Exactly. Take Maggie’s sequence of ‘co-instants’. What is miraculous in them was the utter improbability of such a sequence to infuse meaning, explicit meaning that did not have to be inferred.
(Not to mention the problems that were solved or mitigated.)
Of course, all kinds of people had to have been robotically manipulated. 
In the sense that causation works within the universe, and the natural of the universe determines what events cause other events. Supernatural causation isn’t part of that.
It would not. You disagree?
The reason is that the definition of “miracle” precludes it. If the crossing of the Red Sea was as you describe, it wouldn’t have been a miracle and it wouldn’t have been ordained by God.
In what sense is that “using”? How does one “use” ordinary cause and effect if one is a supernatural being? I can see how you would do it, since you’re part of the universe and part of the series of causes and effects. But how would God?
Then we seriously disagree on what the term means. I’m also not sure what “ordinary” means here. I agree that agency must apply.
Yes, I know. I’ve never been able to understand what that’s supposed to mean. But if that’s true, then everything is a miracle and there is no “natural law”, just what God wants to happen.
Maybe you can answer this: What does “use” mean in Thomas’s quoted sentence? Was not each event in that sequence caused by supernatural intervention?
I don’t know. Why would you say it is not? Perhaps it may help if you can answer what it would mean for a cause to be or not be “in the ordinary course of the universe”. I interpreted this to mean some kind of frequency, but you seem to not be meaning this.
Much in the same way as we would use ordinary cause and effects to achieve our purposes. We do so by our faculties and so would God. Gods faculties involve the ability to create and maintain the existence of the universe. It’s not a stretch to think that those faculties, whatever the details of those faculties may be, include the ability to cause direct effects on particular elements or sets of elements of the universe.
Remember, my view of God is that he is just as part of the universe and series of causes and effects as you and I. In fact, as the foundation of the universe itself, I would hold that he is much more a part of any cause and effect relationship than any human.
We probably have a different understanding of what it means to be supernatural.
I’ve thought we were simply using the word ordinary in a colloquial sense. How have you been using it?
It would seem you have a fairly standard Humean account of miracles. There are good reasons to reject this simply on account of what it demands of how probability works (See John Earmans book ‘Humes Abject Failure’).
If you don’t know what it’s supposed to mean, why suppose that it carries necessary consequences?
Frequency is irrelevant. I refer to a supernatural cause.
Sure. But those direct effects are supernatural causation, not consistent with the way the universe works.
I can’t remember that if it’s the first time you’ve mentioned it. What does “foundation of the universe” mean?
Apparently, though I have no idea what you mean by it, since you haven’t said.
In the sense of “not supernatural”.
What do you mean by that?
You seem interested mostly in scoring points here rather than coming to an understanding. The courteous thing to do would have been to explain what it means. Does the correct meaning, whatever it is, show that everything is not a miracle and there is “natural law”?
I don’t know how he does it, but I love it and it is marvelous. There are no adequate analogies. Does a choreographer ‘use’ dancers? Because that is what it is, a superlative dance in which many do not know they are participating, although some do in retrospect, as in Maggie’s case and in some of the sequences I have related – you might remember Rich Stearns, the CEO of Lenox who became the president of World Vision?
There is nothing he is not cognizant of. Job’s trials were ‘passively’ ordained by God.
I’m not sure what you mean by supernatural, or what it is about supernatural things that makes it inconsistent with the way the universe works.
Can you give an attempt to the questions I’ve given you? Even just trying to answer them will probably help us dialogue.
This refers to a principle that looks to explain the question of why anything exists. Joshua Rasmussen’s relatively short book, How Reason Can Lead to God, spells this out quite well with what is referred to as The Foundation Theory, which can be accepted without accepting Theism.
Neither have you, but unlike you I haven’t been asked such a question. You seem quite fond of avoiding my questions about defining your use of terms.
Not the smell of blue
I’m very interested in coming to an understanding, which is why I’m trying to get you to tell me what you mean when you are using words like ordinary, supernatural and natural law. So far I haven’t received a straight answer to any of these attempts to understand your position.
On Classical Theism, it is in some respect, a miracle that anything exists at all. But, it’s not very interesting here because by this standard even natural laws are miracles, as are apples, physical matter and the applicability of mathematics. Everything is a miracle only to the extent that it didn’t need to exist at all.
This isn’t really interesting when it comes to the conversation about miracles we have been having though. When we’ve been talking about miracles, we’ve been talking about actions that might not be so unlike the act of Creation, but that occur along it’s confines.
That I would be careful of, because it could be taken as pantheism. I’m pretty sure you don’t mean it that way. 
He is ‘part’ of the universe in that, in the blasphemous hypothetical that if he would no longer exist, neither would the universe.
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That’s how I mean it
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Yeah, elementary particle physicists have no clue why the strong nuclear force exists – it just does, not unlike gravity.
It’s miraculous.
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Here are some quotes from Earman’s book:
Toward the end of Part 1 [in Hume’s essay], Hume announces a ‘‘general maxim’’ […] Hume’s Maxim begs to be made precise by translating it into the language of probability theory. There should be no surprise, however, in finding that a number of inequivalent translations are possible since seemingly transparent English statements about the credibility of events turn out to be hiding ambiguities about conditional probabilities. - John Earman, Humes Abject Failure, Page 39
[…] unless testimonial evidence is allowed to overcome prior improbabilities, there is no way to underwrite the sorts of inferences made in everyday life and in science. We would not give much credence to a newspaper report of the number of the winning ticket in a fair lottery with odds of millions to one - John Earman, Humes Abject Failure, Page 33
Hume’s blunderbuss arguments against miracles are ineffective and that his ambition to provide a ‘‘proof ’’ against miracles is based on an impoverished conception of inductive inference. - John Earman, Humes Abject Failure, Page 49
[…] given some mild assumptions, which can be made plausible or at least can be motivated, results about the incremental confirmation of hypotheses about miracles and religious doctrines proper can be proved as theorems of probability. Second, given minimal assumptions about the reliability of witnesses, convergence to certainty, as the number of witnesses increases, about the occurrence of miraculous events can be proven, again as theorems of probability. Thus, if evidence driven consensus is the mark of objectivity of opinion, then objectivity can be achieved in some circumstances in natural religion as well as in science and everyday life. - John Earman, Humes Abject Failure, Page 72
I highly recommend you give it a read. I have seen it described as the most thorough and precise analysis of Hume’s essay on Miracles that exists.
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Nice.
What do you think, @Dan_Eastwood, statistician, sir? 
Earman’s book ↑
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This is simply not true. This is not how computers, for example, are designed. In fact, the opposite is true - the computer is deliberately designed to distinguish between instructions called up by its internal state as part of its sequential program operation (computers are an example of “state machines”) and those instructions imposed by the operator.
You can read up on the distinction by searching for “EXEC versus USER mode”.
Did you note:
and:
plus especially (please see):
Then why are you using analogies in your search for a refutation of the truth of science?
? Who is doing that. Not I.