The Christian View of miracles
Two of my friends, John Loftus at Debunking Christianity and Mike D at A-Unicornist, currently have discussions going on about miracles. Both sites have a back forth discussion going on between Christians who believe in miracles and skeptics who do not believe in miracles or, at least, do not agree with how Christians frame the miracle question.
You will have to read several posts to find the relevant discussions. Some of the discussion is pretty straight forward and some of it is philosophical arm wrestling.
As readers likely know, I am not a big fan of philosophy. Perhaps, the real issue is not such much that I am not a fan of philosophy as much as I am not a fan of endless discussions, debates, and arguments philosophy tends to perpetuate.
My view of miracles is rather straight forward.
What is a miracle? For the Christian, a miracle is an event or action that can not be explained using natural means. These unexplainable events or actions are the work of the Christian God.
My definition of a miracle is very different from the Christian. I readily admit that there are events or actions that happen that can not be explained. All of us have had things happen in our lives that are unexplainable. Where the Christian and I differ is to whom or to what we ascribe the miracle to.
The Christian sees God behind the miracles and I don’t. Just because there is no explanation for an event or action doesn’t mean the Christian God did it. All it means is that there is no explanation.
When Christians continue to press the claim that their God is a miracle-worker, skeptics rightly ask for proof. Where is the proof that a miracle took place and the Christian God was the agency behind the miracle?
Anecdotal stories are not proof. Personal testimonies are not proof.
At the end of the day, believing the Christian God works miracles requires faith. Christians are going to believe God did it regardless of what the evidence suggests. This will always be a problem when discussing miracles with Christians. They will ALWAYS appeal to faith. (and we should not expect them to do otherwise)
Many times, according to Christians, a miracle by God is preceded by prayer. It should be quite easy to test whether or not praying for someone causes the Christian God to work a miracle.
Let’s find a Christian with medically verifiable pancreatic cancer. Let’s invite pastors to pray for the person. Let’s invite any and all Christians to pray for them. Let’s do this for a week, a month, or even a year. And then let’s take a look at the Christian’s cancer. Surely, with all this praying the cancer should be gone.
This exercise can be expanded to included thousands of people with medically verifiable pancreatic cancer and thousands of pastors and every-day praying Christians.
What are the odds that any of the people with cancer will be cured?
Zero.
They will ultimately die because that is what happens with people who have the kind of cancer they have.
Christians will claim a miracle happened if the person lived longer than expected, had less pain than expected, etc. Of course none of these things are verifiable. We will just have to take their word for it. (or not)
If all else fails, Christians will trot out the worn-out line that states, God always answers prayer:
- Sometimes he says yes
- Sometimes he says no
- Sometimes he says not now
I readily admit that unexplainable things happen. However, I simply can not see the connection between the unexplainable and the Christian God.
The gospels are filled with miracles. The miracle of miracles? Jesus being resurrected from the dead.
As a skeptic and an atheist, I do not think Jesus or anyone else resurrected from the dead. When people die they stay that way. (and yes I am aware of near-death experiences. Such things can now be explained neurologically)
I have conducted a fair number of funerals over the years and have attended even more. Not one person has ever had a Jesus or Lazarus resurrection from the dead. Every person is exactly where we left them, in the ground or scattered across the ground.
Again, any claim that people who were dead and came back to life requires faith, a faith I do not have.
I have Christian friends who see every event as a miracle. The sunset is pretty. Must be a miracle, God sent it just for them. Ran into So-and-So at the mall, must have been a divine appointment. I have taken to just smiling and nodding when these miracles are recounted to me.
A beautiful sunset is amazing and wonderful. Attributing it to some divine plan actually detracts from the experience — at least for me.
Same for me. I see wonder everywhere but that doesn’t make think “miracle” or “God.” There are many wonderful, awesome things to behold in this world and I can enjoy them without God being part of the discussion.
Protestant Christians are particularly sloppy thinkers. Every generation changes the meaning of common words. That is why I call protestant Christianity a gnostic religion – only insiders can understand what common words mean. Catholic speakers apply standard (Webster’s Seventh Collegiate ) meanings to common words.
Kansas and Utah’s national parks are generally made out of the same general stuff but very few people travel thousands of miles to see the Kansas landscape. Miraculous stuff is special concentrations and arrangements of natural stuff. This is an old definition of “miracle.”
Some of the unexplainable are really “unexplainable at the moment”, and probably a lot of them (if not all) will be eventually explained.
The interest thing about the ‘miracles’ attributed to God is that most of them (again, if not all) go hand in hand with the science or medicine at the moment.
Years ago, God couldn’t cure cancer at all. Now He can (like medicine can). AIDS was a death sentence, now God manages to let people with AIDS live. God, Science and medicine can’t regrow limbs, although science is managing to create robotic replacements.
So, why is that? Well, Christians then will throw in the “Doctor of doctors” bullshit.
Minutes ago, my wife was telling me about the case of a coworkers niece, a beautiful 3 years old girl, unable to grow to the expected size, with some cognitive problems… After genetic tests they discovered a rare disease. And more rare was the fact that the girl was still alive. So, you can imagine the ‘good’ news for the family. Christians would tell you a myriad of bullshit alternatives, all exempting God from blame. Some would say the fact that she is still alive is a miracle itself. With this thinking, which god can ever fail?
Other factor for attributing miracles to God, is bad understanding of math and statistics. What’s the chance of you being born? the right spermatozoid, the right egg, the timing, one in billions or more. Is is a miracle? Hell, not. it happens thousands os times every day. The odd of being “you” is amazing, but you are there anyway. And along with billion others.
