The Possibility of Historical Evidence for Miracles (Part 3)

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This post is part of my series on miracles. For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through the following article:

• Luck, M “Against the Possibility of Historical Evidence for Miracles” (2005) 44 Sophia 7

In this article, Morgan Luck assesses Richard Swinburne’s argument claiming that there can be strong historical evidence for miracles. Luck notes that Swinburne’s argument relies on three key assertions. We have evaluated the first two of these assertions already. Now we turn our attention to the third:

• Assertion 3: There are conditions under which it is reasonable to assume a violation of a law of nature was caused by God

For the purposes of this evaluation, we are going to assume that we actually do have strong evidence for the occurrence of some kind of miracle. The question we now face is whether we can rightly infer that God is the cause of that miracle.

Swinburne concedes that we would never see God directly causing some miraculous effect. So we would have to make some kind of plausible inference from the effect to the existence of God. He thinks there are two methods for doing this.


1. Argument from Analogy
The first method is to make some kind of analogy between human intentional action and divine intentional action. In other words, we could say that a given miraculous effect seems to be the kind of thing that an agent would bring about (because it is similar to other things that agents like to bring about), but since it involves a violation of a law of nature it cannot be attributed to a human agent; therefore, it must be attributable to a supernatural agent.

To give an example, Swinburne asks us to imagine that 50-foot high fiery lettering appears in the sky reading “I caused these words to appear and I am a rational agent.” He then argues that we would be warranted in inferring that a rational agent caused the lettering to be.

That may be true, but does it warrant us in inferring that God caused it to be? Luck thinks not. He argues that the occurrence of such a violation of a law of nature, that is nonetheless typical of rational agency, is consistent with two other hypotheses: (i) a natural rational agent causing the event by natural means and (ii) a natural rational agent causing the event by means of an intermediary non-natural event.

The first of these hypotheses may elicit a raised eyebrow or two from the reader, but it is perfectly consistent given the definition of a law of nature with which Swinburne is working. As you no doubt recall from part one, for Swinburne a law of nature is a generalised axiom that achieves the best combination of simplicity and strength when applied to the available data.

Under that definition, it is perfectly possible for a natural rational agent to cause a violation of a law of nature by natural means. Presumably, this would just involve the rational agent making use of some as-yet-unknown natural process. Arthur C. Clarke’s famous comment that future technology would be indistinguishable from magic seems apposite here.

So it’s back to the drawing board for Swinburne. On his return, he may stipulate that when making inference to the existence of God, he is assuming that we have evidence that the miraculous event was caused by non-natural means.

One wonders what this evidence would look like, but let’s grant Swinburne the possibility. Even then, Luck argues, he would not be warranted in inferring God. It is, once again, perfectly possible for a natural rational agent to cause the event through a non-natural intermediary process. The possibility being invoked here is logical, not physical or metaphysical, but it is still enough to defeat Swinburne’s argument.


2. The Argument from Prior Belief
Swinburne can bounce back from this defeat. He can argue that we have prior evidence for the existence of God, and that this prior evidence gives us some indication of the kinds of things God would like to bring about. Combining this evidence with the prima facie occurrence of a miracle, might allow us to infer the existence of God.

This is certainly true, but it weakens the apologetic importance of the argument from miracles. No longer are we using the occurrence of a miracle to support the existence of God. Instead, we are using the existence of God to shape our interpretation of a prima facie miracle.

Even if we are willing to tolerate this approach to miracles, problems remain for Swinburne. Two are of particular importance.

First, it is still possible for the event to be attributable to a natural rational agent. Why so? Well, it all comes from the problem of deception. A natural agent, knowing the character of God, could try to mimic him by causing some apparently miraculous effect. (I covered this kind of objection previously in relation to a non-natural event).

Second, go back to part two and look at the discussion of the principle of causal closure (PCC). As noted there, even if we have good prima facie evidence for the occurrence of a miracle, the violation of the PCC makes it virtually impossible to know which particular miracle occurred. This makes it very difficult to know what kind of character is being revealed by a miraculous event.


3. Conclusion
That completes Luck’s evaluation of Swinburne’s case for historical evidence of miracles. We can summarise as follows:

• Assertion One - "A violation of a law of nature is possible": Luck agrees with this assertion. Adopting Lewis’s Systematic theory, a law of nature is a generalised axiom, from which conclusions about natural events can be deduced, with the best combination of simplicity and strength. It is possible for there to be non-repeatable counter-instances to such laws.
• Assertion Two - "The existence of particular present events could be indicative of the prior occurrence of particular violations of the laws of nature": Luck objected to this on the grounds that once we allow for the violation of the PCC, evidence can be consistent with any number of miracles.
• Assertion Three - "There are conditions under which it is reasonable to assume that a violation of a law of nature was caused by God": Luck objects to this on the grounds that it is possible for miracles to be caused by natural rational agents.

The Possibility of Historical Evidence for Miracles (Part 2)

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This post is part of my series on miracles. For an index, see here.

I’m currently looking at the following article from Morgan Luck:

• Luck, M. “Against the Possibility of Historical Evidence for Miracles” (2005) 44 Sophia 7

In this article, Luck assesses Richard Swinburne’s argument for the viability of strong historical evidence for miracles. As noted last time, Swinburne’s argument is based on three key assertions. We have already considered the first of these assertions, in this entry we’ll consider the second:

• Assertion 2: The existence of particular present events could be indicative of the prior occurrence of particular violations of the laws of nature (thanks to event causality).

With this assertion, Swinburne is distinguishing himself from those who think that the chief or sole evidence for a miracle is the testimony of eyewitnesses. He is claiming that we could have hard, physical evidence for the prior occurrence of miracle.


1. Jones goes down to the river
The general principle upon which Swinburne’s argument rests is the following:

• If event E consists in a state of X being followed by a state Y, and we have a trace of state X and an observed later state Y, then we have some evidence that E occurred.

To illustrate the principle, Swinburne asks us to imagine the following story of a man named Jones and his remarkable river-crossing adventure. The story begins with us observing Jones’s footprints in soft mud on one side of the river and Jones himself on the other side. We know for a fact that footprints in this soft mud could not have been left more than a minute ago. We also observe that Jones’s clothes and body are dry and that there are no bridges, boats, aeroplanes or ropes nearby which he could have used to get across.

Under these circumstances, Swinburne argues that we are justified in inferring that a miracle of some kind has occurred. Specifically, that Jones has walked on water. The argument rests on a simple inference that makes use of the principle outlined above:

• Jones's walking on water would be followed by a dry Jones being on one side of the river and his footprints being on the other side, provided no other means of transportation was available.
• We have evidence of a dry Jones on one side of river, & his footprints on the other side, with no other means of transportation apparently available.
• Therefore, Jones must have walked on water.

2. The Principle of Causal Closure
Luck thinks there are serious logical problems with Swinburne’s argument. This is because the possibility of a violation-miracle undermines the indicative strength of historical evidence.

To see why this is the case, we must first appeal to something known as the principle of causal closure (PCC). The PCC is a commonplace is debates over free will and determinism. It maintains that every event is causally determined by a combination of physical laws and the prior physical states of the universe.

