The issue for me is the definition of the word miracles:
- Something which violates the laws of nature.
- An unexpected or unlikely but happy event that causes people to feel the presence of the divine.
I certainly believe in miracles because I use the second definition. But if you insist on the first definition then I don’t believe in such miracles, because I don’t believe in an inconsistent irrational God who makes laws and then breaks them. The God I believe in is not like the whimsical members of the Roman pantheon. If He makes things like the laws of nature then He does so for a good reason. I think the very existence of life depends on the laws of nature and God’s faithful adherence to these limitations.
I certainly don’t believe God breaks the laws of nature for the lame reason of impressing a few people and supporting their ideas of magic and the hope of manipulating God. Furthermore, I think it is absurd to think that God would even need to do such a thing. Humans have shown over and over and over that they can impress and amaze people without superpowers and without breaking the laws of nature – including all of the miracles in the Bible. Walking on water – it has been done. Virgin birth – we know how to do that one. Bringing people back to life – we do that one all the time, though it has caused us to change our definition of death to exclude those we can resuscitate by restarting their heart and getting them to breathe again. Of course this doesn’t mean we can explain everything for we see medical miracles all the time where we just don’t know for sure how the person has recovered – but this doesn’t mean the laws of nature were broken.
Nor does this mean that God doesn’t interact with the world – I am no Deist. This is no longer required because the physical determinism of the 1800s and before is dead due to quantum physics. We can now prove that events occur where there are no hidden physical variables to determine what happens. In fact this is one reason in the list of reasons I often give for believing in God. While the majority of scientists experience considerable cognitive dissonance over this result of quantum physics which seems to contradict the very premises of scientific inquiry itself, for me it makes sense if God needed a back door through which He could interact with the universe without breaking the laws of nature.