Miracles attest to God's direct intervention

This argument is used in the debate Does God exist?.

This argument is a justification of There are divine interventions.

Keywords: God, Miracles, Paranormal, Parapsychology, Supernatural, Laws of nature

Summary

The question of miracles has not been relegated to the distant past, the prehistory of rational thought. Even today, some philosophers in the analytical field debate the issue; an organization like the Bureau Médical de Lourdes, bringing together Catholic doctors and non-believers, examines factual records of people cured in ways that are difficult to explain at Lourdes. Recent history also includes testimonies of people who lived "without eating" for decades (e.g. Thérèse Neuman). Testimonies of unexplained phenomena abounded around Padre Pio in Italy. So it's important to know if there are any "miracles" that would attest to the existence of God.

Quotes

“Would a chapter on miracles be out of place in a book that invites rational reflection? The question is generally repugnant to intellectuals and scientists. Yet the question of miracles can and should be approached rationally. We all believe that the Universe is logical, that everything in it can be explained and that it is governed by universal, immutable laws. Therefore, a clear violation of these laws, with no possible alternative, must lead a rational mind to adopt the simplest explanation: the existence of an all-powerful god, the only one capable of performing such a prodigy. The option of positing the impossibility of a miracle, because a priori God does not exist, is not a rational one.”

Michel-Yves Bolloré, Olivier Bonnassies, God, science, evidence: the dawn of a revolution, Guy Trédaniel, 2021.

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References

Justifications

The resurrection of Christ
History of levitation
Miraculous healings
The miracle of Fatima
Bilocations
Floods

Objections

Just because an event is scientifically unexplained doesn't mean it proves the existence of God (Appeal to ignorance)
Claims of divine intervention are based on unreliable evidence
So-called miracles are based on fraudulent experiments
So-called miracles are illusions of the human brain
Miracles are rare natural phenomena that can be explained by science.
Miracles are paranormal phenomena that do not imply the existence of God.
Arguments in favor of miracles are always more improbable than rational explanations.
So-called miracles have a rational explanation
The "miracle" label is merely a sign of the inadequacy of scientific knowledge.

Parent debate