Argument from Miracles

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While there have been miraculous claims made by Christianity and all of the world’s religions, they all share one commonality -- they are all bound by the law of cause-and-effect. While miracles may defy physics, they never violate causality. Since effects can’t be more than the sum total of its causes, miracles thus require a supernatural cause to render its supernatural effects.[1] Miracles are necessary for religious belief, because people need to be reminded that the process works.

  • The Israelites feared and believed in both God, and his servant, Moses, simply because of the wondrous feats they performed to defeat the Egyptians (EXO 7:10-12; 8:7; 14:31).
  • Jesus only performed miracles to convince others of his divinity (MAT 11:2-5; JOH 4:48, 5:36, 20:30-31; ACT 2:22; HEB 2:4), because that was the only way to attract followers (JOH 3:2).

Christians need to believe in miracles because they need something to believe in, since Christianity doesn’t have much else to offer:

However, the most powerful argument against divine miracles comes, ironically, from the Bible itself, which warns that miracles, signs, and other wonders are the hallmarks of false prophets, who are trying to make themselves look credible. These Satanic people (LUK 11:19; 2THE 2:9) will only deceive you (REV 13:13-14) and turn you away from God (DEU 13:1-3). Likewise, anyone who performs miracles and claims to be the Christ is just one of the many false Christs who will appear from time to time (MAT 24:24). The idiom of “wolves in sheep’s clothing” was originally coined by Jesus, to explain the behavior of these people (MAT 7:15).

Many miracle stories are exaggerations or hoaxes meant to attract followers. The Star of Bethlehem was likely a white lie (“pious fiction”), written by the author of Matthew, or penciled in by a forgotten monk-copyist, to make the Gospel coincide with the Star Prophecy which the other Gospels overlooked. John freely admits that his Gospel was propaganda (JOH 20:31). Additionally, many “miracles” have rational explanations. While it seems unlikely that all of these unusual events occurred by chance to members of a specific ethnic group, in relatively small part of the world -- but biblical genealogies demonstrate that these events took place over a 4000-5500 year period. Each “miracle” is spaced apart by several generations of un-noteworthy dirt-farming, which credits the idea of their being freak occurrences. This is one reason why the Bible actively discourages its own readers from paying attention to the genealogies (1TIM 1:4; TIT 3:9). For example:

  • Many of the miraculous healings which occur after praying to saints are attributable to spontaneous regression/remission. A small percentage of cancer sufferers are able to “just walk it off,” without anyone’s help.
    • Of the millions of pilgrims who have visited Lourdes, only 65 have ever been “miraculously” cured (as of 1997). Of these, only 3 were cured of cancer -- if anything, their pilgrimage made them less likely to be cured.[2]
    • Spontaneous regression/remission makes sense because only miracles only address certain diseases and conditions, while ignoring the rest (e.g., Amputees never fully regenerate their limbs; Down’s Syndrome has never been cured -- ever -- by anything from god or man.)[3]
    • Pat Robertson’s style of healing is statistical, not mystical; he just lists combinations of names, places, and ailments, then declares people cured. Getting such a combination to line up in the US market is entirely analogous to playing 370,000,000 slot machines at once; he needs no divine intervention to hit that jackpot.[3]
    • Praying for healing is unnecessary, since an all-knowing God will know who is sick and suffering.[2]
  • Much of God’s wrath (e.g., the destruction of Jericho; stopping the River Jordan) is attributable to an earthquake. These are a common occurrence, since the entire region rests on a fault line.
  • Isaiah’s miracle of briefly reversing a sundial is possible by a passing cloud refracting the sunlight.
  • Sodom and Gomorrah were likely destroyed by the comet or asteroid impact which created Umm al Binni Lake. While this accurately describes God’s power and wrath against the residents of those cities, it was also inadvertently extended to countless innocent people the world over. Even conservative estimates place this impact at an order of magnitude greater than the Tunguska Event. This impact may have triggered the 4.2 Kiloyear Event, which disrupted or destroyed most civilizations; Old Kingdom Egypt, Sumer, and the Indus Valley Civilization fell simultaneously from this event. Many surviving cultures responded by developing a sudden interest in astronomy, and with building large stone structures.
  • Manna was the discarded cocoons of the trehala manna mealybug (Trabutina mannipara):
    • The cocoons themselves are golden or brown colored, and are a nutrient-rich protein source.
    • The beetles secrete trehalose, a white crystalline carbohydrate, which is still used as sweetener in fine Turkish cuisine.
    • An insect-based origin explains why Moses' was so adamant against hoarding manna -- because eventually “it bred worms, and stank” (EXO 16:19-24).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-beetle-cocoon-that-was-manna-for-moses-1306263.html

  • The resurrections of Lazarus and Jesus were cases of premature burial. This was more common in the past, since pre-1900’s medical science was basically voodoo.
  • The Plagues of Egypt were brought on by the environmental catastrophe following the Minoan (Thera) Eruption, a volcanic eruption so powerful it destroyed the Minoan Civilization and inspired the myth of Atlantis. This event introduced colossal amounts of dust and particulate ejecta into the stratosphere -- 4 times as much as the 1883 Krakatoa Eruption, and 100 times that of the 1980 Mt. St. Helens Eruption. The resulting weather pattern disruptions stopped the rains, causing the Nile to slow and stagnate, leading to insect swarms and algae blooms, which in turn, spread disease and caused a population boom for insect-eating frogs. Global weather patterns were disrupted and airborne particulates served as nucleation sites for hail. The environmental impacts of the later “plagues” were equally inflicted on all Bronze Age civilizations; even the Chinese reported summer frosts and famines at this time. Simulations of these disrupted weather patterns have shown their winds were sufficient to part the seas.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11383620


We could pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 mg of tetracycline every 12 hours. (Christian Science doesn’t not believe in the germ theory of disease, they’d rather see their children die that give them antibiotics.) We can try nearly futile psychoanalytic talk therapy on the schizophrenic patent, or we can give him 300-500 mg a day of clozapine. The scientific treatments are hundreds or thousands of times more effective than the alternatives.<ref name="Sagan"><ref>
  1. P. Kreeft, Faith and Reason: The Philosophy of Religion (Recorded Books, 2005).
  2. 2.0 2.1 C. Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Ballantine Books, 1997)
  3. 3.0 3.1 J. Randi, The Faith Healers (Prometheus Books, 1987).