Is belief in the supernatural rational?

Islam essentially is a religion for people of intellect. The Quran is at its root a call to reason. So you don't really have a place for blind faith in Islam.But we do believe in the unseen. Infact all of the articles of faith in Islam are matters of the unseen realm. Blind faith and belief in the unseen are not the same.

Here's why.

The human intellect by its very nature transcends itself. Meaning it goes beyond its capacity. It goes beyond the data that is provided to it. In doing so it recognizes levels of reality outside the realm of senses.

Let me give you an example. You're in a room and you've been told that you are alone in the building. But you hear footsteps, you see footmarks in the corridor, you hear voices next door. You infer based on your sense data that there is someone in the room next door.

Just with this simple inference you have gone beyond yourself. You are inferring the existence of something you haven't seen. But you are justified to do so. Here you've used something called deductive reasoning when you go from the general to the specific. So your prior experience says that generally footsteps, voices and footprints mean people are around. You apply it to your current situation and you deduce that there is someone in the next room.

In a simple way we've seen how the intellect functions. It gathers prior experience, sense data and then makes an inference.
It leaps into the dark.
It goes from the known to the unknown, from the seen to the unseen.

This kind of reasoning where you go from the specific to the general or from the known to the unknown or from the observed to the unobserved is inductive reasoning, which was a gift of Islam to modern science as it still is indispensible to the pursuit of science.

Now if we were to talk about the Quranic perspective on faith and reason. We are told to deeply reflect on the physical world. The intellect then gets you to the threshold of faith, wherein you believe that there has to be an All Powerful Creator behind all this complexity. Again reason is taking you from the seen to the unseen, from the known to the unknown.

So now that we reasonably believe in an All Powerful Creator, who is someone who can put in place laws in nature that govern and bring the observed regularity in physical phenomenon.
This All Powerful Creator has all the power to break those laws whenever he wants and bring about 'supernatural' events. It is completely within the domain of a All Powerful Free Creator who has put in place laws in nature to break those laws when He wants to.
This is the rationale that was used by traditional Muslim scholars to understand the reality of miracles in Islam.

So we start with a healthy intellect that recognizes an All Powerful Creator behind everything.
An All powerful Creator is capable of bringing about supernatural events which we call miracles.

Simple.

Is science ready to recognize the supernatural?

Today we live in a science dominated world. There is a difference between developing science and being a science dominated and a science obsessed culture.
The Muslim world developed science for 900 years which influenced Modern Science in Europe. But science was recognized as a valid source of knowledge along with the other sources of knowledge. It wasn't made to dominate over all other sources of seeking the truth about creation.

In constrast, science today is considered the yardstick for everything as it intrudes in all spheres of life. So what implications does that have for religious belief in miracles?
What can we make of the whole subject of belief in unnatural events in the current scientific culture?

Now interestingly, since the last century few scientific breakthroughs have brought in major paradigm shifts in our understanding of how nature functions. Developements in Quantum Physics have proved that the world functions very unpredictably down at the fundamental atomic level. There is always a non zero probability of something counter intuitive, unnatural and unpredictible happening.
So 'supernatual events are not impossible in such a scheme.

Another area is Thermodynamics that has accurately defined the universe. But the law of Thermodynamics itself allows for its violation whenever there is emergence of life. Meaning scientific developements today make it very clear that what we understand as laws of physics are not etched in stone or immutable and unchangable.

Nature preserves very well the possiblity to abandon its usual course of things and bring about a supernatural event, which we call 'miracles' in the religious context.

These ideas will be important in a formal modern understanding and appreciation of the fascinating event in the Prophet (saw) life- Isra and Mi'raj? This is by far the most puzzling and mesmerizing of the Holy Prophet's miracles.