Science and Religion, Still Worlds Apart

By GEORGE JOHNSON, The New York Times

(April 9) - One October day in 1947, the director of the local bank in Marksville, La., woke to find that hundreds of fish had fallen from the sky, landing in his backyard. People walking to work that day were struck by falling fish, and an account of the incident by a researcher for the state's wildlife and fisheries department later found its way into the annals of scientific anomalies — phenomena waiting to be understood.

Marilynn K. Yee, The New York Times
A medical study showed that prayers offered by strangers don't help, but one of it's coauthors, Dean Marek, said, "You hear tons of stories about the power of prayer, and I don't doubt them."

Fish falls have also been reported in Ethiopia and other parts of the world. Whether they are hoaxes, hallucinations or genuine meteorological events — maybe fish can be swept up by a waterspout and transported — scientists are disposed to assume a physical explanation.

The same kind of scrutiny is accorded to miracles — fishes and loaves multiplying to feed the masses and the like. But as two research papers published this month suggest, looking to science to prove a miracle is a losing proposition, for believers and skeptics

very cool ~