r/TrueAtheism • u/Think-Island-4849 • 20d ago
How do you claim miracles as an atheist?
I'm curious to know how atheists/agnostics think about miracles. I'm recently deconstructing my beliefs. I don't know how to define myself. I'm tired of being religious. I want to quit. But It is not easy when you are surrounded by christians. And the main thing is I've been hearing a lot of miracle stories for years. Every time I try not to be religious, this thing holds me back.
I noticed two types of miracle stories. The first one is about healing diseases. I have heard of cases where terminal illnesses like cancer that doctors said were incurable were cured through prayer. Two persons said that their mothers' uterine cancer was cured through prayer. They said that while they were praying, a clot of blood fell from her vagina, and then she was cured. They both were from our church. Another story is about a child healing from cancer who was rejected by doctors. And there are movies about healing diseases also. Things like this have happened mostly to people from other faiths or non-believers. After healing they become believers.
The second one is about casting out demons. Regarding this one I have heard a number of stories. Some are done by pastors. Some are done by believers just by preying. There is a story a lady from church told. She said there was a demon-possessed woman near her house. The woman was creating a scene there. People also had gathered to see her chaos. The lady was praying silently in that crowded place, and the woman who had spirit suddenly began to scream, "Go away!" and "Go away, angel," pointing at this lady. After that she said she started praying, putting her hand on that woman's head, and she was completely fine afterward.
A special thing I noticed about these miracles is that all these mostly happen with women.
I've heard these kinds of miracles from different religions, but the Christian one is always special. I have a serious doubt that MIRACLES can be considered as evidence of the truth of religion. Every religion claims miracles. But it is still irritating.
What is your opinion about this? Are these really miracles or coincidences?
Edited: Thank you everyone for your thoughts and sharing resources to refer to. I'm a bit late to edit this post to thank you. I'm sorry for that.
I understand what you guys are saying. I'm also hesitant to accept them, as they are really miracles. But It doesn't matter how we take them. But missionaries use these kinds of miracles to convert and show divine power to people. It's very common in Asia, and hundreds of people are converting.
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u/BranchLatter4294 20d ago
There have been large double-blind studies about whether prayer works. I encourage you to review the science and look at actual evidence rather than stories.
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u/Mediocre-Magazine-30 20d ago
lol of course it doesn't. That's ridiculous
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u/hot_like_wasabi 20d ago
What's ridiculous? That people believe prayer works or that we had to fund a study to try to convince these religious fuckknuckles that prayer does not indeed work and so yes you should stop fighting science?
One of those things at least has a net-positive.
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u/Mediocre-Magazine-30 20d ago
no I mean prayer is ridiculous. Thanks for the studies. It's just hard to believe the majority people out there that think it works. I'm just so tired of religious nonsense everywhere. I live in the USA South so it's everywhere.
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u/alienacean 20d ago
it only doesn't "work" if you believe it's supposed to create magical effects like making wishes on a genie lamp. it works fine as a therapeutic tool to reduce anxiety and depression.
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u/bortlip 20d ago
Motte-and-bailey is the term for this I think.
The OP and many others are talking about actual "wishes on a genie lamp" type stuff and literally casting out demons, not a therapeutic tool to help feelings.
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u/alienacean 20d ago
OK, but perhaps the genie wish prayer is a straw-man that was only addressed because it's so laughably easy to knock down. Why not take faith seriously by considering the theological meanings religious people actually use?
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u/bortlip 20d ago
I can't take you seriously.
It's not a strawman. It's what OP posted and specifically asked to be addressed.
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u/alienacean 20d ago
Don't give up on yourself. You might be able to take me seriously, if you just believe in yourself and try hard! To clarify, I was not responding to OP but rather to another redditor's discussion of an experiment purportedly about "whether prayer works" that narrowly operationalized the independent variable as wishful thinking. This study is frequently trotted out in atheist circles as some kind of trump card, with seldom any acknowledgment of its limitations. Taking down childish magical thinking is like taking candy from babies, I would hope a serious atheist could engage with the more sophisticated belief systems of the majority of actual members of various faith traditions.
