In Your Body Every Day There's a Million Miracles of Warp-Speed Purposeful Assembly

The infographic below gives you the "big picture" on the stupendous  hierarchical organization of the human body. 

 A recent article in MIT News is entitled "Biologist Joey Davis explores how cells build complex structures." We read of a biologist studying how ribosomes get assembled in a cell. At this point the average reader may remember seeing a cell diagram, and the reader may say to himself something like, "Oh, yeah, ribosomes, I remember that there are a few of those little balls in a cell." But the truth is that a typical human cell has millions of ribosomes, and ribosomes are fantastically complex components, like little machines. Ribosomes have the enormously complex function of assembling a huge variety of protein molecules, which are very complex components built from hundreds or thousands of amino acids. 

How did the average person get such a wrong idea about ribosomes, the idea that there were only a few of them in the cell, and that they are simple little balls? It is because our biology authorities have done such a poor job of educating us about the vast complexity of cells. Again and again, our biology authorities published misleading diagrams of cells, making it look like cells have only a few parts. 

The Google Gemini diagram below discusses some of the great complexities of the work done in the cell by ribosomes. 

The diagram has two shortfalls: (1) at the bottom it depicts a cell as enormously less complex than a cell is; (2) at the top it makes ribosomes look vastly less complex than they are.  The diagram below helps to show how complex is the structure of ribosomes, which require the special arrangement of very many types of protein molecules:

We see in the diagram above how vastly organized ribosomes are. For  a ribosome to be constructed, very many types of proteins must be assembled in just the right way, to produce the "protein factory" that is a ribosome. How does such an assembly occur? Scientists lack any explanation for this miracle of organization. The structure of ribosomes is not specified in DNA or any of its genes. DNA and its genes only contain low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up a particular protein. 

As enormously complex as ribosomes are, their complexity is dwarfed by the complexity of the structures that surround them, the structures called endoplasmic reticulum.  A document makes a bungling attempt to explain how the very complex structure of the endoplasmic reticulum arises. It is the vacuous non-explanation of "self organization." The emptiness of the concept is clear from a quote on page 13, where we read, "Self-organization is an interesting concept, but how organelles self-organize is unclear." The last resort of a scientist lacking an explanation for some very high state of organization is to make a vacuous appeal to "self-organization."

Every day that you live, fantastically complex components are magically being assembled in your body, components with a structure that is not specified by DNA or its genes. How this can happen is a mystery a hundred miles over the heads of scientists.  They know of no chemistry or physics factors that can explain such assembly. 

The wonders seem all the more staggering when we consider the speed at which these miracles of assembly occur. In the MIT News article  we get a mention of that. Below is a quote:

"During ribosome assembly, RNA molecules fold themselves into the correct shapes, creating docking sites for proteins to attach. Then, more RNA molecules come in and fold themselves into the structure.

'It’s a beautifully coupled process by which the cell folds hundreds of RNA helices and binds on the order of 50 proteins, and it does it in two minutes from start to finish. E. coli does this 100,000 times per hour, and it’s amazing how rapid and efficient the process is,'  Davis says."

How do ribosomes (such fantastically complex components) ever get built? The MIT article offers us no clue, except for two misleading sound bites. 

The first misleading sound bite comes in the subtitle of the article, which says this about Joey Davis:  "His studies have shed light on the assembly instructions that govern ribosomes, the critical protein-building machines of the cell." That makes it sound as if Davis had studied some assembly instructions for building ribosomes. But no such assembly instructions have ever been discovered, and no such assembly instructions are discussed in the MIT article. DNA and its genes have no assembly instructions for building ribosomes or any other type of organelle.

The second misleading sound bite comes when Davis makes a mention of evolution, without giving any specifics.  He says, "It appears that evolution has selected pathways that aren’t strictly ordered in the way we would think about an assembly line, where you always put in one component, then the next, and then the next. "  All uses of the phrase "evolution has selected" are misleading, as Darwinian evolution is a mindless process, and only conscious entities can select things. And claims about Darwinian evolution long ago do nothing to explain how ribosomes could get assembled right now in your body. If DNA contained some instructions for how to build ribosomes, then you might be able to make some farfetched appeal to lucky DNA mutations long ago that somehow gave us instructions in DNA for how to build ribosomes.  But DNA and its genes do not contain instructions for how to build ribosomes or any other type of organelle in a cell. 

