scientifically inexplicable, apparently supernatural things occur, but not to atheists

The motion before us is that "scientifically inexplicable, apparently supernatural things occur, but not to atheists".I propose that this motion is false; whilst it is obviously true that science can't explain everything that happens (sometimes for want of sufficient evidence), I suggest that there is no measurable difference between the experiences of the devoted and the godless.My opponent speaks much of Lourdes; I'd like to look into the numbers involved a little bit, since unlikely things do happen (such as me winning the lottery) and are more likely to happen when we involve big numbers (it wouldn't be so incredible that I won the lottery if I bought 10 million tickets).More than 6,000,000 people visit Lourdes each year [1]; from this vast set of visits, about 35 cases get reported to the Lourdes Medical Bureau for consideration as miracles [2]. From these 35, 30 or more are normally dismissed very quickly. From the 5 remaining, 2 or 3 may be further investigated by the International Lourdes Medical Committee (CMIL) and perhaps 1 case per year pronounced "medically inexplicable". Occassionally the Catholic Church will then pronounce a given case as not just "medically inexplicable" but a full-blown miracle. Let's say, therefore, that this is at a rate of about one miracle every three years... or something like one in 18,000,000 visits. Now, when we bear in mind the proportion of people who are ill and visit Lourdes only to pray for healing and who are likely to attribute any improvement in their condition to their pilgrimage, I think that we can all agree that 1 in 18,000,000 is not a particularly impressive statistic.Indeed, one would expect that there would be at least one "miracle cure" in a sample of 18,000,000! The human body is an enormously sophisticated thing which is remarkably good at healing itself; for Pro to be able to make the slightest case that Lourdes creates miracles for the devout, Pro would need to demonstrate to us that the background level of "miracle cure" in, say, the average hospital, was statistically significantly less. This is a burden of proof issue and I ask that the gentle reader not be fooled by Pro's attempt to shift the burden of proof - for Pro's case to be successful, they must demonstrate that the religious experience better healing than the irreligious.By the by, there are PLENTY of cases of "miracle" cures in and outside of religious settings; we've all heard of somebody claiming to have cured their own terminal cancer by adopting some mad fad diet... a quick search for "cancer", "juicer" and "cured" on your favourite search engine will yield many claims of miracle cures that are quite independent from any religious context; I could list a dozen other forms of quackery and woo-woo that turn up all of the time in relation to miracle cancer cures (amongst other ailments).Even if we limit our search to people who "naturally" make a "miracle" recovery, we find that there is a very large number of people who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given months to live who have survived for decades and even gone into remission... this is no miracle, it's a simple fact of life - and whilst we understand an awful lot about cancer, we don't understand everything (not by a long shot) and we certainly don't understand the subtelties of the human immune system. Consider Dr. Kelly Turner's research [3]; whilst Dr. Turner is not invoking any mystical component (and specifically denies that faith helps), I wonder whether she may not be making it clear enough that there doesn't need to be any lifestyle change (although I don't deny that these may help) - what percentage of patients who are given months to live have simply been given the wrong prognosis by the medical profession? I assume that most rational people will accept that we don't understand everything about cancer and that amongst 18,000,000 people who had been told they had 3 months to live, at least a few of these would be an example of a wrong prognosis (rather than a miracle cure) - that is to say that even if the doctor knew all of the latest research and current best methods for determining prognosis for cancer patients, our human understanding of this disease and its relationship to the immune system is not complete.tl;dr:"Miracle" cures do happen (no magic need be invoked to explain them), but they happen as frequently to atheists as to Christians, as to Muslims, as to Buddhists, as to Devil worshippers... or even as to juicer-fanatics.Final thought: if the motion were true, what would be the mechanism by which it worked? I assume (but would rather have my opponent come clean and be clear on the point) that Pro's explanation is that God works miracles... if this is the case, how come He hasn't cured any amputees by restoring their limbs? Would Pro have us believe that there is rock-solid evidence of genuine miracle-working in terminally ill (or so-diagnosed) cancer patients but not a single amputated-limb-restoral? What would be God's motivations and/or limitations to cause the one but not the other (even accepting the wild postulation that there is a god)?[1] http://www.catholicnews.com...[2] https://en.wikipedia.org...;[3] http://www.newsmax.com...