Are miracles possible or impossible?

[Prodigal_Son]

God is perfect though. Wouldn’t quirks in nature be like quantum physics, unexpected but knowable and orderly?

Well, yes, I think they are orderly. Hence the notion of “laws”.

Knowable? I wasn’t familiar with the notion that quantum fluctuations are knowable. I mean, they’re knowable after the fact, but not before.

 

[tonyrey]

There is a problem with the idea that there are " inscrutable laws that create miracles". It doesn’t seem to tally with Christ’s teaching that God

The idea that there are inscrutable laws that create miracles seems to make God either redundant or incapable of creating without laws! Surely God works miracles directly rather than having to create laws to work them.

Would they be physical laws or spiritual laws?

 

[tonyrey]

If it didn’t follow that you were calling Bonhoeffer and Consolmagno deists then your raising deism in post #90 is a blatant non sequitur.

And your question is a false dilemma, the evidence is in the quotes.

Which gives me the opportunity to repeat them:

*Anyone who’s trying to use God to explain the things that science can’t explain in the 21st century, is a fool because who knows what science is going to explain in the 23rd century? That’s called the God of the gaps. In fact, it’s the fastest route to atheism because if your belief in God is the God who can explain why something happens, and then science comes along with an explanation, “Oops. Suddenly, I don’t believe in that God anymore.” - Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ, Vatican Observatory

…how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer*

Misrepresentation of my statement:

I believe not only in the Creator of the foundations but also the loving Father who constantly intervenes and cares for all His creatures - ** unlike the deist who rejects miracles/answers to prayer and believes in a remote deity** who is unconcerned about what happens on this insignificant planet.

I did not imply that Bonhoeffer and Consolmagno are deists for the simple reason I don’t believe they rejected the belief that God is the loving Father who constantly intervenes and cares for all His creatures. Do you have any evidence that they did?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

tonyrey:
The idea that there are inscrutable laws that create miracles seems to make God either redundant or incapable of creating without laws!

Why would God be redundant? Because the universe could have had the same laws without God? But that’s correct, anyway, so far as it goes. It’s just not very likely.

As for being incapable of creating without laws, everything God does is rational. A rational mind would not create in any arbitrary ways. I have a hard time imagining any non-arbitrary “ways the world could be” which do not involve laws. This is standard fare in the theology of miracles, where each miracle is not an arbitrary intervention, but rather reveals a real aspect of God’s character.

Surely God works miracles directly rather than having to create laws to work them.

Question-begging?

Would they be physical laws or spiritual laws?

More like physical laws. But I do not think that physical laws are fundamental. Physical laws are, perhaps, just a special case of these deeper laws. But this is out of my depth, frankly.

 

[inocente]

Well, yes, I think they are orderly. Hence the notion of “laws”.

Knowable? I wasn’t familiar with the notion that quantum fluctuations are knowable. I mean, they’re knowable after the fact, but not before.

I meant the laws are knowable even though the behavior is probabilistic.

 

[inocente]

I did not imply that Bonhoeffer and Consolmagno are deists for the simple reason I don’t believe they rejected the belief that God is the loving Father who constantly intervenes and cares for all His creatures. Do you have any evidence that they did?

I don’t understand why you mentioned deists then. Nor do I understand how Bonhoeffer and Consolmagno could possibly believe God intervenes in inexplicable ways, given what they said. The evidence is that they reject as falsehood any belief in a god who intervenes by inexplicable means. It’s right there in their statements, which I repeat again:

*Anyone who’s trying to use God to explain the things that science can’t explain in the 21st century, is a fool because who knows what science is going to explain in the 23rd century? That’s called the God of the gaps. In fact, it’s the fastest route to atheism because if your belief in God is the God who can explain why something happens, and then science comes along with an explanation, “Oops. Suddenly, I don’t believe in that God anymore.” - Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ, Vatican Observatory

…how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer*

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t understand why you mentioned deists then. Nor do I understand how Bonhoeffer and Consolmagno could possibly believe God intervenes in inexplicable ways, given what they said. The evidence is that they reject as falsehood any belief in a god who intervenes by inexplicable means. It’s right there in their statements, which I repeat again:

*Anyone who’s trying to use God to explain the things that science can’t explain in the 21st century, is a fool because who knows what science is going to explain in the 23rd century? That’s called the God of the gaps. In fact, it’s the fastest route to atheism because if your belief in God is the God who can explain why something happens, and then science comes along with an explanation, “Oops. Suddenly, I don’t believe in that God anymore.” - Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ, Vatican Observatory

…how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer*

Bonhoeffer was a saint and a martyr who proclaimed the “death” of God but he **never **stated that God **never **intervenes and does not care for His creatures because he knew it would contradict the teaching of Jesus that God is a loving Father who answers our prayers. Nor did he ever state that miracles are impossible…

 

[tonyrey]

The idea that there are inscrutable laws that create miracles seems to make God either redundant or incapable of creating without laws!

