If nobody believed in superstition it
would be unable to hurt anyone
Miracles Above the Law of Nature?
Religion holds that God has set up nature to work in a
regular way and sometimes he does miracles. A miracle is an exception to the
regularity. For example, nature has it that statues don't come to life. But God
can make a statue come to life. But is a miracle just an exception?
Miracles are either against the law of nature or in accordance with nature. Neither understanding is helpful and both are dangerous and pro-stupidity so miracles are a dangerous and bad belief.
It is possible that miracles are only the result of
unknown natural laws meaning they are not supernatural.
Christians prefer the view that they are not and are
simply supernatural. They are God using his power.
This view does not work. The Christians have already said
that even the ordinary laws of natural are God at work so they are supernatural
too.
What about the view that miracles are ABOVE the law of
nature? That is not a new view. It could mean you are saying that miracles do
not break the laws of nature. You would say rather that they are caused by laws
of nature we know little or nothing about.
Nothing can ever be done to prove a miracle ever happened. Even if a statue weeps blood and no natural explanation is found it still fails to prove a miracle.
There could be a natural explanation that we don’t know
of.
The higher natural law idea means that we can never be
sure if something is really a sign from God or not.
If miracles are not against nature then one day science
might find some kind of intelligent gas that has been doing these miracles and
we have no reason to think God has anything to do with it.
Some events cannot be explained by natural laws. A magic
trick may look like it cannot be explained by natural laws but it can. It may be
explainable in some way perhaps we will never discover. It could be the same
with an alleged miracle.
A miracle is an event that reveals nature has not worked
in a consistent way. One response to a miracle can be is that its not a real
miracle and that we can assume there is a natural explanation even if we don’t
have one. This is reasonable. You cannot go about assuming everything that you
can't explain is a miracle.
A law is not meant for suspending but for keeping. A God
who makes laws he has to suspend is just as useless as a God who makes law and
has to violate it if things go wrong.
A miracle intended to show that God is there has be something that cannot be
explained by the laws of nature. That can get tricky. We know that one day dying
people may be put into suspended animation and be revived and live. We know that
one day it will be possible to cause parthenogenesis – virginal conception.
Frogs are doing it already.