MIRACLES

Miracles are important in The Bible.  Here are seven of them.  Jesus is prominent in the field of miracles.  Buddha similarly had supernatural feats, as did Hindu Shiva.  All religions depend on miracles, with the revelation of the Quran being the greatest by Muslims.  And, of course there too are modern-day miracles.

Joe Biden needs a couple of miracles to prevail over Donald Trump.  One of them could come tomorrow from the Supreme Court.  If Trump is announced not to be immune from prosecution, that could become a game-changer.  A sentence of 4 years in jail by Judge Juan Merchan in eight days will only add to Trump's desperation.

Whether you believe The Bible or scientists, the sudden appearance of Earth or the Big Bang from essentially nothing....they are all difficult to explain, and each one surely falls in the category of miracles.  The creation of life qualifies, then the evolution of us, Homo sapiens, deserves mention.

From the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 79% of Americans believe in miracles.  Republicans more than Democrats.  Another more recent report indicated that only 15% of Americans did not believe in miracles.  Earlier this year, The Hill announced a figure of 83% belief.

I'm about as irreligious as one can get.  For example, when I die, there will be no Heaven or Hell for me.  Not sure yet if it will be eternal gloom or ultimate peace.  I want to believe the latter will prevail.

According to Wikipedia:

A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws^[2] and accordingly gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause. Various religions often attribute a phenomenon characterized as miraculous to the actions of a supernatural being, (especially) a deity, a miracle worker, a saint, or a religious leader.

As I think about it, following the above definition, my life has been a series of "miracles."

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  Being born defied one in 400 trillion odds.  Don't believe me?  Watch this video.  Or, this one, it's more convincing.  In any case, every one of us experienced this miracle.

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  At one point does overcoming insurmountable odds qualify for miracle status?  Let's look at sports.  Here is a top ten:
• #10  With 15 games left in the 2011 season, the St. Louis Cardinals were 4 ½ games behind the Atlanta Braves for the National League wild card spot. Las Vegas sportsbooks had them listed at 999-1 to win the World Series. Then Atlanta collapsed, the Cards went 11-4 in their final 15, and won the World Series over the Texas Rangers. While it takes a lot to make baseball exciting and interesting, a 999-1 run does the job.
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  #9    Again, St. Louis, the Rams in 1991 won the Super Bowl against 300-1 odds.  You would think that 300-1 should be less of a miracle than 999-1, but this list is iffy anyway.
• #1    In the 1980 Winter Olympics, the U.S. Hockey team defied 1000 to 1 odds by beating the Soviet Union for the Gold medal.
• But 1000-1 is hardly a miracle, even though Al Michael's Miracle on Ice thought otherwise.  Here is what he felt.

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  Let me now move on, beginning with my life as a sophomore in high school.  
• Earlier this month, this is what I said in one of my blog postings about my moving on from McKinley High School to Stanford University.

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  One of the miracles of my life was that I even went there at all.  I was an average student most of my life.  Perhaps growing up in Kakaako, a lower-class portion of Honolulu, was partly responsible.  Maybe wanting to be like one of my gang was not personally productive.  Whatever, by the time I was a sophomore at McKinley High School, I was put in a lower level English-Social Studies group, as our school system placed students by performed capability.
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  You can read more by clicking on that posting, but I ended up being accepted by Stanford and the California Institute of Technology, but chose the former.
• In any case, that surely was overcoming one in a million odds, and maybe 1 in a billion.  I count that as a miracle.

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  After graduating, have had an exceptional adult life and professional career, relative to the more than 100 billion humans ever born.  How many in that motley group  accomplished the equivalent of the following?
•  PhD in biochemical engineering.
• Jobs in biomass engineering, renewable energy and ocean resources in Hawaii, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence at the NASA Ames Research Center, laser fusion for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and originator of legislation working for the U.S. Senate for what became laws in hydrogen, ocean thermal energy conversion, wind energy and seabed minerals.

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  Wrote or was co-author for six books, more than a 100 articles in the Huffington Post and gave a TEDx talk two years ago on the Blue Revolution.

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  Have been on more than a dozen around the world trips, flying at least 3 million miles so far in my life.
• This blog site has had more than 3 million viewers from 221 domains (countries plus smaller territories).

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  Finally, when I was born in 1940, my life expectancy was supposed to be to 70.4 years.  I've exceeded that by more than 13 years.  Okay, so that's not a miracle.  But amazing nevertheless for continuing to be production to save Planet Earth and Humanity, and looking forward to many more years to come.

Perhaps there might be one more miracle, although I'm not particularly counting on this to happen.  Some have said that you won't go to Heaven without having something called faith.  Yet, religious scholars like St Augustine have said otherwise.  So, maybe one more to come.

I close with a note that Category 4 Hurricane Beryl has formed in the Caribbean, and should make landfall over the Yucatan Peninsula late on July the 4th.  Took only 42 hours to strengthen from a tropical depression to a major hurricane at 130 MPH.

Beryl is expected pass just south of Barbados tomorrow on the above path.  She became the earliest Category 4 Atlantic hurricane on record.  Atlantic waters are the highest on record for this time of year, and are already about the peak high of September.

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