Miracles and Science Essay

1. IntroductionMiracles as violations of the laws of constitution Unbelievable, isnt it, that at that home ar still students at this university who deal in stories from the Bible, said Martin, an senior(a) colleague, at maven of the formal dinners some which the traditional life of Oxford University revolves. entirely Martin, I dissolving agented, their conviction probably doesnt differ much from mine. I set up still draw his hardihood go pale season he nearly choked on his glass of St. Emilion Grand Cru split up How can you believe in much(prenominal) things nowadays Walking on water, a resurrection from the dead? Those atomic number 18 miracles, and atomic number 18nt you a scientist? Oh, how provoke, say gutter and Ruth, a couple that I pee-pee just met at the abolish of a church service. You atomic number 18 a scientist. They front a berth un trusted of what to say beside and gutter blurts let out, I read recently that we still dont on a lower floo rstand how raspberry bushs can fly so mevery miles to the south and until now go down to exactly the said(prenominal) place distributively summer. Scientists cant explain this it is a miracle, dont you appreciate? I never quite jockey what to say next in such conversations. Perhaps nine years of living in Britain pick up check me too sensitive to that some cardinal of English social sins causing embarrassment. exclusively there is more to it than that. Behind these statements lies a tangle of complex intellectual consequences related to the definition and scope of recognition, the nature of paragons action in the adult male, and the reliability and interpretation of the Bible. These kick the bucket exercised m any of extensiveest minds in history The debate among atheism and religious belief has g unitary on for centuries, and just some any aspect of it has been explored to the point where nonwithstanding philosophers await bored with it. The out perplex is stalemate. 1 So says my Oxford colleague Alister McGrath. Although these subtleties are tumesce known to philosophers and historians of skill, public word on scholarship and obligationeousness practic everyy come alongs blissfully unaware of them. 2 E actu tout ensembley ane brings a set of presuppositions to the table. To manu itemure progress, these should early be brought out into the open.Without season for an honest conversation in which we can listen to each early(a) in depth, I wont know exactly what Martin, bottom, or Ruths presuppositions are. that, for the sake of this essay, I pull up stakes be a bit presumptuous and venture a guess. My guess would be that, although two canvasm to be on opposite sides of a vast divide, they are in fact influenced by a similar perspective on acquirement and miracles, one foremost gear laid down by the big(p) sceptical Scottish philosopher David Hume, who wrote A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable familiarity has e grasplished these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any production line from imbibe intercourse can possibly be imagined.This language of miracles as violations of the laws of nature has close in the debate ever since. Martin, John and Ruth, perchance without realizing it, are living under the long shadow of David Hume. Martin may think that light is the solitary(prenominal) sure route to gaining companionship about the instauration, and that, since belief in miracles is obviously unscientific, such belief essential ipso facto be false. John and Ruth may come on a similar tension mingled with science and miracles, and are and thusly encouraged by any natural mutationctioning that seems inexplicable. Weakening the position of science would seem to potentialen the theme for divinity fudge acting in the earthly concern If we know that interchangeable a shot matinee idol miraculously steers a bird binding to its original habitat after a long return flight to the south, and then it is easier to believe that 2000 years ago he sour water into wine at a wedding in Cana. Now, as a Christian scientist who believes in the miracles of the Bible, I take issue with both(prenominal) of the views above. But to explain this better, I need to first take a tone of voice back and answer two critical questions What do I take to be by science, and what doesthe Bible say about miracles?2. Defining accomplishmentThe problem of deciding where to draw the lines around science has vexed generations of philosophers. uniform galore(postnominal) unsolved issues, it has been given its own namethe demarcation problem. Although one can determine with some degree of consensus what the extremes of the science/non-science continuum are, exactly where the confines lies is fuzzy. This doesnt convey in mind, however, that we can non identify science when we see it4, but rather that a watertight definition is difficult to gain. The old fashioned conception (still taught in many schools) that scientific practice follows a well-defined linear action wellfirst make an observation, then state a hypothesis, and then turn up that hypothesisis certainly out-of-the-way(prenominal) too simple. Science as a tapestry Rather than attempt to come up with a diligent and precise definition of science or scientific practice, I will instead resort to a favorite metaphor of mine. It originates with one of my former(prenominal) teachers at Cornell, the physicist David Mermin, who describes science as a tapestry woven in concert from many threads (experimental results, interpretations, explanations, etc.).5It is only when one projects the tapestry as a whole that it will (or will not) make a convincing pattern. Creating scientific tapestries is a collective endeavor building on mutual send and the communal hold up of what kinds of line of businesss and de pict are bidly to stand the stress of time. In part because the skill of weaving steady-going scientific tapestries relies on subtle thinkments, a young scientist