Competition vs Cooperation
Atheists believe in what provides them with the best explanation for questions of science and religion. However, in that search, the natural world competes with the supernatural. The supernatural is not true unless it manifest itself naturally. This is like forcing an infrared frequency to manifest itself as a color in the visible spectrum. It is placing our expectation in ill-founded background.
Natural and supernatural are two levels of understanding reality. And we may never assume to know what reality really is. So if an atheist only accepts explanations provided by the natural level of understanding reality, every supernatural explanation will always be contradictory. The question: what is the Third included that resolves this contradiction?
Cooperation.
The fact we distinguish natural from supernatural doesn't mean we separate them. We may experience realities that can have both natural and supernatural explanations because reality involves both world-views. They cooperate. It's like I understand that a person's brain reacts to a hype moment of scientific discovery, but it does not invalidate an experience of contemplation of her discovery leading to a greater love for God's grace, and be thankful for this moment of joy in enlightenment. Why this happens? Because if that person believes in a God who created the world, discovering something new and exciting means we were grasped by a moment of intelligibility. "Eureka", "I understand", "I got it"!
I remember the first time I understood trigonometry because I did it before my desk mate which was a better student than I was. Understanding something did not compete with feeling happy for it. Both experiences were part of that single moment. The feeling when something makes sense is overwhelming, and it does not mean a competition between natural and supernatural explanations.
This is more challenging when we refer to miracles, like a healing expected in a canonization process. The problem is that we think there's a competition between a natural explanation and a supernatural one. Namely, a supernatural explanation is given when there's no natural explanation.
Rubbish.
Since both kinds are not on the same level, there's always things explained naturally without a supernatural explanation, and things explained supernaturally without a natural explanation. The problem are gray areas.
The overcome gray areas we need to be mindful that there's no contradiction between explanations because not being at the same level means they're not competitive. Their cooperative. So, any apparent contradiction only means one of the explanations may need reviewing.
If a person is healed, and medics do not have a physical explanation for it, my guess is that we still do not fully understand our biology and there's a lot more to know. However, that does not invalidate the supernatural experience of having another chance to live an even more meaningful life. If God created all things, all that happens has his signature.
"Even when bad things happen?"
What defines a bad thing as bad? Our limitations.
Not God's action, or inaction, but the limitations present in the world for us to experience true freedom.
"So, are you telling me that, when something good happens, it is God. And when something bad happens, it's the world limitations. God has nothing to do with it."
No. I'm saying that both good and bad things in the world are experienced by God from within. From the levels of understanding reality associated with the sense and meaning of things. If a child dies, God dies in that child because He is closer to her than she is to herself.
The "withinness" of things is a mystery we can only glimpse at any understanding if we experience it. For that, we need an open mind, a curious heart and a lot of patience...
