The Suspension of The Laws of Nature

“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.” David Hume.

A few days ago I read a story about a father who’s heart started to beat again after being pronounced dead on the hospital bed; The story highlights the fact that the father’s son was praying for him. Doctor’s were baffled and couldn’t explain how this could happen, and of course words such as ‘miracle’ were immediately headlining. Thousands of people jumped on this opportunity to claim it as ‘God’s will’ and how the ‘divine’ had intervened.

So how can we explain this?

Was it really a case of some ‘Divine intervention’? Can anybody make such a bold statement that in this instance the laws of nature as we know them have been suspended? Or is there a more plausible, logical - scientific explanation for this?

In the last 2 years there have been over 700,000 ‘Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest’s in the United States alone. These are cases where people’s hearts have stopped and without CPR would have no chance of survival. Out of the 700,000, it can be noted that the overall ‘Survivor rate’ is listed around 9.5%; Therefore around 70,000 people were ‘brought back from the dead’. It should be noted that the father mentioned above was also given 30 minutes of CPR.

But does this prove that the son’s prayers were not answered when his father’s heart started beating again? Well no it doesn’t, but this can never be proven and is an impossible quest to do so.

The late Christopher Hitchens asked if it seemed likely that the laws of nature would be suspended to make you happy. A natural explanation for a strange event seemed more likely, he said. “If I took a swig from a water bottle and found that the water had become a fine white wine, that would obviously mean some suspension of the laws of nature, assuming that there was no possibility of a natural explanation. In other words, swig one is water, swig two a moment later is wine, and nobody else has touched the bottle. I'm only aware of one account of water ever being turned into wine, the one in the Bible.”

On the other hand, there are many stories of amazing coincidences. For example, parapsychologists say that one reason why telepathy is hard to study is that people who don't generally show this ability will do so in emergencies, which can't be duplicated in a laboratory.

It's not all that uncommon, they say, for mothers to rush out of the house because they suddenly sense that one of their children is in danger. If this effect is real, would we call it a suspension of the laws of nature? Also, are there only two persons involved in an event such as this, or could a higher power also be involved?

So in the case of the father’s heart suddenly beating again seems overwhelmingly to be pointing more in the favour of science then some mysterious inexplicable supernatural occurrence - doesn’t it?

Let’s review the odds.

Each year, more than 11 million children die, most from preventable causes and almost all in poor countries. Six countries account for 50% of worldwide deaths in children younger than 5 years, and 42 countries for 90%.

Just today, some 21,000 children will die around the world….

That is equivalent to:

• 1 child dying every 4 seconds
• 14 children dying every minute
• A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day
• A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days
• A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days
• An Iraq-scale death toll every 19–46 days
• Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage. And the majority are preventable. 

Some of the deaths occur from illnesses like measles, malaria or tetanus. Others result indirectly from marginalization, conflict and HIV/AIDS.  Malnutrition and the lack of safe water and sanitation contribute to half of all these children’s deaths.

But disease isn’t inevitable, nor do children with these diseases need to die. Research and experience show that six million of the almost 11 million children who die each year could be saved by low-tech, evidence-based, cost-effective measures such as vaccines, antibiotics, micronutrient supplementation, insecticide-treated bed nets and improved family care and breastfeeding practices.

So where is this ‘God’ now? Why would such an all powerful ruler allow such devastation? Why does religion allow for cherry picking the good and ignoring the bad? Why is it when one person survives a cataclysmic event it’s a miracle, but when millions of innocent children perish - it’s simply ignored - or part of a bigger plan?

The evidence in favour of the ‘father’s ‘resurrection’ does not amount to proof. It is an event that still must be called improbable. Nevertheless, 'God' has only ever revealed himself as one who trades in the improbable; if there’s even a chance, then it’s worth siding with him. This appears to be the logic that 2/3rd’s of our world is taking, and that the majority of us are content with such distorted odds.