Do Accounts of Miracles Support The Belief in God?

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

Michelle Holcroft 12LN

The definition of a miracle is a violation of the “laws of nature”, it is an exception that is beyond all naturalistic explanations, meaning they must be explained supernaturally. So do accounts of miracles support the belief in God? Firstly, one must decided whether there is sufficient evidence to prove the existence of miracles, something that people have disagreed about a lot.

A McKinnon says that natural laws are just descriptions of the ‘actual course of events’ so to say that a natural law has been violated would be a contradiction, these events merely show that our natural laws are at present inadequate. On the other hand, McKinnon’s argument presupposes the exclusivity of naturalistic explanations and there is no a priori reason as to why a presupposition should be accepted, unless one can prove that supernatural causal activity is impossible. Also, one cannot assume that the law in question is inadequate if there is a violation of a natural law, all that is inadequate is the belief that everything must have a naturalistic explanation.

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David Hume argues that one cannot prove the existence of miracles because the evidence for miracles is less than that of established laws; he suggests we should always look at things in a naturalistic way and should favour the naturalistic explanations as opposed to supernatural explanations. Hume believes that a wise person will always look at the available evidence then proportion their belief according to this, so therefore accepting a miracle would be ridiculous due to the amount of sufficient evidence compared to the amount that a natural law is supported by. However, what Hume is saying is self-validating and tautological, as it is obvious that established laws hold more sufficient evidence than a miracle, otherwise they would not be the established law, miracles are exceptions hence they have less evidence. Hume’s argument is not a very strong one, as we need an argument independent of what we are trying to prove.

Hume also argues that all recorded miracles made by various religions contradict each other, therefore cancel each other out, however Hume is confusing the interpretation of the miracle with whether or not the miracle actually exists. Different religions have interpreted events differently, but these interpretations are not the same as the event, all Hume’s argument is succeeding in doing is cancelling out the interpretation, not whether or not miracles do in fact exist.

A. Flew says that we must go back to the definition of a miracle, and there we shall find that there is something wrong; the definition is incomplete. The definition states that a miracle is something that is beyond naturalistic explanation. However, Flew argues that one never has the ability to state whether or not something will permanently be beyond naturalistic explanation, we do not know what we may discover in the future, with our limited knowledge we cannot be sure that something may not be naturalistically explained in the future. Therefore, Flew says that one can never claim that a certain event is a miracle.

Swinburne argues that there are certain events that will permanently remain beyond naturalistic explanation, for example resurrection as one cannot accept the exception as well as the rule within the same structure. This is impossible. One must ask, what is a naturalistic explanation? It observes nature, making empirical generalisations that are known as ‘laws of nature’, and these have a certain predictive value. This predictive value would be destroyed by any modifications to some laws, which are so axiomatic to the structure of scientific explanation. Trying to accept both the rule and the exception will upset this structure and the very foundations of all scientific explanation.

After studying arguments about whether or not one can believe in the existence of miracles I believe that miracles do occur and that they have a supernatural explanation as I believe there is more evidence to support this, therefore supporting any belief in God.