On Miracles
In some far - flung corners of the internet, there has apparently been Discourse about Marian Apparitions. Some Catholic Guy wrote a blog post arguing that one of the famous ones proves Catholicism. A well - known rationalist blogger was nerd - sniped into the fray. It was apparently a whole thing.
I read both of these articles the other day, and it dredged up something that's always bugged me about miracle claims. Or, at least about their use in religious apologetics (even for the one I belong to). After convincing the audience that something supernatural occurred, apologists want to say that God did it. But this seems like a leap to me. How do we know that God is the only being capable of performing this or that miracle? The Catholic Guy dismisses the possibility that his Marian apparition was demonic, but we needn't go that far. Maybe teenaged Jinn think it's funny to make people believe they're the Virgin Mary, maybe it was a ghost or a sorcerer. Perhaps there are wild trickster deities running around, and they play spectacular tricks every once in awhile.
These possibilities are outlandish, but no more so than a real Marian apparition would be. If they seem less believable, it is only because they are less familiar to us. And that really shouldn't matter.