Spiritual Blogs

There is a problem in defining something you believe in in a negative way such as 'not explicable by science', 'indescribable', 'non-physical' etc. If you do that, you are prone to be frustrated. The 'inexplicable by science' does not tell us what the phenomenon actually is. It relies on what is going on at the other side of the camp, not on the side that believes in the phenomena it is categorizing as 'miracles'. It says: 'you want to know what miracles are? Then donnot ask us, watch what the sceptics at the other side of the campus are doing'. Specifically, waite until they surrender attempt to explain them when they do that, guess what? That is a 'miracle'! Of course you will be frustrated if you try to find a 'miracle' this way!

Those who say 'miracles are inexplicable by science' donnot understand 'scientific explanation'. Specifically, they don't understand how agile the 'explanations' are, and the fact that such explanations doesn't have to be ultimate true! Anything that can be observed happening can be explained by science. Here I am going to illustrate it using some bible 'miracles'.

Elisha Knowing: 2 kings 6:12:

“None of us, my lord the king,” said one of his officers, “but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom.”

In modern times, what would we say if someone seems to know what you speak in bedroom? Of course we will just suspect that there is an hidden microphone somewhere, say under the bed! It is a simple as that! In ancient times, no one could imagine how someone can hear someone at a distance. So what is 'explicable' or 'inexplicable' depends on time and the amount of knowledge. The 'inexplicable by science' definition is one that becomes the more irrelevant the more scientific knowledge advance! We need an opposite notion, one that becomes more relevant the more we know and understand the world. Notice that the 'scientific explanation' doesn't have to be ultimately correct (in fact this turns out to be the power of science)! Well, perharps something else entirely is causing Elisha to know what is spocken in secret. But perhaps light is also something else entirely and not a 'wave' nor 'particle'.

Jesus Enters A Room With Doors Shut!

This is a no-brainer to a modern physicist. In fact there are many ways of explaining this. I will consider only two of them. One is to say that Jesus first 'went into another dimension'. If you are inside a closed house, the house is not necessarily closed along the 'fourth dimension' and other 'dimensions'. But I don't like this explanation as it can now make a 'new ager' to redefine 'miracle' in yet another negative way e.g. 'not visualiseable by the mind'. The other is to simply say that Jesus's body went through the subatomic holes in the wall. We have come to understand that objects are not single, impenetrable bricks. They prevent other objects from moving by forces of nature. The 'forces' seems totally 'immaterial' but they act like objects in a way that is not difficult to understand. The point is that the forces may or may not interact with objects. A glass does not interact with a magnet (at least in the macroscopic scale). So it moves near a magnet as if there is no magnet there. If you place a piece of iron beneath the glass and place a magnet on top of it, the magnet can drag the iron as if the glass is not there! Such is how a body can move through a wall, as if the wall is not there!

But Why Should We Explain 'Miracles'?

There is zero benefit in saying 'hail, this is inexplicable'. Yet such 'surrender to ignorance' has been idolized in 'new age' as if it has some deep spiritual benefit. It has non! Nature is amenable to various explanation. Nature works the same way even in apparently two totally different phenomena. Lets for instance close exermine light and sound. A sound attenuates by obeying the 'inverse square law' in a way that is easy to understand. So one can suppose that light too attenuates that way. Guess what, he is correct! So showing that a phenomenon, e.g. vibrating an object in remort can be mimicked by sound waves shows that such 'remort controlling' of the object is possible even if there are no sound waves in this case! In other words, modelling a phenomenon using sound helps us know of or understand something about the phenomenon even if the phenomenon actually happens through light and not through sound at all!

In our case, lets say a phenomenon is caused by something else that you want to call it 'a true miracle'. This 'true miracle' will be analogous to light. But now a 'scientific explanation' is analogous to sound. The phenomenon is 'vibrating an electron'. So if light vibrates the electron from remort, it will be 'a miracle', according to this line of thinking. Here we presume scientists are not aware of light. They only know of sound. However, showing that a sound can vibrate something from remort will show that the 'miracle' is possible!! In nature, it realy doesn't matter what phenomenon actually causes another phenomenon. Physics works the same way in all the forms of energy. What is not forbiden for light to do, in some way, it is not forbidden for sound to do, it also. So if our task were to merely show that a phenomenon is possible, then we can use anything in nature to mimic the causes of the phenomenon and our mission will be accomplished!

Next, it can help us discover more! James Clerk Maxwell and many other 19nth century physicists were fond of thinking that magnetic force is mediated by a water-like fluid. At some point, they reasoned that if water can create waves, then this other mysterious 'fluid' mediating the magnetic force might mediate waves as well. So they discovered electromagnetic waves. Again the key point is that the whatever mediating the magnetic force needs not be actually the 'water'! We are able to go way round the need to know the exact cause of magnetism because nature works the same way in all medias and in all forces. Therefore the knowledge we gain from studying one aspect of nature is useful in shedding some light in another aspect of nature. Yes even the knowledge we gain from studying the seen is useful in unlocking the secrets of the unseen!

We should form an habit of explaining miracles. We should stop fixing a lot of weight on the cause of a phenomenon and zero in more on the phenomenon itself. Then brainstorm the various ways nature can create the phenomenon. In 'new age' what cause a phenomenon seems to be more important than the phenomenon itself. This is erroneous! In the case of Elisha, the most important thing is the aquiring of knowledge, not the exact manner in which the information got into the mind of Elisha. Same applies to Jesus. All he wanted to do was to cross the wall. He would care much less of the acrobatics that went on to bring about the effect. The 'inexplicable by science' is only good as a reminder not to dismiss a possibility of a phenomenon just because you don't understand how it may happen. We don't need to insist that 'this phenomenon is not explicable by science' if someone is not trying to use the 'inexplicability by science' as a premise to deny the possibility of the phenomenon. To do so will be to make 'explicability' or 'inexplicability' the thing we are after rather than the phenomenon! This is foolish! It is like a dog so much salivating after a bell to the point that he begines to go after the bells instead of food! Yes, it nolonger want food. It just want the bell!! So goes new agers going after 'black holes', 'other dimensions' etc. They just got after anything 'inexplicable' even if there is nothing that comes after it! It is like graving for a bell that does not mean there is any food after!!