I'm currently marking a collection of essays on - among others - the topic:
Are miracles proof of God’s existence? Give reasons for your answer.
A lot of people are referencing Hume (it was in the reading recommendations) and giving the answer, "Miracles don't exist".
The reason why they came to this conclusion is that Hume provides a fairly thorough discussion of why we may not be able to trust the testimony of the miraculous from others. Any account that tries to provide such an incredible claim as the miraculous must be sufficiently thorough, detailed, well witnessed, and well evidenced... and no written or verbal claims by hearsay or historical record can stand up to skeptical scrutiny to such a high degree. Hume also makes the point that religious testimony is self-defeating because of two reasons: (1) a miracle that apparently violates the laws of physics is remarkable precisely because of the uniformity of our experiences that miracles like that just don't happen, (if they did, they wouldn't be amazing); and, (2) miracles of opposing religions provide contradicting testimony that point towards different gods (the argument being that if e.g. Islamic miracles are true then Christianity can't be correct, and vice versa). And so, the students reasonably conclude, "Miracles don't occur."
In my humble opinion, THAT'S NOT A VALID ANSWER. In fact, that answer is non sequitur.
The question doesn't ask, "Do Miracles occur?". It asks if miracles, for the sake of argument, would be proof of God's existence.
It's a problem I've noticed with discussion about religion in other contexts. People don't simply say, "I don't have sufficient evidence to believe in your proposed god", they tend to lean towards universalising generalisations like, "No evidence exists for your god" or ... "Miracles can't happen".
Now I'm not saying I have ever witnessed a miracle. I don't think I have. I'm not convince many or any have. But that's irrelevant. You can't just make the strong, negative claim of nonexistent-evidence-in-principle when examining the philosophical link between a miracle and a deity. If I sit inside with my curtains drawn, that doesn't mean that the photons shining on my garden aren't caused by the sun. I don't have to see the photons to hypothetically discuss the relationship.
I'll put the essay question into another context.
Would naked photos of your wife sleeping with another man be evidence of her affair? Give reasons for your answer.
Stupid Answer: The naked photos don't exist.
Irrelevant. Nobody said they did. But IF they did, would they be evidence? Yes.
Do miracles occur? Yes, no, maybe. Who cares! (in this case, that is)
So, what do you think?
Are Miracles proof of God's existence? Why? (hint: the answer is not, 'they don't happen')
Is Hume being unfair? Why or why not?
Have you ever witnessed a miracle?
9 comments:
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Re the "aesthetic" claim which you mentioned on facebook, eg birth or a beautiful mountain peak being considered a miracle by some.
No I don't consider those miracles. A miracle would have to be something that "is not normally possible in our experience".
By the way, on a practical level there is lots of evidence to say that even with quite obvious miracles, people quickly forget. I am thinking of the Israelites in the First Testament, who had amazing things happen and then went back to their old ways. Phillip Yancey talks about this in "Disappointment with God".
So how long does a miracle have to stick in peoples' minds for it to be a "proof"?
I guess that is more talking about the fickleness of people than the logic of whether miracles can be proofs or not?
Further to my last, there have been 2 "healings" that i've personally witnessed in my life that could be considered miracles.
Yet they were not "miraculous enough" to convince me that God must be there. Even at the time, though it seemed something "really weird" happened, they weren't of such power that I could not help believing - eg I could put them down to psychology. Also, given that 20 years have passed, I have largely forgotten them.
This leads me to wonder: Is it always possible to doubt miracles? eg Thomas (who was lucky enough to have a miracle of his own later).
eg, If a really strong case can be made that Jesus rose from the dead, I could still say "well, I can't explain it, but it doesn't mean God exists." I think some people may argue that.
Hence my comment on FB that I'm not sure that we can prove many things at all, in the strong sense. I think there can be reasonable evidence, leading to belief, but not proof.
Hence we are always believers, not knowers. (ref my agnostic scale post of a few weeks back).
Few, sorry for the essay, O he-who-has-already-seen-many-bad-essays.
@Klatu,
At first I thought you were joking and the link was going to be something about a new type of Lightbulb or something. I see now you aren't joking. I've read your website and started reading some of the PDF download available. My main concern is that you provide plenty of assertions but (from what I've seen) no actual evidence claims. Anyone can tell a nice story, and many do, so what evidence do you have that suggests that your version is more credible than any others?