The great advantage, from an explanatory point of view, of the PCC is that it means one need only cite natural causes to explain natural effects. The problem for Swinburne is that miracles would violate the PCC because they involve a supernatural agent disrupting the ordinary course of events. This creates problems for the kinds of inferences we can make from present day evidence to events in the past.


3. Using the Principle of Causal Closure
These problems become readily apparent when we consider how we make use of the PCC in our everyday lives. You are making use of the principle right now. As you read this, you are assuming that there is computer screen in front of you upon which some text is displayed. You assume this because you know that, in the ordinary course of events, light is being reflected from the computer screen, is travelling into your eye and on into your brain where the perception of the screen is created.

All of these assumptions rely on the PCC because they assume that one physical event determines another physical event. If the PCC is violated, then these assumptions go out the window. We have to accept other possible explanations of our experiences. For example, you would have accept that there is a possibility that there is no computer screen in front of you and that your experience is an illusion created by God.

Applying this to the case of Jones and the river we note that, without causal closure, it is:

“...quite possible that Jones could have swum across the river and god afterwards caused him to be dry, or god may have spontaneous[ly] created fresh footprints on one side of the river and Jones may never have crossed, alternatively God could have directly created the sensation that we are observing a dry Jones and he is in fact soaking wet after having swum across the river.” (Luck 2005, 16)

Other scenarios are possible as well.

The violation of the PCC thus creates a problem for the proponent of historical evidence for miracles. Luck is at pains to point out that the problem is a relatively modest one. He is not claiming that there can never be evidence for the occurrence of miracles. He is simply claiming that the evidence could be consistent with any number of potential miracles.

Despite its modesty, I think Luck’s point is important. Miracles are often deemed to be theologically significant because of the particular form they take. For example, the resurrection is thought to have particular theological significance for God’s plan of salvation. If it turns out that the evidence for the resurrection is consistent with a large number of potential miracles, then these theological interpretations of the resurrection fall by the wayside.

That’s it for this post. Next time out, we’ll consider Luck’s evaluation of Swinburne’s third and final assertion.

The Possibility of Historical Evidence for Miracles (Part 1)

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This post is part of my series on miracles. For an index, see here.

Over the next few entries I will be going through the following article:

Luck, M. “Against the Possibility of Historical Evidence for Miracles” (2005) 44 Sophia 7

In this article, Luck assesses Richard Swinburne’s argument for the viability of strong historical evidence for miracles. At the outset, Luck notes that Swinburne’s argument is based on the following three assertions:

• Assertion 1: It is logically possible for a violation of a law of nature to occur.
• Assertion 2: The existence of particular present events could be indicative of the prior occurrence of particular violations of the laws of nature (thanks to event causality).
• Assertion 3: There are conditions under which it is reasonable to assume that a violation of a law of nature was caused by God.

Luck sets out to evaluate the plausibility of each of these assertions. Although he ultimately agrees with assertion 1, he finds reason to doubt each of the other two assertions (particularly the second).

In this part, I will run through Luck’s evaluation of the first assertion. The analysis is hugely significant in the general context of the miracle debate where the appropriate definition of a law of nature, as well as the possibility of its violation, are key concerns.

We begin by considering two arguments to the effect that violations of laws of nature are impossible. These arguments already featured in my posts on Everitt’s discussion of miracles. They are given slightly more precise formalisations here.


1. The Argument from Necessity
The first argument comes from those who have a necessitarian conception of a law of nature. According to this conception, it is impossible to violate a law of nature because such a law prescribes a necessary set of relations between states of affairs. For a necessitarian theorist, a claim like “water boils at 100c at normal pressure” prescribes a relation that cannot be broken.

This gives rise to the following argument:

• (1) A law of nature is a necessary relation.
• (2) A violation of a law of nature is a violation of a necessary relation.
• (3) A necessary relation cannot be violated.
• (4) Therefore, a violation of a law of nature cannot occur.

This argument relies on the view that laws of nature are logically necessary. Some people might have a slightly more relaxed view on the type of necessity involved. Specifically, they might think laws of nature prescribe physically or naturally necessary relations. Under such a conception, would it not be possible for there to be non-physical or supernatural violations of laws of nature?

The answer is “no”. Because under that conception a supernaturally caused event would not actually be a violation, but rather a positive instance of a physically necessary law. As follows:

• (5) A law of nature is a necessary relation between natural events, iff those events have natural causes.
• (6) A violation of a law of nature is a violation of a necessary relation between natural events, iff the natural events have natural causes.
• (7) Miracles involve natural events with non-natural causes.
• (8) A violation of a law of nature cannot be caused by a miracle.

So it seems that, on either necessitarian view, there cannot be a violation of a law of nature.


2. The Argument from Regularity
The necessitarian conception is not the only game in town. In fact, the more popular conception of a law of nature, at least since the time of Hume, is the regularity one. According to this view, a law of nature is simply a highly generalised description of the regular pattern of events.

And, so the argument goes, there cannot be a violation of a highly generalised description of the regular pattern of events. Why not? Because any putative violation would simply be a new piece of data to be accommodated by the highly generalised description. In other words, it would simply be evidence that the existing description is faulty and needs to be revised.

These sentiments can be given the following formal expression [note: this is a slight revision of the version found in Luck’s article]:

• (9) Laws of nature are generalised descriptions of the actual course of events.
• (10) Every event that occurs can be accounted for by these generalisations.
• (11) A violation of a law of nature would be an event that could not be accounted for by these generalisations.
• (12) Therefore, a violation of a law of nature cannot occur.

If this argument, and the necessitarian one, are sound, then it seems like Swinburne faces an uphill battle to defend his first assertion. How does he do it? Unsurprisingly, for those who are familiar with Swinburne’s work, his argument relies on the explanatory virtue of simplicity.


3. Swinburne on the Possibility of a Violation-Miracle
Swinburne begins by seeming to accept a broadly regularitarian conception of a law of nature. In other words, he takes it that a law of nature (L) is simply a highly successful description of events with some predictive power. He then defines a miracle as a “non-repeatable counter instance to a law of nature”.

Let’s assume that L stands for “no human being can levitate”. Now suppose that an event occurs (E) in which a human being levitates into the air. Swinburne points out that the occurrence of such an event could prompt us to formulate a new law of nature (L1) that accounts for the levitation in this particular instance. L1 would effectively add an exception-clause to L.

Swinburne then argues that while we could accept L1 as being the true law of nature, doing so might come at a cost. If L1 only accounted for the exception E, it would be more ad hoc and less simple than L. And Swinburne maintains that if reformulating L to account for E comes at the expense of simplicity, we would be justified in calling E a miracle (i.e. a non-repeatable counter-instance to L).

Luck thinks Swinburne’s argument in this respect is sound. He is persuaded by the fact that one of the most successful modern Humean approaches to the laws of nature -- Lewis’s Systematic theory -- allows for violations of this form.

