, the conviction that the biblical chronology of creation is to be taken literally can for that reason regard the evidence to the contrary as systematically misleading. One would think that this is a consequence of his epistemological views that he would hope to avoid.

I think the bold shows the problem with scripture-centric apologetics. It's one thing to get to a basic metaphysical lynchpin - though as we've noted in the past none of those cosmological arguments are free from criticism even when misinterpretations are accounted for - and it's another to try and make mythology align with reality. At the least it seems a defense in this direction doesn't just defend Christianity but other religions as well, to the point that the claims of exclusive holding of Truth are diluted if not dissolved.

Plantinga argues that on the naturalist view of evolution, interpreted materialistically, there would be no reason to think that our beliefs have any relation to the truth. On that view beliefs are states of the brain, and natural selection favors brain mechanisms solely on the basis of their contribution, via behavior, to survival and reproduction. The content of our beliefs, and hence their truth or falsehood, is irrelevant to their survival value. “Natural selection is interested, not in truth, but in appropriate behavior.”

Plantinga’s version of this argument suffers from lack of attention to naturalist theories of mental content—i.e., theories about what makes a particular brain state the belief that it is, in virtue of which it can be true or false. Most naturalists would hold that there is an intimate connection between the content of a belief and its role in controlling an organism’s behavioral interaction with the world. To oversimplify: they might hold, for example, that a state of someone’s brain constitutes the belief that there is a dangerous animal in front of him if it is a state generally caused by encounters with bears, rattlesnakes, etc., and that generally causes flight or other defensive behavior. This is the basis for the widespread conviction that evolutionary naturalism makes it probable that our perceptual beliefs, and those formed by basic deductive and inductive inference, are in general reliable.

Still, when our faculties lead us to beliefs vastly removed from those our distant ancestors needed to survive—as in the recent production and assessment of evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson—Plantinga’s skeptical argument remains powerful. Christians, says Plantinga, can “take modern science to be a magnificent display of the image of God in us human beings.” Can naturalists say anything to match this, or must they regard it as an unexplained mystery?

But if Yaweh is a demonic entity deceiving us, as the Gnostics claimed, we'd be in no position to tell if this reality is an elaborate prison. This goes in line with the next part:

He touches on the problem of evil, and though he offers possible responses, he also remarks, “Suppose God does have a good reason for permitting sin and evil, pain and suffering: why think we would be the first to know what it is?”

This is one of the worst arguments - why should we worship a being whose ideas of morality potentially differ so wildly from our own? I'm amazed anyone could think this was worthy of entrance into a philosophical text.

He believes the alternative hypothesis of guided evolution, with God causing appropriate mutations and fostering their survival, would make the actual result much more probable. On the other hand, though he believes Michael Behe offers a serious challenge to the prevailing naturalist picture of evolution, he does not think Behe’s arguments for intelligent design are conclusive, and he notes that in any case they don’t support Christian belief, and perhaps not even theism, because Behe intentionally says so little about the designer.

This is a whole can of worms where people will no doubt bring arguments to bear. However what's odd to me is that Intelligent Design isn't seen as a sad cheat. What verses in the Bible or Koran ever suggest God is poking around guiding evolution? I could see Wicca or some other Neo-Pagan tradition taking Intelligent Design but to claim it's compatible with the Bible or some other ancient holy book seems like an admission of defeat in itself. Maybe there's a Hindu or Buddhist scripture that can work, but if you can interpret ancient texts that clearly talk about God acting as gardener and blacksmith as a spirit guiding epochs of evolution then can't you take just about part of scripture and bend it to suit whatever you want to believe?

Plantinga holds that miracles are not incompatible with the laws of physics, because those laws determine only what happens in closed systems, without external intervention, and the proposition that the physical universe is a closed system is not itself a law of physics, but a naturalist assumption.

The whole concept on natural laws seems - IMO - to employ circular reasoning, so I'm not going to disagree with Platinga on this point. As admittedly mentioned repeatedly by me, the atheist Tallis does a good job of showing how weak our accounts of causality are to the point where divine action seems only a small part of a vaster problem. See also Talbott's Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen?

Plantinga has a lengthy discussion of the relation of miracles to quantum theory: its probabilistic character, he believes, may allow not only miracles but human free will. And he considers the different interpretations that have been given to the fine-tuning of the physical constants, concluding that the support it offers for theism is modest, because of the difficulty of assigning probabilities to the alternatives.

Is fine tuning really proof of anything? I go back and forth on this. If the constants were different we wouldn't be here....so what? I understand the argument about intelligent design, and what it's trying to say about reality, but I don't fully get fine tuning as an argument. At the same time, if we ask why the constants are the way they are, and what keeps them constant rather than shifty, I see it is dissatisfying to claim they are brute facts.

