The Miraculous Healing of Barbara Snyder

Evidence of a miracle and replies to philosophical arguments against them

The miracle

I’ve recently mentioned becoming increasingly sympathetic to the view that modern miracles are one of the best arguments for theism. There seem to be a great many miracles that are extremely well-attested. Skeptics have to tangle themselves in knots to explain them away. Theism makes much better sense of the global pattern of inexplicable miracles.

I thought I’d discuss one such case in some detail because I think it is completely naturally inexplicable. That is the case of Barbara Cummiskey (at the time, now Snyder). Thanks to Caleb Jackson for telling me about this case and doing much of the research on it and to Craig Keener for describing many of the details of this case. Keener also generously responded to an email I sent him about this. Thanks also to God—or perhaps some other supernatural being—for performing this miracle, for without it, this article would have been impossible.

When you tell people you believe in miracles, a lot of them look at you askance, as if believing in miracles is sure proof that a person is a gullible rube. Weirdly, it seems that believing in miracles is a lot less respectable than believing in an all-powerful creator of the universe who can do miracles whenever he wants.

But most of the people who have ever lived have believed in miracles. There are strong philosophical arguments for thinking that there is a being who can do miracles if he wants. Every person who believes in the truth of Christianity thinks that God miraculously raised Jesus from the dead, and every person who thinks Islam is true believes that God performs miracles. In light of this, I think the extreme presumption against miracles comes mostly from baseless philosophical prejudice, rather than from reason.

Note, the things I say in this essay come from a combination of Keener’s book and Jackson’s book in progress. Both checked their facts carefully. Keener, a notoriously judicious scholar, summarized “I’ve confirmed the facts with two physicians who treated her. There are numerous independent witnesses to her condition and years of medical records. In fact, two of her doctors were so astounded by her case that they’ve written about it in books.” The following newspaper accounts depict her doctors corroborating the accounts and occurred right after the events in question:

Okay, with the preliminary remarks out of the way, here’s what happened!

When she was 15, Snyder developed multiple sclerosis. Her condition was confirmed both by her symptoms and by a spinal tap (a medical procedure that involves inserting a needle into the lower back to collect a sample of cerebrospinal fluid). Snyder spent about three quarters of her life in the hospital between the ages of 15 and 33. MS often goes into remission for brief periods, but in Snyder’s case, it would persistently get worse; her doctor described “she would get through a crisis, and then stabilize on a plateau that was lower than her last remission…but she never improved.” Snyder’s symptoms got really bad, and eventually included:

1. Deterioration of her respiratory system and paralysis of her diaphragm leading to repeat hospitalizations for pneumonia and asthma. This lead, in 1972, to the total collapse of her lung, and her other lung was largely paralyzed. She needed a tracheotomy to breathe properly.

2. Because she wasn’t able to swallow, she was fed through a feeding tube. She was with a nurse constantly, even when at home.

3. Her body became severely warped—Keener summarizes:

In her words, she was wrapped up like a pretzel. Her feet pointed down, unable to rest flat against the floor— even had someone tried to stand her up. Her arms remained tight against her chest; normally when anyone tried to pull one of her arms away from her body, it would automatically clamp back up against her chest. Her hands curled up against the inside of her wrists, leaving them full of dead skin except when, periodically, someone would pry them open to clean them out.

4. Because of this, her leg muscles deteriorated completely. She wasn’t even able to move in a wheelchair because of the severity of her condition.

5. The MS led to her becoming incontinent.

6. Her vision became almost entirely non-functional.

7. Her gastrointestinal system was entirely destroyed—one of the medical records summarizes describes that she had “complete gastrointestinal paralysis with prolapsing rectum corrected by surgery… and complete malfunction of the intestinal tract necessitating the ileostomy.”