may work for years as an apprentice of older and more experienced practitioners before branching out on his own. In this process there are many parallels with the guilds of old. I am fond of this metaphor because it describes what I think I experience from the inside as a scientist. Moreover, it as well as emphasizes the importance of coherence and agreement when I weave together arguments and data to make an inference to a best explanation.6 The punishing communal element inherent in scientific practice has at times been seized upon by sociologists of science to press that scientific knowledge is just one more type of pitying work with no groovyerclaim on reality than any other(a) form of knowledge.But scientists as a whole have reacted to this proposition in a negative way.7 Although they agree that all kinds of economic, historical and social factors do philander a role in the makeup of scientific theories, they would argue that, in the long run, the scientific process does champion to reliable knowledge about the world. The view of nature embraced by most scientists that I know could be described as critical realism. They are realists because they believe that there is a world out there that is self-governing of our do. The adjective critical is added because they recognize that extracting knowledge about that world is not perpetually straightforward. Thus, the primary role of the collective nature of the scientific process is to provide a network of error-correcting mechanisms that prevent us from fooling ourselves. The invariable testing against nature refines and filters out competing scientific theories, leading to advances in the strength and reliability of our scientific knowledge tapestries. Although there are many commonalities in the ways that scientists in distinct f ields assemble their tapestry arguments, there can in addition be subtle differences.These differences are foisted on us in part by the types of problems that each field attempts to address. For somatogenetic exertion, as a theoretical physicist Ive been trained in a tradition of what the Nobel honorable Eugene Wigner called the un honest effectiveness of mathematics The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the saying of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we n all read nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future(a) re look and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perchance to a fault to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.8 We believe, based on a history of salient(ip) success, that mathematical consistency among threads is a cardinal indicator of strong tapestries.9These days, I spend much of my time interacting with biologists who tend to view my authorizationin the ability of theoretical models to extract knowledge about the fleshly world with immense suspicion.10 I, on the other hand, am a good deal instinctively sceptical of the huge error bars that can afflict their data.11 To a enormous degree, these cultural differences are forced on us by the kinds of questions we study. My reaction above a heaves because physics is self- hold ining. As a community we scarcely dont deal with problems of the same level of complexity that biological science does. If an experiment is too messy we will often define it away(predicate) by declaring that isnt physics, and move on.Similarly, molecular biologists can afford to be more selective about their data than medical scientists or psychologists can.12 But, in spite of these cultural differences, which can lead to heated and sometimes frustrating discussion, we do agree on a number of plant rules for defining what makes a tapestry strong. For example, what we either predict or measure should be repeatable. If I claim to see an effect in an experiment, someone else in a antithetical lab should be able to reliably measure the same effect.13 That simple requirement has many ramifications for the types of problems we are able to addressThe limits of science there are many questions that simply are not teachable to purely scientific analysis. A very lucid discussion of this issue can be strand in the book The Limits of Science by Nobel Prize winner (and atheist) Sir puppet Medawar, who wrote That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very akinly by the existence of questions that science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would em authority it to answer It is not to science, therefore but to metaphysics, imaginative literature or religion that we must turn for answers to questions having to do with first and last things. and Science is a great and glorious enterprise the most successful, I argue, that human organisms hav e ever engaged in. To reproach itfor its inability to answer all the questions we should same(p) to put to it is no more sensible than to reproach a railway governance locomotive for not flying or, in normal, not get alonging any other operation for which it was not designed.14 Sciences great power derives from its self-imposed limits. It is wrong to ask it to pronounce on issues international its jurisdiction. In fact, the most important decisions in life cannot be addressed unaccompanied by the scientific method, nor do plurality really live as if they can.In the words of Sir John Polkinghorne, former professor of Mathematical physical science at Cambridge and Anglican priest We are entitled to require a consistency between what people write in their studies and the way in which they live their lives. I submit that no-one lives as if science were enough. Our account of the world must be rich enough have a thickened enough texture and a sufficiently generous rationality to deem the total spectrum of human meeting with reality. But just because we dont live life by the scientific method doesnt mean that the only alternative is irrationality. For example, if I were to decide to get married, a authentically irrational approach would be to