I like the above image, because it’s so absurd. Not that the miracle itself is absurd, but that someone could see such a thing and still dismiss it.
A while back, we had a discussion on this blog about the effectiveness of miracles. Not the “oh, my aunt has a friend that knows someone who had back pain until it was prayed over and now it’s gone” variety, but amazing, in-your-face miracles that simply can’t be explained. Like seeing a man walk on the sea. Or seeing someone whose legs are atrophied because he was lame from birth suddenly begin running and jumping on legs that have been fully restored. Or seeing an ocean separate before you so that you could walk on dry land between two walls of water. In other words, the kinds of miracles talked about in the Bible.
What would it be like to witness something like that?
Before we tackle that question, let’s consider the actual purpose of miracles in more detail. Take, for example, the account of Peter and John healing the lame man in Acts 3. Here, Peter and John encounter a man at the gate of the temple who had been lame from birth. He asked for alms, but Peter replied that he had no silver or gold; instead, he commanded the lame man to walk in the name of Jesus. Of course, the lame man was then able to leap up and run around. This was a marvelous thing to do for a lame person — and obviously, one of the main reasons Peter and John healed him was because they had compassion on him.
But it’s also apparent that the miracle served another purpose:
And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
While he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s. And when Peter saw it he addressed the people…
— vs 9-12
Peter suddenly had the attention of everyone who saw the miracle or recognized the lame man. And that’s no surprise. Just imagine how you’d feel if you had witnessed such a thing — if you had seen the atrophied legs grow and take shape. Wouldn’t you be inclined to listen to whatever Peter and John might have to say? You’d already be inclined to believe something fantastic, because there’s no natural explanation for what you would have witnessed with the lame man. And as we see in verse 4 of the next chapter, many of the witnesses believed what Peter and John said and became Christians.
The Bible is actually fairly consistent in its use of miracles. For instance, John 20:30-31 says this:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
In Genesis 41, when Joseph has an opportunity to decipher the meaning behind Pharaoh’s dreams, he first recounts the dreams back to Pharaoh (something he couldn’t have known on his own) as a sign that God is speaking to him. Centuries later, when God tells Moses to go to Egypt and deliver the Children of Israel, God performs miracles so Moses will have faith in his power. During Moses’ discussions with Pharaoh and the subsequent Exodus, miracles are used many times to show people God’s will. Gideon was shown miracles so he would trust in God’s instructions. In the New Testament, Jesus performed many miracles to show people that he had been sent from God, and his apostles later followed suit. Thomas was allowed to touch the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side, since he was having trouble believing what he was seeing. Paul was given a miracle on his way to Damascus to show him that his persecution of Christians was wrong.
Throughout the Bible, miracles are used as evidence. They are used to convince people who were not convinced by other means.
So if that’s how God operated in the Bible, why don’t we see miracles today? Again, I’m not talking about the anecdotes you hear about someone’s back pain going away. I’m talking about real, immediate miracles that can be witnessed. There’s a book and website called Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? It’s a great question. Just imagine what a game-changer it would be if you turned on the major news networks one day and saw a person’s limb grow back through the power of prayer. And not just that person’s, but many others as well. How could such an event be explained away?
So why doesn’t God do that? If he performed miracles in the past so that people would believe, why doesn’t he do it now?
Some believers will say God doesn’t do those kinds of miracles today, because they don’t convince many people. To illustrate this, they point to the episodes in the gospels where Jesus performed a miracle, but it failed to convince the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the day. But really, how likely is this? If you were to witness an amputee’s leg grow back, would you really deny it? What would you have to gain by doing so? If someone demonstrated that kind of power, wouldn’t you want to know whatever message they had to give?
And if that were true about the Pharisees and chief priests, etc, why did Jesus bother doing the miracles? And why does the Gospel of John say that the miracles were performed so that people could believe? Obviously, the miracles must have been at least somewhat effective — and if God wants everyone to be saved, wouldn’t even one additional person’s belief be worth doing those kinds of miracles today?
In fact, if you really think about it, when the gospels repeatedly say that Jesus’ miracles failed to convince the religious leaders of the day, it probably says much more about the quality of the “miracles” being performed than it does the mindset of those who weren’t convinced.
When it comes down to it, most people are not obstinate enough to deny reality when it’s staring them in the face. Think of every movie you’ve ever seen where one character is trying to convince another of something fantastic. Let’s take Back to the Future as an example, since most people should be familiar with it. When Marty was trying to convince Doc Brown that he was from the future, Doc was very skeptical. Even when Marty tried to prove it by saying who was President in 1985, etc. Those were all details that could have been made up. But once Marty could explain how Doc Brown got the bump on his head, Doc realized Marty could not have known that through sheer intuition. And finally, the most logical explanation for everything was that Marty was telling the truth and had actually come from the future. But if Doc had held out and refused to believe even if Marty showed him the DeLorean and took him on a trip through time, the story would have lost its believability — and not because of the time travel premise.
