tively that miracles, as violations of the natural order, prove Christian truth. He comes at the issue of affirming miracles in a negative way. Thus he does not assert that miracles, as violation of natural order as understood by scientific principles, are evidence of Christian truth, but rather that the state of the natural order or the experience of violations of natural order cannot disprove Christian truth. For Lewis, miracles can compass natural phenomena, however extraordinary, that are perceived as supernatural. He dismisses Hume's idea that only credulous, ignorant, prescientific folk who do not understand natural laws believe in miracles. He insists on the scientific possibility of the historical reality of what are miracles (e.g., the Incarnation), refuting the skeptical with the assertion that the fact that events that violate well-known natural law on that very account achieve legitimacy as a miracle: "Belief in miracles, far from depending on an ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible in so far as those laws are known" (305). Indeed, he asserts that only those who are perfectly aware of the ordinary course of natural phenomena can appreciate the significance of "a unique invasion of Nature by something from outside" and that "increasing knowledge of Nature can never make it more or less credible than it was at the beginning" (306).
It follows from this that miracles perceived as supernatural may also be expressions of a natural world that is imperfectly understood: "Let us not allow vague rhetoric about the march of science to fool us that the most complicated account of birth, in terms of genes and spermatozoa, leaves us any more convinced than we were before that nature does not send babies to young women who 'know not a man'" (306). And from this it follows that we can't look at the state of the natural world to prove that Christianity, which assigns miracle status or spiritual significance to what could hav...