Polar Bear

Atheists: What sort of phenomenon would you have to experience firsthand in order to be convinced that it was (1) a miracle and (2) an act of the Christian God of the Bible?

Theists: What miracles have you experienced firsthand? Can there be any other explanation aside from "God did it"?

Polar Bear

hey moderators, I posted this here because people often use the existence (or absence) of miracles to prove (or disprove) the existence of God.

B. H. Manners

As long as the question remains relevant to the existence of God, I will leave it here. Welcome to the forums by the way.

Philosoft

There are probably quite literally millions of things that I might be inclined to consider 'miracles.' I'm not currently privy to the 'set of all things sufficiently spooky to convince Philo of a miracle' and it's kind of late, so there you go.

Hypernovean

Answering the atheist question: something of cosmic scale (e.g. all the stars in the sky spontaneously rearranging themselves to read out "Worship me, for I am the Christian God!" et cetera), which could be scientifically proven, e.g. Hubble Space Telescope shows that stars really have moved; proof that there's no Secret Christian Hologram Generator projecting across the sky, and so on
Of course, I doubt that would happen anytime soon
Anything on a smaller (i.e. personal) scale however, like seeing an apparition, or being saved from some deadly situation deus ex machina style, I wouldn't see as a godly miracle.

Amie

I have not really experienced any miracles. I did however survive a horrible car accident where I experienced a NDE and baffled a couple doctors with my recovery, but as far as actual miracles I have not experienced any. However I do believe in them most definitely. Sure some I attribute to other explanations, however some I believe are miracles. For instance I believe in the miracles at Fatima

MaxMainspring

The problem for theists with the Fatima miracle is that a large group of witnesses saw, or thought they saw, the sun move erratically in the sky. People in other parts of the world saw a sun that behaved in it's normal manner. This means that either the sun actually did move erratically and the rest of the world was supernaturally decieved in its perception of normalcy or , one the other hand, if the sun actually behaved normally but only appeared to move erratically to the witnesses at Fatima then they were supernaturally decieved in their perception of abnormal movement.

In either event we have miraculous (supernatural) deception occuring which opens the door for a lot of questions for those who would hold to a view that their miracles (revelations and other miraculous events) cannot be the product of divine deceptions.

If divine deception can take place, then any mischeif is possible when it comes to miracles and revelations.

(Edited to add the following.)
Actually the Fatima miracle poses the problem above for those who hold that it was a miraculous event. It also poses a deep problem for those Christians who would claim that the "500 witnesses" are a strong argument for the verity of the Bible because 500 people would not be mistaken. But then they have to explain how the many thousands were indeed mistaken.

Either way Fatima poses difficulties for Christian theists.

[ December 06, 2002: Message edited by: MaxMainspring ]</p>

Amie

allright you skeptic (and I mean that in the most loving way possible) what do you think of Lourdes?

Sandslice

Lourdes?

A man getting off a plane was stopped by Customs inspectors, who asked him if he had anything to declare. "Nay," he said.
"Then what's in that bottle?" the inspector demanded.
"Oh, that's just water from the Lourdes spring."
Taking the bottle, the inspector sniffed it. "Hey! This is whiskey!"
The man crossed himself and swore, "God be praised! A miracle!"

Amie

I believe many miracles happen in Lourdes. I would like to go there someday...