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miracles

Miracles: Can They Happen?

A few days ago we had a post on Science, Miracles, and Benny Hinn, highlighting portions of Bill Dembski’s new online book The Faces of Miracles.  It seems appropriate this time of year to consider miracles.  After all, in the Christian world, this month we’re celebrating an event that can only be described as a miracle: the virgin birth of Christ.  So what exactly do we mean by the term “miracle”?  In the book, In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, Richard Purtill provides this definition: A miracle is an event that is brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of Read More ›

Science, miracles, and Benny Hinn

Bill Dembski's 2nd chapter of a book on miracles is now on line. One wonders whether scam vs. no-scam is even the right question in many cases. Perhaps what we should be asking is, how much of what is happening can be accounted for by the well-documented—and quite real— placebo effect? Read More ›

Rob Sheldon: If you want laws of nature, you must accept miracles

And Christianity too, says our physics color commentator Rob Sheldon. He explains: Proposition: Miracles are violations of natural law. 1. What is natural law; Who invented it? Who enforces it? Who interprets it? a) One argument is that natural law is merely inductive. The sun has risen daily for the past 5000 years of written history, therefore it is a law. But if it did not rise tomorrow, that would only be a 1/1,800,000 event. Are we saying that probabilities < 1:1,800,000 are always certain? Then certain rare forms of cancer should certainly never happen. b) Another argument is that “Nature” operates by laws that we discover. But what is “Nature”? How do we meet “Nature”? If it is inductive, Read More ›