Miracles
The term "miracle," like the word nice, is often used to refer primarily to the responses of the user. In this usage, a miracle is merely some event that astounds the speaker, with perhaps some presumption that others will or should react to it in the same way; just as in the parallel case nice means simply "agreeable to me," with perhaps again some suggestion that all right-minded people will feel the same. But the senses of "miracle" that are of philosophical and methodological interest are stronger and less subjectively oriented. Although they include the idea that wonder is called for as at least part of the appropriate response, the crux as well as the ground for the wonder is that a miracle should consist in an overriding of the order of nature. A miracle is something that would never have happened had nature, as it were, been left to its own devices.
This idea of overriding is essential; however, it is certainly subject to various variations and additions. Some writers, for instance, insist that the word miracle should be used in such a way that it becomes necessarily true that a miracle can be worked only by God or by his specially deputed agents.
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