What happened to all the miracles?

I think it is mainly because people will not believe in them any longer, we have become to skeptical!

Many people claim that miracles are still occurring, They just don’t make the news. Google modern day miracles and you will find some stories.

Good point, @marinelife! Maybe it is me that doesn’t believe in miracles, unless they are spectacular. I needed to add that I was referring to major miracles, I have been told that my surviving was a miracle.

i feel like miracles are in the eye of the beholder.. secular perspectives overshadow many things, and the tiniest, small, bad thing within, is the purveyor to the larger darkness of our conscious thinking. and, the secular views are pushing and have pushed those miracles to which you inquire out of focus.. One only needs to change that perspective to find them again.

Look to nature.

A hummingbird baby emerging from an egg the size of a pea.
The encouraging swell of the lilac buds when winter finally ends.
The relatively identical sizes of the sun and the moon as seen from earth, thereby giving us eclipses.
The baby who looks at you one morning and says “Mama.”
The spectrum of colors as seen through a giant icicle hanging from the eaves.
The appearance of dozens of huge nests in the tops of deciduous trees after the leaves fall. The secret lives of large birds that they signify.

I agree with @NanoBiscuit

Eyes that see but remain blind.

My answer will probably ruffle some feathers (sorry about that).

Actually your question is a legitimate one that Christians have asked before.

One reason is that we have so much available in the way of medicine and technology, that folks look to that rather than first to God for resolution to their problems.

I have heard many first hand accounts of miracles in third world countries.

I also have personally experienced several documented (as in the doctors have absolutely no clue why the person was restored, and of bones inexplicably knit together, etc.)

Some of the non-religious in the medical community, when confronted by evidence of a miracle, try to explain it away with scientific gobbledegook.

Another theory is that in industrialized countries there is a lot of media coverage (think hype and controversy, among other things) there is a tendency to report events in such a way as to sell news rather than report the facts. And let’s not forget media bias as well.

Our family is in a situation right now where we are being crucified in the court of public opinion. A close family member with high credibility (backed up by documentation) was interviewed by ESPN. There was no controversy there, so they declined to show the clip. Instead they showed an interview with a man with low credibility and hearsay for proof.

Remember the last big war Israel had? There were A LOT of miracles that happened then, but the news media conveniently failed to mention them. However they WERE actually documented.

Sid Roth is one newscaster who goes out of his way to document the miraculous, and those events were discussed on his newscast..

The same answer as for the question “What happened to all the demonic possessions?”
We discovered rational and testable explanations for them and discarded the supernatural placeholders.

I think now it’s because for most things we can find a scientific explanation without having to revert to religion or magic.

They never happened. They don’t happen still.

It is because our criteria for a miracle is different. It used to be that recovery from severe illness was called a miracle. However, with all of our medical science, recovery is now expected. (Our definition of a severe illness has changed too, because of this.) Same with injuries. Most people can survive being shot, because of our medical science. I beleive that this trend will continue. Someday, surviving cancer will no longer be a miracle. In short, what is happening is that miracles now occur so often, we don’t consider them miracles anymore.

There are plenty of unexplainable happenings, the problem is the mind thinking it needs concrete answers that don’t drift too far from what we have been taught is ‘reality.’
It’s an ego thing, and sure, some things are explainable, but… there IS magic and mystery that defies rational and/or scientific explaination.

I have experienced many synchronistic and unexplainable moments, events,( miracles?) and I am perfectly okay with that, infact, I am far more than just okay, I have been absolutely awed and delighted! ;-)

One amazing event was during a time I was going through some major awakenings of a ‘spiritual’ and psychological nature.
I had a particular goal/dream I was working towards and…(I am not exagerating in the least! )
One morning, pre-dawn, I was doing some serious meditating and visualizing on my goals, I said out loud ” I am ready to claim my demonstration” ( I am not fundementally religious but, those words were what came to mind in that particular moment. )

12 hours later I received notification that I was beneficiary of $295,000 from a distant ‘Uncle’ that I had little relationship with!

Now, if that series of events was not a ‘miracle’ I don’t know what would be considered one! lol :-)

I believe my consciousness was in such an elevated state that I was able to manifest this unfolding nearly instantly!

There are miracles all the time! I’ve experienced the Supernatural if you want to cause those miracles. Of course, they are in the eyes of the beholder whether they’re miracles or not and some are more sensitive to witnessing them than others. And many actually do witness miracles but quickly write them off as mere quirks. Why? Because they cannot be explained and some people don’t like that concept. They’re uncomfortable with the unscientific. It makes them nervous that , if they do exist, they may have to consider (gasp!) changing their belief sytems. In other words, they don’t want anything to “rock their boat.”

@Aster

Very well said!

Right, and what comes in resisting rocking ones boat is never opening oneself up to discovering new horizons.

Sail on, sail on sailor….. ;-)

More people are educated. more people are advanced in education, than in the past. this should tell us something.

I still believe in miracles. my children were born healthy and intelligent. that was two blessings and two miracles.

Miracles happen everyday. just look around.

Miracles come about when people long for a cure that is impossible. Today we have penicillin.

