Miracle beliefs are not really beliefs

Making a miracle claim can fast track you to fame.  Just say some angel appeared to you or a statue gave you a message.

A miracle claim is made. Is it a lie? Is it a misperceived event? Is it a faulty memory of an event? Is it a misperception caused by natural forces that science and nothing else can detect? Is it a supernatural misperception? Is it a psychic one? The odds are stacked against the account being right. The reality is that a miracle is improbable. It is one possibility against several.  To say you believe in the miracle is to hide the fact that it is only a random opinion you have got.

An opinion is very close to a guess or an assumption.
 
Opinions are conclusions thought out at least a tiny bit but open to dispute. They need not be necessarily thought out carefully or well. The fact that an opinion is open to dispute means you ask for it to be examined by others to see if it is as reasonable or correct as you think. That is the case whether you like it to be examined or not. So if you say something is your opinion you are inviting debate.
 
Miracle believers do not really believe. They can only have an opinion that miracles are real. I call them believers in my writings only because it is too clumsy to put quotation marks around it and keep writing "believers" all the time.
 
If we don't think miracle testimonies are silly, then where do we draw the line? People won't agree on what is ludicrous and what is not. If a religion just becomes opinion then it is a dead religion. If we don't think miracle testimonies are at least neither convincing or unconvincing then where do we draw the line? Again people won't agree. Belief becomes a matter of opinion and opinion is not as strong as belief.
 
Miracle beliefs are not really beliefs but mere opinions/assumptions that a miracle has happened. The miracle supporter can never be sure when he sees a miracle if it really happened. Science cannot prove everything. Perhaps there are temporary mental illnesses that will never be discovered. Maybe it was a hallucination that cannot be explained. Even if a possible explanation is found one day, the fact remains that you cannot be made to repeat the experience so that science can prove it was the explanation in your case.
 
Let us pretend that we can know a miracle has happened. Then what was the miracle? Maybe the the miracle might have been whatever caused one to think it happened. In other words, if you see a statue going for a walk, perhaps it didn't but you were miraculously made to THINK that it did. If real, the solar miracle of Fatima where Mary made the sun spin though science said it didn't spin would have to be considered evidence for such deceptive miracles. The believer replies that the unbelievers can never be certain that what they experience with their senses is real either. True but we are certain enough or it makes sense to assume we are certain. We need to assume it to live. But if you believe in magic and miracles your uncertainty will be far worse. The doubt is increased.
 
We all need the illusion that we know that what we sense is real. That does not mean unbelievers should reason, "We know nothing for sure so we should not be so sure that miracles are unbelievable or false." It is not the same thing. You don't need belief in miracles to survive. Only weirdos look for miracles all the time and think they find them. Most believers let their miracle beliefs only have a tiny impact on their lives.
 
You can never have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. All you can get is evidence that people believed that he did. If we believed everything just because others did then we would be fools. What is so special about the resurrection that we should believe it BECAUSE others believed it? We take it for granted that we have the right to disagree with others. The obligation laid down by the Church to believe in the resurrection therefore contradicts that right. The warning that we will go to Hell for doubting it is just sheer bullying.
 
Miracles might as well not happen at all. And they lack the power to help us genuinely believe. Religion encourages people to say they believe in miracles when in fact they do not. They only guess they have happened.
 
Acceptance of miracle is merely the person making an assumption that a miracle has taken place.
 
It is wrong to use miracles as explanations for mysteries. If you don't understand how the Turin Shroud was made, that does not entitle you to say it's a miracle. Saying it might be is not too bad though. To say it's a miracle is to merely assume that it is.
 
It is wrong to use miracles to get around facts one does not like. For example, if your local saint is caught abusing children sexually, don't say, "I believe a demon possessed him and made him do it. He is therefore innocent." If you say that, you are only assuming. You are not believing.
 
The Christians who are sort of sensible go in search of evidence to show their belief in miracles is justified. They do not guess that a miracle has happened. They only consider miracles when somebody has experienced a possible miracle and claims a miracle happened. But do such Christians exist? One wonders!
 
Religion often retorts ,"But you cannot prove this miracle never happened." We are suspicious of a claim that cannot be falsified - and a miracle claim is that kind of claim!
 
To one miracle fan, the Virgin Mary appearing to children proves that she has a message for us and comes to Heaven. For another, it is a sign that somehow the visionaries have a paranormal power to create the visions themselves. For another, it is aliens or fun-loving spirits making fools of us. Each one interprets the miracle differently and then makes out that the miracle is evidence for his or her interpretation.
 
You can assume whatever you want and then claim that miracles are evidence for your assumption. That is enough to prove your dishonesty and that you have no evidence for not every possible assumption can be supported by the evidence of miracles.
 
Miracles do not rescue you from the tyranny of opinion and the problems it causes. They are useless.
 
Conclusion
 
We conclude believers merely assume that a miracle is a miracle. There is no real belief in miracles where people are merely assuming they happen. At most, the believer has an opinion that a miracle has taken place.