Oh really.
Coincidences and random occurrences happen all the time. A one-in-a-million event will happen to seven people in New York, and over six thousand people worldwide. When the outcome is positive, we call it a miracle. When the outcome is negative, we call it bad luck, and/or look for someone to sue. Our choice of label doesn’t change the fact that it’s merely a coincidental event and nothing more.
Think about it. Out of a thousand people who get cancer, a handful will get better without any sort of treatment, while on the other side a handful will die no matter what anybody does. Then there’s a huge mass in the middle for whom the progression of the disease will be slower or faster and who may or may not die depending on various factors.
Now distribute the available treatments and approaches to treatment, from aggressive surgery and chemotherapy to closing your eyes and wishing really hard (i.e. prayer). The continuum of possible outcomes intersects with the continuum of possible actions to form a matrix. Some of the people receiving aggressive treatment will die anyway. Some of the people who get no medical treatment will get better. It’s simple statistics.
Naturally, the individual who gets better without medical intervention will perceive his recovery as a miraculous event, seeing as he has “beaten the odds.”
But if you’re going to make the two phrases — miracle, and beating the odds — synonymous, then you have to include all the unlikely but negative events as well. Say, you’re walking down the street and a brick falls out of a skyscraper and crushes your head. The probability of this happening to somebody is miniscule, so by getting your skull squished, you have “beaten the odds.” Is it a miracle?
Here’s an even better example: Your daughter is dying of a rare type of organ failure. If she doesn’t get a heart transplant within six weeks, she will die. The odds are against you.
And then, unexpectedly, the transplant team calls: A heart has suddenly become available. It’s a match. Your daughter’s life is saved. Of course, you consider this a miracle.
Twelve hours before you get the call from the transplant team, in a playground two states away, a group of kids is in a playground. One kid falls off the jungle gym and falls face-first on a fence post, impaling himself through the mouth and neck. He is rushed to the hospital, but there is nothing anybody can do. His weeping parents have no knowledge of you or your daughter or her need for their son’s heart, but encouraged by the doctors at the hospital, they agree that his organs can be harvested, and then prepare to remake their shattered lives.
Is this a miracle?
Using similar reasoning as above: Unexplained events occur all the time. Sometimes they are merely coincidental and require no explanation. (Example: You’re at home. Something reminds you of your best friend. You think about your best friend for a moment. The phone rings. It’s your best friend. My goodness, you think, I must be psychic. Naturally, you have no recollection of the ten thousand times you thought of your best friend and the phone didn’t ring.) Sometimes no explanation is immediately available; the weak-minded immediately leap to a supernatural version of events, while more rational people reserve judgment. (Example: Flight 19 disappearing over the ocean south of Miami.)
The only reason we think supernatural events occur is that we do not like unanswered questions and are willing to hold any explanation as being superior than no explanation. As a thoroughly pedestrian example, look at the enduring debate over the contents of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction. There’s absolutely no way to tell from the movie what’s in the case, but viewers have concocted all manner of elaborate and internally consistent hypotheses in order to provide themselves any answer, rather than the correct one, which is that there is no answer, by the filmmakers’ design.
Some do. Some are assholes. I’m an atheist, and I’m a pretty happy guy.
You do come close to being right here, though:
Actually, God is a name we’ve assigned to the phenomenon of nagging unanswerables. We ask why it rains, and until we understand meteorology we have a rain god. We ask why the ground shakes, and until we understand plate tectonics we have earth gods. We ask why we are here and what our purpose could be, and because there is no way to answer we invent a religion to satisfy our deep need for an explanation. It’s not too great to understand; it’s just that the truth is unsatisfying.