Although his original beliefs are fairly reasonable, the four points that he drew up were criticised for being overall, too general. Hume’s claim that miracles were simply "religious propaganda" and were simply developed to "over throw every other system" is extremely narrow-minded and intolerant of others, as miracles have been proven to fortify a person’s faith and subsist as more of an affinity to those who believe, as opposed to propaganda. The main criticism of Hume’s beliefs is that as our understanding of science changes daily, something that occurred over a hundred years ago that was recognised as a miracle may not be conceived as one, in today’s world.
St Thomas Aquinas believed that there were three main types of miracle. The first type of miracle were deemed events caused by God which would prove impossible to accomplish by nature, for example, the sun stopping in the sky (Joshua 10:13) which would be recognised by today’s standards as physically impossible. The second type were events caused by God which nature would be able to do but not as well or in that order, for example exorcisms, which although would not be thought of as entirely implausible, they’d be seldom expected. The third type were events caused by God which nature would be able to achieve but where God doesn’t use a natural law, for example, the forgiving of sin. Therefore, Aquinas thought of God as an interventionist and that when he does so, miracles occur.
However, there are several criticisms of this argument. If this belief were true, it would seem as though God had intervened in random and haphazard ways such as in answering specific prayers and not others, however he did not intervene to prevent the First or Second World Wars or the Holocaust. In addition, if God intervenes too much, there is the possibility of him over-riding free will and causing natural laws to be altered.
Richard Swinburne, on the other hand, claims that miracles have to have significance. He suggests that because the laws of nature can be foreseen, if an apparently infeasible and perhaps “impossible” event happens, then we have rights to class it as a miracle. Swinburne admits that people can be resuscitated from the brink of death and that water being able to be turned into wine with the aid of chemicals, however, in his opinion, what makes these events miracles depends upon the time scale, within which these events happen. To recognise the above events as miracles, it would be necessary for them to occur outside the typical environments in which such events usually take place. Therefore, these beliefs link to Aquinas’s second and third point, because these events are recognised as ‘miraculous’ in the circumstances, timing and way in which they occur.
However, although Swinburne said that for an event to be classified as a miracle it needed to have significance, he went on to suggest that it should entail specifically a deeper, religious significance. He wrote in ‘The Concept of a Miracle’, “If God intervened in the natural order to make a feather land here rather than there, for no deep, ultimate purpose, or to upset a child’s box of toys just for spite, these events would not be described as miracles”. Therefore, the fact that some miracles seem to be as random and haphazard as those described above raises severe criticisms on the occurrence of miracles and how they are defined. Another problem with this argument is that it depends upon what is classed as significant, as what may prove significant to one person may not be to another.
From a contrasting point of view, Holland, author of ‘Religion and Understanding’; put forward the belief that a miracle can be deemed as ‘a series of coincidences with significance’. Holland uses the story of a mother and her young child crossing an exposed railway track; as they cross, the child gets caught in the track just as a train is coming. The mother prays to God for help and the train fortunately stops before reaching her and her child. The train driver had in fact suffered a heart attack and so lifted his foot off the accelerator, causing the train to stop. According to Holland, an event where a link of coincidences occur to save someone’s life, can be classed as a miracle, as he wrote “A coincidence can be taken religiously as a sign and called a miracle”.
Although for some people, this belief may be held as true, there are several problems that come into play with Holland’s theory. This is due to the fact that coincidences don’t need God to cause them, and so if God was not necessarily involved in the event taking place, the event has no real religious significance and cannot be confirmed as a miracle. In addition to this, Holland’s interpretation makes the occurrence of a miracle down to personal interpretation. This is a problem, as it will vary from person to person, as what one person may class a miracle, another may not.
Another perspective on miracles, that of Peter Vardy, was that an unexpected change in a person for the better could be termed as ‘miraculous’. He used the example of the total reform of a drug dealer practicing illegally being a miracle. Sutherland who classed “a persons unlikely change for the better” as a miracle also shares Vardy’s view.
In contrast to the many conflicting views of the arguments put forward by respected philosophers, the principle of ‘anti-realism’ claims that there is no truth, that the ‘truth’ is whatever you want to make it, whatever has specific meaning to you. Therefore, in an anti-realist’s eyes, God only exists, if he exists to you.
A realist’s point of view would be that miracles only occur to those who have faith, and that if there is a God, he would cause miracles to happen to increase his following and the faith in his people. Anti-realists contradict this by saying that coincidences can’t be miracles because God has played no part in their occurrence. The principle of anti-realism proposes that miracles are events that help people to interpret the nature of God and for example, these ‘miracles’ may only be symbolic - so they can only be fully understood by a religious follower. Moore, a recognised anti-realist claims that a miracle isn’t an action by God, but that it’s an inexplicable event. He claims that a believer “does believe that God is responsible for it, but to believe that is not to believe that something is responsible for it”, and says that a non-believer “who has no context available to him to fit the event into, therefore simply finds it baffling”.
Even with these many theories at hand, there are still both many reasons to believe in miracles, and just as many not to. For example, the belief in miracles gives people hope and restores their faith. As there are so many stories that are unexplained, the simplest definition for them is that they are miracles, as this gives an explanation to the unexplainable. This is the principle of Ockham’s Razor, which argues that the most simplistic rationalization of an unusual and inexplicable event is on the whole the most philosophically feasible explanation. Personal experiences of miracles cause many people to hold a belief in the existence of miracles, as does answered prayer. In addition to this, there is also the reference to Jesus performing miracles in the Bible, for example, there is mention of him allowing the blind to see again, turning water into wine and feeding five thousand people from just three fish and five loaves of bread.
However, there are also many contradictory arguments. For example, there is no proof of God’s existence, therefore if God doesn’t exist, how do miracles occur? If, however, God does exist and causes miracles, how come he intervenes in certain situations to answer trivial prayers and cures specific people of cancers when he leaves thousands of others dying of hunger in the Third World and allowed events like the Holocaust and September 11th 2001, to occur? If the latter is true, then God appears to be an inconsistent interventionist. In addition to this, although there are many theories justifying and defining miracles, every argument put forward by a philosopher seems to have at least one flaw. There is also a problem as to what can be defined as a law of nature and how they are broken, for example if a law of nature is broke, this could just be a way of saying something unexplainable happened. Miracles could also be a psychological alternative for those who believe what they want to believe, and by terming an event a miracle, this just acts as an explanation.
In conclusion, all that can be said is that there is no definite resolution as to whether miracles occur or not, as when bringing their existence into question, the concept, purpose and interpretation of miracles is almost always unclear. Due to the fact that miracles mean different things to different people, there are many things that can define a miracle. For some people, the birth of a child would be a miracle, whereas others may need a religious significance to determine a specific event a miracle. Therefore, the most that can be said about a miracle is that it’s an event which can be interpreted to have some significance, religious or not, that in some way can be the result of God’s intervention in the world or in the lives of those who have faith.
Sources:
- Religious Studies, Philip Allan Updates – Sarah K. Tyler and Gordon Reid