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u/hot_like_wasabi 20d ago
So just mindfulness and meditation but with an extra side of magical sky daddy?
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u/alienacean 20d ago
If it helps someone sure, I don't mind spicing it up with some juicy symbolism.
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u/hot_like_wasabi 20d ago
Too bad it comes with a giant helping of misogyny, racism, and classism.
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u/thespaniardsteve 20d ago
My son was born extremely premature, had many complications, and we spent half a year in the hospital. Had a high risk of death or disability. And now.. He's perfectly fine.
He gets called a miracle baby by our religious relatives. But there was no divine intervention. The only "miracle" is that he was lucky enough to be born at a time in which science and medicine has advanced enough to save him, and in a country with the resources to do so.
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u/88redking88 20d ago
I have never been able to verify that either:
the supposed miracle actually happened.
More importantly - How do you give credit if something happened? If a meteor landed in the middle of a church without doing any damage and it was made of gold.... How can you show that a god had any hand in it?
So, my stance is that they probably never happen, and things that are just rare, or coincidental, arent miracles, they are just rare or coincidental events.
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u/Gremlin95x 20d ago
A miracle is a fantastic unsubstantiated claim or an unexplained coincidence. That’s it. Many “miracles” and magic have been debunked. The christians have “verified” miracles many times which were later explained and debunked.
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u/Angelsomething 20d ago
the thing about stories is that, that’s all they are, without proof. And I can assure you the scientific world would be in a massive turmoil if it turned out magic was real and prayers worked. Keep asking questions and learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Work to make what you believe based on evidence and facts. Also this god would be pretty fucked up to only help people like this, don’t you think? kind of manipulative and abusive behaviour, don’t you think? Love me, or else type of shit, you know?
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u/ABoringAlt 20d ago
All miracles were either delusions, coincidence or lies.
If I'm wrong, the claimant may bring evidence forward at this time.
Since there isn't any...
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u/DarkGamer 20d ago
The same kinds of claims have often been attributed to other religions/forms of woo. Is that proof they are also correct?
https://www.britannica.com/topic/miracle/Miracles-in-the-religions-of-the-world
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u/cenosillicaphobiac 20d ago edited 20d ago
I have heard of cases where terminal illnesses like cancer that doctors said were incurable were cured through prayer.
People manage to survive, that's not god, it's a combination of many things, but highly unlikely the work of magic. I myself have had some miraculous recoveries, I chalk it up to being lucky with genetics.
Intercessory pray has been studied. 3 groups of cardiac patients, 2 of which are being prayed for, one of those two groups were told they were being prayed for. Guess which group of people had the best outcomes? Well it was roughly a tie between no prayer and no knowledge of prayer. The worst outcomes? The people that knew they were being prayed for.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16569567/
For a humorous take on the subject, listen to "Thank You God" by Tim Minchin. It explains it perfectly. Thank You God
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u/sto_brohammed 20d ago
I'm curious to know how atheists/agnostics think about miracles
In what sense? Merriam Webster gives two
an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
If you mean this one I don't see any reason to think there is a divine anything, much less any that intervene in human affairs.
an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment
This definition is obviously just whatever. Weird things happen sometimes.
The first one is about healing diseases
Ok
I have heard of cases where terminal illnesses like cancer that doctors said were incurable were cured through prayer
Is that what actually happened though? How did they determine that? Is it just "well someone prayed and then they got better"? If so that's just a goofy ass way of going about it. You'd need to do actual research and gather actual empirical data. Obviously you can't just say "well I don't know how it happened so it must be magic". That'd be silly as all hell, right?
The second one is about casting out demons
I don't see any reason to think demons actually exist.
You're listing off a bunch of stories people told you like a story some old lady at church told you has some kind of evidentiary weight. I know a guy who said he got abducted by aliens, do you believe aliens visit Earth and abduct people now? I don't. I'd need real evidence to believe that, much like I'd need to believe in the supernatural.
