FOREWORD
Starting with the assumption that miracles are possible creates a foundation of possibility, not probability. From there, the search for evidence becomes about finding something that could fit, rather than proving something is likely or probable. This weakens the argument because probability matters less when you're starting with possibility—anything can be framed as possible, even if it's highly improbable. It introduces a bias, as the search for evidence is shaped by a pre-existing belief, rather than a fair, objective investigation.
Stating or being interested in how it's possible Pontius Pilate is alive today already shows bias, because you're starting with an assumption—possibility—without any grounding in evidence or likelihood. The moment you say it's possible, you’ve opened the door to an endless range of unlikely scenarios, but you haven't addressed their actual probability or whether they have any basis in reality.
Just because something is possible doesn't make it worth believing or even worth investigating seriously. It shifts the focus from what’s probable or plausible to what could theoretically happen, which distorts any genuine search for truth. It's a way to avoid dealing with the real odds, and in doing so, you’re allowing any unlikely claim to hold weight without justification.
To declare something as "possible" based solely on weak evidence is just as unfounded as pulling it out of thin air. Possibility alone doesn’t imply probability or credibility. If the evidence is vague or unconvincing, it's essentially the same as making a wild guess. For instance, when someone says, "It’s possible that this event was a miracle," but the evidence is shaky or non-existent, they’re doing nothing more than speculating. It doesn’t make the claim any more likely to be true.
"Some evidence" can be one of the most deceptive and dangerous forms of reasoning because it creates an illusion of credibility. It gives the appearance that there’s something substantive backing the claim when, in reality, it's often just weak or incomplete data that doesn’t really support the conclusion.
In other words, just saying something "could have happened" doesn’t hold up to rational scrutiny unless there’s solid, verifiable evidence to back it. Without that, we’re left with imagination, and imagination doesn't equate to reality.
When we declare something as "possible" without real evidence, we might as well be pulling it out of the imagination—it's just speculative thinking at best. The jump from possibility to belief without good evidence is essentially a logical fallacy.
THE ARGUMENT
A miracle is an event that is not naturally possible. That does not mean it is necessarily impossible; there could be a power greater than nature, such as a god, that can make it happen.
To say it's possible that a miracle has happened is to say it is also possible
that it has not. This is not belief. You need evidence that miracles happen—or
don't happen—to be able to believe one way or the other.
What
evidence, then, does the unbeliever need that miracles do not happen or are not
believable? He must go by the fact that he has never seen a miracle. He must go
by the fact that none of his family or close friends—people he knows well—have
seen one and made a convincing report. The unbeliever has no choice.
Religion may say that if he is decent, he will heed testimonies of miracles,
though neither he nor those close to him can provide such testimonies. But that
is emotional blackmail. People have the right to dismiss even good testimonies,
for good testimonies have been made that turned out to be false.
The Church says that, though we have rational grounds for belief in divine revelation, reason cannot tell us everything. There are things we cannot submit our reason to, but only our ignorance. They want us to think, but when thinking goes no further, we must use faith and religion to fill the gaps.
Take miracles. Religion might say that if we should not submit our ignorance to irrefutable and convincing miracle claims, we should submit it to nothing! Yet the Church tells us to have faith that the events really are supernatural miracles. We should submit our ignorance to the origin of all things, but the Church says no, and that we must accept the notion that God made all things from nothing. Creation is a miracle, and like all miracles, we should submit our ignorance if there is no evidence of fraud or error. By the way, there are no totally convincing miracles. Each miracle claim leaves room for doubt as to whether it was truly magical or supernatural. You cannot have evidence that a miracle happened; you can only have evidence that there was no fraud or error. That does not prove that the miracle happened. Catholicism acts as if it does. The Catholic Church's claim that miracles are signs from God to show it is the true Church is a shameless untruth.
Whenever a natural explanation for a seemingly supernatural event is available, it should be preferred. Nobody disputes that—atheists and religious people alike agree on it. Christians say that "this doesn’t entitle you to dismiss the possibility of miracles, because as soon as you have a natural explanation for one strange happening, along comes another example that cannot be explained." But just because we are ignorant of the explanation does not mean the explanation is supernatural. It may be a natural explanation that we don't yet have. Sometimes facts are lost, incomplete, or distorted, and we may never be able to know exactly what happened. You wouldn’t say a magic trick was really a magical event just because you can't figure out how it was done. Religious people are very biased. They become unfair in order to promote belief in miracles. And miracles, if they happen, serve to encourage their dishonesty.
