Australia to get it’s first Sky Fairy.

A Letter to Noor Almaleki

Australia is poised to get its first saint. Mary MacKillop, a Catholic nun who, in the 1800s was instrumental in founding the “Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart”, an order of Australian nuns, will likely be confirmed as a saint by the Catholic Church some time this year.

While the procedure in the Catholic Church for being declared a saint is cumbersome and time consuming, there are essentially three major steps. First, the Church must declare that the person was of "heroic virtue", which essentially means that they lived an outstanding life, consistent with the then prevailing doctrines and political views of the Catholic Church.

Second, the Catholic Church must find that the applicant-saint was responsible for two miracles. The first miracle allows “beatification”, or being put on the path to sainthood, and the second miracle allows “canonization” or the formal declaration of sainthood.

Under Catholic doctrine, the saint itself cannot perform miracles (why that would be silly). Only the Catholic god can (that, apparently, is not silly). So the story goes that the saint pleads with the Catholic god to perform the particular miracle, God listens and performs it. There is said to have been an “intercession” by the saint. This proves to the Church that the applicant-saint is indeed in heaven and has the ear of the almighty. That this must happen twice is a kind of “double check” that the saint-in-waiting really is interceding on behalf of praying human beings, lest mistakes be made.

Nowadays, given our knowledge of the World, the “miracles” the Church relies on are virtually always medical recoveries. Not so in the past, where purely natural events such as storms, eclipses, and meteors were regularly accepted as “miracles” by the indulgent, gullible and scientifically illiterate church. Such events would be laughed at today, so the Church is forced to retreat into one of the last dark corners where it can still claim miraculous intervention, that of medical uncertainty.

The normal course of events today is that a person is dying of a disease and that person prays (only) to the saint-in-waiting. The sick person later gets better, and “the doctors cannot explain why." Hence, the cure is attributed to the intercession of the putative saint. Essentially, “I don’t know” equals God.

Of course, it is never something unambiguously miraculous, like the re-growing of a severed limb, or the recovery of a lost eye or ear. Never. The “miracle” is always hidden inside the body and fits snuggly into that uncertain zone where something is medically difficult to explain. That area where a miracle can be claimed and never quite disproved.

Right now, Pope John Paul II has been put on the path to sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI. Normally they would have to wait years from his death to begin the process, but, bowing to Polish political pressure, the Pope, demonstrating perhaps the efficiency he learned while a member of the Hitler Youth (he was, Google it) has started the process early. So the hunt for miracles is on.

I will make a prediction. In fact, I will bet London to a brick that; (i) in their search for two miracles, they will quickly find them, just like George Bush’s underlings, under pressure, found “slam dunk” evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; and (ii) the two miracles will both be medical “miracles”. The type that lurk in the above shadows. No severed limbs will re-grow, no angels will appear to raise the dead. Nothing clear and unambiguous. Just good, old fashioned cures perfectly explicable by medical uncertainty.

That was clearly true in Mary’s case. Mary, according to the Church, was responsible for the cure of a woman’s leukemia in 1961 and for the 1992 recovery from cancer of a woman called Kathleen Evans, who maintains that she prayed constantly and wore a picture of Mary and an old piece of Mary’s clothing.

Stop for a minute and think of the sheer absurdity of all this. In a nutshell, the Catholic Church is saying this. A sick woman prayed to a nun. The nun, although dead for over 50 years, read the woman’s mind, or “heard her prayers”, to the extent you see a difference. The dead nun then pleaded with the creator of the Universe, who presumably allowed the cancer to form in the first place, and who, although all-knowing and perfect, is capable of having its “mind” changed. This all-knowing creator sees its mistake and uses its magic powers, or “sacred powers” to the extent you see a difference, to alter the fundamental cell chemistry of the patient and cause her cancer to go away.

You buying this? Would you, if I inserted “Vishnu” for “God” in the paragraph above, as millions of Hindus believe?

Might I posit an alternative explanation. Cancers and many other diseases are simply unpredictable. They are unpredictable in how they start and who they afflict, in if and how rapidly they spread, in if and how they respond to treatment and in if and how they go into temporary or permanent remission. Spontaneous remission of cancer is a recognized medical fact. It occurs rarely, but regularly enough to be recorded by the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, and other science-based institutions as a recognized medical phenomenon. Indeed, this unpredictable nature of the illness is what makes it so frustratingly hard to cure. If we knew how and why it started, spread and stopped, we would probably know enough about it to have cured it by now. In such a case, the Catholic Church would be forced to find its “miracles” under other dark rocks.

