Pseudomiracles cannot be distinguished from real miracles

A miracle is when God makes a temporary exception to the natural order He has established for the purpose of showing He is acting.  That is the standard Christian and Muslim and Jewish definition.  A better one would be, A miracle is when something bigger than nature makes a temporary exception to the natural order and wants to show it is acting.  It would be a more honest one than is for sure.  Believers keep contradicting themselves.  Scientists will worry if religion says, "Maybe tomorrow taking communion will cure cancer."  Religion worries about its opinion and its bad for a system that wants to be allowed into schools and to unduly influence children.  That is why religion talks about the miracle being an uncommon and temporary thing.  The contradiction is in how they say God can treat nature as he wants and they decree he will not do a permanent change.  That's not respect for God.  It is ideology.

Take a miracle cure of person x from cancer.  I would add that no matter how brief it is its effect are everlasting. A raised man who was dead stays alive.  So if nature takes over again after the event is that not another miracle?  God is using nature as the miracle this time to reverse a miracle.  This is clearly shows the shambolic gaslighting and glossing over that underpins miracle theologies and religions.

People like David Hume say that we should not commit ourselves to what miracles ask us to commit to for that means taking as worthy of serious consideration and serious belief.  They say the reason is that anyone who reports a miracle may be telling the truth but we know that human nature lies and errs so lies and errors are more likely to be what is really going on.

We are told by believers, "She or he is being biased or unfairly disposed against belief in miracles and has prejudged the evidence. No evidence for miracles then will satisfy them."  That is ad hominem.  The evidence is that people lie and make mistakes with magical claims.  And Hume and followers could look at the evidence and be shown by it that lies and errors cannot be ruled out and that indications that they are happening are there.  And who has the right to tell you that if you are not responding to evidence for miracles now that no evidence will satisfy you?  Tomorrow is another day.

Plus we are under no obligation to be satisfied with any evidence.  What matters is saying the evidence is there.  Not everything has to be about a conclusion.  A detective has the right to think I am innocent despite gathering evidence that I robbed the bank.

If miracle belief more often than not leads to mistrust of critics then miracle belief is simply not a lovely spiritual thing.  To want a God to do a miracle is like asking for black magic.

To paraphrase Humean thinkers, they look at the believability of miracles and conclude that it is an issue of probability. The Humean is saying that miracles maybe do happen but that they are so unlikely that we cannot be expected to believe in them.  And we cannot be expected to put heavy belief in them. 

Humeans are said to assert that nature has laws and these laws cannot be broken.  Dead men stay dead so Jesus did not rise.  That would lead them to decide that violations of nature would be impossible.  They will not believe even if it could be argued that violations do happen for then then would be so rare as to be actually impossible.  But let us talk about believability.  There is a difference between saying Jesus is dead for it is a fact that the dead don't rise and talking about believing this.  A statement of fact and a statement of belief are not to be confused.  So we can amend what the Humeans say.  They are talking about what is practically unbelievable or as good as impossible to believe if not actually impossible.   In that light Humeans are not making up their minds beforehand that miracles are impossible.  They are merely classifying the resurrection along with other beliefs we all have that certain things do not happen even if somebody says they do and even if they do happen.  That is all.

Humeans can say a natural law cannot be broken.  That is not necessarily a denial that miracles can happen for they can still be saying that maybe miracles do the impossible and break that law.  The argument is about how unbelievable miracles are even if they do happen. Hume's followers are not talking about miracles being ruled out and impossible but that they cannot be believed in.

Hume saying that natural law must be considered unchangeable or unbreakable is not as rigid as it sounds. If there is an unknown law that can make a man rise from the dead then that is a natural law too. It is unchangeable natural law for the man to rise under certain conditions. The view that Hume believed natural law was too fixed for bizarre things to happen - and everything is bizarre the first time it happens is just a slur on him and his non-belief.

Some say that Humeans should always be interpreted in the light of Hume's declaration that a miracle “has never been observed in any age or country”.  That is just his opinion.  His argument is not about that and does not depend on that.  It is only a comment about those who say they have observed them.  Those people are trying to set a straw man up.

Hume clarified that if a testimony to a miracle seemed more miraculous than believing in the miracle reported then the miracle should be believed in. He did not say that we must consider miracles impossible in the sense that they cannot happen. This is nothing more than the commonsense view that the more extraordinary the claim is the quality of the the evidence you need to believe it must be excellent.  There are many cases in medicine and crime where excellent evidence was required and assessed.  Such cases show the standard we need.  Miracle claims should only be presented for belief by people who have showed similar dedication to get at the truth.  Needless to say such well-documented wonders do not exist.

One criticism of Hume and his scholars is that they commit "the error of  'adding' evidence instead of 'weighing' evidence".  So the Humean " pulls together the total amount of evidence for regular events and pits it against rare events. He does not consider the rare events (i.e. miracles) on a case-by-case basis to determine how much genuine evidence they contain."  Again this is a straw man.

First we all have to in some things argue that the evidence for the regular sometimes does show that a claim of an exception is untrue.  We all do it.  The question is, is the Humean right to do that with miracles?  Should we dismiss Jesus rising the way we would dismiss Johnny being 125 years old?  In fact the answer is yes.  If Johnny was indeed found to be 125 that would mean we have to revise.  With Jesus we have no way of showing a claim that God raised him from the dead is any better than saying a witch did it or an alien or that Jesus was not a man but some kind of virtual reality.

Second the critics are guilty of prejudging every Humean.  What about the ones that are weighing evidence?  No two Humeans are the same.

Three all know that rare events happen which means that a miracle claim which by every test is unassailable is in fact made to look that way by a remarkable coincidence.  For that reason, instead of saying, "Miracles make a good case for our faith being true" it should be, "We don't know."