Miracle

A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or preternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, (especially) a deity, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader.

Informally, English-speakers often use the word miracle to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood (e.g. "the miracle of childbirth"). Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.

A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many writers to dismiss miracles as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed (for instance) by Thomas Jefferson, and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, may work without, above, or against it as well.

The word miracle is usually used to describe any beneficial event considered physically impossible or otherwise inexplicable by natural means. Theologically, however, there are more specific definitions. Wayne Grudem defines a miracle as "a less common kind of God's activity in which he arouses people's awe and wonder and bears witness to himself". A deistic perspective of God's relation to the world defines a miracle as a direct intervention of God into the world.

A miracle may be false information or simply a fictional story, rather than something that truly happened. A miracle experience may be due to cognitive errors (e.g. overthinking, jumping to conclusions) or psychological errors (e.g. hallucinations) of witnesses. Use of some drugs such as psychedelics (e.g. ecstasy) may produce similar effects to religious experiences.

Statistically improbable events are sometimes called miracles. For instance, when three classmates coincidentally meet in a different country decades after having left school, they may consider this miraculous. However, a colossal number of events happen every moment on Earth; thus, extremely unlikely coincidences also happen every moment. Events considered impossible are therefore not so – they are just increasingly rare and dependent on the number of individual events. British mathematician J. E. Littlewood suggested that individuals should statistically expect one-in-a-million events to happen to them at the rate of about one per month. By his definition, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.

A miracle is a phenomenon claimed to be unexplained by known laws of nature. The criteria for classifying an event as a miracle vary. Often a religious text, such as the Bible or Quran, states that a miracle occurred, and believers may accept this as fact.

The Aristotelian view of God has God as pure actuality and considers him as the prime mover doing only what a perfect being can do, think. Jewish neo-Aristotelian philosophers who are still influential today include Maimonides, Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon, and Gersonides. Directly or indirectly, their views are still^{[as of?]} prevalent in much of the religious Jewish community.