Miracles would be proof?

Over at Unreasonable Faith, Daniel Florien has a nice post on "Why We Should Trust Reason Over Emotion." Mostly, I just want to chime in and say, yeah, what he said -- but with one "but."

It's that last part of the post: Miracles would be proof. Daniel writes,

Jennifer says that it is “ignorant” to dismiss miracles. And if there were real miracles, I would agree — why would someone dismiss amazing things that really happened?

I've got to disagree. I've got Paine too much on the mind right now, I guess. What I'd like to argue is that the very notion of miracles is somewhat incoherent. As Paine noted, the idea of calling something a miracle involves a truly stupendous claim -- namely, that one knows, absolutely and totally, what is and is not possible. Something may be inexplicable by current human understanding, but that does not, in any way, mean it's a miracle. It is far more likely that it just means there's something we don't understand yet. To establish that something is a "miracle," you'd have to know a heck of a lot more than we do now. Or will ever likely know, quite possibly.

But there's another point, and I'll illustrate it with an example: let's say that tomorrow, every single person on the planet hears a big, booming voice, saying (in the language of every hearer) "I am the Lord God. Bow before me, humans, lest you be doomed to hellfire!" That would, I think you'll all admit, be pretty amazing. It would be a singular event in human history, and come as close as one can to the notion of "miracle." So, wow! God spoke to us! Right?

Says who?.How would you know that the voice is God? Just because the event is amazing? Just because the voice says so? That's a pretty big leap. Maybe it's some weird alien. Maybe it's a being from another universe having some fun. The leap -- from the event to the explanation -- is huge, however "miraculous" the event appears to be. What would this miracle truly be proof of? Not much. Just of itself, really. We could say, wow, something amazing happened. But going beyond that, well, you get into pure speculation. In science, you extrapolate from your data to make a claim -- but it's important not to extrapolate any further than the data allows (that, incidentally, is one of the biggest differences between science and pseudoscience).

And that's the problem with miracles. As Paine noted, even if they did happen, it wouldn't matter -- they explain nothing. They teach us nothing. They establish nothing. They wouldn't prove anything. At most, you could say, wow, something really interesting happened. Anything else would be nothing more than speculation and wild guessing.