Why Unbelief Survives the Miraculous

If an atheist saw a man raised from the dead, would it affect their lack of belief in the miraculous? Probably not, says Rod Dreher . It didn’t change the minds of religious Jews when they witnessed Jesus bring back Lazarus:

Christians today marvel at the shortsightedness of those pious Jews, but those frightened men’s concern is entirely understandable.

When confronted with signs and wonders, it is not easy to discern the meaning of the events. If one is too credulous, one risks being led astray from the truth (as the saying goes, you don’t want your mind to be so open that your brains fall out). If one is too skeptical, one risks persisting in error. Twenty years ago, I experienced a true adult conversion to Christianity, after experiencing an answer to prayer so unexpected and inexplicable that it would have taken more faith to dismiss it as a coincidence than to believe it was a communication from God. I chose to believe, for once, and it changed my life.

In the years since, I have witnessed on three occasions, in the presence of friends who were not believers, or at best nominal believers, events that presented physical evidence of the spiritual realm — and in one case, of the bona fide miraculous. All three cases were instances that would have easily met Pinker and Goldstein’s criterion for collapsing materialism. In no case did the friends of mine who were witnesses have deeply thought out convictions about atheism and materialism; indeed, I suspect none would have called themselves atheists.

Yet in only one case did the friend change her life based on what she saw. In fact, the friend who experienced the most thrilling miracle of them all — I saw it too — was the one who was least affected by it.

Why not? The answer is that in most cases, we only believe what we are prepared to accept.

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