Over the course of the last many months, Substack has been overrun with miracle discourse, and this is partly my fault. I claimed that miracles were a decisive reason to be a theist, because some of them were extremely well-evidenced. Some examples:
The miracle of Calanda: a guy named Miguel Juan Pellicer supposedly regrew a leg. The evidence Pellicer lacked a leg at the earlier time is that he applied for beggar’s licenses twice, many eyewitnesses reported seeing him without a leg, and several doctors remember performing the amputation. The evidence he had a leg at the later time is that after the leg regrew, there was a year-long investigation into his miraculously regrown leg. It’s a bit hard to imagine the people who did a year-long investigation into his miraculous leg regrowth just wouldn’t bother checking whether he had a leg.
Joseph of Cupertino: hundreds of people in Italy say they saw this guy fly. Everyone in Italy agrees: Joseph flew.
Our Lady of Zeitoun: atop a Coptic Church in Egypt images of Mary appeared repeatedly as verified by many tens of thousands of eyewitnesses and some kind of sketchy photos.
Barbara Snyder: she had debilitating MS only to be cured completely of all her symptoms after people prayed for her.
I thought these pretty decisively ruled out atheism. As Ethan put it, “leg, no leg, leg—you’re done!” The evidence seemed very good and the naturalistic explanations just seemed goofy. For example, the way skeptics tried to explain away the fact that everyone in Italy agreed that Joseph flew around all the time, and would describe it in fine detail, was by saying that he might have jumped.
On its face, it’s just such a ridiculous explanation. Can you imagine you and all your friends thinking that a guy flew 100 feet into the air because he jumped? Do you think people in Italy are total idiots?
But I’m now a lot less sure that miracles are an S-tier argument that rules out atheism. I no longer think it’s as simple as “leg, no leg, leg—you’re done!” Here’s why.