Moreover, spontaneous remission of disease happens across the board. It happens to Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Jews, agnostics and devil worshippers. It happens no more regularly to those who pray than it does to those who do not. It happens to good people and bad. From the smartest, most upstanding members of society down to murders, rapists and plaintiffs’ lawyers. It intercedes with obvious blind indifference to the merit or worth of its beneficiaries.

Does the mere fact that many of these people prayed to their respective gods prior to the spontaneous remission of their disease mean their particular god intervened? Can the atheist who crossed his fingers claim a miracle from the index finger cured has cancer? Can the Muslim claim intervention by Allah?

It is a basic law of logic that, just because A happens before B, it does not mean that A caused B. In the oft cited example, the cock crowing before sunrise does not mean the cock caused the sun to rise. The fact that many, probably the vast majority of people with terminal illness, pray coupled with the fact that spontaneous and unexplained cures occur, albeit rarely, means that, statistically, there is bound to be overlap from time to time. People who pray will undergo unlikely and unexplained cures from time to time, as will those who don’t. A stopped clock is right twice a day.

In fact, given that most terminally ill believers pray, it would be far stranger if spontaneous remission avoided believers and seeming miracle cures never occurred. Human nature being what it is, however, the dots are joined, and the miracle proclaimed. Just as the proud cock may proclaim that he caused the sun to rise, the gullible believer takes it as a fait accompli that his prayers cured his illness.

The sporting world is full of athletes who have “lucky shoes” or who eat special meals or undergo specific routines before a game based on the fact that, one time when they did so, they performed very well. A preceded B, so A caused B.

In fairness, I expect that, if I were religious, and prayed to a “saint” and later had my disease go away, I would take some convincing that I was not cured because I prayed. Add societal pressure and constant messages of reinforcement that it is somehow “proper” or “good” to believe in gods and miracles (and the natural tendency not to be “ungrateful” just in case) and the declaration of a miracle is all but certain.

Then, of course, there is the other side of the equation. The so-called “unanswered prayer”.

Most of the United States Armed Forces come from blue collar backgrounds. They are generally the sons, and increasingly, the daughters of lower to middle income families, often from rural or small town America. As such, they tend to be strong Christians. Not all, but certainly the majority of members of the US Armed Forces are Christians and/or have come from devotedly Christian families.

I know first hand that the loss of a child is probably the greatest emotional pain the human mind is capable of experiencing, and something from which a parent will never truly recover. I have little doubt of the nightly anguish and worry the parents of these soldiers must go through when their child is away at war. They must worry constantly that tomorrow may be the day that a black car from the Defense Department arrives to tell them their child has been killed in action. Sleeping must be a difficult and stilted experience.

Given their religious convictions, these parents must pray on a regular basis.

As at writing, approximately 4,500 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and 1,500 in Afghanistan. I have no doubt that the vast majority of the parents of these dead soldiers prayed regularly. They must have asked their god for the safe return of their child every day. I can think of no greater circumstance where, if the Christian god were real, a prayer should be answered. A devout, pious Christian parent, who has lived according to the dictates of the Bible, pleading with God for nothing more than that their son or daughter not be blown to pieces while doing their duty for their country. It does not seem a lot to ask of an omnipotent, loving god.

Yet the body bags mount. And they mount with complete indifference to the religion or piousness of the soldiers and their families. There is absolutely no reason to think, and it is offensive and repulsive to assume, that these good families who literally made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, were somehow ignored for being less pious or deserving than their surviving brothers-in-arms. Of course, on the other side, thousands of Muslim parents are suffering the same gut wrenching losses as their prayers to “Allah” go unanswered and their children are killed.

Now, of course, we can come up with the usual, nauseating ways to explain away the various gods' inactions - they move in mysterious ways, it is all part of their grand plan, we cannot know why they do what they do etc. Funny, however, that total inaction is just what we would expect if there were no god.

