Miracles - Can Nature explain the Supernatural?

It's Palm Sunday. So, in a rare departure from my usual, there's a bit of religion in today's post. I'm leaving the physical and moving more definitely into the metaphysical for today.

There's been a big ballyhoo over a prayer experiment on heart patients and even a recent article speculating about how and whether Jesus Christ walked on water.

(No, I'm not kidding - really: "imagine an ice bridge in the middle of the lake that Peter (and the rest of the occupants of the boat) couldn't see . . . ??? Give me a break.)

(While we're at it: I don't believe that one of the most important variables was covered in the prayer experiment: did the ones who were prayed for *believe*? Belief is one of the elements - although not absolutely necessary - of the placebo effect - that can yeild results from 30%-70% of the subjects.)

An article by George Johnson in todays' New York Times, attempts to cover the debate, which it titles, "Science and Religion, Still Worlds Apart."

Actually, couldn't they be Cosmoses apart?

In the end, it comes down to "In the beginning. . . ."


The whole subject seems to boil down to the age old question of "Where did I come from?" And which sometimes seems like an age old war. As a matter of fact, "war" among the supernatural is one of the "supernatural" explanations for why everthing is the way it is.


Anyway, the question has two main, competing factions, these days: 1. Everything just is, there is no Creator,and reality, including the existence of the humans who are speculating on reality, can be explained as the current outcome of natural progress of natural phenomena, and 2. There is a Creator of our Cosmos, and therefore, ultimately, a Creator of us.

(Just in case you didn't know: No one's ever been able to answer the "in the beginning" question satisfactorily to me, without the Creator similar to the one of the Judeo-Christian Bible.Before I answer "And who created God, I just think they should answer how natural phenomena came from no-natural phenomena.)


Logically, a Creator of the "natural" would have to be outside of the natural dimensions of what He created - He would be "supernatural." So miracles would be phenomena that are consistent with the "supernatural" outside of our reality, but we can't measure them or understand them.

Notice I said "consistent with the 'supernatural.'" I meant more than "explainable by the existence of dimensions and reality outside of ours." In order for me understand (what I don't understand), I have decided that there is order Out There. This Cosmos that I know is a subset of that one, and that while the other does not have to obey all of the "natural laws" of this one, it does have natural laws of its own, which are, in fact natural laws of ours.

As in the cliche'd two dimensional "Flatworld" vs. the 3 dimensional world we live in. Or even Plato's cave dwellers who live in shadow and can't turn around. (pdf format)

You and I can comprehend our nature, but, by definition, we can't understand the "super-natural."

Which doesn't prove that there is, a "super-natural," of course.


But, it would go a long way to explain why what we believe are miracles one day can be explained as natural phenomena the next.

Well, that and we develop better measuring and recording tools all the time.


The NYT piece does end well, though:

"In the 1902 book "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James gave what he considered the broadest and most general definition of religion: "The belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." For all the advances science has made in the century since — relativity, quantum mechanics, computational theory — it has not found a way to measure the immeasurable, or prove that it cannot exist.