Sam Harris on The argument from miracles
Harris dismisses miracle claims as products of human credulity, noting that no miracle has ever withstood scientific scrutiny.
Harris approaches miracle claims with the standard that should apply to any extraordinary assertion: proportionate evidence. The claim that a man rose from the dead, or that water was turned into wine, is an extraordinary claim about the laws of nature. The evidence offered — ancient, secondhand, anonymously authored texts — is not remotely proportionate.
He notes that miracle claims are universal across religions and mutually incompatible. Hindu miracles, Islamic miracles, and Christian miracles cannot all be genuine, since they support contradictory theological systems. The most parsimonious explanation is that none of them are genuine — they all arise from the same cognitive biases: pattern recognition, confirmation bias, and the desire for meaning.
Harris argues that the decline of miracle claims in proportion to the improvement of recording technology is telling. Miracles were common in the ancient world, rare in the modern, and nonexistent under controlled conditions. This is exactly the pattern we would expect if miracles do not occur.
“Tell me why you reject all the miracles of every other faith tradition, and I will tell you why I reject yours.”