Atheists. What consitutes a miracle

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Can there be such a thing as a Miracle.
What would constitute one.
How far would you go to explain one before you said "I'm jumping through hoops here, that is supernatural"

I'll start.
Asking God to show me a stuffed teddy as a sign , and twenty minuites later a Stuffed Teddy was thrown out of a pram, fifty yards from me.
I'd take that as 80% proof of a divine act.
 
I thought an atheist wouldn't believe in miracles on general principle?
 
Even an Atheist would have to deal with a fiery cloud spitting lava decending on Washington followed by twenty squadrons of Angels all blowing trumpets etc etc.

I'm just wondering what was their minimum threshold. Question for agnostics too, and for theists, is the fiver they find on the street a miracle or coincidence. What would be a miracle for each person?
 
i don't believe in miracles. so if i stumbled on something that appeared to be one, i would think OMG i've crossed that thin line between sanity and insanity!
 
interesting question!,

Altough i believe, that the most convincing of miracles; is not proof for someone who is predenying everything!

The miracle would add to his/her disbelieve?

who knows:) would love to read some comments
 
snakelegs said:
i don't believe in miracles. so if i stumbled on something that appeared to be one, i would think OMG i've crossed that thin line between sanity and insanity!
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Sure Snakes, but what if everyone else was witnessing it as well?
 
I don't believe in miracles either.

I am however quite ready to admit I don't know something or can't explain something. Just because we can not explain something does not mean it was an act of God, much less an act of any specific God we name. It could be aliens, it could be a practical joke, it could be some big consipiracy, or it could simply be a coincidence. As Occam's Razor (sp?) says, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. God is the most complex explanation of all, so its higly unlikely, and whatever amazing inexplicable thing we observe can probably be explained by something else.
 
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i think to qualify as a miracle it would have to be something outside the laws of nature.
i believe god works through nature - that many things are miracles and the fact that there are scientific explanations for them doesn't take away from that.
the last scenario you offered was too awful to even contemplate.
 
Tough question. The minimum threshold would be in the realm of I can't explain it, but I know it when I see it.

The teddy bear thing wouldn't do it for me. It would have to be more that just coincidence. A miracle would have to break the normal pattern of my experienced reality.

If I could suddenly fly in order to save someone, that would be a miracle.

Those are some quick thoughts.
 
barney said:
Can there be such a thing as a Miracle.
What would constitute one.
How far would you go to explain one before you said "I'm jumping through hoops here, that is supernatural"

I'll start.
Asking God to show me a stuffed teddy as a sign , and twenty minuites later a Stuffed Teddy was thrown out of a pram, fifty yards from me.
I'd take that as 80% proof of a divine act.
Click to expand...

if perhaps everytime you asked for one that happened you might have a point. otherwise id see it as confirmation bias.

id say something that isnt likely to happen.

say, this women gets hit by a car (tragially ripped in half.) then this magical hand comes down through the clouds and heals her no scar perfectly healthy.

or perhaps, i wake up oneday and im blind (doctors verfiy it, yep those eyes are screwed son). i ask god to heal my eyes and the moment eye ask my eyes are healed completely ( no need for glasses either.)
 
Muezzin said:
I thought an atheist wouldn't believe in miracles on general principle?
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no not at all, we dont deny the existence of gods we just dont believe.

for most of us i imagine there has been no evidence that satisfies us and much contradictory evidence.
 
Greetings,
Malaikah said:
And who said this blokes razor is correct in the first place?
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You haven't heard of Occam's Razor? Its usefulness has become so apparent to scientists and logicians over the centuries that it is often taken to be a standard maxim in those and other fields of study. It can be misused, but as a helpful principle of thinking it is widely accepted.

See here.

Regarding the original question of the thread, I think Pygoscelis has said pretty much would I would say as an answer.

Peace
 
Further thoughts...For a miracle that would move me to believe in a god it would have to first hand experience of god. So the miracle would have to include me directly interacting with or observing the miraculous actions of god.