Darwinism and claims about evolution are useless in explaining the wonders of biochemistry. That is why Darwin and evolution get virtually no mention in biochemistry textbooks. I documented this reality in my post "The Negligible Presence of Evolutionary Explanations in Six Biochemistry Textbooks," which documents the almost complete lack of mention of evolution, natural selection and Darwin in several long biochemistry textbooks. 

Somehow all these marvelously fine-tuned components bigger than protein molecules get assembled in our body,  in a way that scientists cannot credibly explain. No assembly instructions for such components and systems have ever been discovered in the body. These miracles of assembly are sometimes very fast and sometimes slow. The progression from a speck-sized zygote to a full human body over the nine months of pregnancy is a miracle of organization, but one that is relatively slow. Conversely, in your body there is constantly occurring very fast miracles of assembly, such as the "two minutes" marvel of assembly mentioned in the quote above. 

Some of these miracles of assembly are the construction of protein complexes.  Protein complexes are teams of different types of proteins. Proteins somehow assemble into very complex components called protein complexes, which are sometimes so complex they are commonly called "molecular machines" by scientists.  Below are some quotes in which scientists confess their lack of understanding of how protein complexes form:

• "The majority of cellular proteins function as subunits in larger protein complexes. However, very little is known about how protein complexes form in vivo." Duncan and Mata, "Widespread Cotranslational Formation of Protein Complexes," 2011.
• "While the occurrence of multiprotein assemblies is ubiquitous, the understanding of pathways that dictate the formation of quaternary structure remains enigmatic." -- Two scientists (link). 
• "A general theoretical framework to understand protein complex formation and usage is still lacking." -- Two scientists, 2019 (link). 
• "Most proteins associate into multimeric complexes with specific architectures, which often have functional properties like cooperative ligand binding or allosteric regulation. No detailed knowledge is available about how any multimer and its functions arose during historical evolution." -- Ten scientists, 2020 (link). 
• "Protein assemblies are at the basis of numerous biological machines by performing actions that none of the individual proteins would be able to do. There are thousands, perhaps millions of different types and states of proteins in a living organism, and the number of possible interactions between them is enormous...The strong synergy within the protein complex makes it irreducible to an incremental process. They are rather to be acknowledged as fine-tuned initial conditions of the constituting protein sequences. These structures are biological examples of nano-engineering that surpass anything human engineers have created. Such systems pose a serious challenge to a Darwinian account of evolution, since irreducibly complex systems have no direct series of selectable intermediates, and in addition, as we saw in Section 4.1, each module (protein) is of low probability by itself." -- Steinar Thorvaldsen and Ola Hössjerm, "Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems,"  Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Some such as Hume trying to discredit the idea of miracles have defined a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. That is not a good definition of "miracle." Here is a good definition of "miracle": a miracle is something (not explained by known laws of physics or chemistry or common human agency) that occurs without visible or known agency, and which would be so improbable to occur by unguided chance that its probability of accidentally occurring is for all practical purposes zero. For example, if you were to take a pack of 52 playing cards, and throw such cards into the air, and all 52 cards became part of a triangular house of cards, that formation so perfect would be something so unlikely to occur that the probability of it occurring is for all practical purposes zero. 

Under this reasonable definition of "miracle," the assembly of every ribosome is a miracle, and the assembly of every other very complex and enormously organized organelle is a miracle, as is the assembly of every type of protein complex involving the "just right" arrangement of many types of proteins that assemble into "molecular machines" fine-tuned for some biochemical task.  There are no known laws of physics or chemistry that explain such wonders of organization.  The assembly of such components by a chance combinations of protein molecules has a probability that is negligible. Under the same definition of "miracle," the assembly of protein complexes as complex as the proteasome (described in this post's appendix) must also be called miracles. 

