the practice of defining miracles.

this morning, i was pleasantly plucking grapes from the vine, and i ran across a raisin-ified grape. you'll see it every once in a while, a raisin among the grapes. it'll invariably be just the one, all dried out but still connected to the tiny little individual vine-branch that is allocated each grape, tucked there between its fully-inflated neighbors.

what happens to cause one raisin among the grapes? how can it still be connected, yet mummified? was there a blockage in the stem, stopping nourishment from reaching just the one? was it an insufferable brat whom its peers starved? did it starve itself, tiny little anorexic fruit?

it's a mystery and it got me thinking about how some folks would say this sort of thing is a miracle and some folks would call it science, and THAT got me thinking about the miracle-science dichotomy. the miracle-science FALSE dichotomy, rather.

i mean, where do you think scientists come from? someone sees the raisin-on-the-vine and says, miracle, and that's the end of it. that's faith - just accepting that some things happen because there's a plan mere humans can't understand. someone ELSE sees the same raisin-on-the-vine and wonders what caused it. that doesn't mean they don't think it's a miracle, they just wonder about the mechanics. that's where scientists come from.

just because you wonder about the mechanics, that doesn't preclude your belief in a creator who has a Grand Plan that encompasses raisin-grapes. i'd venture to guess that the more you learn about the mechanics, the more clear it becomes you'll never understand the whole system. i mean, it's complicated, all in all.

mathematics and physics and other branches of science have their "givens" or "constants". someone proved them at one point, and you accept that person did the work correctly, and other people take it that person did the work correctly, and people stop checking that original guy's work, and pretty soon everyone's building on the "givens". the result of all this believing and building on belief is that the community's reliance on these givens increases while the individuals lose touch with the original proof. that's faith.

so:
1. wondering about the mechanics doesn't preclude belief in a Plan or a Planner.
2. faith is faith, whether it's in scientific givens or spiritual givens.

so:
spiritual faith vs. scientific faith? it's a false dichotomy.

i mean, c'mon. whether you believe we banged randomly out of a dusty cloud of energy or you believe a creator spoke us into being, it's not like any of us were there. maybe it's a little of both. maybe a creator spoke to the dusty cloud of energy. maybe the random bang banged out a grand planner along with banging out us.

who knows? no one alive KNOWS.

but - we DO all BELIEVE.

we believe the lights will come on when we flip a switch, as surely as we believe the sun will rise every morning. we believe in things we can explain, and we believe in things we cannot explain. we have faith in data, and we have faith where there isn't any data.

the spiritual among us can accept miracles without needing explanation. the scientists among us wonder about, attempt to quantify, and attempt to explain the mechanics of miracles.

so:
science is the practice of defining miracles.