puddingmouse wrote:
I work in a Catholic college and have to support students in RE classes. The topic of miracles comes up frequently and also arises when discussing faith with staff. I try to be respectful.
I won't go to the bother of providing examples of miracles because these are many. I'm not only talking about ones that sound silly like, 'I saw the Virgin Mary in a waffle'. There are many medically related miracles to do with people making a full recovery from terminal or seriously disabling conditions, when medical science has advised the patient to start the grieving process, use a wheelchair, etc.
My stance on this is that just because medical science can't explain these instances now, they will be able to at a later date. I am aware that my position requires faith as much as the position that 'God did it'. It seems that every believer I talk to has some miraculous story of their own, and some of these look like confirmation bias - e.g. my grandmother was hungry and had no money whatsoever, she prayed to God for enough money to buy a loaf or bread, and lo and behold, she saw this money on the street outside her house. This is obviously a fairly ordinary occurrence being attributed to the supernatural.
Other examples are less obviously confirmation bias, for example, my collegue had a car accident and was told that she would never be able to use her right arm again. Weeks later, she regained full use of her arm (with pain) and she attributes this to a higher power. The doctors had no explanation. In this example, I'm aware that my conviction that her recovery was the result of natural events requires faith.
What is your position on miracles? Whilst I'm aware that my position requires faith, I think that better on the natural over the supernatural is the better bet. I don't quite know how to explain why, though. If another materialist/atheist could explain, I would be grateful. I have an idea that the track record of science explaning things that were in the past seen as supernatural is a good place to start. For instance, thunder was once seen as supernatural in origin - but now we know it isn't. I aould also be interested to read explanations from believers about why they think it's more plausible to have faithain the supernatural origin of miracles.
From how you've stated your position, I think yours is more sensible and honest than how many with a similar stance express it.
My semi-random thoughts on this:
Take your thunder example. If we're talking about pure science and materialist explanations in terms of how things work, sure, you have a dichotomy between "God-did-it" and the scientific explanation. On the one hand, you can attribute everything you don't understand to a "God-of-the-gaps," or you can assume that one day those things WILL be explained. We can explain thunder naturalistically, and there's nothing really wrong with that. Prior to understanding thunder, there's nothing unreasonable by attributing it to the supernatural AS LONG AS one also understands that for all we really know there may yet be a different explanation other than a simple "God-of-the-gaps" explanation.
Where I think your reasoning breaks down is where you do make the assumption (and yes, you did acknowledge that your conclusions are partially based on faith, so I'm not throwing that out) that everything we do not yet understand WILL be explained naturalistically. That isn't necessarily true. We don't know whether that will happen or not, and that is why believers will sometimes say that it takes more faith NOT to believe in the supernatural than TO believe.
For the believer, even if there is a naturalistic explanation for thunder, known or unknown to the believer, God still created the universe and everything in it. So he knows God made the thunder and that thunder has a supernatural origin. Understanding the physical side of the mechanics of thunder won't change that God created a natural order that allows thunder to occur.
Where science is useful in determining the occurrence of supernatural activity is in helping us understand what is physically possible and what is not. If you're into QM, it is possible for particles to affect each other over distances and for particles to appear or disappear. Where do they come from? Where do they go? Perhaps washing machines and dryers are made as part of a conspiracy to test the effects of QM on larger objects, specifically socks, because even if we pair up socks prior to washing our undies, odd numbers consistently come out and we always have at least one pair of socks that don't match. Where do the socks go? Who knows? But besides that, we can generally be well-assured that we can sit on the sofa in our living room without it being sucked into some other dimension. Even with QM, these kinds of things just don't happen.