That said, perhaps Wheeler's concept of observer-participancy would also explain fine-tuning without recourse to any deity?

The interest of this book, especially for secular readers, is its presentation from the inside of the point of view of a philosophically subtle and scientifically informed theist—an outlook with which many of them will not be familiar. Plantinga writes clearly and accessibly, and sometimes acidly—in response to aggressive critics of religion like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. His comprehensive stand is a valuable contribution to this debate.

I say this as someone who cannot imagine believing what he believes. But even those who cannot accept the theist alternative should admit that Plantinga’s criticisms of naturalism are directed at the deepest problem with that view—how it can account for the appearance, through the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry, of conscious beings like ourselves, capable of discovering those laws and understanding the universe that they govern. Defenders of naturalism have not ignored this problem, but I believe that so far, even with the aid of evolutionary theory, they have not proposed a credible solution. Perhaps theism and materialist naturalism are not the only alternatives.

One can only hope, given theism is trying to fit square pegs into round (w?)holes and materialism is riddled with a variety of what I think are insurmountable problems.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

It seems to me that almost any theist can use the arguments to defend their own faith, and that a defense of Christianity's exclusive hold on Truth would require the kind of historical proof we not only lack but that Christianity cannot necessarily produce for itself?

I'll go a little further than this. The fact that Christianity, while a big one, is far from the only religion around is fairly devastating to the concept of a "sensus divinitatis." Even if we imagine that atheists are merely blocked up, this doesn't deal with the problem of opposing monotheistic visions. It doesn't deal with adherents of polytheistic religion, and it doesn't deal with adherents of nontheistic religion. I think we'd have to say that all of these people are blocked up like atheists.

But if we grant the "sensus divinitatis" to any one religion, and say everyone else is blocked up, we're confronted with the problem that God (or gods or spirits) is apparently not just selective in granting unblocked "sensuses," but is also curiously attached to sociocultural divisions of human creation. Has there ever been a case of a Christian popping up in a non-Christian society without any exposure to Christianity? Why not? Is God bound by human action, or does God not care?

Maybe the strong sense of and conviction in God is a good reason on a personal level to have faith as an individual. But I can't see how this is in any way a compelling philosophical argument.

[Ormond]

I'm afraid I don't have time to get into the details of the argument between Plantinga and Nagel, but boy does on of the sentences that was bolded above seem really problematical to me:

My instinctively atheistic perspective implies that if I ever found myself flooded with the conviction that what the Nicene Creed says is true, the most likely explanation would be that I was losing my mind, not that I was being granted the gift of faith.

Come on, atheism is no more "instinctive" than religion is(as a psychologist I think this is a very 19th century view of the concept of "instinct" which is no longer supported by science) -- and surely even if a philosopher naively believed in such an "instinct", he or she should be making decisions on whether or not a conviction was true on logical grounds, not on "instinct."

[Sci-2]

Maybe the strong sense of and conviction in God is a good reason on a personal level to have faith as an individual. But I can't see how this is in any way a compelling philosophical argument.

It also doesn't make the idea of damnation of unbelievers any more justifiable. If faith is a gift, then why would its presence or absence fit in with the salvation/damnation mechanics of Christianity? Especially since, as you point out, the divine sense seems to be one of the most poorly functioning sense if we give special credit to Christians (or another group) over others whose sense points in alternative directions.

As Bakker notes, it's nothing but a "Belief Lottery", and to expect special rewards for picking the right ticket at random is rather ridiculous. And assuming the wrong ticket is worthy of damnation is just barbaric.

I'm afraid I don't have time to get into the details of the argument between Plantinga and Nagel, but boy does on of the sentences that was bolded above seem really problematical to me:

My instinctively atheistic perspective implies that if I ever found myself flooded with the conviction that what the Nicene Creed says is true, the most likely explanation would be that I was losing my mind, not that I was being granted the gift of faith.

Come on, atheism is no more "instinctive" than religion is(as a psychologist I think this is a very 19th century view of the concept of "instinct" which is no longer supported by science) -- and surely even if a philosopher naively believed in such an "instinct", he or she should be making decisions on whether or not a conviction was true on logical grounds, not on "instinct."

But the argument is not simply theism vs atheism here. It's the idea that conviction about a particular faith is true, and that this conviction could be considered a rational response despite the issues I noted above (Gnostic criticisms, preceding mythologies, etc). Platinga is, AFACITell, trying to equate our basic consensus knowledge of the world that we take on faith with the feeling of certainty he feels about his scripture.

This seems weak to me, given we have pragmatic reasons for taking the world as it is, which does not necessitate the phenomenal world of our experience definitively being the totality of what's real. And from this world as is AFAICTell we have more reason to doubt the veracity of particular scriptures than we do to accept them.

