From: Brian T. Greuel <bgreuel@jbu.edu>
> Are you suggesting that God only works miracles through overt violations
of the
> natural laws that He created? Even with that definition, it seems to me
that
> God's intervention to alter the path of a single asteroid (or cluster of
> asteroids) so that it strikes the earth constitutes a violation of natural
> law--i.e. a miracle. Whether you invoke the hand of God moving the
asteroids
> out of their normal path or have God suddenly zap a large body into
existence to
> exert force on the asteroids so that they deviate from their normal path,
either
> way you're talking about a violation of natural law.
As I pointed out to Glen, altering the path of an asteroid would be no
different for God, than for me to alter the direction of my car with the
steering wheel. That would hardly qualify as a miracle.
> I would submit, however, that God also works "miracles" by making certain
> low-probability "random" events (from a "naturalistic" point of view)
happen at
> specific times in order to accomplish His purposes. In other words, I
believe
> that God can perform miracles without appearing to violate the very
natural laws
> that He created. The key is the timing of the events.
It seems to me that there are three possible conditions by which God might
conduct business.
1) He could work within His natural laws as we know them.
2) He could work within His natural laws using some of which we may not be
aware of or fully comprehend (Can we say that we know all there is to know
about God's natural laws in order to judge what is or is not outside God's
natural laws?).
3) He could decide to work outside His natural laws.
The last two we might call miracles. And the interesting thing is, we would
be unable to distinguish between them. If God did something using natural
laws which we don't understand, it would seem to us that He was working
outside His natural laws. Thus a miracle need not automatically mean
something done outside natural laws.
Allen
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