Why are miracles never documented by anyone but believers?

Question

And why do believers continue to try and use them as proof for unbelievers when they have no objective proof, just personal testimony?

Personal experience is great, but it doesn't prove anything to someone who didn't share it.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgtXaYOkn6xXmBexCINcntLb7BR.;_ylv=3?qid=20071220060629AAR0dFf
My inspiration.

Sorry I can't give thumbs up, guys. Your answers are great. But Y!A is being evil. Perhaps it will resolve itself.

Answer 1

because science is still trying to figure out the "miracle" of "life" and have yet to create "life from lifelessness...;)

Answer 2

In research there's something called Researcher Bias. I studied it a bit when I got my Masters and was considering whether or not to get a Ph.D. (I decided against the Ph.D because of the absurd cost of education today)
The people documenting miracles are believers, therefore have Researcher Bias. If a scientist without this religious bias goes in, he has some bias. Perhaps he believes there are no mircles, going in with the opinion that it's anything but a mircle. They don't consider "miracle" as a viable scientific option. so they find an explanation that fits within what they consider viable. They also have Researcher Bias.
So, it's impossible to research Miracles in an unbiased way, because there are no outside parties to do the research. It's like trying to look at your own nose without a mirror to decide if there's a mole on it.

Answer 3

Miracles aren't proof of anything to someone who doesn't see them. But if you did see a miracle first-hand, wouldn't it make you a believer? Actually, Jesus said that some people would never believe, even if they saw someone come back from the dead. Anyway, if we know of someone who claims to have seen a miracle, we can evaluate whether it's possible by looking at the person's life before and after the miracle. If a person is willing to die rather than renounce the claim that they've witnessed a miracle, then their claim is worth considering.

Answer 4

Maybe, hence the word "un-believers", they refuse to believe what they have seen.

Also there is documented proof of miracles by unbelievers:

Jewish Antiquities

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.

Answer 5

The genocidal persecution of Christians who died for their faith, within a generation of the time of Jesus, under the Roman empire is well documented in secular anti-Christian sources. It is also well documented in the same sources how the movement grew in the face of all this.

In a court of law, the explaination that the original witnesses or the witnesses after them, died, rather than to renounce a lie, would not suffice. But yet they were killed, in their "vast multitudes", to quote the Romans (not the Bible) .

Go on you believe that they were all delusional, all the tens of thousands of them. For me such an explaination is too far a stretch to believe. I am too sceptical, and not naive enough. I believe the most logical explaination, that only the witness they bore to actual miracles, and the promise they found in that, could have pushed so many people that far. And we are talking about educated Greeks here, the founders of science and logic, who were the closest to the events to judge.

I know you will brush it all off. But I'm glad I could state my rationale to the open minded undecided. B.t.w, did you know the allegedly "subjective" gospels contain not a single phrase of praise for Jesus? Read the introduction to the book of Luke. It is clear that man Luke wanted "nothing but the facts". If he did misrepresent the facts, he was a deliberate fraud, who was so screwed up that he endangered his own life, and consigned himself to a life of poverty, just so that he could spread the lie. I think I am to weak a believer in the improbable, to be an atheist.

Answer 6

Because if someone witnessed a miracle, wouldn't they become a "believer"? Meaning it would be impossible for someone who doesn't believe in a higher being to document something as the work of a higher being.

I think things happen and we interpret them differently. Some people see them as chance/coincidence, others think they are the work of a higher power. If something happens that seems to have no rational explanation, one person may say that means there is no rational explanation and it's the result of divine intervention, another may say there is a rational explanation but we just don't know it yet.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Answer 7

The other funny thing about miracles is that they are almost always 3rd hand accounts.

Every now and then, you get someone who claimed to be present during an miracle, but typically after questioning, the story falls apart. Most Miracle stories however, happened somewhere else to someone else as told by someone they know. There is a reason for that.

When I was a practicing born again, I prayed for people and claimed miracle healings in God's name. Many of the people I prayed for claimed they were healed. A few years ago, while questioning my faith, I called some of the people who I knew were sick that had been healed. Every one of them had relapsed an a couple were dead.

At the time I believed them to be healed by God, and had been telling people that I had witnessed miracles first hand for years. Needless to say, finding out that the people that I 'knew' were touched by God, were all sick again or dead, didn't help build my faith.....

Answer 8

Great question and observation. Miracles are only witnessed by believers. Why? Because those that don't believe in Miracles have other explainations. It's that simple.

Both believers and non believers feel a need to prove there beliefs only when they themselves are in doubt.

Answer 9

Thats just it when a miracle is observed, by an unbeliever, he becomes a belier, when that happens, people like you deny it, refuse to accept it ect.
The Media for example being biased and for the most part anti-christian will absolutely not allow any evidence to be presented,

Answer 10

fatima was seen by believers and non believers alike, the three children predicted an event several months in advance to a particular day suggesting that the event was planned and not caused by atmospheric phenomenon, the event or miracle was seen miles away suggesting that it was not crowd hysteria, even the skeptics of today said something did happen

Answer 11

You ask why one who has faith sees things differently then one who has no faith.

In the days of Moses, the Egyptian Pharaoh seen many things before his very eyes that were miraculous, yet his heart would harden and he would not believe it was of the hand of God.

Only when his son died, did he let the Israelites free. Yet, his heart hardened again and he again tempted the hand of God thus bringing about the destruction of his army by drowning.



The same happens to men today. They see the hand of God everywhere, but rationalize it out of existence by making up carnal excuses for why they occurred.