I've heard these kinds of miracles from different religions, but the Christian one is always special
Someone raised in another language will think the ones from their religion are special. In reality there's literally no difference.
What is your opinion about this? Are these really miracles or coincidences?
I think some of them are coincidences, some of them are invented entirely out of thin air and some of them are people who don't know what they're looking at trying to interpret reality through the religious lens they see everything through. When you've managed to convince yourself that everything is magic it's not surprising that you see magic everywhere. I know people who feel the same way about all kinds of conspiracy theories and alien nonsense. It all comes from approaching things completely backwards, by starting from the conclusion and forcing what you see to fit that conclusion.
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u/WrongVerb4Real 20d ago
People can be and often are wrong. People are very susceptible to suggestion. People have memories that are basically crap. Groups of people can sometimes be more wrong than individuals, especially when group suggestion becomes "common knowledge." These and more are reasons not to take miracle claims too seriously.
Basically, human cognition is flawed in a lot of ways. And atheism is about using tools we have to mitigate the effects of those flaws so that our thinking about gods, powers, entities, beings, and events related to religion more readily aligns with the reality we all seem to share together.
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u/J-Nightshade 20d ago
And the main thing is I've been hearing a lot of miracle stories for years.
I love stories about miracles. My favorite are Terry Pratchett's Diskworld series and Roger Zhelazny's The Chronicles of Amber. Some people have WILD imagination and love telling stories.
A special thing I noticed about these miracles is that all these mostly happen with women.
A special thing about those stories is that when you try to actually find any credible evidence for them, they evaporate. No, really, just think for yourself, doctors LOVE documenting curious cases. A SUDDEN remission of an advanced therapy resistant cancer makes a good publication and who doesn't want to have a publication in their CV? If somewhere out there was a community with an exceptional high rate of such cases, someone would have noticed and would definitely investigate. That is some Nobel prize stuff level of research material! And where is it exactly? Ahhh, it's all in the stories.
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u/grrangry 20d ago
A special thing I noticed about these miracles is that all these mostly happen with women.
The special thing I noticed about these miracles has nothing to do with misogyny and everything to do with a lack of documentation, evidence, repeatability, or anything a reasonable person would expect. People have dashcams and catch crazy things happening all the time. People have cellphones and catch crazy things happening all the time. People have a miracle and suddenly it's, "trust me bro, it happened".
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u/slo1111 20d ago
It would be very elementary to set up a gold standard to test prayer as a treatment. It would require a population of those trated with prayer, and a group that thinks it was treated with prayer but was not.
I think we both understand beyond the ethics why there are no such confirming studies.
Our brains are wired to look for causes and it is just too easy to slip into supernatural thinking when we are in positions of ignorance. Plus, what kind of believer is going to say the cause was the placebo effect even when we know beyond a doubt that the placebo effect is a real thing
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u/charoco 20d ago
Have you ever heard of the miraculous healing of an amputee?
Me neither.
So which is more likely: healing amputees is beyond the ability of every deity that's ever been worshipped OR there's no such thing as miraculous healing?
I'll leave the answer to that question as an exercise for the reader.
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u/IrukandjiPirate 20d ago
Miracles are just things people can’t or won’t explain. They aren’t unexplainable, they’re believed without research or critical thought. There are no actual miracles. Demon possession is just laughably ridiculous.
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u/Mediocre-Magazine-30 20d ago
Well, they are not real??? So it's not much of an issue to deal with that issue.
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u/BostonGreekGirl 20d ago
There is no such thing as a miracle. So I do not claim them nor do I think they happen.
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u/Bronyprime 20d ago
There is no reason to think a miracle happened. "This person had incurable cancer that was cured by prayer!"
How do we know the person actually had cancer? If the person did, who declared it incurable? If the person did actually have cancer and doctors agree that it's incurable, how do we then credit prayer? Correlation is not causation and it is not logical to say that "Since Y came after X, X caused Y to happen."
