When we speak of miracles, we could mean either an extremely rare event that is nevertheless scientifically possible, or we could mean an event that somehow contravenes the established laws of nature. Consider the question of whether a dead person can come back to life. We may consider this unlikely in the extreme because no one we know has seen it happen. All medical attempts to revive the dead have failed so far. But it does not follow that for a dead person to return to life is a violation of the laws of nature. Can anyone say with certainty that in the future medical advances will not reach a point at which clinically dead people can be restored to life? Of course not. So the scientific proposition that dead people cannot come back to life is a practical truth—useful for everyday purposes—but it is not a necessary truth.
But if we might see dead people come to life in the future, then it is possible that dead people have, on one or more occasions, been restored to life in the past. I am not makingthe claim here that this has happened. I am merely saying that if it might happen one day, then it could have happened before. Logical possibility cannot be confined to future events. If it happened in the past, it would be a miracle. If it happens in the future, we’ll call it scientific progress. Either way, it’s possible, not because nature’s laws are necessarily overthrown, but because we have no complete knowledge of what those laws are.
Miracles can also be viewed as actual suspensions of the laws of nature, and here too there is nothing in science or logic that says that these things cannot happen. Who says that these laws are immutable? There is no evidence whatsoever for such a sweeping conclusion. Obviously, if God exists, miracles are possible. For God there are clearly no constraints outside the natural realm. Even modern physics concedes that beyond the natural world the laws of nature do not apply. There is nothing “miraculous” about heaven or hell for the simple reason that there are no laws of nature that operate outside our universe.
