Because I once was an agnostic who thought he was a realist, this caught my attention (emphasis added):
It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: “My Lord and my God!” Was it a miracle that made him believe? Most likely not, but he believed first and foremost because he [chose] to believe, and maybe already fully believed in his secret heart even as he was saying: “I will not believe until I see.”
— spoken by The Author in The Brothers Karamazov, Bk 1, Ch 5, “Elders”
It’s not a coincidence that my confirmation saint is Saint Thomas the Apostle. (Should have waited till the 3rd to post this.)