Modern Day Miracles

Page 1

On the 5th of August, 2013, a 37 year old Ohio man was declared dead by doctors, then "came back to life" allegedly moments after the man's son yelled, "You're not going to die today!"

The family was Christian and credited the recovery to God.

At the time of this writing, the article appears in virtually every major US news source with supernatural claims and inferences being made.

Challenges:

There were doctors who worked on reviving him for the 35-45 minutes while he was "dead," as well as the staff that took care of him for the five days he was unconscious after his heart started beating again, none of whom were mentioned in the media reports.

Just because a doctor pronounces someone "dead," it does not make it objectively so. In this case, the doctor was wrong when he pronounce Tony "dead."

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Despite his heart not beating, oxygen was still getting to his brain by CPR and artificial means thanks to the doctors who worked tirelessly to save his life. Therefore, it is no surprise he is not brain dead. The media reports left this important fact out or their reports and many sources "reminded" readers that brain death occurs after only a few minutes of oxygen deprivation to the brain.

There is a phenomenon called Lazarus syndrome that was first identified in 1982, and there have been many documented cases since then, of exactly the same phenomenon experienced by Tony.

The cardiologist called this a "miracle," because, in the cardiologists own words, "I'm calling it a miracle because I've never seen anything like it." Ignorance of an explanation does not justify a miracle; it simply confirms the doctor's ignorance.

600,000 people die of heart failure in America every year, most of whom are praying Christians, statistically speaking. Where are all the stories about God not saving these people?

Lazarus Syndrome

This is where the heart has stopped beating and starts again by itself.

This is often after several failed attempts at resuscitation.

Its occurrence has been noted in medical literature at least 38 times since 1982.

Occurrences of the syndrome are extremely rare and the causes are not well understood.

One hypothesis for the phenomenon is that a chief factor is the buildup of pressure in the chest as a result of CPR. The relaxation of pressure after resuscitation efforts have ended is thought to allow the heart to expand, triggering the heart's electrical impulses and restarting the heartbeat.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvFIcMH8B8g (Embed)

Page 2

An Oregon man says that his teenage daughters saved his life after they somehow lifted a 3,000 pound tractor off him after his boot slipped off the tractor's clutch and flipped.

Jeff Smith was pinned to the ground by the steering wheel and was unable to breathe.

Smith later said that he pleaded to God with whatever air he still had left.

His two 16 and 14 year old daughters managed to lift the tractor enough so that Smith was able to wiggle free and breathe.

A neighbour later used his tractor to free Smith's arm from underneath the tractor.

Smith suffered a broken wrist and some nerve damage to his arm.

Teenage girls lifting this amount of weight is virtually impossible. Was it a result of adrenaline or God's intervention?

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http://video.foxnews.com/v/2292523730001 (Embed)

Page 3

A woman heard voices in her head during a holiday that warned her to return home at once.

Once back home in London, the voices spoke to her again and this time gave her an address for a brain scanning department. They told her she would need a brain scan as she had a brain tumour that was inflaming her brain stem.

Although she had no symptoms, a scan was performed and did reveal a tumour.

After a successful operation, she made a fully recovery.

It could be argued that this woman had a mental illness, but if the voices had been part of a mental illness, would they have been right?

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Page 4

Miracle of the Sun (Fatima)

The story of a famous miracle in Fátima, Portugal, began in May 1917, when three children (ages 7, 9, and 10) claimed to have encountered the Virgin Mary on their way home from tending a flock of sheep. The oldest girl, Lucia, was the only one to speak to her, and Mary told the children that she would reappear to them on the thirteenth day of the next six months. She then vanished.

The children soon told their parents, and while some in the village didn't believe their tale, others did — and told more people. As the weeks and months passed, more and more of the faithful made pilgrimages to Fátima, where the children claimed to receive Mary's visits. Still no one else saw the Virgin Mary; instead, the gathered adults would stand riveted as Lucia took the lead and began to describe her visions.

It was Mary's final appearance, on Oct. 13, 1917, that became the most famous. In his book "Looking for a Miracle," Joe Nickell states that "an estimated 70,000 people were in attendance at the site, anticipating the Virgin's final visit and with many fully expecting that she would work a great miracle. As before, the figure appeared, and again only to the children. Identifying herself as 'the Lady of the Rosary,' she urged repentance and the building of a chapel at the site. After predicting an end to [World War I] and giving the children certain undisclosed visions, the lady lifted her hands to the sky. Thereupon Lucia exclaimed, 'The sun!' As everyone gazed upward, and saw that a silvery disc had emerged from behind clouds, they experienced what is known [as] a 'sun miracle'."

