Aiyen:

I think the place I would start -- and did start -- is with the question, "Have I ever personally experienced a miracle?" I quickly discarded most possibilities and came down to just a few, all of which were fundamentally a strong of events, each of which was individually highly unlikely. But unlikely things happen every day, so that's not enough to say it is a miracle.

Next, I would ask if people I personally know and trust have experienced miracles. I'd ask them about their experiences. For me, I knew no one who had experienced anything that sounded like a miracle. Again, there were some unlikely coincidences, but that's not really enough. If one of them claimed to have experienced a true miracle, then I'd keep evaluating their credibility over a long period of time. Does their story change? Reasonable consistency would be more credible. Do they act like I would expect them to act if they had really experienced a miracle? A non-believer suddenly becoming a devout missionary in the absence of any personal crisis would be credible. Do they get anything by claiming to have experienced a miracle? Someone getting attention from conspicuous religiosity is less credible for me, though that doesn't necessarily make sense: if I had personally experienced a miracle, I'd think that I would sell off all my worldly possessions to talk about it as much as possible. Is this yet another in a series of flighty decisions? Going from new age to confused to born-again is not very persuasive for me. And so on.

Finally, given that people have cell phones with cameras now, and given that virtually everything else shows up on YouTube, I would think that there would be at least some credible video. I'd also think that I wouldn't be able to analyze whether it is credible, given the possibility of a good special effects studio. But I bet someone else would and that I would hear about a truly inexplicable video.

Max L.