pick a random woman out the street. Instead, assuming I find a potentially spontaneous partner, it is perspicacious to go by dint of a period of courtship during which we get to know each other. We may also ask for the opinion of wise friends. in that location are helpful counseling programs with compatibility lists, etc. that, in fact, often use knowledge that scientific techniques have extracted from our collective experience and perception. But at the end of the day I cant require scientific certainty before deciding to marry someone. Nor is it wise to perform repeatable experiments I need to make a volitional step because there are aspects of marriage that I can only see from the inside.15 Another examp le of a method use to obtain knowledge is the legal process which, although it is a tightly organized system, is not rigorously scientific. Similarly, a historian will use a combination of evidence (e.g. manuscripts) and understanding about the thinking patterns of a particular era to make informed judgements about what happened in the past. Clearly, this big question of how to extract reliableinformation about the world, how to separate fact from mere opinion, is indeed a very difficult and important one.3. Miracles and the BibleHow can we then judge whether or not the miracles of the Bible are reliable? Since the word miracle has interpreted on so many different meanings, it is important to first examine the scriptural language. The New Testament predominantly uses three words for miracle teras, a wonder dunamis, an act of power semeion, a sign Sometimes it combines all three, as in Acts 222 Men of Israel, listen to this rescuer of Nazareth was a man accredited by graven image to you by miracles (dunamis), wonders (teras) and signs (semeion), which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. The word teras (wonder) is almost always use together with one of the other words, accent that the main point of scriptural miracles is not to merely elicit amazement but rather to serve a higher theological plan. For this reason, biblical miracles cannot be understood outside of the theological context inside which they occur. They are not anomalous events.This normal provides a key to the proper assessment of their validity. Nature is what God does Miracles happen against a backdrop. In this context, it is illuminating to see how the Bible describes Gods action in the natural world. For example in Psalm 104, that great poem about nature, we read, He makes springs pour water into the ravines, it flows between the mountains The first part of this verse refers to Gods direct action musical composition the second part suggests that water flows through its own natural properties. demo the Psalm for yourself and notice how fluidly the point of view changes back and forth between what we energy call the laws of nature and the direct action of God. Such soprano descriptions can be put in throughout the Bible. The New Testament is even more explicit The Son is the radiance of Gods distinction and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his regnant word. (Hebrews 13)and He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Col 117) In other words, if God were to stop sustaining all things by his powerful word, the world would stop existing.That is why, when describing nature, the Bible so easily switches perspectives depending on whether it is emphasizing the steadfast behavior of natural phenomena, or their origin in Gods providential sustenance. So, as St. Augustine might say, Nature is what God does.16 Augustine doesnt mean that nature is the same as God (pantheism), for, as he also argued, God op erates outside of space and time. Neverthe little, and this is a very subtle point, 17 a case can be made for ascribing some self-sustaining causal power to the laws of nature. On the other hand, there is no mode within a robust biblical theism for the opposite deistic tone that God latch oned the world and then left it to run on its own, completely independently, because descriptions of Gods continuous care for creation are found throughout Scripture Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 1029,30) As Christian thinkers throughout the Middle Ages wrestled with the questions of miracles and Gods action in the world, the following ideas emerged if the regularities of nature are a musing of the sustenance of God then one would expect them to be authentic and consistent, rather than capricious. The regular behavior of nature could be viewe d as the usance of the Creator as it were. Christians glorify God by studying these laws of nature. A strong case can be made that such theological realizations helped pave the way for the rise of modern science.18By the time the royal stag Society of London, the worlds first scientific society, was founded in 1660, Christian thinkers like the metaphysical poet John Donne, then dean of St. Pauls Cathedral in London, could write the ordinary things in Nature, would be greater miracles than the extraordinary, which weadmire most, if they were done but once only the daily doing takes off the admiration.19 God of the gaps A similar sentiment lies prat a far-famed exchange between those old adversaries, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Isaac nitrogen. The latter noticed that the orbits of the planets did not bulge to be stable when calculated over long periods, and postulated that the solar system needed occasional reformation by God. Leibniz objected that,if God had to remedy the defects of His creation, this was certainly to demean his craftsmanship. 