"It can't be!" Mrs. Snip exclaimed. "Do they really live somewhere on earth?"

"I haven't heard of anyone living underground," said Tom, "until I came to the Land of the Giants."

"Are you in the land of giants?" Mrs. Snip was surprised. "Isn't the Land of Giants everywhere?"

Roland Quiz. Land of Giants, ch. XXXII

By miracle I mean the intervention of an extranatural, i.e., supernatural, force in nature. [1] If there is nothing but nature, a miracle is impossible. Many people think so; I will call them naturers. Others believe that nature is not everything. Our first question is which of them is right. This is where the first difficulty arises.

Before starting an argument, it is necessary, of course, to define what nature is. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to determine this. Naturalists believe that there is nothing but nature, and therefore the word "nature" for them means "everything", "everything in the world", "everything that is". If we understand this by nature, of course, there is nothing else; The question remains unposed, and there is nothing to argue about. Others understand nature as what we perceive with our senses; But this is not enough, for we do not perceive emotions with our senses, and they are undoubtedly natural. In order to avoid this trap and to decide what the naturalist and his opponent are really arguing about, let us try to approach the question in a roundabout way. A synonym for "natural" is the word "natural".

Let's consider five phrases: 1) In its natural form, a dog is full of fleas; 2) Be more natural that you break! 3) Everything is so natural here, grass, flowers, no asphalt, no rails; 4) Is this your natural hair color? 5) I shouldn't have kissed her, but it was so natural.

The general meaning is not difficult to find. Natural color is the one that arose on its own, without paint. The dog is in its natural form, until no one has bought it. The place where grass and flowers grow is untouched by anyone. Natural behavior and a natural kiss are such as are characteristic of us, unless morality or caution interfere. Thus, the "natural" is that which happens by itself; something that does not need to be worked on; This is what happens if we do nothing. The Greek word for nature, phisis, is related to the verb "to grow"; the Latin "natura" is with the verb "to be born". The natural, the natural arises and exists by itself – it is given, it is, it is spontaneous, unintentional.

Prirodov believes that the ultimate reality, the fact of facts, is a huge spatio-temporal process that goes on by itself. Every event within this system is conditioned by another event and, ultimately, by the whole process. Every object (say, this page) is what it is, because other things are what they are; In the final analysis, because this is the whole system. All objects and events are closely related to each other, nothing exists "by itself", nothing goes "by itself". For example, no consistent naturalist can recognize free will, because with it people are able to act independently, to contribute something of themselves. And this is exactly what the naturalist denies. Spontaneity, originality, invention are left only "to everything together", and this is called nature.

The opponents of naturalists fully agree that there must be something independent, some basic given, which is absurd to explain, because it itself is the starting point, the basis of all explanations. But they don't call it "everything" or "everything in the world." They believe that outside of this system (or, if you prefer, above it) there is something, or rather Someone who caused it to exist. He exists in Himself, and she exists thanks to Him. It will disappear if He (or It) ceases to support its existence; it will change if He (or It) changes it.

It can be said that the naturalist describes reality as a democrat, his opponent as a monarchist. Naturer believes that honor and the right to independent existence are inherent in many things; his opponent is that they belong only to a few things, and most likely to One. As in democracy all are equal, so for the naturalist all objects and facts are equally valuable, i.e., each is equally dependent on the other, each manifests itself in time and space in the only possible way. The opponent of the naturalist believes that some things (most likely the One) are on a different level and more important than all others.

You may suspect that the proponents of this view simply brought the system of monarchical societies into the universe. You can just as well suspect naturalists. Both suspicions will overshadow each other and will not help us decide who is right. Only one thing is true: natural trust spread in the ages of democracy, and the other point of view, whether true or not, was universally accepted in the ages of monarchical power. Now those who do not think for themselves are naturalists; then they believed in the extra-natural.

Needless to say, the "extra-natural" is what we call God or gods. From now on, I will speak only of those who believe in God, partly because pantheism is not so relevant to most readers, and partly because pantheists very rarely considered their gods to be the creators of the universe. The ancient gods were not extra-natural in the strict sense of the word; they were part of the system of things and were generated by it. An important clarification follows from this.