They were drowned in Hot Chocolate…...work that one out :¬(

@ucme She asked about miracles, not marshmallows. Sheesh!

@Trillian Claps hands slowly in mock appraisal, whilst rolling his eyes & gently sighing.

@ucme Why? Why ya gotta lash out?

@Trillian !?!!? That was lashing out? Here’s me thinking it was a bit of humour thrown your way. You know mutual sense of fun. I mean, you say stuff similar to that do you not? It makes me laugh anyway. Oh well, another one bites the dust, as someone once said.

Thanks, everyone, for your answers. I appreciate those who’ve said that miracles happen every day; describing seemingly small things that are, to them, miraculous (@gailcalled, @snowberry, @PhiNotPi, @john65pennington, @flutherother). However, that’s not what I was going for. It’s a nice idea, to think that everyday occurrences are miraculous, but not what I was thinking.

I don’t mean the small things. I mean things like turning water into wine, statues that bleed, burning bushes, wounds similar to Christ’s appearing on one’s body. Do those things happen anymore? Or did they ever happen?

The fact that we’ve come a long way with respect to science and that we’re more educated than we were then: does this mean that things like this still happen, but can be explained scientifically?

I’ve read about stigmata and bleeding statues/paintings and am quite interested in them. However, who can say if they’re happening now in 2010? I really don’t know But if you wish to look into psychic surgery check out John of God. He is practicing right now in South America. I saw films of him performing surgeries with zero anesthetic and the patients were saying they could feel nothing but a little tugging at the beginning. One video showed him removing a spinal TUMOR from a man who then appeared on Oprah. The guy was wide awake and said he was fine. His physician said that yes, the tumor was gone.
One of Oprah’s people went to see John of God and reported back to Oprah on her show. Oprah seemed so enthralled that I wouldn’t be shocked if she flew down there.
I haven’t heard of any burning bushes lately ; only spontaneous human combustion.

Harvard M.D . goes to check out John of God himself Scroll down to the (video)
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/is-john-of-god-a-true-healer-or-con-man
Watch and decide for yourself. He was on Oprah and said the experience changed him completely. He still appeared dazed and confused IMO.

People in the middle ages and earlier were just more ready to accept the truth of these stories?
You answered your own Q.
The middle ages were also known as the dark ages, before the age of enlightenment.
Many so-called “relics” were created in the middle ages as well.

Truthiness happened.

Your definition of miracles is very limited and not representative of biblical events.Therefore your question no longer makes sense.

Miracles never happened. People today are more educated in the past. Educated people tend not to believe in bullshit.

This is also why miracle stories today tend to be concentrated in deeply religious, poor, and uneducated regions of the world. I’ve talked to a number of Christians on the internet who claimed that they and others witnessed miracles in the deepest darkest heart of Africa or South America or wherever they were doing missionary work, without any proof, documentation, or reliable witnesses, of course. Miracles tend not to happen in areas with access to proof, documentation, or reliable witnesses, you see.

Just for some perspective, the idea of “objective” history and facts are a fairly recent invention. Thucydides, for example, is widely regarded as the most accurate of the ancient historians… most of his historical texts are long speeches that he wrote and attributed to historical figures. Other ancient historians, like Herodotus, reported fables and legends without investigating them. Some were in the employ of political figures and were obviously biased. Seutonius, for example, reported that Emperor Vespasian healed a cripple and a blind person (MIRACLE!) Josephus, another Roman historian, reported that a magical floating army of chariots in the clouds appeared before an important battle. Ancient writing simply lacked any modern standards of objectivity or documentation. People back in the day wrote a lot of bullshit.

All that said, people today still write, and believe, massive amounts of bullshit (i.e. miracle stories). Faith healings are a common religious example, but there’s also UFO abductions, psychics, and homeopathy.

@Aster, and anyone who believes in “psychic surgery”:

Please watch this video.

You have to be a special kind of gullible to believe in psychic surgery. Really, you should be ashamed of yourself for perpetuating and supporting the frauds who make money off of this shit.

@Aster, you said you’ve experienced supernatural miracles firsthand.

Please tell us about them, and please provide documentation for them. Surely if you’ve experienced supernatural miracles, the world should know. You should share your knowledge with us. If it really happened to you, it should be pretty easy to provide evidence.

@Coloma Far out, big time.

I believe the word was bandied about in the dark ages to try to explain something to a child. If you where part of the masses during those wonderful times, you would be as open to roman catholic dogma as a child would be to Santa Claus.

@Qingu “please provide documentation for them.” What are you talking about? But it really does not matter if I even knew what your documentation would entail because you would fall in one or more of the following categories:
1) I filmed it. (you would say it’s a fake film)
2) I photographed it. (you’d say it’s a fake picture).
3) My eyewitness corroborates what we both experienced at the exact same time. (you would say we were both lying, crazy or hallucinating.)
Therefore, knowing this, I would never take 2 minutes of my time to explain what happened.
Stick with your beliefs in gravity and oxygen and it’ll be ok. For you. Proceed with your worship of the Scientific Method knowing nothing else but solid proof counts. And be happy!
“The world should know.” The world can’t know because the world wasn’t there. And the one and only way you or the world might believe it is under that condition. and suggesting there would be evidence is silly. And homeopathy works well, btw.

