There was this joke that was very popular when I was growing up. It went something like this:
A guy goes to a priest in a church and asks the priest, "Father! how do you define a miracle?". The priest takes a minute to reflect on the question and then a smile crosses his face. He tells the guy to close his eyes and proceeds to give him a really hard slap across his face. To the surprised (and mildly sobbing) guy the priest goes," Son, did it hurt when I slapped you?". The guy, looking up in incredulity goes, "YES". To which the priest replies calmly, " Well! it would have been a miracle if it hadn't hurt!".
Whether you call minor coincidences, random positive events or unexplained events as miracles, the fact remains that belief in miracles is very very popular. The need to divest your rational thought to an experience in faith is very high in this country.
The table above shows three quarters of the population have really strong beliefs in miracles. One wonders is there is a correlation between the above numbers and the drop in U.S.'s math & science rankings in the world.
In India, a country that is a perfect cocktail of God men, spiritual practices, rituals/pseudosciences, belief in miracles is also very high.There is the God man who materializes objects, or the idol that bleeds milk (or some random liquid) or the guy who claims he can ward away evil spirits with a talisman. In all the cases the sequence follows the same three step process:
My own views on miracles can be summed up in the figure below:
There has been a lot of progress made in the field of debunking these miracles, although with some collateral damage. Indian rationalist - Sanal Edamauku had to flee the country after the Indian courts invoked an arcane Blasphemy Law to prosecute him when he disproved miracle claims of a statue of Jesus bleeding holy water. Other rationalists have been working hard to debunk these miracles in the hope of waning the public from being duped by these charlatan God men.
Miracles when combined with religious exploitation makes for a potent and lethal combination. You are literally at the corner of Susceptibility and Indoctrination. I would have loved to close with a dissertation from David Hume on Miracles and contrasted that with the current day belief in miracles statistics.
Sam Harris, obviously does it waaaay better:
Whether you call minor coincidences, random positive events or unexplained events as miracles, the fact remains that belief in miracles is very very popular. The need to divest your rational thought to an experience in faith is very high in this country.
Source:http://www.pewforum.org/2010/02/17/religion-among-the-millennials/
The table above shows three quarters of the population have really strong beliefs in miracles. One wonders is there is a correlation between the above numbers and the drop in U.S.'s math & science rankings in the world.
In India, a country that is a perfect cocktail of God men, spiritual practices, rituals/pseudosciences, belief in miracles is also very high.There is the God man who materializes objects, or the idol that bleeds milk (or some random liquid) or the guy who claims he can ward away evil spirits with a talisman. In all the cases the sequence follows the same three step process:
| Step | Description | |
| The Set Up | "I have a friend who told me about this" Or " I was driving and heard about this and decided to check it out" Or " We heard about this Baba and wanted to check him/her out" | |
| The Description | "My Friend described this thing that was amazing", " I saw with my own eyes the milk was flowing"; " I saw with my own eyes when he materialized the object"; "He had this really bad ailment and he was magically cured when he got the blessings" | |
| The Outsourcing | This is where reason/logic gets outsourced. This goes like this, " I am a sane and scientific person, how can u explain what I saw/experienced" OR " There have been many scientists that have looked into this and they cannot come up with an explanation" OR " How do you explain the person had a tumor and one week after meeting with this Baba it went away" |
My own views on miracles can be summed up in the figure below:
There has been a lot of progress made in the field of debunking these miracles, although with some collateral damage. Indian rationalist - Sanal Edamauku had to flee the country after the Indian courts invoked an arcane Blasphemy Law to prosecute him when he disproved miracle claims of a statue of Jesus bleeding holy water. Other rationalists have been working hard to debunk these miracles in the hope of waning the public from being duped by these charlatan God men.
Miracles when combined with religious exploitation makes for a potent and lethal combination. You are literally at the corner of Susceptibility and Indoctrination. I would have loved to close with a dissertation from David Hume on Miracles and contrasted that with the current day belief in miracles statistics.
Sam Harris, obviously does it waaaay better:
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