Julia Sweeney on The argument from miracles
Sweeney's deconversion involved the gradual realisation that miracle claims, examined honestly, are indistinguishable from wishful thinking.
Julia Sweeney's one-woman show Letting Go of God traces her journey from devout Catholicism to atheism, and miracle claims played a significant role in that transition. As she began to examine the miracles she had been taught to accept — the Resurrection, the virgin birth, the saints' miracles required for canonisation — she found that none of them held up to the same standard of evidence she would apply to any other extraordinary claim.
Sweeney's treatment of miracles is personal and narrative rather than philosophical. She describes the moment of realisation with characteristic humour: she had spent her entire life believing that God periodically intervened in the natural order, and one day it simply struck her that this belief rested on no better evidence than the miracle claims of every other religion she had been taught to reject. If she dismissed Hindu miracles and Muslim miracles as superstition, intellectual honesty required her to apply the same standard to Christian ones.
What makes Sweeney's critique effective is its gentleness and its refusal to condescend. She does not mock believers for accepting miracles — she understands the appeal, because she felt it herself. But she argues that honest examination of miracle claims, conducted without the protective shield of prior commitment, leads inevitably to the conclusion that they are products of human psychology rather than divine intervention.
“I realised that the evidence for Christian miracles was exactly as strong as the evidence for every other religion's miracles — which is to say, not very strong at all.”