If I witnessed an honest-to-god miracle, I wouldn’t just casually mention it on internet message boards without offering any sort of explanation or documentation for it.

Frankly, here’s what I think: Either you’re lying, and nothing happened to you, or you’re too cowardly to stick up for (or even question or examine) what you believe is both true and important in your life.

I don’t believe in any miracles at all. When a person understands the laws and principles to those laws then one can commit what looks to someone that doesn’t understand that law as a miracle but once we all learn the principles to that law then we can for instance walk on water.

OK. This is a very short version of my testimony. My first experience with answered prayer was when I prayed for a wino. After he left the restaurant where I worked, he was planning on going home, drinking himself into oblivion, and shooting himself . I identified with him because he looked like I felt, and I ended up crying out to God throughout the night, and finally I said, “Lord, I can’t do anything more for this guy. In Jesus’ name, heal this man!” As I look back on it, I was also praying for myself. God did not restore me at that point in time, but He did so for my new friend Hank (my restoration came some time later). Hank went through 40 days of DT’s, while his friends kept him fed. He later told me that he could neither touch the booze in his room, nor pick up the gun he had planned to use. Hank fought with the Board of Regents for about 18 months before I got involved and went to bat for him. Neither they, nor the doctors could believe he could simply turn around like he did. Eventually they relented, and let him go to college. Hey, at one point, after his restoration, for about 6 months he lived as a night watchman in the local VFW hall, where he spent nights alone with every type of booze you can imagine. Nevertheless, the night I prayed for Hank was the last night he drank. He went on to get his GED, and then take courses in college. He lived for 15 more years before he died. Do I have documentation about this at this time? No, I probably couldn’t provide it because of how long ago it was, but it happened.

I expect most folks would choose not to believe this. That’s OK by me. If you choose not to believe me, that’s your problem, not mine. The evidence is there if you choose to believe it; but only if you are willing.

Someone deciding not to commit suicide and seek treatment is not a miracle.

It’s also absurd that your god would choose to magically heal a wino (by what, mind-controlling him?) on the basis of your prayer… while ignoring the millions of prayers by the loved ones of people dying of leukemia, malaria, AIDS, in abusive relationships, etc.

As for the “coincidence” of your prayer being the same day as his decision to help himself, you should familiarize yourself with confirmation bias. Was that the only time you prayed for him?

Magic? Wow. You can run from God as far as you can, and eventually, when you least expect it, you’ll find you need him more than anything in the world. When it happens (and I pray it will), I hope you’ll make the right choice. You’re so sure of yourself, but what if, what if what I’m saying is correct?

Miracles as statistically unlikely but beneficial events do still happen. For example the survival of a terminal illness.

And there are still present day prophets hearing voices and having visions, see my recent question

http://www.fluther.com/105015/attempting-a-scientific-evaluation-of-prophecies-how-can-we-interpret/

@snowberry, there’s a reason Pascal’s Wager is considered a laughable fallacy. What if the real god is Allah or Zeus? Then you’re just as screwed as me, if not moreso.

In any case, did you ever pray for this guy before? Or just on the one night he happened to stop drinking? Please answer the question, as it’s important to establish whether this “miracle” even qualifies as a mundane coincidence.

It is not your job to decide if your creator exists. It’s not my job to try to convince you. You have already proven yourself as quite hostile to everything else I’ve posted that you don’t agree with, and I can be quite confident that nothing more I can say will convince you of anything.

Okay. But what if your creator is actually Marduk? The Enuma Elish says he is your creator. Why do you believe the Bible but not the Enuma Elish?

It is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He showed up when nobody else did, and transformed my life.

Millions of people have said the same thing. About space aliens.

I’m OK with that.

To turn it around can anyone tell me anything that exists that is not a miracle?

Jeffrey dahmer
Forced rape and vaginal cuttings by soldiers in Africa
Pedophile preists
Cancer
Slavery
republicans
starving children in america
abject poverty
Haiti
the 9th Ward
the BP oil disaster
I’ll stop before I get real sad

@thekoukoureport

Yes, don’t dwell on the dark side.

I’ll cheer things up a tad….

Synthetic, ultra soft blankets are a modern miracle! Especially being naked underneath one on a cold night :-)

May everyone appriciate the miracle of their fuzzy blankets tonight.

@Qingu ”, I wouldn’t just casually mention it on internet message boards without offering any sort of explanation or documentation for it. *You wouldn’t? That’s ok. And what does offer documentation mean? It sounds like something you’d find in a library. Or a journal. lol

Frankly, here’s what I think: Either you’re lying, and nothing happened to you,I have no interest in lying. And I don’t care who believes me. or you’re too cowardly to stick up for (or even question or examine) what you believe is both true and important in your life.Who said I haven’t examined what I know happened? How do you examine it anyway? Sticking up for ? You mean argue for the truth of it? No thank you. There’s nothing to argue.