20 In other words, the regular sustaining activity of God, as evidenced by natural laws, should be sufficient to explain the regular behaviour of the solar system, without the need for additional ad-hoc interventions.Making it right the first time is more glorious than having to fix it later. In the same context, Leibniz also emphasised the theological nature of miracles And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.21 A more modern version of Leibnizs general objection can be found in a renowned statement by Charles Coulson, the first Oxford professor of Theoretical Chemistry who wrote, When we come to the scientifically unknown, our correct policy is not to rejoice because we have found God it is to become better scientists.22He popularized th e phrase God of the gaps for those who, perhaps like John and Ruth, think that God is found primarily in the lacunas of our scientific understanding. Two sorts of miracles Science, as well as tools from historical disciplines, can be brought to substantiate on biblical miracles. For example they can be split into those that are examples of providential timing (type i miracles) and those that can only be viewed as directly violating physical cause-effectrelationships (type ii miracles). An example of a possible type i miracle would be the crossing of the river Jordan by the people of Israel Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the waters edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing.It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the neighborhood of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea) was completely cut off. So th e people crossed over opposite Jericho. (Joshua 315,16) Colin Humphreys, Cambridge professor of material science, has studied this miracle in great detail 23 and notes that the text supplies a number of unusual clues, including the fact that the water was plugged up a great distance away at a particular town. He has identified this with a location where the Jordan has been known to temporarily dam up when strong earthquakes cause mudslides (most recently in 1927). For many scientists, the fact that God is working through natural processes makes the miracle more juicyThe scientist, even when he is a believer, is bound to try as far as possible to reduce miracles to regularities the believer, even when he is a scientist, discovers miracles in the most familiar things.24 Of course this doesnt take away from the fact that there was remarkable timing involved. Perhaps the attraction of this description comes in part because there is a direct corollary with the very common experience of providential timing of events, which believers attribute to Gods working.25 There are also miracles in the Bible that defy description in call of current science. Perhaps the most significant of these is the resurrection of saviour Christ. If anything, science has alter the case for this not being a type i miracle. For example, in John 1934 we read Instead, one of the soldiers pierced savior side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of railway line and water.Modern medicine suggests that this is clear evidence that the pericardium, a membrane around the heart, was pierced, confirming that he was in fact dead. The more we know about the processes of decay that set in after death, the less likely it appears that Jesus could have risen from the dead by any natural means. Rather, science strengthens the case that if Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, the event must have occurred through a direct injection of supernatural power into the sack of cause and effect that undergirds o ur physical world it was a type ii miracle. Of course the resurrection is rally to Christian teaching And if Christ has not been raised, our discourse is useless and so is your faith. (I Corinthians 1514) Given that almost every great Christian thinker in history has emphasized the fact that miracles must be understood within the context of a theological purpose, perhaps one could invert this argument and say that it is not surprising that the central event in history would be miraculous. 26So where has this argument brought us? I have argued that the precise relationship between miracles and science has been the subject of a long and unresolved debate with strands reaching back to the early Church fathers. Theologians wrestle with questions that concern the differences between Gods regular sustaining action and His special non-repeating actions, i.e. miracles, and how these fit in with redemptive purpose. There is a link to the question of demarcation in science, since within a robust biblical theism the regular working of Gods action, the customs of the Creator (or natural laws) are, almost by design, amenable to scientific analysis. biblical miracles, in contrast, are always linked to special theological purpose and are therefore, almost by definition, non-repeatable and a-scientific. 4. The decisive significance of worldviews If Martin and I would have time to get this far in conversation, Im sure we would have swiftly passed the red herring of natural science being the touchstone upon which to examine biblical miracles. But Martin could point out that Hume made a number of other arguments against miracles, namelyWitness testimony is often suspect. Stories get exaggerated in the retelling. Miracles are chiefly seen among ignorant and bestial people. Rival religions also have miracle stories, so they cancel each other out. These arguments are substantial, and I refer to footnote 3 for an introduction to the copious literature they have inspired. Howev er, we can take a little stab at the first two objections. It is true that witness testimony cannot always be trusted and that stories change with time. But these are the same problems that face legal systems and historians. Nonetheless, we can employ the tools of these professions to examine biblical miracles. Take, for example, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is significant extrabiblical historical evidence that he indeed lived. Much has been compose about the general trustworthiness of the Gospels. For example, there is much internal evidence, in both the style and content of the narratives, that the writers themselves were convinced that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead.Tradition