Set alongside the philosophical argument about whether miracles happen, there is a separate and in some ways more tractable question: what work miracle narratives do inside a tradition, independent of whether the events occurred.
Founding figures are regularly credited with miracles that authenticate their mission rather than merely display power. The Gospels' nature miracles and healings accompany a claim about who Jesus is; the Qur'an by contrast records Muhammad performing very few miracles and stakes his authentication on the Qur'an's own inimitability, a deliberate theological choice. Hagiography, the literary genre of saints' lives, uses miracle as a structural convention: a saint's sanctity is shown through healings, visions and wonders reported after death as much as during life, and scholars of the genre read these accounts as much for what they reveal about the community's values as for historical reportage.
Jewish tradition, despite recording biblical miracles at length, developed a countervailing rabbinic principle, ein somchin al ha-nes, one does not rely on a miracle: a person is obligated to act through ordinary, permitted means and may not expect divine intervention to excuse presumption, a caution invoked in halakhic reasoning about risk.
Hindu and Buddhist literatures describe siddhis, powers such as levitation, clairvoyance or multiplying one's body, arising from advanced meditative concentration. Both traditions treat them with marked ambivalence: the Yoga Sutras list them and then warn that they are obstacles to liberation if pursued for their own sake, and Buddhist monastic rules restrict displaying them to the laity, on the ground that a wonder proves power, not truth, and can attract the wrong kind of follower.