Further to my first post about miracles (wow that was almost a year ago) the following thoughts came to mind today as I was reading In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God's Actions in History, which examines the concept of the miraculous in light of Hume's essay "Of Miracles" (and later works which expanded upon that essay).

The idea that science disproves the possibility of miracles is, IMHO, extremely misguided. Science is able to confirm that certain things are testable and repeatable, that is, empirically verifiable in the present. Miracles, by nature, are none of these things. For example, today as I rode home on the bus I glanced out the window as the bus came to a stop. To my surprise I saw a rabbit sitting on the grass beside the road. I had never seen a rabbit here before (a fairly built-up area along a heavily trafficked road). This event is still not testable (you'll have to take my word for it that I observed a rabbit earlier today) and not repeatable (even if we were to get on the same bus, drive along the same road, etc, the circumstances could never be exactly the same) and yet the event really did occur. There is no reason to claim that this was a miraculous event, but even here science cannot test whether this mundane event occurred.

Therefore it's no surprise that science has not (cannot) confirm (or disprove) the miraculous. Richard R. Purtill notes in his essay "Defining Miracles" (also part of the aforementioned book) that scientists "tend to confine their investigations to the ordinary course of nature and to ignore such exceptions as might be made to the course of nature by God, since exceptions brought about by personal agency cannot be predicted from a study of what normally happens".

Trying to test whether a supposed miraculous event occurred in history using the scientific method is sort of like trying to determine whether a banana is tasty by sticking it in your ear and listening to it. It's inappropriate methodology. There's nothing wrong with the scientific method for testing natural phenomenon. However a miracle is not natural, and therefore it is misguided to dismiss, say, the resurrection by appealing to science that shows that people rising from the dead is impossible. Of course we observe that dead people stay dead, and that's entirely the point. This wasn't lost on first century people either: Jesus' resurrection was a big deal because people knew that dead people are supposed to stay dead.

This does not mean that science has no part in examining the truth claims of miracles, but only that as unique events in history, a miracle claim is more properly investigated as history rather than science.

Further reading: The Facts Concerning the Resurrection: Don't believe the New Testament is a reliable historical source? I'd argue that the NT is historically reliable, but try let's throwing out most of what it contains, and only focus on facts agreed upon by the vast majority of scholars, Christian or not. What we find might surprise you!

(Note: I originally posted this blog entry on TheLife.com's Talk Blog, and it's a bit outside the usual scope of my blog here, but felt it was important enough to post here anyways. I've also made some edits to the post for my own blog … have to be a bit more non-partisan on the Talk Blog …)

Planned Parenthood (whose services include "family planning, gynecological care, STI/STD testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, and abortion") reported some shocking figures for their 2005-2006 fiscal year:

Total abortions performed: 264,943
Total income: $902.8 million
Total profit: $55.8 million

Of that $902.8 million gross income, $305.3 million came from taxpayer dollars, an increase of $32.6 million from the previous year.¹

The glaring number of 264,943 abortions (roughly equivalent to the number of people who live in the city of Buffalo, New York) should encourage us to take a calm but serious look at the issue of abortion.

That, of course, is the big question: What is the unborn? As Greg Koukl says, "If the unborn are not human, no justification for elective abortion is necessary. But if the unborn are human, no justification for elective abortion is adequate." Irregardless of my Christian faith it is my contention that abortion is morally wrong and therefore should no more be allowed than any other crime. Of course, this doesn't make the issues surrounding abortion any easier, but moral decisions are rarely easy.

Related reading:

• Confessions of an Ex-abortionist – Why Dr. Bernard Nathanson, MD, who performed over 75,000 abortions, now campaigns against abortion.
• Can I Destroy This? – Greg Koukl asks the important question in the abortion debate: What is the unborn? All other questions are secondary.
• "Active Euthanasia" or Infanticide? – A previous post on Why Faith regarding "infanticide": Is it a logical outcome of legalized abortion?

Today I started reading The Secret, and came across the following quote:

Quantum physicists tell us the Universe emerged from thought! (Page 15)

I admit my knowledge of quantum physics is sorely lacking … is this statement accurate? If so, what exactly does it mean? I know what it means in "The Secret" context, but what does it mean in the world of quantum physics (if anything)? (I'm not trying to be a smart-ass by the way, this is a serious question!)

I'll post some thoughts on the content of The Secret as I get farther in the book. For those who haven't heard of the book, it's basically the best-selling New Age repackaging of the 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking. Available via Amazon, eBook version from eBooks.com (this is the version I got) or your local bookseller. I'm reading it because I'm writing one of my research papers on it. My initial impression is that the power of positive thinking stuff is generally good, but the "thought magnet" stuff and the implication that thoughts create reality is simply unnecessary at best. [Edit: As I read further into the book, I'm becoming more increasingly concerned. I think this book could actually be harmful.]

(Please note: This long post represents my initial thoughts, and not any kind of carefully worded thesis, on this issue. I hope to develop these thoughts further and in more detail at a later date.)

