http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/10/post_3.html
I'm not a miracle. And neither are the Chilean miners. We are all alive today for perfectly rational reasons. Yet there is a common compulsion to describe unlikely outcomes as miraculous -- if they are happy, of course. If sad, they are simply reported on, or among the believing described as "the will of God." Some disasters are so horrible they don't qualify as the will of God, but as the work of Satan playing for the other team.
The 9/11 tragedy, for example, was described by very few as the will of God, although many blamed it on Satan, and Pat Robertson briefly believed it was God's way of punishing us for our sins. Within Al Qaeda circles, of course, it was seen as the Will of Allah, and, given the competence of the first-time jet pilots, perhaps qualified as miraculous.
Like so many of us, I watched with joy as the miners emerged from their tomb, one after another. In a year of sadness, it was a blessed moment. One can sympathize with those who called it a miracle, but actually it was the result of perfectly understandable engineering techniques. The construction of the mine itself, so deep in the earth, was a much more impressive feat, but no one thought to describe that as a miracle.
How much better to describe the rescue as the result of the fortitude of the miners and the skill of the good-willed people on the surface who reached them in what was, after all, a very short time. How much better to say the outcome in Chile was the result of intelligence and good will. But there seems to be a narrative in these matters that requires the citing of divinity. Newscasters, victims and their families alike praise the powers above. This reassures us -- of what? That everybody knows the script.
Much more at link.
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