[Richard Dawkins, a prominent evolutionist and militant atheist, is well known for his unsympathetic attitude to religion. While visiting Lourdes for his 2006 television documentary, The Root of All Evil?, he comments on the miracles alleged to occur there and questions Fr. Liam Griffin about them as follows:]

It may seem tough to question these poor, desperate people’s faith. But isn’t bracing truth better than false hope? What is the evidence for any miracles?

FR. GRIFFIN: There are actually sixty-six declared miracles. There are about two thousand unexplained cures here. But then we would say there are millions of people who have been healed in different ways.

DAWKINS: Healed in some sort of mental way?

FR. GRIFFIN: Healed in spiritual ways, or people who have come to terms with their own particular situation, people who have rediscovered God in their lives again, people who have received a new grace here in Lourdes.

DAWKINS: So you tend to get about 80,000 per year?

FR. GRIFFIN: There’s about 80,000 sick pilgrims who come here every year.

DAWKINS: That’s been going on for more than a century now—for a century and a half?

FR. GRIFFIN: Yes

DAWKINS: So, 80,000 per year, and, of those, sixty-six have been cured. I’m just. . . you see the way I’m thinking?

FR. GRIFFIN: Yup

So the hard fact is that over the years with their millions of pilgrims there have been sixty-six supposed miracles. Statistically, it adds up to no evidence at all. I can’t help remarking that nobody has ever had a miraculous regrowing of a severed leg. The cures are always things that might have got better anyway.

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