Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

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 --JOHN ALLAN PAULOS: Miracle? A Question of Science and Faith
 --NEW YORK TIMES WEEK IN REVIEW: More on the Third Secret of Fatima
 --NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The Return of Ram Dass
 --US NEWS & WORLD REPORT: Q&A with Robert Park, Author of "Voodoo Science"

 JOHN ALLAN PAULOS: MIRACLE? A QUESTION OF SCIENCE AND FAITH

 The following op-ed appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, May 15th, 2000.
 It appears here by permission of the author.


 Miracle? A question of science and faith
 Miracles?

 Miracles here, there and everywhere. Popular discussions of miracles have
 recently appeared in Time and Newsweek, in newspapers and periodicals of all
 types, on TV and radio, and in movies such as the Philadelphia-based "The
 Sixth Sense."

 A more significant local example is the case of Katharine Drexel. A
 Philadelphia heiress, nun and social worker who died in 1955, Mother Drexel
 is nearing the end of the long process whereby a person is canonized a
 saint.

 The process hinged upon the recent official certification of two posthumous
 miracles attributed to her.

 That Mother Drexel was an admirable, compassionate and selfless woman who
 divested herself of her considerable fortune and made the world a better
 place, I have no doubt. It's with the general notion of miracles that I have
 difficulty.

 What does the word mean? If a miracle is simply a very unlikely event, then
 miracles occur every day. Just ask any lottery winner.

 But if a miracle is some sort of divine intervention, some questions come
 naturally to mind. Why, for example, is the rescuing of a few children after
 an earthquake often called a miracle when the death of perhaps hundreds of
 equally innocent children in the same disaster is laid to a geophysical
 fault line? It would seem both are the result of divine intervention or both
 are a consequence of the earth's plates shifting.

 The same point holds for other tragedies. If a recovery from a disease is a
 considered a miraculous case of divine intervention, to what do we attribute
 the contracting of the disease? Nobody except the most benighted maintains
 that AIDS is some sort of divine retribution.

 In the Mother Drexel case, two hearing-impaired children prayed (or their
 parents prayed) to Mother Drexel years after she died, and they soon enjoyed
 spontaneous and unexplained recoveries. But such recoveries do sometimes
 occur, as do the more common spontaneous and unexplained deteriorations.

 Not knowing what causes them in every case does not mean they're instances
 of divine intervention. In fact, scientists frequently are unable to ascribe
 a specific cause to either the contracting of a disease or a recovery from
 it. Statistical tests and clinical trials conducted not on one or two people
 but on large samples of people are sometimes insufficient to determine
 causes.

 If someone really wanted to search for a causal connection between prayers
 and cures, he or she would need to examine a very large number of cases, set
 time limits on cures, survey the prayers and the person or entity to whom
 they're directed, compare recovery rates of those who pray with those who
 don't, and guard against self-deception and wish-fulfillment.

 Another problem with proclaiming a miracle was noted a long time ago by
 David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher. Whatever evidence exists
 that a certain phenomenon miraculously violates a scientific law is evidence
 as well that the scientific law in question is flawed or irrelevant. If
 before Alexander Graham Bell, for example, someone heard the voice of a
 friend who was hundreds of miles away, the evidence for this "miraculous"
 event would also be evidence that the physical laws that the event seems to
 violate (regarding how fast sound travels, let's say) are wrong or don't
 apply.

 It's become somewhat trendy to say that religion and science are growing
 together and are no longer incompatible in any way, but are simply concerned
 with different realms. Religion, we're told, deals with faith and science
 with facts. The Templeton Foundation, a local philanthropy located in
 Radnor, makes a large annual award to whoever has made the greatest
 contribution to furthering this harmony between religion and science.

 Harmony is difficult to oppose, but I don't believe that any attempt to
 homogenize these very disparate bodies of ideas can succeed. In many (but
 not all) ways, they remain quite distinct and reflect quite different
 mindsets.

 Since getting people to change their minds about these matters usually calls
 for a miracle (in the sense of being extremely unlikely), I'll stop right
 here. Well, not quite. We can all be glad that, whatever the cause, the two
 children who prayed to Mother Drexel have completely recovered.

 **John Allen Paulos, a mathematics professor at Temple University, is the
 author of "Once Upon a Number." He is an advisory member of the Daily News
 Editorial Board.


 NY TIMES WEEK IN REVIEW: MORE ON THE THIRD SECRET OF THE FATIMA

 May 21, 2000

 REVELATIONS
 The Third Secret Raises More Questions
 By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

 For the full article, go to
 http://www.nytimes.com/library/review/052100vatican-secret.html

 [ROME -- The Vatican's belated disclosure of the third secret of Fatima last
 week was a little like the F.B.I. announcing that Elvis is, in fact, dead.
 The revelation that the long-suppressed prophecy contained a vision of
 something that has already come to pass, the 1981 assassination attempt on
 John Paul II, deflated decades of conspiracy theories and doomsday
 predictions (nowadays broadcast on dozens of Fatima Web sites). Most
 third-secret devotees were skeptical.
 Fatima, revered by Roman Catholics as a place where the Virgin Mary appeared
 to three Portuguese shepherd children in 1917, has long held a broader
 fascination for people attracted to unsolved, spooky mysteries....]

 NY TIMES MAGAZINE: THE RETURN OF RAM DASS

 The Dass Effect
 After a near-fatal stroke, the spiritual leader Ram Dass is back -- this
 time guiding baby boomers to the enlightenment of age.

 By SARA DAVIDSON
 Sunday, May 21, 2000

 For the full article, go to
 http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000521mag-ramdass.html

 [A full moon was rising on a windy winter night three years ago when Ram
 Dass was lying in bed in San Anselmo, Calif., trying to fix a book he was
 writing on aging and dying. He was 65, his hair had turned white and he had
 spent hundreds of hours working with people who were severely ill. He had
 completed a draft of the book, "Still Here" (to be published by Riverhead
 this month), but on that same day in 1997, his editor, Amy Hertz, had sent
 the draft back to him. She said it was "too glib -- funny and interesting
 but not really getting to the heart of the matter."...]

 US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT: Q&A WITH ROBERT PARK, AUTHOR OF "VOODOO SCIENCE"

 News You Can Use 5/8/00

 How bad science can be hazardous to your health

 By Avery Comarow
 For the full text of the article, go to
 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000508/nycu/park.htm .

 [Sales of Voodoo Science (Oxford University Press, $25) could wind up being
 less than author Robert Park might like. On May 5, if Web postings based on
 a doomsday book are to be believed, the world will end, swamped by tidal
 waves and torn to pieces, when the Earth, moon, sun, and five planets line
 up. It's the kind of pseudoscience that Park, a physics professor at the
 University of Maryland, takes on in his book, which will be published this
 month....]

 --------------------------------

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