According to Lewis’s theory, a law of nature is a generalisation that occurs as a theorem (or axiom) in an explanatory deductive system that achieves the best combination of simplicity and strength. As such, Lewis’s view can tolerate some violations of the laws of nature, provided the system as a whole maintains its simplicity and strength. As follows:

• (13) Laws of nature are axioms with the best combination of simplicity and strength.
• (14) It is possible that these laws may be substantially simpler and insubstantially weaker by not accounting for the occurrence of certain events.
• (15) It is possible these unaccounted for events could be in violation of the axioms with the best combination of simplicity and strength.
• (16) Therefore, it is possible for a violation of a law of nature to occur.

That concludes Luck’s evaluation of Swinburne’s first assertion. In the next post, we’ll take at look at his evaluation of the second assertion.

The Problem of the Evil/Miracle Ratio (Part 2)

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This post is part of my series on miracles. For an index, see here.

I’m currently working my way through the following article by Morgan Luck:

• “Aquinas’s Miracles and the Luciferous Defence: The Problem of the Evil/Miracle Ratio” (2009) 48 SOPHIA 167-177.

In part one, we saw how it was Luck’s goal to provide an argument that worked from premises concerning the nature of evil to a conclusion relating to the identification of miracles.

The first step towards this goal was taken by outlining Aquinas’s definition of miracles. According to Aquinas, a miracle can be defined as a super-creational effect, caused by God. If that definition is completely opaque to you, then you should really read part one before proceeding any further.

In this part, we’ll see how this definition feeds into Luck’s overall argument.


1. The Suitability of Aquinas’s Definition
Aquinas’s definition of miracles does not appeal to the traditional distinction between natural and supernatural events. For Aquinas, a miracle is simply an effect that is not within the power of a creational entity to cause. Thus, Aquinas allows for possibility of monistic miracles, i.e. miracles involving wholly supernatural or natural events. For example, the creation of an angel would count as a miracle for Aquinas, but would not involve any natural events.

The importance of this approach to defining miracles lies in the fact that it rules out, as not being proper instances of miracles, any events that are caused by supernatural creational entities such as angels or demons. This is an attractive approach for religious apologists because it necessarily restricts miracles to acts of God.

The question we need to ask is whether this definition is acceptable. Luck argues that one way in which to establish the suitability of a definition is to employ the paradigm case approach. This initially involves the identification of a paradigm instance of the term we wish to define, followed by a consideration of whether the definition captures this paradigm instance.

One paradigm instance of a miracle, according to Luck, can be found in Exodus 7. This is the case in which God turns Aaron’s staff into a snake. This is a paradigm case because (a) there is a strong religious tradition supporting the idea that this is a miracle and (b) there is a strong intuition to the effect that the instantaneous transmogrification of wood into a snake is miraculous.

But on this paradigm case, Aquinas’s definition seems to fail. Why? Because this is not a supercreational effect. According to the same book of the Bible (Exodus 7:11), it is within the power of a creational entity (an Egyptian sorcerer) to bring about the same effect.

Traditions and intuitions can be wrong, so are there other reasons to be wary of Aquinas’s definition? Luck thinks so.


2. Demons and Natural Evil
To see the problem we must first revisit Plantinga’s (in)famous response to the (logical) problem of natural evil.

Plantinga proposed a sophisticated version of the free will defence to the logical problem of evil. The typical response to this defence is to point out that not all instances of evil are attributable to the freely willed acts of human beings. There are also natural evils. Indeed, as I write this, one of the wealthiest and best-prepared countries in the world is struggling to deal with the fallout from natural evil (I refer, of course, to Japan and the recent tsunami).

Plantinga argued that these cases of natural evil could (possibly) be the result of the freely-willed acts of non-human agents, i.e. demons or fallen angels. This, in effect, reduced natural evil to supernatural moral evil. This type of response can also, with scriptural support (Exodus 7:11, Matthew 24:24 and Revelation 13:14), be used to account for the miracles associated with other religious traditions. Luck calls this the “Luciferous Defence”.

The problem with the Luciferous Defence is that by increasing the causal powers of supernatural creational entities, it narrows the logical space available for true miracles. This can be called the problem of the evil/miracle ratio:

The more power we grant to fallen angels in order to account for natural evil, then the fewer kinds of events we are entitled to call miraculous.

To overcome this problem, we will need to know what is a creational power and what is not. This is not easy to do. And since the problem arises directly from Aquinas’s attempt to tie the definition of a miracle to an act of God, Luck argues that it will need to be addressed by all apologists who adopt an account of miracles that restricts their cause to God.

The Problem of the Evil/Miracle Ratio (Part 1)

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This post is part of my series on miracles. For an index, see here.

I’m continuing to work my way through some of the neglected aspects of the philosophy of miracles, before eventually looking into the debate surroudning Hume’s argument. In service of this end, I’m going to summarise the following article by Morgan Luck:

• “Aquinas’s Miracles and the Luciferous Defence: The Problem of the Evil/Miracle Ratio” (2009) 48 SOPHIA 167-177.

In this article, Luck examines the relationship between one’s belief in miracles and one’s response to the problem of evil.

He begins by analysing an ongoing debate in the philosophical literature which suggests that the possibility of miracles may exacerbate the problem of evil. He notes that all the arguments in this debate work from premises concerning the nature of miracles to conclusions relating to the problem of evil. He then proposes an alternative form of argument that works from premises concerning the nature of evil to conclusions relating to the identification of miracles. This argument focuses on the definition of miracles put forward by everybody’s favourite Dominican: Thomas Aquinas.

In this part, we will focus on the first set of arguments and Aquinas’s definition of miracles.


1. Couldn’t God stop evil by performing a miracle?
Several authors have argued that any believer who accepts the possibility of miracles runs into increased difficulties when responding to the problem of evil. Luck mentions four authors in particular who have made this argument: Hebbelthwaite, Wiles, Keller and Overall. The following is a brief summary of their views.

First, we need to recall that the problem of evil claims that the existence of God is incompatible with the existence of evil (the “logical problem”); or, alternatively, that the existence of evil is evidence against the existence of God (the “evidential problem”).

A popular response to the logical version of this argument is the Free Will Defence (FWD). According to this response, free will is a great good that could not be realised by God without allowing for some possibility of evil. Hence, the existence of God, contra the sceptic, is compatible with the existence of some evil.

Hebbelthwaite offers an interesting rejoinder to the FWD. He argues that miracles (particularly those presented in the Bible) often involve God stopping evil from occurring. He cites as an example the story of Daniel being saved from the lions. The fact that God was willing to intervene in this case prompts the following question: why wouldn’t God intervene to prevent all the evil arising from free decisions? Presumably, he could do this without preventing people from having the great good of free will.

The response to Hebbelthwaite’s objection requires some slight backtracking on the FWD. It says that it is responsibility for actions, not free will per se, that is the truly great good. Free will just happens, on some accounts, to be a precondition for this kind of responsibility. If God were to intervene to prevent the evil consequences of our free decisions, then we would not have true responsibility for our actions. Or, to adopt Swinburne’s argument, we would lack responsibility for the moral value of our world.

