What is miracle

Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert. Tags: Bible Miracles. Support Aleteia! Here are some numbers: 20 million users around the world read Aleteia. As you can imagine, these numbers represent a lot of work. We need you. It only takes a minute. Thank you! Donate now! And today we celebrate The affections with which they are contemplated by the same person, are just as opposite as desire and aversion, love and hatred.

The same religious zeal which gives the mind of a Christian a propensity to the belief of a miracle in support of Christianity, will inspire him with an aversion from the belief of a miracle in support of Mahometanism.

The same principle which will make him acquiesce in evidence less than sufficient in one case, will make him require evidence more than sufficient in the other…. It is, therefore, a debatable question whether the consideration of the passions evoked by tales of the miraculous works for or against the miracle claim in any given instance. This is not an issue that can be settled in advance of a detailed consideration of the facts.

A third general argument is that miracle stories are most popular in backward cultures. As John Toland puts it,. The unstated moral to be drawn is that both the production and the reception of miracle stories are due to a failure to understand the secondary causes lying behind phenomena, while increasing knowledge and culture leaves no room for such stories.

Hume 90—91 also borrowed this line of reasoning. But the supposed trajectory of societies from ignorant superstition to enlightened rationalism owes a good deal more to selective illustration than one would suspect from reading Toland and Hume.

Coming forward in time, miracle stories abounded in the 18th century, as Hume well knew. And renowned scientists such as Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle were well known defenders of the Christian miracle claims.

Other forces are at work in the creation and acceptance of miracle stories besides the relative level of civilization and education. As a fourth and final argument, Hume sketches some accounts of purported miracles outside of the canonical Christian scriptures—two cures ascribed to Vespasian, one Catholic miracle reported to have been worked at Saragossa, and some cures ascribed to the influence of the tomb of the Jansenist Abbe Paris in the early s—and suggests that their affidavits are in various respects as good as one could wish for.

Hume clearly expects his Protestant readers to reject these stories with disdain. He leaves unstated the obvious conclusion: by parity, his readers should also reject the miracles of the New Testament.

Aside from these specific criticisms, one important general line of argument emerges in the criticisms, articulated well by Adams 73 :. All attempts to draw an evidential parallel between the miracles of the New Testament and the miracle stories of later ecclesiastical history are therefore dubious. There are simply more resources for explaining how the ecclesiastical stories, which were promoted to an established and favorably disposed audience, could have arisen and been believed without there being any truth to the reports.

There is not yet anything approaching a comprehensive survey of these responses. As Charles Sanders Peirce notes Peirce , the Humean in-principle argument has left an indelible impression on modern biblical scholarship. The Humean objection has also been vigorously contested as destructive not only of miracle stories but of common sense as well. Each of these satires makes the same point. Granting for the sake of argument that a reported miracle, in the sense of an event beyond the productive capacity of nature, has been established, what follows?

Historically, many participants in the discussion have been ready to grant that, at least when the religious significance of the event is obvious and the doctrine or claim it ostensibly attests is not otherwise objectionable, the miracle must have been worked by God and that it provides significant confirmation for the doctrine or claim. There are two exceptions to this general acquiescence in the evidential value of miracles. First, there is a question regarding the identity of the cause. If God alone can work miracles, this is easily settled; but this claim has been a point of contention in the theological literature, with some writers Clarke ff; Trench maintaining that lesser, created spirits may work miracles, while others e.

Farmer , Wardlaw , Cooper vigorously deny this. The point is of some interest to the evaluation of arguments for miracles, since as Baden Powell points out, there is a distinction. Powell is quite right to say that testimony is not the proper source for evidence of the supernatural nature of the event. But it does not follow that all opinions on the point are equally reasonable.

The very description of the event—and even more, of the context in which it occurs—might render any naturalistic alternatives non-starters. Whether this is the case will depend, not on general considerations, but on the details of the case in question. Second, it is occasionally argued that, contrary to what most philosophers and theologians have assumed, actual confirmed cases of miracles could not count in favor of the existence of God. George Chryssides argues that a miracle, conceived as a violation of a scientific law, could never be attributed to any agent, divine or otherwise, since the assignment of agency implies predictability.

This bold contention has not attracted many defenders. Gregory Dawes pursues a related but more moderate line of argument, urging that it is difficult to meet the standard necessary to attribute particular events to the personal agency of God. But Dawes does not present this as an absolute barrier to theistic explanations.

