The "science" of Miracles

That question is self-contradictory. If there is scientific evidence for an event, there are necessarily possible scientific explanations and by definition it is not a miracle. Attribution is by a person. There is no person choosing a slit so there is no possibility of attribution. The situation we're talking about is where Reverend Jim attributes the choice of slit to a supernatural cause while Scientist George says he doesn't know why or how the choice was made. But scientist George doen't call the choice a "miracle"; he just keeps looking for the why and how. Why would we discuss that? We know that scientific consensus would never call something a miracle. You might as well discuss a scientific consensus on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Yes we are. Those are the only people who call something a miracle. It's only the attribution to supernatural causes that makes it a "miracle". Look at the miracle of the sun. The Catholic Church attributes it to a supernatural cause. Science does not. The Catholic Church attributes a particular observation of the sun's activity to supernatural causes. Science does not. A miracle is the attribution of an event to supernatural causes. And science has never encountered a true fairy before. That's why the "phenomenon" of fairies is called a fairy tale. Nothing is "inexplicable" according to science. It may be unexplained temporarily. The actual problem here is that you refuse to consider what people actually call miracles. Look at the miracle of the sun. It is called a "miracle" by people who can't explain it but it is not called a miracle by science. Science tries to explain it.Your what-if scenario is like closing down the Patent Office because everything possible has already been invented. Science isn't going to quit just because you make up a fairy tale about a flying bridge. Science is never going to conclude "insert miracle here".

If you take your car to a mechanic, do you expect him to say, "It can't be fixed," or "It's going to cost a lot to fix it"?People who are science-minded will say, "I wonder how that happened," and try to figure it out. I'm not avoiding the terminology. I'm saying that science doesn't use it. Nonsense. I didn't say that science "will" find all the answers or even that it "can" find all the answers. I'm said that it will never quit trying. Yes I did. I became a believer the same way you did, by swallowing hook-line-and-sinker what my society said was "the Truth". Then I became an unbeliever by recognizing that it wasn't true. Nonsense. I could have ZERO faith in science ever finding the answer to anything. What I'm talking about is the fact that science will keep looking, no matter how good or bad their record is. The bigger philosophical questions are mostly garbage.

Show us an example of something that is actually called a miracle where there is no attribution. That's the opposite of tentativity. Tentativity in science means that even if something seems to be a miracle, we can never rule out the possibility that a natural explanation will be found. That's why scientists don't call things miracles.Look at the miracle of the sun. The Catholic Church calls it a miracle. Scientists do not. So give us some examples of scientific papers where scientists call an event a miracle. You haven't shown that. In the miracle of the sun, the only distinction between the Church's attitude and the scientists' attitude is that the Church attributes the event to supernatural causes. We've had evidence of fairies. Science determined that it was faked. That's what makes the scenario nonsensical. Nothing is "inexplicable" to science, even if it is temporarily unexplained. You're the only one who seems to want to. But science doesn't define "miracle" at all. It doesn't need to. Of course it could. It has been avoided for centuries despite the observation of phenomena that were temporarily unexplained.

No. I'm saying that science doesn't use it. It has nothing to do with authority. If you know of examples where science refers to miracles, please post them. When they're doing science, they don't refer to miracles. Nonsense. Science is collective. Of course there is. Science stops at the evidence. Nonsense. I'm not a scientist at all. I never even started trying. Evidence is evident to everybody. That's what evident means.

Exactly. Miracles are not referred to by science because miracles are religion. But science doesn't define miracles any more than it defines gods or leprechauns. I'm willing to consider evidence on any subject. But evidence can not point to a "miracle".

No it doesn't. "Miracle" doesn't distinguish between flying bridges and dark matter and Bigfoot, etc. If science was going to introduce new terminology for flying bridges, ir would be more likely to call them "flying bridges" than to borrow religious terminology. Well, you're proposing "miracle" for the phenomenon of flying bridges, which have not been observed.

And it still doesn't. And it still doesn't. I'm presuming to predict that scientists in the future will not throw up their hands and say, "it's a miracle!" I explained why it doesn't:

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"Miracle" doesn't distinguish between flying bridges and dark matter and Bigfoot, etc. If science was going to introduce new terminology for flying bridges, ir would be more likely to call them "flying bridges" than to borrow religious terminology.

