In the brisk flitted consciousness I have had the pleasure
and the pain to experience, I have noticed the forceful comings and the
hesitant goings of ideas of the supernatural. I may add though that I myself –
and I count myself lucky- have not ever had the desire for supernatural virtue.
Susceptibility to supernatural belief is something that seems innate in our
human condition, I might add, but that is not relevant and for another
pondering. On to the matter of miracles. The Christian mind has a way with miracles
which renders a deep suspicion in its reasoning that engages a great deal of
thought. The elasticity of what might
occur to be a miracle can stretch to the bounds of the ridiculous. The miracle
of a saved parking space to the miracle of sunny day seems to fit those bounds
rather snug. But what of things like shrinking tumours and the finding of a
long lost child? But of course these are things that could have gotten better
without the hand of god to squeeze a tumour small or guide the stork that saves
the child. I don’t want to go beyond the obvious and point out that, tumours
can shrink and children can find their own way home, but it seems I must to
prove a point. Of the millions of cancer sufferers there will undoubtedly be a
portion of those who pray, and undoubtedly a portion of those whose tumours
shrink, therefore a group will exist containing an overlap of the two –who pray
and whose tumours shrink. Are these therefore miracles? Of course not. The same
applies to missing children and to any other misery that could have gotten
better anyway. Miracles also have tendency more miraculous if told to a more
naïve, young or trusting audience. This brings up the point of the sincerity of
the teller. Whether it be control of minds, egoistic soothing, a coercive push
towards antique beliefs, an amount of scepticism is certainly necessary when it
comes to the authenticity second hand accounts. Personal agenda of the teller
or all the previous tellers who informed the even more previous tellers before
him is maybe an obvious reasoning, but a reasoning that has yet to burst
through the meninges of impressionable brains. Miracles also –like any
unbelievable word of mouth story- have a snowball-type effect. Through each
generation of the stories existence it might alter slightly from
misrememberings or mishearings and these effects get passed down to the next
generation of the story. There also is the effect added to the story through
each of its generations, including amplification of certain details for
theatrical effect or leaving parts out for censoring purposes. As these stories “evolve” -if I might be so
bold to use the term- the seemingly minor and superfluous details can retain
their place in the story, therefore becoming not, obscure and trifling
irrelevancies, but part of the dogma. Just to be complete I shall add that as
parent stories give rise and birth to daughter stories , an ever increasing
variety of stories shall exist, expanding and adapting, nay, mutating, meaning
two stories might have shared ancestors, but cease to have many similarities
with each other or with, indeed, their ancestors. The issue of “evolving”
stories retains practical relevancy only for miracles with a history
sufficiently large to have caused adaptations which change the probability of
the miracle being true. Now to a rather tedious endeavour - explaining the issue
of finding sufficient validation (of the mere miraculous) from biblical text. This is a rather hopeless and endlessly
insufficient proof, and I shall begin with an importation of words from a man
with better words than I.
“Here then we are
first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people,
written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability
long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony,
and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin.
Upon reading this book we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an
account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the
present: Of our fall from that state; Of the age of man, extended to near a
thousand years: Of the destruction of the world by a deluge: Of the arbitrary
choice of one people, as favourites of heaven; and that people the countrymen
of the author: Of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most
astonishing imaginable: I desire any one to lay his hand upon his heart, and
after a serious consideration declare, whether he thinks that the falsehood of
such a book, supported by such a testimony would be more extraordinary and
miraculous than all the miracles it relates; which is, however, necessary to
make it received, according to the measures of probability above established.”
David Hume – An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
This passage (As the highest pitch of the eloquence of these
words ring in my ears, I have now a realisation, that this is what must be
meant by ‘Atheist Porn’) leads obtusely but directly towards my next reasoning.(A
miracle that seems molded to a biblical form, most probably, is molded from one.
As I make this assertion, it seems at
the present moment, to be of little relevancy to my current point, but a
tangent, into the relevancies of another.)
So I continue; Biblical text itself (the King James Bible,
preferably.) is suppurating with grandiose
miracles and scientific ignorance(and yet the Christian mind’s claim is that it
holds every answer you could ever need for scientifically graced, un-grandiose
life of the modern human) which immediately gives reason to suspect the truth
of any action in its poetry saturated pages. This book, then, falls from ever
affecting whether the miracles inside it are probable - to an extent which
would make the most deluded lottery junkies feel hopeless. The assertions of
biblical events remain evidenceless and unmatched by History, which is why
these very events are not taught to students as History, but as religion. The
reason most biblical events are not included is that fantastical lack of
evidence, and it is evidence that
gives us our knowledge of history. The French Revolution, Hitler’s Final Solution,
The Fall of Hellenic Society, are presumed to be true, because of the
overwhelming amount of evidence that is bestowed on us by the scientific
method. Therefore, the insidious suspiciousness that is validated by the lack
of evidence for biblical miracles, becomes an inevitability, an almost
necessity, in dealing with this matter.
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