People believe in their INTERPRETATION of MIRACLES and not in MIRACLES

A POINT

Religious language is saturated with symbolism that deliberately inflates ordinary words into universal and transcendent realities. Terms like light, darkness, evil, rebirth, and life are removed from their everyday meanings and presented as cosmic, divine forces. This symbolic exaggeration serves a narrative function: it transforms events into messages and experiences into signs. Within such a framework, miracles are not discovered but read into events, because the believer already seeks a faith-story or mythic structure that gives ultimate meaning. The desire for a coherent religious narrative therefore precedes and drives miracle interpretation, shaping how ambiguous or unexplained events are framed as acts of God rather than as neutral occurrences.

This tells us more about human psychology and our need for meaning than about any genuine reaching toward a divine reality.

THE CORE THESIS

A miracle belief is not belief in an event alone, but belief in a specific interpretation of that event. 

There is a problem of interpretation. A miracle occurs and is interpreted both as an act of God and as a sign of God. Then, because God is understood as something that lives within you and connects personally with you, it is argued that you can sense in your soul that the miracle is real. But how else is God supposed to make the miracle spiritual and transformative?

That already gives us three separate interpretations. The last one is a red flag because it is highly subjective—it relies too heavily on personal self-interpretation. The miracle is being fitted into an existing religious framework rather than examined on its own terms.

It is often said that faith interpretations are imposed on miracles, but it may be more accurate to say that we impose the interpreters we prefer onto them.

Remember that the event (something unusual happened) and the interpretation (God caused it for a religious purpose) are logically distinct.

Religion routinely treats interpretation as if it were part of the observed fact, which is an error.

1. What a Miracle Claim Actually Asserts

A miracle claim usually includes three components:

An unusual or unexplained event occurred.  The event was not caused by natural processes.  The event was caused intentionally by God (or a supernatural agent) to convey meaning.

Only the first component is observational.  The second and third components are interpretations, not observations.

2. Unexplained ≠ Supernatural

Many events are medically unexplained, scientifically anomalous, statistically rare - all without being supernatural.

History shows that phenomena once labeled miraculous (e.g., lightning, disease remission) later received natural explanations.  Ignorance of a cause does not justify a supernatural conclusion.  It warns that it must be accepted only as a last resort.  Therefore declaring an event “miraculous” because it lacks explanation is an argument from ignorance.

3. David Hume’s Evidential Asymmetry

We have massive, repeated evidence that nature behaves regularly (e.g., the dead remain dead).  Far weaker evidence for miracles or suspensions or violations of natural law is proposed.  Rational belief should follow comparative evidence strength.  Testimony for miracles must outweigh the uniform evidence for natural regularity.  In practice, it does not.  We know that believers themselves agree with Hume except when it is miracles they like.  They would not believe even star witnesses who say that they were lifted by aliens in secret.

4. If Nature Is Less Regular Than We Think, Miracles Lose Force.

Some theologians argue that nature may allow rare exceptions.  But this concession implies that such events may be rare natural anomalies, not divine acts.  If so then miracles no longer function as evidence for God.  They become unusual but natural occurrences with religious meaning imposed afterward.

5. Selective Interpretation and Religious Bias. Religions label certain anomalies as miracles while ignoring equally strange non-religious anomalies.

Example - spontaneous cancer remission without prayer is not treated as a miracle.  But similar remission following prayer is.  Even worse, if the prayer is offered to Zeus and a sudden amazing cure comes, Christians will not treat it as a miracle.  They want it said to their God.

This shows the miracle status depends on prior religious commitment, not objective features of the event.

6. Canonisation and Attribution Problems are rife.  When a cure is attributed to a saint there is no way to establish which saint, if any, caused it, or whether any supernatural cause was involved.  Attributing the event to a specific religious figure is speculative, underdetermined by evidence and guided by institutional interest.  The event alone cannot justify the theological conclusion drawn from it.

7. Circular Reasoning in “Miracles as Signs”

Religions often argue that a particular kind of God exists because miracles occur, and miracles occur because that kind of God exists.  This is circular reasoning.  A sign must be identifiable independently of the system it is supposed to confirm.  Otherwise, any belief system can validate itself arbitrarily.