Every day within your body there are a million such miracles, very many of which involve a kind of warp-speed assembly in which parts magically assemble very, very quickly into functional components, in a way that is not predicted by anything we know about the laws of chemistry or physics, and that is not predicted by anything we know about what is in DNA and its genes.  The continual occurrence of such miracles is required for the continuation of your life.  The physical origin of your body (involving the nine-month progression from a speck-sized zygote to the vast organization of a full human body) was one miracle, but a slow, gradual miracle. The continuation of your body over the span of decades requires endless millions of other miracles,  in which purposeful cell components magically assemble in a way that is utterly beyond any explanation of physics, chemistry or genetics. 

I asked Google Gemini to produce an infographic visual explaining an example of a protein complex that assembles very quickly. It gave me the visual below. The nuclear pore complex (NPC) discussed is a very well-organized protein complex consisting of more than 30 types of proteins, arranged in just the right way to achieve a particular hard-to-achieve functional effect. Apparently this nuclear pore complex gets assembled within five minutes.   The bottom of the diagram has a few lines trying to explain the speed of assembly, but it is little more than the thinnest hand-waving. 

How there occurs such miracles of purposeful assembly at such stunning speeds is a mystery a thousand miles over the heads of scientists. When materialists claim that all of the processes of life "can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry," they are telling a lie as big as the sky. The continuation of your life requires the daily occurrence of these miracles of purposeful assembly. The progression from a speck-sized zygote to a vastly more organized full human body over nine months is a miracle of organization very far beyond the explanation of biologists. But it is not merely the origin of every human body that is beyond the explanation of materialists: it is also the continued living existence of an adult body that is a miracle beyond their explanation, because of the million microscopic miracles of warp-speed purposeful assembly that must occur every day for a human body to keep living.   

Postscript: Today while searching for some more quotes to add to my "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" post (the largest collection  anywhere of scientists confessing what they don't know), I found these two quotes. In one, scientists confess they don't understand how mammary glands arise in a developing body; and in the other scientists confess they don't understand how eyes arise in a developing body. 

• "A quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, we still lack basic knowledge regarding the formation and function of the organ that gives its name to all mammals, and which provides important health benefits for children and their breastfeeding parent through the creation and delivery of breast milk." -- 3 scientists (link). 
• "Despite increasing knowledge of pathways controlling the differentiation of many cell types in the eye, we still lack a basic understanding of the mechanisms controlling its morphogenesis." - 3 scientists (link).  

Also I read today a paper making it clear that contrary to boasts in the press, the AlphaFold2 software does not actually solve the protein folding problem, the problem of how protein molecules almost instantly acquire very complicated 3D shapes needed for their function. The year 2026 paper states, "The explanatory scientific understanding of the protein folding problem is thus

not directly advanced by AF2 [AlphaFold2]." Later the same paper says, "The protein folding problem remains unsolved." Instead, the AlphaFold2 software makes progress on a different problem, properly described as the protein structure prediction problem, which is the problem of predicting the 3D shape of a protein molecule from its amino acid sequence. Whenever one of the more complex types of protein molecules almost instantly takes the very complex 3D shape needed for its function, that is another example of a miracle of warp-speed purposeful assembly.  

Appendix A: The Proteasome Molecular Machine

Below is one example of the many types of protein complexes that seem to require miracles of assembly beyond the explanation of scientists. The wikipedia.org article on proteasomes tells us this:

"Proteasomes are protein complexes which degrade unneeded or damaged proteins by proteolysis, a chemical reaction that breaks peptide bonds...In structure, the proteasome is a cylindrical complex containing a 'core' of four stacked rings forming a central pore. Each ring is composed of seven individual proteins."

A paper on this topic is entitled "Gates, channels, and switches: elements of the proteasome machine." We read this:

"The proteasome has emerged as an intricate machine that has dynamic mechanisms to regulate the timing of its activity, its selection of substrates, and its processivity. The 19-subunit regulatory particle (RP) recognizes ubiquitinated proteins, removes ubiquitin, and injects the target protein into the proteolytic chamber of the core particle (CP) via a narrow channel."