Sam Harris, famous propagator of straw-man fallacies (at least, IMHO) regarding the nature of faith, has this to say about science in his article "Science Must Destroy Religion":

Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world. … The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so.

To be clear from the outset, I have nothing against science; certainly, it would seem ironic at best to bemoan the wonders of science while posting on an Internet blog as I type on my laptop which is connected wirelessly through the wireless router. But as I thought about Scientism (aka Positivism, though the terms are not exactly synonymous, they are similar), ie the belief that scientific study is the only way to "real" knowledge, I was led to consider the way in which we know scientific knowledge.

The process of scientific discovery and dissemination, as I understand it, goes something like this:

Scientific Experiment

1. A scientist (or team), knowledgeable and accredited in his/her/their chosen field of inquery, performs a scientific experiment according to the scientific method.
2. The experiment is repeated to verify the results are reliable.
3. Once duly confirmed, results are scrutinized by other scientists, and published in peer reviewed journals.
4. The reports published in the journals are then condensed and distilled to their essential details to be published in the common press.
5. We read the reports about the studies, accept the results, and modify our lives/behavior accordingly.

But wait a minute … this is the process by which scientists ascertain scientific truth. As laypeople, we are active only in step #5 of the above process. When we talk about how we "know" science, the process might look something more like this:

Everyday Science

1. We read about scientific discoveries in the popular press, or hear about them secondhand from other people.
2. Not willing to believe everything we read (or hear about), we perform an evaluation of the proposed scientific discovery:
   • Is the source describing the claim credible? (ie. The BBC has more credibility than, say, someone's anonymous MySpace site)
   • Are the credentials of the person/people making the claim appropriate to the type of claims being made?
   • Do they have a potential bias that may have tainted the results?
   • Do those conducting the study have a potential reason for lying, overgeneralizing or selectively interpreting the results?
   • Are there other plausible explanations or interpretations of the results?
   • Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, so does the experiment really show a causal relationship?
3. By analyzing the evidence available to us, we make a judgment based on whether it is most reasonable to believe the claim or not.

The reasons that we have to engage in a process of personal discernment regarding scientific claims are numerous. First of all, many scientific claims are highly disputed. No, I'm not talking about evolution. 😉 But what about global warming? Is it caused by humankind? Are you sure? Some people aren't. Secondly, sometimes the claims we read in the press later turn out to be fraudulent. Numerous recent examples include Hwang Woo-suk's false cloning "research" (which was intentionally fabricated) and the Bogdanov Affair in theoretical physics where for quite some time the Bogdanov brothers' scientific peers couldn't agree whether their research (published in respected scientific journals) was legitimate or pure nonsense. Thirdly, and more practically, we know that honest mistakes are sometimes made, and it's usually best to check things out for ourselves rather than trusting authority, even though we will of course hold the opinions of those with legitimate authority highly.

It should be clear that, while the method above ("Practical Science") does seem sensible and rational, that it is not much at all like the scientific method. Even those who are scientists themselves are experts in at most one or two fields of inquiry, so for example an physicist would need to use much the same process to evaluate the claims of an archaeologist. So, from a dogmatically scientifist point of view, only the scientists who actually conduct the study really "know" anything; most, however, even those claiming a scientism point of view, would agree that the "Practical Science" method outlined above is still valid.

     Do you have a point or are you just rambling?

Okay, okay. Lest I be accused of engaging in straw-man arguments of my own, let's say that this process of laypeople "knowing" science could indeed fall under the definition of scientism because the process we engage in is still rational and based on evidence. In that case, the types of evidence we consider in the process outlined above (bias? credibility? other interpretations?) must be considered valid evidence when making our judgments whether we believe something or not. If this type of evidence were not considered to be valid, then the layperson would have no means by which to evaluate scientific claims made by other people.

It's worthy of note, then, that these same sorts of evidence are some of the types of evidence that are routinely presented as arguing for the authenticity of the Christian faith. Arguing that Christian evidence is based on "authority" is not a problem per se, because we receive our scientific knowledge the same way: from established experts (authorities) in their fields. By examining historical, philosophical, theological, and yes, even scientific evidences, we can come to reasonable conclusions regarding the possibility of truthfulness of the Christian faith. Making the claim that there is "no evidence" to support the Christian faith is simply incorrect. Someone making that claim that there is no evidence has either never considered the evidence available or has dismissed it out of hand from the outset as evidence of an invalid type, although we have seen that there is no reason to dismiss this type of evidence. Saying that "the evidence is not convincing enough to me" is one thing, but claiming that "there is no evidence" is quite another.

Hopefully this all makes sense. Perhaps later, after further reflection, I'll try to rework this into a proper essay.

Related links:

• The Evidence for Jesus – by Dr William Lane Craig: "In summary, the gospels are not only trustworthy documents … their historical veracity shines through."
• Five Possible Theories regarding Jesus' Resurrection – "Which theory about what really happened in Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday can account for the data?"
• Videos: Investigating Christianity – Lee Strobel interviews scholars in many fields to answer questions about the Christian faith. (63 different short streaming video clips)