Miracles!!
 

Do you believe in miracles?
What do you feel is the definition of a miracle?
Have you ever experienced or observed something you feel is a miracle, and what was it?

As someone who does not believe in the occurrence of miracles, which I define as events that defy natural law, I was amused to read a news report today that says a man claims to have survived 70 years without eating or drinking anything!

I was even more amused to read people's responses. So, this made me curious about other MusicBanter members' beliefs about miracles. I didn't see a miracle thread during a search (though this topic overlaps with the religion and the ghost threads). Apologies if a miracle thread already exists!

Here is part of the article:

Some of my favorite responses that people gave:

Breatherators! :D

I'm interested in what people are going to say about this.
Miracles are an interesting thing.
But it's definitely not possible.
I like science. I believe in science.
Of course, I have hope for miracles sometimes.
But this is too much.

I don't believe in miracles and I don't believe I have ever witnessed one. My definition of one is basically the same as yours, Vegangelica .. This news is quite interesting though :D I think this is one sneaky yogi indeed. Maybe he carries bottled water somewhere in his body? :p:

Doing this before someone else does. :finger:

Breatherators? :laughing:

I believe in miracles
Since you came along
You sexy thing

i believe in miracles, but probably because i define them differently from you. for example, the spontaneous appearance of life on earth is "miraculous" even though it can be explained naturally. i don't think the fact that something can be explained scientifically precludes it from being miraculous.

events that defy natural law i would characterize as supernatural.

it's a miracle people still buy into these claims when they pop up every couple of years. what about the one about the kid in India that the Discovery channel recorded meditating for two weeks with no food or water?

as for the 'breatherator' thing, is anyone else at all surprised that googling that term doesn't actually return anything at all besides that one article?

while extraordinary, this is hardly the wildest claim i've ever read about yogis or people who practice high level meditation, and definitely not something i'd call a miracle (more like a metaphysical parlour trick). managing to survive for 10 days while being crushed by the rubble of a building following a natural disaster on the other hand, is most definitely what i'd call miraculous.

The closest thing I've seen to a miracle happened only last month.
My elder sister had severe stomach pains causing her to vomit and go into a seizure.
While she was in that state, she inhaled vomit onto her lungs.
At the hospital she went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing.
They resuscitated her, but she remained unconscious and was unable to breath unaided.
The doctors were about to put her on life support when she regained consciousness, but her condition was life threatening so they put her into an induced coma.
We were told that due to inhaling vomit onto the lungs the bacteria would cause an instant infection and along with the acid from her vomit she had suffered burns to the lungs.
We were then told that her chances of survival were none unless they operated to find the root cause. Namely, the pain which caused the vomiting and the subsequent seizure.
If there was a blockage, or a burst ulcer, finding the problem was vital to her already slim chances of survival. They gave her a 20% chance. Odds of 5 to 1 against.
They warned us however, that if the operation (which involved opening her up and physically checking her bowels) found nothing, then the added insult would probably give her less chance of surviving than the one she had if nothing was done.
Which as I've already pointed out earlier, were pretty much none to begin with.

After a quick family discussion we gave authorisation for the operation...they found nothing.

But, when they opened her up and removed her bowels for inspection they realised they were distended from the oxygen pumped into her by the paramedics.
The oxygen had to go somewhere because her lungs weren't responding at the time.
Removal of the bowels freed up space in the diaphragm and eased her breathing somewhat.
Consequently they made the decision not to close her back up, but to leave the incision open, covered with a plastic sheet, until they returned to normal.
The next 48 hours were crucial!
Things can't get any worse, right?

Wrong!

3 days later my father was admitted to the same hospital with breathing problems.
Now, my father had been ill for a long time. Some members here will know that he suffered from dementia, along with several other illnesses.
Dad had developed pneumonia and it wasn't looking good.

As my dad deteriorated, miraculously, my sister began to respond to the intensive care treatment.
The day my sister came off the ventilator was the day that my fathers breathing became shallow.
The day my sister was taken out of her induced coma was the day my father slipped into one.
It was as if Dad was slowly swapping places with my sister!

