Editor’s note – We’re running this piece because the question of miracles cuts to the center of Christian belief: either God intervenes in the world He made, or He doesn’t. The author walks through Scripture’s own record of skepticism, from the Philistines searching for a way to call it coincidence to the Pharisees who refused to believe a healed man standing right in front of them. It’s worth remembering that resistance to the miraculous rarely comes down to a lack of evidence.
According to a new study from CBN News and the American Bible Society, 48% of all Americans say they have received a miraculous answer to prayer.¹
Like many things in this country, we have a pretty stark split in our beliefs about divine intervention.
I’m with those who affirm miracles are absolutely real.
But before I share my reasoning, we should first define exactly what we’re talking about.
What is a Miracle?
A miracle is an event that breaks the rules of nature or science.
Its roots are in the Latin word mirari, which means to look at with wonder or astonishment.²
We commonly use the word to describe a completely unexpected event.
Like when a United States hockey team made up of college players defeated the juggernaut Soviet Union team in the 1980 Winter Olympics.³
The eventual 4–3 win for the Yanks was cemented as “The Miracle on Ice” following sportscaster Al Michaels’ game-ending exclamation: “Do you believe in miracles?!“
The Soviets had previously beaten the U.S. team 10–3 in an exhibition before the Olympics. They were the four-time defending gold medalists. They were heavily favored.
It was certainly an implausible win.
An analysis by a modern betting site puts the real odds of a U.S. victory at 10%.⁴
Those are some long odds.
But it’s nonetheless in the realm of possibility. It doesn’t break the normal rules of life.
A miracle breaks the rules.
A miracle is something so extraordinary and mysterious that it cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws. A miracle doesn’t only evoke surprise and astonishment, but invites a sense of wonder.
Editor’s note – The 1980 hockey win makes a good illustration precisely because it wasn’t a miracle. Long odds are still natural odds. A true miracle isn’t just improbable, it’s the suspension of the created order itself, which is exactly why it points beyond nature to its Maker.
So, are Miracles Real?
If you don’t anything can exist outside of the natural world, you cannot believe in miracles.
They are category contradictions.
In order for a miracle to exist, it means the naturalistic rules must have been broken. Therefore, some who doesn’t allow for the existence of the supernatural will never be able to see a miracle. Not without changing their assumptions of what is possible.
Where others credit the divine for an event that breaks the natural rules, the skeptic has different options. Here are three:
Chalking it all up to coincidence
Disbelieving the report
Disbelieving the eyes
We see the same responses existed in the time of the Bible too.
Let’s take a look and see how they play out.
Option 1. It’s All a “Coincidence”
In 1 Samuel Chapter 5, the Philistines have captured the Ark of the Covenant. They’ve taken the holiest physical object from the Israelites and brought it as a trophy to the temple of their god Dagon in Ashdod.
But things don’t go as planned.
The first night with the Ark in residence, the statue of Dagon falls on its face before the Ark.
The temple priests presumably set the statue back up. But the next night the statue falls again before the Ark.
This time the head and hands break off as it lays before the Ark.
And when a plague of tumors breaks out in the city, Ashdod has had enough. They send the Ark on to the city of Gath.
Pestilence breaks out again.
Gath then sends the Ark along to Ekron. Same story. Plague comes to that city. After 7 months of this, Philistia is ready to get rid of their sacred war prize.
They’ve run the analysis and the possibility of coincidence increasingly seems like wishful thinking.
Dagon statue falls on its face before the Ark on night 1: “That’s weird, perhaps we should make sure the base isn’t wobbly when we set it up.”
Dagon statue falls on its face before the Ark on night 2 with the head and hands broken off: “That’s really weird and rather disconcerting. We totally made sure Dagon was solid after he toppled last night. How could he fall again? And this removing of the head and hands is the same thing we do to our defeated enemies to show our dominance. What’s the deal?”
Plague breaks out: “We don’t quite understand what’s happening, but we know we don’t want this Ark of Yahweh anymore. Here you go, Gath.”
Plague breaks out in Gath: “I’m starting to think we don’t want Yahweh in Philistia…”
The Philistine diviners and priests recommend sending the Ark back to Israel, along with a guilt offering to Yahweh.
But they still think it might all just be a coincidence. After all, the supernatural realm is invisible to human eyes, and it takes a measure of faith to believe something you can’t see with your eyes.
So they build in a final test to determine whether they were actually witnessing God’s displeasure. Or if it was all an unlikely, yet coincidental, series of unfortunate events.
They hitch the Ark to a team of oxen and send it on its way. If the unguided oxen take the specific path to go back to Israel, the Philistines will have their final answer:
Take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us but that it happened to us by chance. [1 Samuel 6:8-9]
If you don’t know which way the cart goes, you can pick up the story in 1 Samuel 6:10.
Spoiler alert: the possibility of coincidence looks even less plausible to both Philistines and Israelites by the end of Chapter 7.
Editor’s note – Notice how much effort the Philistines invested in explaining away what they had already seen with their own eyes. That’s often the real cost of unbelief: not a lack of evidence, but the elaborate reasoning required to avoid it. The oxen test they devised to settle the matter ended up settling it for them.