In the same way, if it became a known fact that prayer could visibly heal people of egregious injuries, there would be no rational reason to dis-believe it. In other words, to answer our original question, miracles would be very convincing. And there doesn’t seem to be any good reason why God would refuse to use them. So the fact that they don’t happen is very good evidence to me that the Christian god is simply imaginary.
Finding Truth 
@ Unklee
Your rhetoric is little more than polemic.
You have yet to justify how your man god became the deity you claim created the universe and you have yet to offer a single piece of irrefutable evidence to support your miracle claims. Not one.
Hardly a single commenter has shown the slightest inclination to even consider anything you have written here.
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Josh, you stated your points very well. But I think they could also be applied to religion. If someone enslaves themselves to a false religion — let’s say Islam, since neither of us believe in it — have they found freedom or just enslaved themselves further? Or even the Christians that are so fundamentalist they shun modern medicine — are those people free or enslaved?
While good things can come from religion, I also think it’s never a good thing to bind yourself to something that isn’t true. So your devotion to God, while valuable to you, isn’t real freedom if he turns out to be imaginary. Would you agree?
And as you stated, we already know that we have to limit ourselves from certain things because there can be real, negative consequences in this life (over-eating, drug use, extra-marital affairs, tax evasion, etc). What additional limits that we’d only find through religion bring benefits?
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Ark-
I didn’t get the sense that was what Nate was saying. And, I agree with your statement that we’re encouraged to exercise responsibility in our freedom. I didn’t think this was the “true freedom” to which Nate was pointing. I thought what he meant by “true freedom” is that he gained some sense that he no longer had to submit to an authority to tell him what he could or could not do. If, as you suggest, he did mean he had to exercise responsibility in his freedom, then you and he do have to submit to an authority (whatever “responsibility”, as you put it, dictates is your authority). That authority (“responsibility”) just isn’t defined the same way as mine (“God”).
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I said I’d check out the links you provided. Still, I’ll be shocked if any of them fit within the parameters I laid out at the beginning of my post — I’m looking for events that are simply too amazing to have any other explanation. That’s why healing amputees is such a great example. Most that I’ve heard of are of the variety you mentioned yesterday, where someone is resuscitated after an unusually long period of time, yet he still didn’t revive until they used the defibrillators. I just don’t see that qualifying as a miracle, especially in light of all the other problems I have with Christianity. A deistic god? Who knows? Maybe one exists. But not the Christian god.
While you and I come to different conclusions, I understand when you say that you see the problems in the Bible, you acknowledge the problems of evil and suffering, but at the end of the day, those aren’t enough to eliminate your faith. I’m simply saying the same thing. I don’t know what ultimately caused the Big Bang, and there are things (premonitions, the placebo effect, etc) that I can’t explain, but at the end of the day, those things aren’t enough to make me believe in a God.
Well, the Bible seems to teach otherwise. John explicitly states that the miracles are recorded to generate belief. And miracles were used to display God’s power, whether it was the 10 plagues, Elijah with the prophets of Baal, the signs given to Gideon, Jesus’ healing the sick and feeding the 5000, Thomas feeling Jesus’ wounds, Paul’s experience en route to Damascus, etc. I’m not saying the miracles only had one purpose — but to discount them as evidence requires ignoring an awful lot of scripture.
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Josh, I didn’t bring up the limits and responsibilities we have to place on ourselves, because I thought that was understood. That’s my bad — when I was a Christian, I assumed people who didn’t believe in God did it to escape authority. Now, I know better, but I sometimes forget that most people assume that. Sorry. Hope my last point was clearer… I was really talking about the things like worrying about the right type of baptism, how often I was attending worship services, whether my friends and family were saved, etc. Things that I now realize have no real importance.
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Nate-
No need to apologize. I read your words, and read meaning into them. That’s pretty much my fault 🙂 I’ll take a crack at responding to the points you just made instead of treading all the way back.
“But I think they could also be applied to religion. If someone enslaves themselves to a false religion — let’s say Islam, since neither of us believe in it — have they found freedom or just enslaved themselves further? Or even the Christians that are so fundamentalist they shun modern medicine — are those people free or enslaved?”