Sadly, my father died on St. George's day. Believe me, it was a blessing considering the quality of life he had over the previous 18 months.

My sister attended the funeral.

sorry for your loss R-T, at least you've got a positive perspective on the matter. my grandmother has been in her 'final' hospital stay since Easter (stroke), we were all hoping for a quick and painless passing, 6 weeks later she's still cognitive but not any closer to being medically stable.

Sorry to hear that Dave.
I'm not sure where you're from...are you aware of the Liverpool Care Plan?

I'll keep my eyes on this "starving yogi" story to learn if/when his claims are debunked. Or proven! Perhaps there are "breatherators" who gain sustenance from the very air!

I can think of only one orifice big enough, and carrying a water bottle there wouldn't be too comfortable...but better than drinking your own urine!:D

You were singing that song to Freebase, weren't you, Janszoon! I couldn't help but notice that his post came right before your post! ;)

So, bungalow, to make sure I understand, you define a "miracle" as some event that follows natural law but has a very low probability of occurring. Meanwhile, it sounds like what you think of as supernatural would be what I define as a "miracle."

How unlikely would you feel some natural occurrence has to be for it to be a miracle? Wouldn't such a probability cutoff be very arbitrary? If I flip a coin a trillion times and get only 1 head, would that be a miracle? And if it *were* a miracle, what about if I did it again and get 2 heads? Or 10? How would you decide when some event is no longer considered "miraculous?"

I'm very sorry, right-track, about your dad's low quality of life in the year and a half before he died. I'm glad your sister survived!

A high school classmate died on his second day of Junior Year due to aspirating and asphyxiating on vomit while wrestling with his little brother. One day he was there...the next...gone.

I think one reason the idea of "miracles" is so hard for me to imagine is that their application would be so arbitrary, assuming there were miracles and some supernatural being were behind them. I hear survivors of great traumatic events say their survival was a "miracle" but I can't forget all those who weren't saved.

If there were a supernatural power behind rare natural events that people perceive as miracles, why wouldn't such a supernatural power dispense miracles right and left? If I could work miracles to save people, I'd be doing that all the time!

Maybe I was!

There was a group of about 5 of us who were really close throughout primary. We were only 11/12, Me and 4 boys. One day I was grounded so couldn't go out with them... we used to go down to the river and play on the rope swing thingy, and my mate fell off the rope and into the raging river below. As you said, one day he was there, the next he was gone.

i wouldn't seriously ascribe the word "miracle" to anything concerning coin flipping. so i assume i am free to ignore your what-if scenario. i am not out to quantitatively define "miracles"--my point is simply that things occur which could be considered miraculous (mr. dave gave a fantastic example--people surviving 13 days beneath earthquake rubble, as recently observed in haiti), and because i do not believe in a benevolent intelligence that actively interferes with human affairs these occurrences must have natural explanations...but that does not make them any less miraculous. you can explain how these events happened scientifically, but that they happened is miraculous.

i'm in Canada, hadn't heard of the LCP but it sounds similar to the setup available here. my maternal family all lives within about a half hour drive from each other aside from myself and like 3 other cousins so they're just as involved with her care as the professionals. it's like my mom tells me, even though the family has known it was coming for years you're never really ready when it finally happens.


i obviously disagree since this was my earlier example, but... i don't buy the idea that it's an external supernatural power. to me it's a cop out, a denial of the power of the human spirit. then again i refuse to believe that my life and existence is limited to the physical body i inhabit. the miracle in my eyes is that the individual is able to disconnect and reattach themselves to their physical bodies once the trauma has passed.

or maybe i'm reading too much into the similarities between the words miracle and mirage.

If a "miracle" were to ever happen all that would mean to me is that we are behind in our scientific discoveries.

