I was thinking the other day about 'supernatural' events. Scientists and those in the academic world have a real problem with some of the claims of Christianity, namely those that require a violation of a natural law. So for example, if I were to claim that Jesus was raised from the dead, they would say that such an event is impossible according to scientific laws and therefore didn't happen.

What I realized is that all natural laws are based entirely on observation of events. We know that objects on earth fall to the ground at 9.8 m/sec squared because every time we get out our measuring devices and start watching objects fall to the ground, they always seem to fall at that speed. In other words, a law is a law because we've never observed any violation of the law. If we were to reliably observe some violation, say an object that consistently falls at 100 m/sec squared, then we would have to rethink our law.

And this wouldn't be a problem; this happens in science with some regularity: new information leads to changes in laws or to changes in they way we think about the natural world. No one had observed bacteria in the time of Louis Pasteur, and some people ridiculed him for his insistence that 'invisible' creatures (he couldn't see the bacteria) were polluting things. However, once he found tangible evidence of microorganisms, his detractors had to rethink the nature of disease.

I think you can see the problem with claims against Christian belief in 'supernatural' events. Jesus was raised from the dead you say? We've never observed anything like that before. It must not have happened. There are germs contaminating our milk you say? We've never observed anything like that before. It must not be happening.

You can feel free to drink all the unpasteurized milk you want, but I'm going to go ahead and assert that, until we've been able to observe everything in the universe for all of time, scientific laws are always going to be subject to change, and it's always going to remain a scientific possibility that Christ was raised from the dead.