How can we detect miracles of timing and need?

cloudyday2 said:

Imagine that God performs miracles, but imagine the miracles rarely if ever violate the laws of nature. Imagine that God miraculously tweaks nature such that it provides what we need when we need it in response to our prayers.

So, for example, a person with cancer might pray and God might arrange that the cancer go into a long remission. There would be no violation of the laws of nature, because cancers sometimes go into remission, but the timing would seem to convey a message that God heard the prayer and cared.

Another example might be a prayer for guidance followed by some natural event that is interpreted by the Christian as guidance and that ultimately yields the desired results.

So how could we detect these types of miracles?

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You can’t detect a miracle that does not leave any trace.

Using timing to detect a miracle is to confuse causation with correlation.

cloudyday2 said:

I wonder if statistics might be used. Imagine life as a casino and God occasionally tweaking the dice and the Roulette wheel or whispering in the ear of the Christian at the poker table. That would be detectable statistically if we analyzed enough data such that the miracles arose above the noise - right?

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It would be possible to establish SOMETHING was happening. But it would not give information regarding the cause. Only that something was going on.

cloudyday2 said:

Imagine that God performs miracles, but imagine the miracles rarely if ever violate the laws of nature. Imagine that God miraculously tweaks nature such that it provides what we need when we need it in response to our prayers.

So, for example, a person with cancer might pray and God might arrange that the cancer go into a long remission. There would be no violation of the laws of nature, because cancers sometimes go into remission, but the timing would seem to convey a message that God heard the prayer and cared.

Another example might be a prayer for guidance followed by some natural event that is interpreted by the Christian as guidance and that ultimately yields the desired results.

So how could we detect these types of miracles? I assume the detection would use statistics but how exactly could we do that?

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I belive you are expanding the definition of a miracle. God hearing our prayers does not always equate to a miracle which is defined as a supernatural event. Blessings.

cloudyday2 said:

Imagine that God performs miracles, but imagine the miracles rarely if ever violate the laws of nature.

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I think the meaning of 'miracle' is that it's a violation of the laws of nature. IOW, it may not necessarily be an event that itself violates the laws of nature, but the fact that it occurs means that the laws of nature have not followed the course they would otherwise have taken.

So the event(s) leading up to the miracle necessarily violate the laws of nature, otherwise it would not happen. To put it another way, supernatural interference is ipso-facto a violation of the laws of nature.

cloudyday2 said:

... Jesus says that God blesses both the righteous and the unrighteous indiscriminately ( Matthew 5:44-45 ), so we can't assume that God would prefer Christians to non-Christians either.

It seems to me that a likely goal for God would be to teach a person how to be close to God? Presumably, God might be more likely to help people who are more receptive to the possibility that God is trying to teach them? Even that isn't certain I suppose.

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No, indeed. ISTM that someone who is 'more receptive to the possibility that God is trying to teach them' might be deemed more 'righteous' than someone who is less receptive.

Logically, there is no advantage to being 'blessed' by God, since, supposedly, we're all blessed, whether righteous or unrighteous...

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

Logically, there is no advantage to being 'blessed' by God, since, supposedly, we're all blessed, whether righteous or unrighteous...

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But then there's this: you have not because you ask not. Will unbelievers ask?

Rachel20 said:

But then there's this: you have not because you ask not. Will unbelievers ask?

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Ask what?

cloudyday2 said:

I propose that miracles are entirely naturalistic.

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Every "miracle" in scripture? How would our natural laws explain Christ appearing in the midst of a cube (room) without coming through any of it's sides? I think you would have to add the possibility of higher dimensions with "natural" laws greater than ours? Like 3 dimensions allowing for triangles with more than 180 degrees, but impossible in 2.

cloudyday2 said:

The way I remember quantum mechanics was that a probability wave collapsed into an observation/event. Take the example of a dice roll. Couldn't God make the dice land a particular way by tweaking something quantum mechanically within the dice-roller's nervous system such that the dice is thrown as God wills? And no natural law would be violated - right?

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If God tweaked the probabilities or determined the outcome in some way it would be a change to what would otherwise have played out. You might not be able to detect it, but if he interferes with the outcome it's not the 'natural' result by definition - the only reason for tweaking is that the natural laws would not produce the desired result.

I suppose you could claim that God tweaks the outcomes of a proportion of all quantum events so that the outcomes overall correspond to the predictions of the quantum formalism - IOW you could say that 'natural laws' include God's interference. But then you're potentially drifting into the realm of panentheism, where the laws of nature are the 'mind of God' in a Spinozan or Hawkingesque sense.

(As an aside, I've often wondered about this tweaking of randomness. Is tweaking randomness a violation of the laws of nature? It seems that too much tweaking might be a violation, but maybe "random" in physics is defined by the lack of determinism rather than the statistical properties of a data set? So God could tweak the results as much as He wants as long as there is nothing in nature that is determining the results?)

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'True' randomness physics is disputable, depending on the formulation of quantum mechanics you prefer.
But whatever the case, the randomness is stochastic, i.e. probabilistic, and the probabilities are mathematically described by the wave function. So (in principle) you can calculate exactly the probability of each possible outcome, and, of course, the probabilities add up to 100%. So if there was a way to tweak the outcome, it would involve changing all those probabilities, which would mean changing the quantum state of the system.

cloudyday2 said:

... If Star Trek is to be believed...

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That 'if' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there!

Another possibility, is that the story of Jesus appearing in the locked room is a legend that might have been loosely based on an actual event with a natural explanation.

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Maybe he sneaked in by a hidden entrance for theatrical effect...