It is at this stage that Wiles enters the debate. He draws our attention to catastrophic instances of evil such as those perpetrated at Auschwitz or Hiroshima. He then points out that the miracles in the Bible seem trivial in their purpose, e.g. the coin-from-a-fish’s-mouth miracle in the Gospel of Matthew. Wiles then asks, if the FWD is compatible with at least some miracles (something the believer in miracles must accept) then surely those miracles would be reserved for ameliorating catastrophes rather than trivialities?

The response to this is interesting. Peter Vardy argues, contra Wiles, that in order for human beings to meaningfully exercise free will in a way that is conducive to moral responsibility, then there must be predictably bad results to bad actions. If God had a track record of intervening to prevent every catastrophe, then we couldn’t exercise moral responsibility over our world. Miracles need to be hidden and unexpected so as not to interfere with our moral responsibility. Trivial miracles fit this bill.

One may question this since catastrophes are often unexpected and not the result of intentional wrongdoing, but alas we must move on....


2. Are miracles themselves immoral acts?
Keller argues that the possibility of miracles exacerbates the problem of evil because many of the miracles attributed to God are immoral. He points, in particular, to the way in which God seems to treat the Israelites favourably at the expense of others, when these others are equally in need of moral and spiritual guidance. As an example, he cites the parting of the Red Sea which benefits the children of the Israelites at the expense of the children of the Egyptians (who lose their parents).

Responding to this, it can be argued that the beneficial effect of God’s miracles may be both direct and indirect. Thus, although there was no direct benefit to the Egyptian children, perhaps they benefitted indirectly because, say, if their parents had succeeded in recapturing the Israelites, an even worse fate may have befallen them.

Christine Overall makes a rather more interesting claim. She argues that miracles are inconsistent with the character of an all-good being. Why so? Well, she suggests that an all-good being would not wish to mislead humanity in their pursuit of knowledge. But miracles are misleading because they confuse rather than solidify our knowledge of the world. This is apparent from the difficulty we have in correctly identifying a miracle.

Luck thinks there is a problem lurking behind Overall and Keller’s arguments. Both seem to be committed to the following propositions:

• (1) Causing a miracle to occur (or not causing another miracle to occur) is (sometimes/all the time) an immoral act.
• (2) God cannot perform an immoral act.
• (3) Therefore, God cannot allow a miracle to occur.
• (4) But (immoral) miracles do occur.

The question is: what further conclusion is to be drawn from this set of propositions? If a miracle is, in some sense, defined as an act of God or another supernatural being, then the best this argument can do is to either suggest an inconsistency in a religious person’s beliefs or support the existence of a supernatural being who is not God.

I’m not sure that I entirely agree with Luck in this observation. I haven’t read Overall’s work, but on the face of it she doesn’t seem committed to proposition (4).


3. Defining Miracles the Thomistic Way
All the arguments surveyed above work from premises concerning the nature of miracles to conclusions about the nature of evil. Luck’s goal in the remainder of his article is to present an argument that works in the opposite direction. He begins this task by outlining Aquinas’s definition of a miracle.

Luck asks us to note the basic structure behind most definitions of miracles. According to this basic structure, a miracle can be said to be a natural (spatiotemporal) effect with a non-natural cause. Luck outlines how this basic structure is reflected in the definitions proffered by Hume, Swinburne, Basinger and Larmer.

This stands in stark contrast to Aquinas’s definition. Aquinas does not rely on the distinction between a natural and supernatural event. Instead, he relies on the distinction between creational and supercreational events.

The distinction is based on his ontology. Aquinas defines a creational entity as one whose causal powers are created and sustained by God. All natural creatures are creational entities. For example, human beings only have the powers that they do have thanks to the creation and sustenance provided by God. However, some supernatural creatures are also creational entities. For instance, an angel would be a creational entity.

This leads to Aquinas’s definition of a super-creational event:

• “Super-creational event” = “An event that cannot be caused by a creational entity”

In other words, an event that is not the result of the exercise of a causal power by a creational entity. This allows for the following definition of a miracle:

• “Miracle” = “A super-creational effect caused by God.”

One important point to bear in mind about this definition of miracle is how narrow it actually is. A miracle, for Aquinas, is an event that is defined primarily by the absence the causal powers of a creational entity. Applying this definition, it follows that the acts of creational entities such as angels cannot be properly called miracles. This is significant because traditional definitions would have included such acts.

In the next entry, we’ll see how Aquinas’s definition can be used as the basis of an argument against miracles.

The Devil's Lying Wonders (Part 3)

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This post is part of my series on miracles, For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through an article by John Beaudoin entitled “The Devil’s Lying Wonders”. In it, Beaudoin presents the following challenge to the religious believer who takes the existence of the Devil (or other demonic supernatural agents) seriously: how can you reliably distinguish between the miraculous acts of God and the work of the Devil?

The challenge is significant because one of the defining characteristics of the Devil is his desire to deceive us, which he could do by performing apparently beneficent miraculous acts.

Last time out, we considered three criteria that supposedly provide grounds for distinguishing the acts of God from the work of the Devil. We found reason to fault each of them. This time round we consider some further criteria.

The criteria are taken, by Beaudoin, from the (infamous?) work of Morton Smith. Remember, for the purposes of this discussion, there are two ways in which a supernatural agent could perform a miracle (a) directly by themselves or (b) through the intermediary of a human being. Smith’s criteria are:

• (4) Divine miracles fulfill Old Testament prophecies;
• (5) Demonic miracles involve the explicit invocation of demonic forces;
• (6) Demonic miracles are often performed for the purpose of self-aggrandisement;
• (7) Divine miracles convey edifying moral lessons;
• (8) The effects of divine miracles are permanent rather than transitory;
• (9) Divine miracles bring about conversions to Christianity;

What are we to make of these? Do they improve the epistemic position of the believer with respect to the work of the Devil?


1. The Failure of the Criterial Approach
Beaudoin deals with each of these criteria relatively brusquely. He does so legitimately in my opinion since the major criteria were discussed last time round and, as he himself points out, some of these criteria are both repetitious and obviously flawed.

Dealing with them one-by-one, the following can be said:

On (4), the link between divine miracles and Old Testament prophecies is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, there’s no reason to think that the Devil wouldn’t be above deceiving people with false hope by performing a miracle that fulfilled a prophecy. Indeed, if he wants his deception to be successful, this is exactly the kind of thing he should do. And second, its not clear that divine miracles are always performed to fulfill OT prophecies.

On (5), this only stands a chance of working when the devil works via the instrumentality of a human agent. After all, the devil would have no reason to invoke his own powers when acting by himself. Furthermore, even if the miracle is performed through the instrumentality of a human agent, there’s no reason to think that the invocation of demonic powers would be made obvious to onlookers.

On (6), this assumes that God is not above a bit of self-aggrandisement. Beaudoin argues that there are reasons to think that some of the miracles God performs in the book of Exodus are done as displays of power (he cites the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart as a particular example of this). Certainly, the overarching message of the book of Job supports this idea.

On (7), this is defeated by the possibility of the Devil allowing for short-term edification in the service of some nefarious long-term plan. We covered this in the previous entry.