Another paper is entitled "The 26S Proteasome: A Molecular Machine Designed for Controlled Proteolysis." A page on the site of the Theoretical and Computational Group tells us this:

"Recycling of unneeded protein molecules in cells is performed by a molecular machine called 26S proteasome (Figure 1), which cuts these proteins into smaller pieces for reuse as building blocks for new proteins. Proteins that need to be recycled are labeled by tags made of poly-ubiquitin protein chains. The 26S proteasome machine recognizes and binds to these tags, pulls the tagged protein close, then unwinds it, and finally cuts it into pieces. As the cell's recycling machinery, the 26S proteasome is vital for a variety of essential cellular processes, including protein quality control, cell cycle regulation, adaptive immune response, and apoptosis....The 26S proteasome recruits, unfolds, and degrades poly-ubiquitin tagged proteins through a complex interaction clockwork of over 60 known protein subunits that is driven through ATP hydrolysis."

A scientific paper tells us this:

"The 26S proteasome is a multisubunit complex that catalyzes the degradation of ubiquitinated proteins. The proteasome comprises 33 distinct subunits, all of which are essential for its function and structure." 

Below is a depiction of the human 26S proteasome structure, one that labels some of its protein parts. We see three different views of the same protein complex, with different protein parts labeled (the Greek letters used stand for alpha and beta parts mentioned in the table below):

Image credit: Xing Guo et. al, link.

Below are the number of amino acids involved in these parts, which I looked up using the UniProt online database (you can use the links to check the numbers I have given):

Protein	Number of amino acids	Comment
Proteasome subunit beta type-1	241	On Chromosome 6
Proteasome subunit beta type-2	201	On Chromosome 1
Proteasome subunit beta type-3	205	On Chromosome 17
Proteasome subunit beta type-4	264	On Chromosome 1
Proteasome subunit beta type-5	263	On Chromosome 14
Proteasome subunit beta type-6	239	On Chromosome 17
Proteasome subunit beta type-7	248	On Chromosome 20
Proteasome subunit alpha type-1	263	On Chromosome 11
Proteasome subunit alpha type-2	234	On Chromosome 7
Proteasome subunit alpha type-3	255	On Chromosome 14
Proteasome subunit alpha type-4	261	On Chromosome 15
Proteasome subunit alpha type-5	241	On Chromosome 1
Proteasome subunit alpha type-6	243	On Chromosome 14
Proteasome subunit alpha type-7	248	On Chromosome 20

The structure shown above clearly requires several thousands of amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way. The structure shown above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above (insufficient to specify the total structure) is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 60 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least eight of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 11, Chromosome 14, Chromosome 15, Chromosome 17, and Chromosome 20.

Appendix B: The Nuclear Pore Complex 

The nuclear pore complex or NPC is a large protein complex found in the "nuclear envelope" that is the outer boundary of the nucleus inside human cells.  A science research press release tells us this: 

"For structural biologists, the human NPC is a challenging yet exciting 3D puzzle, with around 30 different proteins each present in multiple copies. This amounts to around 1000 puzzle pieces, which form a round core with surrounding flexible parts."

The wikipedia.org article on this complex states that it consists of "456 individual protein molecules, and 34 distinct nucleoporin proteins." So the complex apparently requires 34 types of protein molecules. The article tells us that the "principal function of nuclear pore complexes is to facilitate selective membrane transportation of various molecules across the nuclear envelope." This mean that nuclear pore complexes have the extremely complex job of acting like gatekeepers, letting the right kind of molecules get into the nucleus of the cell, and keeping out the wrong type of molecules.  The article tells us that there are typically about 1000 of the nuclear pore complexes in every cell. We read of some impressive functionality of these nuclear pore complexes:

"Notably, the nuclear pore complex (NPC) can actively mediate up to 1000 translocations per complex per second. While smaller molecules can passively diffuse through the pores, larger molecules are often identified by specific signal sequences and are facilitated by nucleoporins to traverse the nuclear envelope."

