So over the last few days there has been a lot of hubbub on the Internet about a supposed “miracle baby” in Argentina who was thought to be stillborn and left for dead in a morgue. The thing is that the kid wasn’t actually dead, and she somehow survived there for over 12 hours before being discovered. And people are calling her a “miracle baby” that somehow proves the existence and goodness of God, blah blah blah…
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great the kid survived (though recent reports show that she may be dying). But it just bugs the crap out of me when people point to events like this as some kind of “proof” of God’s omnipotence and goodness. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it blatantly ignores the big and classical problem of evil and suffering in the world. Why would a “good” God allow such a thing to happen to this little baby in the first place?
Or, to put a little more punch to my point and as a way of balancing out this topic with a harsh dose of reality, allow me to share the following picture which is worth more than a thousand words…
And another thing this whole story got me thinking about: it seems to me that the standards people have for so-called “miracles” have been dropping. I’ve heard people declare that “it was a miracle their headache went away”; are you kidding me? I’m an atheist and all I have to do to get over a headache is… wait. Maybe your claim to a “miracle” might be a bit more impressive if you had your arm hacked off in an industrial accident and it magically regrew after you prayed. To put this whole criticism of miracles into perspective, allow me to share this humorous graphic 🙂
Thanks to Irreligion.org
The Skeptical Teacher 