On (8), there are conceptual issues that need to be confronted here with respect to the causal effects of all historical events (don’t they all leave permanent traces?). I’ll be considering this issue in a future post. In any event, depending on how one deals with these issues, it could be argued that at least some of God’s miracles have only temporary effect, e.g. the parting of the Red Sea since the sea closed-up again. Either way, (8) is difficult to apply.

On (9), Beaudoin thinks there is a problem in identifying genuine conversions. The defining beliefs of Christianity would need to be identified first. And even if a set of such beliefs could be identified, the question of whether their profession constituted a sufficient condition of a divine miracle would be raised. Beaudoin argues that profession of such beliefs could not be a sufficient condition for identifying a divine miracle because a demon or magician or hypnotist could easily induce such profession through non-miraculous means.

In conclusion then, none of the profferred criteria stand much chance of success.


2. The Epistemic Costs to the Believer
What is the upshot of all this for the religious believer? How damaging is the possibility of demonic miracles to their general worldview? Beaudoin offers some concluding thoughts.

First, he thinks it could be quite damaging from an apologetic perspective. Any use of supposed miracles to evidence the moral character of God is now cast in doubt since beneficent effects and the fulfillment of prophecy could both be attributable to the Devil.

Second, it could be quite damaging to those who rely heavily of personal religious experiences as evidence of God’s moral character. Again, seemingly profound, morally and spiritually beneficent experiences could be the work of the devil. This was what worried St. Theresa of Avila the most and what moved her to develop a set of criteria for properly identifying divine miracles. Of course, the problem with this is that criterial approach seems to fail.

Third, and finally, it creates problems for the proponent of a Plantinga-style reformed epistemology. How so? Well, as readers of this blog are no doubt aware, Plantinga’s claim that religious beliefs are properly basic is premised largely on the idea that if Christianity is true, we have reason to trust our belief-forming faculties. But since at least some forms of Christianity entail the existence of the Devil, and since the existence of the Devil entails the possibility of a supernatural deceiver, the reason Plantinga proposes for trusting our faculties can be defeated.

The Devil's Lying Wonders (Part 2)

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This post is part of my series on Miracles. For the index, see here.

I am currently working my way through an article by John Beaudoin entitled “The Devil’s Lying Wonders”. The article considers the problems that the existence of the Devil might pose for those who wish to reliably identify God’s miracles.

The problem was introduced the last time out. In this post, we will consider three criteria that are sometimes proposed to help us distinguish God’s miracles from those of the Devil. The three criteria are:

• (1) God’s miracles display greater power than the Devil’s;
• (2) God’s miracles have beneficent, rather than harmful, effects.
• (3) Where the miracle is done to attest the authority of some messenger, God’s miracles would be consistent with both scripture and his moral perfection.

We'll look at each of these criteria in turn. Before we do so note that, for the purposes of this discussion, there are two ways in which a miracle can be performed by a supernatural agent: (i) the supernatural agent could directly cause the miraculous event; or (ii) the supernatural agent could temporarily give a natural agent (i.e. human being) the power to cause a miraculous event.


1. The Power Criterion
According to this criterion, God’s miracles will carry the mark of his greater power when compared to the devil. John Locke was a fan of this criterion and he felt it could be successfully deployed when trying to tell whether an alleged prophet was acting with assistance of God or the Devil.

Several scriptural passages are cited in support of this criterion. The first comes from the contest between Moses and Aaron (acting with the support of God), and the Pharaoh’s sorcerers (presumably acting with the support of the devil or other fallen angels) in the book of Exodus. If the report is to be believed (and no one is saying that it should), then the sorcerers were able to reproduce some but not all of the miracles produced by God. Thus it was God’s superior power that separated the two sides in the end.

Similar contests take place between Elijah and the worshippers of Baal in 1 Kings 18, and between Paul and Elymas in Acts 13. In both cases, God’s superior power makes itself known.

There are several things to be said about this criterion.

First, outside of the competitive context, the criterion is likely to be useless because we will have nothing with which to compare the putative miracle in order to determine whether it emanates from a being of lesser power. This is exacerbated by the fact that we have no knowledge of the upper limit of the Devil’s power, and that God, if the bible is to be believed, frequently performs miracles that are relatively unspectacular in form.

Second, even within the competitive context, its not clear that this criterion works. Why not? Well, in the scriptural passages cited in its support we already know which side is representing God and which side is representing the Devil (or other demons). But what if we don’t know this? What if both sides are actually demonic? Isn’t a fake contest something that the devil might rustle up for the sake of deception?

Taking these two problems on board, it seems that the power criterion is a failure.


2. The Other Two Criteria
Beaudoin says that criteria (2) and (3) can be treated jointly because they suffer from a common flaw. The flaw is that they assume the Devil can only perpetrate harm and blasphemy in the short-run, and that God’s actions are always manifestly beneficent in the short-run.

Both elements of this assumption can be disputed.

First, as discussed in part one, the devil can actively try to deceive us by performing actions or miracles that appear to be beneficent in the short-run. Indeed, this is exactly the kind of thing he would do if he wanted to deceive us. (This idea is explored with some mirth by Stephen Law in his article “The Evil God Challenge").

Second, if skeptical theists are to be believed, then God may have beyond our ken reasons for allowing short-run evils. The skeptical theist argument is usually applied to natural evils, but there is no reason why it couldn’t be applied to apparently evil miracles as well. Furthermore, even if we are not enamoured with skeptical theism, the same objection could hold for certain forms of theodicy, e.g. soul-building theodicies.

In conclusion then, none of the three criteria outlined above offer good prospects for reliably distinguishing between the miracles of God and the miracles of the devil. Are there any other criteria that could work? We’ll consider this possibility in the next entry.

The Devil's Lying Wonders (Part 1)

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This post is part of my series on miracles. For an index see here.

One of the major components of this series on miracles will be its coverage of some of the contemporary debate about Hume’s argument and the various Bayesian interpretations thereof. However, before I get to that, I want to cover some of the lesser-discussed problems with arguments to and from miracles. I do so because it is important to realise that the problems with these arguments do not begin and end with Hume.

With this in mind, over the next few posts I will be covering John Beaudoin’s article “The Devil’s Lying Wonders”. The article looks at the problems that the alleged existence of the devil creates for those who wish to reliably identify God’s miracles.


1. Introduction: The Problem of the Devil
Beaudoin begins his article by noting that many Christians take the existence of the devil seriously. This creates a problem for them because it could be that miraculous events they have attributed to God are actually attributable to the devil. He cites the example of St. Theresa of Avila as someone who was so worried about this problem that she developed a set of criteria for distinguishing the devil’s acts from God’s.

Is there really a problem here? Could we not argue that God and the Devil have diametrically opposed characteristics and that these characteristics would be reflected in their deeds? There are three things that count against this conclusion:

• (a) Although not omnipotent, the Devil is usually assumed to have supernatural powers that allow him to work remarkable wonders that might appear to a finite intellect to have a divine origin.

• (b) The Devil is assumed to be vastly more intelligent than ordinary human beings and so could have designs and methods that are inscrutable to us.

• (c) The tradition maintains that the Devil uses his powers for the purposes of deception and imposture, occasionally even going so far as to disguise himself as a benign.

