Do miracles really happen, and if so what are they?
Depends on how you define "miracle". As much as we like to pretend otherwise, most of the events that happen to us are stochastic in nature - a fancy way of saying these events happen to populations of people with a predictable statistical distribution. What this means is that extremely rare events are expected to occur with some degree of regularity - and when you consider that there are 6+ billion of us on this planet, it is of no surprise that even the rarest of rare events do happen on occasion.
Of course, many things that people claim as miracles really are not - often surviving diseases with high mortality (cancer, for example) is called a miracle, when in reality its just the expected number of people surviving the disease. Strangely enough, these people often are the last to acclaim their survival due to the work of their MD's, but that's another thread... The same rule applies for for surviving auto accidents, and any other number of rare events.
There is also the issue of self-selection; basically people interpreting events filtered through their past experiences. The problem here is things which appear absolutely miraculous may, in reality, be totally normal and expected events. If you've never been in a severe auto accident, it may appear a miracle when you survive one. In reality, modern cars are so safe that the majority of people in severe accidents survive. But since these accidents are rare, the events appear miraculous to those involved, even though on a population level they are exactly what you would expect. IMO, this effect is often amplified in religious individuals, who often are seeking signs of miracles.
I think to truly have a "confirmable" miracle you need an event to occur which simply isn't improbable, but is actually impossible (i.e. the laws of physics say it cannot be possible for that event to occur). After all, any other "miraculous" event could not be separated from events which are simply statistically rare occurrences.
Bryan
