I am grateful to Steven Carr for the points he raises in response to my chapter on 'Miracles' in Thinking Clearly About God and Science. I agree that at the heart of the issue is whether one is 'open minded or closed minded'. The person who dismisses some of the claims of modern science simply because they do not accord with common sense misses out on quantum theory, relativity and a whole host of other successful scientific theories. At the same time the person who dismisses the possibility of miracle because of a inflexible worldview based on certain philosophical assumptions which may not be scrutinised falls into the same mistake.
Science encourages openness to the unusual, but an openness which is based on evidence.
The Christian claim of the miraculous, for example the resurrection of a crucified man, is prepared to argue for an openness to the unusual on the basis of evidence. Christian faith is dependent on evidence, and accepts the limitations and difficulty of evidence. I am not sure that finding the original copies of the gospel in a bedroom drawer immediately 'stands up to scrutiny'. Thus the Christian dependence on evidence is not without major questions as Steven rightly perceives. However, this is no reason for dismissing evidence.