Not everyone reported the same thing; some present claimed they saw the sun dance around the heavens; others said the sun zoomed toward Earth in a zigzag motion that caused them to fear that it might collide with our planet (or, more likely, burn it up). Some people reported seeing brilliant colors spin out of the sun in a psychedelic, pinwheel pattern, and thousands of others present didn't see anything unusual at all.

The whole event took about 10 minutes, and this Miracle of the Sun, as it became known, is one of the best-known events at Fátima.

What happened at Fátima?

So what really happened at Fátima? What did the thousands of reporters and witnesses see? We can start by noting that we know for certain what did not happen: The sun did not really dance in the sky. We know this because, of course, everyone on Earth is under the same sun, and if the closest dying star to us suddenly began doing celestial gymnastics a few billion other people would surely have reported it. It's really not something that anyone else could have failed to notice.

This suggests that the experience was something else. In his book, Nickell suggested that the crowd saw a sundog, a patch of light that sometimes appears beside the sun. Sundogs are stationary, however, so that doesn't explain why people thought they saw the sun moving. So perhaps the "sun dance" appeared in the minds and perceptions of those pilgrims present — not in the skies above them. There must, therefore, be a psychological explanation, and indeed we can find one: an optical illusion caused by thousands of people looking up at the sky, hoping, expecting, and even praying for some sign from God. It is of course dangerous to stare directly at the sun, and to avoid permanently damaging their eyesight, those at Fátima that day were looking up in the sky around the sun, which, if you do it long enough, can give the illusion of the sun moving as the eye muscles tire.The fact that different people experienced different things — or nothing at all — is also strong evidence of a psychological explanation. No one suggests that those who reported seeing the Miracle of the Sun — or any other miracles at Fátima or elsewhere — are lying or hoaxing. Instead they very likely experienced what they claimed to, though that experience took place mostly in their minds.

And what about the three young children whose visions of Mary put Fátima on the religious map? It's not clear what, if anything, they saw. For the believers, it made sense that Mary might only appear to (and speak to the world through) innocent peasant children, using their humble status to convey her messages of peace and spiritual salvation. Skeptics, however, noted that there was no real evidence of any miracles occurring, and suggested that Lucia was an imaginative girl who influenced her suggestible younger cousins.

There were other, lesser-known aspects of the Fátima story, including secret revelations and prophecies given to Lucia; as Nickell notes, several of the "prophecies" were true, but were actually written after they occurred, and thus were not true prophecies at all.

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Page 5

Jesus' face on Google Earth

A 26 year old man from Southampton spotted the resemblance of Jesus when using Google Earth to plan his holiday.

Zach Evans saw the outline in satellite pictures of a field of farmland near Puspokladany in Hungary.

He claimed, "I'm not a religious person looking for images of Mary or Jesus in everything, but this is obvious."

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Pareidolia and the power of suggestion

In addition, there was likely an element of mild mass hysteria involved, where one person sees something and gets excited about it, and others feed off it and start seeing similar things themselves. This is neither dangerous nor uncommon. Mass suggestion can be very powerful, and it's not difficult to find examples in which the religious mind sees images that may not really exist.

December 2010, for example, was an especially busy season for Mary, starting when a woman named Mari Valenzuela of Alhambra, California, noticed an image of the Virgin Mary in her melted candle. The lump, about an inch high and made of soft white wax, resembled a woman's head and torso. Valenzuela showed the miracle to her priest, who assured her that it was a sign that her life was on the right path.

It's not surprising that human-shaped forms might be interpreted as religious figures, especially around the religious holidays. People see these images for the same reason that they see faces in clouds, Rorschach blots and coffee stains. This phenomenon, called pareidolia, is well known in psychology, and it is the cause of many supposedly mysterious and miraculous events (including the famous "Jesus in the Tortilla"). Whether the sightings are the result of a miracle or a mundane psychological process, they are welcomed by the faithful.

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It's quite possible that Zach Evans saw an altered image on Google Earth.

