Assume you are a Christian and you believe that the descriptions of the life of Jesus are facts.
Things like turning water into wine magically, walking on water and other miracles seem to be inconsistent with the laws of science.
As a scientist, I am curious if you can have a consistent belief system with the two.
As you are asking about Christianity, I think the first place to start is by noting that Christianity is explicitly opposed to Deism, the belief that God exists and created the world, but does not intervene or even really interact with it now. The god of Deism is unknown and unknowable, but the Christian God, right from the beginning of humanity, has communicated, related with, and intervened in the lives of people and the world he created. Though he is not part of the created universe, he has never been far from it, and it exists only because he sustains it.
So there is a sense in which God's interventions in this world are natural: natural to how God is in himself, a relational being who loves his creation, and natural from our perspective, as the whole history of humanity has been one in which God is active.
Second, though we often think of there being a strong dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural, Christian theology does not accept that. Instead Christianity teaches the doctrine of Providence: God's continuous sustaining of the universe. Providence is ultimately one act of God, even though it takes different forms at different times. So see the Westminster Confession of Faith on providence:
5.1: God the great Creator of all things does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.
5.2: Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, He orders them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.
5.3: God, in His ordinary providence, makes use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure.
In paragraph 2 we read that God is the first cause, by which all things come to pass, but that God ordains that what happens happens through secondary causes, according to their nature. As it is the nature for fire to be hot, ice to be cold, and heavy masses to pull light masses towards them, so these secondary causes are used to work out the providence of God. By itself this might seem to prohibit miracles which go against the nature of things, but paragraph three says that God is free to use these means, or to work without, above, or against them as he wishes. The miracles of God are the times when he decided to use unusual secondary causes, but even then they were not times when every law of nature was suspended. For example, in the miracle of Jesus calming the storm, however it came to pass, gravity still remained in place, and the waters and atmosphere still followed their currents and convections. So rather than thinking of natural and supernatural (or unnatural), it's probably more helpful to think of ordinary and extraordinary.
In this Christian view of God I would say it does imply believing in miracles, because miracles are ultimately only distinguished from the ordinary by the free pleasure of God to act as he wills. For the Providence of God to not have capacity for extraordinary secondary causes would mean that God is beholden to a will more powerful than his own.
Christians believe God has created a consistent and ordered universe, one in which the enterprise of science can be productive. Although every single physical phenomena is direct result of God's providence, his ordinary providence is so reliable that we can study the universe and construct models of the physical world with incredible detail. So in the rare times when he deems to use non-ordinary means, our scientific enterprise is not able to account for what he does.
Consider the simplest possible miracle, the creation of something from nothing, even as simple as a single photon. If God decided to do this, it would be impossible for science to account for it, because of the law of the conservation of mass/energy. Indeed, it wouldn't even be possible for us to observe it happening, at that scale we can't even compare observation to scientific model. And were we to detect the existence of the photon, all we could say is that it had been travelling in a straight line at constant speed. If we traced its path we might identify a supposed source, or we might have to conclude that its source is beyond our observational reach. But there's no capacity in our observational abilities or our models for it to simply come into existence.
For a similar but larger scale miracle, consider the water turning into wine. At that scale natural human observation can contradict scientific modelling. But scientific study could not be reconciled with naive sort of observation of the wedding attendants. We could analyse the wine and determine what type of grapes it was made from, how old the wine is, perhaps where it was made. We wouldn't detect that it had come into existence just minutes before. The miracle is not that Jesus turned water into minutes old wine, but into quality wine that had been aged for years in barrels in a cellar somewhere. Science could tell us how old the wine was, and that would in a very real sense be the truth.
Christian theology teaches that only God is eternal and self-existent, everything else that is, exists and is contingent on him. We can produce wonderful models with science, but we can't ultimately account for existence. Christians believe God created the universe, and this necessitates a miracle, one which is beyond science. Whether God created through the big bang, or in six days out of nothing, the world that he created is one in which there is matter and energy and laws in how they interact. In an expanding universe the only stable configuration is a singularity, so however God created the universe, when we looked back to model the past, we couldn't see the creation of everything, but only expansion from a singularity. But as I said, we can't account for existence, and science doesn't try. So when there is a fundamental distinction between creator and creation, as Christianity teaches, I believe this does imply believing in miracles, at least the original miracle of the universe.