I would argue that someone who believes in a “false religion” continues in bondage in which the Christian is no longer held. Religions, as a general rule, teach that you must perform in some way in order to earn god’s favor, obtain enlightenment, etc. Christianity, compared to this kind of system, is not a “religion”. Christianity announces the Good News Jesus announced – that he stooped himself and offered himself to us to show that we are no longer bound by the endless enslavement to performance of some kind. “Religions” teach the performance I mentioned, but none gives measures against which one can determine whether they’ve “made it”. So, you’re always under the bondage of a need to become better and better. Christianity, by contrast, announces that God has lowered himself to us to show that he has reconciled us to him. We believe we must perform to earn. This is part of our nature. All “false religions” contain the system by which we must earn our reward. It goes back as far, probably, as the earliest humans believing they needed to please some god for rain or food or whatever. This is one of the convincing differences offered by Christianity. It doesn’t fit the mold in which human imagination forms religion. “It is finished”. Christ has completed it. There is no more bondage to anything that can keep us from God.
“While good things can come from religion, I also think it’s never a good thing to bind yourself to something that isn’t true. So your devotion to God, while valuable to you, isn’t real freedom if he turns out to be imaginary. Would you agree?”
I agree it is not a good thing to bind yourself to something that is not true. If the God of Christianity turns out to be imaginary, I don’t believe I’ve lost any freedom that isn’t lost by any average person with a functioning “moral compass”.
“And as you stated, we already know that we have to limit ourselves from certain things because there can be real, negative consequences in this life (over-eating, drug use, extra-marital affairs, tax evasion, etc). What additional limits that we’d only find through religion bring benefits?”
I think the question you end with here can be attributed to my muddying of two different kinds of freedom (unacceptable behavior vs. the freedom from the bondage of performance offered by Jesus). I don’t think I’d argue any particular limits of religion that offer added benefits. And, it isn’t the limits that offer the benefits in Christianity, anyway. It is the good news of true freedom announced and completed by Jesus.
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Is Melchizedek a miracle from the bible, he had no mother or father?
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He would be more of a “Biblical Miracle” than the birth of Jesus.
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Hi Margaret, thanks for the comment!
You ask a great question, but I personally never took that passage to mean he literally had no mother or father. I think it was making the point that his lineage had nothing to do with his being a priest. Whereas every Jewish priest was a priest because he was of the tribe of Levi (and high priests also had to be descended from Aaron), Melchizedek was a priest solely because God found him worthy to be one. So I take the passage to just be emphasizing his worth as an individual over his need to be of a particular bloodline. And that in that same manner, Jesus could be high priest because he was worthy, even though he was neither descended from Aaron nor of the tribe of Levi.
/apologistMode off 🙂
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Good job Nate ! I thought I was reading an apologetic from unkleE for a moment ! 🙂
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Josh, thanks for the great response. You state your case well, but this is where things get a bit tricky, because there are many Christians that would probably disagree with your description of Christianity.
Aside from that, if I understand you correctly, your freedom comes from believing your debt of sin has been totally wiped away and nothing more is required. My freedom comes from believing that there was never any debt of sin to begin with. In a way, I think our feelings of freedom are probably about the same! 🙂
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I’ll take that as a compliment, kc! 😉
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And it was meant this way !
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Nate, do you really feel Miracles are that important in today’s world ? You certainly received many diverse comments on the subject . Reports of Miracles aren’t a Christian Exclusive. Other religions claim Miracles too. Are their reports any less valid than the Christian ones ?
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That’s a really great question. Honestly, I don’t find them that important. If they really happened, maybe I’d feel differently. But then, I think we’d live in a very different world, if that were the case. Because if the Christian god was real — a god that loves everyone, wants the best for everyone, has unlimited power, and does involve himself in the physical world — then I think there’d be no such thing as cancer. I don’t think people would starve to death. I don’t think events like the Newtown tragedy would happen.
To say that God picks and chooses which cases to help is the worst possible scenario, in my opinion. It would be better to believe in a god who simply decides not to interfere — let life play out as it will. But so many religions claim that God is all-powerful and intervenes in life here… that means that God chooses when to let a child die of leukemia. That flies in the face of descriptions like “all-loving” and “merciful.” So I find the gods of most religions to be logically impossible. That’s where I think miracles come into play. They show the inherent inconsistencies in most conceptions of god.
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Thanks, Nate!
“…there are many Christians that would probably disagree with your description of Christianity.”
Agreed. There are also many who would agree. I would argue the firm grasp on our idea of performance for reward is a factor in many Christians’ trouble with the way I’ve described Christianity. They are uncomfortable that it does not conform to what they’re comfortable with 🙂
“…if I understand you correctly, your freedom comes from believing your debt of sin has been totally wiped away and nothing more is required.”
