Sally and Joe have been friends for many years.
Over that time, Sally has realized that Joe is not honest with her, 10% of the time.
Sometimes it is an honest mistake, other times he is outright lying,
but either way 10% of the time the information is wrong.
So one day Joe tells Sally that he flipped a coin and it came up heads.
Should Sally believe him?
Well there are two possibilities:
1) That Joe is lying which has a 10% chance;
and 2) That the coin did indeed come up heads, which has a 50% chance.
Since it's more likely the coin came up heads than Joe lying, Sally should believe him.
But what if Joe tells Sally that he flipped a coin 10 times and got 10 consecutive heads.
Should sally still believe him?
Rather than making a gut reaction, we can give an accurate answer to this question.
There is still a 10% chance Joe is lying,
but now there is only a 0.1% chance the coin did what Joe says.
It's much more likely that Joe is lying than the coin giving 10 consecutive heads,
so no, Sally shouldn't believe him.
The moral of this story is, you shouldn't believe everything you are told.
Especially if the probability the person is being dishonest
is higher than the probability of the event they are describing.
Now we've all heard the saying, "Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence."
And the religious communities know this all too well.
Imagine if I told you my friend Bob was the son of god.
That definitely counts as an extraordinary claim.
And you probably wouldn't simply take my word for it.
But what if I told you at the party last night Bob turned the water in the Britta pitcher into wine.
You might be more inclined since that is definitely some extraordinary evidence.
Miracles are the foundations of the three western religions
from which they claim authority for the supernatural.
Judaism and the old testament is filled with stories of global floods,
people surviving inside fish,
and talking animals.
Christianity and the new testament contains stories of a virgin birth,
water being transformed into wine,
and the dead being resurrected.
And Islam with their prophet ascending into heaven on a winged horse.
Those who proselytize for these religions use the stories of miracles as their sales pitch,
because without them, you really only have the word of some random guy.
The question is, should you believe someone's claim of a miracle.
The general definition of a miracle
is an event that requires supernatural intervention to have occurred.
By this definition, miracles are proof of god.
Let's be clear, the virgin mary appearing on toast is NOT a miracle;
cancer going into remission is NOT a miracle;
and a sports team winning against all odds is NOT a miracle.
As all of these have natural explanations and occur quite often.
A miracle by definition is the explanation with the lowest possible probability
simply because it defies the laws of nature.
Well this sets up a huge problem.
If a man on the street, or a book in your local house of worship,
claims that a miracle happened in the past, should you believe it?
Let's disregard all the possibilities that the person or book is being intentionally dishonest
for political, monetary, or personal reasons, and assume that they are entirely genuine
well intentioned, and honestly believe what they are saying is true.
The answer is still NO.
Because miracles are so unlikely to actually occur,
the probability of a natural explanation, the person or book being in error,
either being mistaken in what they saw,
simply having been tricked,
or having suffered a vivid hallucination, is always higher.
When you apply logic and reason one quickly realizes that all claims of miracles must be rejected.
Even if you believe you experienced a miracle personally,
it is more likely you didn't and are mistaken.
Now I am not claiming miracles don't happen.
And I am not claiming god doesn't exist.
But what I am claiming is that logically, miracles should never be believed.
And without their authoritative foundation,
what are the major religions of the world left with.
Think about it.