The main argument against miracles

[Oreoracle]

Let me stop you right there.

•You can’t log into the network.
•If you have a current password, then you can log into the network.

Conclusion:
•You don’t have a current password.

But this is not correct. You can’t log into the network because your Ethernet cable is bad, or because the network is down for maintenance. This “form of argument” did not work this time.

In logic, there is a distinction between “sound” arguments and “valid” arguments. A valid form of argument is always true if its premises are true. A sound argument is a valid argument whose premises are indeed true. Your argument was valid but not sound because your second premise was false.

Here is some further reading on the uncertainties of the theory mentioned, without mentioning God’s “tummy ache”.

I am aware that our current theories are uncertain. But there is a difference between saying 1) I am not certain and 2) I could not be certain even in principle. I think most physicists, while confessing that they are uncertain, would agree that there are laws of physics and that they are intelligible by humans. As my previous post demonstrates, however, if God intervenes with the universe’s affairs, then one cannot distinguish between the failure of a physical law and a miracle.

 

[Forged]

In logic, there is a distinction between “sound” arguments and “valid” arguments. A valid form of argument is always true if its premises are true. A sound argument is a valid argument whose premises are indeed true. Your argument was valid but not sound because your second premise was false.

We are discussing inductive arguments, not deductive.

iep.utm.edu/ded-ind/

 

[ShynSup]

In logic, there is a distinction between “sound” arguments and “valid” arguments. A valid form of argument is always true if its premises are true. A sound argument is a valid argument whose premises are indeed true. Your argument was valid but not sound because your second premise was false.

I am aware that our current theories are uncertain. But there is a difference between saying 1) I am not certain and 2) I could not be certain even in principle. I think most physicists, while confessing that they are uncertain, would agree that there are laws of physics and that they are intelligible by humans. As my previous post demonstrates, however, if God intervenes with the universe’s affairs, then one cannot distinguish between the failure of a physical law and a miracle.

You dont seem to comprehend:

God’s “interference” if thats how you wanna call it, is not subjected to this world rules.

Miracles happen in another dimension to put it some way.

Also, what if they are no universal physical laws? Another planet could have different laws than ours. Of course there is no way of proving it otherwise until you have checked all planets in the universe. Then what about stars? Or what if its not an universe but a multiverse? We will never know.

Regarding how to differ a miracle from a physical law failure, easy, miracles are not subject to physical laws. Its not a failure of the law, its that the event is happening on another plane.

Anyways, its even easier, if anything can be related to Jesus, Christianity, its a miracle. If not, you got new evidence, which means you will have to make up your laws again.

Edit: regarding the dice example: God is not subject to any rule, and thus, unpredictable.
But unpredictable to what point? This means one day he can decide to stop being all loving? Of course he can, but he wont. Source? His word.

 

[balto]

I think that if the universe really does obey rules (and I suspect I does), then the rules must be knowable.

But if all the rules are knowable, does that mean we can have an absolute complete picture of the universe and make predictions with presumably 100% accuracy? If so, how would we know that we “know it all.” You would have to extend your predictions to infinity to have confidence that the accuracy is 100% and not 99.99998%.

Frankly, I don’t see the difference between postulating unknowable rules and claiming that the rules don’t exist, so I think both people in this hypothetical scenario are actually in agreement. If there are rules,* they are necessarily the subject matter of logic *and ought to be provable in principle. To say the rules can’t be demonstrated is to say they don’t exist.

I understand what you are saying but I don’t know why we are assuming that everything must be knowable to us. Consider the law of segregation in Mendelian genetics which stipulates that during meiotic cell division the homologous chromosomes are separated into separate gametes. Is this a strict law? No, it’s only a ceteris paribus law because it has exceptions (i.e. errors during cell division or chromosome replication could violate the law). That’s all well and good though because there are laws of chemistry and physics that supersede the law of segregation that explain these occurrences. But how do we know those laws aren’t ceteris paribus laws as well? I may be wrong but I thought that physical research has suggested that these laws break down at the quantum level. Does that mean there’s a grand unified Law that covers all of reality? I contend yes but that would be God. Even if you don’t accept that it is God, either way it still is not something that can be completely understood by us (because it would be metaphysically simple and therefore lacks restraints on its being, which we obviously have).

To get back to the question of miracles, I think you are conceiving of God in deistic terms whereas I am thinking about Him in the classical sense. The deistic view is that God created the universe, gave it laws, and then leaves it to operate by its own right. A miracle would then be God coming by to play a trick on us just because He can, which would be troubling to me as well. But in the classical sense God is constantly sustaining the universe so it never operates “in its own right.” So-called miracles were always a part of the universe or the “grand unified law”.

To answer the dice question, I presume you would determine the validity of the proposed law the same way you would validate any other law: observing relationships between events and determining that certain things tend to lead to others. But this would probably still be a ceteris paribus law. The ultimate cause of everything in the universe is the will of God (which is unchanging in the classical sense and not arbitrary). That we cannot completely understand it does not mean that it’s the same as not having to operate under it at all (people still had to obey the law of gravity even when we didn’t understand it, even if we never understood it).

