How can we detect miracles of timing and need?

[SelfSim]

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.

The thing is though, the miracle, itself, always seems to happen in nature, (regardless of the violations of its laws).

 

[cloudyday2]

@Rachel20 , I hope my silly example with Klingons wasn't offensive. Your point is a good one - that we don't know the actual laws of nature, so God can be respecting the actual laws of nature while violating the laws of nature invented by scientists (which can change as more is learned).

 

[cloudyday2]

'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.

I didn't learn about the quantum formalism that you mentioned. Is the quantum formalism a way to ensure that the conservation laws hold true as each probability wave collapses? That brings up another question - time. To confirm that conservation of whatever is being honored I would need to measure whatever everywhere at a given time, but of course there is not some universal clock I could use for that. Oh well, getting off topic.

Back on topic, what if random events are simply scripted events? What if God wrote the script for the life of the universe and what we perceive as non-deterministic/randomness is actually scripted but the script is transcendent? That would be more of a deist God.

 

[sjastro]

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.

?????
In 3D Euclidean (flat) space the angles of a triangle add up to 180⁰; in 3D curved space they don't.
This brings up to the modern version of the omnipotence paradox; can God create a triangle in flat space where the angles do not add up to 180⁰, or make 1+1=3.

A version of the omnipotence paradox Christian theologians have struggled with for centuries is the Stone paradox; "Could God create a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it?"

 

[SelfSim]

Your point is a good one - that we don't know the actual laws of nature,

The laws of nature are actually what we do know about nature!

 

[cloudyday2]

The laws of nature are actually what we do know about nature!

It seems to me that we don't actually know anything for certain. We don't know what is possible and impossible. For example, the original age of the Earth was wrong by orders of magnitude because the scientist in the 1800s making that calculation was not aware that the Earth was being kept warm by radioactive decay. I think that is the point that @Rachel20 was making earlier, and it seems to be important to keep in mind. We can't know if the physical appearance of Jesus inside a locked room would actually be a violation of the laws of nature, because we don't know those laws of nature - we can never know if the laws we inferred experimentally are the actual laws.

 

[SelfSim]

.. We can't know if the physical appearance of Jesus inside a locked room would actually be a violation of the laws of nature, because we don't know those laws of nature - we can never know if the laws we inferred experimentally are the actual laws.

The laws we infer are still the only laws of nature that we know.

Your use of the word 'actual' in your term 'actual laws', adds precisely zip to the meaning of 'the laws of nature'.
They're actually our laws .. end of story.

 

[Larniavc]

For example, God might not care if I win a hand of poker - particularly if that means that somebody else will lose a hand of poker.

Dunno about that. If God does chose intervene in a hand of poker it means he did NOT intervene when a child dies an agonising death of leukaemia.

 

[Larniavc]

but God might do a lot of miracles without being asked and without being noticed by humans (and without violating any natural laws).

How could you establish this? I don’t think you can for the reasons I gave previously.

 

[cloudyday2]

Dunno about that. If God does chose intervene in a hand of poker it means he did NOT intervene when a child dies an agonising death of leukaemia.

Not necessarily. If I am correct that God limits His interventions according to the laws of nature then it might not be possible for Him to save the hypothetical child from leukemia while it might be possible for Him to give somebody hints at the poker table.

 

[cloudyday2]

How could you establish this? I don’t think you can for the reasons I gave previously.

It would be very difficult. I don't know.

 

[essentialsaltes]

There were a few studies of intercessory prayer a while back. IIRC, they were looking at medical complications after surgery. There were some questions about design -- how do you tell for certain that no one is praying for the person in the control group?

I believe the initial announcements showed that prayer was effective at reducing some kind of infection, but a closer look showed that it was more of a file drawer effect or sharpshooter fallacy. They monitored dozens of possible complications, so the fact that one of them showed a statistically significant effect was to be expected by chance.

ETA: STEP Project

Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients

Conclusions: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG

 

[Larniavc]

Not necessarily. If I am correct that God limits His interventions according to the laws of nature then it might not be possible for Him to save the hypothetical child from leukemia while it might be possible for Him to give somebody hints at the poker table.

If that is true his power level is WAY below what most Christians would peg him at.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The thing is though, the miracle, itself, always seems to happen in nature, (regardless of the violations of its laws).

Where else could it happen? If it happened in the 'supernatural realm' (wherever that is), it wouldn't be a miracle...

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I didn't learn about the quantum formalism that you mentioned. Is the quantum formalism a way to ensure that the conservation laws hold true as each probability wave collapses?

No, it's the mathematical description of quantum systems and their time evolution (the Schrodinger equation, etc). It's relatively straightforward mathematics, but what it describes is hard to put into words, hence the multiple interpretations or formulations of what it means. I don't think it has anything, in particular, to do with conservation laws.

Back on topic, what if random events are simply scripted events? What if God wrote the script for the life of the universe and what we perceive as non-deterministic/randomness is actually scripted but the script is transcendent? That would be more of a deist God.

That possibility has been investigated without invoking a deity - it's called superdeterminism. It basically proposes that observations of quantum effects such as entanglement can be explained by the measurement choices of the observers at each detector and a 'hidden variable' not being independent of each other, but causally connected, correlated by being predetermined so that the observed outcomes are inevitable. IOW, it differs from standard determinism where the measurement choices are causally predetermined but independent (i.e. not causally related).

It's not considered to be a particularly useful idea because it makes our attempts to discover how the universe works like participating in an illusion - as if we're set up in advance to ask the questions and make the particular observations & measurements that will produce the pre-determined outcomes ("Pick a card... any card" <smirk>). But it's good that even such seemingly far-fetched ideas have been seriously considered.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

A version of the omnipotence paradox Christian theologians have struggled with for centuries is the Stone paradox; "Could God create a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it?"

I like the answer that says He could, but He wouldn't because by doing so He'd lose His omnipotence...

 

[cloudyday2]

If that is true his power level is WAY below what most Christians would peg him at.

I agree that most Christians believe God can do anything He wants. In fact there is at least one quote from Jesus that can be understood to support this common view among Christians (assuming Jesus was not speaking metaphorically).

And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen."

Matthew 21:21 NASB

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I agree that most Christians believe God can do anything He wants. In fact there is at least one quote from Jesus that can be understood to support this common view among Christians (assuming Jesus was not speaking metaphorically).

And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen."

Matthew 21:21 NASB

Hmm, I guess that means that 'faith-without-doubt' is a miracle in its own right - else we'd see people working indisputable miracles - after all, who needs excavators when faith-without-doubt will do the job? ... or maybe he was just trolling them.

 

[cloudyday2]

Hmm, I guess that means that 'faith-without-doubt' is a miracle in its own right - else we'd see people working indisputable miracles - after all, who needs excavators when faith-without-doubt will do the job? ... or maybe he was just trolling them.

I've been trying to think of a way to reconcile belief in this quote from Jesus with my proposal that God limits His activities to the laws of nature. Here is a possibility: Maybe this level of faith in God is accompanied by a reluctance to ask for unncecessary things and a confidence that God will do what is necessary and best regardless of our asking? And God has decided that the best policy is to limit His activity to the wiggle room provided in the laws of nature?

 

[sjastro]

The 'laws of nature' are defined through repeated observation and experiment and not necessarily an inherent property of the Universe.

For example in our local flat frame we find the conservation of energy holds through repeated testing.
We can do a particular conservation of energy test n times and the law holds.
We inductively infer the law holds when n → ∞.

However in our expanding Universe the conservation law doesn't hold as demonstrated by cosmological redshift.
The photon energy loss through cosmological redshift 'goes nowhere.'