Religion: studying the supernatural: can science explain miracles?

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HAMBURG — Two scientists stand in front of three blackboards. The one on the left is full of formulas, just like the one on the right. The middle painting, however, bears only one comment: “Then a miracle happens. » One scientist turns to the other and says, “I think you should be more specific here in step two.” »

This drawing, published in 1977 by the American cartoonist Sidney Harris in American scientisthas since become iconic. Of all his work, no drawing is more famous than this one. I have seen it posted in many astrophysics researchers’ offices, and it continues to circulate on social media in ever-updated forms.

The cartoon’s popularity among scientists is not surprising. The message is, after all, at the heart of modern research: assuming miracles won’t get you very far. It is a special achievement of today’s natural sciences that everything is done “according to the rules.” That is, you can move from the block of formulas from left to right on the board without divine intervention, supernatural powers or occult influences. For example, with logical conclusions or laboratory experiments that show beyond doubt that the formulas are causally related.

This fundamental hypothesis has been extraordinarily successful. This has allowed us to gain in-depth knowledge of how the world works and to develop technologies so complex and effective that one might believe miracles to be relics of the past. But are they really obsolete?

Why we pray

What is certain is that we still find them in tales and folklore. Now at Christmas in particularly large numbers, at the latest when we go to a Christian mass on Christmas Eve. These services tell stories of virgin births, angels, and a guiding Christmas star who led wise men from the East to the birthplace of Jesus.

The church calendar then unfolds with stories of water turning into wine, miraculous healings, walking on water, and ultimately the resurrection of the dead. Such accounts can seem almost confrontational to anyone with a scientific mind, especially if taken literally.

The Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann also saw things this way. Eighty years ago he summarized the problem as follows: In the New Testament we encounter the mythic worldview of the time these writings were written. At the time he was writing, people still lived in belief in heaven, earth and the underworld, angels and miracles. This no longer applies to us today – and such a worldview cannot be imposed.

“Our experience and control of the world is so advanced in the scientific and technological world that no one can seriously cling to the New Testament worldview,” he wrote in 1941. His radical conclusion: “The miracles of the New Testament are therefore there are no more miracles.”

New policy on miracles

Dealing with miracles has not become easier, even for the Catholic Church. In May 2024, the Church released a revised version of its standards for evaluating alleged supernatural phenomena. This update removed the highest designation for confirmed supernatural events.

All the Church offers today is a “nihil obstat” – a declaration that “nothing stands in the way” of believing in the event. Previously, the 1978 standard authorized a declaration of
observation of supernaturalitymeaning “the supernatural is certain”.

Yet the assignment of this predicate has apparently become increasingly difficult in recent times. The investigations dragged on. The new standard aims to speed things up and avoid problematic cases. One example is the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Međugorje, a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where young people reportedly encountered the Mother of God several times in 1981; official clarification on this is still pending.

For believers, the updated guidelines mean there is no obligation to believe in miracles. However, many people continue to do so. In a 2021 survey by the Allensbach Institute of around 1,000 Germans, 52% expressed their belief in miracles. In addition, 28% find the existence of angels plausible. Openness to miracles correlates with religiosity, financial insecurity, and personal misfortune, a 2020 study of 15,400 Latin Americans found.

But how does this fit between our world dominated by science and our openness to supernatural influences? Can we use online banking with a clear conscience and at the same time consider that it is possible that the laws of nature could be suspended at any time by supernatural powers?

Breaking Causal Closure

First of all, you have to know what we’re talking about. Philosophers have been trying for centuries to define what a miracle really is. One thing is clear: a miracle means a deviation from the normal course of things; it is an event that nature itself would not have produced. Scottish philosopher David Hume described it as “a violation of the laws of nature.” Yet identifying the specific laws of nature violated during a given miracle can be difficult.

The angel of the Lord who sends the shepherds to the manger, as a traveler between heaven and earth, probably violates the speed limits of the theory of relativity and the law of conservation of energy. Yet biblical details on this subject are scant. The virgin birth is even more difficult because, given the complexity of the phenomena described, the biological laws of nature are even more conditional in their application than physical laws.

To get around these challenges, some prefer a related but technical definition: miracles “break the causal closure of the physical world.” This means that miracles disrupt the principle that every event has a physical cause. Other definitions explicitly require the involvement of supernatural powers.

Philosophers like the Englishman William Paley or the American Gary Habermas have also reflected on the types of arguments used in favor of Christian miracles. The classic way of propagating miracles, as recorded in the Bible, works through eyewitness accounts: several people bear witness to a supernatural event, and they are particularly credible if this experience lastingly changes their lives – like Jesus’ disciples, whose depression suddenly disappeared after his resurrection.

Natural sciences and beyond

However, these stories rarely convince scientifically inclined individuals. There are more plausible psychological and sociological explanations for such reports, such as perceptual errors, manipulation, mass hysteria, or the desire for attention and financial gain (e.g., the creation of pilgrimage sites). Eyewitness reports always require trust. The more incredible what they say, the more trust it requires.

Anyone who does not accept eyewitness testimony as an argument for miracles should experience a miracle themselves. But even that won’t necessarily convince a skeptic. They could still attribute such an experience to a series of improbable coincidences, without supernatural forces being involved. And even if a scientist observed a clearer violation of a natural law in the laboratory, he or she would probably prefer to modify the natural law or look for other disturbing factors rather than accept a miracle.

The fact that no miracle has ever been discovered in a scientific context does not, strictly speaking, constitute evidence against the existence of miracles. Researchers would prefer almost any other explanation. If miracles really existed, scientists would find ways to incorporate them into their scientific worldview without arousing suspicion.

Yet the immense success of the natural sciences suggests that supernatural forces, if they exist, rarely influence events. Otherwise, such phenomena would have already been detected. Furthermore, as scientific understanding advanced, more and more purported miracles were convincingly explained without invoking the supernatural – such as the case of the bloodied Madonna statue in Ostro, Saxony, which was eventually attributed to a colony of red mites. But whether one wants to hear such explanations is a question of worldview.

Translated by Worldcrunch