A World Without Accidents

"a world in which accidents do not happen would be so different from the actual world as to be unrecognisable. If all air crashes were miraculously soft ones, there would scarcely be any need for runways; if all aircraft engines were divine guaranteed against fault there would be no need to service them. And if planes flew on after their engines or wings failed or fell off, there would be no need for engines or wings in the first place. The performance of one tiny miracle, provided it could be relied on, would so destroy the underlying principle of causality as to transform the world into a completely irrational state. What need or possibility would there then be for human intelligence? What chance, even, of appreciating the occasional miracle?"

James Jones, Why Do People Suffer? The Scandal of Pain in God's World (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 1993), 58, citing "a religious columnist for London's The Times".