David B

If it demonstrably happened, beyond critical doubr, then it ain't a miracle.

David B

Alethias

• If it's provable beyond any reasonable doubt that the event happened,
• and it's provable beyond any reasonable doubt that the event is physically impossible,
• and the event is repeatable,

I'll believe it's a bona-fide miracle. I threw in the repeatable requirement because I would consider that necessary to remove suspicion that some previously un-explained condition caused the miracle.

I don't think I'm asking for much here. It's certainly not beyond a real, existant deity, or his/her duly-appointed and empowered representative.

SoT

Ryzo

I suppose the easiest way would be process of elimination. If a natuaral explanation can't be found then it could be a miracle. Of course it could also mean that our understanding of the universe isn't quite as complete as we believe it to be, and that there is a natuaral explanation, but our science isn't advanced enough yet.

This parallels to "miracles" in the past. Ex: Johnny was blasphemisng Thor and was struck by lightning. This at their time-period appears to be a sign of god. However looking back on it with our current knowledge it can be deduced that Johnny was probably struck because he was waving his big bad sword in the air during a thunder storm.

Gawen

I think this is reasonable. I posted it way back in Sept. of last year. Took me forever to dig it up.

The same rules or laws of probability must govern in religious questions as in others. There is no subject, and can be none, concerning which any human being is under any obligation to believe without evidence. Neither is there any intelligent being that can, by any possibility, be flattered by the exercise of ignorant credence. The mind seeks the path of least resistance, and the conclusions arrived at by the individual depend upon the nature of his mind, experience, hereditary tendencies, society and a plethora of things that constitute the difference in individual minds.

A very large majority of mankind believes in the existence of supernatural beings and forces. In the realm of thought, majorities do not determine. A universal belief does not even tend to prove its truth. Everyone knows that his desire can never take the place of fact. The greatest honor must be won in honest search in finding the truth and not in hopes or desires.

Religions rest on miracles. A miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent" (Hume).

All religions report numerous and equally credible miracles. As Hume noted, the religions of the world have established themselves upon their miracles. If so, then they cancel each other out. That is, each religion establishes itself as solidly as the next, thereby overthrowing and destroying its rivals. Hume compares deciding amongst religions on the basis of their miracles to the task of a judge who must evaluate contradictory, but equally reliable testimonies.

There are no miracles in the realm of science. No scholarly journal today would consider an author rational if he or she were to sprinkle reports of miracles throughout a treatise. The modern scholar dismisses all such reports as lies, delusion or cases of collective hallucination.

I am perfectly confident that there are no miracles in nature. Vanity, delusion, greed and zealotry have led to more than one ‘pious fraud’ supporting a holy and meritorious cause with gross embellishments and outright lies about witnessing miraculous events (Hume). As a result, everything we perceive could be completely unrelated to what it appears to be. My backyard fence could be a guardian angel and likewise, I could have rolled my son into the ground thinking he was a roll of sod. Such a world would be unreasonable and unworthy of God. If the senses can't be trusted in one case, they can't be trusted in any.

To believe in transubstantiation/miracles is to abandon the basis of all knowledge: sense experience.

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. There must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event; otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact, which it endeavours to establish. There are no exceptions.

Credulity should be the servant of intelligence. Many still cannot believe the actual, because the actual appears to be contrary to the evidence of their senses. That is to say, they have not intelligence enough to comprehend the absurdities involved in their belief. They trust their eyes, not their reason. The laws of nature have not been established by occasional or frequent experiences of a similar kind, but of uniform experience.

Ignorance has always been and always will be at the mercy of appearance. Credulity, in many cases, believes everything except the truth. The moment we understand a question or subject, the miraculous disappears. If anything happens in the scientific world, it will, under like conditions, happen again. The question is can miracles be established except by miracles? To believe in miracles would be to reject the principle of the uniformity of experience, upon which laws of nature are based. It would be to reject a fundamental assumption of all science, that the laws of nature are inviolate. A miracle cannot be believed without abandoning a basic principle of empirical knowledge: that like things under like circumstances produce like results.

Of course there is another constant, another product of uniform experience which should not be forgotten. And that is the tendency of people at all times in all ages to desire wondrous events, to be deluded about them, to fabricate, create, embellish, enhance, and come to believe in the absolute truth of the creations of their own passions and heated imaginations.
It must be admitted that we have never seen a miracle ourselves, and we must admit that, according to our experience, there are no miracles. The probabilities are on the side of our experience and against the miraculous; and it is a necessity that the free mind moves along the path of least resistance.

Does this mean that miracles cannot occur? Of course not. It means, however, that when a miracle is reported the probability will always be greater that the person doing the reporting is mistaken, deluded or a fraud than that the miracle really occurred. To believe in a miracle, as Hume said, is not an act of reason but of faith. The effect of testimony depends on the intelligence and integrity of the witness and the intelligence of he who weighs it. Such people, with the best intentions, honestly bear false witness. They have been imposed upon by appearances, and are victims of delusion and illusion.

Now, there are believers in universal perpetual interference by a supernatural power, this interference being for the purpose of punishing or rewarding, destroying or preserving or attaining higher consciousness, etc.
Others have abandoned the idea of providence in ordinary matters, but still believe that Deities interfere on great occasions and at critical moments. This is the compromise position.

This question is answered by reading the history of those nations that believed thoroughly and implicitly in the supernatural. There is no conceivable absurdity that was not established by their testimony. Every law or every fact in nature was violated. Virgin births, men lived for hundreds of years, subsistence without food and without sleep; thousands have been possessed with spirits controlled by the supernatural and thousands of confessions of impossible offenses. In religious courts, with the most solemn of form, impossibilities were substantiated by the oaths, affirmations, tortured and un-tortured confessions of men, women, and children. Decisions were made for everyday acts of life by praying, which way birds flew, bones scattered on the ground and reading leaves in water.

These delusions were not confined to ascetics and peasants, but they took possession of nobles and kings, of people who were at that time called intelligent and educated. No one denied these wonders, for the reason that denial was a crime punishable generally with a hideous death. Societies and nations became deluded, as victims of ignorance, subjugation, of dreams, and, above all, of superstitious fears. Under these conditions human testimony is not and cannot be of the slightest value.

The same is true of every religion. The question is: When will people see the defects in their own theology as clearly as they perceive the same defects in every other? All religions and beliefs were substantiated by miracle, signs and wonders, by prophets and martyrs, precisely as our own. Our witnesses are no better than theirs and our success is no greater. If their miracles were false, ours cannot be true. Nature was the same in India, in Greece and Italy, in Britain and Scandinavia, and in Palestine.

The more the ignorant are at odds with their environment and the less control they feel they have over it, the greater their belief in unseen powers. It does not seem possible that any human being ever will establish a truth, anything that really happened, in the religious or metaphysical sense. It is easy to understand how that which was natural became wonderful by accretion and it is easy to conceive how that which was wonderful became by accretion what was called supernatural. And it does not seem possible that any intelligent, honest man ever endeavored to prove anything by a miracle. The testimony of man is insufficient to establish the supernatural. If a book sought to be proved by miracles is true, then it makes no difference whether it was inspired or not and if it is not true, inspiration cannot add to its value.

This...(the above)...is why you cannot find one, let alone ten "tangible" miracles.