QUICK THOUGHTS ON WHY WE SHOULD LEND LITTLE CREDENCE TO MIRACLE CLAIMS

Some say a miracle is an event that cannot be accounted for by any known order of nature. This is a broad definition. The other definitions are really sub-definitions and are therefore lesser in importance. So it becomes a case of, "I don't know how this event that seems supernatural took place therefore it is supernatural." That is an argument from ignorance and it is no good. It is better to dismiss all miracles as nonsense instead of using such arguments. It is not biased or unfair when there is no option. The believers in miracles are the ones who are unfair.

Others say a miracle is a remarkable coincidence. But some will say they learn from remarkable coincidences that God is vindictive and deceitful or that magic rules the universe not God. So the definition isn't really any good when it comes to evidence and logic. And the coincidence won't impress you unless you are looking for it to. A coincidence showing you Jesus is God requires that you decide in the first place that he is God. So it makes no difference to your faith. God must be doing it just for the entertainment value.

It is not coincidences that tell us truth - the mundane is more important for that. We learn more from the mundane and live with the mundane more. What use then is somebody being saved from death by a remarkable chain of coincidences that look like God acting when babies suffer and die? You may reply that God has a reason for saving the person and letting others remain in danger. But that is an assumption - you cannot provide evidence or proof. You have to let evidence speak for itself and keep speculation out of it.

No matter how good the evidence or testimony for a magical event - eg the sun being turned into cheese for a while - we will not believe it. Religious people agree with this attitude and do not see it as narrow. But if we take the same attitude say towards the magical return of Jesus Christ from the dead they disapprove. Fair is fair. Belief in miracles is implicitly unfair and therefore an insult against those who do not believe. It is not fair to randomly pick miracles and magic reports to believe and discount or dismiss others. Religious people can be very angry when their miracle beliefs are challenged - they sense the problem if they cannot put their finger on it. Miracle reports stifle true decency. Religion is a system of belief concerned about the magical and the miracle - ie the supernatural. Religion, then despite its charm, is really a time-bomb.

Believers forget that a miracle by definition is only possible but possible by itself does not make any reported miracle believable. You can only go as far as saying, "Maybe it was supernatural and maybe it was not. Who can believe either way?" Somebody may rise from the dead. The evidence cannot indicates that he did rise. It can only indicate that he might have done. So a miracle possibly happened. But then you will only guess where the miracle made its input. Maybe the miracle is not that somebody rose but that people thought he did though he did not. Maybe the miracle is that something implanted false evidence in their heads. Maybe the miracle is that the person was so close to death that he passed for dead and a few days later made a magical recovery. You cannot say you are a servant of a God of truth and honesty and sense if you dogmatically claim that the man rose from the dead. You are pretending to care about what God is trying to say in the miracle when in fact all you care about is arrogantly saying you know what you do not know.

A religion based on miracles should be avoided like the plague - it is based on arrogance and lies.