Miracles%20

1
Miracles Do They Exist?

• Humes Skeptical Challenge

2
Which if any - of these are miracles?

• Someone who has been pronounced dead comes back
  to life.
• A person correctly predicts a future earthquake.
• A large tiger suddenly disappears from a cage in
  front of a large audience.
• Water is changed into wine.

3
Brief Review of Empiricist Epistemology

• Empiricism is the view that all claims to
  knowledge must be based on
• sense experience (evidence or matters of fact
• truths of reason (conceptual relations or
  relations of ideas)

• Knowledge developed from these bases must follow
  all the rules of careful reasoning.

4
Empiricism and belief-formation

• Because the strength of evidence can vary, wise
  men will proportion their beliefs to the
  evidence.

• Frank brought flowers home to his wife. He must
  be having an affair.

• Franks credit card bills show charges for a
  local motel, and he has been spotted leaving the
  hotel once with Joan.

• Frank was caught having sex with Joan multiple
  times.

5
Empiricist Principles

• Beliefs should only be as strong as the evidence
  supporting them.
• Claims with prima facia implausibility should not
  be accepted without strongly supportive evidence
  and argument.
• The authority of witnesses derives from witness
  reliability and conformity with other facts and
  other witnesses

6
Empiricism and Miracles

• Definition A miracle is a violation of a law of
  nature. p. 513. Thus

• the argument against miracles from the start
  is as powerful and compelling as natural law
  itself.
• only equally powerful and compelling
  argument/evidence can override this presumption
  of falsity.

7
Humes Basic Position

• no testimony is sufficient to establish a
  miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind,
  that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than
  the fact, which it endeavours to establish p.
  513

In other words the miraculous claim should be
so obviously true that the conditions under which
we would question it are not apparent.
8
Argument for Skepticism - 1

• No miracle is affirmed by enough of the right
  kind of witness, to dispel our doubt of their
  testimony. p. 514

• No self-delusion
• Complete integrity/reliability
• Possessing a good reputation they would not want
  to lose
• Attesting to facts that are/were widely public
  and known

9
Argument for Skepticism - 2

• Certain human emotions tend to override our
  normal skeptical tendencies with respect to that
  which is called miraculous.

• Our thinking is naturally and usefully
  conservative we tend to give credit to
  thinking/observations supported by past
  experience.

• In contrast, our fascination and wonder at the
  unusual and exotic tend us to believe in the
  apparently miraculous.

10
Argument for Skepticism - 2

• People respond as much to eloquence as to
  evidence and reasoning.
• There are many instances of forged miracles or
  supernatural events.

11
Argument for Skepticism 3 4

• Testaments to miracles tend to occur more
  frequently in ignorant and barbarous nations,
  or as handed down from such primitive origins.
• Every miracle confirming the beliefs of one
  religion counts, eo ipso, against those of every
  other religion, in a mutually destructive
  pattern. p. 515

12
Miracles Definitions Revisited

• Swinburne and the Philosophical Issues Connected
  to Miracles

13
A New Definition of Miracle

• An event of an extraordinary kind but what
  counts as extraordinary?
• An event caused by a God or perhaps by any
  rational agent with unusual powers?
• An event of religious significance but what
  counts as religiously significant?

14
Extraordinary Events

• These are events that do conflict with natural
  law, in the strong sense, as Hume argued.

• A miracle is a non-repeatable counter-instance
  of a law of nature (it would not happen again
  under similar instances), no matter how laws of
  nature are interpreted.

15
Natural Law - 1

• Universal laws those which state what must
  happen.
• Example All material objects are subject to the
  law of gravity.

Universal laws by definition do not allow for
natural exceptions or extraordinary but still
actual events.
16
Natural Law - 2

• Statistical laws those which state what is
  likely to happen in a particular population of
  things or events
• Example in a large sample of coin tosses, half
  will result in heads and half in tails

Statistical laws allow for individually
unpredictable or highly improbable, but still
actually possible events.
17
How Can the Extraordinary Happen?

• All natural laws apply, only given certain
  initial conditions.

Its not the case that all objects fall. It is
the case that, given an objects being in a
certain state under certain conditions, it will
fall.
A miracle could be the result of extraordinary
initial conditions which still follow natural law
given those conditions.
18
Gods Hand in Miracles

• Unusual events are not miraculous, in the
  common-sense understanding of the term.

Correctly predicting an event in the future is
unusual but not necessarily miraculous, in the
sense that the prediction could have been correct
for purely natural or coincidental reasons.
Miracles, then, are also considered the work of a
unique power be it God, or gods or even some
rational agent acting intentionally
19
Religious Significance

• an event must contribute significantly toward
  a holy divine purpose for the world. p. 520

Unusual, and purposive but this could be the
activity of a malevolent being. To retain the
common-sense understanding of a miracle,
Swinburne adds this condition.
20
Summary of Swinburnes Definition of Miracle

• Statistical natural laws may allow of
  extraordinary but not miraculous events
• Universal natural laws are consistent with
  non-repeatable counter-instances

• Miracles - or
• Demonstrations of the limits of our current
  understanding of natural law

21
Response to Hume

• Are there sufficient numbers of witnesses whose
  testimony does agree?
• Is there historical but non-testamentary forms of
  evidence (confirmation of prophecy)?
• Miracles arent necessarily offered as proof of
  specific theological doctrines (answers to
  prayers, v. resurrection of Christ)