Quote Originally Posted by thir View Post
Not to me, but to some people it is god's punishment, and they anguish about what they have done wrong.
Part of the reason for that is that they have been raised to believe that anything bad that happens to them is punishment from God. And to be honest, for some people that concept is far more comfortable than the idea that there is no reason for some things. Some things just happen.

True. But is also means that you cannot off-hand reject what you cannot prove right now.
Agreed. And there are scientists who are studying supernatural and paranormal claims. They have yet to find anything verifiable, however. If they ever do then we may have to change our ideas. I'm not holding my breath, though.

In earlier times, reports of meteorites were rejected, because everybody knew that rocks do not fall out of the sky.
"The Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them" - Joshua 10:11
Apparently the ancient Jews knew that rocks could fall from the sky. So did the ancient Greeks. They reasoned that the rocks were actually from the ground and had been picked up by winds, but they did know they fell from the sky. While it is true that there was a period during the 18th century when some scientists stated categorically that stones could not fall from the sky, it was hardly a universal belief. After all, stones were seen to fall.

I am not talking about divine writ, but of what people may report that they experience, see, hear - whatever.
Eye-witness testimony has been shown to be one of the least reliable methods of establishing the truth. People's perceptions are sometimes altered by their experiences, beliefs or even wishful thinking.

For example near death or death experiences. If science 'knows' that what people say cannot be true, then it is rejected, no matter what.
Near death experiences have been studied, and found to be not credible. It seems, IIRC, that peoples experiences tend to follow cultural and religious lines. You don't find devout Catholics experiencing the Hindu version of heave, for example. And if I'm not mistaken, scientists have been able to duplicate some of these experiences by stimulating various parts of the brain.

But some might be myth or legend, which I personally think comes from somewhere - even if it can be almost impossible to know what it was from the start.

Maybe some religious texts are the same, a version of something that happened, seen in a religious light.
Of course. I'm not about to claim that these stories are made up out of thin air. There is a basis for them. The universal flood stories, for example, are most probably based upon actual floods which caused tremendous amounts of damage. And in an age when most people rarely went further than a few miles from home, these floods would seem to have wiped out the world.

Optimally, yes. But there is dogma in science as well. And sometimes who says something is more important than what is said.
True again. There are those who have established themselves through their work as being experts. If you're going to joust against those windmills you have to make sure you have proof. And science works slowly sometimes. Many discoveries, especially those which overturn established theories, have the same problems as religions: those making extraordinary claims must provide extraordinary evidence.

How do you distinguish between 'miracles' and 'do not know yet'?
The first thing you have to do is find a real miracle. Then you study it, dissect it, learn about it. That will usually solve the problem.

Can you show me a miracle that hasn't been explained?

But as long as each person keep their beliefs as something individual and do not try to invade others with it, it does not matter.
I've said exactly the same thing. But look around you. Here in the US, for example, our money says, "In God We Trust". Our Pledge of Allegiance states, "One nation under God." Religious groups are continuously attempting to change the laws which separate Church and State. These are not the actions of people keeping their beliefs to themselves.