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Asked by E.C.J to Barbara, Matt, Ravinder, Sophie, Tristan on 13 Mar 2015.
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Sophie Robinson answered on 13 Mar 2015:
Personally, I do not believe in miracles as such. As a scientist, we tend to be very logical thinkers meaning we don’t tend to believe things can happen without any logical explanation. Although some people think science and religion are incompatible, some scientists are religious. As a biologist I believe in evolution rather than creationism. This means I believe the world was made during the Big Bang and life has evolved over billions of years from tiny microorganisms. There is a lot of evidence that supports this process, however we will never be able to prove that God doesn’t exist. Some religious scientists may support the theory of evolution but still believe in a higher spiritual being, like God.
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Matthew Moore answered on 13 Mar 2015:
A miracle by definition is a suspension of the natural order of things, of the laws of physics. There will have been times in human history where unknown phenomena seemed miraculous but there is no reason to believe in miracles, no.
There are broadly two types of religion deism and theism. The former, deism, science doesn’t have much of an opinion on, deism is the idea that the universe was created by some ‘prime mover’ and this best explains the complexity we see, perhaps the universe wasn’t even designed with us in mind and is a grand experiment allowed to run and see what happens!
The second type is theism and this contradicts science. Theisms include Christianity, Islam, Judiaism, Hinduism etc. The difference with theisms is that they make scientific claims, i.e. miracles such as the sun stopping in the sky, or prayers being answered or a reward/punishment type afterlife. These pertain to the physical universe and so fall firmly in the camp of science and are therefore testable –the power of prayer to heal for example is just as testable as a new drug and should be held up to the same scrutiny.
However, this doesn’t mean that a scientist can’t believe in God. That would be fine as long as particular beliefs (i.e. creationism) don’t contradict scientific fact.
Importantly though science is not dogmatic, if a religious person disagrees with evolution that’s great, they should attempt to disprove it; if I could I would and collect my Nobel Prize!
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Barbara Shih answered on 15 Mar 2015:
I don’t really believe in miracles, such as god. I never believed in god because I was never told of god when I was younger, and by the time I learnt of it, it just does not fit in how I understand of the world.
I was brough up in a very superstitious background, with my dad being a fortune-teller. He even did fortune-telling with car parking! There are many miracles he told me about feng shui curing cancers. Now this may seem ridiculous to others, but at the time, I really believed it. That’s what I was taught, so why would I question it? I don’t believe in fortune telling anymore; this is a conclusion I made from what I can understand of the world (after moving away from home for 10 years and talking to people who didn’t grow up in the same background).
I could be wrong about not believing in miracles, but I would rather risk the possible misjudgement and just work with evidences/knowledge I can comprehend until counterevidence are shown.
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