Pardon my ignorance, Polycarp, because I usually stay away from the religious threads (in which you probably have made your meaning of the above quote abundantly clear), but isn’t this a contradiction? If something happens in accordance with natural law, how can it be called a miracle?
Miracles are subjective. Childbirth can be considered a miracle by the parents. A person surviving terminal cancer could be considered a miracle.
What you are looking for is an objective miracle. That is a contradiction.
David B announced having observed a miracle here a couple of years ago. He was speaking of the birth of his youngest child.
A miracle, in Christian use, is an observable case of God responding to human need – whether through coincidence, the good deeds of His followers (or others!), or whatever makes no never mind.
It’s literalists on the one hand and debunkers on the other who have insisted that a miracle be an event which flies in the face of known natural law. That has never been the precise meaning of the term for most Christians, even those who would insist on the literal truth of Scripture. Cyrus giving orders that the exiled Jews be sent home and rebuild their temple is one classic example of “a miracle” that in no way violates natural law.
If a ‘miracle’ is consistent with physical law, then God hasn’t done anything, has He? He hasn’t responded; He hasn’t changed the world; He hasn’t interceded.
What kind of a miracle is that?
The only kind there is. The subjective kind. What do you think a miracle should be?
Well, my friend, a month ago I was in despair – running out of money, my car repossessed, no means of accessing this board which I love, and no gainful employment. And I called RT Firefly to ask him to post an explanation of why I’d be offline indefinitely.
And, through the undeserved kindness of several dozen dopers, the hard work of Scottischer and several others, the practical help of Libertarian, Edlyn, Joe Cool, Jersey Diamond, RT Firefly, Aenea, and any number of others, everything about my existence turned around. (And I can report today that I’m back to work, at least for the moment, as of Wednesday, the last item on my “needs list.”)
And for at least some of us, including most emphatically me, that was a miracle. Done solely through the lovingkindness of human beings, many of whom don’t share my faith – many of whom are not religious at all – but to me both a reaffirmation of the goodness of human nature and of the providence of God in taking care of me – as well as being very practical help that I desperately needed.
I dunno about you, but I take my miracles where I find them. And that was definitely one. He sent me “two boats and a helicopter” – and I realized it.
(Note to non-Christian people: The idea that we theists have that God works through the goodness of other humans to provide help to a human in need must not be taken to in any way denigrate the goodness and lovingkindness of those who give because they love, and don’t believe in a God who inspired them to do so. I’m more grateful to you than I can say. And I think Libertarian may have the words to make clear the idea that it was Love that motivated you all. I hope he reads this and is inspired to make it clearer than I can. 
Polycarp, you appear to be mistaken about the traditional import given to the word “miracle” by Christians. The article on miracles from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia calls them “wonders performed by supernatural power as signs of some special mission or gift and explicitly ascribed to God” and “above, contrary to, and outside nature”. The article is very explicit that miracles are things like raising the dead and turning wine into water. See also St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III: 101 (Of Miracles):
I’m sure some Christians–and these days, many Christians–would prefer the definition you give, but the idea of a miracle as an “event which flies in the face of known natural law” isn’t some strawman invented by atheists; it’s precisely the traditional definition used by Christian theologians.
JustPlainBryan, according to Thomas Aquinas, miracles are, by definition, objective: “And because one and the same cause is sometimes known to some and unknown to others, it happens that of the witnesses of the effect some wonder and some do not wonder: thus an astronomer does not wonder at seeing an eclipse of the sun, at which a person that is ignorant of astronomy cannot help wondering. An event is wonderful relatively to one man and not to another. The absolutely wonderful is that which has a cause absolutely hidden. This then is the meaning of the word ‘miracle,’ an event of itself full of wonder, not to this man or that man only.”
This is exactly why theologians and philosophers of any kind should be taken with a grain of salt. Noone should be telling you exactly what to think in matters of religion and worldview.
Oh, and goodie for Thomas Aquinas. I’m glad his worldview worked for him.
Well, just don’t tell us atheists and “debunkers” that “Christians have never believed so-and-so”, when in fact, Christians traditionally have believed so-and-so, and don’t tell us that something is a “contradiction” if we use a word in the manner in which it was understood for many centuries, with a definition which is really not in the least bit contradictory. Things under that definition may not exist, you may prefer some other definition, but I don’t see how that constitutes a “contradiction” of anything other than your personal beliefs.
I think I have found convincing evidence that Dr. Suess’ “The Cat In the Hat” was a real, flesh-and-blood cat.
First, read “The Cat In the Hat”…
[/quote]
I will not read “The Cat in Hat”
I won’t believe a thing 'bout that
I will not read it on this board
No matter now whose ox is gored
I won’t accept your proof he’s real
“No cat in hat,” I say I feel.
No matter what this Cat in Hat
I will not give belief to that.
[/quote]
Me too.
