Faith and Science: True Miracles Not Unscientific Events

Miracles are generally understood to be divinely caused unexplainable phenomena which break natural laws. This understanding is absurd. For what “god” is so helpless that, in order to act, he must break laws he created himself?

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: Rochester Muslim Examiner
By Sardar Anees Ahmad | March 28, 2011

When 19th century mathematician Georg Cantor proved the existence of smaller and larger infinities, mathematicians demonized him and quarantined his discovery because it violated prevailing mathematical concepts. A foundational study in the early 1990s discovered that when more than 50% of experiments produced unexpected results, researchers almost always considered the results a mistake. In 2009, Wired Magazine published a report revealing even experts activate their anterior cingulate cortex - an area of the brain which suppresses conclusions contrary to what the individual believes. In other words, trust in a pre-conceived idea can trump reality and some scientists, like some religious people, are bigots.


This preface is necessary when discussing the nature and validity of miracles. While believer’s views are often to blame, skeptics unjustifiably deem all miracles to be unscientific.

Miracles are generally understood to be divinely caused unexplainable phenomena which break natural laws. This understanding is absurd. For what “god” is so helpless that, in order to act, he must break laws he created himself? Instead, a miracle, as Mirza Ghulam Ahmad argues, is, “a piercing in the natural order.” This means a veil masks the divine realm from the observable world. A miracle offers a glimpse into the divine realm. Thus, a miracle is not a “violation of natural law” as David Hume believed, but an unveiling of a hitherto unknown law.

True miracles, therefore, are not unscientific events. Instead, the reality is that science has not matured enough to explain such phenomenon. It is ignorant, and arrogant, to assume science – which has repeatedly reshaped its views – is the ultimate yardstick. Moreover, if evidence is produced supporting a miracle’s occurrence, it is unscientific to reject such facts, even if the occurrence is currently unexplainable.

In this light, one can understand the event of Prophet Moses’ rod turning into a serpent. Pharaoh employed magicians to dumbfound the masses and justify his worship. If Pharaoh’s magicians were deceiving the masses through magic, Moses should have displayed a superior form of mesmerism to demonstrate God’s superiority over Pharaoh. If the masses realized that Pharaoh did not have supreme command of such forces, they would worship the One Who did – the God of Moses.

The Quran (35:44) states that God never breaks His own laws; so if He acts, He does so from within the same system as the prophets’ enemies. The implicit argument is that whatever their plans, the prophets’ enemies always fail. Consequently, when, after the magicians had mesmerized onlookers, Moses replied by turning his staff into a serpent, the Quran presents the event as a superior feat of mesmerism. As proof, the Quran (27:11; 28:32) uses the words “ka-annaha” – the prefix “ka” used to indicate "as though" something occurred. Consequently, the Quran states the staff moved, “as though it was a serpent” – not that the staff became a serpent. God, if He exists, was certainly capable of making the staff a real serpent. However, the event called for a miracle from within the confines of the same system Pharaoh was exploiting.

The Quran (20:67-69) and Bible (Exodus 4:3) both state that the staff’s transformation scared Moses. This indicates that Moses himself could not have broken the mesmerism when he threw his staff because the mind, once mesmerized, cannot voluntarily break from the mesmerism. So Moses countered the magicians with God’s help, not of his own will and this aspect qualifies the event as a miracle – a “piercing of the natural order.” The magicians realized God had helped Moses because despite having mesmerized Moses, Moses liberated his mind and his staff delivered a powerful response.

While this piece explains the nature of miracles, it does not validate them.


Read original post here: True Miracles Not Unscientific Events