Let's be honest. Praying for miracles is useless. Useless regardless of your god. Useless for the simple reason that there is nothing there to hear your prayers. You are pleading to a vacuum, imploring a zero. You are fooling yourself if you think they are periodically “answered”. You are relying, like an addicted gambler, on the periodic reinforcement of A before B means A caused B. In this sense, and as discomforting as it may be, religion can really be seen as little more than a reluctance to accept the fact that the Universe simply does not give a damn.

Which brings us back to (soon to be) Saint Mary MacKillop. She has, apparently performed two recognized miracles. She waited 50 years after her death to perform the first and a further 30 more to perform the second. Perhaps, this is statistically about how long it would take for a true believer who prayed predominantly to a relatively obscure personality like Mary to undergo the rare spontaneous remission of their disease. Meanwhile, many thousand of other worthy Australians were ignored and died. Mary doesn’t seem to be very attentive. Then again, who can blame her. After all “Saint Mary” was once excommunicated by the Catholic Church following a falling out with the Church hierarchy. It seems saintliness or sinner status has as much to do with politics in the Catholic church as it does with “miracles”.

The Fallacy of "Miracles"

A Letter to Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali

On the fifth of November, 2009, Nidal Malik Hasan, a mentally disturbed US Army Major, walked into the offices where he worked at the US military base at Fort Hood, Texas. After bowing his head for a few seconds, Hasan, a Muslim, reportedly jumped on a table, shouted “Allāhu Akbar” (“God is the greatest” in Arabic) and opened fire, killing 13 people and wounding 30.

Immediately after the incident, the same thing happened that happens after every such tragedy. People saw the hand of god all over the incident. Their god. The badly injured proclaimed it a "miracle" that they had survived the shooting, the slightly injured saw a miracle in the fact that they were not badly hurt, and to those unaffected, but in the proximity of the shooting, it was a miracle that the gunman had passed them by. Each person basically looked one circle in closer to the tragedy and declared it a miracle that they were one circle out.

Meanwhile, those nowhere near the disaster proclaimed it a miracle that more people weren't killed and still others saw a miracle in the (true and admirable) heroism of police officer Mark Todd in taking down Hasan before he took more lives. Paradoxically, but predictably, Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Muslim Imam, who allegedly inspired and incited the attack, proclaimed it a miracle from Allah that the attack occurred in the first place and that 13 "American Infidels" were killed.

So many miracles. Overlapping and inconsistent.


This is nothing peculiar to the Fort Hood shootings. It happens every time there is a tragedy or near tragedy of any kind, anywhere in the world. Captain "Sully" Sullenberger pilots a distressed plane to land safely the Hudson River in New York City and nobody is killed, and it's a miracle from God; a young girl is found in India, totally terrorized, but alive after being abducted and raped for a week, and it’s a miracle from Rama (or Vishnu or Shiva) that she is returned to her parents; an earthquake kills 5,000 people in Tibet, it's a fortune not of a god, but of Karma that more people weren't killed; or a family in Northern Pakistan survives an errant American drone attack, and it’s a miracle from Allah.

What all these proclamations of miraculous intervention miss is the downside of the incidents. The fact that the passengers and crew of Flight 1549 were terrorized and the plane destroyed, that 13 innocent people are dead at Fort Hood, that the girl was held for seven days, raped and sodomized and will be traumatized for the rest of her life, the 5,000 dead and 20,000 injured in the quake, or that a number of innocent civilians were killed by the drone.

Of course, none of these incidents really are "miracles," they are tragedies, from end to end. And that's just the point. When the totality of facts are taken into account, "miracles" turn out to be nothing more than people ignoring the downside of a set of facts, focusing solely on the "good" and calling the quarantined "good" a "miracle." One might as well ignore the four legs of a table and declare it a miracle that the tabletop remains suspended in midair.
Upon the slightest critical reflection, the "miracle" quickly disappears. In any tragedy, there will be victims and lucky survivors. If all survived, it would not count as a tragedy and if all died, well, we’d all be dead. This is neither miraculous nor unusual, it is everyday life. Every cloud may have a silver lining, but there is nothing miraculous about the silver.

