by Michael Skinner

Created on: July 05, 2009

"It's the only true miracle in the history of the world," my brother said in offhandedly.

Just this once, he knew what he was talking about. It was a miracle. Everyone said so.

Every amputee on Earth had, over night grown new, usable limbs. Most people agreed that it was a miracle and most people were preparing for the Messiah of the religion of their choice to come back and create a paradise on earth.

Everyone except my brother George. "Read the Bible," George continued, every miracle in that book is lame. We can do all of them ourselves, given the money and the time."

I have you now, I thought! "So George, you can bring the dead back to life?"

George looked angry enough to kill me for a few seconds then he abruptly smiled. "Bringing a dead man back to life in a time before heart and brain monitors is one of the easier miracles to perform. Parting the Red Sea for instance is much more expensive."

"So," I continued, " if the Bible states that a man was cold and dead for days and maybe that he even began to smell..."

"I don't grant any credence to the superstitious nonsense in a thousand year old book. But if I did I would remind you that we know several drugs that mimic death and that at least once a month, someone gets up from the autopsy table."

Since I still wanted to believe in God I was skeptical, but I knew that he had me on the run as far as bringing the dead back to life thing, so I let that one drop. Now I needed to divert his attention while my tottering faith was still intact. Bring up another miracle perhaps. Nope, that wouldn't work. Even I did not believe in modern day faith healers and a lot of the miracles of the Bible looked like faith healing...At this point my brother saved my wavering faith by getting distracted.

"Why now?" He mused aloud.

"Why not what?"

"Why would the bug eyed aliens from the planet Uranus pick now to demonstrate the superiority of their technology?"

I smiled at the scatological pun in spite of myself. "A minute ago you agreed that for every amputee on the planet to get usable limbs over night was a real miracle. What's lame is for you to invoke bug eyed aliens. What kind of technology can go through walls and down in caves where some of these people were anyway?"

Now it was George's turn to squirm. "Craig," he began, calling me by name, " that's just the problem. The real problem,"

"What problem? A miracle is the answer to a problem. "

"You

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