Essentially. I’d be more comfortable wording it a little differently. I think the concept we have of “sin” is troublesome when talking about this. We see sin as behavior, and it entails that. But, it’s more like a virus that has infiltrated our nature and bent us away from God. Our understanding of God is that he is constantly balancing the scales, and nothing but submission to him or penance for not submitting will appease him. Jesus, and the progression of God’s presentation thru scripture, reveal to us a God who is different than we imagine. He offers himself to free us of the terrible view we have of God, which is a part of the virus called sin that bends us away from him. He reveals himself in ways we will understand (the bloodthirsty god calling for sacrifice of the firstborn, which is what would have been expected of a god at the time), and then turns that on its head by showing his mercy toward us and providing the reconciliation sacrifice himself.
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@Josh: I’m one of the Christian’s who would agree with you 🙂 I enjoy reading your well thought commentary on Nate’s posts. Keep it up!
@Nate:
“…why did God create humans to be so blind and stubborn in the first place?”
Personally I don’t think he ‘created’ us that way. He created us with that dreaded freewill thing and we’ve chosen to be that way. I think that fits in with the Pharisee’s decision to placate the Romans. I don’t think that was blindness, I think that was greed and self-centerdness.
“He wants everyone to believe in him, but most are incapable of it — seems like punishing a dog for not being able to fly”
Hmmm….but what if the dog CAN fly? What if it chooses not to fly? What if it’s standing in flood water and the only thing it need do to escape the rising water is fly out? Yet it refuses to, even though it’s capable? Who’s fault is it if it drowns? (I’m reaching, I know….I couldn’t resist Ha! 😉 )
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A dog can fly? Next you’ll tell me you believe a man can walk on water… 😉
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Thanks for fleshing out your thoughts, Josh. I’d like to explore some of that a bit more, but I may do it in a new post soon so we can concentrate on it solely. Plus, that will give me some time to really think about what you’re saying and get my thoughts together. Thanks!
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“there are many Christians that would probably disagree with your description of Christianity.”
I’m not sure which parts of what he said you are referring to in particular, but Josh has described the christianity I know, and that I thought was held by almost all christians I have ever met. In particular, the concept of grace rather than performance.
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Sounds good, Nate. Got kinda off the track you laid down here 🙂
UnkleE & Kent: Thanks!
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Hi Nate, I decided I didn’t want to add even more length to these comments, so I have written a post on God and miracles at Does God use miracles to prove himself? Should he?, if you are interested. Part 2 will follow.
Best wishes.
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NEW YORK – A woman in New York state was pronounced dead and about to have her organs removed for transplant when she awoke and opened her eyes.
Ms Colleen Burns had been taken to St Joseph’s Hospital Health Centre in Syracuse after taking a drug overdose in 2009. She was thought to have passed away, a victim of “cardiac death”, and so her family agreed to turn off the 41-year-old’s life support machine and donate her organs.
unkleE, this is why I asked earlier, do we currently have the technology to determine if a person is truly dead. By the way, NO one prayed for her or used a Defib. Miracle ? Or just an unexplained phenomenon ?
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Hi kcchief1, I think you should have read the reports a little more carefully before you rushed into print. There are some clear differences.
That wasn’t an issue in either of the two cases. In the case of Dr Crandall, they had all the equipment, and there were no vital signs – no heartbeat etc. In the case you quote, they didn’t even need the equipment, because this report notes:
“the day before her organs were to be removed, a nurse had performed a reflex test – scraping a finger on the bottom of her foot. The toes curled downward – not the expected reaction of someone who’s supposed to be dead.
Outside the operating theatre, her nostrils appeared to show signs of breathing, and her lips and tongue moved, the Daily Telegraph reported.
“Dead people don’t curl their toes,” said Dr Charles Wetli, a forensic pathologist from New Jersey. “And they don’t fight against the respirator and want to breathe on their own.”
Twenty minutes after those observations were made, a nurse gave Ms Burns an injection of the sedative Ativan, according to records.
In the doctors’ notes, there’s no mention of the sedative or any indication they were aware of her improving condition.
“If you have to sedate them or give them pain medication, they’re not brain-dead and you shouldn’t be harvesting their organs,” said Dr David Mayer, a surgeon and an associate professor of clinical surgery at New York Medical College.”
So in one case there was no heartbeat and no suggestion of incompetence, in the other there was movement and gross incompetence – hardly the same!
And this report also points out that “The state could not find a case similar to the Burns case after reviewing the past 10 years of inspection records, a spokesman said.”
So the case you quote doubly illustrates that the case of Dr Crandall was quite different and quite amazing.
As it turns out, neither. But Dr Crandall’s case remains a plausible miracle.
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