The surgeon Harold Adolf described her situation as the following:

Barbara was one of the most hopelessly ill patients I ever saw. She was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic as having multiple sclerosis. She had been admitted to the local hospital seven times in the year that I was first asked to see her. Each time she was expected to die. One diaphragm was completely paralyzed so that the lung was nonfunctional, and the other worked less than 50 percent. She had a tracheotomy tube in her neck for breathing, always required extra oxygen, and could speak only in short sentences because she easily became breathless. Her abdomen was swollen grotesquely because the muscles of her intestine did not work. Nor would her bladder function. She had not been able to walk for seven years. Her hand and arm movements were poorly coordinated. And she was blind except for two small areas in each eye.

She was admitted to the Mayo clinic in 1978, but it didn’t help. Thomas Marshall, one of her doctors, sent her home, expecting that she only had weeks to live, and administered hospice care.

That’s when everything turned around. It all occurred on Pentecost Sunday, June 7, 1981, when she was visited by two friends from Church. Before this, quoting Keener, “Someone had called in a prayer request about her to the local Christian radio station, WMB1. Now 450 letters came to her in care of her church.”

While her friends were reading the letters to her, she claimed that she heard a booming voice declare “My child: Get up and walk.” She immediately declared that God had told her to get up and walk, and requested her family urgently.

Before she could wait for them, she did get up and walk, something she’d been unable to do for years. What happened next was even more astonishing: every one of her symptoms was gone immediately. Keener notes “Her feet had been too deformed even to wear slippers, but now she found them flat on the ground.” She could see. She could breathe. She could walk and function normally.

Her doctors were absolutely astonished to find her new state, as were all her acquaintances. A medical record from one of her doctors is displayed below (I’ll quote it below because it’s hard to read—thanks for Caleb Jackson doing the transcription):

The patient is a 31 year-old white female who has had recently a complete healing of a severe multiple sclerosis which she has had for the previous 16 years. The complete recovery occurred two weeks after an ileostomy, exploratory laparotomy on 5-14, at which time she was completely incapacitated with complete paralysis of the right diaphragm, 50% paralysis of the left diaphragm, tracheostomy tube in place and constant tracheostomy care, intermittent, almost complete blindness with large scotomata, complete gastrointestinal paralysis with prolapsing rectum corrected by surgery, but complete malfunction of the intestinal tract necessitating the ileostomy, severe tremor of both arms and hands, making personal care almost impossible and complete inability to walk for the previous two years.

The patient now has none of the findings of multiple sclerosis, is walking normally, has the tracheostomy tube out, and no pulmonary problems. She is anxious for her ileostomy and tracheostomy to be closed. [For the patient’s] past medical history and systemic review: please see previous extensive charts. At the present time, the patient has no findings of multiple sclerosis, and walks normally, speaks normally, and is very happy as is her family over the obvious answer to prayer and the good hand of God on her life.

A Chicago Tribune article depicted above includes the following descriptions from her doctors, each calling it a miracle:¹

• Dr. Harold Adolph (Surgeon at Central DuPage Hospital), “This was completely unexpected. There is nothing I can explain on the basis of medicine…[it was] a miracle.”

• Dr. Thomas Marshall (Internist at Central DuPage Hospital), “I have never witnessed anything like this before or since and considered it a rare privilege to observe the Hand of God performing a true miracle. Barb has gone on to live a normal life in every way.”

Dr. Donald Edwards (Family practitioner at Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital), “There is no medical test to explain what has happened. There is no neurological trace of her problem. The proof is time.”

At no point, between then and her death at 71, did her symptoms reappear. This is very surprising; MS doesn’t go away.

As far as I can tell, there are four coherent naturalistic explanations, but none of them fit the facts.

The first theory involves some sort of elaborate fraud on which Snyder wasn’t really sick. But this is a wholly implausible theory. We have many eyewitness reports of Snyder’s condition. It was well known. This theory requires that several different doctors falsified medical records at great personal risk for no gain, and that her entire family was in on it. Remember, Snyder had every incentive not to fake this condition because it resulted in her being in a horrifically debilitated state. And that theory can obviously not explain the breathing tube, the visits to the Mayo clinic, and so on, which would have made no sense if she was perfectly well.

