Craig Keener, Author of “Miracles”: People Who Want to See Ghosts Usually Do

People who believe in the paranormal usually end up experiencing paranormal events, whether they be haunted houses or cases of demon possession.  As the saying goes, “Seek and ye shall find.”  The power of suggestion is very strong.

I just finished reading Christian apologist Craig Keener’s two volume book, “Miracles”.  Whew!  I’m glad that’s over with!  Page after page after page of anecdotal claims of somebody who told somebody that somebody in Timbuktu was healed or exorcised of demon possession by praying to Jesus.  Not one case was investigated by a team of impartial investigators.  Not one dollar was spent on research.  Nope.  Just anecdotal claim after anecdotal claim.

Now listen to this story from the author himself:

“Nearly four years after my conversion from atheism and several years before I had reimbibed much academic skepticism, I was visiting a recently converted widow when I felt that God’s Spirit led me to a door, which I found then led me into a dark basement.  As I descended the stairs, I felt that the widow’s husband’s “ghost” was behind another door in the basement, but according to the basic theology I had imbibed, this spirit could only really be a demon.  Once I commanded it to leave in Jesus’s name, it departed; the widow then informed me that her husband’s belongings were stored in that room and that he had been involved with the occult.  She also informed me that a year earlier she had dated a man who claimed to have psychic powers, who claimed that the ghost of her husband was in that room and tried to exorcise it; it chased him away instead.”  

    — Craig Keener, Professor of New Testament Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary in his book, “Miracles”, p. 853

Mr. Keener is a very intelligent, very educated man…but any grown adult who believes that there are ghosts in your basement should not be taken seriously on the subject of the supernatural.

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