Broken news and "miracles"

I had the same discussion with some friends.
It's good to know someone is out there who thinks the same, and even more importantly, can express it better than me.

From the Slacktivist

Broken news and "miracles": "Before the horrifying surprise of that 2:57 a.m. news alert -- the one announcing that we, and all those poor family members had been grievously misinformed -- I was talking with the late guy on our copy desk about miracles.

The word miracle appeared in quotes in our headline -- we used it only because it was used by people at the scene: 'Relieved families celebrate 'miracle' after men spent 41 hours underground.'

Technically, the word has several definitions, one of which is 'a remarkable event or thing' -- and that certainly seemed to apply to the good news being reported out of West Virginia. But even that secondary definition seems to carry connotations from the primary one: 'an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and is hence thought to be due to supernatural causes, esp. to an act of God.'

Because of this, my friend hates it when the word 'miracle' gets used in headlines. Attributing events to divine intervention, he thinks, goes beyond reporting the facts as we find them.

'Why is it,' he asked, 'that we say it's a miracle when they survive, but we never blame God when everybody ends up dead? We never call it a 'miracle' when a German skating rink collapses on a bunch of children.'

He's an atheist and I'm not, but I agree with him on t"