doubtingt

Neither I nor I think many skeptics would define an event that simply cannot be currently explained, a miracle. Such an event provides no evidence of intervention with natural laws, only that the details are not sufficiently understood to explain how they could arise from natural laws.

For me, a "miracle" must be an event that directly contradicts what is expected via natural law and must be accounted for by some intervening force capable of suspending or violating those laws.

When defined this way, skeptics and all people rationally evaluating such events should be predisposed towards particularly strong skepticism and require an especially strong body of evidence to accept the event as a miracle.
This is because to accept a miracle is to simultaneously conclude that the very well established, endedlessly repeated and supported ideas about physical and material constants and all the data supporting them are in some fundamental manner wrong or flawed.
Thus, the evidence for a miracle must be greater than the body of evidence in support of these constants.

Also, there is tremendous evidence that human perception, interpretation and memory and not only error prone, but directly biased in favor of a priori preferred conclusions. We also know that many if not most people are emotionally and ideologically predisposed to preferr miraculous conclusions and often do so when overwhelming evidence supports a obvious natural explanation.

These psychological realities combined with the burden of evidence already faced by miracles, means that eyewitness testimony of singular unrepeatable events will never be sufficient basis to reasonable conclude that a miracle provides the best explanations for those eyewitteness claims.

The well established reality of psychological mechanisms for producing the false experience of "miraculous" events makes such experiences for more plausible a priori for any event compared to the wholly unestablished reality of supernatural mechanisms that could produce actual miracles.

With all this in mind, a miracle account will never be the most plausible or reasonable account unless to conditions of observation and repeatabiltiy allow for these psychological alternatives to be ruled out with virtual certainty and the phenomenon is observed with sufficient accuracy as to determine relatively definitively that it violated known principles of the physical world.

This skeptical approach, rather than being unfair or close-minded to miracles, is the epitomy of open-mindedness whereby a miracle account is given exactly the level of consideration, evaluation, and plausibility it deserves given its empirical status compared to non-miraculous alternatives.
To give miracles any more "benefit of the doubt" is to be close minded to the alternatives and not give them their due weight.

Thomas II

Interesting,isn't it? The only case I remember of Jesus healing even at a distance is with the servant of the centurion...The faith of the centurion was so strong that Jesus did not even had to meet the servant...It is one of the strongest faiths I have seen anywhere...In those cases the person with faith becomes like an open container for the energy of the healer to flow to, just like water flows unobstructed into an empty bowl placed below. Nothing supernatural here. These are the natural laws of nature.
In Luke 8:40-48 a woman afflicted by constant bleeding touches the hem of Jesus' robe as he passes near her on the way to somebody elses house...
Jesus immediately senses it and says that power just came out of him
and he wants to know who among the crowd had touched him...The woman comes forth and Jesus tells her "Your faith has healed you". Which is true...
Jesus could have been a carrier of that energy but there had to be "empty containers" in order to receive that power. He obviously had a very strong energy field...The container is our consciousness,our mind. "Empty" means empty of our own ego,our own preconceived sense of self...
Again,there is nothing supernatural with all that...Energy is everywhere, and some people and some places have better energy that others.
In every alleged healing event, people trusted that Jesus could do what he said he could do. I imagine that some did not get a healing. Apparently there is not infinite ammounts of energy available all the time. Even the healer's energy has to be replenished from time to time so that he can heal another day. As it is a natural process, it has it's ups and downs...Also some times, as this relates to energy fields, those who are more in synchrony have a better chance of "communicating"...

Johnny Skeptic

Merriam Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary defines "miracle" as follows:

1. An extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.

2. An extremely outstanding or unusual.

My main argument is that no skeptic would be opposed to "any" being, a claimed God or otherwise, who was willing to help us with our many problems. If Jesus healed people, whether he was the son of God or an ordinary man, healing people is a good thing, and no skeptic would object to it.

jonesg

Contempt prior to investigation .

' most spiritual awakenings are of the educational variety', Willam James.

Dargo

Christians are rather hypocritical about that. They are just as skeptical as we are of any miracle claims outside of their faith. They have absolutely no problem believing that Miss Cleo and John Edwards are frauds, but get upset if anyone suggests that Biblical miracles are nonsense. For that matter, Christians are often skeptical of many supernatural claims within their own religion. Non-charismatic Christians don't put much stock into faith healings. Protestants generally don't believe in the miracle claims made for Catholic saints, and I doubt most modern Catholics take them too seriously either. Many of the saints prior to the Renaisance are supposed to have performed miracles that would rival those of Jesus. The miracles have gotten rather pathetic in recent years for some strange reason.

miracles?

doubtingt,

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/vmary.htm

I think instance meets some of your criteria for a miracle but I'm NOT saying it is one, but is more convincing then hypothetical aliens coming to earth and such.

1. Egypt is a non-christian country i think you would agree with that.
2. These visions were seen by millions of people.
3. It happened sporadically over a 3 year period.
4. It was televised and people took pictures.
5. People in the audience were healed.

Would you give this a fair assestment that if not a true miracle it does have a realistic side to actually being a miracle, or would you just dismiss it.

Huon

If you are NOT saying it is a miracle, then, it is NOT a miracle.

1. Egypt is a moslem country with an important Coptic (christian) minority. The Holy Virgin never appeared in Saudi Arabia.

4. It was televised and people took pictures. Conjurers can make such tricks, and they are televised.

5. People healed. In Lourdes, there have been recently (1950 +) very few unexplained healings since a good medical control exists.

miracles?

1. Egypt is a moslem country with an important Coptic (christian) minority. The Holy Virgin never appeared in Saudi Arabia.


This sighting of the Virgin Mary was on a Coptic Church roof. Supposedly because it is near where Mary, Joseph, and Jesus fled Herod after Jesus was born.

4. It was televised and people took pictures. Conjurers can make such tricks, and they are televised

The police searched the area around the church and couldnt find anything, the President of Egypt even went out to see it. I would imagine since it was in Egypt if anything was found or confessed to anyone about conjuring the Muslims would be irate and probably would do some damage to the church/conjurers, wouldn't you? It wasn't just the image either. Along with the image there were doves which they said don't fly at night.

Huon

The paper says "more than one million".

Another question : you do not doubt a second that this apparition was the Holy Virgin. People said that they recognized her. The photos of the paper show unmistakably that the HV looks like ET.

Cares

Hi, I'm new here & this is my first post.

I grew up as a christian (although I'm not one anymore),and I NEVER witnessed anything that could be described as a miracle.
I once read a really good description of miracles from the Jewish side.

It went something like this...

Imagine your walking down the street when suddenly an arm reaches out from a side alley, grabs you by your shirt and pulls you into the alley.
The man then says to you "I'm having a really bad hair day, so I'm going to shoot you."
All of a sudden a meteor comes falling from the sky, hits the man on the head killing him instantly.
You fall to your knees and say "Thank God, It's a miracle."

Definition of miracle: A perfectly natural event with incredible timing.

I found this veiw to be refreshing after being bombarded by christian friends who claimed to have seen miracles that go against natural laws etc
It just never seemed real to me...so I never put any stock in it.