How are genuine miracles possible?

[Pheonix]

This is a question I’ve been mulling over for the last couple of days, but I have been unable to come up with a decent answer.

When non-believers ask Catholics why God doesn’t stop evil and suffering, the typical response is that God gave humanity free will. In order for our will to be “free,” we must have the choice between acts that cause good and acts that cause evil and suffering. The only way God could stop evil and suffering is to take away our ability to choose the acts that cause evil and suffering. Therefore, our will would not be “free.” This presents a problem because it’s God’s will that humanity has the choice between good and evil. To act against that (i.e. taking away free will) would mean that God has contradicted his will. God, being perfect, cannot contradict himself.

Thus, my question: why doesn’t this reasoning apply to miracles?

Christianity holds that God created the universe and everything in it. If that’s true, then God created all the physical phenomena described by scientific laws and theories. Therefore, God created what we describe with germ theory, atomic theory, and the laws of thermodynamics, biogenesis, and gravity.

Miracles, by definition, defy scientific explanation. I see only two ways miracles can defy scientific explanation: (1) they suspend or even break laws or theories, or (2) the process that caused the miracle is simply unknown to science at the current time. Point 2, however, doesn’t work. I don’t see how something can be called a “miracle,” in a religious or spiritual context at least, if it has a natural, scientific explanation.

So we’re left with Point 1: miracles can only happen by God suspending or breaking laws and theories. But how is this possible? God, for example, created the second law of thermodynamics. It is therefore God’s will that the second law of thermodynamics acts the way it does. If God did something contrary to the second law of thermodynamics, then that should be considered contradictory to his will. I think it would be reasonable, however, to assume that Christians would deny such a conclusion.

Why? If God caused a miracle that contradicted the second law of thermodynamics, then why would this not be considered a contradiction of God’s will? One could argue that God is not bound by his creation, and he can therefore suspend or break the physical phenomena described by laws and theories. But the same can be said for free will, if we use the same reasoning. God created free will, and he is not bound by his creation. Therefore, God can suspend or break free will.

I can’t make sense of this. Perhaps I’m simply not thinking about this thoroughly enough, but I would nonetheless appreciate any and all conjectures and explanations. Recommendations for both religious and non-religious literature on this subject, if it exists, will also be appreciated.

Thanks!

Robbie

 

[mdisse]

Point 1 maybe theres things outside our universe that are possible that God brings into ours. Point 2, maybe God used those things we haven’t discovered yet to convert the early humans, and true miracles are things like people finding God and changing their life for the better, or a child wanting to help those less fortunate which I’ve seen recently. I’ve thought a lot about this lately so maybe the Holy Spirit is helping us both out.

 

[JerryZ]

Well it is an interesting question, the way you posited it, but then you postulated something that went off the tangent, namely that somehow if a miracle even went as far as apparently modifiying a “physical law” it somehow twarted “free will”.
But the reality is it did not, the miracle is a response from God to petitions to a Human wether that petition was manifest or hidden.

Look for example at the miracle of Lanciano, Italy (an Eucharistic miracle) it happened because the Priest that was celebrating mass was struggling with his faith that the Host and Wine were indeed transformed into the real flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus.

God caused the miracle to strenghten that priests faith and at the same time also gave us all a permanent testament through the ages so others might also strenghten their sometimes fledgling faiths.

We humans are unfortunately sometimes the prisoners of our senses and need to be reminded that GOD is outside our Material World but HE is the primary causer of it and He can alter temporarily it’s laws if He so pleases.
Another thing to consider is that those who have decided to reject Him have done so in spite of these miracles and that further prooves that HE did not twarth free will.

I just praise and thank God HE has allowed them to happen that some (like St. Thomas) might come to believe again here also they chose to do so freely.

 

[WoundedIcon]

I heard Edward Feser describe a miracle from the Thomistic perspective. He said that, since creation is more like a song God is constantly playing than a set of dominoes, the laws of nature aren’t temporarily suspended during a miracle so much as God goes improv for a sec.

 

[abucs]

Nice point WoundedIcon.

I also like to remember Einstein’s remark that there are two ways to view reality - if nothing is a miracle or if everything is.

If we are going to ask how God works in the world then we have to have a correct view of the fullness of reality which we do not have. We only have a partial view and suppose that if something happens contrary to that then somehow our view of reality has been suspended.

I was a computer technician by trade (profession, whatever). Sometimes i would sit with users of big banking financial systems and log on to re-create or review what they have done. Because (excuse the pun) my user-id pretty much had God status i could use special commands that would access hidden panels that would allow me to do anything that i had previously dreamt up and written into those panels. Because the users would get error messages if they tried the same thing, it must have looked to them like the normal programming rules had been suspended or changed.

In affect it was the same system with the same code that had always been written into the functioning of the system. They had never seen it before though because they did not have authority to access it under their own control.

The same happens with game programmers who give them-selves ‘God’ status in order to wander at will throughout the game to test their creation whilst not being under the same restrictions as users of the system. The rules do not change, it is simply what access you have (or have given yourself).

Science is not the study of the totality of reality but only that material part we have access and control to empirically test. Miracles on the other hand as Einstein might concede, are not magic, they could be the constant fabric of our reality.

Some miracles follow well known laws we can recognise in Creation and we have chosen to call science. Other miracles may well indeed use parts of Creation we do not have access to and are therefore outside of science.

Science only covers parts of Creation. Miracles (as you seem to define them) are not contrary to science, need the suspension of science or once known become part of science.

 

[Ion]

God, being perfect, cannot contradict himself.

God is almighty, it’s not a good habit to use the construction cannot in the same sentence. You can use “doesn’t”, or other formula.

God is the cauze of all things, in the sequence cauze-effect there can be any intervention without any contradiction.

About the free will of humans, the same, there are examples in the Bible where the hearth of some people was hardenned (ex. pharaoh), or strengthen (the other way). There are people that get into psychological disorders, and I don’t know how much of it they have anymore.

As for the humanity as a whole, and thus for an individ in particular, God gave us free will, but His intervention is possible anytime anywhere without any contradiction.