I think you might run into another problem with believing that the laws of physics are constant and unchanging. Isn’t their existence in a sense “miraculous” and have to be accepted as brute facts? Doesn’t doing so make them unknowable (we don’t know why they exist or why they are immutable or if they are even immutable)?

 

[MPat]

Right, but physical laws become pointless if we don’t know when we’re allowed to use them.

I think that if the universe really does obey rules (and I suspect I does), then the rules must be knowable. Your question sums up some of the questions of others, so let me address it further.

Suppose we have idealized dice, such that the results of each roll are random. If we rolled these dice several times and recorded the results, the sequence of numbers would have no statistical pattern in the sense that we wouldn’t be able to predict the next number of the sequence. You would be perfectly justified in saying that this sequence follows no rules–if it did, it wouldn’t be random.

But suppose someone else disagrees, and says that the dice do obey rules; he insists that there is a perspective one could adopt that would allow future entries of the series to be predicted. Now you would be very skeptical and would naturally ask what these rules are. The other person tells you that the rules aren’t known, and indeed they can’t even be known in principle. We can’t find them with empirical methods, or even with logic.

Frankly, I don’t see the difference between postulating unknowable rules and claiming that the rules don’t exist, so I think both people in this hypothetical scenario are actually in agreement. If there are rules,* they are necessarily the subject matter of logic *and ought to be provable in principle. To say the rules can’t be demonstrated is to say they don’t exist.

But perhaps I’m wrong, in which case one of these two requests could be met: 1) Name a situation in which results are unpredictable but the notion that there are unknowable rules could lead us astray. 2) Name a situation in which there are unknowable rules being obeyed but the notion that these rules don’t exist leads us astray. The two claims seem interchangeable to me.

Or, if you prefer, you may address my hypothetical scenario: If the other person is wrong about the dice following unknowable rules, then how could this be demonstrated (logically or empirically)?

OK, let’s see. We know that busy beaver function (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver) exists. We also know that its values cannot be computed by any Turing machine (that has been proved).

On a very related note, we do know that it is impossible to know (in the general case) if a given Turing machine stops or doesn’t stop. Yet we do know that each Turing machine either stops or doesn’t stop, even if we have no way (in general) to find out what actually happens with a given one. In short, just because we have no way to find out if something is true, it doesn’t follow that this “something” is not true.

Yet that is only true for humans: it doesn’t mean that God couldn’t “wait for an infinite time” (that is definitely not accurate wording, as God is outside of time, but it will have to do) and see the answer.

So, on basis of that, would you say that Turing machines are “unknowable”…? After all, we do know many true things about them, even if we do not know everything and there are some things that we will never know in this life (even in principle)…

I’m glad you brought that up. Here is my issue: Suppose I postulate a law of physics which is known to be incorrect in some cases–Hooke’s Law is a good example of a law that isn’t very general. We of course “know” that this law isn’t very general, but if miracles are allowed, we could be very wrong about this. Perhaps Hooke’s Law is more general than we thought, but God happens to suspend the law frequently.

Sorry, but that law is not “incorrect in some cases”. It is “inaccurate”. Remember: the “laws” of nature that we find are meant to be approximations. It is only natural that sometimes the error becomes higher than we want it to be.

In general, it would be impossible to tell the difference between 1) a law genuinely not being universal and 2) a law being universal but being perpetually suspended by God’s will. So this uncertainty is extremely relevant to physics.

Well, can you distinguish it from the case where we just didn’t measure the things accurately enough…? I’d say that is not likely, and thus we won’t ever reach the point where the problem you mention is going to be relevant…

 

[polytropos]

Right, but physical laws become pointless if we don’t know when we’re allowed to use them.

Consider the state of our current knowledge in the physical sciences and our capabilities of applying the physical sciences to technology and medicine. Now suppose that occasionally miracles occur in isolated incidents. (Something the Catholic Church actually claims.) I am sure that you would not be convinced by such claims, but it seems rather clear that if they are true, they are consistent with our current knowledge in the physical sciences, technology, medicine, etc.

So the occurrence of miracles (and human knowledge of such occurrences) seem to be consistent with physical laws not being pointless. It seems like you have two presuppositions:

(1) If miracles occur, then we don’t know how to apply physical laws.
(2) If we don’t know how to apply physical laws, then physical laws are pointless.

Since it seems like the occurrence of miracles is consistent with humanity’s current scientific development, I am inclined to think that (1) is false, and is too strong of a claim.

Here is my issue: Suppose I postulate a law of physics which is known to be incorrect in some cases–Hooke’s Law is a good example of a law that isn’t very general. We of course “know” that this law isn’t very general, but if miracles are allowed, we could be very wrong about this. Perhaps Hooke’s Law is more general than we thought, but God happens to suspend the law frequently.

In general, it would be impossible to tell the difference between 1) a law genuinely not being universal and 2) a law being universal but being perpetually suspended by God’s will. So this uncertainty is extremely relevant to physics.

I am a latecomer to this thread, so would you mind clarifying your overall argument for me? You are saying that the uncertainty entailed by the occurrence of miracles is relevant to physics. What are the implications of this “relevance”?

