How common are miracles? | Lee Strobel & Mark Mittelberg
How common are miracles? Aren’t they pretty rare?
By Lee Strobel & Mark Mittelberg
That’s what I used to think—but then I started my investigation into the miraculous. As I began researching this topic, my curiosity prompted me to commission a national scientific survey, which was conducted by Barna Research.
What did we discover?
Interestingly, half of US adults (51 percent) said they believe that the miracles of the Bible happened as they are described. The numbers, however, were lower among millennials (ages eighteen to thirty) compared to baby boomers (ages fifty to sixty-eight) by 43 percent versus 55 percent.
Asked whether miracles are possible today, two out of three Americans (67 percent) said yes, with only 15 percent saying no. The others weren’t sure. Again, there were generational differences, with young adults less likely (61 percent) to believe than boomers (73 percent). Incidentally, Republicans were more likely to believe in modern miracles (74 percent) than Democrats (61 percent)—a statistic on which I offer no comment.
I was interested in what was generating the skepticism of those who don’t think miracles can occur these days. The biggest reasons turned out to be a lack of belief in the supernatural (44 percent) and the contention that modern science has ruled out the possibility of miracles (20 percent). While only 12 percent of those age sixty-nine and older cited science as their obstacle, that number doubled among millennials.
Most of all, I wanted to know how many people have had an experience that they can explain only as being a miracle of God.
I found that a surprising number of Americans believe God has intervened supernaturally in their lives.
As it turns out, nearly two out of five US adults (38 percent) said they have had such an experience—which by extrapolation means that an eye-popping 94,792,000 Americans are convinced that God has performed at least one miracle for them personally.
Even weeding out instances that were actually just coincidences, as many of those undoubtedly would be, that still leaves a surprising number of seemingly supernatural events. Among various age groups, the data stayed fairly consistent: 35.5 percent among millennials and 39.7 percent among boomers.
The conclusion?
It seems that miracles are not nearly as rare as we might assume.
Lee Strobel is founding director of The Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. He is the New York Times best-selling author of The Case for Christ and three dozen other books.
Mark Mittelberg is a bestselling author, speaker and apologist. He is the Executive Director of the Lee Strobel Center at Colorado Christian University.
This is an excerpt from The Miracles Answer Book by Lee Strobel & Mark Mittelberg. Used with permission.