"Medical Miracle" and the Other Side of the Coin

To present a different view regarding the question "what is a medical miracle?", I have extracted a small portion of a paper written by Boguslaw Lipinski, Ph.D., D.Sc. and to be found at the Faith and Culture website. Go there to read the entire paper titled "Christian Roots of Western Medicine" Also it would be most interesting to read what my visitors to this blog have to say about medical miracles. So.. comment! ..Maurice.

What is a medical miracle? There is a religious meaning, a lay meaning,

and what we shall call a scientific meaning. We define a scientific miracle an

event that has an extremely low probability of occurring. Such miracles are well

known in medicine, but generally physicians call them spontaneous remissions.

Scientific, or medical, miracles do not need any explanation: their occurrence is

explained by statistical probabilities. In other words, miracles - in our scientific

sense of the word - are definitely part of scientific thinking. (Berry RJ: “What to

believe about miracles.” Nature, 1986;322:321-322.)

In 1984 fourteen signatories, all of them professors of science in British

universities, submitted a letter to the Times about miracles (The Times, 13 July

1984). They asserted that:" It is not logically valid to use science as an argument

against miracles. To believe that miracles cannot happen is as much an act of

faith as to believe that they can happen. We gladly accept the virgin birth, the

Gospel miracles, and the resurrection of Christ as historical events. Whatever

the current fashions in philosophy or the revelations of opinion polls may

suggest, it is important to affirm that science can have nothing to say on the

subject. Its 'laws' are only generalizations of our experience." The authors have

exposed the fallacy of Hume's attack on miracles based on an assumption that

events have only a single cause and can be explained if the cause is known. "

This is logically wrong. For example, an oil painting can be 'explained' in terms

either of the distribution of pigments or the intention and design of the artist. In

the same way, a miracle may be the work of (say) a divine up -holder of the

physical world rather than a false observation or unknown cause. The authors

quote Medawar (Medawar P. The Limits of Science. [Harper&Row, New York,

1984]) who said: " There is then a prima facie case for the existence of a limit to

scientific understanding." Most of our anxieties, problems and unhappiness

today stem from a lack of purpose which were rare a century ago and which can

fairly be blamed on the consequences of scientific inquiry.