Miracles

Key

• Red writing – names of philosophers• Green writing – examples/illustrations• Blue writing – key words/phrases• Purple writing – evaluation points

Definitions of miracles

Hume

• A miracle is an event which is caused by God and which violates the laws of nature.• For example, Jesus turning water into wine.

Aquinas

• Divine intervention can happen in three ways:1) When something happens that nature could never do• For example: Sharknado; the Fatima miracle (when crowds saw the sun spin

out of the sky)

2) When something happens that nature can do, but not in the order that it happens• For example: The Resurrection; paper turning into a tree

3) When something happens that is usually done by nature, but happens without the principles of nature• For example: Mary’s conception; faith healing

Swinburne

• An event caused by God which violates the laws of nature and which has religious significance.

Holland

• Holland puts forward the idea of coincidence miracles.• These are events which do not necessarily violate the laws of nature,

but which are seen as miracles and are viewed as having religious significance.• He puts forward the example of a child on a train track, stuck and

unable to move; a train is approaching, but the train driver has a heart attack and the train stops just before the child can be harmed.

Arguments against miracles

General Empiricist Argument (Hume)• The laws of nature are based on our past experiences of the world.• By definition, a miracle goes against all of these experiences.• Therefore, it is never rational to believe that a miracle has occurred.• “a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”

The reliability of testimony (Hume)

1) Individuals have been misled2) They are hallucinating3) Miracle stories are comforting4) People misreport (Chinese whispers)5) Miracles happen in places/times with little scientific knowledge and

understanding• HOWEVER more miracles have been reported in the US than anywhere else

6) Those from different religions have miracle stories which conflict7) It is more likely that the individual is lying than that a miracle has occurred

• HOWEVER if we follow this constantly, we may never believe any new discoveries

Problem of Evil

• If God can intervene without having to adhere to the laws of nature, then why doesn’t He fix evil with miracles?• Maurice Wiles argues that God cannot intervene in the world by

miracles, or else He would use them to fix evil; the only true miracle to ever have occurred is that of the Creation of the universe.

God’s nature

• Can a timeless, space-less God intervene in the temporal, spatial world directly?

Augustine

• It is not rational to believe in miracles.• When we are faced with an apparent violation of the laws of nature,

the laws of nature need to be revised.• HOWEVER Holland argues that to revise the laws of nature every time

a miracle has been claimed to have happened is far too big a price to pay.• He puts forward the example of the self-sustaining horse, and argues that it is

better to leave an inconsistency than to change the laws of nature.• It is also possible to use the example of the Indian man who has not eaten or drunk

anything in 70 years to illustrate this point.

The issue of religious significance

• Swinburne and Holland try to address the issue that neither Hume nor Aquinas mention religious significance in their definitions of miracles; the former’s example of the upset box of children’s toys surely shows that some religious significance is needed in order to define something as a miracle?• HOWEVER we could argue that we do not need religious significance,

merely significance.• HOWEVER it could be argued that the significance of an event is far

too subjective to judge whether an event is miraculous or not by it.