Below is a good response from Saints and Sceptics regarding the rejection of miracles. The original post can be found here.
Christian theology
affirms a number of miracles, most importantly the atonement, the resurrection,
the incarnation and the virgin birth. The secular mind dismisses these as
tall-tales and myths produced by superstitious, pre-modern minds. However, it
seems to us that the modern prejudice against miracles is not very rational.
1) Experience shows that miracles do not occur
This argues in a circle. The Christian asserts that he has good
testimony that a miracle has occurred. The sceptic responds, “that can’t be
true because human experience shows that miracles do not occur.” But the
Christian has just cited evidence that this is not the case: the Christian is claiming that
he has evidence that some humans have experienced
a miracle!
It is true that human experience establishes that miracles are,
at the very least, rare. But relying on our experience of what usually happens can lead to terrible mistakes.
“This medicine has never harmed patients in the past; therefore it will
not hurt anyone tomorrow; these buildings have withstood all earthquakes until
now; therefore they will withstand the next earthquake.” We should always be
open to evidence of the unexpected. Sometimes that evidence can tell us that an
unrepeatable, unprecedented event has occurred!
2) Science shows that miracles are impossible!
It is true that miracles like the virgin birth are naturally impossible, but who ever thought
otherwise? Christians claim that the resurrection is a supernatural event. The laws of nature are just
mathematical descriptions of how nature normally behaves. But suppose there’s
more to reality than the natural world. Suppose the reason the universe behaves
in an ordered, law-like manner is that the universe has a rational creator.
In that case, the behaviour
of the universe would be predictable and we would have a good knowledge of
the laws that govern the Universe. But, on occasion, God do
something new, to bring about an event which normally does not happen in the day
to day running of the Universe. After all, isn’t it possible that God
could have reason to do something extraordinary in his universe now and then?
Couldn’t God cause an exception to the laws of nature?
3) If we believe in one supernatural event we might as well
believe in Santa and flying reindeer!
It’s possible to believe in a miracle (say the resurrection) and
to be extremely sceptical about most reports of paranormal activity. Miracles
are not impossible, but they are unusual (in the sense that they do not
occur frequently). We should expect miracles to be rare and to be events
that God would have a good reason to bring about. Indeed, miracles
lose their significance if they are not exceptional events. So we would not
expect every miracle report to be true. The Christian world-view insists that
we should not uncritically accept every miracle claim.
What about Krishna and
Buddha? The only way to determine whether a miracle has occurred is by a
detailed study of the relevant evidence. Merely pointing out that different
religions have different miracle claims is beside the point. The question is:
what is the evidence for these miracle claims? Do all the religions have
equally good evidence that their central, defining, most important miracles
occurred? Here we would suggest that the evidence for Jesus’ miracles – and
especially the miracle of the resurrection – is unparalleled.
4) But surely miracles are so improbable, so extraordinary, that
no amount of evidence could justify believing a miracle had occurred?
All sorts of events can be very improbable before relevant
evidence is taken into account, but highly probable afterwards. Unique
historical events may be extremely improbable in the absence of evidence, but
accepted on the basis of fairly mundane evidence. Physicists have never
observed proton decay despite all their attempts and believe that it must be
exceedingly improbable that a given observed proton will decay; but they also
believe that evidence could show that
it had in fact decayed (otherwise they wouldn’t spend time trying to observe
the phenomenon).
Or consider this thought experiment: suppose my friend John
claims that he has inherited billions of dollars from an eccentric Russian
oligarch. This billionaire made John his sole beneficiary after he had chosen
John’s name at random from a phone-book, which was itself chosen at random.This
seems like a tall tale; it seems fair to say that it is very probably false.
Oligarchs typically don’t act this way and, even if they did, it is very
improbable that John’s name would be chosen at random.
However, the next week
John arrives at my house driving a new BMW. He then shows me a newspaper which
has a picture of him at his new Russian mansion. Later I see reports of
John’s good luck on the national news; all these reports confirm John’s
testimony about the eccentric billionaire. All this evidence would be very
improbable if John’s story was false, but is just the kind of evidence I would
expected if he was telling the truth. This is sufficient to overcome the
initial improbability of John’s tale being true.
Someone might object
that this story does not help the case for miracles because a miracle involves
a supernatural event. John’s tale does not involve a supernatural agent. But
this objection would amount to a stubborn refusal to examine any evidence that
could overturn the initial improbability of a miracle having occurred. The objection
assumes that miracles are impossible; that assumes that there is no God.
5) You can’t believe in miracles unless you already believe in God.
