“Miracles are the reason I don’t believe the bible,” says Jacob, a biologist in Los Angeles, Calafornia. “Every event in the world can be accounted for by other events, except for miracles. Because of this, the bible’s account of these numerous miracles easily disproves its authenticity.”
Typically, the first reason people believe that science has disproven religion – and Christianity specifically – is because most religions believe in miracles and that miracles are scientifically impossible. Christians very much so believe in miracles. There are many miracles written about in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, climaxing with the miracle of the resurrection of Christ from the dead by his own power. Is it true that science is incompatible with miracles? Must we accept this conclusion?
When someone claims “Science has disproven that there is no such thing as a miracle,” therein lies a monumental leap of faith. These people believe that every “miracle” we see today, or any in the past, were the result of some natural cause, but it is absurd to believe that there can’t be any other kind of cause. It is one thing to say that science is only equipped to test for natural causes and cannot speak to any others, but it is quite another to insist that science proves that no other causes could exist. There is no experimental model for testing this statement. The statement which says, “There are no supernatural causes for any natural phenomenon” is a philosophical presupposition and not a scientific finding.
The argument is quite circular: Science cannot discern or test for supernatural causes, therefore, those causes cannot exist. Alvin Plantiga responds in such a way that debunks this “scientific fact.” Plantiga gives an illustration that goes like this: There is a drunk who lost his keys. He insists on looking under the streetlight because the light there is better. It suits the drunk that since the keys would be hard to find in the dark, they must be under the light. The same goes with science. Since we do not have the resources (scientific test method) to find the keys (cause of miracles) in the dark (reality), they can’t exist in the dark (reality). Do you see how this reasoning is circular? “We don’t have a way of testing this cause/God, so this cause/God must not exist.”
Another hidden premise in the “miracles can’t happen” statement is that “there can’t be a God who does miracles.” Why must we accept this premise? Consider the possibility that the creator God does exist; what, then, is illogical at all about the possibility of miracles? Can not the one who created everything from nothing surely rearrange the created anytime he pleases? The bottom line is this: to be sure that miracles cannot occur, you have to be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that God does not exist; and the existence of God is neither demonstrably proven nor disproven. The belief that miracles cannot exist, then, is not a scientific fact; it is a philosophical leap of faith.