If the argument is for a universal deity that is largely mysterious but potentially benevolent, a god that doesn't care about the minutiae of scripture or the damnation of disbelievers I could see Plantinga's appeal to gnosis- at least as Nagel presents the argument Plantiga is making in the review - having more weight. But the desire to make conceptions of a deity fit into an exclusive mold seems to me one of theism's great weaknesses. Makes me think of the story of the monkey whose hand gets stuck in the jar because he's so greedy he won't drop any of the cherries in his fist.

[Jo498]

I find the question interesting what it would take to be convinced that a miracle

(or some other clearly supernatural phenomenon) really occurred. The prior conviction that it could not

would usually be so strong that almost everyone (who would not already entertain the possibility)

would go quite far to "explain it away". Usually one would look for cheating or some science we do

not understand yet or some illusion/hallucination.

And it's another question what kind of miraculous phenomenon should one lead to a belief in

a particular deity rather than in magicians or powerful aliens...

Of course a sudden conviction that a particual Creed is true is a uncommonly personal "miracle"

and one's reaction would probably be different from personally witnessing someone turning water

into wine ore levitating or whatever. It would make the connection to the respective deity

quite likely, though.

[Stubby]

I find the question interesting what it would take to be convinced that a miracle

(or some other clearly supernatural phenomenon) really occurred. The prior conviction that it could not

would usually be so strong that almost everyone (who would not already entertain the possibility)

would go quite far to "explain it away". Usually one would look for cheating or some science we do

not understand yet or some illusion/hallucination.

And it's another question what kind of miraculous phenomenon should one lead to a belief in

a particular deity rather than in magicians or powerful aliens...

Have a visually documented account of an amputee growing back a traumatically severed limb. Perhaps for a truly deserving person - like a 5 year old who stepped on a land mine. Or make cancer non-existent in all life forms. Or bring back a totally extinct species.

Those, off the top of my head would do the trick.

[Sci-2]

It seems to me miracles - meaning improbable events - would only suggest something I already agree with, that natural "laws" only describe regularities.

But then according to Cisco I may just not be imaginative enough:

“Anyone could say that a miracle is something impossible, but they say it thoughtlessly, mindlessly, because most people have such weak imaginations they couldn’t possibly understand what they’re saying when they say that a miracle is something impossible. Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it’s something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words, but possible after all. If this were really true, then miracles would be the most ordinary things in the world, the most uninspiring things in the world, and what can one expect from people who have never been anything but ordinary and uninspired.”

-The Traitor

[Gears of the Beast]

It seems to me miracles - meaning improbable events - would only suggest something I already agree with, that natural "laws" only describe regularities.

That's not what 'miracle' means. A miracle is an event that (supposedly) cannot be explained by natural laws and is assumed by superstitious people to be the work of some kind of supernatural causation. Improbable events are explainable by natural laws and even predicted by natural laws. Here.

[Sci-2]

That's not what 'miracle' means. A miracle is an event that (supposedly) cannot be explained by natural laws and is assumed by superstitious people to be the work of some kind of supernatural causation. Improbable events are explainable by natural laws and even predicted by natural laws. Here.

I don't think the things Stubby mentioned would be explainable explicable by natural laws. My point is that if miracle means divine act then even the regeneration of a limb and so on would not be proof of divinity, but rather a sign that the laws inferred from observed regularities are wrong.

That said, reflecting on it a bit more if all cancer on earth vanished I probably would wonder if the cause suggested something more than X-men style mutant powers....

[Gears of the Beast]

I must say, I completely disagree with Stubby. When answering a question like 'what would convince you....' atheists have a tendency to say silly things. A spontaneously regenerating limb wouldn't convince me that I know what caused it. How about alien technology? How did you decide that god was a more likely explanation than alien technology? It sounds ridiculous until you remember we are talking about the fucking God concept. The fact is until you have verified the cause of something you have no idea what caused it. An unknown event should never convince anyone of anything other than something happened which we haven't explained. And the trap that people claiming miracles often fall into is that just because we can't explain something currently using natural laws doesn't mean the event can't be explained by natural laws, to know that we would have to have all the relevant evidence and know everything about the natural laws. The fact that some primitive apes with a limited understanding of the universe cannot explain something is not extraordinary to me.

[Stubby]

I must say, I completely disagree with Stubby. When answering a question like 'what would convince you....' atheists have a tendency to say silly things. A spontaneously regenerating limb wouldn't convince me that I know what caused it. How about alien technology? How did you decide that god was a more likely explanation than alien technology? It sounds ridiculous until you remember we are talking about the fucking God concept. The fact is until you have verified the cause of something you have no idea what caused it. An unknown event should never convince anyone of anything other than something happened which we haven't explained. And the trap that people claiming miracles often fall into is that just because we can't explain something currently using natural laws doesn't mean the event can't be explained by natural laws, to know that we would have to have all the relevant evidence and know everything about the natural laws. The fact that some primitive apes with a limited understanding of the universe cannot explain something is not extraordinary to me.