Thinking about the resurrection this evening, it doesn’t make any sense within a trinitarian theology. How could 1/3 of the godhead die, I mean really DIE? Death makes absolutely no sense for a being outside of time and space, death is a state of biological systems. Something eternal CAN’T die, by definition. It’s hard not to see the whole resurrection business as some variation of the Greek Demeter, Dionysius, or Orpheus myths grafted onto Jewish sin ethics. Christianity has some pretty striking similarities to Greco-Roman mythology/religion. The Logos, as one huge example; the mystery cults like the Eleusinian mysteries as another.
The other thing about the “miracle” of the resurrection, as I’ve said before, is why not just stick around? If you want to impress the truth upon people, stick around for a few hundred years, ageless and omniscient. Have the stars write your journal across the sky every night, words of love and forgiveness in a hundred different languages every night. There are so many obvious ways that the miracle could be made more manifestly miraculous. We get resurrection, but no Jesus to be found. This would make any reasonable person wonder mightily about the resurrection. Apply Occam’s razor (what is the simpler explanation that accounts for the facts as they appear?). Why would the Deity do that to people? So that their choice of Said would require a leap of faith? While I have great sympathies with Christianity as a symbolic system pointing to something very valuable, it is a very “primitive” myth, simple and utterly outside of logic and science. It stands with every other culture’s myths.
Any good outcome, even the slightest thing, is considered an answer to the prayers that were uttered. That doesn’t seem very scientific. How can they know that one is in any way connected to the other? What if I responded, “No, Sally’s actually getting better because I rubbed my rabbit foot for an hour yesterday.” Or, “No, Allah helped her because I prayed to him five times yesterday and begged for him to intervene on her behalf.” Would the Christian then say, “Wow, maybe it was the rabbit foot or Allah.” I doubt it. They would consider those things coincidental, not actually connected or causing anything to happen. They would clearly see that a rabbit’s foot can’t really help anything. Outsiders see prayer the same way. Plus we feel we must nod and smile, as someone mentioned. It’s almost like when a mentally ill person is explaining something strange to you and you feel you must just nod and smile because that’s safer and doing anything else wouldn’t do any good anyway.
Yeah, I have a friend who has run all of his life. He had a heart attack and it was determined that he needed heart surgery. After he had the surgery, everyone was praising God. I love this guy, dearly, and I want to honor his sensibilities about his recovery. But honestly, just think if the money pouring into churches were put into medical research, how much better off everyone would be.
Correct. I know of people who have prayed their social security check will be in the bank on X day and when it happens it is a miracle. The real story is that their bank was notorious for posting social security checks a day late so when they finally fixed their system to post them on the proper day it was a MIRACLE.
So silly.
Speaking of prayer-a lady and I were watching people in front of the library deal with a child who wouldn’t cooperate. She said, “We need to pray.” What did I do? I nodded and smiled, of course. I guess what irks me is that she feels free to express herself, but I feel I must suppress myself.
Don’t suppress yourself. This is a call to me, too.
I’m not an atheist but I do find the use of the term ‘miracle’ to be thrown around so much that it renders it meaningless. I am a Nazarene pastor who reads your blog, and while I’m sad you’ve left the faith, I find your posts interesting and honest. Not that I necessarily agree with them, but I’m not one to read stuff that just reinforces my own beliefs.
Thanks Greg. I found the the “miracle” threshold was very low when I was a pastor. the silliest of things were called a “miracle.”
Researchers have actually studied prayer (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=all) and the results suggest that praying for someone doesn’t create a positive effect on the outcome (in this case, heart surgery).
When I was in college, I worked for a family very interested in living a “New Age” life. Their 3-year-old boy got a piece of food stuck in his throat in such a way that he could breathe but was wheezing terribly. The mother had called a New Age “healer” who put the boy in a steamy bathroom. When it was clear that wasn’t working, the healer gathered the other children and me into the bathroom and told us to visualize the piece of food being coughed up. Of course, nothing happened except the boy continued to wheeze and cry and be miserable. I guess we didn’t “visualize” enough. Finally, after about 3 hours, the mother and healer finally took the boy to the hospital. Prayer or visualization, I’ll take the hospital first every time.
Me too-the hospital over superstition.
I define “miracle” as a statistically highly improbable event or an application of an unknown power. Or help from my Guardian Angel.
I’m 63 ! I have yet to come across what I’d consider a miracle, unless it’s the miracle of medicine which has helped me survive this long. Right now I need a small miracle of Science/Medicine to help me get rid of my kidney stone. Should I pray to the Medicine Gods?
Hi Bruce,
Many years ago, as a young Christian, I was having extreme doubts about miracles and and whether God answers prayer. A couple of Pentecostals convinced me that if I experienced the so-called Baptism of the Holy Spirit with “signs following”, I would know that the bible is true and see God healing the sick . The events of the Acts could be experienced in the life of the church today.
I became a Pentecostal for a short while then a Charismatic Baptist. But years have taught me that it is all charlitanism. Healings are not taking place and many Pentecostal and Charismatic leaders are duping their followers with false hope. I now do not think that miracles ever took place.
Shalom,
John arthur
Yeah, I remember being at that place where I wanted more but it seemed “more” was always beyond the next horizon.
Like you, I came to the conclusion that it was all a fraud.
About John Arthur’s comment: IMO, The Clergy Project demonstrates that like John, ex-preachers have finally opened their eyes and used their critical thinking skills to come into the real world where delusion no longer can comfort you through faith. What do you think of the Clergy Project, Bruce? (if you’ve already commented about it, forgive me for not having read it.)