The article (and also the Google Gemini infographic above) tell us that a nuclear pore complex has a molecular weight of about 110 megadaltons. A dalton is the mass equal to a twelfth of the mass of a carbon atom. A protein complex of 110 megadaltons would have the mass of about 9 million carbon atoms. Apparently the proteins that make up this complex are particularly complex proteins. Below are the exact numbers (we may assume that there are multiple instances of such proteins in a nuclear pore complex). 

Protein	Number of amino acids	Comment
NUP98_HUMAN	1817	On Chromosome 11
NU153_HUMAN	1475	On Chromosome 6
NUP93_HUMAN	819	On Chromosome 16
NU107_HUMAN	925	On Chromosome 12
NU205_HUMAN	2012	On Chromosome 7
NU160_HUMAN	1436	On Chromosome 11
NU214_HUMAN	2090	On Chromosome 9
NUP85_HUMAN	656	On Chromosome 17
NUP50_HUMAN	468	On Chromosome 22
NUP88_HUMAN	741	On Chromosome 17
NU133_HUMAN	1156	On Chromosome 1
NU155_HUMAN	1391	On Chromosome 5

The molecular machinery shown above clearly requires more than 12,000 amino acids that have to be arranged in just the right way, which amounts to a special arrangement of more than 100,000  atoms. The structure of the molecular machinery described above is not specified in DNA, which merely specifies which amino acids make up each of the protein parts. The amino acid information needed to make the structure above  is not at all contiguous in DNA. To assemble the structure above, among other wonders of construction a human body must magically gather genetic information scattered across many different chromosomes in the nucleus, like someone quickly finding just the right 34 loose pages hidden in random books of 46 tall, long bookcases in a library. The table above shows that at least nine of the 23 human chromosome pairs would need to be accessed: Chromosome 1, Chromosome 5, Chromosome 6, Chromosome 7, Chromosome 11, Chromosome 12, Chromosome 16, Chromosome 17 and Chromosome 22.

The nuclear pore complex (credit: Protein Data Bank, link)

Early Newspaper Accounts of Out-of-Body Experiences

The Chronicling America web site and other web sites allow full-text searches of old newspapers. Using such sites, I found some interesting old newspaper accounts of out-of-body experiences. For example, there is the account below of a man claiming to have out-of-body experiences in which he traveled to the 1905 World's Fair in St. Louis. 

You can read the full account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1905-02-05/ed-1/seq-18/

Below is a 1903 account of a dying boy (Walter Smith) who reports a trip to Heaven during a close brush with death that was soon followed by actual death. We have elements of a near-death experience, an out-of-body experience and perhaps what is called terminal lucidity.  Click on the image to read it better. 

You can read the account below:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SRX19030814.2.2&srpos=752&e=-------en--20--741--txt-txTI-psychic-------

Below is a 1903 newspaper account:

"Jim Burlington of St. Joseph. Mo., is dead again, and has at last been buried. Burlington died, or appeared to die, about five years ago. The body was placed in a coffin and arrangements were made for its burial. Just as the funeral procession was about to leave the house life returned to Burlington's body. When he had regained consciousness Burlington declared his belief that he had really been dead. He said that he had been to heaven and told a beautiful story of the sights he had seen there. He was not a well-educated man, but described heaven as he said he had seen it in most remarkable language. Burlington's description of heaven was printed in a pamphlet soon afterward and was declared by scholars to be a most wonderful statement. Burlington was a member of a church and his statements were fully believed by the other members. One strange feature of the story was that Burlington said he saw a man in heaven who had formerly been a resident of St. Joseph, but who had moved away and was believed to he still living. Inquiry revealed the fact that the man was dead.—Sacramento Sunday News."

