I have two personal miracle stories. Neither involves healing or suddenly getting money to pay a bill.
In 2010-ish I was powerful in the Spirit, more so than now. I was a faculty member at a big private university. We had a faculty room with a refrigerator, sink, and our big 4 foot tall master copy machine. I was running VERY late to give a class a test. Kids DO NOT like it when you don't give them tests when they are scheduled, as they want to "cram and forget." I had the master copy in my hand and on my way to class ran to the copy room. There were at least two other people (maybe three). I have eyewitnesses. The copier was dead. I don't mean, lit up and not copying, but dead as if it had no power.. Lights were off. No one could get it to work. I had NO TIME for this and I jammed my test in the slot and laid hands on the copier and shouted "IN THE NAME OF JESUS, WORK!" and it shot to life, copied all my tests. The minute I pulled them out of the hopper, it died and no one else could get it on.
The second was I was with my brother-in-law at a gas station. My wife and I had a practice of whenever walking about just staying alert to what we called "favor of the Lord," pennies, nickels, whatever, which we put in a jar and haven't touched to this day. (One time I found $14 outside Taco Bell---but that's not the miracle). This day, as I always did when gas was automatically pumping, I walked around the pumps just checking for favor of the Lord. Nothing. I "heard" a strong stirring. "Go around again." So obediently I walked around the pump again, looking studiously. Nothing. I got this a second time: "Go around again." Now I'm thinking this is some trick or I'm on a camera or something. But I went around a third time and right in my pay, where I couldn't have missed it even if I wasn't looking, was the brightest, shiniest penny I had ever seen. You could have seen it from two pumps away. I said, "Good one, Lord."
Ryan, I wonder if there is a factor in the age cohorts that would see in a very general sense children of the 30's are in the cohort of the 50's and children of the 40's are in the cohort of the 60's and if this relates to the parallelism of the two sets of cohorts? And does that apply elsewhere: as in church attendance or tithing, etc.? I appreciate all the hard work you do Ryan.
Ryan, thanks for these articles. They say so much and should make religious leaders pause and revamp things a bit. Or majorly! Lol.
This particular article made me ask a question on the other side of the coin: how many people believe in demonic possession? It seems to be many here in the south among charismatic churches. I look forward to reading that research and commentary from you! Rev. Dr. Cathy Davis
The 1991 dataset looks like an outlier, unless you honestly want to claim the share of religious Americans who definitely believed in miracles increased by 10% from 1991 to 1998
Doesn't the declining correlation between years of schooling and disbelief in miracles look like a compositional effect?
If I understand the data correctly, belief in miracles increased between 1991 and 2018 among Americans in every educational bracket, with the largest increases among people with some postgraduate classwork. But you also say that for the entire population, the increase wasn't statistically significant.
Not to be tactless, but that's the same paradox you'd probably observe if you tried to correlate years of schooling with scores on an IQ test. Being a high school dropout is less common than it was thirty years ago, so that subpopulation has become more unrepresentative. And having a master's degree is more common, so that group is less unrepresentative.
These results are fascinating to me considering the rise in no religion in America. Additionally, there have been declines in belief of supernatural/spiritual entities (heaven, hell, angels, god, devil) over the past two decades (source below). It really doesn’t make sense to me that belief in miracles doesn’t follow these same trends. Great data, though, and plenty more questions to consider.
I had the same thought. Maybe, because only those who report that they are part of a particular religious tradition are measured, as the weak believers drop out, leaving mostly strong believers behind, what Ryan is showing is the same or higher percentages of those left behind. In other words, by removing non-believers and non-practicing Christians from the data, he's showing that belief in miracles is the same or increasing, but only among a progressively smaller segment of the population and tells us nothing about the percentage of people who believe in miracles in the entire society. I'm guessing that would show the decline you are asking about.
I have two personal miracle stories. Neither involves healing or suddenly getting money to pay a bill.
