The Scientific Basis of Miracles?

1. Q: What Is A Miracle?
2. Consider Cotton Mather and the Radio
   • if he is transported to our time, how would he perceive the radio?
   • as a wonder of technology? probably not
   • as a voice from heaven? yes, if he liked what he heard
   • as a voice of a demon? yes, if he didn't like what he heard
   • in either case, a miracle, good or bad
   • but a miracle only because of Matther's ignorance
   • likewise, we try to explain miracle's from a scientific basis
   • how did Jesus walk on water (if he did)? physically, probably something to do with water tension
   • exorcisms? Jesus was a good psychoanalyst!
   • feeding the 5K? everyone really had food; they just weren't going to share it
   • but are there really miracles? does science allow for them?
3. God's Promise of a Rational Universe
4. How can there be miracles?
   • via backdoors in space-time
   • from beyond space-time
   • by emerging out of space-time
5. Backdoors
   • Random mutations
   • Quantum uncertainity
   • Gödel incompleteness
   • apparent random events intrude into the deterministic universe
6. Beyond spatiotemporality ... holosychronality
   • And God said, "Let there be light ..." and there was a miracle ...
   • Mathematics cannot calculate what was happening "before" the Big Bang or even at the Big Bang
   • Bohm and the holographic universe
   • Process Reality and God's lure
   • Eternity: beyond space-time
   • the Unreasonable Reasonableness of Mathematics
   • influences from beyond space-time
7. Emerging: Consilence, Chaos, and Complexity
   • whole greater than the parts
   • non-linearity of reality [Gleick, p303ff]
     1. the butterfly effect
        • sensitivity to initial conditions
     2. fractals
        • geometry of feedback loops
        • regularity in chaos
        • self-similarity
        • strange attractors
     3. simple systems give rise to complex behavior
     4. complex systems give rise to simple behavior
     5. chaos is the end of the reductionist program
     6. randomness with feedback implies order as we see in biological evolution
     7. God plays at dice, but the dice are loaded
   • something unique arises from the parts
8. So what is a miracle?
   • technically: a divine event emerging in s-t from beyond s-t through a backdoor in s-t
   • subjectively: the very creation in all of its diversity, beauty, and complexity
   • objectively: the rationality of the universe
   • popularly: anything we don't understand
9. Conclusion
   • Unlike theology, science "justifies" miracles
   • Did Jesus wrought miracles?
   • Could he reach beyond s-t through a backdoor in s-t?
   • The Kingdom of God emerges miracleously
   • Jewish perspective? Moslem perspective? Hindu? Buddhist?

References

1. Gleick, James; Chaos: Making A New Science; Viking ©1987.