You can read the account using the link below:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=MDA19031115.2.37&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------

An 1892 newspaper account tells a story with many remarkable aspects. We hear of an 18-year-old young Mexican woman (Teresa Urrea) who had remarkable healing abilities after spending days in a death-like trance:

"She had spasms, and went into a trance that lasted thirteen days. Her parents thought her dead and were preparing for the funeral when she revived and recovered. Immediately after this she began to perform wonderful cures by the laying on of hands. A lame woman was her first case. This becoming rapidly gossiped about, the lame, blind and otherwise ailing began to arrive in crowds, walking on their knees as soon as they came in sight of the house, and reciting prayers and calling the young lady the 'holy maiden.' "

We are told Teresa gave proof of her power of mind-reading, and that she "has cured more than three hundred sufferers from all kinds of complaints." We read this claim of an out-of-body experience which Teresa seemed to produce at will, with someone else corroborating the reality of the experience: 

"One incredulous individual named Jose Parades laughed in the young girl's face, whereupon, so says the report, she slipped out of her body and stood before him for an instant in double form, both shapes being perceptible to him. Parades rubbed his eyes and his hair rose on end. 'What did you see?' asked Teresa. 'Nothing,' he stammered. 'That is, it was an optical illusion.'  But he was converted."

You can read the full account using the link below:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=MU18920811.2.2&srpos=44&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------

You might be inclined to completely dismiss the account above, claiming that no one ever reports seeing the apparition of a living person. But while such apparitions are reported much more rarely than apparitions of the dead, the literature of the paranormal does include some cases of people reporting apparitions of living people. Such cases are discussed in my post here. 

Another newspaper account of Teresa Urrea (from April 1892) states this:

It seems that the healing powers of Teresa Urrea lasted a long time. She eventually became a folk hero known as Saint Teresa (Santa Teresa).  Revolutionaries adopted her as an inspiration or patron saint, although she denied encouraging them directly. An 1893 newspaper article states this. 

A 1900 newspaper article (published eight years after the original reports of her healings) describes Teresa as being a famed healer who performed miraculous cures:

Do a Google image search for "Teresa Urrea" and you will find many articles about her. A search for newspaper articles on her using the search terms of "Teresa Urrea," "Theresa Urrea" and "Santa Teresa" or "Santa Theresa" produces quite a few matches. 

Teresa Urrea, called Santa Teresa

Where Hume Went Wrong on Miracles

Skeptics are fond of quoting a certain passage by David Hume relating to miracles, written in his book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. The passage is as follows:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior. The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), ‘that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.

The reasoning in this passage involves a number of fallacies. The problem starts at the very beginning where Hume defines a miracle as something that “is a violation of the laws of nature.” If you define a law of nature as something that always happens (a typical definition), and then define a miracle as something that violates such a law (something that always happens), then you are starting out by defining a miracle as something that can never happen. That is not fair if you considering whether miracles might happen, because it is a way of begging the question. It's rather like starting out an essay considering the possibility of ESP by defining ESP as an “impossible type of cognition.”

As it happens, some common types of things thought of as miraculous do not clearly involve violations of laws of nature. If some miracle worker or mystic or medium were to levitate a table or some other object (something that has actually been reported quite a few times), we need not at all think of this as a violation of the law of gravitation. Gravitation is the weakest force of nature, and even a very small force is able to overcome it (for example, you can cause an object to rise through air jets, magnetism, and so forth). So if we see something levitating, we need merely think “a small unknown force has been applied underneath the object, causing it to rise” rather than extravagantly thinking “the law of gravitation has been locally violated.” Similarly, a case of something apparently appearing out of nowhere need not be thought of as a violation of the law of the conservation of mass and energy, as there are all kinds of unknown ways in which local nearby matter might be transformed in a way that does not violate such a law. Similarly, cases of remarkable healing or resuscitation after apparent death do not violate any known laws of physics or chemistry, which say nothing about biology. Nor do they violate any laws of biology, which has no such laws as “cancer never reverses” or “people always die as soon as their vital signs stop.”

There is a better definition of miracle, which is simply something extraordinary and marvelous that is not explicable by natural or scientific explanations. Once we use that better definition, it's a great blow to Hume's reasoning. Another problem with Hume's reasoning is the naivete involved in its consideration of laws of nature.

