What would you do if you found out God existed

[Catholic_Lady]

Well, dont we know through science that natural disasters are caused by winds, temperature fronts, tectonic plate movements, etc? Don't we know that murderers, and other evil acts are caused by people, not some magical force? Perhaps there are some religions that believe God causes all that in some supernatural way, but I can't speak to that because it isn't what I believe.

I do believe there have been instances of miracles, yes. In those cases God is intervening. But i do think these miracles are extremely rare, and they are the exception, not the rule. If God were to intervene every time something bad was about to happen, we'd be puppets  living in a very different world I think.

We only determine something is a miracle when there is no other possible explanation for it. Example, a man suffers from severe headaches and seizures. He has a mass in his brain consistent with a stage 4 brain tumor as seen by multiple doctors in various imaging tests, MRI, and CT scans. He goes to a church and prayes his heart out. The next day he has another appointment and more imaging tests are done in preparation for surgery. The mass is completely gone, when it was just there a few days before. He hadnt yet started any sort of treatment yet. The surgery is cancelled. His headache is gone, and he never again suffers another seizure. A case like that would get investigated for the possibility of being a miracle, and may be officially proclaimed as one.

I guess some people are very quick to call every little thing a miracle when it could have just been good luck, but there's nothing official about that, so I can't really comment on it. I'm not one of those people.

Fair enough, but how do you determine that we've exhausted every other possible explanation?  Especially when considering the miracles that have happened more than a century ago, when our knowledge of science was nothing compared to what it is today (and going back further it gets even worse), were those people with their limited knowledge validated in concluding that they had run out of every other possible explanation?  Would someone today be reasonable in saying they've run out of every other possible explanation, if a new explanation might be around the corner in 20 years with new technology?  That's the big issue I have with calling anything a miracle, even if it's an event that seems miraculous to us at this point in time, because we don't know what sort of new investigative abilities we'll have in the future - it seems premature.

And you mentioned determining the cause of weather/murder/etc.  There are plenty of events that could be explained by natural/material forces that are still held up as miracles, even 'official' miracles accepted by the Catholic Church.  For example, the miracle recognized by the Vatican for Mother Teresa's canonization beatification was the apparently miraculous healing of an Indian woman's abdominal tumor after she rubbed a picture of Mother Teresa over the area.  She was being treated by doctors and was undergoing therapy for her disease for nearly a year, and even her husband said the miracle is a hoax, and that the thing that cured her was modern medicine (conveniently, the medical records were confiscated by the Missionaries of Charity).  

The above 'miracle' is officially recognized by the Catholic Church - but it seems to fit your description of something that is NOT a miracle - we have a physical, material explanation with a mechanism for how the result (tumor healed) was achieved.  Do you think the Catholic church was wrong in considering this a miracle?  Could you give an example of a miracle that you consider to be genuine?

EDIT - beatification, not canonization

I guess it's impossible to determine that. Maybe 100 years from now we will discover that a certain type of scent immediately makes brain tumors go away if we inhale it or something lol. And that's why the guy in my example was spontaneously cured. I haven't looked into nor am I familiar with many Church approved miracles, but if I had to guess I'd say some of them were probably caused by completely natural causes. I definitely do believe in the Fatima sun miracle. I see what you mean about proclaiming something a miracle "prematurely", and considering we will never understand everything about the world, every miracle made official will be premature in that sense. I suppose for lack of a better way to put it, it's "harmless" to believe that something was a miracle. With the exception of the miracles of Jesus, the immaculate conception, and others in the Gospel, official miracles are still not dogmatic. This means that they are not infallible teaching that all faithful Catholics must adhere to. Actually it's perfectly fine for a Catholic not to believe in the Fatima miracle or any other miracle of the like. Probably for the very reason you listed.    

I'm not too familiar with the abdominal tumor miracle, but I'll look into it and let you know what I think. The "rule" for officiating a miracle like that is that there cannot be possibility of the cure being caused by medical treatment. So it strikes me as strange that they'd officiate it.