A second theory is that her symptoms were psychosomatic. But this is rather ridiculous. Psychosomatic conditions do not lead to the kinds of objective symptoms she displayed—gastrointestinal issues, a horribly warped body, incontinence, a collapsed lung, and so on. Also, psychosomatic symptoms tend to appear immediately rather than build gradually as her symptoms did, and her symptoms fit MS, as various doctors confirm. Lastly, the spinal tap test confirmed that it was MS.

A third theory: perhaps the condition was originally misdiagnosed and then cleared up on its own. But this won’t explain things at all:

1. It won’t explain the spinal tap test confirming she had MS (a spinal tap isn’t completely dispositive, but it is very strong evidence, especially in conjunction with her other symptoms).

2. It won’t explain the immediate healing. Even if she didn’t have MS, she clearly had something, and there’s no comparable disease where her symptoms would all disappear immediately at the same time. Her other symptoms were caused by her disease destroying her body’s functionality, so merely fixing the underlying cause won’t fix her immune system. It takes time for nerves to regain functionality—this won’t happen all at once just from the underlying cause being addressed. One paper summarizing recovery from MS states “Symptoms of MS relapse typically develop gradually over hours to days, reaching a in some of days, followed by a gradual and variable recovery course over weeks to months.” Note that the medical inexplicability of the case was agreed to by all of Snyder’s doctors.

3. This won’t explain the immediate return to functionality of the lung when it was collapsed. Collapsed lungs don’t heal themselves and wouldn’t clear up immediately with the other symptoms.

4. This won’t explain her ability to walk immediately after her condition healed. Her leg muscles had deteriorated because they went unused for years, so her being able to walk again is inexplicable.

5. This won’t explain why her healing occurred during the Pentecost, after hearing a voice say “My child: Get up and walk.”

The fourth theory: she had MS but it went into spontaneous remission. In other words, her MS cleared up and this eliminated her other symptoms. However, this doesn’t explain the data:

1. It doesn’t explain the collapsed lung.

2. It doesn’t explain her immediate complete return to normal functionality. It takes time for nerves to regenerate—MS symptoms wouldn’t clear up all at once, and functionality would return to different organs at different times.

3. This won’t explain her ability to walk immediately after her condition healed. Her leg muscles had deteriorated because they went unused for years, so her being able to walk again perfectly well is inexplicable.

4. This won’t explain why her healing occurred in the Pentecost, after hearing a voice say “My child: Get up and walk.”

5. It won’t explain why the disease never came back. MS isn’t curable—it can go into remission for a bit but it comes back. So this theory won’t explain her being disease free for decades. I couldn’t find a single documented case of MS going into total remission for 30 years, apart from this one. Only about 8% of people are symptom free after seven years, and this is especially unlikely if people have really severe symptoms.

The naturalistic theories aren’t just improbable. They’re not just one in a million events. They are flatly incompatible with the data. They do not fit the facts. The only theory that fits the facts is that a miracle occurred, orchestrated by a supernatural agent.

Philosophical objections

There are various philosophical objections people have to miracles. In this section, I’ll explain why I don’t buy them.

A first one: if God does miracles sometimes, why doesn’t he do them more often? Why didn’t he heal Snyder before this point? Why doesn’t he heal your loved ones? In response, however, note that theists will inevitably have to grapple with the fact that there is evil in the world. Maybe they will explain this by soul building, maybe by free will of supernatural entities, and maybe in other ways. But the point is, even before one got evidence for miracles, it was a puzzle on theism that God doesn’t eliminate bad things—and this is a puzzle theists have spent lots of time thinking about.

This puzzle becomes no worse from the fact that God sometimes performs miracles. Whatever explains why there’s so much wild animal suffering, pediatric cancer, and so on, will also very likely explain why more miracles don’t occur. And if one is going to bring in other, unrelated objections to theism to bear on the miracles data, then the theist is licensed to bring up other arguments for the existence of God.

Another common remark “if you believe in miracles, why do you reject them in other religions. It’s just the special pleading fallacy.” But I don’t reject miracles in “other religions.” I don’t have a religion, and I’m perfectly willing to grant that God heals Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Christians and Muslims should grant this too!

