Reflection 3: Still Begging the Question | Stephen Scheidell When the keyword "evidence" appeared in this week's reading,

the present author was excited to move in the direction of settling epistemic dilemmas attached to identifying miracles. However, Geivett does not provide material for this move. Hence, the present title does not intend to imply that Geivett answers no questions, ut rather it aims to say that Geivett's evidential basis for miracles does not in fact provide a asis for placing anomalous phenomena into the category of a miracle. !or, in the case of external evidence, we might run into "uhn's #legitimate$ o %ection that any scientific paradigm "creates" & anomalies y virtue of the fact that some phenomena inevita ly fall outside of that given paradigm. Why do we not call the anomaly ' as evidence for the need to revise the current paradigm( Geivett's " asis" for miracles, relying upon )win urne, hinges upon the strength of natural theology's arguments for the existence of God*a asis found to e very loose for reasons that will not e ela orated here for lack of space. +o say, "if God exists, then we might expect miracles" is to simply provide room for saying that miracles possibly occur, without much asis for distinguishing this anomalous phenomenon as one that we may %ustifia ly title a miracle rather than a mere scientific anomaly. )win urne's notion of internal evidence seems somewhat promising, ut some may o %ect that such evidence relies too heavily upon su %ective interpretation. ,erhaps, )win urne intends to propose that the cumulative case uilt upon oth external and internal evidence provides enough room to separate anomaly from miracle. -ut this merely rings us to where we rested last week when that essay paralleled miracles to "glitches" in the .atrix. +rinity appropriately identified the glitch ased upon compound awareness of oth the usual course run y the programming and the fact that a programmer outside of the .atrix may, at any time, alter the program.

"/reates" is in quotations ecause the paradigm produces not the anomaly itself, ut asis for the phenomena's eing taken as an anomaly*a phenomena inexplica le under the present paradigm. 2 We will hereafter use the term "anomaly" in "uhn's somewhat technical sense used in the previous footnote. 0t denotes a phenomenon that may, or will, e explained under a paradigm to come. +he is not to e confused with the term "inexplica le phenomenon" which will e reserved for the wider category encompassing oth miracle and anomalies.
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