How do you explain miracles to religious people?
We've all had this sort of conversation where someone religious comes up to you and they say:
"No, you have to believe in God, because this thing happened to me. I was sick and then I got cured."
"And the doctors didn't know what was happening. It's a miracle."
"How do you explain that, Mr. atheist?" You know, we've had that conversation.
And the question is: how do you rebut that? How do you
respond to someone who says they experienced a miracle
when you know it wasn't a miracle?
And the truth is:
I probably wouldn't-- I probably wouldn't try to convince them that it wasn't.
Because why-- I mean, I think it's very hard to tell someone that what they're feeling, what they experienced,
isn't real.
If they experienced it,
good luck trying to tell them: "No, that's not what you felt."
"I know what you felt." Like, "No, you really don't."
So, that's a hard sell
to try to tell someone that what they thought was a miracle, really wasn't.
But if I was pressed and I had to explain what happened,
the truth is there's a lot of things out there that we can't explain.
Why did you get better? How come the doctors said you were going to die,
but then you ended up living?
Well, there are a lot of medical things out there that even doctors, even the best of doctors can't always explain.
It doesn't mean God like stuck his hand in there and fixed you,
but it does mean maybe the doctors didn't catch something. Maybe the x-rays didn't say--
Maybe they didn't read the x-rays properly. Maybe all the--
the printouts they had, all the tests they did, didn't show
the problems that were going on with you.
And maybe they missed something. Human error happens a lot.
And so, that's a possibility.
And it's also a possibility that you are the anomaly; that something crazy did happen.
One out of a million-- something that happens one out of a million times
happens thousands of times a day.
And it's really weird when you think you're one of the rare people that something happened to.
Like, "Oh, you won the lottery. That's crazy."
No, it's crazy that you won the lottery.
It's not crazy that someone won the lottery. It's actually weird if no one wins the lottery, you know.
And so it's not weird that "miracles" happen to people.
It is just kind of weird when you feel like it's happening to you.
But, how do you overcome this?
Understanding how probability works, understanding that there are things out there that we just can't explain,
and sometimes we have to live with that ambiguity and we have to live with that
knowledge that, "Oh, I might not be able to explain what happened." That helps, too.
And realize that, you know, from an atheist perspective,
we don't believe God put us here on this earth. We believe we got here over millions and millions of years of evolution.
And if you think about how amazing it is that we are here right now.
Like, your parents had to meet in this amazing way for you to be alive right now.
And their parents had to meet in a particular way.
And think of all those serendipitous moments that people always talk about, like,
- Oh, how did you meet your wife? - Well, I was standing at the bus stop one day and she walked by.
Or, you know, "I clicked on that online profile and
this person responded. That never happens."
I mean, there's all these crazy things that had to happen perfectly
for you to be alive.
Some people may argue that's a miracle.
And, by the way, they all had to be alive
Like millions of years, all your ancestors are winners, because they all lived and you are here because of that.
You descend from a long line of winners
and some people may say that's a miracle.
And I would argue: "No, it's not a miracle."
But if it didn't happen that way,
you wouldn't be here to discuss it.
So, it just so happened that all the ways things turned out: "Hey, here you are."
That's amazing and we should revel in how extraordinary that is, that we are here today.
But it didn't have to happen that way.
And if it didn't,
you wouldn't know about it; you wouldn't be here to talk about it, or you wouldn't even know what happened.
So, to me that's not a miracle.
That's just, "Oh, the way things worked out, this is the hand we were dealt."
Sometimes that's good; sometimes that's bad,
but it's not something that is there because of the hand of God.
My name is Hemant Mehta and I write for FriendlyAtheist.com
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