[James]

A miracle is “a violation of a law of nature” and “contrary to experience.”

I’ve been discussing these issues for over 20 years and I can honestly say that I’ve never in that time encountered one atheist who defined a miracle as “contrary to experience”. Why not? Because it would beg the question concerning whether the alleged miracle had happened or not. If miracles occur then they are not contrary to experience because people have experienced.

I realise that sceptics often use “miracle” as a short-hand way of referring to miracle claims and that may be a bit misleading / confusing, but that is what is happening. If I tell you that I walked upside down on the ceiling unaided yesterday, you don’t have evidence of a miracle. You only have evidence of a claim that a miracle took place.

Inductive warrant is relatively weak but if the evidence for a miracle claim is not sufficient to defeat expectations based on background experience then that can only be because the evidence for the miracle claim is weaker than the inductive warrant that calls it into question (and that is weak?. Let’s take my claim about walking on the ceiling unaided. In principle, you know what evidence for this would look like. Is that evidence there? No. So you shouldn’t believe my claim.

Secondly, you cannot disprove my claim that I walked upside down on the ceiling unaided but that is not a reason you should believe it. Miracle claims come with a heavy epistemic risk meaning, if you do form a belief that a miracle occurred and you are mistaken in your belief, you now have no way of finding out that you have made a mistake. If all you have is a claim and the evidence that would support the claim isn’t there then you should be cautious because the lack of corroborating evidence is consistent with the claim being false and if you mistakenly believe a false claim, you’ve now no way of finding out that you got it wrong.

Thirdly, even if the content of the claim is verified (and we don’t even have that for most miracle claims) and we grant that it took place, how do we know it was God and not some other supernatural being trying to deceive us that was behind the phenomenon?

Those who deny the existence of a creator are usually the same sort of people who define the existence of miracles as “a violation of a law of nature” and “contrary to experience.”

Everyone rejects at least some miracle claims and even if they concede that the event took place, they will attribute the miracle to something other than God. Muslims believe that Mohammed flew to Mecca on a winged horse. How many Christians (who are not atheists) think that actually took place? Catholics believe that Mary has made many appearances over the decades. How many Christian non-Catholics believe those claims? And even if they accept that the events occurred, how many believe that God was behind it, and not something else? Deists are not atheists, yet they reject miracle claims too, holding that God exists but does not intervene in the natural world. The question we need to be asking is, whose approach to miracle claims is the most consistent? That question cannot be answered simply by pointing out that the person in question is an atheist, deist, Catholic, Christian or what-not.

I’m afraid you’ve engaged in confirmation bias (also known as the “my side” fallacy in a context such as this) and what is affectionately known as a genetic fallacy. You’ve just totally ignored everyone who rejects miracle claims, or who refuses to attribute them to God even if they think they happened and who is not an atheist.

[James]

The third paragraph is messy and should read as follows:

Inductive warrant is relatively weak but if the evidence for a miracle claim is not sufficient to defeat expectations based on background experience then that can only be because the evidence for the miracle claim is weaker than the inductive warrant that calls it into question. Let’s take my claim about walking on the ceiling unaided. Based on background information and your knowledge of gravity, is this something people are able to do? No. Let’s be charitable and conclude that this isn’t strong enough to conclude that it cannot happen (eg, with divine help). What I’m claiming isn’t logically impossible and in principle, you know what evidence for this claim would look like. Is that evidence there? No. So you shouldn’t believe my claim.

Adding to the final paragraph … which miracle claims should we believe, and why should we believe those claims? Presumably it is not being suggested that people should believe all miracle claims. How does this embracing of particular miracle claims form part of a consistent, non fallacious (eg, question begging) approach to miracle claims?

[Poul]

“Within the framework of an atheist, the universe came about by random chance.“

No. All the atheists will agree on is to reject the idea that the Universe has a supernatural cause.

“Now if the earth came about this way, it necessarily follows that the laws of nature are also random.“

That absolutely does not follow. The most fundamental law of nature that we “know” of (the Schrödinger equation) describes probabilities of events happening at the atomic scale (this video explains how an uncaused universe and ultimately the Earth may have come about). We don’t know why the laws of Nature are as we observe them to be, but that doesn’t make them random.

“If the laws of nature are random, then why is it so jarring to see something contrary to such?“

Because we have overwhelming evidence that they are not.

“What is stopping the laws of nature from changing?“

We don’t know. It’s an observation.

“The only justification appears to be that the laws of nature were always the way they are because of experience and so will never change. This is exemplified in the problem of induction. Just because I have dropped a marker and it has fallen every time does not give sufficient evidence that it will always do so in the future.“

But, conversely, given our observations, you would need to argue for why we shouldn’t trust the laws of Nature to be unchanging.

“Within this context, miracles can easily be described simply as above nature. There is no clear way to understand why the laws of nature are the way they are, so how can atheists so strongly say that miracles should not be trusted because they are contrary to them?“

Because our confidence in knowing the laws of Nature is strong enough to assume that anecdotal evidence of so-called miracles do not actually violate those laws.

You may pray to God for a miracle, but don’t expect to be heard.

en.wikipedia.org

Schrödinger equation - Wikipedia

Schrödinger equation - Wikipedia

[James]

Atheists agree that they do not accept the claim that the universe had a supernatural cause, they will not agree that they reject that claim.

“What is stopping the laws of nature from changing?” assumes that the laws of nature can change and that something needs to stop this from happening. It first needs to be established that the laws of nature can in fact change, before we need to posit something that stops it from happening. The problem of induction is a philosophical problem and it can be pointed out that it exists, but the existence of the problem does not entail that natural regularities can actually change.

