Miracles Flashcards
What two main important definitions of a miracle does the course focus on?
- A violation of, or exception to Natural law
- An event of religious significance
Natural law was once percieved in prescriptive terms - what does this mean?
Nature was required to behave in ways that scientists required it to behave.
Natural Law is now concieved of as descriptive - What does this mean?
Scientists understand nature by simply trying to describe and understand what happens naturally.
How is natural law seen in religious sense?
In religious terms natural law comes from God and guides human moral behaviour.
What is David Hume’s famous defination of a miracle?
A transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent.
The word miracle comes from latin miraculum - what does this literally mean?
Wonder
What four examples does Richard Swinburne give as violations of natural law?
- Levitation
- Resurrection from the dead in full health of a man whose heart has not been beating for twenty four hours and who was dead also by currently used criteria;
- Water turning into wine without the assistance of chemical apparatus or catalysts;
- A man getting better from polio in a minute.
What is a Theist?
Someone who believes that the world was not only made by God but that its existence continues to depend totally on its creator.
What is a Deist?
Someone who believes that, having created the world, God leaves it to run itself - governed by the natural laws He created.
Who said that it was not the events themselves that made them remarkable, but the timescale and the order in which they occur?
Richard Swinburne
Swinburne said that the trangression of a natural law was not enough to make something a miracle - he said they had to have some deeper meaning and significance - some underlying plan. What two examples did he use to illustrate this?
- God making a falling feather land in a different place.
- God upsetting a childs toy box for no reason
Thomas Aquinas desribed three ways that God can interact with the world - what are these?
- God’s sustaining activity (God is present, but God exists to sustain our universe. It does not involve individual actions, he is forever sustaining).
- Primary actions by God (God intervenes in our world through key events in history – such as the ‘great flood’, God sending Jesus into the world)
- Secondary actions by God (God using human beings as agents by which to bring about change in our world – sending the prophets to change the ways of others!)
Why would Brian Davies argue that it does not make sense to speak of an interventionist God?
He adopts a theistic view that If God is present in every action (what is considered miraculous and what is not) God cannot be seen to interact occasionally because He is always acting.
Who defines natural laws as… ‘generalizations formulated retrospectively to cover whatever has, in fact, happened’.
John Hick
John Hick argues that… if we in fact define miracles as ‘violations of natural laws’ then there are in fact no miracles. Why does he say this?
He argues that we base our knowledge and understanding of ‘natural law’ on the fact that we have experienced it.
If we see a ‘miracle’ we are simply witnessing a previous un-witnessed event.
This event can then be added to our knowledge of how natural law works.
What argument do some scientists use to claim that miracles may be natural events?
They may claim that because our knowledge of natural law is incomplete but continually growing, there may one day be a valid explanation for what are now considered miracles.
Where science could not explain somethig, God was said to have intervened - filled the gaps in scientific understanding. However, what is the problem with this ‘God of the Gaps’ idea?
As our knowledge of the world around us grows there seems to be fewer and fewer events that need to be explained by a divine intervention - less gaps for God to fill. This may eventually lead to no gaps and no need for a God.
What is the placebo effect - and how does it relate to miracles
The placebo effect refers to the power of the human mind to bring about physical improvements. Doctors sometimes use fake pills - but if the patient believes they are real and are therefore likely to work, recovery may take place.
If a religious person believes God will intervene to help them it might promote recovery which the person would then attribute to Gods intervention.
John Hick argues that if we see a ‘miracle’ we are simply witnessing a previous un-witnessed event which can then be added to our knowledge of how natural law works.
Does this mean that no event can ever be truly said to be miraclulous?
John Hick himself admitted that it was not possible to rule out miracles and that not everything could be proved to be an extention of our knowledge of natural law.
He said… there are many unusual and striking events evoking and mediating a vivid awareness of God.
Who said… “In all my scientific knowledge and understanding I can explain how the universe began……
I still, however, cannot explain why.”
Stephen Hawkings
David Hume was an empiricist - what does this mean?
The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge
Hume did not say miracles are impossible yet he refused to believe in them - what was his main objection?
Hume’s point was not so much that miracles are impossible, but that it would be impossible for us to prove that one had happened.
Hume’s said that it would be impossible for us to prove that a miracle had happened.
He proposed four grounds for discrediting the existence of miracles.
What was his first?
There is not to be found in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion.
Hume’s said that it would be impossible for us to prove that a miracle had happened.
He proposed four grounds for discrediting the existence of miracles.
What was his second?
`The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles. ..gives a tendency towards belief of those events… A religionist may be an enthusiast and imagines he sees what has no reality.‘
Hume’s said that it would be impossible for us to prove that a miracle had happened.
He proposed four grounds for discrediting the existence of miracles.
What was his third?
`It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound amongst ignorant and barbarous nations.’
Hume’s said that it would be impossible for us to prove that a miracle had happened.
