Overview: Christians worldwide claim miracles both in Jesus’ times and in the present. Did these stories really happen, and if not—how can we deny the credibility of thousands of people claiming these miracles?
Christians and Messianic Jews often claim that their peoples merit countless miracles thanks to their belief in Jesus. This, they continue, validates their belief in the faith. Wow! What a claim! And unsurprisingly, almost every religion claims the exact same thing, thus not an exclusive claim for Christianity! In fact, after taking a glance at these “miracles,” we can understand why every religion indeed has them and why they are nothing exclusive to any specific claimer.
Christians find it fascinating that people from former troubled backgrounds (e.g. family issues, drug-addiction, or depression) find comfort and “salvation” upon encountering Jesus in their heart. They suddenly quit their addictions or find happiness in their lives. They must have gotten “saved by Jesus” due to the drastic change, they say.
This claim is very misleading. There is nothing exclusive about this phenomenon, which explains why every religion has the same thing! Why? Because it is only natural that someone with a troubled background would get inspired and find comfort in anything spiritual. This occurrence is very natural in every sense with no supernatural element to it.
Next are the “healings” miracles. We often hear from missionaries: “Mr. So and So, a believer in Jesus, got saved from his terrible disease that is labelled as ‘deadly’! He had a miracle!”
But the premise of this claim is deeply flawed. A “deadly disease” isn’t a disease that allows for no exceptions. The fact that this believer got saved is the work of statistics and nothing to do with a miracle.
Of the 10 million, for example, cases of this specific deadly disease throughout the world, 99% are expected to die and only 1% survive. Of these 100,000 survivors, 30,000 are probably Christian believers (based on their universal population ratio). So are we to suggest that these are the results of “miracles” because they believed in Jesus? The only reason Christianity has so many “miracles” is because they have the biggest universal population! [Additionally, miracles are popular in the Christian world because miracles are essential to their belief as the New Testament states and Christian theology stresses on the idea that God will respond to all those who call out to Him in the name of Jesus. Thus much emphasis is put on alleged miracle stories and publicizing them.]
Similarly goes with miracle-stories about someone getting saved in a deadly car-crash (e.g. all passengers die but one). It too is naturally expected and isn’t a miracle as exceptions (i.e. survivors of deadly car-crashes) aren’t “super-natural” in any shape or form. These exceptions are statistically required based on the laws of nature, and any superstitious explanations are simply laughable.
Now, there are some claimed miracle stories that actually have a supernatural aspect in in them. The only question is whether or not we should believe the story actually happened. There are many liars in the world, and of the estimated two billion Christian believers there must be many of the latter. Even one who is identified as a “believer” is of no exception to the suspicion of lying, because often one’s “belief” is only external, or lying is simply their weak-spot. It may be that they are of the opinion that lying for the sake of spreading what they believe is the truth is permissible, if not encouraged.
More frequent then lies are exaggerations. It is a very human nature, especially for certain people, to exaggerate stories heard, not even intentionally necessarily. That is why stories, especially ancient ones, have so many different versions and details up to the point where sometimes what is considered the same story is in fact two different accounts. Sometimes, the very person involved in the story may exaggerate, by either naively perceiving it in its exaggerated form, or by only telling it over to others with exaggerations.
What then is a miracle and how can we trust it?
The real definition of miracles would be supernatural events that cannot be statistically or naturally explained. Going through every scenario would be an impossible task, so I would suggest to simply use common sense and be logical; come with a critical-thinking mindset—but not too extreme—in order to be realistic.
Trusting a story isn’t a black-and-white test but many levels of probability and possibility that one just has to use common-sense for. Hearing it firsthand is of course a greater chance of it being true, especially if you personally know the individual as a reliable individual. Certain stories are susceptible to exaggerations, and again, only common-sense can help you sense those stories.