@Jonathan, the Doubting Thomas/Faithless Disciples line of argument is something I have bumped into before. People reason, "If the disciples were continually doubting even though they experienced Jesus' miracles regularly, what would the point of any great and miraculous sign be? It wouldn't make any real difference to the skeptics."
Well, for one thing, I think that the most convincing reason for why the Disciples are so amazingly idiotic is because they are literary foils. The device of using a literary foil is very common even now and was used through many contemporaneous and pre-dating myth/miracle texts to scripture. Just watch TV now and you will see even a very smart and otherwise heroic character acting uncharacteristically naive just so that the MAIN hero can explain lessons or plot points in a detail that the unschooled audience will understand. In CSI, a lead CSI character demonstrates an ignorance of crime scene forensics just so Gil can explain how it works; a character in Star Trek will show cultural or technological ignorance so that the Captain can spell out the moral of the story or the plan that is unfolding; in the bible, the Disciples seem to repeatedly regress back to a neutral state just so that they set up Jesus for the ultimate slam dunk. I think they're literary foils.
I'm not saying the Disciples didn't exist, that's another issue, but even if they did I feel that their characterisation is definitely modified to fit the literary style. That's why I don't think we can take any lessons literally about their ignorance or faithlessness and make any conclusions about doubt today.
And, yes, I probably agree that people could doubt the divine cause of many miracles. That is at the root of the problem of miracles, I think. Many philosophically savvy christians that I know admit that, in honesty, miracles don't "prove" god. Well if everyone knows they don't - including the truest of true believers - then shouldn't we all just agree on the fact that miracles should be removed from the conversation? I wonder what that leaves us with...
In my opinion, God and proof are separate terms. Miracles, religion, etc. the good and bad, are human perceptions that have nothing to do with God. Faith not proof.
I kinda agree with Romy, except I don't like the word "faith", I prefer the word "belief".
I see your point about literary foils, but I think "forgetting the miracle" is *actually* what happens in real life, based on my limited experience.
As for the usefulness of miracles, I see them as valid "evidence", but not proof. Strong evidence is good enough, in a courtroom type analogy. Which is why I think we are all "believers", not knowers, to repeat my current epistemological epiphany. :)
I guess the word 'faith' is loaded for many - I mean belief but it is unconditional...heinous and blissful things happen.
Iain, a book that I came across recently. (Haven't read it).
Agnostic philosopher argues that Hume's arguments are not valid.
http://www.amazon.com/Humes-Abject-Failure-Argument-Miracles/dp/0195127382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1291091088&sr=1-1
If I understand it correctly, his main argument is in making the point that miraculous claims cannot be dispelled by a priori reasoning based on the regularity and non-miraculous nature of ordinary experience.
I agree that miracles should not be dismissed in an a priori manner. As C.S. Lewis says (a quote I use among my gmail signature quotes),
“What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.”
If we dismiss the miraculous at the a priori stage then we make critical analysis of historical textual claims of miracles useless: we presuppose our conclusion.
If we view miracles as divine interruptions of the laws of nature then miracles, like god, are unfalsifiable. If you can't dismiss God through a priori reasoning then you can't dismiss his interventions. But that doesn't really get us anywhere.
One thing I would defend of the style of Hume is the notion that testimony is not necessarily sufficient to prove true of miraculous claims. What level of detail of the events, character witness of the psychological state and trustworthiness of observers, and scientific analysis of alternative explanations would we need to find in a miracle text before we could believe it? I don't know. It may not be possible in historical, relatively "pre-scientific" documents as they exist.
The problem of induction, which I gather the author raises in his book, is a problem that doesn't just apply to miracles only. We presuppose a type of consistency and orderliness on our reality that isn't justified without knowing how and why our reality acts as it does. Hume presupposes the consistency of orderly experiences and therefore rejects the miraculous; I presuppose the fact that my house doesn't turn into a dragon and fly away when nobody is looking at it.
It might be said that new discoveries, new unknowns, and novel experiences should all be ideas that would generally be rejected by a Humean philosopher. You might also argue that the presupposition of universal order is just as much a "faith" position as the presupposition that a deity does miracles instead.
I suppose the real question is: beyond the a priori, beyond making assumptions about the way the work "must" work, what does experience and evidence bear out? That is the more important focus, in my opinion.
If this were some kind of apologetics debate, I suppose that would be a good time for somebody to provide real, recent, reliable evidence of a modern day and well documented miracle. The stage awaits the contender :)
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