Accept this [series]

Part 1: Murderers, rapists, pedophiles, white-collar tax evaders and all criminals in-between are necessary parts of a society if that society wants to recognize good behavior. There needs to be a calibration factor, against which goodness can be measured. Theoretical example: if every member of a population never took part in criminal behavior, it would only take a few generations before the concept of crime disappeared and acting “good” was the only way people could conceive of acting. What we would call good behavior would be considered the only behavior option by the people populating the theoretical example. Thus, good behavior could not be recognized as such.

Part 2: People who believe in miracles and who define a miracle as being something which cannot be explained scientifically are necessarily acknowledging the validity of the scientific method. Yet, many of those who believe in miracles are skeptics of science and are likely to recite genesis over and over silently in their heads while their biology professor lectures about single cell and then multi-cellular organisms. The great irony is that by virtue of their definition of a miracle, they endorse/approve of the answers about the universe that have been reached with science. More accurately, science does not prove, it disproves. Therefore, the miracle believers must consent that what science has disproved (oftentimes hypotheses) is no longer an acceptable explanation, even if doing so is at odds with the miracle believers’ beliefs.