Overall argues for the more radical contention that a miracle would count as evidence against the existence of God, on three grounds: 1 if order and harmony are evidence for the existence of God, then a miracle, which entails a breach in the order and harmony of the universe, must count against the existence of God; 2 the inevitable controversies over the identification and authentication of a miracle are an impediment to the growth of scientific knowledge and philosophical comprehension; and 3 an omnipotent God who does intervene in His creation would be obliged, on pain of moral defect, to intervene more often and more evenhandedly than He is supposed to have done in the Christian tradition.

Claim 2 is arguably simply false, as such controversies do not appear noticeably to have impeded the progress of science or philosophy. Argument 3 will be effective against a certain sort of theological position, but it is not one that many believers in miracles actually hold. For further discussion of this issue, see the exchanges between Larmer and Overall Larmer 75—82, Overall , Overall , and Larmer In the final analysis, the relevance of background beliefs looms large.

That is not to say that they could not be an important or even, under certain circumstances, a decisive piece of evidence; it is simply that neither a positive nor a negative claim regarding the existence of God can be established on the basis of evidence for a miracle claim alone, without any consideration of other aspects of the question. For the evidence for a miracle claim, being public and empirical, is never strictly demonstrative, either as to the fact of the event or as to the supernatural cause of the event.

It remains possible, though the facts in the case may in principle render it wildly improbable, that the testifier is either a deceiver or himself deceived; and so long as those possibilities exist, there will be logical space for other forms of evidence to bear on the conclusion.

Arguments about miracles therefore take their place as one piece—a fascinating piece—in a larger and more important puzzle. Concepts and Definitions 1.

Arguments for Miracle Claims 2. Arguments against Miracle Claims 3. Arguments from Miracles 4. Concepts and Definitions The philosophical discussion of miracles has focused principally on the credibility of certain claims in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Some stable background is, in fact, presupposed by the use of the term, as William Adams 15 notes: An experienced uniformity in the course of nature hath been always thought necessary to the belief and use of miracles.

These are indeed relative ideas. There must be an ordinary regular course of nature, before there can be any thing extraordinary. A river must flow, before its stream can be interrupted. Mackie sums up this perspective neatly: The laws of nature … describe the ways in which the world—including, of course, human beings—works when left to itself, when not interfered with.

A miracle occurs when the world is not left to itself, when something distinct from the natural order as a whole intrudes into it. Thus, Samuel Clarke —12 writes that the true Definition of a Miracle , in the Theological Sense of the Word, is this; that it is a work effected in a manner unusual , or different from the common and regular Method of Providence, by the interposition either of God himself, or of some Intelligent Agent superiour to Man, for the Proof or Evidence of some particular Doctrine, or in attestation to the Authority of some particular Person.

Here, for example, is a deductive reconstruction of an argument given by William Paley , broadly modeled on the version given by Richard Whately — and other Victorian logicians: All miracles attested by persons, claiming to have witnessed them, who pass their lives in labors, dangers, and sufferings in support of their statements, and who, in consequence of their belief, submit to new rules of conduct, are worthy of credit.

The central Christian miracles are attested by such evidence. Therefore, The central Christian miracles are worthy of credit. Various non-Christian miracles are worthy of credit. Paley does not cast his own argument into a deductive form, but he does attempt to forestall this sort of criticism by adding, in rounding out Part 1, an additional claim for which he offers several lines of argument: [T]here is not satisfactory evidence, that persons professing to be original witnesses of other miracles, in their nature as certain as these are, have ever acted in the same manner, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and properly in consequence of their belief of those accounts.

Paley 2. That it be done publicly in the face of the world. That not only public monuments be kept up in memory of it, but some outward actions to be performed. That such monuments, and such actions or observances, be instituted, and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done. His disciples subsequently had experiences which they believed were literal physical appearances of the risen Jesus.

The disciples were transformed from fearful cowards into bold proclaimers who were willing to face persecution and death for their message. Paul, who had previously been a persecutor of the Christians, had an experience that he also believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus. And unless the whole series of things which may be alleged in this argument, and every particular thing in it, can reasonably be supposed to have been by accident for here the stress of the argument for Christianity lies ; then is the truth of it proved: in like manner, as if in any common case, numerous events acknowledged, were to be alleged in proof of any other event disputed; the truth of the disputed event would be proved, not only if any one of the acknowledged ones did of itself clearly imply it but, though no one of them singly did so, if the whole of the acknowledged events taken together could not in reason be supposed to have happened, unless the disputed one were true.

