The Encyclopedia of World Religions

294 S miracles

terranean world sick people often slept in the temple of Asklepios; some experienced dreams and were miraculously healed. Mountain ascet ics in Japan known as yamabushi healed the sick and cast out demons. In the United States today some people offer miraculous healings over tele vision sets. Christianity claims miraculous powers for J ESUS . The N EW T ESTAMENT presents him as heal ing, casting out demons, and performing other miracles. B UDDHISM says the B UDDHA could perform miracles but was skeptical of them. He once met a person who, after years of spiritual discipline, could walk on water. He lamented that this person had wasted so much time; it is relatively cheap to hire a boat. According to the Q UR ’ AN the prophet M UHAMMAD ’s miracle was having received God’s revelation of the Qur’an. In the Muslim tradition of S UFISM those close to God are believed to have performed miracles. Christian SAINTS are believed to have done so, too. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church declares people to be saints only if they have performed authenti cated miracles. The Virgin M ARY has miraculously appeared to Roman Catholics on many occasions. R ELICS often perform miracles, too. Not everyone accepts miracles. The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero rejected them. The two most important leaders of the Protestant R EFOR MATION , Martin L UTHER and John C ALVIN , encour aged their followers not to look for miracles. In his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), the Scottish philosopher David Hume laid down a principle upon which many have rejected miracles. According to Hume, we can accept evidence that a miracle has occurred on only one condition: If it would be an even bigger miracle for the evidence of the miracle to prove unreliable. Many still find miracles meaningful today. According to the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, any event that reveals God is a miracle, regardless of whether it violates the laws of nature. The psy chologist Carl Gustav J UNG explored miracles in his notion of “synchronicity.” Philosophers of science such as Paul Feyerabend have argued that “world views” that reject miracles are no more valid than

to escape from the world than wanting to change it. Yet millenarian movements have often had a profound historical impact. They have vigorously expressed the discontent of mistreated people, and mobilized them for eventual action on political as well as religious levels. Their visions of a better future have inspired both utopians and reformers. They have started religious movements that, some times with changes, have survived as important denominations. And they have repeatedly demon strated the richness and power of religious VISIONS of the ideal world. miracles Extraordinary events that people claim point to religious truth. It is not quite correct to say that miracles are “supernatural” events. Some religions says that miracles happen by perfectly natural but unusual processes. Many people throughout history have used miracles to argue that their particular religions are true. Those who practice Hindu YOGA claim that siddhis, miraculous powers, show that they have reached certain stages of realization. Celsus, an ancient opponent of C HRISTIANITY , thought that Christian claims were nothing special compared with pagan miracles. In fact, people in virtually every religion have experienced miracles. Some miracles are events that affect our natural surroundings. The anthropologist Clifford Geertz once noted how some residents on the island of Bali saw spiritual force at work in a large, rapidly growing mushroom. In the fall of 1995 images of the Hindu god G ANESA created a stir in India and around the world when they seemed to drink milk. Miracles of nature may be connected with SALVA TION and deliverance. When YHWH (“the Lord”) freed the people of Israel from Egypt, he did so with many miracles. In the 1960s lava from Mount Agung on Bali miraculously missed a temple of S IVA that it should have destroyed. Miracles do not happen just in nature; they happen to human beings, too. Miraculous heal ings are ideal examples ( see HEALING , RELIGIOUS ). Shamans ( see SHAMANISM ) heal by means that we might consider miraculous. In the ancient Medi