by jimwalton » Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:03 pm
One of your obstacles seems to be miracles, so let's talk about that.
The first step in any discussion about miracles is to define a miracle. Some philosophers say that it is an occurrence contrary to nature, but we shouldn’t be so quick to embrace that definition and then find our hands tied by our own definition. The Bible never claims that God violated the laws He Himself imposed on the world. Maybe a miracle is God working with the laws of nature rather than against them, just in a different manner and on a different time scale. C.S. Lewis, for one, said that miracles were just nature on a different time continuum, like fast forward. He said water always turns to wine; it just usually takes four months instead of one second; human bodies have the capability to heal, just not instantaneously at the word of the Master. So what is a miracle?
The Cambridge Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (pg. 208) defines a miracle as “An event (ultimately) caused by God that cannot be accounted for by the natural powers of natural substances alone. Conceived of this way, miracles don’t violate the laws of nature but rather involve the occurrence of events which cannot be explained by the powers of nature alone.” That’s an acceptable definition, but I would tentatively define miracle as “a supernatural exception to the regularity and predictability of the universe, and therefore it is not a common (this term needs to be interpreted) occurrence.” Maybe the laws of nature speak of naturally recurring events, and miracles speak of supernaturally nonrecurring events. After all, the laws of nature are not really laws, but rather more accurately forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong field forces) and constructs (velocity, mass, energy, acceleration). Einstein’s theory of relativity lets us know that velocity makes a difference in reality and can come into play in ways we are still deciphering. It’s quite possible that God has forces as yet unknown to us, and can manipulate velocity, as well as other forces, to initiate relative states.
Secondly, we should realize that science cannot prove that miracles are impossible. After all, science can only speak to what is within the purview of scientific observation and the study of nature. Anything outside of that ballpark is outside of its scope. Science can’t prove to us whether entities exist outside of nature, and whether or not those entities could possibly have an influence in our natural world.
Since a miracle, by any definition, is a once only, nonrecurring event, it is outside the scope of science (which can only observe and test recurring sequences) and naturalistic evidence. Miracles can only be proven in two ways: (1) that they can be shown to be logically consistent with the physical world—the way things are, or (2) by enough corroborating, credible eyewitnesses to substantiate the claim being made.
For instance, if I put $20 in your pocket today, and then another $20 in there tomorrow, logic and reason would tell me that there will be $40 in your pocket. And of course that’s true, provided that no one has meddled in your pocket. So one of the first things to establish when we discuss the possibility of miracles is to find out whether your presuppositions have ruled out all “meddling” by definition. In that case, of course miracles are impossible to prove. You have made it impossible by your arbitrary definition. The second thing to notice is that nature is full of once-only, non-recurring events, such as the cosmic blast that happened in Russia in 2013. It would be sort of foolish for a group of scientists to gather there saying, “C’mon, do it again!”
As far as the second, if you have enough trustworthy people whose eyewitness accounts corroborate with each other, even though the event may not repeat, it could be considered to be accepted as reality if their testimony is reliable. Even our courts accept such testimony.
There is no philosophical argument or scientific experiment that conclusively disproves the possibility of miracles. Scientifically speaking, the odds of certain miracles occurring (such as the resurrection) may be infinity to one, but theologically speaking they are x:x (unknown to unknown). Miracles are outside of the scope of probability calculations, as I've already mentioned. But realistically, the question is not so much “Can they occur?” but “Do they occur?” Anyone will admit that scientists exclude the miraculous from their scientific work, which they are entitled to do. But that’s because if a scientist tried to offer a miraculous explanation for something, he or she would no longer be doing science, but something else, like theology or philosophy. Miracles are inadmissible as scientific evidence because they are unpredictable, not able to be compared with a control group, and unrepeatable for confirmatory studies.
Ultimately you are asking the wrong question of the wrong discipline. Science can really only work in a uniform environment that is predictable, repeatable, and (in this situation) controllable (a control group and an experimental group). Evidentiary demands require some sort of material remains that allow a phenomenon to be studied, but this requirement is outside of the sphere of what we mean by “miracle.” Miracles are not predictable (so the situation can’t be intentionally studied before the event), reproducible (so the situation can’t be tested again to confirm hypotheses), nor controllable (cannot isolate causal mechanisms).