If you believe that all things recorded about Jesus in the New Testament is historical fact, that logically implies believing in miracles. That falls out of a basic syllogism, because some things recorded about Jesus in the New Testament are expressly miraculous in nature.
The more interesting question here philosophically is about the philosophy of science, and working out what we mean by "the laws of science." Ignoring all the extreme scepticism about whether induction is valid or whether we could be brains in a vat, there are two things we have to understand about scientific results.
The first is that they are descriptive rather than prescriptive. The second is that they are restricted in scope. That is, when we say about a stone sitting on a hill "An object remains at rest or in uniform motion" we're not telling it to stay still, we're describing what it will probably do based on seeing what other stones do. That prediction is only good until something shakes it up a bit, which is why the full law is "An object remains at rest or in uniform motion unless acted on by an external force." Further, that prediction is only reasonable as long as this stone is like the other stones we studied. (For an informal illustration, if what we identified a stone is actually a sheep, it is possible that it won't behave like most stones!)
This is where we come back to miracles. A miracle doesn't deny the normal descriptions that we call "the laws of science." (In fact that's almost the definition. If it turned out people could normally walk on water but just didn't know it, that wouldn't be a miracle!) It is a situation different enough from the ones we're usually studying that we can still say "In usual situations, this happens" while accepting that in very unusual situations, who knows?
If there's a man on the mountain kicking stones, they may just start moving.
There are two questions:
Answers to the first question depend on what a particular Christian means by Christianity. To avoid setting up a straw man, I will quote an influential Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, who takes a stand on this question: (page 108):
All the essentials of Hinduism, I think, remain unimpaired if you subtracted the miraculous, and the same is almost true of Mohammedanism. But you cannot do that with Christianity. It is precisely the story of a great Miracle. A naturalistic Christianity leaves out all that is specifically Christian.
From the perspective of Christians who take a similar view as Lewis, believing in a Christian God implies believing in miracles.
The second question is whether this is rational. Is the Christian belief in miracles inconsistent with a belief in laws of nature? Lewis wrote his book, Miracles, partially to address that question. For him the laws of nature are not violated by miraculous events. Rather miraculous events are introduced into nature by the supernatural. Laws of nature then accommodate whatever events occur. In particular he writes: (page 98)
If what we call Nature is modified by supernatural power, then we may be sure that the capability of being so modified is of the essence of Nature - that the total events, if we could grasp it, would turn out to involve, by its very character, the possibility of such modifications. If Nature brings forth miracles then doubtless it is as 'natural' for her to do so when impregnated by the masculine force beyond her as it is for a woman to bear children to a man. In calling them miracles we do not mean that they are contradictions or outrages; we mean that, left to her own resources, she could never produce them.
What this means is that Christians who take a similar view on miracles as Lewis does have a way of justifying their beliefs when challenged by the presence of natural laws.
Lewis, C. S. (1947). Miracles; a preliminary study.
No, I don't think so. Believing what the Bible says, word-for-word, is not a prerequisite or requirement for believing in the basic existence of the Christian God. Believing in his existence does not imply that he is onmipotent/has the power to perform miracles such as those shown in the Bible- you are simply acknowledging that he exists, not specifying what he's able or willing to do. Think of a cat. You see the cat, acknowledge its existence, but your recognition of this fact does not imply that the cat possesses some sort of ability or power, such as being able to jump very high in the air. The cat could have some sort of disability, but this does not lessen the fact that you believe in its existence as a cat, specifically the one in front of you.
(Sorry for the bad analogy.)
However, if you believed every word of the Bible was truth, thereby going beyond the scope of the simply recognition of the existence of the christian God, then yes, it would logically imply that you believed in miracles.
But then there's also the fact that the Bible's words put the "Christian" in "Christian God", and not Allah or Brahman or another similar god..... Perhaps I may be wrong after all......
If you are a part of the mainstream of the Christian religion, then yes, you accept that Jesus could, and did, suspend what we call "scientific law." It's an important part of orthodox (small "o") Christian belief that Jesus' divine nature granted command over the realities of the universe; a power that Jesus wielded, not indiscriminately, but as an accompaniment to his religious teachings. Denying this, in addition to contradicting all standard interpretations of the New Testament, also denies either Jesus' divinity, the divine power of God over the universe, or, (at the least) that Jesus chose to demonstrate that power. There are people who revere Jesus' teachings, but don't accept Jesus' divinity, people who identify as Christians who don't believe Jesus ever actually suspended natural law (regardless of the what the Bible reports), and Bible believers who believe there are naturalistic scientific explanations for all Biblical miracles, but none of those groups is within the mainstream of Christian belief.
