The Nature of Agnosticism Part 5
Religious Experience, Miracles, and Revelation I was rereading old posts and realized that I had touched on miracles and religious experience without ever giving them the treatment they deserve. That omission matters because these concepts are not peripheral to religious belief. In ordinary conversations with believers—often more than in formal apologetics—personal experience is one of the most persistent reasons people give for believing, remaining believers, or trying to persuade someone else. Miracles, religious experiences, revelation, prophecy, and testimony are deeply related, but they are not interchangeable. A religious experience is an episode interpreted by the subject as involving something sacred, divine, ultimate, or metaphysically significant. A miracle claim adds a causal or theological interpretation to an event. Revelation adds the further claim that something has been disclosed by a divine source, often with content and authority. Prophecy communicates alle...