The word "miracle" is one of those cloudy, hard to define words, which can be used to mean most anything wonderful. It is often used in nebulous ways such as, "Life is a miracle," or "It's a miracle I've done this well." It's not very interesting to talk about these types of miracles in relation to religion or science - they're too ill-defined to say anything interesting about. So I'll use the word miracle to mean "An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural (or magical) in origin or an act of the Gods."
Nearly every religion has adherents who believe in these types of miracles. The Neopagan community has a high percentage of people who believe in these types of miracles, because of the emphasis on magic, energy work, and alternative healing within the culture. The difference between Neopagan miracles and other religions' miracles is that the miracles are attributed differently for each religion. In Christianity or Buddhism, for example, Christ, God, Buddha or particular Bodhisattvas are usually credited with working the miracles. In Paganism, Pagans often credit themselves for having raised and shaped the power necessary for such miracle working. Sometimes, although less often, various spirits, elementals, particular deities, or ritual forms are credited.
Within Neopaganism, there are two tendencies with regard to miraculous events. One is to argue about the definition of miracles, magic, or other so-called supernatural things -- usually rending the words so nebulous that they're impossible to talk about. For example, try to pin down the Neopagan community on what the word "magic" means, and you'll get so many definitions that it will be impossible to do anything with the word. Consider the following definitions often offered during a typical discussion about magic:
These definitions produce a word that is impossible to state anything definitive about, except, perhaps, that magic is difficult to define and seems to mean different things to different people. Certainly, one cannot prove anything about magic, given that no one seems to agree on exactly what it is. The language of science cannot speak in this realm - it's not well equipped to handle such fuzzy, imprecise definitions.
There's also the tendency in the Neopagan community to deny the "supernaturalness" of events, usually by trying to "explain" how they work by using a garble of pseudoscientific language. That is, the argument goes that magic works, not because of any supernatural reasons, but because laws of magic are simply laws that many people don't know. The people who are familiar with the laws know how energy can be sent into the world to cause changes in the universe. Often, people will rely on quantum theory to explain their argument.
Maybe magic works, and maybe it has something to do with quantum physics or the way some mysterious, as yet unmeasurable energy moves around the universe. But the scientific community doesn't currently agree with the premise that magic works, let alone how it might work. The scientific community may never agree with the premise that magic works. And making assertions about magic cloaked in the language of physics doesn't make the assertions any more scientific -- it just sounds dishonest. And while quantum theory is, from the tiny bit I've read, extremely strange, reading a few popular science articles about it doesn't make me - or anyone - competent enough to try to explain supernatural phenomena with quantum theory.
People often refer to studies that claim to prove the power of prayer, the existence of psi, or the validity of energy healing. The problem is, so far these studies haven't been repeatable or accepted by the majority of the scientific community. Just because something has been reported in popular media (including Discover or similar popular science magazines), doesn't mean that it's been accepted by the scientific community. A couple of years ago, mainstream media enthusiastically and widely reported that "Prayer Works" (even when the recipient is unaware of the praying). These findings were based on a couple of studies which have since been shown to have been manipulated or fatally flawed (1). However, this follow-up fact has not been as widely reported, mostly because the information isn't as surprising or interesting as the first studies. When our religious community continually discusses these studies as if they're valid, we look like the Christian fundamentalists who use similarly flawed studies and pseudoscientific language to "prove" that the literal, biblical view of the world's creation is true.
William James (2) discusses two ways of forming a world view. The first involves trying to learn as much truth as possible, without worrying too much if one happens to believe some untrue things along the way. The second method involves trying to only believe things that are true. He argues that you can't do both in religion - one of the commandments of "know the truth," or "avoid error" must be superior - and that in religion, choosing to follow "knowing the truth" is the only rational choice to make.
However, the rise of rationalism and scientism (3) in our culture has made it unfashionable to choose "knowing truth" over "avoiding error". The language of science is designed to "avoid error", whereas the language of religion is designed to "know truth". So people become caught, with two conflicting commandments warring for supremacy. People caught in this way often try to convince themselves and others that their beliefs satisfy both commandments by using the language of science to give the appearance of validity. There is a powerful incentive to do this -- consider words applied to older beliefs, since shown to be erroneous by science: "superstitious", "ignorant", or "backwards". To hold to beliefs for which there is no scientific proof leaves one open to similar ridicule.
The problem is that using pseudoscience to explain religious beliefs is neither good religion nor good science. Science is one way to understand the world. Religion is another. They don't speak the same language or discuss the same things -- I don't expect my religion and interaction with the Gods to produce Newton's Laws, or any other scientific result. That's just not possible. On the other hand, neither do I expect science to answer moral or ethical questions for me. Science explains the conditions needed for a beautiful sunset; my religion calls for me to live in the moment and revel in the beauty.
Science and religion may overlap at times - someday, science may prove or disprove some of my religious beliefs, and religion has, and will again, drive people to search for truth using the language of science. I don't hold religious beliefs that have been disproved by science, but neither do I worry if science hasn't proven what I believe about the Gods and the world. There's a parable that tells of a deeply religious man who lived fully. After he dies, some of his religion is proven wrong and his friend announces, "Thank goodness I didn't put any stock in that nonsense." Does this new information negate the man's beliefs and make his life worthless? No -- it means he lived as fully as he was able, in his time. There's no sin in that; we would do well to do the same.
To confuse the two disciplines of religion and science leads towards an absolutist view of the world -- one where it's tempting to state that things stated in the language of science must be proved by religion, and vice versa. But to succeed in proving truths universal by using both languages invariably causes one discipline to become subservient to the other. Religion subservient to science leads to the mindset of "avoiding error" and thus, causes one to miss much of the beauty that religion has to offer. Science subservient to religion leads to ignorance and stagnates both science and religious growth.
We all have mysteries in life that we celebrate and marvel at. Celebrating these mysteries isn't ignorant or unenlightened. But neither do they need to be rationalized by the poor use of scientific language. Rationalizing them by cloaking unscientific principles within scientific language doesn't make us appear more credible - rather, it has the opposite effect of making us appear willing to use dishonest means to validate our beliefs. In some sense, the whole point of religion is to celebrate the mysterious and awesome in the universe; to try to explain away these mysteries with the improper tool of pseudoscience is to deny the power of religion.
1. See Skeptical Enquirer, volume 24 number 3, volume 24 number 2, and volume 15 number 2.
2. The Will to Believe, by William James. See the first lecture, which contains the expanded version of the arguments I discuss here.
3. For an interesting discussion of scientism and religion, see the sermon,The Religion of Science.