As an example, NDEs are documented to describe things that a hospital patient should not have been aware of, and with the cessation of brain activity could not have detected by the senses. I've had one experience myself in which I walked away from what would have otherwise been a lethal car accident--a voice told me to open the door and step out of an out-of-control vehicle. Two things surprised me about that: How calm and peaceful I felt when I realized what was happening, and I'd had an unusually vivid and detailed dream the night before about the whole thing. If you follow "the rules" scientifically, the conclusions you have to draw would be: IF it happened, it was a fluke, pure coincidence; it's statistically improbable to the point of being impossible; it's not falsifiable, therefore it simply did not happen. Given the nature of what happened to me and what I KNOW I saw/heard/felt, I know with all certainty that what happened did indeed happen. Given the impossibility/improbability of it, it defies naturalistic explanation. The only way of accounting for it would therefore be supernatural. I can accept that because I'm a believer, obviously. But even if I wasn't a believer, I'd think I was being more irrational trying to convince myself that something that happened, and I know it happened, did NOT actually happen. Can I prove that to anyone else? No. But I know it, and I believe it, and anyone who knows my story has to make up his or her own mind about it.
So my conclusions so far are thus: God created everything, science serves to help us understand the "stuff" of creation. Also, there is a supernatural realm as well as a natural one.
Now, as far as miracles go, here's what I think: The role miracles serve in Christian life is not to fulfill some wish or desire on the part of the witness. We don't get to pray, "Lord, please cure Aunt Rose," expect a cure, and call it a miracle when it happens. OK, suppose Aunt Rose is cured despite impossible odds. Well, that just shows that God does answer prayers. It's not a "miracle" in the strictest sense because miracles in the scriptural sense don't work that way.
While we do accept or reject Jesus and God based on faith, it doesn't stand to reason that faith should be blind. I don't believe in an unreasonable God who says, "Look, you just have to believe, and I'm not going to lift one finger to substantiate yours or anyone else's belief in Me." I'd say that's harsh and unfair, and I don't think a God who exists above or apart from any kind of justice is really any kind of God worth trusting. It's like if someone were to offer me a ride in a car known to be unreliable or unsafe, I'm less likely to trust that car over one with a solid reputation for high safety standards. So in terms of trusting the right deity and the possibility that my eternal destiny may very well be on the line, I'm going to want some evidence that I'm making the right choice. If I can be convinced that the evidence points in a certain direction, then I can trust that direction is more likely the correct one. It's difficult to say, "Hey, I have evidence of God" when God never shows up. And it's when God shows up that a person has a reason to believe in God.
And that's what I think miracles are from a scriptural perspective. Jesus told His followers that He is the Son of God, but He didn't come out and literally say, "Hey! I'm the Son of God! Worship Me!" What Jesus DID do was perform miracles for those who were seeking the Messiah, were wondering if He was the One, and cause them to wonder if anyone but the promised Messiah could do the things Jesus did. It was up to Jesus' witnesses as to whether they believed He was the Messiah. Some proclaimed Jesus the Christ, some said His teachings were too difficult to follow, and others said He was either a fake or merely anything else other than the Messiah. Some people thought He was crazy, which is perfectly reasonable given some of the claims He made. I just don't think that crazy people are typically able to establish the level of credibility Jesus had with His devoted followers. It DOES sometimes happen, of course, but I just don't see this as being the case with Jesus.
And Jesus is not the first person or event God used miraculously to demonstrate His presence. The birth of the nation of Israel in leaving Egypt and spending the exodus period literally in the shadow of God's presence is another example of miracle being used to spark faith. And even here the physical manifestation of God among His chosen people can by no means force people to accept the Presence. And that presence ended upon the completion of the exodus period since by this point all who would have believed should have accepted God through faith by then. Israel no longer needed to "see" God but were rather charged with the task of passing on to their children and grandchildren what they witnessed. Often what you see in the Bible is God in some way reminding us that He is still here when faith is dead. And I think that's what the purpose of true miracles is--not for God to grant us our wishes, but for God to fulfill our spiritual needs. Miracles stop once faith takes over. I'm not a cessationist, because I can imagine future scenarios in which we would need God to reawaken our faith. I'm just saying that we don't NEED miracles right now to believe in God. I don't count God working in our lives in amazing or unexplainable ways as true "miracles," but that doesn't mean God is inactive. I'm just saying for something to be a "miracle," it has to serve a purpose, to send a message, and to give those who want to believe a reason to.
30 Oct 2012, 12:26 pm
