Okay. The term miracle in your book is a relative term. Here it is a miracle; there it is natural.
No, the original sense of the word, and the metaphysical sense, is the primary sense. It's the first listing in a dictionary.
The secondary sense, a wonder of nature, as in 'all life is a miracle'.
The ternary and more recent sense, of a misunderstood or unknown natural action, is the least of the three.
This third does not actually 'undo' the idea of miracles, simply states that what was often viewed as miraculous was actually unseen nature.
Many events we attribute to miracles might have involved hidden natural processes or complex chains of interconnected events beyond our current understanding.
I don't dispute it, but that does not therefore exclude the possibility of miracles – it does not necessarily apply in every case.
What the physical sciences cannot do is determine whether or not there has been a divine Intervention.
Who draws the line between "divine intervention" and an as-yet-undiscovered natural explanation? You?
No, Tradition.
And, by the same token, who decides that 'miracles' are unreasonable or irrational?
I'm often told that 'science' (by which is meant physical sciences) has all the answers, and rules out religion. I simply happen to believe there is that which lies outside the wit and purview of the physical sciences – and when I am told this is nonsense, it seems reasonable and rational to me to ask for the proof on which that assertion is based...
But none is provided, nor can one be, for science – or rather that dogmatism I think of as scientism – decides
a priori what can and cannot be as a given axiom, and simply refutes, without sufficient reason, anything to the contrary – demanding that it should offer itself up, as it were, for investigation.
So it seems to me the claims of scientism are based on insufficient scientific evidence.
Take the case of a person who suffers from an increasingly debilitating condition. The condition is determined by medicine as 'incurable', and the treatment is palliative. The person lives their life as best they are able. Their community prays for their deliverance. Then, one day, the condition 'mysteriously' reverses. Medicine observes, confirms, but cannot explain the process. The community believe it to be a miracle.
Now, one cannot prove the miraculous, nor can anyone prove the cure was as the result of unseen and unknown purely natural causes – science can say no more than that the recovery is currently inexplicable, but hopes, one day, it will be understood, for the benefit of all.
But no-one has conclusively ruled out a miracle.
As
@RJM's said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Most people can't explain a toaster, a motor car engine or how a transistor works. Most people believed voices 'travel' down a telephone line (if you remember landlines) ... I'd have thought nearly all tech is a 'miracle' to the everyday person – certainly a mystery, but that mystery is not in the same category of a religious Mystery.
Here's a story:
At a place I worked used to be an advanced Tai-Chi practitioner. Someone he knew was being treated for cancer via chemicals and radiography, and the latter was most debilitating, with vomiting and nausea for about 36 hours afterwards. My co-worker mention it, and the master said he would like to help. He met the man and began a programme of breathing techniques.
The patient undertook a specific breathing exercise for at least 20 minutes, each side of the treatment. The result was a rapid recovery from the treatment, and no long-lasting side-effects. Recovery was in hours, rather than days. He thought it miraculous. Nor could his doctors explain it, having noted how speedily he recovered.
It was not a miracle, but it was something outside the scope of western medicine, although common to the Orient.
+++
A simple test: Can, and do, scientists believe in miracles?
Answer: Yes – nothing precludes the possibility, and there are those who do.
There's a discussion on the topic at the
Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.
Within a biblical paradigm, miracles are rational and reasonable, plausible and coherent. If God is the creator of all that exists, then it is perfectly rational to believe that God can act outside the sphere of human understanding. Augustine said: "For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature." (City of God, XXI, 8).