[Fred]

” if miracles are the work of the divine, why do they have to be discredited because they are “a violation of a law of nature” and “contrary to experience.”

Miracles aren’t “discredited” for being contrary to the laws if nature; they are DEFINED to be events contrary to laws of nature.

Miracles certainly are “contrary to experience”, and that’s because we the world behaves according to laws of nature.

“If God is constrained by those two things…”

It would make no sense for an atheist to claim a hypothetical God would be so constrained. Quite the opposite. The fact that we see no violations of laws of nature is a reason to be skeptical that a miracle-working God exists.

OTOH, DEIST’s generally believe in a “God” that does not intervene in the universe (after creation event).

“Within the framework of an atheist, the universe came about by random chance. Now if the earth came about this way, it necessarily follows that the laws of nature are also random. If the laws of nature are random, then why is it so jarring to see something contrary to such? What is stopping the laws of nature from changing?”

No, the universe (=the totality of material reality) did not come about by “random chance”. Randomness follows from something prior (e.g. quantum uncertainty). Rather, the universe exists by “brute fact”, which implies uncaused and thus nothing prior that could have resulted in a different world with different laws of nature.

Laws of nature entail necessitation: specific antecedent conditions necessitate certain consequences (in the case of quantum uncertainty, the consequences are probabilistic- but their range and probability distribution are necessary). That’s what it means to be a “law”.

“There is no clear way to understand why the laws of nature are the way they are…”

If something exists by brute fact, then there IS no explanation for it being as it is – it wasn’t caused. This is true of laws of nature (under naturalism), and it is also true under theism: there’s no explanation for God being as he is.

Example: assume an omnibenevolent God exists. There’s no reason for this; hypothetically, he could have been omnimalevolent. But his omnibenevolence is a brute fact, and since it wasn’t caused – it could not have been different.

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by  Fred.

[James]

I did find it intriguing that Cat seemed unaware that “a temporary violation of natural law” is a definition of “a miracle” supplied by and agreed upon by theists. If everyone could walk on water and was doing it regularly, Jesus wouldn’t be thought capable of anything remarkable. How would God regularly enabling this be distinguished from a natural regulatory under such circumstances?

“Contrary to experience” does risk question begging in the strictest sense. If people have experienced miracles then it isn’t true simpliciter that miracles are contrary to experience. I prefer the more modest “for most of us, acceptance of a miracle claim won’t be inductively warranted”.

[Sam (Agnostic)]

Cat objected to this argument which claims we should not believe in miracles as laid out below:

1. A miracle is “a violation of a law of nature” and “contrary to experience.”

2. If so, then the prior probability of a miracle is very low.

3. Therefore, the prior probability of a miracle is very low.

4. If so, we should believe in the miracle only if the evidence for it is extremely strong. (3,4 MP)

5. The evidence for a miracle is never extremely strong.

6. So, we should never believe in any miracle. (5, 6 MT)

As Cat objected to premise 1, I would like to object to premise 4 because I don’t think we should believe in miracles only if the evidence for it is extremely strong. People believe in miracles even when the evidence for it is not strong, that is partly why certain things can be referred to as miracles. When we do not have all the information, we need to know something and we choose to believe it because it is good for some reason.. For cancer patients, the chance of full recovery differs with each kind of cancer, but whichever one it is, the patient should believe in full recovery even if the evidence for it is not strong, in this case, the evidence could be the doctor’s diagnosis or the preexisting data for previous cancer patients. The reason for that is that cancer patients actually have a better chance at recovery if they believe they are going to recover, just like sometimes people feel better as soon as they put pills in their mouth when they are not feeling well. There is a certain strength in believing they will heal that eventually helped cancer patients to heal, and in this case, even if the evidence doesn’t suggest they might heal, as it might be a miracle to heal, there are practical benefits to believing in healing, even if it is a miracle with no enough evidence.

[James]

For cancer patients, the chance of full recovery differs with each kind of cancer, but whichever one it is, the patient should believe in full recovery even if the evidence for it is not strong, in this case, the evidence could be the doctor’s diagnosis or the preexisting data for previous cancer patients.

In circumstances like this, a phenomenon known as the placebo effect would justify encouraging a positive approach in the patient. This is because the belief itself is known to have positive benefits for the patient, even if it is help with pain improvement. In other words, this is a set of circumstances where the belief itself could impact the outcome and therefore, encouraging the belief is warranted.

This wouldn’t apply where the belief has no impact whatsoever on the outcomes (whether the belief is held is true of false). It could be argued that certain beliefs (eg, Jesus raising people from the dead for a future life in Heaven) has positive outcomes even if the belief is mistaken but then it becomes a question of what matters most to people. That their beliefs make them feel better or that their beliefs are true?

[James]

The comment in the opening post seems to belie a view that induction is the only warrant for confidence in natural regularities. This is not the case. Our confidence in natural regularities is also the best explanation for our ability to accurately predict future events.

For example, let’s say I take 5000 people and under controlled conditions, ask each one to drop a ball. I predict that the ball will fall to the ground 5000 times and I get this correct. I am a non-omniscient being and for each of these 5000 occurrences, it is a unique event that has never occurred before in the history of the universe. So how was I able to predict the outcome with such a high degree of accuracy? After all, I’m also predicting what an omniscient and omnipotent being won’t do (cause ball to float in mid air etc). That the balls cannot do anything else under the circumstances (once they are controlled and carefully monitored) is the best explanation for our predictive success under certain conditions. The existence of an omnipotent and miracle working being who can occasionally interfere for reasons we don’t understand isn’t the best explanation for why these non-omniscient beings are getting their predictions 100% correct about certain things and under controlled conditions because such a being is the one factor that we cannot control and could still interfere.