Miracles are commonly characterized as divine actions in violation of the laws of nature. Not a surprising definition.
However, although in appearance it is simple and clear, this definition encounters difficulties in its application. And since at least one of the major religions, Christianity, holds as a basic tenet that God made man, Jesus Christ, performed miracles, these difficulties may call into question an important Christian tenet.
So while these difficulties fall within the realm of the esoteric, we must delve into their complexities. We will examine three questions:
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Can we gather sufficiently accurate testimony of miracles?
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Would miraculous events be distinguished from simply extraordinary ones?
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Do the laws of nature prevent God from performing miracles?
Critical Miracle Issue One: Testimonial
Can a sufficiently valid testimony be offered to support a miracle?
The celebrated 16th century philosopher David Hume voted against it, meaning no valid testimony can be offered. For him, such testimony faces an essentially insurmountable obstacle. Hume stated:
“No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless it is of such a nature that its falsehood is more miraculous than the fact it attempts to establish.
“Because, first, never in all of history has a miracle been witnessed by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestionable good sense, education and knowledge as to guarantee that they are not deceived; of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of wanting to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have much to lose if they are found to have told a lie; and at the same time testifying to the facts – the reported miracle – which occurred in such a public manner and in such a famous part of the world as to make the detection of any falsehood inevitable. All these conditions must be met if we want to be completely sure of the testimony of men.
In other words, a miracle is so momentous and at the same time so improbable, and humanity so remarkably fallible and flawed, that no one person could give sufficiently credible testimony. We must question the testimony rather than believe the miracle.
Keep in mind, however, that you are in our world. The fallibility of humanity belongs to our real, contingent and disordered version of a world.
Philosophy allows us to consider not only our world, but also possible worlds. So could we, in some conceivable world, a world with better human nature, achieve sufficiently credible testimony? Surely. Give people more accurate perceptions, higher moral integrity, and better mental memory. Or populate the world with Three Rule Asimov robots. The accuracy of testimony in such conceivable worlds could rise to sufficient completeness.
Now, in Hume’s time, perhaps such a world could not be conceived. But today, a world thus conceived could become a real world.
Compared to Hume’s time, we have sophisticated technology. We can record, detail and store recordings and data of all kinds. We can collect phenomena in multiple media. We may disseminate, collate, review, challenge and examine reports and data of any occurrence.
So, if in our time the walls of Jericho have been predicted to come crashing down at the sound of trumpets after a seven day march, CNN, Fox, and all the media, and a plethora of scientific instruments and an array of digital recordings. devices, they would be ready to observe, record and document the event.
I will leave as undiscussed a corollary, but unfortunate question. The miracles of God made man, of Jesus, did not occur under the scrutiny of modern techniques, but two millennia ago. Does the testimony of that time from ancient Galilee rise to sufficient precision to attest to a miracle? We will not discuss that here, but we are left to ponder the question.
Critical Miracle Number Two: Extraordinary
Every day, across our globe, and more broadly across the universe, out of the billions and billions of occurrences, a subset surely falls out of the ordinary, many standard deviations out of the ordinary.
But among this cascade of events, can we separate the uniquely divine from the simply extraordinary? How can we even recognize a phenomenon as an act worthy of being considered a miracle? Please note that here we assume a sufficiently accurate testimony. So we ask if we can select from the enormous cacophony of accurately reported extraordinary but otherwise mundane events those that represent miracles, or at least candidates for miracles.
Perhaps, in fact most likely, if we look at the attributes of the phenomena. Three attributes stand out: 1) variability 2) originality and 3) attribution.
Consider the weather. Variability lies in the very nature of the climate. Temperatures, precipitation, winds – everything can vary in huge ranges. A 200-inch rain, or a 250-mph hurricane, is extraordinary, but within possible variability.
However, within that variability, certain variations essentially never occur. The rain falls as precipitation, but not the grains of wheat. Temperatures vary, but not in directly adjacent locations. So if we walk out of our house into a shower of wheat flakes, and the temperature between our front and back yards differs by a hundred degrees, we might think of a miracle.
In terms of originality of observation, consider exoplanets. We have only just begun to discover planets, and thus we begin to understand the principle behind the production of planets. An original discovery of planets would probably be an addition to our current limited knowledge, not an exception.
But water. Many years of practical experience and scientific study give us an idea of the properties of water. If any suddenly turned into wine, we might think of a miracle.
let’s go back to attributionin other words, we can attribute the event to a divine cause.
Consider, for example, if a standard water sample, from an average lake, taken by a typical biology graduate student, unexpectedly contains an unknown, surprising, and bizarre form of life. Or consider, if a normal archaeological dig, in an average location, by a typical graduate student of ancient history, uncovers an astonishing and bizarre unknown human civilization.
Would we attribute the findings to a miraculous intervention by a divine entity? Some might, but we don’t. Even as these findings represented a huge outlier, we may not judge them a miracle. Why? There is no causal connection with the divine; no divine motivation or purpose seems present; findings were not predicted; no religious messages or divine revelations were received.
However, consider an additional to our scenario. Consider that the archaeological dig uncovered an ancient religious text, which stated that a million digits in the decimal expansion of pi, the sequence at that point would give the GPS coordinates of a buried cave. And furthermore, that sequence outlines a chemical structure billions of molecules long, of a form of life not previously found on earth. And the GPS coordinates and chemical structure match the fossil we found in the cave.
The prediction of a religious text, and the accuracy of the prediction, and the unique structure of the life form, would indicate a possible attribution to the divine.
Now we must reflect again, for Christianity, on another unfortunate question. Do Old Testament prophecies contain enough accuracy to unquestionably predict New Testament miracles, and even whether some New Testament miraculous phenomena were classified as original enough (i.e., sick people recovering, spirits appearing in dreams) as to not actually be natural occurrences? We won’t delve into that question, but leave it for us to ponder.
Critical Miracle Number Three: Occurrence
Could God do miracles?
We focus here on the laws of nature. Does nature itself, with magnificent laws and regularity, constrain its creator? Do the deep symmetries and principles by which the universe operates block divine miracles?
No. God does not operate as if on the same level as these laws, but from a level above the laws.
Think of a feature film director, video game creator, or computer programmer. They can create worlds with physical, biological, and social regularities different from our real world, and adjust, develop, and change them as they wish to serve the purpose of their plot, game, or investigation.
We can equally conceive that our news operates in a relationship similar to a God. Such a divine entity could “recode” our real world at will, to create any desired “breach” or “increase” or “suspension”, in other words, perform what we would consider miracles.
Thus, a divine entity does not function in the sandbox of our laws. Consider a divine entity building a sandcastle or, for our analogy, a movie director putting a sandcastle on film. Nor would it be necessary to build the castle by sculpting real sand. Rather, just as the movie director might build a sandcastle out of a digital graphic, God might, figuratively speaking, at his level above our laws, simply reprogram our reality as a collection of illuminated pixels. on a smartphone.
Note that I am presenting an analogy here. We do not know the precise relationship of a divine entity with our reality. But we can conclude with reasonable confidence that a divine entity operates at a level, perhaps several levels, above the regularities of our world.
As in the previous two issues, we are still faced with an unfortunate question here. While we can easily imagine God controlling the laws of nature at will and therefore he could perform miracles, right? Would performing miracles for some, and not for others, imply that a divine entity acted unfairly? As before, with those unfortunate questions, we will leave this one without discussion, for us to reflect on.