But science has shown us clearly that everything follows the laws of nature. Therefore it makes sense to believe that miracles cannot happen.
Dig Deeper
- Yes, I think we are capable of understanding everything in the universe, at least theoretically; we must assume that or we will just give up trying to understand.
- No, I don't think we can claim that we're the highest beings capable of understanding everything.
- I'm not sure. I don't think I'm in the position to know that.
- Take me back to the previous question
Let's back up and try to understand what we mean by the word "miracle". What is a miracle? A very common answer is how Spinoza defined it:
Miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and therefore impossible…
But let's think about that for a moment. This definition assumes that we have exhaustive knowledge of all the laws of nature. For instance, we know that the laws of quantum mechanics violates many of the laws of classical physics. Like the law that 1 object cannot occupy 2 different spaces at the same time, or the law of causal chain. But in the quantum world, those classical laws of physics are broken in all sorts of strange ways. In fact, before we discovered quantum mechanics, we would have regarded these ideas to be in direct violation of physical laws, and therefore supernatural. If you want to find out more about these strange violations of the laws of nature, you look into things like Double Slit experiment or the Quantum Eraser.
So anyway, here's the point, the claim that the Laws of Nature cannot be violated assumes that our current understanding of the Laws pretty much cover all of reality. Think about that. That's how we can even claim to know that a law of nature was truly violated. We are assuming that there aren't any higher dimensional laws to speak of. But as quantum mechanics shows us, the Laws of Nature turns out to be organized in layers from the simple to the complex. And the more we learn about the universe, it turns out to be more complex & weirder than we had imagined.
As an illustration, let's imagine there is some sort of a higher being in the universe, whether that's God or aliens, it doesn't matter. And let's say these beings operate in a higher dimension. We humans operate in 3 spatial dimensions, so our minds are unable to grasp anything higher. But according to theoretical physics, the universe [may have] 10 spatial dimensions. Wow. Okay. There is no way we can conceive of that.
Okay so if there is a higher dimensional being that operates on the (let's just say) 7th dimension and if they did something, we would be incapable of understanding that. That would be like trying to explain Einstein's theories to a cat. The brain structure of the cat would be incapable of understanding it.
So here's an interesting question. If a higher dimensional being did something that is hopelessly incomprehensible to us, and we say, "Hey!! How did you do that?"
And they answer: "That's simple! I just folded 6th dimensions into the 7th, and then I mapped my mind's 3rd consciousness into… Um… actually... Nevermind... There's no way you can understand." So if that's the answer.. what would you call that? Is that a miracle? That's a hard question to answer. Would that be a miracle to that higher being? Would it be a miracle to us?
Perhaps to God, if such a being exists, there is no such thing as a miracle, because He would know exactly what happened. Perhaps a more universal definition of miracle is as follows: "A striking work which is outside the ordinary course of nature… such that witnesses regard itas extraordinary and supernatural." (Jacob Vernet)
Through this discussion, I hope that you can see that when we say "miracles are impossible", we are not really sure what we mean by the word "miracle." Not only that, in order to say that miracles are impossible, we actually have to assume that human beings are capable of understanding everything in the universe.
So what do you think? Do you think we can make that claim?
Dig Deeper
- Yes, I think we are capable of understanding everything in the universe, at least theoretically; we must assume that or we will just give up trying to understand.
- No, I don't think we can claim that we're the highest beings capable of understanding everything.
- I'm not sure. I don't think I'm in the position to know that.
- Take me back to the previous question