Furthermore, it simply resembles a human-shaped form, but it's not necessarily Jesus. People interpret what they see, and the power of suggestion then influences others to see the same thing.

Page 6

The Lucky Choir

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95pzg4O_GPY (Embed)

This example of a miracle supports both R.F. Holland and Paul Tillich's definitions of miracles:

Holland said that a miracle is 'coincidence that is interpreted in a religious fashion.' It's quite possible that the reason all the choir members were late was something of a coincidence, and not caused by the divine.

However, Tillich said that miracles point to and inform us of the nature of God 'without contradicting the rational structure of reality.' Every choir member being late is not an extraordinary event, however, if it was divinely caused, it reveals God's omnibenevolence and protective nature towards those who love him.

Page 7

The Weeping Statue in Civitavecchia

In 1995, a 16-inch high statue of the Virgin Mary, known as 'La Madonnina', allegedly wept tears of blood in front of many witnesses. When the blood was tested, it was found to be genuine haemoglobin, from a human male. The statue was also x-rayed and found to be solid. It is believed that the tears could only be the tears of Christ.

In recent years, such exposés of the paranormal have become increasingly popular. Among the more bizarre explanations for La Madonnina's tears is the suggestion that someone fitted the statue with special contact lenses, which expand and release liquid when exposed to heat, or that a blood-filled syringe fitted inside the figurine was attached to a hidden battery, allowing the device to be electronically activated by remote control. The suggestion that Gregori may have resorted to such tricks has, says Forestieri, reduced his client to an emotional wreck.

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What does this miracle tell us about God's wishes for us?

Jesus' suffering during his crucifixion may be represented by this event. Jesus' blood was shed for the good of all, and the tears could represent both his own pain and his anguish at our spiritual condition.

Page 8

Statues of Nandi in a Hindu mandir drinking milk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiyTogk9kp4 (Embed)

Before dawn, a Hindu worshipper in a temple in south New Delhi made an offering of milk to a statue of Lord Ganesha, and the statue seemed to 'drink' the milk. By noon, temples all over North India, Britain, Canada, Dubai and Nepal were able to successfully replicate the phenomena.

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Does it matter that other religions also report miracles?

On the surface, it may seem like miracles and religious experiences being experienced by all faiths is a challenge to the credibility of a particular faith, however, this is not necessarily true.

This miracle could be caused by capillary action. Seeking to explain the phenomenon, scientists from India's Ministry of Science and Technology travelled to a temple in New Delhi and made an offering of milk containing a food coloring. As the level of liquid in the spoon dropped, it became obvious that after the milk disappeared from the spoon, it coated the statue beneath where the spoon was placed. With this result, the scientists offered capillary action as an explanation; the surface tension of the milk was pulling the liquid up and out of the spoon, before gravity caused it to run down the front of the statue.

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Furthermore, it is of course possible that William James' theory of pluralism is correct. He argued that all faiths recognise a single spiritual reality, yet disagree about fundamental points, but that they all experience its truth through various miracles and religious experiences.

Page 9

Six year old falls off cliff

A six year old girl fell 45 metres from a clifftop and only suffered minor injuries. She plunged from a fenced off area of grass near the Blue Dolphin caravan park in Filey, North Yorkshire. This same clifftop is where another holidaymaker, aged 16, fell to her death two years previous.

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However, this miracle can be explained without divine intervention, using the arguments from quantum physics. Quantum physicists say that the laws of nature are statistical, instead of inflexible. This would mean that is simply more statistically likely that this girl would have died, and not impossible.

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Page 10

Verses from the Qu'ran appear on a baby's body

In 2009, thousands of pilgrims gathered to see the Koranic verse, "Be grateful to Allah," printed on nine-month old Ali Yakubov's right leg.

The verse was said to have faded and reappeared every few days.

Islam in Russia is widely believed to have originated in Dagestan, where 3 million people speak over 30 different languages.

A spate of recent suicide bombs and armed attacks on police and security services in Dagestan, Ingushetia and neighbouring Chechnya, where Russia has fought two separatist wars, has shattered a few years of relative calm in the North Caucasus.

The miracle has been linked to these events, with his mother saying, "Allah is great and he sent me my miracle child to keep our people safe."

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But is this truly a miracle?

It's possible that someone has been writing this on the baby.