As Charles Babbage puts it: [I]f independent witnesses can be found, who speak truth more frequently than falsehood, it is ALWAYS possible to assign a number of independent witnesses, the improbability of the falsehood of whose concurring testimony shall be greater than the improbability of the alleged miracle.

Babbage , emphasis original; cf. Holder and Earman Ahmed argues that the anti-Humean argument leveled by Babbage , Holder , and Earman requires an assumption of the conditional independence of successive testimonies to the putative event, an assumption that is plausibly always violated both conditional on the assumption of its truth and conditional on the assumption of its falsehood.

Arguments against Miracle Claims Arguments against miracle claims, like arguments in their favor, come in a variety of forms, invoke diverse premises, and have distinct aims. His argument for this claim is somewhat difficult to follow, but it appears to run approximately like this: The will of God is identical with the laws of nature.

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. Therefore, Miracles cannot happen. By the very exposition itself, a miracle is a contradiction in terms: a law cannot at the same time be immutable and violated.

He could not … derange the machine but with a view of making it work better; but it is evident that God, all-wise and omnipotent, originally made this immense machine, the universe, as good and perfect as He was able; if He saw that some imperfections would arise from the nature of matter, He provided for that in the beginning; and, accordingly, He will never change anything in it.

Hume immediately illustrates this maxim by applying it to the case of testimony to a resurrection: When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle.

If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

A very simple version of the argument, leaving out the comparison to the laws of nature and focusing on the alleged infirmities of testimony, can be laid out deductively following Whately, in Paley 33 : Testimony is a kind of evidence very likely to be false. The evidence for the Christian miracles is testimony.

Therefore, The evidence for the Christian miracles is likely to be false. Another crude argument that focuses solely on the improbability of miracle claims Ehrman — may be laid out thus: A miracle is by definition the most improbable of events; the probability of a miracle is infinitesimally remote.

An historian can establish only what probably happened in the past. Therefore, An historian can never establish that a miracle happened. An alternative reading of Hume, proposed by Dorothy Coleman — , is that an event that has no ready natural explanation is not necessarily an event that has no natural cause.

To be a miracle, an event must be inexplicable not in terms of what appears to us to be the laws of nature but in terms of what laws of nature actually are…. Counterinstances of what are taken to be natural laws are not by themselves evidence establishing that no natural law could possibly explain them: at most they provide grounds for revising our formulations of natural laws or seeking an improved understanding of the nature of the phenomena in question.

At the very least they provide grounds for suspending judgments about the nature of their cause until more evidence is available. On the other hand, past experience shows that what are at one time considered violations of natural laws are frequently found at some later time not to be so. Proportioning belief to evidence, therefore, it is more reasonable to believe that the claim that an event is a miracle is mistaken than it is that the event is a violation of natural law. The argument for a miracle, from testimony, is at best a strong but somewhat weaker argument from experience.

In any case where two arguments from experience point to contradictory conclusions, the stronger argument must prevail. A conclusion is credible only if the argument supporting it is not overcome by a stronger argument for a contradictory conclusion.

Therefore, The argument for a miracle, from testimony, cannot even under the most favorable circumstances render belief in a miracle credible. Adams 37 mounts an attack on premise 2 by drawing attention to the manner in which the lives of the apostles corroborate their testimony: That men should love falshood rather than truth—that they should chuse labour and travail, shame and misery, before pleasure, ease, and esteem—is as much a violation of the laws of nature, as it is for lead or iron to hang unsupported in the air, or for the voice of a man to raise the dead to life: but this, I have granted to the author, is, not miraculous, but impossible, and shall therefore have his leave, I hope, to assert, that falshood, thus attested, is impossible—in other words, that testimony, thus tried and proved, is infallible and certain.

And he drives home the point by a quotation from Hume himself: We cannot make use of a more convincing argument, than to prove that the actions ascribed to any person are directly contrary to the course of nature, and that no human motives, in such circumstances, could ever induce him to such a conduct. His most famous miracle was making a few loaves and fishes feed a multitude.

And his second most famous miracle was turning water into wine. But at the root of the unnatural miracle s is the natural miracle —the heart of man.

That was how I learnt the strangest tale that ever a man was told, and knew the miracle to which I owed my life. For the people generally say of him that it would be a miracle if another worse than he could be found. That fancy dialogue about expresses the legal value of the evidence for this important miracle. Mais particulierement encore l'exemption de maladies, qui est vn miracle tres-evident.