Option 2. Disbelieving the Report
Another way to miss miracles is by rejecting evidence you can see, but don’t understand.
We see this in the 9th chapter of the Gospel of John, when Jesus heals a man who was blind from birth.
The skeptical Pharisees choose to disbelieve and attack the witness.
Here’s what the text says:
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. "He put mud on my eyes," the man replied, "and I washed, and now I see." [John 9:13-15]
They then ask the formerly blind man in verse 17 just what he makes of Jesus: “What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened.”
The man replies with his conviction that Jesus came from God.
But the Pharisees aren’t willing to accept this, and instead go to ask the parents of the man for more research.
They still did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they sent for the man's parents. "Is this your son?" they asked. "Is this the one you say was born blind? How is it that now he can see?" [John 9:18-19]
The parents affirm that their son was indeed born blind. Yet they are afraid to credit Jesus (who is becoming increasingly unpopular with the religious authorities), so they tell the Pharisees they should get the details of what happened from their son.
The Pharisees call for the once-blind man again. They accuse him of lying and tell him to deny Jesus.
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. "Give glory to God by telling the truth," they said. "We know this man is a sinner." He replied, "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!" [John 9:24-25]
They don’t like the answer.
And go back to ask the same question yet again.
Then they asked him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered, "I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?" [John 9:26-27]
That makes them angry.
Then they hurled insults at him and said, "You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from." [John 9:28-29]
But the man has found his courage.
And he stays firm to his conviction which ends with the Pharisees attacking the man and throwing him out.
The man answered, "Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out. [John 9:30-34]
This is what it looks like to disbelieve the report.
The Pharisees, even when confronted with clear evidence of once blind man who was now seeing, were not willing to believe.
They were only willing to entertain “evidence” that would indicate no miracle had actually occurred because that suited their worldview.
Editor’s note – The Pharisees didn’t lack information; they lacked willingness. They interrogated the man, then his parents, then the man again, hoping a different answer would surface. When people are committed to a conclusion, more evidence rarely changes their mind – it just gets explained away.
Option 3. Disbelieving the Eyes
A final option for discounting miracles is refusing to believe even what you do see.
This takes place in the Bible when the risen Christ appears on a mountain in Galilee to His disciples.
It’s a miracle!
It’s the hands-down, never-doubt-again confirmation that it was all real. All the mysterious things Jesus had said about being raised again on the third day finally made sense.⁵ There could never again be any doubts that He was the Messiah and the Son of God who was worthy of all worship.
Except, that’s not what the Bible says at all.
Instead, there was a mix of worship and doubt even when the resurrected Jesus appeared.
When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. [Matthew 28:17]
The disciples would go on to become so secure in their faith that most would later chose martyrdom rather than deny the reality of the resurrected Jesus. But the jarring reality of seeing Him alive was such a shock to their senses that some initially chose doubt over acceptance.
Miracles are jarring to the senses and, especially for the analytically inclined among us, very difficult to believe.
That is very much the case today. And the Bible shows us that this is not a new phenomenon.
Wrapping Up
Miracles are indeed possible, but many of us don’t want to see them, and so we remain blind to them.
Certainly there are people who suffer from an opposite tendency. Those who find a miracle in every fortune cookie. But I think this risk is less likely in the hyper-rationalistic West where many of us have long since decided that miracles are not possible and we refuse to interrogate our assumptions.
Are we willing to actually do the hard work and think about what blinders we already have in place?
If we are, we should seriously consider this question:
Is the primary reason for our doubt in supernatural reality really an honest search for evidence?
Or is the central issue actually the mental struggle of wrestling with the implications of what it would mean if the evidence points to something we don’t like?
Sources and References
1: Groundbreaking new research reveals Americans’ beliefs on miracles, prayer: https://religionnews.com/2026/04/23/groundbreaking-new-research-reveals-americans-beliefs-on-miracles-prayer/
2: Latin definition for mirari: https://latin-dictionary.net/definition/27010/miror-mirari-miratus
3: Miracle on Ice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_on_Ice
4: What Were USA’s Moneyline Odds in 1980 Miracle on Ice vs. Soviet Union?: https://www.actionnetwork.com/nhl/what-would-usa-ussr-moneyline-have-been-in-1980-miracle-on-ice
5: Matthew 16:21, Matthew 17:22-23, Luke 9:22, Luke 11:29-32, John 2:19-21, Matthew 26:32
A Word from the Editor
Miracles were never designed to overpower unbelief by force. Even the disciples who watched the risen Jesus with their own eyes on that mountain in Galilee still doubted. Scripture doesn’t promise that evidence erases doubt; it promises that Christ is patient with us in the middle of it. If you find yourself skeptical, take heart: so did men who stood in the actual presence of the risen Christ. The invitation isn’t certainty first and faith second. It’s to bring whatever belief you have, however mixed with doubt, and let Him grow it from there – the same honest request the father in Mark 9:24 brought to Jesus, admitting his faith and his unbelief in the same breath.
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
Editor Comment: Thank you for walking through Scripture's own record of doubt alongside belief – it's a needed reminder that skepticism about miracles is nothing new.
This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.