holds that 11 of the 12 original apostles were martyred for this belief that turned a group of cowards into a people who turned the world upside down. Although it is well beyond the scope of this essay, a very strong case for the plausibility of the resurrection can be made.27 Similar analy sis can be brought to bear on other miracle claims, including those of other religions. After all, every meaningful system of thought must be open to careful scrutiny. But I suspect that often, underneath the surface, it is really the third argument that carries the most cogent force. In part because history is littered with claims for the miraculous that seem bizarre, or smack of superstition, and in part because the incredible advances of modern science and technology inspire awe, we can intensely feel the attraction of identifying with the latter and not the former.This disposition is exemplified in the following quote by the theologian Rudolph Bultmann, a man famous for his attempts to de-mythologize the New Testament It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.28 By getting rid of the miracle stories in the Bible,B ultmann and his followers hoped to make the Christian story more palatable to modern man. Although I recognize the emotional weight of this sentiment, I am not convinced that it is an intellectually coherent approach, mainly for reasons of self-consistency.If the New Testamentitself asserts, both directly and indirectly, that the historicity of the resurrection is foundational to Christianity, then it would seem to stand or fall by that fact. As a physicist, I have a natural penchant for wanting to see how an idea relates to more basic principles. And to analyze the validity of a quote like the one above, we must take a cold hard look at our fundamental presuppositions. In the words of John Polkinghorne If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world.29Where does each of those two fundamental starting points take us? When we u se them to construct a worldview, what kind of sense does it make of experience, morality, truth, beauty, and our place in the world? These are not easy questions. There is so much riddle around us. Perhaps the best way to move forward would be to borrow Mermins tapestry analogy and carefully investigate whether the different threads of historical evidence, philosophical consistency, and personal knowledge can be woven together into a worldview that is robust. In particular, does our tapestry posses those qualities of coherence and (surprising) fertility that characterise the best scientific tapestries? If I start from the brute facts of nature, I personally am unable to construct a tapestry that is both rigorous and rich enough to make sufficient sense of the world.By contrast, if I assume a divine will and purpose behind the world I believe that I can construct a much more compelling tapesty that incorporates all of the threads of humanexistence. at heart that purposeful world, the case for Christianity is much more persuasive. To use a famous quote from C.S. Lewis I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen-not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.30 It is the sum total of all those arguments that convinces me of the veracity of biblical miracles.Nevertheless, I recognize that no egress how cogent, say, the historical evidence for the resurrection is, if I start from a different worldview, as Martin and Rudolph Bultmann do, then it will be some impossible to accept the existence of biblical miracles. (In the end I think this is what Hume is really saying). Miracles cannot be interpreted independently from the theological context in which they function. They are part of a package deal. I dont know what Martin would make of all that. We would surely need more than one glass of wine to complete this discussion (but wouldnt it be fun?).5. ConclusionFinally, what would I say to John and Ruth? If they are like many Christians I know, they might feel a slight queasiness with science, a subconscious fear fed by the pontifications of some popularizers who seem keen to equate science with atheism.31 So perhaps I would first point out the obvious limits of science. But then I might tell the story of Leibniz and Newtons exchange, and point out that Newton was a good enough theologian not to turn the allege instability of the planets into a God of the gaps argument. Similarly, if it is true that we dont yet understand how birds can navigate so accurately over large distances, then surely it would bring more glory to God to search for the mechanisms by which such remarkable feats are accomplished It is the glory of God to conceal a matter to search out a matter is the glory of kings. Proverbs 252Perhaps because evolution has been a in particular favorite bludgeon of the science = atheism cabal, a Christian mini-industry has sprung up to debunk it. Unfortunately, this only feeds the public misperce ption that the core of the conflict between science and faith concerns scientific mechanism (evolution did or did not occur) rather than one of the philosophy and interpretation of science. God could, of course, have regularly used miracles to create throughout the time-span of natural history. He is free. But whether he did so in natural history is fundamentally a question of Biblical interpretation. 