In my opinion, a "miracle" is something that can not happen in the natural world, (e.g. returning from the dead, an amputated limb reappearing). If it happens in the natural world, (e.g. 1 lone survivor of a catastrophic event), it may be a very rare event but is not a miracle.

Your view basically boils down to the argument of incredulity, a logical fallacy. In summary it's I don't understand how something could happen by normal means; so....MAGIC

A miracle is a supernatural occurrence that defies the laws of physics and an impossibility. Anything that can happen eventually will. The universe is not sentient possesses no awareness or will. No amount of magical thinking can change that.

Your 1 in a billion estimate is absurd hyperbole on the part of an EOD officer. Grenade fuses are composed of a striker, percussion primer, time fuse, and blasting cap. There are several potential points of failure in the components and more opportunities for failure during assembly.

I live in the heart of Tornado Alley USA. I have seen tornadoes damage all the houses on a block except one. I have read stories about children picked up by tornadoes and some dropped gently someplace safe, and some who died of impalement by other flying debris. I don't believe the universe has an meaning, it is pretty much random and sometimes the randomness works out well for some individuals.

magical thinking is fun but sometimes misleading.

the human brain is wired to see patterns and that's helpful -- we can't learn without that facility. unfortunately we see them whether they're there or not. so we find meaning where there is meaning and we find it where there is none, too. i guess that's the price we pay for being human.

yes, my life has been full of strange stuff. no, i do not believe in (literal) miracles. no matter the degree, weird is just weird (and that's subjective anyway).

g

Consider: if you flip a coin ten times, and it comes up heads ten times, what are a the odds, that if you flip it the eleventh time, it will come up tails? Or heads? 50-50 chance everytime, correct? However, there is always a chance, a very small chance, that it would not be heads or tails but instead land perfectly balanced on it's edge...
Not a miracle, just an extraordinary event not expected...

Things are termed miraculous because others term them so. In your case did the EOD officer hold any position of authority that would have to do with odds? Things happen and not always as a logical mind would seem to want them to happen. This would be so in your auto accident. I also had an auto accident at a high rate of speed where I hit a mailbox and it broke my windshield, hitting the car roof right before my face. Many said that it was the grace of god that kept that mailbox from coming on through and knocking my head off. My simple answer is that this was the way it happened. It has nothing to do with gods or meaning in the universe.

I will add however that if you are looking for gods, meaning in the universe, or anything deemed supernatural that you will find it.

No. Even things that happen one in a billion times happen all the time. Maths.

I’ve had plenty of odd and unlikely things happen to me but I can accept that I don’t understand the cause, without assuming it to be supernatural.

“Something is happening but you don’t know what is
Do you, Mr Jones”

Ballad of A Thin Man - Bob Dylan

Fifty years ago while traveling through CanTo, VN with someone else I was sitting at the head of a hotel bed and this other guy was at the foot. We were talking and he was messing with his .45 caliber 1911. All of a sudden the thing goes off. The bullet goes down through the mattress ricochets off the tiled cement floor comes straight toward me but hits and badly deforms a steel angle iron cross member on the bed before continuing up through the mattress between us and ending up who knows where. I've been an Atheist since I was a kid so divine intervention had nothing to do with this. It's just a matter of chance. Like driving down the road and a drunk hits you head on.

Then why you ? And not so many others ? Why some genuine good persons have endless bad luck ??

I should have died many times but I just happen to be in the right place. Let’s face it, shit happens.

The human brain and survival instinct is remarkable, capable of pushing the body to do seemingly remarkable things in order to survive.
As for the grenade incident, if it had not happened the way it did, no one would be reading your post about it having happened the way it did, pure chance.
It is like the creationist argument that the odds against the universe being the way it is are so great that there must be a god, when that is an obvious god of the gaps fallacy.

No miracles, ever, nothing supernatural, ever. But I've seen two different UFO's, so I'm very sure there is extraterrestrial life out there. Surely the earth is not the only place with the required amino acids, water, and lightning! They just started let's say a million years before us. Look what we've discovered in the past 100 years. Imagine what we'll be able to do in another 100 years. No god, no miracles, no collusion, lots of obstruction of justice. You think the extraterrestrials that are watching us are laughing their asses off?

Yes, I have been in those circumstances more times than I can count, in terms of "that was a weirdly low percentage of surviving". I even "died" twice (heart stopped for long enough). Now, I could look at this in different ways. 1) God/universe is looking after me and has some plan for my life, 2) I have done so many things in life that the chances of me being in dangerous situations is increased (therefore, more incidences) and luck and variables have played a large part in me surviving, 3) god/universe is playing some sadistic game with my life, etc.

I could fit my experiences into many different such explanations. Sometimes, it feels good to think that someone /something is battling to keep me alive but when reality sets in, there's no evidence for any of that.

And when did you buy a lottery ticket and won big time? I want to know.

No, I've just been lucky.

My nephew Jay got hit by lightning... twice. Less of a miracle and more in the don't stand near a tree while playing golf holding a nine iron you idiot thing.

Someone said that it was a miracle that I survived without severe damage a sudden cardiac arrest. No, it was random luck that I worked with 3 people who did not loose their ability to think and who had training. No miracle. While your odds might be astronomical, it was called luck.l

No. Magical thinking is not a part of my life.

Everyone who is alive can claim to be the winner of the "should not be alive by astronomical odds" award. If you are dead, you cannot claim anything (likewise if you were never born).

My dad survived the worst fighting during the worst year of Vietnam (more stories than I can retell).

He once drove a garbage truck, and the breaks went out while going down a hill--shifted down through the gears to slow down, then turned to miss an embankment, tilted two wheels off the ground...and then stopped (the other garbage man in the truck turned white).

Another time dad went to fill a gas can at a 7-11, and the can caught on fire. An attendant ran out and put it out. So he goes the next day to fill the same can at another convenience store (thinking it was the pump and not the can that caused the fire), and the same thing happened again. No explosion.

He once went up in the mountains alone with a chainsaw to cut wood, and the chainsaw got caught in the tree, he lost his grip, and nicked the back of his calf. He drove himself to the hospital.

He had a heart attack in 2006--well, likely more than one, and refused to go to the hospital over a week's time. He finally did go, had several 100% blocked arteries, had quintuple bypass surgery, and has been fine.

There are dozens more like this. These are not miracles. He's a 70 year old man. If he had died in Vietnam, as 58,000 others did, I wouldn't be here to tell you any of these stories.

My mother was told that she was completely infertile. Here I am. It did take 11 years for her to conceive... With no medical intervention. But, I guess that's not too long to make the impossible happen.

It made her faith, and that of our immediate family, extremely strong. Being referred to as the "miracle baby" had the opposite effect on me- I've been an atheist since primary school.

As with Seattlepanda, I can accept that it is random happenstance. For example, since there are at least a million viable sperms in any one ejaculate, the chance that it should be I who exist is one out of a million from just that fact--not to mention the odds of the existence of all the particular forefathers necessary to get to my father. And similar considerations make the odds of any living being staggeringly improbable. And, really, so on for the inanimate world. I like Santayana's description (maybe not exact): "The world is absurdity incarnate---the oddest of possibilities masquerading momentarily as a fact."

I can accept that random happenstance and coincidence is responsible.