Of these three, it is (c) that creates the most serious problem for the believer. Assuming God always works good miracles, but assuming that the Devil will try to deceive us by performing similar miracles, we will genuinely struggle to distinguish between miracles that are attributable to God and miracles that are attributable to the devil.

What’s more, the idea that the Devil could engage in such deceptive miracles is one that has considerable Biblical support. Beaudoin cites two main passages in support of this:

“For there shall arise false Christs, and false Prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the elect (Matthew 24:24, KJV).”

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth ... and he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And he deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast (Rev. 13:11-14, KJV).”

No wonder St. Theresa of Avila was worried.


2. Lying Wonders and Counterfeit Miracles
Beaudoin suggests that one initial response to this type of problem is to claim that the Devil does not have the power to perform genuine miracles; instead, he only has the power to perform “lying wonders” or “counterfeit miracles”. The support for this idea comes from Second Thessalonians 2:9.

Presumably, the idea here is that the Devil’s “miracles” are little more than conjuring tricks or illusions that do not have a genuinely supernatural origin or cause. Thus, distinguishing them from true miracles would be akin to distinguishing a genuine magic trick from something involving trickery or deception. Think about how James Randi debunked Peter Popoff and you have the general picture.



Beaudoin thinks there are some problems with this response.

First, the only scriptural support for the idea that the Devil cannot perform genuine miracles -- i.e. ones with genuine supernatural causes -- comes from Second Thessalonians. Elsewhere in the New Testament the language describing the Devil’s miracles (semeia kai terata) is the same as that used to describe Jesus’s miracles.

Second, the Devil is supposed to be a fallen angel with supernatural powers. Why would his ability to work signs and wonders be limited to signs and wonders of the non-supernatural kind? There seems to be no conceptual justification for this limitation.

Third, modern definitions of “miracle” tend to say that a miracle is simply any event for which operating natural causes are insufficient and thus are in need of a supernatural force for their explanation. Since the devil is a supernatural being, there no reason why he couldn’t supply such a force.

Although we haven’t covered much of the article to this point, this is a natural place to break off. Next time out, we’ll cover three proposed criteria for distinguishing the work of the devil from a miracle of God.

Arguments to and from Miracles (Part 3) - Direct-acts, Inexplicability and Coincidence Miracles

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This post is the third (and final part) of my series on Chapter 6 of Nicholas Everitt’s book The Non-Existence of God. It also forms part of my series on Miracles, which will continue after this.

Over the first two entries we dealt with the concept of a violation-miracle and the problems associated with that concept. In this entry, we will consider three alternative conceptions of miracles. They are: (i) the directly-willed-acts conception; (ii) the inexplicability conception; and (iii) the coincidence conception.


1. Miracles as Directly Willed Acts of God
According to this conception of the term, a miracle is any event in the natural world that can be attributed to an act of God.

Theists usually conceive of God as the creator of the natural world. This implies that every event in the natural world can be traced back to at least one of God’s acts (viz. the original creative act). Does this imply that every event counts as a miracle? No; there is a distinction to be drawn between an event that is indirectly attributable to an of God and an event that is directly attributable to such an act.

As an example of the distinction between the two, consider the story of the parting of the Red Sea. Presumably, God could have made this happen by direct or indirect means. If he opted for direct means, then the sea would just have spontaneously parted allowing for Moses and the Israelites to cross. If he opted for indirect means, then the sea might have “parted” following a drought or a whirlwind. The former would count as a miracle, but the latter would not.

This conception of miracles avoids the problems associated with violation miracles (it is surely not correct to say that God could violate his own indirect willings). But it has some problems of its own. Two seem particularly apposite here:

First, in order to successfully identify a miracle under this conception, one would need to develop some criteria that allow you to reliably discriminate between the indirect and direct acts of God. Usually this involves pointing to the religious significance of certain events like the parting of the Red Sea. But for this to work we need to be sure that (a) we have a good (non-miraculous) source of information about what is religiously significant and (b) that we are not being deceived by another supernatural being. We’ll consider this problem in future entries.

Second, this conception seems to reduce the evidential significance of miracles. With the violation conception the idea, presumably, was that certain rare and/or impressive events constituted particularly good evidence for the existence of God. With this conception all events count as evidence for the existence of God. Thus it becomes much more difficult to see why we should care especially about arguments to the existence of miracles.


2. Miracles as Inexplicable Events
According to this conception of the term, a miracle is an event that is inexplicable. This obviously folds an epistemic concept -- i.e. explicability -- into our definition of miracle and thereby creates certain problems. To see what these problems are we need to distinguish between two varieties of inexplicability (i) de facto inexplicability and (ii) in principle inexplicability.

Look at de facto inexplicability first. If an event is de facto inexplicable then this implies that, as a matter of fact, we cannot currently explain it. The problem with this is that we are constantly improving our ability to explain events over time. And so what is or what is not de facto explicable is subject to revision over time.

To take an example that has been doing the rounds recently, it was, no doubt, once true that we could not explain why the tides obeyed the regular patterns that they do. But nowadays we can explain this phenomenon. Does this imply that the tides were once miraculous but no longer are? It would be absurd to answer in the affirmative.

The absurdity of the de facto sense of inexplicability leads to the idea of in principle inexplicability. According to this version, an event is inexplicable -- and therefore miraculous -- if it is forever and always incapable of being explained.

Although this might appear to solve the problem with de facto inexplicability, it simply creates a new problem: it assumes we can reliably identify events that are in principle inexplicable. But this is to assume more than we can know. When it comes to any event that is currently inexplicable it might be the case that it can never be explained, but it might also be the case that it will be explained in the future.

In other words, we could be standing in the same relation to the currently inexplicable event as the ancients were in relation to the tides. Thus, it would seem like we could never really identify an in principle inexplicable event.


3. Miracles as Coincidences
According to this conception of the term, a miracle can be said to arise whenever there is a very surprising coincidence with significant beneficial effects. The coincidence is said to count as a miracle even if there is a naturalistic explanation for it. Everitt cites the following example from R.F. Holland (this is a mix of Everitt’s words and Holland’s words from pg. 125 of Everitt's book):

A child has wandered onto a railway track. A train is approaching at high speed but because the track is curved, there is no possibility that the driver will see the child in time. The mother is watching from a distance ... but is too far away to intervene. The train hurtles down upon the child and then suddenly its brakes are applied and it comes to a halt a few feet from the child.

There was nothing supernatural about the manner in which the brakes of the train came to be applied. The driver had fainted... on this particular afternoon because his blood pressure had risen after a heavy lunch during which he quarrelled with a colleague, and the change in blood pressure caused a clot of blood to be dislodged... He fainted at the time he did...because this was the time at which the coagulation in his blood reached his brain.

Holland claims that, despite the plausible naturalistic explanation, the mother could still thank God for the miraculous turn of events that saved her child. But is she really in her epistemic rights to do this?

Everitt thinks not. He argues that atheists and agnostics can happily concede that unlikely coincidences like this occur. They would, however, rightly dispute any inference from their occurrence to the existence of God. After all, if a perfectly good naturalistic explanation, which does not rely on any direct intervention of God, is available, then why exactly do we need to bring God into the discussion.