MEBuckner:
Allright, but if an atheist is debating the existence of God with Polycarp, and uses lack of evidence for supernatural miracles as a reason for believing that God does not exist, isn’t that a strawman, since Poly wouldn’t be using evidence for such miracles as an argument in support of his own side? Maybe he was incorrect to imply that Christians have never required belief in supernatural miracles or that they have never used “evidence” of such miracles as proof or propaganda for their doctrines, but would you argue with applying what he said to the beliefs of most Christians today? I think he illustrated a way in which his religion and its believers are evolving along with the rest of the world. Long ago, people chalked up all kinds of things to what we are calling “supernatural” causes because they had no hope of understanding the mechanism by which they worked. Today we do have such hope. I think Poly’s point was that this is not necessarily a reason for a person of faith to become a person of non-faith. Obviously, many people will require empirical evidence for the supernatural - which is something of a contradiction in terms, I think - before they will subscribe to any set of religious beliefs, and that’s okay. Perhaps the OP is one of them. Just know that Poly’s faith is not based on that. And neither is mine.
Sure, it’s obviously foolish to argue with someone against beliefs they don’t actually hold. I was mostly just objecting to the implication that Christians have never held such beliefs. And I do think that lots of Christians still believe in miracles being supernatural events, above, contrary to, or outside nature. Many American Christians still hold to such a view of “miracles”, though perhaps not most (more than half) of all American Christians anymore. According to this page, 84% of American adults believe that “God performs miracles”, but it doesn’t say what a miracle is. However, 79% “believe that the miracles in the Bible actually happened”, and the miracles in the Bible tend to be the dead rising from the grave, walking on water, fire raining down from heaven sort. So maybe it is still “most” American Christians. On the other hand, it doesn’t say when that poll was taken, and brief little sentences from opinion polls can often be misleading. There are also hundreds of millions of Christians outside of “First World” countries; both Catholics–and Catholic covers a lot of territory on various theological or political issues; you can’t assume all Catholics have the same attitudes as a professor of theology at Georgetown–and growing numbers of charismatic or evangelical Protestants. In the U.S., I believe the more “evangelical” denominations are still growing faster than the “mainline” denominations.
I’m sorry, where did you see the claim that Christians have never believed that miracles were objective?
It’s nice to know I’m speaking with the spokesperson for atheists and “debunkers”, by the way. 
Really? Please explain to me why an objective miracle is not a contradiction. Why I am wrong in believing that miracles are subjective?
Centuries of theological discussion have given us strange definitions of the universe, in addition to the definition of what miracles are. Shall we continue to use those as well?
Once again, I challenge you to tell me how an objective miracle is not a contradiction in terms.
I was reacting to this statement by Polycarp:
Who better to respond to the spokepersons for the Christians and the believers?
By your definition, then, miracles are subjective. But your definition is hardly the only definition.
It’s a contradiction if you define a miracle to be a subjective event. But that’s not how Christians historically defined miracles; the whole point of miracles is that they were (allegedly) objective: Anyone should see them, and thus be made aware of God’s power. The problem is, such objective events seem few and far between; it’s always some other century or some distant land where the dead rose from their graves or the prophet of God called down fire from heaven on the idolaters. Here and now we’re reduced to a few healings, and the details of even those are hard to pin down. So, one thing you can do is redefine miracle. Just don’t try to persuade everyone that the word has always meant that, or that it can’t possibly mean anything else.
Ah, thank you for the clarification.
I assume that your qualification is that you are a thinking human. Fair enough. It just sounded like you presumed to speak for every atheist on this board without their consent.
I can’t argue with that. I will say that my definition is no more or less than others because my definition does not have the weight of a theologian behind it. It simply makes sense to me.
I can only redefine it for myself.
I thought that you were doing this very thing in limiting the defintion of a miracle to a Catholic theologian who is long dead.
Sorry, MEB, I wasn’t trying to debunk the “miracles are violations of natural law done by God” theory so much as to say that the understanding of them is something quite different than the “does this break a law of nature?” standard people seem to use – it’s an act of unusual nature seen as performed by God for the benefit of someone or all people. IMHO, He usually if not always uses the laws of nature in performing them, though I’m confident that others will disagree with that position.
I grant your Catholic Encyclopedia and Aquinas quotes – but I suspect that there is as much evidence for my point. To take perhaps the classic Biblical miracle – the one Cecil B. DeMille visualized for everybody – the parting of the Red Sea. In one account, Moses lifts his arms and the waters part; out of exhaustion, he’s forced to get two guys to hold his arms up until the Children of Israel finish crossing. But in the other account, right there in Exodus with the first, God sends a mighty wind to drive the waters back, providing a ground-where-the-sea-had-been crossing. Two explanations, one seemingly supernatural and one based on a natural, if unusual, phenomenon, for the same “miracle.” The point to miracles, in other words, is not whether they’re supernatural or not in the sense of being unnatural occurrences, but rather that they’re supernatural in the sense of being stuff that God does, whether by the forces of nature, the actions of human beings, or whatever, that illustrate His power, compassion, and grace towards us.
So a miracle is in the eyes of the beholder? Heck, that’s not what I was taught in Sunday school.
Take the example of the Weeping Madonna of Perth, from September 2002. A statue appears to cry in western Australia. Why, “it’s a miracle!” devotees say. But hold on - an expert has examined the statue:
So, what does this tell me?
Statue weeping supernatural tears = miracle.
Statue weeping tears of a natural, physical origin = not a miracle.
See, this is why I stay out of religious threads.