A third common reply: the world is a big place (fact check: this is true), so it’s not too surprising that super shocking things happen sometimes. However, the odds of all the symptoms reversing at the same time are sufficiently low that this shouldn’t happen multiple times in world history. It would be like, by chance, ten people in a room all getting royal flushes. And, as Craig Keener documents, well-confirmed miracles are pretty common—not one in a million events (see here for more). And for many of the features of the Snyder case, they’re not just unlikely—they’re completely medically inexplicable. They should happen zero times in human history, not a few, especially when you stack together the improbable bits. There aren’t other recorded instances of all of a person’s MS symptoms going away immediately in a case as severe as Snyder.

It’s particularly surprising how often healings come with full reversal of symptoms. A naturalist should, after Snyder’s healings, have expected her MS to return. They’d have been wrong. And in the other cases of seemingly inexplicable healings of uncurable diseases, it is curious that the symptoms never seem to come back.

A fourth objection: perhaps, as Hume appears to suggest, a miracle is by definition the most probable explanation, so we shouldn’t believe it. This doesn’t seem right—whether miracles are the most probable result is a substantive question, rather than a definitional truth (certainly a miracle seems a lot likelier than a person getting 100 back-to-back royal flushes in poker). You can’t just define something into being unlikely.

A fifth Humean objection: because our universal experience confirms certain universal laws, our evidence for those laws is always better than our evidence for any specific violation. However, the fact that a law holds in our experience doesn’t mean we need infinitely strong evidence to think it breaks down in any cases. In my experience, no one has ever said their phone number was 323,444,9122, but if someone told me that was their phone number, I would believe them. Physicists didn’t think they needed infinitely strong evidence for weird quantum mechanical exceptions to various laws. Jonathan McLatchie gives a nice example:

To illustrate why, philosopher Dr. Timothy McGrew has given the following example from the physical sciences. According to one proposed theory in nuclear physics, spontaneous proton decay occurs, though it is such a rare event that no instances have ever been observed. In order to test this theory, scientists set up sensitive detectors in underground water tanks and leave them there for decades in order to determine whether spontaneous proton decay in fact occurs. By Pearce’s metric, this would be judged to be an extraordinary claim. But the mere fact that the great many protons so far observed have not decayed does not entail we should always, in accounting for the data, prefer alternative explanations to the hypothesis that spontaneous proton decay has taken place. But if we are permitted to conclude, on the basis of sufficient evidence, that something unprecedented has happened in the physical sciences, then should we not also be able to do the same thing in a religious context?

The two theories on offer are:

1. Natural laws are followed universally.

2. Natural laws are followed almost all the time, except in the rare cases in which a miracle happens.

Both theories predict that natural laws would hold in our experience. Thus, natural laws holding in our experience can’t be strong evidence either way, for to be evidence, something needs to be better predicted on one theory than another.

Experience can’t give us super strong arguments against miracles. Maybe a person very skeptical of theism should also be skeptical of miracles. But it’s risky business to reject empirical evidence based on your philosophical suppositions. That’s been a big source of historical error. In light of the fact that lots of very smart philosophers think God exists, you shouldn’t think the odds of God are much less than one in a thousand. But if you don’t think that, then the empirical evidence for miracles should cause you to be a believer.

A final objection: these arguments may prove the supernatural but don’t prove God specifically. I agree! These arguments will establish that there is some being with the power to heal supernaturally, but it won’t tell us if the being is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. It will, however, raise the odds of such a being, because the odds of miracles given theism are vastly higher than the odds given atheism.

Conclusion

Let me be blunt: the evidence for miracles is really strong. Naturalism, as a worldview, requires that they don’t happen, so naturalists have to tell very hard to believe stories to explain them away. One following the evidence should think miracles happen sometimes. The fact that this is incompatible with atheism is bad news for the atheist, rather than for miracles.

1. The following is a verbatim description from Jackson’s book in progress.