The subject of miracles is frequently placed in a separate category from religious experience, although much of what we have been talking about in the previous chapter might also be classed as ‘miracles’. In fact, it is rather difficult to present a clear definition of what is meant by ‘miracle’.

St Augustine (354–430) defined a miracle as “whatever is hard or appears unusual beyond the expectation or comprehension of the observer”. However this definition has obvious weaknesses as it rests on the expectation and comprehension of the observer and not on the event itself. For example, the cargo cults of Melanesia and New Guinea in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries associated the arrival of European and American cargo as a miracle, resulting in the development of whole new religious movements. They did not associate the arrival of ships (and, later, planes) with Western technology, but with divine intervention. This is an example of today's science being perceived as miraculous. But if we define a miracle as something that is relative to the observer, then we do not have an objective standard of a miracle: what is a miracle for you may be science to me and vice versa.