Studying The Supernatural — Can Science Explain Miracles?

-Analysis-

HAMBURG — Two scientists stand before three blackboards. The one on the left is crammed with formulas, as is the one on the right. The middle blackboard, however, bears only a single comment: “Then a miracle occurs.” One scientist turns to the other and says, “I think you should be more specific here in step two.”

This cartoon, published in 1977 by American cartoonist Sidney Harris in American Scientist, has since become iconic. Of all his work, no drawing is more famous than this one. I’ve seen it displayed in numerous offices of astrophysics researchers, and it continues to circulate on social media in endlessly updated forms.

The popularity of the cartoon among scientists is not surprising. The message is, after all, central to modern research: assuming miracles will not get you very far. It is a special achievement of today’s natural sciences that everything is done “by the book.” That is, you can get from the left to the right block of formulas on the board without divine intervention, supernatural powers or occult influences. For example, with logical conclusions or laboratory experiments that show beyond doubt that the formulas are causally related.

This foundational assumption has been extraordinarily successful. It has enabled us to acquire profound knowledge about how the world works and develop technologies so intricate and effective that one might assume miracles are relics of the past. But are they truly obsolete?

Why we pray

What is certain is that we still encounter them in stories and folklore. Now, at Christmas, in particularly large numbers, at the latest when we go to a Christian mass on Christmas Eve. These services recount tales of virgin births, angels and a guiding Christmas star that led the wise men from the East to Jesus’ birthplace.

The church calendar then unfolds with stories of water turning into wine, miraculous healings, walking on water and, ultimately, the resurrection of the dead. Such accounts may seem almost confrontational to anyone with a scientific mindset, especially if taken literally.

The Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann also saw it that way. Eighty years ago, he summarized the problem as follows: In the New Testament, we encounter the mythical world view of the time when these writings were written. At the time he wrote people still lived in belief of heaven, earth and the underworld, in angels and miracles. This no longer applies to us today — and such a world view cannot be forced.

“Our experience and control of the world are so advanced in the science and technology world that no one can seriously hold on to the New Testament world view,” he wrote in 1941. His radical conclusion: “The miracles of the New Testament are thus no longer miracles.”

New policy on miracles

Dealing with miracles has not become any easier even for the Catholic Church. In May 2024, the Church released a revised version of its standards for assessing alleged supernatural phenomena. This update eliminated the highest designation for confirmed supernatural events.

The most the Church now offers is a “nihil obstat” — a statement that “nothing stands in the way” of believing the event. Previously, the 1978 standard allowed for a declaration of constat de supernaturalitate, meaning “the supernatural is certain.”

Yet awarding this predicate has apparently become increasingly difficult in recent times. The investigations had dragged on and on. The new standard is intended to speed things up and avoid problem cases. On example is the apparition of the Virgin Mary in Međugorje, a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where young people are said to have repeatedly encountered the Mother of God in 1981; the official clarification of this is still pending.

Philosophers have been trying for centuries to define what a miracle actually is.

For believers, the updated guidelines mean there is no obligation to believe in miracles. Nevertheless, many continue to do so. In a 2021 survey by the Allensbach Institute of around 1,000 Germans, 52% expressed belief in miracles. Furthermore, 28% found the existence of angels plausible. Openness to miracles correlates with religiosity, financial insecurity and personal misfortunes, as a 2020 study of 15,400 Latin Americans found.

But how does this fit together, our scientifically dominated world and our openness to supernatural influences? Can one use online banking in good conscience and at the same time consider it possible that the laws of nature could be suspended at any time by supernatural powers?

Break the causal closure

First of all, you have to know what you’re talking about. Philosophers have been trying for centuries to define what a miracle actually is. One thing is clear: A miracle means a deviation from the normal course of things; it is an event that nature itself would not have produced. Scottish philosopher David Hume described it as “a violation of the laws of nature.” Yet, identifying the specific laws of nature violated in a given miracle can be challenging.

The angel of the Lord who sends the shepherds to the manger, as a traveler between heaven and earth, probably violates the speed limits of the theory of relativity and the law of conservation of energy. Yet the biblical details on this are sparse. The virgin birth is even more difficult because, given the complexity of the phenomena described, biological laws of nature are even more preconditional in their application than physical ones.

To sidestep these challenges, some prefer a related but technical definition: Miracles “break the causal closure of the physical world.” This means that miracles disrupt the principle that every event has a physical cause. Other definitions explicitly require the involvement of supernatural powers.

Philosophers such as the Englishman William Paley or the American Gary Habermas have also thought about the types of arguments that are used in favor of Christian miracles. The classic way of spreading miracles, as reported in the Bible, works through eyewitness reports: several people testify to a supernatural event, and they are particularly credible if this experience changes their lives for the long term – like the disciples of Jesus, whose depression suddenly disappeared after his resurrection.

Natural sciences and beyond

Yet these accounts rarely convince scientifically inclined individuals. There are more plausible psychological and sociological explanations for such reports, such as perceptual errors, manipulation, mass hysteria, or the desire for attention and financial gain (e.g., creating pilgrimage sites). Eyewitness reports always require trust. The more unbelievable what they say is, the more trust it requires.

Anyone who doesn’t accept eyewitness accounts as an argument for miracles would have to experience a miracle themselves. But even that won’t necessarily convince a skeptic. They could still attribute such an experience to a chain of improbable coincidences, without supernatural forces being involved. And even if a scientist were to observe a clearer violation of a natural law in the laboratory, he or she would probably want to modify the natural law or look for other disruptive factors rather than accept a miracle.

Supernatural forces, if they exist, rarely influence events.

The fact that no miracle has ever been discovered in a scientific context is, strictly speaking, no proof against the existence of miracles. Researchers would prefer almost any other explanation. If miracles really did exist, scientists would find ways to integrate them into their scientific worldview without raising suspicion.

Yet the immense success of the natural sciences suggests that supernatural forces, if they exist, rarely influence events. Otherwise, such phenomena would have been detected by now. Furthermore, as scientific understanding has advanced, more and more alleged miracles have been convincingly explained without invoking the supernatural — such as the case of the bleeding Madonna statue in Ostro, Saxony, which was ultimately attributed to a colony of red mites. But whether one even wants to hear such explanations is a question of worldview.