Good work.

I have some thoughts on Ethan’s methodology regarding miracles, and intend to gather them in a response when he publishes his promised article on it. To my mind, there is a fatal flaw in it even before any considerations about specific miracle cases get off the ground, and even if we grant that all of his miracle cases are factual. In this aspect our approaches to Ethan’s work are strikingly similar.

Preview: Ethan wants me to believe that Catholicism is true based on some historically far-removed anomalous physical phenomena at Fatima. This would include believing, based on these far-removed anomalous physical phenomena, that I and all my relatives will be plausibly eternally tortured in fire unless we convert. IMO, that is a ridiculous epistemic demand in comparison with the evidence provided, and this incredulity touches only the incomparable weight of the evidence relative to the assertion, and not also any priors. As far as priors are considered, Ethan’s case becomes even more implausible. Any moral realist not already wedded to eternal conscious torment, for example, will almost certainly find it to be moral nonsense (and thus impossible given a morally perfect God in whom Ethan believes) with such conviction that Ethan’s case does not even begin to scratch the surface of overcoming these priors (I am saying this as a strong moral realist myself). There are many other philosophical, moral and historical objections to Catholicism, and the list goes on.

Ethan says that his case for Catholicism from miracles is so strong as to unilaterally defeat all of these other objections (for example, he says that the Problem of Evil as a whole is defeated by his miracle cases), but to my mind, that is a strikingly overconfident and baseless assertion which overvalues Ethan’s case to the utmost degree.