Miracles are events that cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws --  suggesting that these inexplicable events may only happen because of divine intervention by a supernatural deity. Therefore, it never occurred to me that an atheist might believe in miracles. So when I watched an interview with Oprah Winfrey in which prominent atheist Dan Barker claimed that he had prayed in the name of Jesus Christ and as a result, a man was instantly healed of laryngitis, it frankly caught me by surprise. Even more interesting was my discovery that former pastor Jerry DeWitt's autobiography Hope After Faith contained multiple claims of divine intervention that ranged from the mundane ("magnetically" led to find an allegedly special triangle-shaped rock) to the truly spectacular (the spontaneous healing of a brain aneurysm allegedly caused by his prayers for a miracle in the name of the Christ.)  Both Dan and Jerry asserted that remarkable phenomena occurred as a result of their fervent prayers -- in fact, they seemed to be bragging about it. Otherwise, why would they even mention that these alleged miracles took place, if these men didn't want us to believe something truly inexplicable had occurred because of something they had done? Yet when pressed to provide a rational explanation for such an incredible coincidence, if it was not an act of God, atheists can't explain what happened. Atheist scientist Jacalyn Duffin's involvement in the verification of an alleged miracle healing was just as impressive as Jerry DeWitt's aneurysm story because of the medical … [Read more...]