He proposed four grounds for discrediting the existence of miracles.
What was his fourth?
`In matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary. ..every miracle, therefore, pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions… destroys the credit of those miracles.’
In other words - all religions can’t be true but all religions claim to have seen miracles - some or all are not telling the truth.
Hume argued that the laws of nature are well established and witnessed and unchanging - a miracle account would have to outweigh all the evidence in favour of a natural law.
How does this argument fail?
A miracle is meant to be an exception to the rule - it breaks the rule. As such, its occurrence in no way challenges the general rule. Miracles and natural law can exist side by side.
Brian Davies used an illustration about men walking on the moon. What point was he trying to make?
He was saying that an Empiricist view based entirly on past experience is false - Just because you haven’t seen it before does not mean it won’t happen.
Swinburne said that the same types of evidence are needed to establish science and miracles.He argued that they were just as valid for either.
What are these three things?
- Our apparent memories
- The testimony of others
- The physical traces left behind by the events in question.
Many of Hume’s arguments against miracles fail because of what?
He is not precise enough.
For example…
- how many witnesses are sufficient?
- how much education id necessary?
- What makes a nation barbarous?
- Etc.
.
Why did Maurice Wiles not like the idea of a God who intervenes?
- God created the world how he intended it to be for eternity.
- If miracles did occur then God would be undermining the laws of nature and the accepted order of life which He created
- Petty miracles and acts of intervention do not fit with this God.
Why did Nelson Pike claim that it would not be possible for God to intervene in our world?
He argues that since God is outside of time (timeless), with no start or end, how can God act at any point in the world.
St Thomas Aquinas argued that God can be both timeless and act within a single moment in our time. Which modern philosopher would agree with him?
Richard Swinburne - who claims that God is not restricted by time. He argues that time does not affect God in the way it does us - for example, God does not age like we do.
What are the main moral problems with the idea of a God who intervenes?
The continued presence of evil and sufferring. Why does God not intervene to change this?
What is the main religious response to the problem that an interventionist God does not stop evil and sufferring in the world?
Some argue that if God intervened then it would affect our grasp of free will. They claim God would never do this. God has given us the ability to choose to do good and we must freely choose to use that ability.
Some argue that God has a particular reason for not intervening to prevent evil and sufferring - we cannot see the greater plan and must trust that God knows best.
Kieth Ward argued that even minor interventions by God may have far reaching and long lasting consequences therefore God only intervenes very occasionally.
When, according to Ward, would God intervene?
When it will build up peoples faith and when it would not simply bestow favours on individuals.
What does R.F.Holland have to say about amazing coincidences?
A coincidence can be taken religiously as a sign and called a miracle. If a series of remarkable and unexpected events come together to bring about good it could be seen as being filled with a sense of divine purpose and significance.
Peter Vardy and Julie Arliss used an example from america to show how a coincidence could be seen to be miraculous. What was the story?
The Nebraska choir coincidence. The sense of the miraculous comes from the sheer improbability that the only night when they were all late was on the only night they all needed to be.
What are the two different ways in which a coincidence might be considered a miracle.
- God directly intervenes in the natural event
- God is present in the natural event but not intervene in any way, shape or form.
How could God be seen to have directly intervened in the Nabraska Chior incident?
God put lots of obsticles in the way of the people involved so that they would be late. However, God’s involvement is less clear and much more subtle.
How could God be seen to have indirectly intervened in the Nabraska Chior incident?
It was a truly natural event in the sense that it is an event in which God does not intervene at all. He may, however, in some way be present.
Sometimes other natural events that do not even involve a surprising coincidence might be interpreted with a sense of religious significance.
Give an example ?
Examples could include
- Witnessing a sunset,
- Witnessing a new birth
- Etc.
In what three ways may someone respond to the view that a coincidence can never be seen to be miraclulous?
Response 1: Proof not needed for the believer
Response 2: Anti-realism
Response 3:God as ‘being itself’ - the ‘ground of being’.
Why might a believer not need proof of a miracle to believe its true?
- The person might feel that the religious experience is a personal experience, thus they know for themselves that God is present and real.
- Numinous experiences, for example, often result in the person acknowledging a personal feeling of God’s presence – do they really need proof?
How does Anti-realism relate to belief in miracles?
Anti-realism a theory of truth. It says that there is no ultimate truth. Truth is relative.
The Nebraska choir incident: does not depend on what physically happened, but what people claim happened in the incident.
On this view, a single event in time can be both a miracle and not a miracle at the same time, and without any contradiction.
We construct that which is truth. It is all a matter of interpretation.
How did Paul Tillich respond to the idea that coincidences can be seen as miracles?
God is the power that gives existence to everything in our world. Without God, Tillich argues, nothing would exist.
He says that a ‘miracle’ is an event that gives the individual believer a powerful sense of the creative power that is God. We are most likely to sense this creative power in unexpected events – healing, coincidences…
