Miracles
The poet Shelley wrote “Only impossible things are miracles, therefore we know that they did not happen because they are impossible." Nothing that is ordinary or possible is a miracle. People who escape street accidents, or have narrow escapes in war or industrial accidents and are not killed or injured, should not claim that they have had a “miraculous escape.” No miracle occurs or could have occurred in connection with such events. If water gets turned into wine or runs uphill voluntarily, if dead men rise from their graves, or virgins give birth to babies—then all these constitute miracles—but not in having a narrow escape from death or injury. The two kinds of phenomena are quite different In the case of miracles the laws of nature, hitherto so immutably harmonious, suddenly and without cause undergo a violation and contradict everything which has gone before. For example the turning of stones into bread, or the feeding of thousands of people on two loaves and five fishes. The modern usage of the word miracle is very misleading and has nothing to do with these biblical and religious absurdities that have been alleged to have happened in the days when religion had growing pains.
Every religion has its lists of attested miracles and its quota of blind believers who accept the whole lot, lock, stock and barrel, without evidence or without wanting evidence. In fact they are usually offended if you offer them any evidence to the contrary. If proof is asked for about these miracles, it is not forthcoming, for the very good and simple reason that there is not a shred of evidence for any miracle. Of course one cannot prove negatives, and therefore it cannot be proved that some phenomena did not at one time occur, but the onus of proof falls upon the shoulders of those who claim these absurdities.
If we look at things from a strictly logical angle we must ask, is it more possible that Balaam’s ass spoke, or that a man told a lie? Is it more possible that Joshua’s trumpets blew down the walls of the city of Jericho—or that somebody exaggerated? The religious believer accepts the former, while the non-believer, the materialist, the socialist, the latter.
When radio-active substances were first discovered, it was soon made known to the world that the spring which supplied the holy water at Lourdes, was radioactive. Strange how those in control and in communication with the Almighty did not know this before' this scientific discovery. When a party of scientists visited the spot and tested the water, they found that it was just the ordinary water of the district, and contained no special medicinal or radio-active quality. An unfriendly visitor to Lourdes once declared that it would constitute no more of a miracle for a one-legged man to grow another leg than for hundreds of those who were alleged to have thrown away their crutches and become healed. We do not say that among these cases, there have not been those who have made through faith a profound recovery from functional disorders, but many of them were victims of "organic” conditions in which nothing short of growing a new limb could have brought about a cure.
Apart from the Catholic countries, Italy, Spain, Austria, France, etc., the only place where miracles are supposed to occur is in the U.S.A. Every few weeks a new religion is founded or a revised version of an old one is resurrected. Usually a child sees the Virgin Mary in an isolated village where life is very drab and the people starved for excitement and where the local newspapers have little sensational to offer. So the local journalists get down to it and an exaggerated write-up is given of some ghost-seeing event. The result is that the newspaper sales go up, hotels benefit, shops get record sales, churches, chapels and other local businesses including the pubs get a good rake off it, and all because of the flood of visitors into the village.
Generally speaking, "the age of miracles" is past. God who used to reveal himself to mankind at frequent intervals in his busy life, seems to have got fed up with it. He may of course be genuinely too busy, or he has concluded that his presence only convinces the lesser-educated with stultified powers of perception.
Seriously, the basis for miracles has largely been destroyed as a result of the better understanding of mankind generally. It doesn’t take a lot of scientific knowledge to understand the absurdities behind the claims of any miracle.
Horace Jarvis
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