The Science of Miracles Read online

  Published 2013 by Prometheus Books

  The Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible © 2013 by Joe Nickell. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION: TOWARD A SCIENCE OF MIRACLES

  PART 1: MIRACULOUS EFFIGIES

  Chapter 1. Miracle Idols

  Chapter 2. Miracle Statue of Belgium

  Chapter 3. The Idol of Pachacamac

  Chapter 4. The Holy Image of Guadalupe

  Chapter 5. The Painting That Performs a Miracle

  Chapter 6. Jesus under the Microscope

  Chapter 7. Snapshot Miracles

  Chapter 8. Grilled-Cheese Madonna

  Chapter 9. Animated Images: The “New” Idolatry

  Chapter 10. A Weeping Icon and the Crime Laboratory

  Chapter 11. The Case of the Miracle Oil

  Chapter 12. Hindu Statues That Drink Milk

  Chapter 13. The Statues That Glow

  PART 2: MAGICAL RELICS

  Chapter 14. The True Cross: Chaucer, Calvin, and Relic Mongers

  Chapter 15. The Holy Blood

  Chapter 16. The Image of Edessa Revealed

  Chapter 17. The Holy Mandylion: A Déjà-View

  Chapter 18. Miracle or Fraud? The Turin Shroud

  Chapter 19. Artistry and the Shroud

  Chapter 20. Oviedo's Holy Sudarium

  Chapter 21. Miraculous Relics

  Chapter 22. In Search of the Emerald Grail

  Chapter 23. St. James's Miraculous Relics

  Chapter 24. “Incorruptible” Corpses

  PART 3: MIRACLE HEALINGS

  Chapter 25. Jesus’ Healings

  Chapter 26. Lourdes and Other Healing Waters

  Chapter 27. The Belgian Lourdes

  Chapter 28. Miracle Dirt of Chimayó

  Chapter 29. Peter Popoff's “Gift of Knowledge”

  Chapter 30. Benny Hinn's Miracle Crusades

  Chapter 31. Spiritist Healer: “John of God”

  Chapter 32. Healings by a “Victim Soul”

  PART 4: VISIONARY EXPERIENCES

  Chapter 33. Jesus’ Resurrection Apparitions

  Chapter 34. “Visions” behind The Passion

  Chapter 35. Eucharistic Signs

  Chapter 36. The Secrets of Fatima

  Chapter 37. The Medjugorje Phenomenon

  Chapter 38. Guardian Angel Encounters

  Chapter 39. Heaven's Stenographer

  Chapter 40. The Mormon Seer

  Chapter 41. Visits from the Beyond

  PART 5: SAINTLY POWERS

  Chapter 42. Miracles—or Parables?

  Chapter 43. Miracle Worker of Amsterdam

  Chapter 44. Mysteries of Popular Saints

  Chapter 45. Tijuana's Murderer “Saint”

  Chapter 46. Stigmata: Wounds of Christ

  Chapter 47. The Case of Padre Pío

  Chapter 48. Stigmata of a Convert

  Chapter 49. Taking Up Serpents

  Chapter 50. Additional Pentecostal Powers

  Chapter 51. Loretto Staircase: St. Joseph's Miracle Carpentry?

  PART 6: THE DEVIL'S WORK?

  Chapter 52. Exorcising Demons

  Chapter 53. Horror at Amityville

  Chapter 54. Demon Victims I Have Known

  Chapter 55. Satan's Step

  Chapter 56. Footprints of the Devil?

  Chapter 57. Fire from Heaven—or Hell?

  NOTES

  REFERENCES

  INDEX

  I am grateful to the numerous people who helped to make this book possible.

  Paul Kurtz (1925–2012), chairman and founder of Prometheus Books, believed in this project, and the skilled staff members at Prometheus were again a pleasure to work with, including Steven L. Mitchell, Cate Roberts-Abel, Brian McMahon, Jade Zora Scibilia, Melissa Shofner, and Nicole Sommer-Lecht.

  At the Center for Inquiry I am grateful to Timothy Binga, director of the Center for Inquiry Libraries, for research assistance, aided by Librarian Lisa Nolan; Paul E. Loynes for typesetting; Thomas Flynn for photographic expertise and other advice; my assistant, Ed Beck, for many efforts, including scanning and organizing illustrations; and indeed the entire CFI staff for help at all levels—especially Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO; Barry Karr, executive director of CFI's Committee for Skeptical Inquiry; Kendrick Frazier, editor of Skeptical Inquirer (CFI's science magazine); and Patricia Beauchamp, Chris Fix, Julia Lavarnway, and many others.

  I especially want to thank John and Mary Frantz for their generous financial assistance, which helped make many of my investigations possible.

