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To: Non-Sequitur; betty boop; xzins; P-Marlowe
How do you test for a miracle?

If you could test for it, it wouldn't be called a miracle.

Science accepts that it cannot measure God, that it cannot say whether God exists - and therefore proceeds under the assumption that nature is knowable, measurable and predictable (methodological naturalism.) That is the self-imposed boundary of scientific investigation.

Science cannot therefore be used to deny God since it never considered Him in the first place. Nor can science make observations about miracles or any other supernatural thing or event.


126 posted on 04/04/2009 9:23:59 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
If you could test for it, it wouldn't be called a miracle.

So how would you expect science to falsify a miracle?

128 posted on 04/04/2009 9:32:48 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Alamo-Girl; Non-Sequitur; xzins; P-Marlowe; hosepipe; metmom; GodGunsGuts
Non-Sequitur: How do you test for a miracle?

Alamo-Girl: If you could test for it, it wouldn't be called a miracle.

I gather that Non-Sequitur is not a theist. That doesn't necessarily mean N-S is an atheist. I won't draw that conclusion; but I do notice that N-S seems to be looking for "proofs" of the scientific kind for miracles. This is the same demand that materialists/naturalists often make for the existence of God — even though their method is limited to direct observation of the natural world and thus cannot address supernatural entities in principle. The scientific method simply has nothing to do with the matter: God and miracles are simply not "testable" in principle. But because they cannot be "tested" doesn't mean they don't exist.

What can we say about miracles? I very much admire Martin Buber's reflections on this matter:

The concept of miracle ... can be defined at its starting point as an abiding astonishment.... Miracle is not something "supernatural" or "superhistorical," but an incident, an event which can be fully included in the objective, scientific nexus of nature and history. Miracle is simply what happens; in so far as it meets people who are capable of receiving it, or prepared to receive it, as miracle. What is vital is only that what happened was experienced, while it happened, as the act of God.... The real miracle means that in the astonishing experience of the event the current system of cause and effect becomes, as it were, transparent and permits a glimpse of the sphere in which a sole power, not restricted by any other, is at work. [emphasis added]

All I can say about the matter on the basis of personal experience is: Miracles do happen. And indeed they do seem temporarily to suspend the laws of cause and effect.

Thank you ever so much for your trenchant essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!

131 posted on 04/04/2009 10:51:39 AM PDT by betty boop (All truthful knowledge begins and ends in experience. — Albert Einstein)
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