Science is appropriate when dealing with repeatable (reproducible) phenomena that can be studied under controlled conditions and give confirmatory results. One time events that were unpredictable and don’t leave behind any material evidence can’t possibly fall under that category. Suppose you had a sneezing fit a few weeks back. I want you to quantify it and analyze it, or better yet, prove to me that it happened. That’s not possible, Should I then assume you never sneeze, never sneezed, and that you’re wrong until you can prove it? What evidence do you have that you had a sneezing fit? Or walked around the mall last month? Or saw a catamount? We have to use the proper measure for the proper category. And science is not the proper measure for understanding or proving miracles. Even in the area of astronomy, for instance, where some phenomena are one-time only events, to study them scientifically requires multiple repeatable examples that can be observed and compared/contrasted. Again, miracles don’t fall into this category.
In short, the bottom line is that knowledge is not one-dimensional. The methods of evidentiary scientific study are not applicable to much of our knowledge, including the occasion of miracles. Attempting to extend scientific evidence as the grounds of all knowledge is doomed to failure in many arenas, not just this one. To presume that anything remaining outside of science’s scope fails to qualify as knowledge is not justified by science or any other argument, and is, in fact, self-contradictory.
Can anyone prove that a once-only nonrecurring event is a miracle from God or not? No, because either way it’s an interpretation of what one has seen or experienced. We all decide based on what we determine to be consistent with our understanding of the world and the evidences on which we build those understandings.
Let’s talk a little bit, then, about Newtonian physics and miracles. People’s main problem with miracles is that they mess with what people know about science, while at the same time requiring them (if accepted) to subscribe to metaphysical realities like spirits and spiritual forces. But if we are honest philosophers and scientists, we have to be open to reputable questions (as any scientist would ask): Why can’t the causal continuum be interfered with by supernatural and transcendent powers? Why are miracles necessarily incompatible with modern science? A little probing will reveal that they are not. They are only incompatible if it can be proved that nature is a closed continuum of cause and effect, and closed to any intervention from outside that continuum. Classical (Newtonian) science is nowhere near sufficient for anti-interventionism. Newton himself believed that the laws he observed reflected the nature of what God had created. According to Newton, natural law describes how the world works when, or provided that, the world is a closed system, subject to no meddling. The Newtonian laws of physics only apply to isolated or closed systems, but there is nothing in them to say there is or can be no God who can intervene in such a system to make change to the matter or energy in question. Furthermore, it is not part of Newtonian mechanics or classical science generally to declare that the material universe is a closed system—because that claim isn’t scientific, but theological, philosophical, or metaphysical. The laws don’t tell us how things have to go, or even how they always go, but only how they go when no outside agency acts on them.
Interestingly, quantum mechanics offers even less of a problem for special divine action than classical science, since quantum mechanics is characterized by (among other things) indeterminism: a spectrum of probabilities to the possible outcomes. Quantum mechanics doesn’t by necessity prohibit any answers to prayer, raising the dead, or walking on the water.
Looking at miracles even another way, it’s absurd to think that everything must be subject to scientific proof and evidence, and miracles are in that category as well. We are wrong even to think that miracles should be or can be subject to scientific inquiry. There are thousands of things we know that are not subject to scientific proof (as critics want miracles to be): I like apple pie, I forgive you, I felt chilly yesterday, I saw a beautiful sunset five days ago, Bill is my friend, that wasn’t fair, I’m in love with Denise, I’m afraid of heights, my favorite movie is “Gladiator,” I feel at peace with myself. There are millions of these. We’re just in the wrong arena to think that we can use science to prove these things. There are also things that exist, that are coherent, but not scientific: peace, justice, love, memory, reason, values, to name a few. There are disciplines that have nothing to do with science, but they are still legitimate ways to know things: jurisprudence, economics, history, literature, politics, art, philosophy, logic, and theology. As it turns out, probably most of what we know is not subject to scientific verification, nor can it be considered scientific knowledge. Miracles also fall into this category. It is both illogical and unreasonable to apply scientific reason or necessity to the possibility or veracity of miracles. While we can bring some scientific thinking to bear as we evaluate them, they are just as much outside of the purview of science as “I forgive you.”