In 2010-ish I was powerful in the Spirit, more so than now. I was a faculty member at a big private university. We had a faculty room with a refrigerator, sink, and our big 4 foot tall master copy machine. I was running VERY late to give a class a test. Kids DO NOT like it when you don't give them tests when they are scheduled, as they want to "cram and forget." I had the master copy in my hand and on my way to class ran to the copy room. There were at least two other people (maybe three). I have eyewitnesses. The copier was dead. I don't mean, lit up and not copying, but dead as if it had no power.. Lights were off. No one could get it to work. I had NO TIME for this and I jammed my test in the slot and laid hands on the copier and shouted "IN THE NAME OF JESUS, WORK!" and it shot to life, copied all my tests. The minute I pulled them out of the hopper, it died and no one else could get it on.
The second was I was with my brother-in-law at a gas station. My wife and I had a practice of whenever walking about just staying alert to what we called "favor of the Lord," pennies, nickels, whatever, which we put in a jar and haven't touched to this day. (One time I found $14 outside Taco Bell---but that's not the miracle). This day, as I always did when gas was automatically pumping, I walked around the pumps just checking for favor of the Lord. Nothing. I "heard" a strong stirring. "Go around again." So obediently I walked around the pump again, looking studiously. Nothing. I got this a second time: "Go around again." Now I'm thinking this is some trick or I'm on a camera or something. But I went around a third time and right in my pay, where I couldn't have missed it even if I wasn't looking, was the brightest, shiniest penny I had ever seen. You could have seen it from two pumps away. I said, "Good one, Lord."
Ryan, I wonder if there is a factor in the age cohorts that would see in a very general sense children of the 30's are in the cohort of the 50's and children of the 40's are in the cohort of the 60's and if this relates to the parallelism of the two sets of cohorts? And does that apply elsewhere: as in church attendance or tithing, etc.? I appreciate all the hard work you do Ryan.
Ryan, thanks for these articles. They say so much and should make religious leaders pause and revamp things a bit. Or majorly! Lol.
This particular article made me ask a question on the other side of the coin: how many people believe in demonic possession? It seems to be many here in the south among charismatic churches. I look forward to reading that research and commentary from you! Rev. Dr. Cathy Davis
The 1991 dataset looks like an outlier, unless you honestly want to claim the share of religious Americans who definitely believed in miracles increased by 10% from 1991 to 1998
Doesn't the declining correlation between years of schooling and disbelief in miracles look like a compositional effect?
If I understand the data correctly, belief in miracles increased between 1991 and 2018 among Americans in every educational bracket, with the largest increases among people with some postgraduate classwork. But you also say that for the entire population, the increase wasn't statistically significant.
Not to be tactless, but that's the same paradox you'd probably observe if you tried to correlate years of schooling with scores on an IQ test. Being a high school dropout is less common than it was thirty years ago, so that subpopulation has become more unrepresentative. And having a master's degree is more common, so that group is less unrepresentative.
Thank you for reading your articles. I imagined this one being ready over an instrumental version of the Hot Chocolate song.
https://youtu.be/WmeMdEZPcpg?si=uOToG0kefGd4mg1Q
These results are fascinating to me considering the rise in no religion in America. Additionally, there have been declines in belief of supernatural/spiritual entities (heaven, hell, angels, god, devil) over the past two decades (source below). It really doesn’t make sense to me that belief in miracles doesn’t follow these same trends. Great data, though, and plenty more questions to consider.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/508886/belief-five-spiritual-entities-edges-down-new-lows.aspx
I had the same thought. Maybe, because only those who report that they are part of a particular religious tradition are measured, as the weak believers drop out, leaving mostly strong believers behind, what Ryan is showing is the same or higher percentages of those left behind. In other words, by removing non-believers and non-practicing Christians from the data, he's showing that belief in miracles is the same or increasing, but only among a progressively smaller segment of the population and tells us nothing about the percentage of people who believe in miracles in the entire society. I'm guessing that would show the decline you are asking about.