I’ve been thinking about miracles.

Last week The Lancet published an article by researchers at Duke University. The research concerned the effectiveness of noetic techniques, spelled like poetic with an “n.” A noetic technique is a method of therapy that doesn’t use a tangible substance or medical device. Specifically, what these researchers were examining was the effect of music, imagery, touch, and prayer on heart patients.

The newspaper headlines told us that the experiment failed to show a benefit to prayer. That was only part of the story. In reading the research paper, it’s clear that the Duke researchers are on the hunt for the positive effects of noetic techniques. Although this experiment wasn’t successful, they cite others that were. This is all quite respectable empirical science: some scientists think something’s going on, they have a hypothesis, and they’ve set about methodically uncovering whether something really is going on through experimentation.

This is not the case with a growing movement for teaching creationism in schools labeled “intelligent design.” the theory that some biological processes can’t be explained by evolution and can only be explained by the miraculous intervention of an intelligent designer (guess Who). This is an agenda to suppress or eliminate altogether evolutionary science by claiming that evolution is controversial and doesn’t explain everything and that intelligent design is a viable scientific alternative. It is not.

I say this because a science does two things: it explains what scientists observe AND it enables them to test hypotheses through experimentation. If the facts don’t fit the theory, scientists take a look at the theory or the experiments or what they see or all three. Like the Texas politician who is all hat and no cattle, intelligent design is all explanation and no experiment. Whatever it is, it’s not science.

So on the one hand, prayer researchers experiment with the miraculous as a way to learn something about better health. On the other hand, intelligent design advocates promote faith in the miraculous, from which we can learn nothing. An explanation clung to faithfully, however comforting, doesn’t let our own experience teach us anything.

Miracle drugs. Miracle cures. The miracles of modern science. Kind of close to intelligent design.

You are a scientist. You experience your health: your temperature, the clarity of your mind, your strength, your libido, your aches and pains, you name it. You have explanations for why your health is the way it is. It’s what you eat or pollution or stress. And every day is an experiment. When your experience isn’t what you expect, you take a look at your ideas and what you did and what happened. You learn. And all you have to do is keep an open mind, an open heart, and pay attention.

Pretty miraculous, don’t you think?