More on miracles

I wrote about my miracle in this post.

Let me define what I meant:

Miracle, defined

Oxford defines miracle in these ways:

An extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency.

A remarkable event or development that brings very welcome consequences.

An exceptional product or achievement, or an outstanding example of something.

My miracle was a change of consciousness (itself a miracle.)

I was suddenly aware of the miracle of existence at that moment.

My existence.

The existence of the world around me.

The trees. The stones. The sky.

Isn’t it ‘just reality?’

Well, you might say, “That’s not a miracle. That’s just reality.”

And I will say back: “Right! Reality is a miracle. We live in a miracle.

“What you are disparaging as ‘just reality’ is itself a miracle.

“No moment is ordinary.

“No person is ordinary. No tree is ordinary. All are miraculous.

“Drink it in!”

What it took

In a universe that’s almost entirely cold, dark, and empty, anything that exists is a sort of miracle.

In a universe that’s mostly devoid of consciousness, anything that’s conscious is a sort of miracle.

“But,” you may ask, “if natural law explains it, then can it still be a miracle?” Indeed, you just did ask it.

“Yes,” I answer. “You might say that we can explain everything by natural law—In theory.

“And yet,” I add, “in practice, we can explain nothing.

“How can both be true?” You ask.

“Watch,” I say.

No zeroes

All representations of natural law conform to one constraint: no zeroes.

With no zeroes, even the most improbable occurrence has a non-zero probability.

Natural law says, “anything is possible.”

The probability that the universe arrives any given state—like the state we’re in—is near zero.

But it’s not zero.

Against all the odds, here we are!

QED

The probability that the universe changes from one state to any other state may be infinitesimally small.

But it’s still possible.

So against all the odds, anything can happen.

Miracles are allowed.

And we can’t explain how anything happens for a straightforward reason.

Not enough time.

Not enough time

Even if we knew the laws of nature precisely—which we can’t—even if we knew the initial conditions exactly—which we can’t—even though that’s enough to explain anything, nothing can be explained.

There isn’t enough time.

There’s not enough time to represent the initial conditions and not enough time to fully represent the laws of nature and not enough time to do the calculations that would show how one state leads to another.

We can say: “it can be explained.” And that’s true. Given infinite time and infinite resources, we can explain something.

But we can’t explain it.

We can explain it approximately—which means that we can wave our hands and say, “it’s something like this.”

But we can’t say what it is precisely.

Practical examples

We understand the laws of planetary motion. Yet, yet we can’t solve even the three-body problem, much less the complex multi-body problem that is the solar system.

My body synthesizes a vast array of proteins.

We may know how to synthesize some of those kinds of proteins.

But no one, least of all me, knows how to synthesize even a single molecule of any one of those proteins in my body.

And no one can explain the way it all worksworsks.

Isn’t that a kind of miracle?

I asked for a miracle, and I got one.

And that led, a few days later to “A Course in Miracles,” another miracle.

Meanwhile, today’s miracle is about to arrive: another Miracle of The Second Posting.

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