So while the flying thing is definitely miraculous (an amazingly extraordinary event breaking normal bound of reality), it wouldn't actually make the threshold.

So if I saw a person falling from a building and a voice inside my head said "I'm god and I'm going to save that person" and at the same time the person began to float down like a feather and landed harmlessly. That would go a long way.

Thanks.
 
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Hmm, I wouldnt have to have it named as God.
Aliens wouyld be obviously Alien because they wouldnt have the flappy wings, robes and halos that we stick on them, they would have some transport method and act in a way inconsistant with scripture, assuming God has anything to do with scripture.

However, the fact that I've asked for a teddy and one appears within a certain time frame is in my book high evidence. If I saw one on the telly the next day, I'd rate that at 20%. If a teddy immediatly glided from the sky , glowing and talking passages from the Book of Mormon, thats 100% for me. I'd book my ticket to planet Kolob immediatly.
I would just have to check others had seen it as well so that Insanity was ruled out.
Glo said once that the message of a vison would have to be consistant with the message of God. I.E, dont beleive the voice that tells you to kill your son on an alter is god, because it's not what God would do.
Personally, I think the message dosnt matter. It could be "carve the ends out of Cedar wood and make them 2ft long and gilded in Gold" or "Stone the Adulteress with Stones", the main thing for me would be its a supernatural event, unexpalinable by science and visable or audible to many.
 
Medically speaking, there have been many cases of people who appear to be dead, who are not dead. There is a word for this but I forget!

As a result, in ancient times, people thought various dead people have miraculously been brought back to life. They were not. Instead, they only appeared to be dead.

Medicine is well aware of this issue and as a result there has no such occurrences for over 100 years.

My definition of a miracle would be for a person who has been dead for more than a month to be brought back to life.

k
 
barney said:
Hmm, I wouldnt have to have it named as God.
Aliens wouyld be obviously Alien because they wouldnt have the flappy wings, robes and halos that we stick on them, they would have some transport method and act in a way inconsistant with scripture, assuming God has anything to do with scripture.

However, the fact that I've asked for a teddy and one appears within a certain time frame is in my book high evidence. If I saw one on the telly the next day, I'd rate that at 20%. If a teddy immediatly glided from the sky , glowing and talking passages from the Book of Mormon, thats 100% for me. I'd book my ticket to planet Kolob immediatly.
I would just have to check others had seen it as well so that Insanity was ruled out.
Glo said once that the message of a vison would have to be consistant with the message of God. I.E, dont beleive the voice that tells you to kill your son on an alter is god, because it's not what God would do.
Personally, I think the message dosnt matter. It could be "carve the ends out of Cedar wood and make them 2ft long and gilded in Gold" or "Stone the Adulteress with Stones", the main thing for me would be its a supernatural event, unexpalinable by science and visable or audible to many.
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In the words of Albert Einstein, "the miraculous thing about the universe is that there are no miracles".

What you want is a suspension of the natural order and process so that something inexplicable can occur.

What you actually said is in effect, "I cannot explain it, therefore there is no explanation, so god did it"

Arguments from ignorance, i.e. "I do not know, therefore...", are in and of themselves useless because once you claim to not know then you must forgo the ability to lay positive claims to truth.

I do not know how wormholes are created, I do not for a moment use my ignorance of an event which can be measured and evaluated naturally, to assert divine authority, nor can I use it, if it happen to be a singularity, to extrapolate vague theories which cannot be tested in order to establish positive claims about anything else.

In short, if you don't know then just admit it and try to find out, if you think you can't do it yourself, that still means you just have to admit you don't know.


Also, please refrain from using percentages for some statistical calculation you cannot possibly make.


All the very best,

Faysal
 
To answer the question....

If I happen to die and find myself in heaven or hell, then I suppose that would be a miracle.

I really can't think of anything, then again nothing I've heard from the religious types amounts to more than anecdotal evidence.

It's really hard to say.

Do we know, for a fact, of any miracle that occurred? I've yet to see a serious claim.
 

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