The purpose of miracles is to teach us to see the miraculous everywhere. Are there miracles do you think?

Question

St Augustine of Hippo wrote that first sentence.

Do you take every day events, such as a surgeon saving someone's life as miraculous? Or do you need something almost impossible to happen, before you will say that's a miracle!? Define what you consider to be a miracle...

A philosopher may define it as violations of a law of nature by a supernatural being. Any event considered to be a miracle faces tough challenges!

I purposely placed this question under philosophy..

Answer 1

A miracle for me is making the impossible possible.

So for me i don't believe in miracles, there are highly unlikely situations or recoveries that happen but by definition they are not impossible.

I strongly disagree with the first sentence as well. To me hope is the one thing that makes the highly unlikely happen. Hope makes me see that anything can be achieved if you believe it will enough.

Answer 2

Miracle.... the definition will vary from people to people.

Take the extreme. Bill Gates.When he started out with his venture would he have ever , ever thought that he would be the richest man on earth? Harvard / stanford will explain it as technology and hardwork and innovation and .. and ..... ONLY Bill gates will know that it was grace and a miracle .

same thing is happening in everyione`s live all the time. small miracles , big ones . Unbelievable ones . I , personally, have been amidst miracles so many times in the last year. These "miracles" have not changed the world but they have certainly changed my philosophy on life. I still donot know why these happened in my house. I have no idea but I was /am overwhelmed.

Answer 3

Miracle is defined by Websters in the following way:

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin miraculum, from Latin, a wonder, marvel, from mirari to wonder at
1 : an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
2 : an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment
3 Christian Science : a divinely natural phenomenon experienced humanly as the fulfillment of spiritual law

I subscribe to the second definition, and the meaning from the latin Miraculum; a wonder.

Many things in life fall under this category; Surviving a horrific car accident, winning the lottery, or meeting a long lost love unexpectedly in a far away place where you know no one.

To me, they are positive events whose results are so contrary to the mathematical odds of ever occuring that they inspire a sense of joy and wonder.

I reject the first and third definitions because I don't like to ascribe random happy events to supernatural beings. Thats no different than ancient greeks thanking Demeter for having nice apples on their fruit trees. In other words I don't believe in miracles like being healed by making a pilgrimage or seeing the Virgin Mary in a nut loaf.

Answer 4

My life has been full of unexplainable things and I do think they have the origins of being miracles. I think the surgeon has the education to save but what about the patient that has almost no chance of survival and because of that surgeon does. It is a miracle. I think so because It was an act of God and everything God does is a miracle to me.

Answer 5

I think creating life is a miracle. It's kind of incredible how two people can make another person. Think about that. It's the one thing science can't figure out how to do (yet).

It's pretty exciting to think that you can carry around all these eggs and then someday one of them, or a bunch of them, woudl become a whole separate human with his/her own thoughts, feelings, and individual life. I think it's pretty miraculous and it happens all the time.

Answer 6

I think a miracle is when God interferes with his own laws to bring about a (humanly) impossible event, and yes I've seen them happen, even been used by God to heal in the miraculous way.

Answer 7

Sorry I do not believe there has ever been one "miracle" that couldn`t be rationally explained. I believe they are all just events attributed to being a miracle through a divine intervention by people desperate to show evidence of a God.

Answer 8

"Why is it so hard to say that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that little fairies were behind its creation?"

~Douglas Adams.

For us non-believers, this pretty much defines our view of "miracles". We can apreciate it when something extraordinary happens, without having to give credit to anything.

I believe in miracles for the same reason that I believe in the ingenuity of people to solve problems. There's nothing magical or supernatural about the miracle, but that doesn't stop me from apreciating it.

Answer 9

i'm not sure? i guess ive always looked at things that happen on a daily basis as not very miraculous, but i suppose to whomever it happens to it COULD be a miracle? like passing a crashed car on the road where no one died might seem typical for you, but to the people driving the cars it was the best thing that ever happend . . . ? it's a good question. i think, overall, it depends on yr point of view.

Answer 10

There's a department of the Catholic Church which looks for evidence of miracles. They are part of the beatification process of making some one a Saint. Apparently they have found evidence of one miracle in the beatification of Mother Theresa and are examining evidence of a second. It is unclear what constitutes evidence of either however.