God would be redundant not because a Godless universe could have had the same laws but because there would be another set of physical laws which push the Creator further into the background.

As for being incapable of creating without laws, everything God does is rational. A rational mind would not create in any arbitrary ways. I have a hard time imagining any non-arbitrary “ways the world could be” which do not involve laws. This is standard fare in the theology of miracles, where each miracle is not an arbitrary intervention, but rather reveals a real aspect of God’s character.

The idea that God creates without any physical laws is going to the other extreme and is certainly not what I believe or implied.

Surely God works miracles directly rather than having to create laws to work them.

Question-begging?

On the contrary. Miracles presuppose the existence of physical laws: otherwise they wouldn’t be miracles!

Would they be physical laws or spiritual laws?

More like physical laws. But I do not think that physical laws are fundamental. Physical laws are, perhaps, just a special case of these deeper laws. But this is out of my depth, frankly.

I think it’s out of everyone’s depth because it is deeper laws that are redundant not God - if Occam’s Razor is valid. One set of physical laws is surely sufficient…

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t understand why you mentioned deists then. Nor do I understand how Bonhoeffer and Consolmagno could possibly believe God intervenes in inexplicable ways, given what they said. The evidence is that they reject as falsehood any belief in a god who intervenes by inexplicable means. It’s right there in their statements, which I repeat again:

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I think it’s out of everyone’s depth because it is deeper laws that are redundant not God - if Occam’s Razor is valid. One set of physical laws is surely sufficient…

Does Occam’s Razor support your claims?

Occam’s Razor says that the simplest hypothesis should be preferred. I am saying that God, through a *single *intention or disposition, sets in motion a principle from which many actions, which are miracles, proceed. You seem to be saying that God, through a great number of multiple intentions or dispositions, makes individual miracles happen one by one.

Positing one intention is simpler than positing millions.

And, if you like, the deeper laws I’m talking about could just be understood as physical laws, just ones that no scientist could ever figure out. I’m not deathly opposed to that.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

I don’t understand why you mentioned deists then. Nor do I understand how Bonhoeffer and Consolmagno could possibly believe God intervenes in inexplicable ways, given what they said. The evidence is that they reject as falsehood any belief in a god who intervenes by inexplicable means. It’s right there in their statements, which I repeat again:

*Anyone who’s trying to use God to explain the things that science can’t explain in the 21st century, is a fool because who knows what science is going to explain in the 23rd century? That’s called the God of the gaps. In fact, it’s the fastest route to atheism because if your belief in God is the God who can explain why something happens, and then science comes along with an explanation, “Oops. Suddenly, I don’t believe in that God anymore.” - Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ, Vatican Observatory

…how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer*

I just read two of Br. Consolmagno’s books, so I can comment on this. He has explicitly rejected Deism in his book, “God’s Mechanics.” Br. Guy is a Jesuit Brother and clearly and explicitly believes in the miracle of the Incarnation, and the intervention of God in the natural order in response to prayer, so how could he be a Deist, or how could he NOT believe that God intervenes by inexplicable means? He was simply stating his belief that God generally uses natural processes to run the world (erosion, natural selection, volcanism, etc.) but intervenes at specific points when necessary. He was arguing against the idea of tying scientific theories to faith, since science changes (few scientific textbooks are still accurate after 25 years) but faith remains constant. Fr. Lemaitre, who formulated the “Big Bang” theory argued in a similar fashion against any attempt to incorporate his theory into orthodox theology, as he said science can always be proven wrong and his theory was no exception. St. Augustine made the same argument.

Br. Consolmagno wrote:

But it is important to remember that God the Creator is also God the Father.

If to us God is nothing more than scientific hypothesis invoked to explain planetary orbits or the rise of life on Earth or the source of the Big Bang, we are guilty of believing in the God of the Gaps. And we hold our religion hostage to new advances in science that may close those gaps. The science fundamentalists are right to reject such a God. What sort of God would these images give us—God as nothing but an indifferent clockmaker, the Prime Mover, who starts things off but then abandons us? What do you call a Father like that? God is no deadbeat dad.