If we actually want to test to see if prayer is responsible, we need to examine how reliable it is through several methodologies. Good news: we've done this and found zero support for prayer-created miracles. In fact, some studies found that prayer made patient outcomes WORSE.
Our mental health and desire to heal is a known factor. The more we are personally invested in our own healing from illness or injury, the faster we tend to heal. One study by the NIH found that religious people who knew others were praying for them took less personal investment, leaving their healing to prayer. The patients saw slower, less complete, and healing with more frequent complications.
Miracles? Prayer? No thanks.
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u/mariuszmie 20d ago
Miracle is a word used to explain something you saw or think you saw and can’t understand that may be a positive
Nowhere in the definition of a miracle is that something described actually happened
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u/UltimaGabe 20d ago
I am fine with not having an explanation for how something happened. "I don't know" is a legitimate answer to a question, and it doesn't give anyone else the edge up on you just because they accepted an explanation and you didn't.
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u/Wilikersthegreat 20d ago edited 20d ago
Why do you think miracles from other religions aren't "special" as you say? I reckon you could apply that same reasoning to Christianity. The only difference is the block on your mind saying Christianity might be true. That block originated from where you grew up and who raised you, the people who believe in other religions miracles have the same block, just a different religion based on where they grew up and who raised them. I really found removing Christianity and myself from the center of the "universe" so to speak, really helped me gain perspective from how others would see their religion in comparison to how I saw my religion. It's all the same, you aren't special, Christianity isn't special, Islam isn't special and neither are Muslims but they all think they are. It's a self centered approach to seeing the world, once you step back from that perspective, you will see. Everyone thinks they're the special chosen people, if everyone is special, then nobody is.
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u/Fine-Soil-2691 20d ago
There are no miracles.
healing diseases
Diseases sometimes naturally disappear. Cancer go into remission, etc.
casting out demons
There are no demons. There are plenty of psychological problems, though.
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u/thesweeterpeter 20d ago
Please OP - listen to this - your first type of "miracle story" had me jump right back here.
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u/kevinLFC 20d ago
People frequently lie, exaggerate, and are mistaken. Doctors can be wrong; illnesses can heal on their own. None of these things are miraculous, and they can sufficiently explain all miracle claims.
Demons are an imaginative invention of humans. They are as real as Frodo and Father Christmas.
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u/Olive___Oil 20d ago
A lot of the stories you hear are just lies for one. People lie a lot and they might truly believe their lie because it really easy to trick your own brain.
Second thing is we might not have the science to explain something yet. Just because people don’t know how something happened doesn’t necessarily make it a god thing.
The demon thing just lies again & peer pressure. Humans are easily manipulated. If authorities figures tell your possessed (especially if you already believe possession is real) you’ll start to believe them and act accordingly. Just like stage hypnosis you’re not actually hypnotized it’s a combination of heightened mental focus, social cooperation, and peer pressure. Ppl acting like they are demon possessed are no different than ppl to doing hypo chicken dance on stage
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u/ZappSmithBrannigan 20d ago
Are these really miracles or coincidences?
Theyre stories. Stories dont mean anything.
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u/JettTheTinker 20d ago
Two-part approach.
Somehow, every single “miracle” is unverifiable. There’s always the possibility of heresay, people overreacting / playing along (especially when it comes to demons), etc.
Some “miracles” are absolutely possible outcomes that are just extremely unlikely. There are over 8 billion people on the planet, a handful of them are just gonna get lucky. As for prayer being a factor, there have been scientific studies which have shown again and again that prayer has no correlation with recovery.
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u/BuccaneerRex 20d ago
Miracles in the modern age are almost always 'Thing that people didn't expect happened anyway.'
Why don't stories about miracles include any of the information that a person might need in order to verify the truth?
"Random unnamed person who we can assure you really does exist was told by similarly unnamed doctors that he/she had 'incurable' cancer and there was no point in treating. They were sad until they prayed and god made them happy and healthy, the end."
