Understanding Miracles: An Athiest Perspective Part VII

“Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel.”

     Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov  

 

 "In the beginning" were the questions we asked concerning this conflict between what one believes and what one comes to understand, or between the findings of careful scientific investigation and the proclamations of religions that give us comfort in an uncertain world,  questions that needed to be kept in mind during this brief survey of why and how people see miracles from such radically different perspectives. The questions the reader needed to keep in mind, and to ask themself, before any attempt to understand these different perspectives concerning miracles, or anything else for that matter, is what was more important to them as both an individual and as a member of a species: their beliefs, which allow them to relate to one group even as they oppose those with different beliefs, or the truth as far as we can ever know it, which is universal to our whole species? And if a conflict is found to exist between the two, which are they willing to sacrifice in order to follow in the footsteps of the other? Should we remain within the guardrails of our beliefs, in other words, or venture off-road and outside the lines of our well-worn synaptic forests and, like Robert Frost, take the path less traveled by? 

What followed was then a brief consideration of the power of mathematics to refine our understanding of the true nature of realty, so we could see the difference between how what is believed by some to be divine looks exactly like mere repeating patterns by others. More than mere words, numbers, which have discovered and unmasked greater truth about everything from the elliptical orbits of planets to the nature of the solar system to the Higgs boson and the multiverse and beyond, than sacred scriptures have, continue to reveal to us just how much we have been mistaken in our understandings of reality.  And if following truth is a not only our goal but also a moral obligation we all have, both to our own sanity and to all others beings with whom we share this planet, then which path should we follow? The one that leads to the truths about reality as best we are able to know them, or which leads to confirming "beliefs" that often stand in as much defiant conflict with the truths found by using our best methods of investigation, by some of the brightest minds of our species, as they stand in opposition to anyone who has a different "belief" about the same thing? 

Between the classical and the quantum view of physics, physicist Werner Heisenberg explained how words can get in the way of actually understanding what is really going on with reality itself. Math - the same math that Christians rely on to illustrate examples of objective truth, and which now govern everything from economics to physics to finance to the development of AI - revealed an objective truth about the true nature of miracles. They did this by revealing that Einstein was only seeing half the picture of reality, for example, missing the rich complexity of quantum mechanics that Bohr had discovered through the looking glass of numbers. 

Like the truth about the solar system and elliptical planetary orbits to morphogensis, zig-zag geometric shapes, quantum mechanics, fractals, and even Bayesian inferences, that could only be seen through the lens of mathematics, so David Hand demonstrated how that same looking glass allows us to zoom out and see miracles from a God’s-eye-view. Doing so allowed us to discover that what we define as "miracles" are comprised of a trinity of human components: a penchant for pattern recognition, a craving for meaning, and a lousy aptitude for complex mathematics that disposes us to crave simple answers to life’s most complex questions.

 And to top it all off, engaging in all three of these components triggers an endorphin release in those areas of our brain that make us feel an agent somewhere must be looking out for us, “saving” us from a cold cruel and wholly indifferent universe.  

Then there is the problem of confusing the process by which we heal our physical conditions by first healing our psychological fissures in our subconscious. This can happen with religion and without it. But when it occurs in the former instance, it does not prove a causal connection between the healing and the existence of God, it merely illustrates a causal connection between the person's healing and the particular way in which that person interpreted their religious beliefs. 

Only when those beliefs lead a person to accept that they are worthy enough as they are, not because they are born ugly-sinner-ducklings who need saving but because they are swans who are perfect in all their imperfections, do they begin to be born again. However much a church connects a person to a community, as important as that is, more important is the persons ability to heal thyself, by feeling worthy enough exactly as they are, and embracing whoever they desire to be. For that, and that alone, is what a "gift" like life can give. And the only way to show one's true gratitude for such a gift is not to allow others to rob you of the chance to become the masterpiece we are born to be.  

 What all of this boils down to for the atheist is that it is certainly not a belief in "miracles" that is the problem between Christians and atheists, but the different meanings that each derives from them. The Christian accepts miracles to be “signs” sent from a God who, rather than ever showing himself, prefers instead to offer only hints of his existence by selectively showing to those who “believe” He exists already “miracles” that are ambiguous enough to be highly debatable on the one hand, or merely the result of chance on the other. 

What makes the Christian interpretation of miracles so problematic, however, is two things. First, it requires accepting that, despite being born with the limiting effects of sin on their soul, they have an infallible ability to know the difference between what is a miracle and what ain't. And simply because they "believe" they do. 

And second, a belief in miracles overrides a person's sense of "free will," as the person who believes in them no longer feels "free" to ignore them as ambiguous mysteries. Rather, they feel compelled to have to accept them as true signs from God of God's threats, lest they ignore them at their eternal peril. But why give people free will, only to require them to "have faith" that cannot be substantiated by scientific evidence, and then provide miracles that also cannot be verified by any scientific means, and can only be inferred as coming from a supernatural agent as evidence of that agent's existence, in order to frighten people into surrendering their "free will" in order to save themselves from a hell that also cannot be demonstrated to exist in any way shape or form? What the hell is God's point of playing so complicated and asinine a game?  

 In short, the Christian thinks a miracle informs us about the existence of a higher intelligence, while the atheist knows a miracle is simply evidence of our own ignorance. And while one sees them as a license to act like God, the other sees them as a reminder that we are only human.