I'm surprised you would choose *that* episode for the psychosomatic route of explaining miracles.
Given for example the episode on the Emmaus road, where Jesus appeared post-resurrection to the disciples, and they did not recognize him; or the speech by "doubting Thomas" ("unless I put my in the hole in his side, or touch the nail holes, I will not believe"), it seems kind of silly to say that the resurrection was an example of people "merely seeing what they wanted or expected to see".
For resurrection in general, though, recall that the Jewish leaders (during the time leading up to the crucifixion) were also discussing killing Lazarus (whom Jesus raised from dead), simply because having him walking around was raising a scandal, and bringing the reputation of this "king of the jews" onto the Roman radar. Much better to hush it all up again...
My question was, does the internalized belief in a Biblical miracle produce an interpretation of an event consonant with that belief rather than with the physical event. If so, how do we determine the 'truth' of the event given the distance we are from the event?
Too late at night for a cogent answer to this. The answer (to my mind) is related to the famous ECREE (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence) of skeptic's fame.
But with a twist.
Allow me to quote C.S. Lewis--not because I consider him disposative, but because he covered the topic much more succinctly than I can...I may be mixing up a couple of his quotes, I pulled them from another website.
“All men alike, on questions which interest them, escape from the region of belief into that of knowledge when they can, and if they succeed in knowing, they no longer say they believe. Each group proceeds by applying their own techniques to the questions: “The mathematician’s proof … is by reasoning, the scientist’s by experiment, the historian’s by documents, the judge’s by concurring sworn testimony. But all these men, as men, on questions outside their own disciplines, have numerous beliefs to which they do not normally apply the methods of their own disciplines. Authority, reason, experience; on these three, mixed in varying proportions all our knowledge depends.”
All clear so far? Pure reason is the best (Godel notwithstanding); followed by experiment, then by writings or statements of people.
But best at what? Not necessarily at getting everying right--but at minimizing the number of mistakes, or at most quickly finding mistakes once they are made.
And thus it is that miracles are so often discredited--first, because they are abnormal, or prima facie ridiculous -- "Everyone knows people don't really rise from the dead." The default position, that any such incident is false, is confirmed both by scientific prediction, and common experience. And, playing by the normal rules of evidence, this would be sufficient.
However, the fly in the ointment comes in, in that miracles do not claim to be "the normal flow of nature"; they in fact claim explicitly, and on purpose, to be interruptions or interferences with nature, at the behest of some agent which stubbornly refuses to make itself available for inspection or systematic investigation. It doesn't help matters that most of the miracles seem to take place among people, or in locations, conducive to repeated and regular investigation. Almost like it was done on purpose.
The canonical response of the ECREE crowd is "well, you can't prove it, so shut up already." The indignation appears to be that "C'mon, couldn't you fanatics come up with a miracle that isn't afraid to show its face? So now the *real* reason you won't open up is clear: your alleged miracle is a fake which won't stand up to investigation. H'mmmph."
But there is another possibility--and one that is explained by the believer on other grounds entirely, starting from a totally different ansatz than that of the "disinterested observer."
This possibility is that the supernatural agent (say, a benevolent Deity) has other things to do than jumping through hoops in order to satisfy intellectual curiosity or pride. And in fact, the miracles are there to help foster a closer and more intimate *trust* between the people and the Deity. The entire atmosphere and spirit in which the investigator approaches things, tends to stifle them. (By analogy, imagine taking a clinical approach to a wife or girlfriend's amorous approach over a candlelight dinner. The minute you whipped out the notebook, the mood would go *POOF*. But it wouldn't be special pleading to point that out--except maybe your own pleading to not have to sleep on the couch for the next six months.)
So the short version of the wordy answer is, "It depends on trust." Whether in the Deity, or the superstitious peasants relating the story, varies from case to case.
Finally, to my mind, there are a couple of reasons this is so *offensive* to the scientific mind.
First, the idea that the universe is orderly, predictable, and, well, tidy. If you have a Deity barging around willy-nilly, what's the use of measuring anything?
Second, the affront to intellectual pride. "Look we've got a perfectly good model here, we know how to use it, and we can produce everything from antibiotics to guided missles to IPODS with it. Why don't you religious folk ever produce anything if you're so bloody clever?"
Third, back to the whole idea of minimization of errors. It is often said that religious fundamentalists fear science because it unravels the whole fabric of Biblical inerrancy.
But, it is also paradoxically true, that miracles threaten the entire framework of scientific completeness and sufficiency. ("Mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive" scenarios and all that...)
Some scientists and/or intellectuals may grudgingly admit that "OK, fine. There are gaps in our experience related to miracles and/or religion that (strictly speaking) we can treat as 'indeterminate'. We know they ought not to exist, but we can't directly disprove them. And strictly speaking science cannot do anything to disprove their philosophical underpinnings, since you can't get God in a Test Tube, or even create an experiment in which He *must* show up..." ("Unfalsifiable" does not mean "FALSE". It means "just 'cause we can't prove it false, that doesn't MAKE it true.")
Their rejection of the supernatural, at that point, becomes one of taste--in the interests of intellectual integrity or fairness, if you admit *one* fairy tale, you have to admit them *all*. Witches on broomsticks, fairy godmothers, elves, and all the rest come flying at you: and once you admit the possibility of one, you have no grounds for excluding ANY of them.
But that's only true...if you accept the SCIENTIFIC method as the only possible means of knowledge. One is still free to use *horse sense*, faith, historical evidence, and the rest to sift among competing supernatural claims. Or even, you know, trust.
The problem is, scientists often insist on not "loweing their standards" by doing so: since science / empiricism retains its methodology of "falsifiability" and the other approaches to things just don't. Science *is* more reliable--but only where it is applicable.
A little while ago I mentioned C.S. Lewis' example of the judge and concurring sworn testimony. There is some analogy there. Say a judge has to deal with a case of alleged date rape. If the man denies even an attempt at sexual contact, but his semsn is found (DNA match) on her underwear, it's open and shut. BUT if the situation is not so neatly defined, and it is a classic "he said, she said" situation, then even the best judge cannot resolve the dispute using the tools at his disposal. Someone who was listening in from the next apartment (hearsay), or even folks who *personally know* the parties involved, may happen to be of more use. But by the rules of evidence, these avenues are excluded. Because they must be false? No, because they might be, and the cost of being wrong is too high to admit of their being used without some means of verifying ("falsifying") their conclusions.
One last point: if you are interested in possible physical evidence for the resurrection, you might want to contact Freeper Swordmaker about the Shroud of Turin...It is odd, but I have seen a couple of reliable pro-evo FReepers use arguments just as shrill and contradictory as any pro-cre on a crevo thread, attempting to attack the Shroud. (Though I name no names.) I am not familiar enough with the Shroud to explicitly say "Yep. That's it" -- but I do know that Swordmaker has (to my mind) successfully refuted every garden variety and canonical skeptical counter-claim I have seen made against it.
Your mileage may vary. Have a good night.
Cheers! I agree with you on two points:
1) Yes, I'm willing to bet that there are a fair number of occurrences in which people engage in interpretations of events consonant with their own deeply-held beliefs rather than objective fact.
2) The weakness in this approach to things is that it appeals to the materialist and skeptic as well as to gullible believers. A devout is free to discount almost any particular miracle (except say those directly supported by the Creeds of his/her faith); whereas a skeptic MUST debunk and refuse all of them.