  I am also grateful to my wife Diana Harris for her assistance, and the support of my daughter, Cherie Roycroft, and grandchildren Chase, Tyner, and Alexis Jo.

  In addition to those mentioned in the text, I am also indebted to the many scholars, scientists, popular writers, and other generous folk who assisted me at numerous sites around the world over the many years of this investigative effort. To all I am most appreciative.

  Do miracles actually occur? Certainly, miracle claims abound. Miraculous healings are reported at various holy shrines, like Lourdes in the French Pyrenees, and New Mexico's Chimayo, where a unique “Holy Dirt” is said to effect inexplicable cures. Some scientists have suggested that the image on the Shroud of Turin, the reputed burial linen of Jesus, could only have been produced by a miraculous burst of radiant energy at the moment of his resurrection. Again and again, statues and icons weep or bleed, potential saints exhibit the stigmata (the bleeding wounds of Christ) and other phenomena, visionaries receive prophetic messages that appear to come true, and myriad signs and wonders appear. All these are held to be miraculous.

  But what exactly is a miracle? In Latin the word is miraculum, from mirari, “to wonder at.” The term has been defined in many ways. For example, Webster's New Universal Encyclopedia describes a miracle as “an event that cannot be explained by the known laws of nature and is therefore attributed to divine intervention” (McGlynn 1997, 771). But this is a most unsatisfactory definition, since it depends not on positive evidence for an event, but on its being inexplicable. Such a claim is based on a logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance; that is, from a lack of knowledge. One cannot insist, for example, that we don't know what caused someone's cancer to go into remission and then conclude that therefore we do know that the remission was caused by “a miracle from God.”

  The Anglican writer C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) succinctly defined a miracle as “an interf
erence with Nature by supernatural power” (Lewis 1947, 15). But this begs the question, what supernatural power? One cannot explain one mystery by invoking another.

  In his treatise “Of Miracles,” philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) argued that miracles did not in fact occur. He stated (1777 [1902, 114–16]): 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, as is entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined….

  The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), ”That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.“ When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.1

  C. S. Lewis (1947, 11–12) begged to differ, insisting that

  If immediate experience cannot prove or disprove the miraculous, still less can history do so. Many people think one can decide whether a miracle occurred in the past by examining the evidence “according to the ordinary rules of historical inquiry.” But the ordinary rules cannot be worked until we have decided whether miracles are possible, and if so, how probable they are. For if they are impossible, then no amount of historical evidence will convince us. If they are possible but immensely improbable, then only mathematically demonstrative evidence will convince us: and since history never provides that degree of evidence for any event, history can never convince us that a miracle occurred. If, on the other hand, miracles are not intrinsically improbable, then the existing evidence will be sufficient to convince us that quite a number of miracles have occurred. The result of our historical enquiries thus depends on the philosophical views which we have been holding before we even began to look at the evidence. The philosophical question must therefore come first.

  However, I have taken a very different approach than these philosophers. Now in my fifth decade of examining miracle claims, I have avoided putting the proverbial cart before the horse; that is, I have refused to decide, antecedent to inquiry, whether or not a miracle could exist. I have therefore tried to avoid the approach of “believers” and “debunkers” who may start with the desired or expected answer and work backward to the evidence. Instead, I have determined to investigate specific cases, trying to discover the best evidence and let it lead to the most likely solution, using established principles of scientific inquiry.

  One such principle is the old skeptical maxim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”—that is, that evidence must be commensurate with a given claim. Another principle, established in science as well as in law and scholarship, is that the person who asserts a claim has the burden of proof, not someone who questions it—it being difficult or even impossible to prove a negative. The person who proclaims, “Well, I may not be able to prove this is a miracle, but you can't prove it isn't” has just lost the argument. Yet another principle is known as Occam's razor (named for William of Ockham, the fourteenth-century philosopher). This holds that the simplest tenable explanation—that is, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions—is to be preferred.

  I began investigating alleged supernatural and other paranormal claims in 1969 while working as a stage magician. I went on to become a private investigator for a world-famous detective agency, and still later a scholar with a doctorate in English (specializing in literary investigation and folklore). In 1995 I became senior research fellow for the organization now known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, publishers of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. In this role I am, apparently, the world's only full-time professional paranormal investigator. Much of that work has been as a “Miracle Detective,” as chronicled in my book Looking for a Miracle (1993) and on numerous television documentaries. The character played by Hilary Swank in the 2007 movie The Reaping was based partially on me. (Warner Brothers even invited me onto the movie set to watch some of the filming and to meet the engaging Hilary.)

