Do you believe in miracles?

[Thorne]

For all your very interesting and even learned responses to my trite postings, I cannot get past this point:

We all seem to agree that science cannot explain everything and possibly never will. But regardless of that, we have to argue from our current state of knowledge. It is certain that we do not know everything now.

Given that fact, the possibility has to be acknowledged that some things might happen as a result of divine interervention. Those of us who reject the idea of divinity are backing a hunch: we do not know that there is no god - at least, not in the terms of the only standard that is left: science, which requires rigorous proof before it says a thing is or is not so. We simply believe it. Until an apparent miracle can be scientifically explained, its cause can only be guessed at, and divine causes are imaginable.

This goes far beyond simple mechanical explanations: science must provide an answer to the question "why". Eventually, it must explain the mind of man, and account for self-awareness and abstractions. It must tell us what the square root of -1 is or why negative numbers cannot have roots. It must discover what caused the Big Bang, and what the purpose of the universe is. And it must confirm whether or not we are the crazed imaginings of some super being, or pawns in a huge chess game.

Finally, to prove its own validity, it has to demonstrate that science exists independently of god: it therefore has to prove there is no god.

Until it does all that, who's to say God isn't responsible after all?


TYWD

Once again we seem to batting this subject back and forth with no real way to resolve it. As you say, it's all a matter of belief.
One thing that I think you and I are both guilty of here, though, is treating science as if it were a living entity, a god if you will. It's not. It is simply a tool, a method of explaining the world around us, of investigating those things we don't understand. Science is humanity seeking to learn about the universe we live in.
Can we prove that God does not exist? Absolutely not. One thing that science HAS taught us is that you cannot prove a negative. You cannot prove that something is impossible. But for all the time and effort that mankind has spent trying to prove the existence of gods, we are no closer to that proof now than we were when we worshiped the volcano gods.
And to my way of thinking, a belief in miracles stems from the same roots as a belief in a divine creator: it's an attempt to explain our world when unexplainable things happen. When you have no concept of geologic forces, it's just as valid to suppose that there is some sort of superior being living in that mountain who vomits out lava periodically.
The problem there, though, is that you can get the idea that there's something you can do to appease that being, to make him stop the destruction. And that's when you have some really smart guy, who really hates working for a living, step up and say, "All we have to do is toss a virgin into the mountain and the god will be satisfied." And when that doesn't work, well, we must really be bad, so let's find another virgin. And maybe the volcano will die down, as it's done in the past, or maybe it will destroy the village. But either way, that smart guy has it covered and before you know it he has everyone convinced that the god speaks only through him and if they don't follow the god's directions really bad things will happen.
So I say, let's forget about the gods. Let's find the real reason for that volcano erupting. Maybe we can't do anything about it, but at least we won't have to sacrifice any virgins to it. I can think of much more enjoyable things to do with them!