Miracles and Divine Action
In episode four of our Science and Faith series, we discussed miracles: what they are, how they work, and whether it is reasonable to believe in Divine Action. To tackle these questions we invited three guests: Dr Alessandro de Franciscis – President of The Bureau of Medical Observations at Lourdes, Fr Michael Dodds – a Dominican friar and former Academic Dean at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, and Prof Daniel Bonevac – Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.
Generally, when people think about miracles they may recall some stories from the Bible. For example, the Resurrection, or the miracle when Jesus healed the paralytic in Capernaum. Hence, the first part of our conversation focused around our experts’ best-loved miracles and their significance.
We learnt that the Catholic Church has a strict procedure to investigate and verify miracles. Dr de Franciscis explained how that unravels for healing cases at Lourdes. It was fascinating to hear that there were no medical relapses with regards to all the cases declared as ‘miracles’ in Lourdes.
We also asked our panel of experts about the nature of miracles. In particular, if the belief that the physical world is governed by laws of nature makes it impossible to believe in miracles. One of the highlights of this segment was the discussion around what it means to think of miracles in terms of supernatural agency and how this is different from the way God acts in keeping natural things in existence.
Has science made miracles unbelievable?
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Shop
Prof Daniel Bonevac’s: https://www.bookdepository.com/author/Daniel-Bonevac; https://www.waterstones.com/author/daniel-bonevac/33869
Fr Michael Dodds': https://www.waterstones.com/author/michael-j-dodds/1289198
Resources
Virtual Visit Sanctuary of Lourdes https://www.lourdes-france.org/visite-virtuelle/
Vatican Observatory Foundation https://www.vofoundation.org/faith-and-science/about/
Christians in Science https://www.cis.org.uk/resources/
Faraday Institute for Science and Religion https://www.faraday.cam.ac.uk
Interactive Science and Faith workshops https://gatbb.co.uk