His mother said the baby is cranky when the words appear, which is to be expected if someone is scraping or otherwise irritating his skin to write these words.

Additionally, if this is the case, the words would also fade over time, which they seemed to do.

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Page 11

Derren Brown and the Lottery

Derren Brown is an illusionist who correctly predicted the six lottery numbers in September 2009.

He wrote his predictions on six balls which he revealed after the numbers were announced.

However, no one goes near the balls that are clearly visible on the other side of the screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QG-5qebwflA (Embed)

Derren revealed the method he used on his show two days later, which is reliant upon automatic writing and the "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon.

James Surowiecki argued in his book entitled The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, that the aggregation of information results in much better decisions than those made by any single member of the group.

Automatic writing or psychography is an alleged psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. The words are claimed to arise from a subconscious, spiritual or supernatural source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JH_6ujgLkg (Embed)

Is that really how he did it?

One of the most plausible options seems to be that of split screen.

On the left side of the screen (the one with the predictions), what you see is actually a pre-recorded footage. The only thing that is actually transmitted live is the right part of the screen with Derren and the TV screen.

That way, we cannot see what is really happening with the balls. We only see a previously recorded footage of them. Meanwhile, Derren's assistants can put the winning balls into place just in time for Derren to come over to the left side of the screen and reveal them.

When the balls are in place, left part of the screen also starts showing live footage.

Both parts of the video are cleverly put together so we think we are looking at one, continuous live recording of the event. The camera is even moving all the time so we wouldn't think of this explanation, but the movement effect can be easily achieved.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rqAt2akPHJ8 (Embed)

Page 12

Benny Hinn - Healing a Tumour

Benny Hinn was a televangelist and a faith healer, known for his "Miracle Crusades", or revival meetings held in city stadiums that would be later broadcast on his show, This is Your Day.

As well as healing tumours, Hinn claimed to have instantly healed a number of other conditions.

A doctor supposedly 'verifies' the healing on stage.

Benn Hinn’s crusades are well documented. They are characterized by singing, a talk by Hinn, along with the requisite speaking in tongues, prophecy, and “profitry” (collection of offerings). The offerings are solicited with the understanding that if one gives, God will do something for the giver.

Then comes the healing part of the service. Hinn practices the “art” of slaying in the spirit. As people approach him, he will blow on them or wave his white coat at them. They will then fall backwards and are (hopefully) caught by a catcher who strategically stands behind the person who is “slain in the spirit”. However, some have not been caught, resulting in injury and, most likely, out of court settlements.

Hinn links what he claims to be his anointing and the “supernatural” ability he has to knock people off their feet. He asserts that the “fire of the spirit” falls on the people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pf-XUe_z-8 (Embed)

Criticisms and Controversy

When Jesus healed the lepers, He told them to go to the priests to verify their healing. Hank Hanegraaff asked Hinn to prove just one of his healings. Hinn actually met with Hanegraaff and handed him “proof” of the healing of an abdominal tumour. The individual’s first X-ray clearly shows a large mass. This person then went to a Hinn “healing” show, and miraculously the tumour disappeared! As proof, Hinn handed Hank an X-ray after the crusade, and the mass was gone!

Well, not exactly. Hanegraaff decided to call the radiologist to ask about the X-rays. It seems Hinn left out an important detail in the timeline. There was a surgical intervention to remove the abdominal tumour. Hanegraaff revealed this to Hinn who would not comment.

A HBO documentary, The Question of Miracles, followed seven cases of Hinn's healings for a year, and found that there were no cases of people actually being fully healed.

The CBC television show, The Fifth Estate, did a special focusing on Hinn, which found that miracle seekers attending Hinn's crusade, such as quadriplegics, brain damaged, and virtually anyone with an obvious physical condition were turned away and not allowed on stage.

They choose those who are more easily shown to be healed. Lower back problems is a good one. Cancer is another. You see, there is a doctor to “verify” the healings on stage. But can anyone explain how a doctor can immediately verify that cancer has miraculously disappeared without blood tests or scans?

Hinn had once promised some watchdog groups that he would wait six months before declaring someone healed but then refused. He actually told the Trinity Foundation that his ministry would be “decimated” if he couldn’t instantly declare a healing. What he really means is his income, estimated to be in the tens of millions, would decline.

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