There is no reason in
principle to think that evidence for miracles is impossible. Suppose someone
thinks (as almost all atheists do) that God’s existence is improbable, but not
impossible. Such a person would consider a miracle to be extremely
improbable; but evidence can completely overturn a low probability. Evidence
for a miracle could in turn increase the probability of God’s existence and so
provide evidence for God. (In the same way that evidence of Tom’s inheritance
made the existence of the Russian oligarch seem more probable!)
6) There is no way to tell from the historical record if a miracle
has occurred.
Ask yourself two questions. One: would this be
the sort of evidence that I would expect if a miracle had occurred? Two: is there a good non-miraculous explanation for
this evidence? There could be situations where the key witnesses were extremely
unlikely to have been fooled or mistaken. If the evidence is more likely given
the truth of the miracle then you have good evidence that a miracle has
occurred.
A large enough number
of independent, reliable witnesses (even if they are only partially reliable) to
a miracle will result in the miracle being more probable than the witnesses
being mistaken. If a dozen journalists, a dozen doctors, a dozen police
officers and a dozen members of the Skeptical Society all testify under oath
that they witnessed a “Holy Man” part the waters of a river, and we find no
evidence of deceit or illusion, we should take their testimony very seriously.
Of course, hypothetical scenarios and thought experiments of
this kind do not show that miracles have ever occurred. However, they do
undermine the idea that there is some sort of problem with gathering evidence
for miracles in principle. It is also worth
noting that the evidence for one important miracle, the resurrection, is
stronger and more subtle than a simple appeal to eyewitness testimony. No
one is arguing that some historically reliable documents report a resurrection,
and that we should therefore believe that a resurrection occurred.
The case for the resurrection of
Jesus Christ depends on various well-supported facts. Not one of these facts is supernatural in character and each can
be established by normal historical methodology. The case for the
resurrection is that it provides a much better explanation of these (and other)
facts than any purely natural explanation. And it really is much, much better,
not least because there are no plausible natural explanations on offer.
Rather, the historical
method is used to establish certain facts, and a miracle is inferred as the
best explanation of those facts. Here we can focus on 18 facts:
1. Jesus was put to death by crucifixion. This was a shameful
death which should have devastated the disciples and ended Jesus’
movement.
2. His body was buried in an identifiable tomb (Joseph of
Arimethea’s).
3. A few days later a group of women followers claimed that
Jesus’ tomb was empty.
4. It would have been more convenient for the Church if this
discovery had been made by men (whose testimony was considered more reliable)
and by one of the early heroes of the faith (like Stephen or Cleopas).
5. The disciples were not expecting Jesus to be resurrected. Jews
had many other ways of conceiving life after death: the disciples could have
claimed to have seen Jesus’ angel, or his Spirit in heaven, or that Jesus had
been translated into a “star”. It was decidedly odd to claim he was resurrected
from an identifiable tomb.
6. Multiple appearances took place in which many people who had
known Jesus well believed they had seen him alive again.
7. Paul, who initially persecuted the early Christians, became a
follower of Jesus as a result of believing he had seen the risen Jesus.
8. James, the brother of Jesus, who was not a follower of Jesus
before the crucifixion became a follower afterwards. He also became a leader in
the church in Jerusalem and was put to death for his faith.
9. The Christian movement started in Jerusalem, where Jesus had
been crucified, shortly after the crucifixion.
10. The message of the early Christians focused on the death and
resurrection of Jesus. “Resurrection” could only mean that Jesus’ body had been
raised from the dead.
11. The early Christians met on the first day of the week, and not
on the Jewish Sabbath. Something about the Sabbath was significant to the first
Christians.
12. The early Christian church had a highly exalted view of Jesus.
13. The early Christians were willing to die for their faith.
14. There was no attempt to venerate Jesus’ tomb.
15. Jewish apologetic claimed that the disciples stole the body;
so Jewish critics agreed that the tomb was identifiable and empty.
16. The early church grew in a Hellenistic context that would have
been hostile to the idea of bodily resurrection. Gentile philosophers wanted to
escape the confines of the body; they didn’t want to be trapped in their bodies
forever!
17. It is unlikely that the later Church invented the
story of the empty tomb.”Bodily resurrection” would mainly have impressed
Palestinian Jews, and not later Hellenistic Christians (who struggled with the
idea that they would have resurrection bodies too). So the preaching of a
resurrection could only have started with the first Jewish Christians in
Palestine.
18. It is highly unlikely that the disciples stole Jesus’s body to
keep Jesus’ movement going. If they wanted to venerate Jesus’ memory athey
could just have said that they had had visions of Jesus’ “spirit” or
“angel”.
Some explanation of these facts is sought; and it seems that the
only adequate explanation is that God raised Jesus from the dead.
And, if we have good
reason to believe that the resurrection occurred, then we should be more open
to testimony of other miracles involving Jesus.
God Bless,
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