Religion, Science, and Miracles

Abstract

Over the centuries there has been a knotty relationship between science and religion. Whether referring to the ancient Ionian philosophers seeking rational explanations of change in the physical world, or Copernicus and Galileo appealing to astronomical evidence for understanding the movements of the heavens, or Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin seeking natural explanations for the origin and development of living organisms, there have been those thinkers who sought a logos (rational account) rather than a mythos (religious or mythical account) for explaining phenomena in the natural world. However, there have also been those who are unsatisfied with explaining all phenomena in the natural world in strictly naturalistic terms. In both ancient and recent times, many have thought it necessary to posit spiritual, nonscientific reasons and explanations for certain events that occur in the world. In recent decades, this issue has been heightened in the academy as well as in the culture at large. The creation/evolution debates in the United States are a case in point, but other examples abound, including various claims of miracles or of various kinds of religious experience. Many people maintain that they have been miraculously healed or have had a religious experience of one sort or another—sensing the divine, say, or hearing God. Yet others claim that affirming divine interaction or causality in the world, whether small or large, to account for any phenomena is unwarranted religious bias and that a scientific (aka, naturalistic) explanation—even if that explanation is not yet known—is always a more reasonable approach in our contemporary scientific age.