miracles?

Today – as I was driving to Connecticut to visit friends I finally found some time again to listen to the amazing scholar, Karen Armstrong, reading from her book “The Case For God”. Although, I’m sure I’d get so much more out of it if there weren’t young children yelling and asking incessant questions from the back seat.

Armstrong (in chapter 5 of her book) talks about Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Keppler – to name a few - and how people of the modern world wanted to explain God – provide proof. Although, I believe she said that Descartes argued against this approach. From what I could make out through the screaming of my kids, she spoke about how the great minds of this time philosophized about how everything has a reason, a motivator, a creator (i.e. all mass is inert unless it is moved, thus God must exist – or something like that).

Theories were established that God instilled divine principles of order and rules on the atomic level and then retired.
The theory or belief of there being intelligent design in nature isn’t something I disagree with but I always wonder about the oddities of nature. When things suddenly behave or develop differently than how they are supposed to.

Sometimes people refer to these things as miracles. Maybe they are just instances of free will. For even though I believe in some sort of destiny, I think that it’s not set in stone. That we still have some influence (or free will) depending on our actions – who we are or strive to be. So – maybe inexplicable phenomena and oddities in nature are just that. Free will. Rebellion. Chaos. Resistance. Whatever. Something of this kind….

Does that sound like a crazy thought process?