How can one believe in both Jesus (in the sense of mainstream Christian faith) and science? The simplest reconciliation is to believe that scientific laws hold at all times except when suspended or superseded by divine will. It's arguably a much stronger demonstration of Jesus' divinity if Jesus' miracles break rules that can't otherwise be broken. If everyone could make the blind see and raise the dead then it wouldn't be particularly notable that Jesus did those things. (In fact, some might say that the "miracles" possible through modern science weaken traditional religious belief for that very reason.)
What happens when science is confronted by a miracle? There's no legitimate scientific reaction available except to report anomalous observations that contradict accepted theories. It may be hard to believe, but there is no requirement in science that science governs all things, or (in other words) that its domain is co-existent with the universe. Many scientists of course, believe such propositions, but those are meta-scientific beliefs, beliefs that are themselves outside of science. Science, in fact, is deliberately limited in such a way that prevents it from making such statements. (If you think about it carefully, there is no possible empirical experiment that could demonstrate that science has the universal domain.)
This goes not only for Christians but for all religious believers that subscribe to lore involving miracles... say for instance Muslims that believe that Mohammad's horse spread wings for his night flight to Mecca.
The question becomes: how do religious believers reconcile a belief in the temporary suspension of the natural order, while still believing that the natural order is consistent in every other instance?
The simple answer is that they consider the deity to be in full control of the natural order and can choose to suspend it at its leisure.
Which then brings us to The Problem of Evil but that is outside the scope of this question.
'Christianity' is a porous term. We can't define necessary and sufficient conditions for a set of beliefs or practices to be Christian. Christianity is an essentially contested concept. Any nuclear, essentialist approach is bound to fail.
Following this line of thought, which does full justice to the history of religious ideas, we can't say that a belief in miracles is a necessary condition for being a Christian or, otherwise put, that believing in a Christian God logically implies believing in miracles. On some constructions or conceptions of Christianity, it does: but the concept of 'Christianity' is too elastic to require a belief in miracles or to rule it out.
I see no contradiction in saying, 'I am a Christian but I do not believe in miracles.' For it is logically possible for a Christian to hold a view of the nature of God which excludes the occurrence of miracles because it conflicts with God's perfection. How so ?
Prior to the eighteenth century miracles were an embarrassment to theologians because their occurrence appeared contrary to God's perfection. The following are some of the reasons for their concern. Why had God not created a world in which what was accomplished by His intervention in the natural order (by means of miracles) could have been accomplished in the ordinary course of events; consequently God's need to intervene with miracles is analogous to the maker of a pair of shoes who subsequently has to mend them. Moreover, a rationally ordered world system is the kind of product expected of God, but miracles are disruptions which leave gaps in the orderly workings of nature. Finally, since miracles are primarily intended for the purpose of conveying messages about what God wills; and since whatever God wills is rational, there is, therefore, nothing about God's intentions which could not have been available to human reason without the need of His intervention. (Leon Pearl, 'Miracles and Theism', Religious Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1988), pp. 483-495: 484.)
For a Christian who takes a view of God of the kind outlined by Pearl it would appear that believing in a Christian God excludes rather than implies a belief in miracles.
Many Christians will vehemently reject this view of God. I have nothing to say against them except to refer them back to the opening remarks about esssentialism.
No. Belief requires neither coherency, logical consistency, nor anything other than believing. Such is the psychological power and scope of faith.
If you want to believe that 2 + 2 = 5, you have that capacity. If, however, you stand 2 + 2 feet from a train track and as a train rolls by you jump the distance believing you've a foot to spare, you will quickly be rendered unable to ever set foot in either a logic class or a Sunday sermon.
Identifying as a christian, certainly, people might expect that you are willing to suspend your disbelief of such fictions as transubstantiation, but that is another matter altogether.
You might enjoy the Thomas Jefferson Bible, it is the story of Jesus from Nazareth sans the miraculous.