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In the case of gravity, we have actual events observed by actual people. Apples fall every day. The case of the flying bridge is just a made-up fairy tale. There is no "phenomenon". Rumpelstiltskin was observed spinning straw into gold in exatly the same way. But the brothers Grimm didn't call it a thought experiment and scientists would not have called it a miracle. That's an absurd analogy. We have a long list of anecdotal evidence about what "might" happen if somebody climbed a tree. We have no data on flying bridges or flying pigs. A "thought experiment" on non-existent data can produce any number of results but none of them are useful without a connection to reality.

Of course we're allowed to speculate. We can speculate all we like about what if pigs could fly. What we should not do is claim that scientists would call flying pigs a miracle.A test pilot in an experimental aircraft in an uncontrolled spin will not go screaming to his death. He'll be trying this and trying that - "What if I flip this switch? What if I turn left?" - until he augers into the ground. The embarrassment of not being able to figure it out is worse than death. It's been called "the right stuff".Scientists are the same. Let's be more precise in out use of the word "hypothesis". Every tale about flying pigs or fairies is not a hypothesis. Unless we can test it, we shouldn't be calling it a "hypothesis".

Asked and answered. If evidence for an event existed, scientists would examine the evidence and try to come up with an explanation. They would not declare it "inexplicable". I have no difficulty with the concept of pigs flying. What I'm disputing is your certainty (Message 266) that, "A consensus of scientists would most certainly concede they're miraculous." I think the evidence shows that they most certainly would not. The objection is not on the grounds that your scenario has never been observed. The objection is on the grounds that your scenario, by your own description, is impossible according to everything we know about science. A person climbing a tree is repeatable. We can ask, "What if Bob climbed the tree?" and then watch him do it, or we can watch somebody else do it and extrapolate the results to Bob. Your analogy is bad because your "thought experiment" can not be tested, can not be connected to reality in any way. But we don't decide that, "A consensus of scientists would most certainly concede they're miraculous," (Message 266) based on data that is currently non-existent. Of course not. I'm predicting what scientists would do based on what they have done in the past. You have it backwards. You're the one who is predicting that, "A consensus of scientists would most certainly concede they're miraculous." (Message 266) I'm just saying the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. If scientists didn't call something they didn't understand a "miracle" in the past, why would they do it in the future? Where you went wrong is in suggesting that they would stop at "miracle". They would not stop.

That isn't very long. Science develops tentative explanations pretty quickly, so they have no need to call something "inexplicable". Every scientific paper that doesn't fall back on "miracles". Sure there is. When scientists discovered that a lot of matter seems to be "missing" in the universe, that had never been observed before. What they did was hypothesize a new kind of "dark" matter that can not be observed by conventional methods - and they began to look for new ways to observe it. They did not call it a miracle. So you and Tangle are fine-tuning your preferred definition of miracles by dragging it even farther from reality.Real-life phenomena that have no current explanation are not miracles. Agreed.And events that are called miracles by some, such as the Miracle of the Sun, are beneath you so you refuse to discuss them.So the only "real" miracles are flying bridges. But what has that got to do with science?

Your 'events' are not "unprecedented" - they're made up. In the real world of real events - including events like the Miracle of the Sun - the only place we have to look for guidance is the existing body of scientific research. Nothing has the qualities that you and Tangle proposed. You proposed a fairy tale, which is why science has no reason to deal with it. You don't have to make up fairy tales. You could look at real reports of "miracles, such as the Miracle of the Sun. And of course, science does not call them miracles. Of course it's relevant - because the Catholic Church is the only one calling it a miracle.

You're tailoring those "needs" to your preferred definition of miracle, which is incorrect.The point of the Miracle of the Sun is that the Catholic Church calls it a miracle while scientists do not. The only thing that makes an event a miracle is somebody attributing it to unnatural causes. Miracles are religion, not science.

First, I don't have that kind of power. Nothing I say is going to have any effect whatsoever on science.Second, science has already distanced itself from that vocabulary. I have asked repeatedly for any evidence that science uses the word "miracle". I don't think you'll find any.

It's important to understand that it's only "inexplicable" to the people who call it a miracle. Indeed. And scientists don't use the word "miracle".

Your "rebuttals" have been addressed. You're just refusing to accept reality - scientists do not use the word "miracle". You refuse to discuss what (some) people actually do all "miracles".