32 Surely it is even more glorious if God could design a physical system that creates itself through the regularities of his sustaining action. Like many of my Christian scientific colleagues who hold to a high view of Scripture, I believe the biblical text allows itself to be interpreted in this way, that sentient beings arose primarily through the ordinary customs of the Creator, and that moreover it glorifies God to seek to understand these patterns.33 John and Ruth might then ask if I emphasize the honor of the regular action of God in sustaining the humankind, and even in creati ng us, then why should miracles occur at all?Can they occur today? Rather than answer that theological question directly, let me resort to a musical analogy borrowed from Colin Humphreys. Suppose you are watching a piano player play a classical piece. You will notice that there are certain notes that he plays, and certain ones that he never does. The choice of notes is trammel because the music is being played in a particular key signature. But then, occasionally he may break this rule and play an unusual note. Musicians call these accidentals, and a composer can put them in wherever she likes (although if there are too many the music would sound strange). As Humphreys puts it, If he is a great composer, the accidentals will never be used capriciously they will always make better music. It is the accidentals which contribute to making the piece of music great. The analogy with how God operates is clear God created and upholds the universe but, like the great composer, he is free to override his own rules. However, if he is a consistent God, it must make more sense than less for him to override his rules.34Notes1. 2. 3. Alister McGrath, Dawkins God Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life, (Blackwell, Oxford 2005) p 92. A good example of this is Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (Bantam, London 2006) David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, (1748). Humes argument has often been criticized for being self-referential. He at first presupposes that no reasonable person can believe that the laws of nature can be violated, and then concludes that miracles cannot occur because he defines them as violations of the laws of nature. Note that this analysis is not trustworthy by all commentators. Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, (Paternoster, Exeter, 1984) provides a lucid overview of the debate. See also John Earman, Humes Abject Failure. The Argument against Miracles (Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000) fo r a critical view, and Peter Harrison, Miracles, Early Modern Science, and Rational Religion, Church History 75 (3) pp. 493-511 (2006) for an interesting historical perspective.I am redisposed(p) of a famous quote by US Supreme Court judge Potter Stewart who, when asked to bring out between art and pornography, noted that although it was hard to define I know it when I see it (Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964)). N. David Mermin, The Golemization of Relativity, Physics Today 49, 1113 (1996) Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, (Routledge, London, 2004) In the 1990s this tension between sociologists and the scientific community erupted into the so-called Science Wars. For a good overview, see e.g. J. A. Labinger and H. Collins (eds), The One Culture? A Conversation about Science, (University of pelf Press, Chicago, 2001). Quote from Nobel Prize winner E. Wigner, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960). An iconic example would be Paul Diracs 1928 prediction of anti-matter, which he showed to be necessary to satisfy the mathematical consistency constraintsimposed by combining quantum mechanics and special relativity for electrons.See P.A.M. Dirac, Proc. Roy. Soc. A, 117, 610 (1928). The cultural differences between more mathematically minded physical scientists and more empirically minded biological scientists are discussed by Evelyn Fox Keller, in a winning book Making Sense of Life Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines, Harvard University Press, capital of Massachusetts (2002). Such instinctive reactions are what make interdisciplinary research so difficult. Clearly biology has been incredibly successful despite its differences with my scientific culture. I also suggest that as the questions we ask become difficult (often the case for applied subjects like medicine), the tapestries, by necessity, become more fragil e. I brighten that this is more subtle for historical sciences like geology and cosmology (we have, for example, only sight one universe). Nevertheless, even in these fields, parallel concepts apply. P.B. Medawar, The Limits of Science, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987). There are interesting analogies here to making a religious commitment.Christians would argue that important aspects of the Christian life can only be understood and experienced from within a relationship with Christ. That is not to say that a step of faith is just a blind leap in the dark. It should be a decision that is informed by careful thinking and weighing of evidence. But it is more than just that. Augustine, Literal Commentary on Genesis, c AD 391 See e.g. C. J. Collins, Science and Faith Friends or Foes? (Crossway, Wheaton, 2003) ch 11. See e.g. R. Hooykaas, Religion and the organize of Modern Science, (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids,1972) John Donne (Eighty Sermons, 22 published in 1640) John Hedley Brooke , Science and Religion , CUP, Cambridge (1991), p147. Leibniz, as quoted by C. Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, (Paternoster, Exeter, 1984), p 75. Charles Coulson, Christianity in an Age of Science, 25th Riddell Memorial Lecture Series, Oxford University Press, Oxford, (1953).Colin Humphreys The Miracles of Exodus A Scientists Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories, (Harper Collins, San Francisco, 2003). R. Hooykaas, op cit One could argue that God must nevertheless employ divine action to set up the conditions necessary for a type i miracle to occur at the right time. In that sense both kinds of miracles may involve violations of normal physical cause-effect relations, but in type i this is more hidden. Note that I am not arguing that miraclesbreak ultimate cause-effect relationships. Within a divine economy, they may make perfect causal sense. Language like violation of physical cause-effect reflects our limited access to the mind of God.