8. Competing Interpretations Are Always Available.

Any alleged miracle allows multiple explanations natural anomaly, psychological effect, misperception, unknown natural law, deception, non-religious intelligent agency and perhaps religious supernatural cause.  No observation uniquely selects the religious interpretation.  Choosing one interpretation reflects prior belief, not evidential necessity.

9. The Meaning of a Miracle Is Not Observable

Even if an event were supernatural its meaning, purpose, and message are not observable facts.  Witnesses may sincerely experience something, yet misinterpret what it signifies.  Therefore the truth of an event does not guarantee truth of its theological explanation. Religious claims that God has revealed to us the meaning of life, the most important knowledge there can be, assume that he conveyed that truth through and in miracles.  Big claims like that need solid evidence.  There is no such evidence that any particular witness told the truth about the message.

10. Social and Moral Pressure Distorts Interpretation

Declaring miracles “signs from God” pressures people to accept a specific interpretation.  It blames disagreement as moral or spiritual failure.  This undermines honest inquiry, biases testimony and discourages alternative explanations.

11. Unknown Natural Laws Can Mimic Apparent Intelligence

Complex systems governed by natural laws (e.g., computers) can simulate intelligence and produce goal-directed outcomes.  Therefore apparent intention in an event does not imply a personal supernatural agent.  Nature could, in principle, generate events that look purposeful.

12. Inconsistency Undermines Evidential Claims.

Religions ignore or reject UFO miracles, psychic phenomena, fairy or alien claims and all the while accepting their own miracle traditions.  Without a neutral standard this selectivity is unjustified.  The reliability of witnesses must be assessed globally, not selectively.

13. Miracles Cannot Ground Faith Rationally.

Faith based on miracles rests on disputed testimony, ambiguous events and guessed or contested interpretations.  Rational belief requires
the most probable explanation and not merely a possible one.  Since natural explanations are always at least as probable miracles cannot serve as a reliable foundation for belief.

Final Conclusion

What people believe in is not miracles, but interpretations of unusual events.  Treating interpretations as facts is intellectually irresponsible.  Miracles, even if real as events, cannot function as evidence for religious truth.

Faith based on miracles is faith in human meaning-making, not in demonstrated divine action.
  
Further Reading ~
A Christian Faith for Today, W Montgomery Watt, Routledge, London, 2002
Answers to Tough Questions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1980
Apparitions, Healings and Weeping Madonnas, Lisa J Schwebel, Paulist Press, New York, 2004
A Summary of Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof, The Banner of Truth Trust, London, 1971
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
Enchiridion Symbolorum Et Definitionum, Heinrich Joseph Denzinger, Edited by A Schonmetzer, Barcelona, 1963
Looking for a Miracle, Joe Nickell, Prometheus Books, New York, 1993
Miracles, Rev Ronald A Knox, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1937
Miracles in Dispute, Ernst and Marie-Luise Keller, SCM Press Ltd, London, 1969
Lourdes, Antonio Bernardo, A. Doucet Publications, Lourdes, 1987
Medjugorje, David Baldwin, Catholic Truth Society, London, 2002
Miraculous Divine Healing, Connie W Adams, Guardian of Truth Publications, KY, undated
New Catholic Encyclopaedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc, Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Raised From the Dead, Father Albert J Hebert SM, TAN, Illinois 1986
Science and the Paranormal, Edited by George O Abell and Barry Singer, Junction Books, London, 1981
The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan, Headline, London, 1997
The Book of Miracles, Stuart Gordon, Headline, London, 1996
The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2000
The Encyclopaedia of Unbelief Volume 1, Gordon Stein, Editor, Prometheus Books, New York, 1985
The Hidden Power, Brian Inglis, Jonathan Cape, London, 1986
The Sceptical Occultist, Terry White, Century, London, 1994
The Stigmata and Modern Science, Rev Charles Carty, TAN, Illinois, 1974
Twenty Questions About Medjugorje, Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D. Pangaeus Press, Dallas, 1999
Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, Freeman, New York, 1997

THE WEB

The Problem of Competing Claims by Richard Carrier
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/4c.html