Perhaps I didn't make myself sufficiently clear.

If a limb spontaneously reappeared it would fit for a start. And you are correct when you say that some other unknowable cause might have been the reason it happened. That was the question that was asked. Jo498 asked about a "miracle (or some other supernatural phenomenon)". Alien tech would not be supernatural. It would be unknowable to us at the moment but it's not supernatural. Once we verify something it is, by definition, 'natural'. My response was limited to the 'supernatural' because that was the question asked.

[Gears of the Beast]

Perhaps I didn't make myself sufficiently clear.

If a limb spontaneously reappeared it would fit for a start. And you are correct when you say that some other unknowable cause might have been the reason it happened. That was the question that was asked. Jo498 asked about a "miracle (or some other supernatural phenomenon)". Alien tech would not be supernatural. It would be unknowable to us at the moment but it's not supernatural. Once we verify something it is, by definition, 'natural'. My response was limited to the 'supernatural' because that was the question asked.

I'm pretty sure our differences are ultimately semantic, I think I more or less agree with you. Maybe slightly differ on how I would use 'miracle' and 'supernatural'.

[Jo498]

So how would you use miracle and supernatural? If there is nothing that could possibly qualify it is not an interesting category. Of course it seems good methodology to first expect cheating, strange coincidence, whatever. I completely agree with that. But if the bar is set too high this seems like an immunizing strategy.

[Gears of the Beast]

So how would you use miracle and supernatural? If there is nothing that could possibly qualify it is not an interesting category. Of course it seems good methodology to first expect cheating, strange coincidence, whatever. I completely agree with that. But if the bar is set too high this seems like an immunizing strategy.

Yes, it is not an interesting category. To be convinced of a miracle or supernatural event I would need it to be verified that said event was caused by something supernatural. As I said, an impossible-sounding event happening wouldn't convince me of anything. Is that setting the bar too high? I'll agree the bar is pretty high (considering I don't think it's actually possible for humans to demonstrate supernatural causation) but as the great Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Without the bar set that high is there any argument for a miracle/supernatural event that wouldn't go something like: "well we don't have any other explanation, therefore we're assuming it was supernatural"? I don't see how the standard could be any lower without capitulation to such obvious logical fallacies. Wouldn't this just be common sense in any facet of life? To be able to assert the cause of something you actually need a way of demonstrating the supposed cause.

I'll quote Hume from his essay On Miracles (just because it's an excellent quote): "which is more likely, that the whole natural order is suspended or that a Jewish minx should tell a lie?"

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

I've said this before and I'll say it again, as a theist and a Christian, I don't believe it is possible for the "supernatural" to exist. Plenty of things that happen in nature are pretty miracoulous without having to be "magic". That's was "supernatural" means. Just because it is currently unexplained doesn't make it "supernatural".

[Sci-2]

I've said this before and I'll say it again, as a theist and a Christian, I don't believe it is possible for the "supernatural" to exist. Plenty of things that happen in nature are pretty miracoulous without having to be "magic". That's was "supernatural" means. Just because it is currently unexplained doesn't make it "supernatural".

Well it's arguable - and I'm sure it's going to be argued :cool4: - that the very idea of a "natural order" is derived from theistic conceptions of God setting not just regularities but definitive physical laws into place. Perhaps ironically the questioning of causality that Solo brought up previously is at least partly based on Hume's own critique of causation.

All that said, I think the word "supernatural" works enough well to describe certain kinds of phenomenon that don't fit into our day-to-day communal experience/expectation of the physical universe.

[Jo498]

I also find it ironic that Hume who is generally considered to have "destroyed" a strong conception of causation and laws of nature appeals to an exceptionless course of nature to argue for the exceptional evidence one needed for "miracles". If cause and effect are but "loose and separate" the constant conjunction mainly based on psychological habit of us observers etc. why should we even be surprised by miracles?

But the more interesting "supernatural" phenomena to me would not be necessarily be rare. I do not know enough anthropology but clearly there are many (sub)cultures where supernatural (or at least extra-scientific) phenomena seem to be common and even manipulable. Of course we believe that all or most of this is superstition or must have some rational explanation. But it shows that rarity is not a central feature of the supernatural. And the fact that most experiments (although there are dubious cases) for psi-phenomena failed does not prove all that much. It could be the case that the artificial experimental conditions do destroy the concentration, focus, flow of mana, offends the spirits (or whatever). Certainly there are even mundane phenomena where experiments tend to be self-defeating in a similar fashion.