The only thing you can absolutely prove is that you are aware now. And you can only prove it to yourself. Nothing else is as certain. Skeptics look at miracle reports that seem to have no evidence against them. They may say there is evidence that it is a real miracle, but the miraculous nature is still not proven. Evidence is not the same as proof. Evidence supports belief. Proof gives certainty.
Few Christians these days claim that God can be proven. They settle for saying there is no disproof of God and that there is evidence indicating his possible existence. If God is proven, then miracles are possible—though that does not mean they happen. If God may only possibly exist, then miracles are possible, albeit less likely than if he were proven to exist.
If it is possible that God exists, then it is possible—albeit less possible—that miracles happen.
Christians who argue that Christianity and miracles are possibly true and not probably true are simply confessing—though they try to hide it—that the evidence does not support their beliefs. So they are really trying to explain the problem away. They are not the friends of evidence and honest inquiry that they pretend to be.
If you say a miracle happened, it is up to you to show that it did or probably did. To do that, you must do three things:
You must show that miracles can happen.
You must show that the events possibly happened—or did happen.
You must show that the events probably happened—or did happen.
You must show that the events are miracles—or probably miracles.
That’s a lot of work and means miracles must meet a very high standard of evidence.
Miracles, by definition, are very unlikely. If they are not naturally possible,
then they must be rare. By "naturally possible," we mean something that is
likely to happen. We call something a "law of nature" when it behaves
consistently like a law. We cannot say it is naturally impossible for dead
people to rise again all the time. If it were happening a lot, it would no
longer be naturally impossible. Dead people would no longer stay dead. So, it
becomes naturally possible.
If we deny that miracles are unlikely, we are saying they are likely. Then, it
follows we shouldn’t be saying the egg will be boiled in a few minutes. A
miracle may happen to make it freeze instead. Life would be impossible. God does
miracles to show that he can temporarily change the laws of nature. It is unfair
to ask anyone to believe in a miracle unless the evidence is very good. It would
need to be better than what you would need to convict a murderer in court.
Nobody has the right to ask you to merely take their word for it that a miracle
has happened.
If we say we don’t know whether miracles are likely or not, then it is presumptuous and arrogant to say that if I crash the car into a wall at 100 miles per hour, I may die. And it is a lie. There are "moral" repercussions.
Believers must start with the notion that miracles are rare and unlikely. What if they consider a case where a miracle supposedly took place?
They need to provide evidence that the witnesses are generally exceptionally honest and truthful.
They need to provide independent, objective evidence that the miracle happened. Not having too much emotional investment in believing the miracle would be important.
You can never prove that even the most truthful person on Earth always tells the truth, so there will always be room for doubt.
We would expect the evidence for a miracle to be as good as the evidence that John F. Kennedy was shot dead.
You can never prove that somebody is truthful, so the best you can do is say that you trust them and accept their testimony, but not necessarily to the effect that a miracle they report actually occurred. You might take it as something that could have occurred. You wouldn’t trust your beloved wife—whom you've known for years—if she said she experienced an alien abduction. And she wouldn’t blame you. There’s nothing wrong with that. And we must remember, all people lie, and if you lie about the supernatural, you are guaranteed to get away with it in the sense that nobody can prove it didn’t happen. It is outside the test category.
Believers think they accept the testimony that a miracle has occurred when they actually think it may have occurred. There is a big difference between "has occurred" and "may have occurred."
And there is no such thing as a miracle that gives us evidence as good as the evidence for the murder of Kennedy. Again, the evidence only points to the miracle being possible.
But "possible" is not good enough! It's possible that Hitler was in fact the holiest man ever and killed the Jews as a sacrifice for the human race to save us all from Satan. Where do you draw the line with supernatural possibilities?
Christians deny that we should only believe things when there is the highest degree of probability that they are true. For example, they say we may think the sun will probably rise tomorrow, but the fact is we don’t know if it is probable or not. We cannot live or be happy if we stop assuming and acting as if we know the sun will rise.
Their reasoning only makes it possible that miracles happen. It still doesn’t mean we may believe in them.
Religion today tends to argue not that a miracle can be proven to have happened, but that it was possible. It often seeks evidence that a miracle could have happened, not evidence that a miracle did happen.
Some
miracles are less convincing than others. For example, we might believe St.
