A Miracle Test

Usually when a supposed miracle is suggested to me the implication is something about how I should change my world view and life style quite significantly. This is usually goes something along the lines of: “Miracle X proves that god Y exist so therefore you must do Z”. There are of course problems with such claims but we will ignore them for the sake of simplicity and argument.

Considering this I think it is completely fair to ask the person that “if we only consider the evidence of the supposed miracle would you be willing to change your world view and life significantly also?” Or in other words for the sake of argument lets say that Miracle X proves God A (instead of Y) and so you should therefore do B (Instead of Z).

For example if you believe that there is compelling evidence that Jesus Christ was resurrected then lets say that for the sake of argument that there is equally compelling evidence is in favor of Muhammad riding off to heaven on a winged horse and therefore Allah exists and you should become a Muslim. Would you immediately disown Christianity and become a follower of Islam?

Or we can consider an example I often come across because I live in Utah and was raised in a Mormon family. The supposed miracle “do you really believe that a 18 year old boy (Joseph Smith) with a 3rd grade education could have written the entire book of Mormon in X amount of days (I don’t remember how long it was but it was a relatively short amount of time)?” Well my question to these people is, If a man advocating voodoo wrote and equally complex book, had an equal (or even less) amount of education, and in an equally amount of days would you immediately switch your religion to voodoo?

If the answer is no to these questions, I find that interesting because you asking to me believe in evidence that is not even compelling enough for you. This of course does not objectively prove or disprove the miracle, but it is an interesting question to ask, and can be used to avoid petty debates over fuzzy historical records or evidence. And really get to the issue of if someone is trying to actually appeal to your intelligence or just intimidate you with supposed evidence that they don’t even find compelling themselves.