# Would it be inaccurate or misleading to define a "miracle" as an "impossibilty"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 26, 2021, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665 "2021-12-26T13:01:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/81 "2021-12-31T16:06:20Z")
The more I think about this, the more I conclude that someone was fucking with me. It’s impossible (almost) that I dropped the ballcap on the ground in the 5 minutes between last wearing it and realizing it was gone and then retracing my exact steps twice immediately afterwards and in those 5 minutes it disappeared from this earth. Much more likely that one of my neighbors saw me dropping it and picked it up. And then left it in the men’s room of the pool I visit every day for some reason, knowing that I would see it there. The next-most-likely explanations are A) that it’s another identical grey ballcap that just happened to turn up or B) Jesus considered my lost ballcap sufficiently dire a problem that He decided to intervene. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2021, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/82 "2021-12-31T21:11:44Z")
I should point out that I had to Google the term ‘ballcap’ in order to fully understand your anecdote. Misunderstanding averted. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2022, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/83 "2022-01-01T21:19:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > > [@kanicbird](#): > > > > was looking very down, but also said cheer up today at 11:54 the sun will come out. I thanked hike and was hiking on and thought to myself that was a very weird time to indicate, not noon, or 11, but 11:54. (just a note the exact time I forget but it was some odd such number). I just thought it was a nice gesture and hiked on though the cold misty rain. When all of a sudden the clouds and mist/fog I was hiking through just blew away, and I was in the sun. I checked my phone and saw it was the exact time he said it would happen to the minute. > > I would not consider this a miracle at all. The Earth rotates very predictably, the Sun’s rising is very predictable, this guy may simply have checked some charts or website that gives the sunrise time that day at that longitude and latitude. You guys are overthinking this. Occam’s razor suggests the most obvious explanation is not a miracle, it’s that the random man is a time traveler who of course knew it would become sunny at 11:54 because for him it already had. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2022, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/84 "2022-01-02T00:13:58Z")
“Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.” -Dirk Gently ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2022, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/85 "2022-01-22T19:51:35Z")
> [@Roger\_That](#): > > Exactly. Every religious miracle I’ve ever heard of was witnessed by no one, recorded nowhere, and passionately attested to by people saying “I have zero evidence for this but trust me.” Even if a miracle really occurred and was witnessed and recorded, the problem is that evidence ages. Witnesses die, records degrade or are lost. People second-guess what they think happened after the fact. People who aren’t going to let the truth stand in the way of a good story introduce distorted accounts. Five hundred years later, the best anyone can say is that some partial records from a couple of centuries after the fact survive, the writers were copying earlier but still not contemporary sources, and who knows what motives the original authors may or may not have had for writing what they did? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but how long could that proof be expected to last? ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_That](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roger_that/32/8505_2.png) [@Roger\_That](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_That)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2022, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/86 "2022-01-22T20:25:49Z")
OK, show me the BEST surviving evidence for a miracle that still exists today. I haven’t seen one, but out of all the miracles that God has performed, there should be ONE that you think should persuade somebody the best. I’ll wait. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2022, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/87 "2022-01-23T00:39:14Z")
This lists a few claims from early modern times on. > **[Levitation (paranormal) | Christianity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitation_(paranormal)#Christianity)** > > 1.According to three gospels, Jesus walked on the water of Lake Galilee to meet his disciples who were in a boat. | > 2.Saint Mary of Egypt (c. 344 – c. 421), walked across the river Jordan according to her hagiographer, the hermit Zosimas of Palestine | > 3.Saint Bessarion of Egypt (died c. 466), is said to have walked across the waters of the river Nile | > 4.Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, is recorded as having been "suspended above the earth, often to a height of The thing is, almost no second-hand account a skeptic can’t independently verify is going to be accepted as having verisimilitude. Science demands repeatability, a requirement which rare or one-off phenomena can’t meet. Heck, it took decades for ball lightning or sprites to be accepted because they were so hard to observe. And given the inherent unlikeliness of miracles, the default is to accept almost any other explanation: either the account is mythical or the original author was lying, or the onlookers were tricked by a illusionist, or they were all high on ergot, or… anything but a miracle. ETA: and the editor ABSOLUTELY REFUSED to let me remove that image, which is in direct contradiction to the point I’m trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2022, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/88 "2022-01-23T00:47:39Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > ETA: and the editor ABSOLUTELY REFUSED to let me remove that image, which is in direct contradiction to the point I’m trying to make. - Look at the image full size. The upper dude is clearly pasted in. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2022, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/89 "2022-01-23T01:28:44Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Look at the image full size. The upper dude is clearly pasted in. Actually that’s a real image. The trick is that their clothing conceals supports that transmit the load to the ground. Although you rather make my previous point: What good are photographs when trick photography was invented 26 seconds after the first real photograph? ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2022, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/90 "2022-01-23T01:33:56Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > > [@running\_coach](#): > > > > Look at the image full size. The upper dude is clearly pasted in. > > **Actually that’s a real image.** The trick is that their clothing conceals supports that transmit the load to the ground. Although you rather make my previous point: What good are photographs when trick photography was invented 26 seconds after the first real photograph? - I don’t doubt that. There’s a distinct line around the upper dude that’s not present with the lower. I know about the supports that are used to create the effect for spectators. I just think this specific example is altered rather than faked at the time the photo was taken. Maybe the line is an artifact of the original exposure. ---
**Author:** ![Pabitel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Pabitel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pabitel)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2022, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665/91 "2022-01-24T14:30:35Z")
In the case of Catholic saints there are a bunch of “miracles” that are really just common place things that could happen to anybody, but were raised to miracle status by the church. There is at least one where the saint’s miracle was that her three sons would die before they saw battle so they would not be guilty of violating “thou shalt not kill” and all three died in a shipwreck or something on the way to battle. Could of happened to anybody, but because she claimed she prayed for that outcome it was a “miracle”. Another is here: A child named Beatrice and her younger brother were told to take care of a large piece of cheese. They went out playing and forgot where they had hid the cheese. They prayed to St.Thomas Becket, who came to them in a dream and told the siblings where they had left the cheese. So, a kid remembering where they left their cheese became a “miracle” There are actually a bunch like this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-inaccurate-or-misleading-to-define-a-miracle-as-an-impossibilty/956665.md?page=4)