(Aside: wouldn’t assuming God’s intervention in the example just given create problems anyway? Doesn’t it call into question God’s moral character? Surely he could have halted the train without causing the driver to have a stroke?)


4. Conclusion
Through the course of his chapter, Everitt examined four different conceptions of miracles. We can summarise his views on each of them as follows:

• (1) The Violation Conception: This conception is both: (a) rationally unacceptable because sufficiently strong evidence for the occurrence of a violation of a law of nature would also undermine belief in the existence of that law of nature (Hume’s argument); and (b) logically impossible due to the incompatibility and conceptual confusion arguments.

• (2) The Directly-Willed-Acts Conception: This conception is problematic because (a) it assumes we have the ability to reliably distinguish between the direct and indirect acts of God; and (b) it reduces the evidential significance of miracles.

• (3) The Inexplicability Conception: This conception is flawed because we cannot reliably distinguish between an event is “in principle” inexplicable or simply inexplicable due to limitations in our current knowledge-base.

• (4) The Coincidence Conception: This conception is flawed because we are not entitled to infer God’s existence from a naturalistically explicable coincidence (note: an inexplicable coincidence would just suffer from the flaw associated with (3)).

Arguments to and from Miracles (Part 2) - Two Arguments against Violation Miracles

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This is the second part of my series on Chapter 6 of Nicholas Everitt’s book The Non-Existence of God. It also forms part of my series on Miracles.

Last time out, I covered Everitt’s interpretation of Hume’s argument against the rational acceptability of belief in violation miracles. A violation miracle is said to occur whenever some law of nature has been violated or transgressed.

Everitt would seem to summarise Hume’s argument as follows:

There is a complementary relationship between the evidence for the occurrence of a violation miracle and the evidence for the existence particular law of nature such that any evidence that was sufficiently strong to convince you that a violation had occurred would also be sufficiently strong to cast doubt over the existence of the relevant law of nature.

I won’t comment any further on this argument for the time being.

In addition to offering this interpretation of Hume, Everitt presents two further arguments against the possibility of violation miracles. These arguments count against the a priori possibility of violation miracles, not just against their rational acceptability. We will cover each of these arguments in this post.

To understand the two arguments, we first need to agree that any putative law of nature must possess the following feature:

• Universality: For X to count as a law of nature, it must say something about all or every member of a class, or about what always happens when something else happens; or, alternatively, it must say something about no members of a class or about what never happens.

Examples of laws of nature that seem to satisfy this criterion could include something like “Water always boils at 100 ° C at normal pressure” or “No iron can be turned into gold.”


1. The Incompatibility Argument
The first argument against the possibility of a violation argument rests on what appears to be an innocent, unassuming and uncontroversial logical principle, namely:

• What is incompatible with a truth must itself be false.

To see why this is uncontroversial, consider the following abstract example. Suppose there is statement “All As are Bs” and this statement is true. This statement implies a second statement “no As are not Bs”. Jointly these statements imply that if someone comes along claiming to have found an A that is not a B, what they say must be false.

This creates a problem for the proponent of violation miracles. Suppose it is alleged that the statement “no dead man can live again” is a law of nature. If this is true, then it implies that no living man could have been dead. Thus, anyone who claims that a dead man is now living must be saying something that is false.


2. Assessment of the Incompatibility Argument
On the face of it, this is an extremely simple objection to the violation sense of miracles. Indeed, it is so simple that some of the most sophisticated thinkers have dismissed it. Everitt considers some examples.

The first comes from the writings of J.L. Mackie who seems to accept that laws of nature must satisfy the criterion of universality but who has also said:

“An occasional violation [of a law of nature] does not in itself necessarily overthrow the independently established conclusion that this is a [working] law [of nature].”

This might be an accurate reflection of our psychological reaction to anomalies in our worldviews, but as a matter of logic Everitt thinks it is plain wrong. If laws of nature have the universalised form “All As are Bs” then it simply cannot be the case that there is a true statement of the form “An occasional A is not a B”.

A second example of the mistake comes from the work of Richard Swinburne. Swinburne employs what we might call the “exception-clause”-strategy in response to the incompatibility argument. In other words, he adds an exception to the law of nature that obviates the problem of logical incompatibility.

Specifically, Swinburne says that there can be non-repeatable exceptions to otherwise universal laws. This means that he thinks laws of nature look something like this:

• Swinburnian Law of Nature = All As are Bs, unless there is a non-repeatable exception.

As Everitt points out, this does nothing to solve the problem. Why not? Because this is simply a new generalisation which embraces two types of case (i) All As bar one being Bs and (ii) One A being not-B. This implies that should we come across one A which is not B, we have no grounds for saying it is a violation of a law of nature - the reputed violation is already included in the definition of the law.

Look at it like this. Suppose the statement “All swans are white, except for the black ones in Australia” is taken to be a law of nature. Now ask yourself whether this implies that the presence of black swans in Australia is a violation of a law of nature. Obviously, it implies nothing of the sort.


3. The Conceptual Confusion Argument
No doubt many readers will find that previous argument to be suspect, so here’s a second one that calls attention to a potential confusion in the concept of a law of nature.

Everitt notes that there are two types of laws: prescriptive and descriptive. Prescriptive laws tell us what ought to be the case or what ought to be done; descriptive laws tell us how things are or how they will be. There is no obvious contradiction involved in asserting that a prescriptive laws has been violated; there is an obvious contradiction involved in asserting that a descriptive law has been violated. This is because an accurate descriptive law is supposed to provide an accurate description of how the world actually is.

The contrasts between the prescriptive and descriptive senses of the term law are summarised in the following picture.

This brings us to the second argument against violation miracles. The argument states that the claim that there can exist violations of laws of nature confuses the prescriptive and descriptive senses of the word “law”. It is simply not possible to say that a true description of the world can be violated, and since that is what laws of nature are, it is not possible for there to be violation miracles.


4. Assessment
Everitt thinks that this second argument is successful and, when combined with the other argument, offers a fairly decisive rebuttal to the proponent of violation miracles. I'm not entirely convinced, but in any event, as we saw when discussing Hume, the believer in miracles has a fairly simple response to these arguments: abandon the concept of violation miracles.

We’ll consider some of the alternatives in the next part.

Arguments to and from Miracles (Part 1) - Hume and Violation Miracles

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This post serves a dual function. It is part of my series on Nicholas Everitt’s book The Non-Existence of God, and my series on Miracles.

Over the next few posts I will be covering chapter 6 of Everitt’s book, entitled “Arguments to and from Miracles”. This will serve as a nice, gentle and general introduction to the philosophical issues associated with miracles and miracle claims.

Everitt begins his chapter by noting that miracles are thought to be both indicators of God’s existence and (potentially) God’s character. He then observes that one of the problems associated with evaluating arguments to and from miracles is that they frequently rely on different senses of the term "miracle".

In this entry we will discuss the violation sense of the term "miracle".


