> 2. I know of no documented miracles. In fact, such a proposition is unproveable, as is the claim that "miracles do happen".
Thing is, anything can happen ... it's just a matter of probability. Think of any impossible event (like an angel, i.e. a shiny humanoid with wings, integrating in front of your eyes) and that's possible. It's just highly unlikely.
In that light I consider miracles to be very unlikely events. Life on earth is such an event, especially since we haven't found proof that life exists on other planets yet, although we have found the proper conditions (like water).
And if life exists on such a planet, did it manage to evolve like us? This is even more unlikely since we may not have the means to observe bacteria from a distance, but we could observe artificial lights and non-random radio signals coming from other planets.
And then ... if we manage to build interstellar ships and expand to other planets, that will be prof in itself that no other intelligent beings managed to do that ... simply because aliens had a lot of time to expand to earth before we appeared (after all, if you have enough room to expand, the growth rate is exponential).
You can say that life happened by chance, but currently intuition suggests otherwise.
Not only that ... but the miracles you witness everyday stop being miracles. Babies being born are a miracle, simply because this probably doesn't happen in any other of the billions of galaxies. And you being able to transcend your original condition and reason about such things is another.
Thing is, anything can happen ... it's just a matter of probability. Think of any impossible event (like an angel, i.e. a shiny humanoid with wings, integrating in front of your eyes) and that's possible. It's just highly unlikely.
In that light I consider miracles to be very unlikely events. Life on earth is such an event, especially since we haven't found proof that life exists on other planets yet, although we have found the proper conditions (like water).
And if life exists on such a planet, did it manage to evolve like us? This is even more unlikely since we may not have the means to observe bacteria from a distance, but we could observe artificial lights and non-random radio signals coming from other planets.
And then ... if we manage to build interstellar ships and expand to other planets, that will be prof in itself that no other intelligent beings managed to do that ... simply because aliens had a lot of time to expand to earth before we appeared (after all, if you have enough room to expand, the growth rate is exponential).
You can say that life happened by chance, but currently intuition suggests otherwise.
Not only that ... but the miracles you witness everyday stop being miracles. Babies being born are a miracle, simply because this probably doesn't happen in any other of the billions of galaxies. And you being able to transcend your original condition and reason about such things is another.