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Donnie B.
Skeptic Friend
417 Posts |
 Posted - 07/28/2002 : 16:08:39
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So, they dug out the nine miners who were trapped underground for three days in Pennsylvania. They were all alive and in pretty good shape.
But the news media are trumpeting this as some kind of miracle!
Is this really something to be concerned about? After all, the word 'miracle' is used pretty loosely. For example, the "miracle of childbirth" occurs tens of thousands of times a day... hardly paranormal! Similarly, phrases like "the miracle of modern medicine", and the like.
But it does bother me a little that the miners' rescue is described as a 'miracle', rather than the result of 72-odd hours of hard and dedicated effort by the rescuers.
What do you think, is this worthy of our skeptical scorn?
-- Donnie B.
Brian: "No, no! You have to think for yourselves!" Crowd: "Yes! We have to think for ourselves!"
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 07/28/2002 : 16:15:20 [Permalink]
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To be honest, when I saw the news that's about the first word that popped into my head. It wasn't because I thought it was magical but because that's just the sort of situation that the word is applied to.
I think we can safely use the word yet realize that the miracle occured because of training, hard work and procedures developed from lessons learned when minors weren't so fortunate.
 @tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 07/28/2002 : 17:27:45 [Permalink]
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I think you are being a bit oversensitive about the usage of the word miracle. Many people who say that the rescue has been a miracle do so without having any thoughts of divine intervention. There are bound to be few religious types who talk about it with a different definition of miracle in mind, but I don't think that there is any reason for concern here.
The Miracle thing could be worse. A local town had a similar mining accident in 1963 with 11 miners rescued after 14 days under dramatic circumstences and unprecedented media attention. Everyone called it a miracle then, too. Just because the town was named Lengede the event has eventually become known as the 'Legende von Lengede'. It is not even close to the dictionary definition of legend , but people never let semantics get in the way of a good title or label.
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The SollyLama
Skeptic Friend
USA
234 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2002 : 07:25:24 [Permalink]
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I'm sensitive to the overuse of the term "HERO". The news trumpeted the miners as heroes. Exactly for what? Not dying? That hardly merits one being a hero.
I'm really glad they all got out too. But I'm a bit fuzzy on what they did, other than not die, that makes them heroes.
I also saw on CNN someone wrote in a letter saying how it was god (but failed to mention which one) that saved the miners. Really? I thought the 500 or so people digging that big hole had something to do with it.
In fact, if we're to give all the credit to god, that begs the question: Who buried them down there to begin with? Who caused the flooding (the Christian god has a rap-sheet a mile long on flooding) that nearly drowned them? Until HUMANS, not ghosts in the sky, dug those men out.
Seems to me that 'god' did his best to kill these fellows. If it weren't for other humans, they would be dead.
It's always funny to hear religious types ignore the contributions of man and attribute everything good that happens to god. All the while ignoring the fact that god would have to be equally responsible for the bad. If that's the case, and it was all the work of some god- then that god merely toyed with those miners lives.
Does anyone believe those miners would be alive now if it was simply left to god to save them?
Be your own god!
(First, and only, commandment of Sollyism)
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Dr Shari
Skeptic Friend
135 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2002 : 09:52:37 [Permalink]
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Life is a miracle. Everything that happens is a miracle. This is a continual miraculous world. I admit I am tired of the term also. Like the word beautiful, miracle is an overused term. A person is beautiful. A sports play is beautiful. A sunset is beautiful.
On this list of overused words I would add Love, Neat, Awesome, Hero, tragic, suffering,... A whole list of things that try to convey an emotion but are inadequet. People need to read a thesaurus to expand their vocabulary but then again the average person doesn't even know what a thesaurus is.
Death: The High Cost of Living
It is easier to get forgiveness then to get permission! |
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Mespo_man
Skeptic Friend
USA
312 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2002 : 10:32:27 [Permalink]
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You don't seem to have much good to say about anybody, spiritual or otherwise.
The miners kept their heads and stuck together. They worked as a group for the survival of each and every member. Teamwork, guts, determination. That's hero stuff. When ordinary people do extraordinary things.
God didn't try to kill them. The miner's map of the location of the adjacent abandoned mine was off by 300 feet. Sounds like human error to me. But, by the same token, extraordinary human effort got the men out.
So lighten up, Solly. After all the crap coming from Wall Street, it was nice to read about what humans can do right, for a change.
(:raig |
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The SollyLama
Skeptic Friend
USA
234 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2002 : 14:01:18 [Permalink]
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Don't get me wrong- I'm happy as heck those guys survived.
I just don't see where the term Hero applies. Simply not dying should not be a qualification for being a hero. Given the fact that they receive training for such an accident, and had no option but to simply wait it out, I don't see where that's extraordinary.
Am I a hero for not dying in a motorcycle wreck? No, I was just lucky. People who walk away from a plane wreck are not heroes- they are lucky. The miners were lucky.
While I certainly commend them not dying, and I commend their ability to have presence of mind to tie everyone together, I think it's an abuse of the word to call them heroes. No malice intended here.
I think it takes from the definition of the word (now the people who took on the terrorists on flight 93 were HEROES with big capital letters) if the simple act of survival is deemed heroic.
It's a matter of semantics, not malice.
Be your own god!
(First, and only, commandment of Sollyism)
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2002 : 15:01:52 [Permalink]
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Mespo, I don't see how you see that as being a negative thing. The word is overused. I have no problem with it being used in this case, or for that matter any case, really. Better than miracle, I suppose. Maybe it applies in this case, and maybe everyone is a hero just surviving at all.
"Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a war against terrorism." - Howard Zinn |
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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend
343 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2002 : 15:41:11 [Permalink]
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quote:
Don't get me wrong- I'm happy as heck those guys survived.
I just don't see where the term Hero applies. Simply not dying should not be a qualification for being a hero. Given the fact that they receive training for such an accident, and had no option but to simply wait it out, I don't see where that's extraordinary.
Am I a hero for not dying in a motorcycle wreck? No, I was just lucky. People who walk away from a plane wreck are not heroes- they are lucky. The miners were lucky.
While I certainly commend them not dying, and I commend their ability to have presence of mind to tie everyone together, I think it's an abuse of the word to call them heroes. No malice intended here.
I think it takes from the definition of the word (now the people who took on the terrorists on flight 93 were HEROES with big capital letters) if the simple act of survival is deemed heroic.
It's a matter of semantics, not malice.
Be your own god!
(First, and only, commandment of Sollyism)
While I generally agree with everything you stated, there well could have been some heroic acts committed by the miners in this case. Say helping a struggling member to hold on or giving a guy suffering from hypothermia your coat for a while and so on. The fact that they survived and were rescued (by definite real heroes) was not heroic, but maybe some of the actions they took while surviving were heroic.
Another perfect example would be those who managed to escape the WTC before they collapsed. Surely there were some heroic acts by some individuals who helped another survive.
Now some could argue that the very fact that they are miners and take some risks in their everyday job makes them heroes (something you will hear as well for fire fighters, police, EMT's, etc.). Now I myself will not go that far since it is a very calculated risk and the fact that they are just doing their job does not make one heroic as per the definition
"A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war."
Or
"showing extreme courage; especially of actions courageously undertaken in desperation as a last resort; "made a last desperate attempt to reach the climber""
So in summary some of the guys could have been heroes while trapped in the mine, but the fact they were trapped did not make them heroes, it made them victems.
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