People use "miracles" as proof of god.....
"miracle of life?"
"My son got in a car accident........survived"
most of these are just unlikely outcomes to common situations... so i'm wondering what defines a miracle?
2007-09-26 05:33:52 · 15 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
wow hennesy wrote a lot....
2007-09-26 06:25:59 · update #1
I certainly can't pick a winner as i am not sure what the best answer to this question is, people overuse the term, and usually it more like "thats an unlikely outcome"
2007-09-26 08:53:56 · update #2
It is SUPPOSED to mean "defying the laws of nature", but Christians use it even when a pimple goes away a day before the prom.
2007-09-26 05:36:43 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋
Baker's Dictionary of the Bible defines a miracle as "an event in the external world brought about by the immediate agency or the simple volition of God."
I however think of a miracle as being something inexplicable that acts in defiance of all known natural laws. For example, in my opinion, a person who jumps off the top of the empire state building head-first and naked with no protection or device to reduce his falling speed, but belly flops on the ground and only has a slight case of windburn to show for the entire ordeal has just experienced a miracle. There is no explanation for this; it is in defiance of everything we know about physics and the frailty of the human body.
Miracles, these inexplicable and "unnatural" events occur everyday. By my way of thinking, Birth is both natural and explainable [to a certain degree], so while it is an event that we can all view with wonder and awe, it is not what I would consider a miracle. Although there can be miracles of birth. Living is a wonderful thing and if one thinks far back enough, it is a miracle. How did humans come about and propagate? How did the earth form? While there are many theories running rampant, there is absolutely no proof; merely conjecture. In that regard, life truly is a miracle.
Where the vehicle accident is concerned, merely getting into an accident and surviving is not a miracle. But being involved, for example, in an accident where you are one of several passengers in a normal sized sedan that crashes headfirst into a truck [with you as the front seat passenger], then the car explodes and everyone is burned beyond recognition, but somehow the car has folded around your form just so and the airbag has protected you from smoke inhalation, fuel, and glass; and then your own seat happened to be made of normal flammable materials but somehow withheld from burning (despite all of the other chairs in the vehicle burning immediately) until rescue personnel could extract you one hour later free from burns or any other injuries- that would be classified as a miracle. Something like that is both inexplicable and unnatural and defies belief.
What do you think?
2007-09-26 12:50:56 · answer #2 · answered by Hennessy 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
"A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.
A miracle contains the gift of grace, for it is given and received as one. And thus it illustrates the law of truth the world does not obey, because it fails entirely to understand its ways. A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. Now is forgiveness seen as justified."
2007-09-26 12:47:54 · answer #3 · answered by Theresa 6 · 0⤊ 2⤋
A miracle is an event that cannot be explained by the known laws of nature and is therefore attributed to a supernatural or divine power.
Not many around I'll wager.
2007-09-26 12:39:02 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
A miracle, derived from the old Latin word miraculum meaning "something wonderful",.
So a miracle can be anything from finding the best parking place to the unexpected birth of a wanted child.
It does not have to be divine intervention.
2007-09-26 12:38:34 · answer #5 · answered by silly_me 5 · 1⤊ 1⤋
A miracle is an event or happening that can't be explained by modern man through science or theory.
2007-09-26 12:49:44 · answer #6 · answered by sparkplug 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
You may find the following study guide of interest in answering your question(s).
Also:
[Earlier posts uncovered epistemic as opposed to ontic conceptions of miracles in Augustine and in Spinoza; but Immanuel Kant too seems to favor an epistemic approach. "If one asks: What is to be understood by the word miracle? it may be explained . . . by saying that they are events in the world the operating laws of whose causes are, and must remain, absolutely unknown to us." (Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Harper Torchbooks, p. 81) There is no talk here, as in Hume, of a miracle as involving a "transgression" of a law of nature. The idea is that in the case of miraculous events there are laws of nature operating but these laws are unknown to us. This seems to imply that the miraculousness of a miracle is an appearance relative to our ignorance. If we knew the laws, there would be no miracles.]
2007-09-26 12:39:29 · answer #7 · answered by ? 1 · 3⤊ 0⤋
A miracle is a divine revelation or action that cannot be attributed to anything material or logical within the framework of our mind's perception.
2007-09-26 12:39:21 · answer #8 · answered by Soul Shaper 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I suppose a miracle would be the manifestation of the literally impossible.
2007-09-26 12:37:43 · answer #9 · answered by iamnoone 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Something we can't understand why it happens. No scientific reasoning.....What were one time considered miracles we now have explanations for.
2007-09-26 12:37:15 · answer #10 · answered by margherita 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