After discussing the above circumstances logically required in order to verify a miraculous account, I don’t think any honest Christian believer would claim that Christians merit real verifiable miracles.[1] Now, having discussed miracles as a whole to the followers of specific groups or religions, we will now move on to an individual miracle-performer who claims divine Revelation and establishes a new religion on that basis (known as a “founding-father”).
Most religions worldwide attribute supernatural powers and wonders to their founders. From a rational point of view, there is certainly no reason to grant these miracle-stories any credibility. This is in contrast to the grand Mass Revelation the Jewish people experienced at Mt. Sinai (discussed at length in chapter “The Mass Revelation Argument”). But even if we are to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that these wonders actually happened (e.g. the account of Jesus walking the river or Muhammad using donkey-airlines to travel from Mecca to Jerusalem), that doesn’t mean that these wonder-workers are divinely ordained prophets. There’s the supernatural power of sorcery and witchcraft, in addition to the natural powers of magic, that could very well have been the instrument used by these alleged miracle-doers. The Torah discusses the power of sorcery multiple times suggesting that its knowledge was somewhat common in ancient times.
Visions
Then there are those missionaries and Christians who believe that the Lord or Jesus had revealed Himself to them in visions, dreams, or voices. The issue with this is the same as brought earlier. Every religion has the same stories of such, leading me to believe that all of these stories, including most of those claimed by Jewish believers, are bogus. The fact that virtually every religion has these claimed stories of visions and dreams shows that it is nothing more than a natural phenomenon (usually called lies or hallucinations). Dreams—which are driven by our day-time thoughts—of the such are much easier to explain. When missionaries claim “visions” or “voices,” the question then becomes whether to believe them or not. Based on the statistics of liars or exaggerators expected to be within Christianity (with a mammoth population of almost two billion), logic recommends not to put our faith on such “evidence.” Especially when we are well aware of the religious agenda the claimant has.
“The 19-year-old who is accused of killing 17 people and injuring dozens more when he opened fire on a South Florida high school Wednesday afternoon told investigators that he heard voices in his head, giving him instructions on what to do to conduct the attack, law enforcement sources told ABC News.” This was a report from ABC News on Feb 16, 2018 on the Parkland Shooting.
Here’s a scientific article on the issue of “hearing voices:”[i]
“Serial killer David Berkowitz, also known as the “Son of Sam,” famously claimed that he heard voices in the form of a dog telling him to commit murder. But hearing voices isn’t necessarily a sign of psychosis. In fact, according to the authors of a recent study published in the journal Brain, enhanced attention-related neural pathways might cause these illusory sounds. People hear them because their brains may be especially primed to pick up speech.
“It’s true that lots of people who hear voices have serious mental health issues,” Ben Alderson-Day, a psychological research at Durham University and lead author on the study told Popular Science. “But roughly 5 to 15 percent of the general population will have some experience of hearing unusual voices at some point in their lives. We think potentially up to one percent might have pretty frequent experiences and just don’t really tell anyone and get on with their everyday lives.
“It’s this one percent that catches psychologists’ attention. Because this group isn’t clinically psychotic and thus typically not on psychotropic medication, researchers can study their tendency to hear voices without the confounding factors of mental illness. They think these benign voices hearers could bring some explanation to why humans hear voices, and perhaps a broader understanding of the brain.”
Well, I think that tells us enough about those missionaries who claim to have heard “voices”…
[1] It is possible—and I don’t know if it indeed happened or not—for a Christian Believer to merit a miracle. But since it is nothing exclusive to Christianity (because all religions can also have such stories), we can well assume that it was God’s desire that this miracle happen to this particular individual—who just happens to be Christian in belief—but is independent of his beliefs. Also, a possibility is that the miracle was granted in reward for a good-deed that was performed by this religious individual. Also, as we shall soon discuss, there is the power of sorcery which may have been the role-player in a specific miracle account.
[i] http://www.popsci.com/hearing-voices-neuroscience-hidden-speech
