Monday Musings

In, Miracles, C.S. Lewis rejects the notion that scientific progress and discovery has nullified the belief in miracles.

The idea that progress of science has somehow altered this question is closely bound up with the idea that people ‘in olden times’ believe in them [miracles] ‘because they didn’t know they laws of nature.’  Thus, you will hear people say, ‘The early Christians believed that Christ was the son of a virgin, but we know that this is scientifically impossible.’

All records of miracles teach the same thing.  In such stories the miracles excite fear and wonder (that is what the very word miracle implies) among the spectators, and are taken as evidence of supernatural power.  If they were not known to be contrary to the laws of nature how could they suggest the presence of the supernatural?  how could they be surprising unless they were seen to be exceptions to the rules?  And how can anything be seen to be an exception till the rules are known?  If there ever were men who did not know the laws of nature at all, they would have no idea of a miracle and feel no particular interest in on if it were performed before them.  Nothing can seem extraordinary until you have discovered what is ordinary.  Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known.

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