The usual answer given by adherents of the Great Pretend to the observation that, if the relevant god really was bent on performing a miracle, why did he allow the tragedy to occur at all, is that the “bad facts” that gave stage for the climactic miraculous intervention were all humans’ doing and that God/Allah/Yahweh/Brahma etc. swooped in at the last minute to save the day. The classic case is the recovered drug addict or cancer patient who confidently declares it a miracle that they are still alive. Their wasted years living in a drug induced haze or years of struggling against the disease are conveniently assigned to human imperfections or, in extreme cases, to the “devil” or some other malevolent being, but the recovery or cure is unquestioningly assigned to their chosen deity.

This methodology of retrospectively assigning good facts to the good deity and bad facts to imperfect humans or the evil deity also has the convenient fringe benefit of making the putative god immune to disproof. Evidence against its miraculous intents, such as “well, if God was intent on protecting you, why did he still allow you to spend five years as a cocaine addict,” is countered with (the ironically true) “well, that was all my doing.”

Let me make a prediction. The next time there is a tragedy anywhere in the World, be it in India, China, the USA, Egypt, South America, or anywhere else, the local population will proclaim that the miraculous intervention of their god(s) saved the day. Over the course of the next year (whenever you happen to be reading this letter) there will be miracles from God, Yahweh, Allah, Brahman, Vishnu, and hundreds of other contemporary deities. The next time a mine or church collapses anywhere in poor South America, it will be a miracle from the Christian god that nobody was killed. If only a few people die, it will be a miracle that more weren't killed. If all die, it will be a miracle that a statue (or painting) survived. Quite possibly, the surviving art work will attain a local fame equal to Guatemala's Black Jesus. People will pray to it. Watch this space.

Who knows, perhaps competing gods are all sitting up in the sky, watching the Earth and selectively intervening with miracles in the geographical areas of the planet where their believers live and ignoring all other parts of the World. Perhaps the many Hindu gods are drumming up miracles in India, Allah is intervening to kill Americans in Iraq, while God protects Americans over the Hudson. Gods carving up the worldwide believers market in flagrant breach of the Antitrust laws.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, all this is just silly. Isn't it more likely that the millions of daily “miracles” and the gods who perform them exist solely in our minds. That we see miracles in tragedies because we so want to see them. We as a species are distraught by tragedy and cannot stand the thought that there is no divine justice. Nobody there to punish the bad and reward the good. No "ying" to balance the "yang." It makes us feel good to think of gods and miracles. It evens things up, relieves pain and provides security. How often do you hear the victims of crime or other injustice mention that they are comforted by the fact that their perpetrator will “go to hell” or otherwise face divine retribution. As an atheist, I would love a dollar for every Christian I have debated who has smugly taken comfort in telling me that I will burn in the Christian hell for eschewing the Christian god. It was George Bernard Shaw who remarked, “The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.”

On the flip side, if we ourselves survive a disaster, we feel a need to thank our god, lest it consider us ungrateful and the next time we might not be so lucky. Human psychology 101.

If all these "miracles" really were the acts of god, why can we predict with complete and absolute certainty when and how they will occur, and why do they occur all over the world with blind indifference to the faith or worth of their beneficiaries? More fundamentally, why are all "miracles," without exception, perfectly explicable by natural events. The author is reminded of Lourdes, where thousands of gullible Christians visit each year in vain search of a miracle cure to their (often terminal) illnesses. It never really happens, but the crowds keep coming.

If a god really wanted to reveal itself through a miracle, what would be easier than making a big public display of it so as to remove doubt - descending over an earthquake and stopping the rumbling, having a guardian angel appear and stop the Fort Hood shooter in his tracks, actually showing at Lourdes for once - you get the picture. Well, of course, this never happens, and it is so far-fetched that it even seems silly to suggest it. The skeptic’s poignant observation that miracles are always perfectly explicable by natural events is met with the shallow rebuke “god moves in mysterious ways” or the equally vacuous “god does not want to reveal himself, so that we have real faith.” Sounds a lot like exactly what they would have to say if there is no god.

Maybe it's time to grow up as a species. Maybe, as a child eventually, if reluctantly, sheds its Santa Clause and pretend friends, we adults should intellectually outgrow our invisible, wish-granting sky-fairies. Imagine for a moment, as John Lennon implored us to do, a World without religion. Imagine if all the billions of dollars in time, effort and hard cash that we spend worldwide on religion each year were instead funneled into something real and worthwhile, like reducing poverty, improving education or protecting the environment. We could probably make huge strides toward curing the chosen ill.

Now that would be a miracle.