Bernadette that she saw some supernatural figure at Lourdes, but it can never be
proven that she was telling the truth about that figure. Maybe it was a
fairy-woman, and she lied that it was a being from Heaven, the Mother of God? A
more convincing miracle would be Lazarus coming back from the dead—if it really
happened. An apparition is never as good as hard evidence for the supernatural.
The approach that it’s possible a miracle occurred and that’s enough endangers
people. It gives license to fraudsters to expect people to believe their faked
miracles, as long as they are careful and manipulate the evidence. Miracle
claims are not just about facts. They raise problems about protecting people
from bad religion and fraudsters.
Religion says we must admit that the universe came from nothing, so its existence is a miracle. Therefore, we should have no problem in holding that miracles may happen.
It does not follow that miracles may happen just because the universe is a miracle. They are possible, but that still doesn’t mean they may happen. In fact, the only miracle we would need is to recognize that the universe is a miracle! So, the argument makes miracles less possible, not more possible.
Getting evidence that people sincerely believe a miracle has happened is not the same as getting evidence that the miracle has happened. What about the people who believe miracles don’t happen? The skeptics know their stuff better than uneducated believers who testify to miracles.
Christians deny that the wise person only believes things when there is good enough evidence for them.
Miracles, by definition, are very improbable.
The wise person will look for a lot of evidence regarding miracles.
Believing that miracles are possible does us no good at all.
First of all, if it is possible that Jesus rose from the dead, then it’s possible that the magic of Catholic baptism puts an evil occult force into a baby to influence him or her to accept the gospel according to the pope. We end up with no reality check.
Secondly, to say it is enough to show that a miracle possibly happened denies that you need evidence that a miracle actually happened—not just evidence that a miracle could have happened. You need strong evidence that the magical took place. To say that you only have evidence that it might have happened is to admit failure. Even skeptics often say that Mary might have appeared at Lourdes and Jesus might have risen from the dead. They only say they find no adequate reasons for thinking these things happened. The believers might say Mary might have appeared and Jesus might have risen; therefore, we should believe. That is not logical.
Religion says skeptics say, "Miracles do not happen and nothing can ever show they do happen."
It objects strenuously to that view.
Yet it believes that nothing shows they happen. It might state it as, "The evidence shows the miracle possibly happened," which amounts to the same thing.
The believer says miracles are possible and some are true.
The unbeliever says that miracles are possible, but saying this does not mean we will believe, so we just do not believe.
It is obvious who is the most rational. The believer is the one making an assumption—that miracles happen. The unbeliever simply avoids unwarranted assumptions. He or she sticks to what is fair.
If the evidence shows that miracles happen, it does not necessarily show which miracles in a set are miracles and which ones are not. If you know that miracles do happen, it does not follow that you must know what events are miracles. The problem then is, if you cannot know what specific event is a miracle, what entitles you to say miracles happen at all? Believers are too biased to listen to.
The leap from possibility to belief in a miracle is, in itself, a sort of "miracle". There is more than faulty reasoning going on. It's a huge mental stretch that bypasses critical thinking, solid evidence, and probability, as if there is some clairvoyant or prophetic revelation there. That is the miracle foundation that you base your miracle claims on. That is the miracle claim you do not talk about.
Finally
The closest a believer in miracles can get to being rational is by saying that it is possible some event is a miracle. If miracles are possible, saying they have happened is still illogical because it is going too far.
Even if miracles are possible, that does not establish or mean that any ever happened or probably happened.
The notion, "I think the miracle happened because it is possible it happened," is fundamentally irrational and biased. It is not an argument but sheer lie.
A miracle is such a big claim that you cannot say, "Maybe it happened." Would you say it is possible that the Cinderella story with all its magic and the pumpkin turning into a carriage is possibly a true story? You need to be armed with strong proof. Believers cherry-pick about what miracles are possible and what ones are not. It is about what they want to be possible, not about what is possible. They cannot be taken seriously.
You cannot prove that there are no ghosts at all. You cannot prove that nobody ever rose from the dead. With these, you cannot prove a negative. Proving a negative and the null hypothesis must not be confused. The null hypothesis is just simply saying, "Whatever has happened here, we don't know what the cause is." The null hypothesis does not ask you to make possibilities such as demons being at work or whatever equal to natural possibilities. Possibilities can still be ranked in order of plausibility, even if you don't know which of them is the right one. Where would we be if a baffling murder happened and we started saying, "Maybe we should just settle for saying that demons might have done it?"