It really is that simple

I've quoted this before, and no doubt I'll quote it again (to make, once again, the same point I'm going to here) -- From 'The Demon-Haunted World' by Carl Sagan --

Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

*The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow.

As the above quote demonstrates to those willing to think about it, the God-deniers don't scoff at the possibility of miracles for any principled reasons, but only because as they have chosen to deny God, they must perforce deny all things connected in any way with God (*).

What is the difference between the claim that "once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street" and the claim that an iron axe-head, rare and expensive in the time and place, which had flown off the handle into a body of water, was seen to float to the surface to be retrieved by the people who needed it?

Well, one minor difference is that no one claims ever to have witnessed the former -- and, in fact, the sort of persons who assert that it *could* happen simultaneously assert that the possibility of it actually happening is so vanishingly small as to be non-existent -- whereas the latter is claimed to have been witnessed, and that claim is recorded in a certain famous "bronze age religious text".

But the major difference, the difference that makes all the difference in the world, is that the former, should it ever be witnessed to occur, would be utterly meaningless, caused by nothing and for no reason and signifying nothing (**); whereas the latter not only had a cause, but had a personal cause, was the result of a deliberate act, and signifies, among other things, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".

What is the difference between the claim that at some point in the far distant past, mere undifferentiated and unorganized chemicals became living entities, and the claim to have witnessed the death of a person and then later to have seen that very person alive?

Well, one minor difference is that no one claims ever to have witnessed the former -- and, in fact, the sort of persons who assert that it *did* happen simultaneously assert that the possibility of it happening again is so vanishingly small as to be non-existent -- and further, such an occurrence is contrary to what we believe we understand about "the Laws of Nature", whereas the latter is claimed to have been witnessed, and while such an occurrence is not commonly witnessed, it is not contrary to what we believe we understand about "the Laws of Nature".

But the major difference, the difference that makes all the difference in the world, is that the former, while asserted to have happened, and asserted to be one of the ultimate causes of our existing, is intrinsically utterly meaningless, being something that "just happened", for no reason, and given what 'Science!' has become of late, no cause; whereas the latter not only had a cause, but had a personal cause, was the result of a deliberate and reasoned act, and signifies, at the very least, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".


Now, my point is that God-deniers do not denigrate the possibility of miracles and claims to have witnessed miracles out of any high-minded principles. And they certainly don't do it because miracles "break the Laws of Nature", as they like to accuse. For, as the Sagan quote makes clear to anyone willing to see, in the end the God-deniers deny that there even are any such things as "Laws of Nature".

No, the reason -- the *only* reason -- that the God-deniers denigrate the possibility of miracles and claims to have witnessed miracles is because, by definition, a miracle is the result of a deliberate and reasoned act of God, and signifies, at the very least, the lordship of God over "the Laws of Nature".

God-deniers don't hate miracles because they "fuckin' love science", as so many of them are wont to claim when they imagine that 'science' may be a handy stick for beating God, but because they hate God; it really is that simple.



(*) which is why, in the end, they always end up denying that they themselves, and you also, of course, even exist.

(**) well, it does signify the denial that there even *are* any "Laws of Nature"