Miracles: Maurice Wiles

Question 1

Wiles’ view of miracles

Answer 1

• does not reject them on scientific reasons as “the world is not a closed, deterministically ordered system”
• relates it to PoE: “it would seem strange that no miraculous intervention prevented Auschwitz or Hiroshima” => his rejection is on moral grounds rather than that of logic

Question 2

Wiles’ view of God’s intervention in the world

Answer 2

• if God got into the habit of breaking LoN, we would not have LoN at all => be impossible for us to live normal lives

Question 3

Evaluation of Wiles

Answer 3

• wrong to judge God by human moral standards; even if we cannot fathom why God would choose to heal a blind man over thousands at Hiroshima, that is God’s choice => must be the right thing to do
  CP: arbitrary argument
• the point of miracles is to reveal an attribute of God => a comparatively small miracle is thus more significant than a large one because it reveals to us an aspect of God’s nature