Nor is he the kind of Father who would let us think we were living our own lives but who secretly—without our knowledge—pulls strings to make life “easier” for us: uses his influence to get us into college, arranges for us to meet the love of our lives, in general never letting us grow and try and stumble and try again. Any parent knows, as any teacher knows, that the hardest part of the job is knowing when to keep your mouth shut. Which is not to say that sometimes, like our natural fathers, this one might not pull a few strings, arrange a few coincidences perhaps, to help us out to get past our own blind spots and onto the direction we’re trying to get to. But usually, he does us the courtesy of waiting for us to ask for help before getting involved. He likes to be asked. Besides, the deist or clockmaker image of God, who winds things up and then steps back, is not the God whom we experience every day in prayer and contemplation. And it is far removed from the God who sent his only son to save us from our sins.

Consolmagno, Guy (2009-05-18). God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion (pp. 169-170). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

I think you’re taking Br. Consolmagno out of context based on a single passage you read, Inocente.

 

[inocente]

I just read two of Br. Consolmagno’s books, so I can comment on this. He has explicitly rejected Deism in his book, “God’s Mechanics.” Br. Guy is a Jesuit Brother and clearly and explicitly believes in the miracle of the Incarnation, and the intervention of God in the natural order in response to prayer, so how could he be a Deist, or how could he NOT believe that God intervenes by inexplicable means? He was simply stating his belief that God generally uses natural processes to run the world (erosion, natural selection, volcanism, etc.) but intervenes at specific points when necessary. He was arguing against the idea of tying scientific theories to faith, since science changes (few scientific textbooks are still accurate after 25 years) but faith remains constant. Fr. Lemaitre, who formulated the “Big Bang” theory argued in a similar fashion against any attempt to incorporate his theory into orthodox theology, as he said science can always be proven wrong and his theory was no exception. St. Augustine made the same argument.

Br. Consolmagno wrote:

Consolmagno, Guy (2009-05-18). God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion (pp. 169-170). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition.

I think you’re taking Br. Consolmagno out of context based on a single passage you read, Inocente.

Thanks, it’s good to know I understood him correctly.

I never thought he could be a deist, it was tonyrey who brought up deism, I’ve no idea why, I said Consolmagno couldn’t be a deist in post #92.

The passage you quoted backs up the one I quoted, that Consolmagno doesn’t believe God intervenes in inexplicable ways. The operative word being inexplicable, since a god invoked to explain anything we don’t is precisely “nothing more than scientific hypothesis invoked to explain planetary orbits or the rise of life on Earth or the source of the Big Bang” and then we “are guilty of believing in the God of the Gaps”.

 

[tonyrey]

I think it’s out of everyone’s depth because it is deeper

I don’t believe there is an uniform law for miracles. God’s only *single *intention or disposition is His love which is expressed in as many different ways as there are individuals. He forgives us as we forgive others and responds to each of us according to our needs, our love for Him and our love for one another…

 

[wanstronian]

This is really a question for non-believers, obviously. Are miracles possible? Why or why not?

Whether they’re possible or not, who knows? None have ever been adequately proven to have occurred, so it’s not looking likely. As the saying goes, “Why are there no discarded crutches at Lourdes?”

I don’t think that a definition of miracle as “outside the [currently] known model of physics” would prevent one occurring. I do think it would be dumb to simply refer to it as a miracle and stop trying to find a rational explanation. If everybody had done that we’d still be living in caves and screaming with terror whenever there was a thunderstorm.

 

[tonyrey]

The very fact that anyone or anything exists is a miracle! No one can understand or explain why there should be something rather than nothing:

O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.

• King Lear

There is nothing in the entire universe that need exist. Physical necessity is an illusion.

That is not the only miracle. We need not exist yet we can understand that nothing need exist! If everything is unnecessary how and why can we understand everything is unnecessary? Doesn’t that strike you as another inexplicable fact? Is there any reason why we should be capable of such insight?

Survival value is a hopelessly inadequate and nonsensical hypothesis. Such knowledge is useless from a physical point of view. The power of our mind is another unexplained miracle that has to be taken into account in any coherent view of life. Otherwise we are existing at a superficial level and ignoring the most fundamental fact of all which is responsible for the incredible success of science and all the other achievements of the human race.