Miracles Flashcards
Realist view on miracles
-See miracles as real events in the world, brought about by a transcendent being: a God who is personal, can answer prayer, and who acts in the world for a purpose, as part of his care for the world he created.
-Want witnesses and facts from the event but argue they are real events.
Examples of miracles for realists
Juliane Koepcke’s 1971 survival of a plane crash and free fall over the Peruvian rainforest.
1950 Nebraska church choir incident.
Problems with describing real events in the world as miracles.
-Why does God choose when to/when not to intervene?
-Hume argued miracles are violations of natural law.
What is the problem with defining miracles as violating natural laws?
-not accepted by science
-natural laws are seen as descriptive/probalistic (don’t dictate what must happen, instead they summarise what has been found to happen).
-Hick argued that if there appears to be an acception to a law or nature, then the law simply expands to include the exception.
-if God can intervene miraculously, there should not be evil and suffering
Anti-realist view on miracles
-The concept of miracles is subjective and dependent on individual or cultural beliefs, rather than being a objective occurrence in the external world.
-Miracles are seen as interpretations shaped by personal/cultural factors.
-May be seen as something that lifts the spirit or transforms a community of people.
-Tillich, Ward and Holland
Tillich on miracles
-Anti-realist
-Sees God as ‘Being-itself’
-Miracles are ‘sign-events’ that cannot be divorced from their religious context
-“An even which is astonishing…an event which points to the mystery of being…a sign-event in an ecstatic experience” (Tillich)
Ward on miracles
-Anti-realist
-Miracles are not brought about my something supernatural that breaks the laws of nature.
-The laws of nature remain intact and the miracle is in the mind.
-It serves to restablish an individuals relationship with God.
Holland on miracles
-Anti-realist
-Miracles are not supernatural
-An event is a miracle if a person interprets it as being God’s doing and it belongs to a form of life to which an individual subscribes.
Hume on miracles
-Realist
-A miracle is “a transgression of a law or nature by a particular volition of the deity or by the imposition of some invisible agent”.
-A miracle is a breaking of a law of nature by the choice and action of a God or supernatural power.
Hume’s 5 main points on miracles
1) “A wise man proportions his belief to evidence”. A wise man considers which side is supported by the most evidence (proportionality principle).
2) We must choose the lesser miracle, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. In order for a miracle to be true, denial of the miracle would have to be more miraculous than its acceptance.
3) With all claims of miracles made, there is inadequate witness testimony. Witnesses must be well-educated, intelligent, have a reputation to lose, and there must be “sufficient number”.
5) Most miracles are unreliable as they are made by poor, uneducated fishermen and peasants.
6) Miracles in other religions cancel eachother out. Instead of picking just one to belief in, we should deny them all.
Wiles on miracles
-Rejects any idea of interventions by God into the created universe.
-Rejects them from a moral perspective.
-God could perform miracles and suspend the laws of nature if he wanted to however, it would be impossible as we would not be able to have laws of nature at all and could not lead normal lives.
-God would not be worthy of worship if he COULD intervene but failed to do so in cases like the Holocaust, the Rwanda and Kosovo massacres, or earthquakes.
-“It would seem strange that no miraculous intervention prevented Auschwitz” (Wiles)
Objections to Wiles
-Don’t accord with traditional teachings about God.
-Cannot suggest miracles show God’s love and power if you also say God cannot intervene in the world.
-We can’t make God conform to human rationality as God acts in ways beyond our human reasoning.
Aquinas on miracles
Miracles are “that which has a divine cause, not that whose cause a human person fails to understand”.
Significance of miracles for religion
-Christianity is founded on a miracle (Jesus’ resurrection).
-“If Christ was not raised, then faith is futile” (Paul’s Gospel)
-God intervenes as a demonstration of power and love.
-Some argue miracles are the act of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent and transcendent God (realist).
-Others argue miracles are ‘sign-events’.
