In Which I Kill the Notion of Miracles

Lazarus. He was a guy in the Bible who, like a lot of other guys in the Bible, died. Jesus, for reasons best known unto himself (although I suspect He was just showing off) resurrected this Lazarus. Now I know it wouldn't have been right for Jesus going around resurrecting everyone who died in the Bible. For one thing, Judea's pension system would have fallen up its own arsehole. So Jesus could only raise one person from the dead, and it was Lazarus. Why? Well, it may be because back in biblical times there was a medical condition called Lazarus syndrome where someone who had apparently died would suddenly come back to life. So Jesus was a physician with a sense of humour? Hey, it's the Bible. Anything can happen.

This Lazarus syndrome still exists today, although Jesus doesn't (or if he is, he's keeping a rather low profile). So what exactly is the cause of these people suddenly coming back to life? Zombieism? Can't be that as the "not deads" have no (as yet) reported brain cravings. Miracles? Can't be that either, as we'll see in a minute. Crap medical staff who want to clock off early and go out and pickle their livers? Probably. I think we're agreed that incompetent doctors exist the world over, and that their incompetency could quite credibly stretch to not being able to tell if someone has a case of the deads. What's that you're screaming at me? No?

"No, you're being too cynical! No, there is no person in medicine on earth who can make this mistake! No, you're too quick to dismiss the hand of God!" Well alright, you mentalist 24th century Federation starship Captain, how about this? Abdel-Sattar Badawi's a guy in Eygpt who was declared dead, and he was consequently bunged into a hospital morgue. I think you can guess what happened next. Sure enough, he woke up from being "dead" and pushed the lid off the coffin he was in (which somewhat fortuitously wasn't nailed shut). Then he shouted for help, what with being a bit disorientated from being not alive a few seconds ago. Three staff came running in, and he explained to them how he actually wasn't metabolically challenged and didn't really belong in a morgue, and could he please have some cocoa and a hot water bottle?

So the three medical staff tried to take it on board, and only two of them managed to do so and survive. I think under the circumstances having a heart attack and dying is quite understandable. It's a bit of an odd miracle for God to raise someone from the dead to have them kill someone else? "But maybe the person who ended up dead was a nasty nasty man who God had decided to wipe out in an elaborate way because, y'know, He likes playing silly buggers with people?" There was a Brazilian woman who was at her own funeral, open casket. She woke up and somewhat lost her shit, sprinted out of the church and into the road whereupon she was run over and killed. Now if you can explain to me why God would kill someone, resurrect them and then kill them again, I might start to believe it's a miracle. "... Erm..... Errrrrmmmm......."

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