As a passionate believer in reason and critical thinking, I had an unpleasant encounter with my newsfeed last weekend. Once again, the natural human need for meaning that compels belief in the unreal has made the news. This time, it’s the notion of “incorruptibility”, the idea that the bodies of sufficiently good people are somehow immune from the normal processes of decomposition.

This latest such occurrence happened outside Kansas City, when the body of Sister Wilhemina Lancaster was exhumed and found to be in supposedly immaculate condition.

This alleged violation of the laws of physics has drawn thousands to the small town of Gower, Mo., to see the miracle firsthand. Unfortunately for them, there’s nothing miraculous about it at all.

There are numerous factors that influence organic decomposition. Access to oxygen, exposure to bacteria and insects, the level of humidity, affect how decomposition occurs. There is no scientific law that says all bodies must decay at the same rate in the same way. In fact, incorruptibility is easy to test: bury people in the open air and see what happens.

Given the large number of bodies buried and exhumed throughout human history, if unusually long periods of decomposition never occurred, that would be strange indeed. Bodies found on Mount Everest are in excellent states of preservation, yet no one would suggest the tragic death of a misguided tourist indicates a saintly life. Nor will bodies decompose in space. Will future humans who die in orbit be candidates for sainthood?

Probably the best work on this topic is Christine Quigley’s book “Modern Mummies: The preservation of the human body in the 20th century”. She documents numerous cases of this phenomenon, showing how unextraordinary it actually is. Did you know, for example, that the body of civil rights activist Medgar Evers appeared not to decay? Its state of preservation helped convict his murderer.

Fortunately, the Catholic Church understands the lack of a miraculous basis for well-preserved bodies. Incorruptibility is now neither necessary nor sufficient for sainthood. This is consistent with the Catholic understanding of miracles as phenomena that cannot be explained naturally. Slow decomposition is not one of them.

While early Catholic doctrine was inhospitable to science (just ask Galileo), more modern Catholic orders have understood scientific inquiry to reveal the mind of God. The brilliant Catholic priest Martin Mersenne made fundamental contributions to mathematics, music theory, and physics. Gregor Mendel, a Catholic friar, discovered the laws of biological heredity (although there is strong evidence he fudged his data). The originator of Big Bang cosmology was the Jesuit-educated priest George LeMaitre.

For these people and millions like them, trying to understand the world as it is, in the beauty and harmony of all its physical laws, without preconception, prejudice, pretending, or magical thinking, is a source of wonder and delight.

The best evidence we have says that the universe is about 14 billion years old, the earth about 4 billion, life a little less, descended from a single-celled common ancestor and diverged into species via evolution through natural selection.

That same evidence says bodies can exhibit wide ranges of decay over time. It also says the lighter atoms in our bodies came from the creation of the universe, while the heavier ones came from exploded stars. We are indeed made from star stuff, and our bodies eventually return there. At rates that can vary widely, depending on natural conditions operating under natural laws that our brains can discover and understand.

That, it seems to me, is miracle enough.

Barry Fagin is a long-time promoter of science, skepticism and critical thinking, frequently writing and speaking in support of them. He is a professor of computer science and the author of “The Radical Center.” Readers can contact Fagin at barry@faginfamily.net.

Barry Fagin