Those who say they believe in miracles forget they believe in other people's belief in them not in the miracles!
I believe I know x is an excellent artist for my friend says so. I will feel I
know x. I don't. I really believe in my friend not x. I believe in my friends
word that x is good and that is nothing like me actually knowing x.
Faith in religion and in miracles does not exist. What happens is that you have
faith in other people's faith in them. You have faith that they have faith but
they like you have faith that you have faith. In other words, we believe many
things just because we are moved by the belief of others. We cherry-pick the
others who move us. The believer has not respected atheists enough to be moved
by them but chooses say religious people.
Sometimes conditioning plays a role. We may think we believe in things not
realising we are programmed to accept them. Suppose you are Christian or taken
to be and think you are. Being conditioned means you are not a proper believer
at all for genuine belief is a head and heart response to the evidence given to
you by a loving God. Evidence would be a gift from God. Some religionists if not
all are completely conditioned. The differences between them in belief though
they were exposed to the same religious data and experience is taken to be
evidence that they are not. It is not. Nobody responds to conditioning the same
way and each person perceives things differently. In fact if they were
reasonable and careful and true lovers of truth there would be more agreement.
The differences then are evidence of conditioning.
There is no evidence that miracles and magic have ever taken place. Evidence
that they seem to is not evidence that they have. You will say you don't know
what it is - nature after all is still largely mysterious to us and physics says
it can rarely do odd things and the supernatural is a complete mystery if it
exists - or you will say that it may be a fraud or lie for many of those have
been uncovered.
You cannot prove that even if an amputee gets a new leg in an instant that it is
really a miracle or supernatural. Maybe aliens are doing it somehow - they have
the technology for doing incredible magic tricks. Maybe you have something wrong
with your head though it is otherwise okay.
What believers and religion do is say, "The witnesses of some miracles believed
they experienced them therefore they probably happened." People believing the
miracle happened is not evidence that the miracle happened. To depend on people
is to say that we cannot know for sure if the miracle was real or a fake or a
mistake.
Though belief should be directed by evidence belief can turn into bias and be
its enemy.
Believing every miracle report because the witnesses seem to believe it is
exactly the same thing as believing a miracle report without trying to check it
out. Checking them out for honesty is no good. It is still not evidence that a
miracle has taken place. The reason honesty is not enough is because the
evidence shows that honest people have been wrong about such stuff.
You can never have evidence for the supernatural from others. You need to see
the miracle yourself if you want to avoid believing just because others believe.
You need to see the miracle yourself instead of believing because you believe in
them for that is really not belief in the miracle but belief in them.
If belief in a miracle is irrational or risks being irrational then clearly to
try and believe because others say it happened is even more irrational and
risky. If a miracle belief is rational on the face of it believing in it because
others say so is irrational.
You can only have evidence that people believe they have experienced or seen it.
Thus you never really believe in a miracle - you cannot believe in that which
has no evidence. You can only believe in those who say the miracle happened.
Most or all people accept supernatural beliefs because they think the beliefs
are about what cannot be checked out. Therefore you don't need much sober
thought and can in your laziness accept them because you don't need to think or
want to think. Transcendental Meditation famously exploded all over the world
because many practitioners claimed the power to levitate. That was easily
disproved but it did not stop it getting converts. It only went out of fashion.
It was not discarded for being nonsense.
Miracle believers disguise how their faith is really just blind trust that does
not care about the evidence. They lie about their love of the evidence and they
are not motivated by this love to believe. Believers go on the slippery slope to
flying planes into skyscrapers in the name of God. If they don't get that far
some certainly will. Once you advocate blind obedience you say in principle that
if you are asked to murder for God then you should do it.
Miracle believers do not only believe because others
believe they cherry pick the same miracles as them to believe. The
Christian miracle believer compartmentalises. You would be considered
touched in the head if you ran after every report or was always on the lookout
for miracles. Yet if miracles happen that would be fine. You try to
make the belief sound saner than it is by being selective. That is why you
believe in pre-selected miracles. There is no honesty in cherry picking.
Truth is not a democracy. It does not care how you feel or what you feel.
Religion manipulates people who don't want to face the truth.