  So here is much of the fruit of my more than forty years of labor, The Science of Miracles. I have grouped the chapters into six parts as follows:

  Part 1, “Miraculous Effigies,” presents alleged miracle figures of every kind: idols, icons and statues that “weep” and exhibit other remarkable phenomena, images that appear spontaneously, “miracle” photographs, and so on.

  Part 2, “Magical Relics,” scrutinizes such holy relics as the Shroud of Turin, pieces of the True Cross, the Holy Grail, the reputed blood of Christ at Bruges, and many more, including allegedly miraculous relics of saints.

  Part 3, “Miracle Healings,” examines the claims for various healing shrines and the reputed miracles worked by the hands of such faith healers as Peter Popoff, Benny Hinn, and Brazil's John of God.

  Part 4, “Visionary Experiences,” treats the holy visions and paranormal phenomena reported at sites like Fatima, Portugal; Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia; and Conyers, Georgia. Events such as near-death experiences and angelic encounters are also examined.

  Part 5, “Saintly Powers,” investigates reputed wonderworking abilities of saints, including glossolalia, stigmata, fire immunity, and other feats.

  Finally, Part 6, “The Devil's Work,” discusses those allegedly supernatural phenomena attributed to Satan or to demons—notably various devil's footprints, cases of demon possession, and outbreaks of phenomena such as those reported as the “Amityville Horror.”

  So turn the page and come with me on this around-the-world adventure to investigate strange mysteries at the interface of science and religion. Let us dare to check our emotions and rely on reason and evidence, seeing, as I have long held, that the progress of science is a series of solved mysteries.

  Effigies that worked apparent miracles were reported in ancient cultures. The operative word here is apparent. What can we learn about wonderworking idols that credulous folk of yore did not know? We begin with the sensational mystery of a Babylonian figure worshipped for its demonstrable appetite!

  THE IDOL OF BEL

  During the reign of Cyrus, the Babylonians persuaded the Persian king to worship their idol Bel (or Baal), which was set up in a temple. Each day the priests placed before the figure twelve bushels of flour, forty sheep, and fifty gallons of wine (figure 1.1). Then the temple doors would be closed. Yet when the doors were opened in the morning, the entire meal would have been devoured!

  These events are told in relation to the Old Testament prophet Daniel, who, encountering the priests, soon uncovered the secret of the devouring, imbibing idol. The story is found in chapter fourteen of the Book of Daniel (in Catholic Bibles, Daniel 14:1–21).

  Daniel, a wise counselor to Cyrus, advised him on many matters, but the king demanded to know why Daniel refused to worship the deity. Daniel responded by stating that he believed in a living God. Cyrus pressed him further: Was not Bel a living God? Did Daniel not see how much the effigy ate and drank each day? Daniel, laughing, cautioned the king not to be deceived. He observed that the idol was merely a brass-over-clay statue and therefore incapable of eating or drinking anything.

  SECRET REVEALED

  For this perceived blasphemy, King Cyrus grew angry. Summoning the seventy priests of Bel, he proposed a test between them and Daniel. The loser—or losers—would be put to death. And so Cyrus ordered t
he food and wine to be placed before the statue once again, but this time the temple doors were not just closed; they were sealed as well. This way, no one could gain entry without revealing the fact.

  The following morning the seals were unbroken, yet the food was gone. However, Daniel had set a trap to reveal possible trickery. According to the account, he had instructed his servants to scatter ashes upon the floor of the temple before it was sealed. When the doors were opened, Daniel restrained the king from entering the temple and called attention to the unmistakable footprints—of men, women, and children—preserved in the ashes.

  Thereupon, the priests confessed. They revealed the secret doors by which they and their families had entered and partaken of the daily feast. Although the legend is not known to have a historical basis, it no doubt helped motivate the Jews to resist idolatry. We can also appreciate it as a model of critical thinking—especially one among the earliest reports of paranormal investigation.

  FIRE FROM HEAVEN

  Another magical feat is associated with Bel (or Baal), although it does not directly involve an idol; this time, however, the deity is trumped by an apparent miracle from God. This story, which is related in 1 Kings (18:19–39), features a sort of duel between the prophet Elijah and 450 priests of Baal. Each side is to invoke his deity in an attempt to receive, as a sign, fire from Heaven.

  After the priests fail, Elijah builds an altar of twelve stones surrounded by a trench, places on it wood and pieces of a sacrificial bull, and then (as if to make the test more difficult?) drenches the whole with four jars of water, repeated two more times. Finally, Elijah invokes the Lord: “Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench” (1 Kings 18:38).

  However, a clue as to what could have occurred (if such an event actually happened) is found in a similar account, recorded in 2 Maccabees 1:19–36 (Catholic Bibles). In this account a “thick liquid” is described rather than water, and it is called “nephthar” (similar to naphtha)—obviously a flammable petroleum product.