What are the challenges to believing in miracles today?

Answer 1

In ancient times, people were more gullible and could easily be convinced even by modern parlour magic that they had witnessed a miracle. And if a miracle were merely reported to them, anecdotally, by a supposed eyewitness or even in a letter or book, many would believe.

At the end of the second century, the resurrection of the dead was very far from being esteemed an uncommon event, frequently performed on necessary occasions, by great fasting and the joint supplication of the church of the place, and the persons thus restored lived afterwards amongst them many years. Only a few people challenged this message. A noble Grecian promised Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, that, if he could be gratified with the sight of a single person who had been actually raised from the dead, he would immediately embrace the Christian religion. It is somewhat remarkable that the prelate of the first eastern church, however anxious for the conversion of his friend, thought proper to decline this fair and reasonable challenge.

Today, most people are less easily convinced by anything as improbable as a miracle, and thus it is often said that the age of miracles has passed. Communications are enormously better and it is easy to obtain confirmation of a supposed miracle, if indeed it happened. So, modern miracles are usually limited to weeping statues or to intended saints of the Catholic Church curing two people of cancer.