Here are the kind of assumptions that Hume seems to make:

1. Nature always behaves in fixed or predictable ways, without throwing us much in the way of surprises.
2. Humans can figure out from their experience what these fixed tendencies are.
3. Once humans have figured out these tendencies, they are then entitled to exclude any report of experiences that differ from these tendencies that have been observed in the past.

There are all kinds of reasons why such assumptions are invalid. For one thing, very often nature often throws us surprises, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, meteors, and many types of anomalous phenomena. Secondly, humans are generally not smart enough or knowledgeable enough or experienced enough to be declaring that some particular tendency is an inviolable law of nature, based on our small experience which occurred in only the tiniest “zillionth” sliver of the universe's history, and occurred while living on only a “zillionth” iota of the universe's territory. Third, from the mere fact that we always have seen X happening, we are not entitled to conclude that X must always happen (unless we have solid knowledge of reasons why X must always happen). And from the fact that we have never previously seen X, we are not entitled to conclude that we cannot now start observing X.

For example, if you were an American colonist of Hume's time (around 1770), you might have deduced that it was a law of nature that big earthquakes don't occur anywhere near the American colonies, based on the “firm and unalterable experience” that no such earthquakes had been observed. But such a law would have been invalid, and very large earthquakes did occur in Missouri in 1811 (the New Madrid earthquakes). Similarly if you were a Roman living in Pompeii in 78 AD, you might have assumed it was a law of nature that “mountain tops never explode,” but you would have been soon surprised when just such a thing happened in the eruption that buried Pompeii. 

 

Such examples show how mistaken Hume was when he wrote this line from the passage cited above:

And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.

No, a uniform experience does not amount to a proof. Even if humans have always experienced X, this does not prove that something different from X may some day occur. And even if humans have never experienced X, it is no proof that they will not in the future experience X.  

What Hume seems to suggest is a kind of reasoning which we might visualize by imagining a scale. On the left side is human experience suggesting that X does not happen. On the right side is some human experience suggesting that X did happen. Unless the right side outweighs the left side, according to Hume, we should not believe that X happens. But this makes no sense. If people in 100 cities are not blown up by asteroids, and they all conclude that “asteroids don't blow up cities,” we do not need 101 cities to be blown up by asteroids to show that an asteroid can blow up a city. A case of a single city being blown up by an asteroid is sufficient to show such a thing. Before September 11, 2001, it was generally believed that fires can't cause skyscrapers to fall, based on 1000 skyscraper fires. But we didn't need 1001 skyscrapers falling during fires to show that such a thing can happen; we only needed one of them like the two that fell on September 11, 2001.

What's ironic is that in many other places in his writings, Hume was very skeptical about human knowledge and human abilities. He often tended to think of human beings as error-prone stumblers and bumblers, and he famously claimed that reason is the slave of the passions. But when it came to considering man's ability to proclaim all-encompassing laws of nature from man's limited experience, Hume “checked at the door” his usual skepticism, and spoke in a very naive way as if such laws could be proclaimed with complete confidence. It's the same deal for many modern skeptics: they bring out unbounded skepticism for people reporting the anomalous, but zero skepticism towards those who are dogmatically declaring that such things can't happen.

Another commonly quoted statement by Hume is the one immediately following the paragraph quoted above. It goes like this:

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

This is often used as some justification for denying evidence of the paranormal. But the problem is that claims of the paranormal usually don't rest on a single person's testimony. The better claims of the paranormal are supported either by the testimony of many witnesses, or large amounts of photographic evidence or laboratory evidence.

A photo I took yesterday, described here.

In some cases there are two of these three things to support the claim. For example, evidence for ESP includes testimony by countless observers and also lots of good laboratory evidence; and evidence for UFO's includes a wealth of witness testimony and photographic testimony. It's therefore fallacious to speak as it's all a question of whether we should believe one person's word.

Ironically, the very thing that Hume used as an example of testimony that can't possibly be true has actually been proven true. See here for quite a few cases of people who revived from death quite a while after they had been declared dead, with no vital signs. This is another example of why it's wrong to assume that some thing can't happen merely because it wasn't previously observed.