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Miracle happens: "That doesn't count:

1. it wasn't under controlled conditions
2. it wasn't observed by specialists, only by common people who are given to [various generalized ad hominem descriptions which are *themselves* unsubstantiated]
3. the textual descriptions are uncertain, and were not reported immediately in a properly peer-reviewed journal
4. there are charlatans, who fake miracles for money. this instance purports to be a miracle. therefore if the witnesses are acting in good faith, they were merely deceived by a charlatan."

The problem isn't that there is "no evidence" : it is that they reject the evidence at hand as not being of sufficient quality / quantity to allow them to apply "scientific principles" (e.g. Occam's razor, null hypothesis).

But they don't realize that science doesn't give you "the TRUTHTM" but instead is a tool for pruning existing models to eliminate false positives.

It doesn't do such a good job on false negatives: for in matters of the supernatural, the skeptic tends to conflate a Scottish Law verdict of "not proven" with "necessarily false."

And, similar to the glee with which atheists and 'higher thinkers' tend to attack sola scriptura ("just pull on this one loose end and the whole thing unravels!"), so too, they cannot allow *any* tinge of the supernatural, or their whole materialistic faith unravels.

Which reminds me of a couple of earlier posts:

http://209.157.64.200/focus/news/2379629/posts?page=127#127

http://209.157.64.200/focus/news/2379629/posts?page=141#141

OUTSTANDING posts, aruanan! Thank you ever so much for the links!

Some musings on this subject, courtesy of Gagdad Bob's Christmas Day blog article:

... the Creator is a person. Thus, he has principles. But unlike leftists, his principles are not just convenient fig leaves to obscure or lend legitimacy to a tawdry snakedown operation.

Remember, although the Jesus is "Word made flesh," this does not mean that the eternal Word was nowhere to be heard in this vale of ears prior to the Incarnation. Rather, we would say (with Augustine) that the Word and Wisdom of the Christic principle were (and are) always here, and couldn't not be here; again, where there is Truth there is God, and vice versa....
We would go so lo as to see that the affirmation of anything is the affirmation of God, and therefore the negation of "nothing" (nothing being the absurd affirmation of a blind nihilism that can affirm nothing at all, not even itself). Otherwise there is no firm ground for any of your flimsy affirmations.
If, as Eckhart suggests, God ex-ists (for us) because he under-stands, it means that the poor toolish trolls who don't understand these truths don't even properly exist. Or, alternatively, they only exist. And existence without Truth is.... well, first of all it's an absurdity, but more to the point, it is hell. Which is why they refuse to put us out of their misery. The bad word must be shared, for it is lonely at the bottom.

I don't know why people have such a problem with miracles. That they happen at all only tells me that "miraculous" events occur as effects of a non-local cause that is not "in" the same spacetime frame as its effects.

Had our friend a_perfect_lady not read the Holy Scriptures as "flatly" and "literally" as possible — as if it were some kind of instruction manual or "user guide" — perhaps she could have sensed that there, she was dealing, not with "information," but with divinely revealed Truth about the divinely created Great Hierarchy of Being — God–Man–World–Society — of which she, like all of us humans, is firmly a part and participant....

Happy New Year!!!