1. Hume and Violation Miracles
We begin with the locus classicus: Hume’s discussion of violation miracles in his essay “Of Miracles”. This is a text to which we will return time and again throughout this series as it has shaped the contours of the modern philosophical discussion. In his essay, Hume defines miracles as follows:

• “Miracle” = a violation (or transgression) of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity.

This violation sense of the term miracle is undoubtedly popular. The idea, presumably, is that the natural world is governed by a set of laws determining regular unfolding of events and that the only being who could violate such laws would have to be supernatural in origin.

The problem with this is that although there may well be a fixed set of natural laws, we are not necessarily any good at identifying them. Thus, it will be difficult to assess whether a putative violation is due the actual intervention of God, or due to an error in how we have been identifying the laws of nature. Hume, as we shall see, uses this as the basis for an argument against believing in miracles.

Before outlining Hume’s argument, Everitt stops to make a couple of points.

First, some believers argue that even if we could identify them, violations of the laws of nature would not necessarily be evidence for the existence of God. They contend that the violation must contribute to some divine purpose. Of course, this assumes that we have some alternative source of information about divine purposes.

Second, it is not necessary to assume -- even on this definition -- that miracles are rare. Indeed, some religious doctrines suggest that miracles might be commonplace. As examples of this consider some of the claims made concerning the success of petitionary prayer, and the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. That said, regular occurrence of miracles might create some problems from an evidential perspective, as we shall see.


2. Hume’s Argument
In his essay on miracles, Hume makes two simple arguments. The first is an in principle argument. It suggests that it is (in principle) impossible to rationally believe in the occurrence of violation miracles. The second is an in fact argument. It suggests that the existing testimony is weak.

The in principle argument relies on Hume’s mini-theory of rational belief. This has two elements to it: (i) beliefs must be proportionate to the available evidence and (ii) the prior improbability of an event increases the evidence needed to prove that the event occurred.

To see how Hume’s mini-theory works, consider a simple example: a friend of yours tells you that they saw a cow in a field. Assume your friend’s eyesight is normal and they have no reason to lie. Should you believe them? I would say yes: the presence of a cow in a field does not suffer from prior improbability and so relatively little evidence is needed to make belief in the presence of that cow rationally acceptable.

Now imagine a second version of this. This time around your friend claims that they saw a three-headed cow in the field. Should you believe them? No: the existence of a three-headed cow suffers from prior improbability and so you will need more than one eyewitness to convince you of its presence. You would probably need several (independent!) eyewitnesses, photographic evidence and may even like to confirm it for yourself.

Based on this example, Hume’s mini-theory of rationality seems unexceptionable. But now consider how it applies when you’re receiving testimony about the occurrence of a violation miracle. To make belief in this miracle rationally acceptable, two propositions need to be established:

• (1) That there is a law of nature L.

• (2) That event E (a violation of L) has occurred.

It is worth emphasising the point that both of these need to established, not just (2). But since our beliefs must be proportionate to the evidence, and since we could err in our identification of the laws of nature, Hume points out that:

• (3) The statement that E has occurred contradicts the statement that L is a law of nature.

In other words, any evidence that is sufficiently strong to prove the occurrence of E would also be evidence that counts against L’s status as a law of nature. It might be that L really is a law of nature and E really is a miracle, but it might also be that E is something that should encourage us to revise our commitment to L.

This is Hume’s in principle argument. Note that although Hume explicitly refers to belief in E that is based on testimony, the same argument holds even if you have observed the evidence for E yourself.

Hume follows this up with a discussion of the kinds of evidence that usually is presented to support belief in miracles and finds it to be not even of sufficient strength to warrant agnosticism. We won’t discuss that argument here.


3. Assessing Hume’s Argument
In assessing Hume’s argument, Everitt points out that Hume is not claiming that violation miracles are impossible. This is a common misinterpretation, one to which even the most sophisticated of Bayesian interpreters can fall prey. Rather, Hume is claiming that the following disjunctive conclusion must be reached:

• (4) Either it is rational to believe that E occurred but was not a violation miracle, or it is rational to believe that E did not occur.

Everitt thinks that many commentators fail to understand both the strengths and the limitations of this conclusion.

As an example, he cites Brian Davies who argues that although testimony may fail to provide rationally compelling evidence of miracles, the testimony could be corroborated by physical evidence. The idea being that historical events leave causal traces in the present that could be recovered.

Everitt responds by saying that this could very well be true, but that it misses the point. The point is not that testimony is particularly weak form of evidence; the point is that evidence for miracles and laws of nature complement one another. The more credible is the evidence for the miracle; the less credible is the evidence for the law of nature, and vice versa.

Everitt thinks that, when understood properly, Hume’s argument really does provide a decisive blow to arguments supporting the occurrence of violation miracles. But he qualifies this by saying that the decisive blow could be avoided by simply offering a different definition of miracles.


4. Conclusion
That is the extent of Everitt’s discussion of Hume’s argument. A few words are in order. Everitt studiously avoids the recent Bayesian interpretations and critiques of Hume’s argument. This is something for which he has been criticised. According to some of the Bayesian critiques, the disjunctive conclusion reached above is much too strong because there are conditions under which it may be permissible to believe in the occurrence of miracles.

We will consider some of these more sophisticated Bayesian critiques in future entries to this series. In the next post on Everitt’s chapter, we will consider two further arguments against the violation sense of miracles.

Miracles (Series Index)

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Miracles are important for religious believers. For some, they provide evidence for the truth of their beliefs; for others, they provide an insight into the nature of God and his plan for humanity; for still others, they serve as a valuable weapon in apologetic debates. The classic example of a miracle that serves all three functions (evidential, theological and apologetical) is of course the supposed resurrection of Jesus.

For sceptics and non-believers there are obvious questions that need to be asked about the religious fondness for miracles. First, we need to ask what exactly is a miracle. Second, we need to ask whether there is any good evidence for the occurrence of miracles. Third, we need to ask whether we can make successful inferences from the occurrence of miracles to the character of God. And finally, we need to ask whether miracle claims can be successfully deployed in the apologetic context.

This series of posts will explore each of these questions. Once again, as is my wont on this blog, the series will cover the work of others. The following is the plan of action. It is subject to revision in line with the shifting sands of my motivation and the interruptions of “real life”.

(1) Nicholas Everitt, “Arguments to and from Miracles” from The Non-Existence of God

• Hume and Violation Miracles

• Two Further Arguments Against Violation Miracles

• Direct-acts, Inexplicable and Coincidence Miracles

(2) The Devil’s Lying Wonders, by John Beaudoin

• An act of God or the Work of the Devil?

• Three Criteria for identifying the work of the Devil

• Further Criteria

(3) The Problem of the Evil/Miracle Ratio, by Morgan Luck

• Miracles and the Problem of Evil

• Thomistic Miracles and the Problem of Evil

(4) Against the Historical Possibility of Miracles, by Morgan Luck

• Is it logically possible to violate a law of nature?

• Historical Evidence and the Principle of Causal Closure

• Inferring God from the Existence of a Miracle

(5) The Bayesian Analysis of Hume’s Argument in “Of Miracles” (Various Authors)


(6) Fogelin in Defence of Hume's Argument