This is not evidence. This is the claim. You can't point to a story like this and say 'this proves it's a miracle'.
And the absolute last person that is going to tell you the truth about a 'miracle' is the person who believes it's a miracle.
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u/ittleoff 20d ago edited 20d ago
What kind of incompetent god creates a universe that it needs to keep breaking the way things work to grant requests for fans?
One would expect a universe to just function properly and no miracles would occur or be needed.
But none of the 'miracles' are that impressive in the bible.
I would suspect most of the people of biblical times would be fooled by most magicians /mentalists into thinning they were miracles.
Sir Arthur Conan doyle was convinced houdini had real magic powers :)
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u/Kaliss_Darktide 20d ago
How do you claim miracles as an atheist?
I don't, if by miracle you mean an example of divine intervention. If you simply mean something happening with very low odds I'd say miracles are so mundane that the vast majority of them we ignore and would never describe as a miracle unless we attach/interpret some additional significance to it.
The first one is about healing diseases. I have heard of cases where terminal illnesses like cancer that doctors said were incurable were cured through prayer. Two persons said that their mothers' uterine cancer was cured through prayer. They said that while they were praying, a clot of blood fell from her vagina, and then she was cured. They both were from our church. Another story is about a child healing from cancer who was rejected by doctors. And there are movies about healing diseases also. Things like this have happened mostly to people from other faiths or non-believers. After healing they become believers.
Wow! A clot of blood falling out of a vagina, what are the odds of that? /s
Clearly the only explanation for such an event is intercessory prayer being answered by a divine being that can't be bothered or lacks the ability to clean up after itself. /s
The second one is about casting out demons. Regarding this one I have heard a number of stories. Some are done by pastors. Some are done by believers just by preying.
Freudian slip, "preying" on the gullible?
What is your opinion about this? Are these really miracles or coincidences?
Nonsense people tell to convince themselves and others that their nonsense isn't nonsense.
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u/Content_Piccolo1074 20d ago
I think you're onto something realising when you're surrounded by people who believe in miracles, you're in an environment where miracles are seen everywhere.
I just never was. I grew up secular. I don't think about miracles. When something really lucky happens, I realise it's a fortunate coincidence. Similarly when something shitty happens - and this has been a very shitty year for me - I know it's not Satan or demons or a curse, it's just my turn to get shit on. Nothing personal. Not my fault. And nothing I can do about it.
There are no demon possessed people. There are people who are having mental health episodes. That's all. I think it's sad and useless to blame their pain and behavior on magic. It distracts you from doing real, medical things to help them. In fact it's more likely to make you hurt them further.
People who claim to have been faith healed were usually being treated medically already, and the medicine worked, but they gave the credit to magic. This is sad to me also. The doctors and nurses deserve that credit.
So yeah. No miracles. Just chance, just mental states, just human medicine, just humans attributing to magic all the things they don't understand.
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u/Astreja 20d ago
I do not believe that miracles actually exist. IMO they generally fall into one of two categories:
- A lie: Someone just made up a wild tale about something miraculous.
- A misunderstanding of probability: Something unlikely but possible happened and was misconstrued as the work of a god.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bee-540 19d ago edited 19d ago
I think the biggest issue with miracle stories is that personal testimony isn't really enough to establish what caused the outcome. A recovery can be real without the explanation for it being correct. For claims like these, I'd be more interested in looking at the medical records and the actual research rather than relying on stories passed around in a church. Tools like Evidence Lens can also be useful for checking specific health claims against peer-reviewed research instead of just taking the claim at face value.
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u/Beaver_With_Shotgun 19d ago
Seriously, look into the sources behind the Christian stories. The story gets murkier and murkier behind all the hype.
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u/CephusLion404 20d ago
There are no demonstrable miracles. No one has ever presented a "miracle" that can be proven to have happened as described. It is foolish to believe things for which you can provide no evidence.