If the phenomena are inexplicable, you cannot rule out spiritual explanations. In fact, yours is a dogmatic insistence that there will be a materialist and mechanistic explanation found, given enough time. The fact that at some point people were too prone to imagine supernatural agency does not mean there is none in any circumstance.
It is obvious that there is evil in the world. The traditional answer is that God permits it because free- will is more important than the havoc caused. Even things not directly a result of malevolence are disruptions caused by evil in the world. In the longer run, God restores the moral order of the universe, but for now, we must put up with a lot. Prayer and special dispensations like Lourdes are presumed to draw upon God's mercy, not His justice, to accelerate the putting right of something, in consideration of the sincerity of the trust in God evidenced by the petitioner, and to encourage faith in those who witness the intervention. In instances where the petition is refused, it is presumed that there is a providential reason, and that a deeper plan would be upset by granting it. Remember, there has to be a limit to the revision of the world as we know it if free- will within creatures is to have a place, and therefore there must be an economy of intervention.
The intellectual problem is not insuperable, but for some people, the bitterness is. I always ask what is better to believe, that all will be made right in the end, or that none of our striving and suffering matters in the total scheme of things. As I have mentioned, one of my brothers is confined to a wheel chair from cerebral palsy. He is spastic, with restricted use of his hands, although he gets around quite a bit in his electric wheelchair. I spent a lot of my childhood carrying him or pushing him around in his wheelchair. I am not Pollyanna. I have confronted my own questions about all of this too........... |