Sorry to hear hun :( :love:

David, The story about your sister alone sounds pretty rough, but I'm glad to hear she recovered! About your father, I am sorry for your loss. I lost my grandparents on my father's side a few years ago and it was a pretty awful, drawn out and tragic affair for both of them. Now, I really dread the day my own parents get sick :(

As a general comment to the miracles topic, I sometimes think calling stuff miracles sort of cheapens nature or reality. I'm not so much talking about people surviving overwhelming odds, that's fine although I do agree with Dave a bit in that it can underestimate the human spirit a bit, but .. Stuff like the existence of stars or the emergence of life are not really miracles. While surviving tough odds may be a really unlikely event, I think the emergence of life on our planet considering it's placement, size and the presence of water etc. was basically inevitable. Assuming life emerged once and then all life descended from that one event (doesn't have to be true at all), if that event hadn't happened when it did, I believe it would've happened on a later occasion anyways!

agreed, but have you checked out the ICP clip in this thread about 'Miracles' and what they consider miraculous occurrences? hahaha

stars seem like a sensible miracle in comparison.

I used to believe in miracles and fate and stuff like that, then I become a cynic.

For me it's completely the opposite. To have this exclusively positivist view on reality with explainable laws is to simplify it and yes, cheapen it in a way. There has to be a sense of mystery in it, and by that I don't mean an ignorance that will eventually go away when we have more knowledge. I'm referring to the essential mystery of things that can never be explained to its fullness. (otherwise there would be no point for the Philosophy to exist). To me this feeling of mystery (and miracles are the obvious part of it) is what enriches the reality, because it opens a world of possibilities that I wouldn't want to lose.

It's like absorbing a work of art. The more obvious it is the more power it loses. When you figure it out, you lose interest. But if there are secrets in it, something that you can't put your finger on, but is drawing you to discover something more every time, it becomes a well of themes, layers and emotions and never lets you go. That's when you know you're in a presence of great art. I'm choosing and trying to view the world this way, it's much more rewarding.

r-t, that anecdote is incredible. I am so sorry for the loss of your father :( but that is incredible that your sister made it through.

everything is a miracle. "physical laws" only pertain to a certain mode of relating to and engaging the universe. the higher realms have laws of their own which are learned largely through intuitive rather than rational means, but having done this literally anything becomes possible.

:thumb:

Wikipedia says that a miracle is "an act that defies the laws of nature". I would say that a miracle is more like something that is amazing and cannot be explained by science yet. I do believe that some of these "miracles" are true but I don't see them as proof of God or anything - simply a gap in our scientific knowledge. We are a very very long way from complete scientific understanding. Even just 100 years ago theories thought to be true have now been proven completely wrong, and I'm sure it will be exactly the same in another 100 years.

Master Jo!

No miracles. Everything in life occurs in the exact way it was predestined to.

miracles and all

That statement was so oxymoronic that it was sarcasm, even if you didn't mean it to be.
(But I do hope you did)

Life on Earth is a miracle. The Earth itself is a miracle, how it was formed and all. I think the miracle of life is just taken for granite.

I think granite is taken for granted.

:laughing: You rock.

Wood you consider your beleaf in miracles to not extend into supernatural occurrences, or is that a tuff question to answer?

How's that? You realise that miracle and predestination are two entirely separate entities, aye?
There are no miracles cos a miracle would infer that something out of the ordinary that 'wasn't supposed to happen' did (i.e. mum had a brain aneurysm and miraculously recovered from a half dead state). But in terms of predestination, miracles don't exist cos what was supposed to happen was planned out all along. :beer:

Predestination infers an external enforcer.
Supernatural miracles do too. Funny...

But either way, you're assuming that what may have miraculously happened wasn't "meant to be". How do you know that wasn't what was actually meant to be?
I think all of it is utter cunt juice, but go ahead with what you will.

If it was 'meant to be' then it wasn't 'miraculous' ;)
And I am not inferring any external enforcer. I didn't say GOD MADE EVERYTHING FOR A REASON ,that ain't wot I'm saying at all... cos I certainly do not believe that. Predestination as in lack of free will. You're watching life like a film, while you think you're making choices but in 'reality' the choice is already made and the future already ahead of you.