TO SUPPOSE A SUPERNATURAL IS REAL IS TO INVALIDATE THE FINDINGS OF SCIENCE FOR IT CAN INTERFERE

Science depends on the assumption that miracles and magic do not happen and that we can learn how nature works and see that nature has laws and structure. There would be no value in experiments if magic can interfere. Believers, like scientists and unbelievers, say dead people stay dead. The believers add that Jesus was an exception for he rose again. But how do they know that he was the only exception? They say the evidence tells them. But evidence is not everything! Perhaps resurrecting happens a lot and no evidence is left behind? What gives them the right to assume that dead people staying dead is really a regularity? The person who does not believe that anybody rose is more supportive of regularity than they are. The supernatural attacks science. It denies regularity. It cannot be tested. It provides then no direction for doing research.
 
It is not only a miracle being supernatural that is the sign. It is the miracle being supernatural and rare and a once-off. If a spring issuing water cured all warts supernaturally it would not be seen as a sign. It would only be seen as a sign if it supernaturally cured some warts. A miracle being rare and a once-off makes it a miracle far more than its being supernatural does. This means three things:
 
- You have to show the event was provably or probably a miracle.
- You also have to disprove other similar miracle reports for it has to be rare to be a true miracle.
- To hold that ongoing miracles happen would mean that science is unreliable. Perhaps there is no sun at all but a miracle makes us think there is one.
 
The miracle then puts a huge burden on science for it calls on experts for verification and a lot lot of work! The standard for investigators would need to be immense. But like I said, science cannot do that. Miracles need science and they dismiss it at the one time. Miracles are absurd.
 
People should get their science right and forget about miracles. Do not waste time with the supernatural. It is far more important to check out suspect scientific claims than miracles. If somebody gets treatment for a sore back that is based on pseudo-science, that person could be actually suffering from lung cancer. Because she has been told and convinced she has a sore back and the treatment will help she may delay visiting the real professionals and end up dying over her cancer being found when it is too late. Pseudo-science is made harder to eliminate if practitioners can use miracles as evidence that science does not know it all. Practitioners may claim that the miraculous aids their treatments! Pseudo-science is made harder to eliminate if time and thought is taken up considering miracle claims. Nobody dies if people refuse to examine and test the apparitions of Medjugorje. People die over pseudo-science. Miracles and religion demand that we waste time with them and people die in the process. They are indirectly murderous at worst and irresponsible at best.
 
Some physicists state that it is naturally possible for a dead person to return from the dead after three days. They regard this as very improbable. There are molecular explanations as to why that might happen. That would mean you never should call anything supernatural or attribute it to the supernatural. If nature can do it, then supernatural explanations are redundant.
 
Imagine in a possible world that science has verified that miracles happen. Science if it recognises miracles cannot test what is doing them. It could be a case that if x rises from the dead today, somebody else could rise next week or maybe millions will rise in a months time. Nobody knows. Science cannot function with such a presumption. Even if there is a God, that God who lets babies suffer terribly may have to do it - according to religion. So then he could give his power to do miracles to some witch or something. All agree that believing some power can do random mad miracles ruins science. Religion agrees. But that does not change the fact that it cannot give evidence that miracles happen sensibly. Science and philosophy and religion cannot show that or make it likely.

If you request a birthday cake in prayer, will God minutely tamper with the universe to make sure you will get one? That would be against the laws of physics. Believers might say it is not for rather than tamper he sets up the universe in preparation for your cake. But that would be against physics as well. Why? Would it be as bad as or worse than tampering?  It is worse for it is still tampering and it won't admit it.  Prayer is more important to religion than miracles and miracles are supposed to be about getting people to pray and have a relationship with God.  Thus if prayer is anti-science then it follows that miracles are necessarily anti-science too.

Science shows that antibiotics work. Or does it? What if they are useless and it is a perpetual miracle at work?  That would explain why people get better.  Researchers all agree that to view God as constantly or perpetually suspending natural law makes science useless and futile and blasphemous.  Even the suggestion that God could be perpetually suspending natural law or alternatively that what looks like a natural cause in fact is not (eg if antibiotics do not affect the immune system and the response of the immune system is not down to them but a miracle) ruins science.  Science does not make room for any doubt when something is verified.  And there is enough to bring doubt in if anywhere without miracles and the supernatural adding to it.

Religion tells you that if you think all miracles are suspect or if you debunk them all that there could be a real miracle out there that you have not come across.  It warns you against concluding that miracles do not happen or probably do not happen.  But do not forget how science operates. It will test human beings by taking a suitable number and performing a study. It will find human nature is too unreliable with such tales.  Science regards a study as enough to show human nature is always too unreliable.  Religion is anti-science for it rejects the method of science.  Science has shown that eyewitness testimony needs such caution that you cannot lay too much importance on it.  It is not enough to justify jailing somebody for life or basing magical doctrines on.



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