One could take your point further: If miracles can occur, then possibly occasionalism is true. But I don’t really see how that causes any issues for scientific practice. (At least not any issues that should count as evidence against miracles.) If one substitutes weaker theories (say, the occasional suspension of Hooke’s law) for “occasionalism,” it does not make the point any more cogent.

 

[Oreoracle]

You all have given me a lot to think about, and if it’s all the same, I think I will withdraw from the thread for now to digest things a bit more. I suspect that, as some have said, I did overextend my arguments a bit. Once I feel out the boundaries of my arguments, I might make a thread over the topic. I think I’ve hijacked this thread quite enough as it is (sorry to the OP).

Since polytropos is a latecomer and is interested in my position, I will explain the gist of it before I take my leave.

I am a latecomer to this thread, so would you mind clarifying your overall argument for me?

Let’s begin with three premises: 1) The universe is predictable; that is, it obeys certain rules. 2) God’s behavior obeys certain rules as well. This is in accordance with Catholic precepts such as “God is Logic”. 3) God performs miracles.

In my first post I pointed out that (2) would make God’s behavior predictable in the same way that the observable universe is predictable. This in turn would make God’s miracles predictable. So if we hypothetically knew the rules by which God operates, we could account for everything, miracles included. From this perspective, miracles would just be another set of phenomena we could predict and wouldn’t be “miraculous” at all.

The main disagreement others seem to have is the assumption that we can know God’s rules just because they exist. I have other philosophical commitments that make this assumption more plausible. For instance, if God is indeed a logical being, his rules should be knowable in principle just as every theorem in math is knowable in principle. It’s clear that the others have a different idea of what “God is Logic” means, however. I’ve also pointed out that, in practice, there is little difference between claiming rules don’t exist and claiming that there are rules, but they’re unknowable. Either way, you lack the ability to predict the phenomenon in question.

The second disagreement concerns these counterarguments I’ve given: If God being unknowable makes some of the universe’s behavior uncertain, then how far does this uncertainty spread? I contend that it spreads through all of physics, since one cannot distinguish between whether or not a physical law works or whether God is simply suspending the law. For example, perhaps gravity doesn’t exist at all, and God is simply suspending the “real” laws of physics.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

For instance, if God is indeed a logical being, his rules should be knowable in principle just as every theorem in math is knowable in principle.

His rules are knowable in principle, because *He *knows them. It is not required, for them to be “knowable in principle”, that our minds could understand them.

 

[balto]

His rules are knowable in principle, because *He *knows them. It is not required, for them to be “knowable in principle”, that our minds could understand them.

Agreed. I think humans can only have a potentially infinite understanding of God and reality (i.e. our knowledge can grow ad infinitum but it will always be a finite amount of knowledge) but not an actual infinity of understanding as God has.

Oreoracle:

You all have given me a lot to think about, and if it’s all the same, I think I will withdraw from the thread for now to digest things a bit more. I suspect that, as some have said, I did overextend my arguments a bit. Once I feel out the boundaries of my arguments, I might make a thread over the topic. I think I’ve hijacked this thread quite enough as it is (sorry to the OP).

Well you’ve given me a lot to think about as well and your efforts are forcing me to understand my position better, which is good. So I for one definitely appreciate your contributions on this on other threads . I look forward to your eventual rebuttal.

 

[Portofino]

Consider the state of our current knowledge in the physical sciences and our capabilities of applying the physical sciences to technology and medicine. Now suppose that occasionally miracles occur in isolated incidents. (Something the Catholic Church actually claims.) I am sure that you would not be convinced by such claims, but it seems rather clear that if they are true, they are consistent with our current knowledge in the physical sciences, technology, medicine, etc.

So the occurrence of miracles (and human knowledge of such occurrences) seem to be consistent with physical laws not being pointless. It seems like you have two presuppositions:

(1) If miracles occur, then we don’t know how to apply physical laws.
(2) If we don’t know how to apply physical laws, then physical laws are pointless.

Since it seems like the occurrence of miracles is consistent with humanity’s current scientific development, I am inclined to think that (1) is false, and is too strong of a claim.

Agreed. If, however, (1) had been formulated, “if miracles occur with almost as great a frequency as non-miracles occur, we would not know how to apply physical laws” then the above would not be false. It would, of course, be an open question as to what the threshold of frequency would be – 10% of the time; 20% of the time? Even this would be high, such as to permit one not to assume naturalistic explanations as the most likely ones (even though, technically, they still would be the most likely, at 80% or 90% of the time).

If miracles occurred with almost as great a frequency as non-miracles occurred, they might itself lead one to believe that there is a pattern in the miracles; though, presumably, discerning a pattern would prove fruitless, and discerning a mechanism by which miracles are affected would prove fruitless.

What isolated cases of miracles reasonably permit one to do is to assume that, in any case, a miracle is improbable and that one should not concede that a miracle has occurred until one has exhausted all naturalistic explanations (though our ignorance of nature may leave doubt as to whether all naturalistic explanations definitively have been excluded).

If the above were not the case, we would not have had enough “faith” in naturalistic explanations to have abstracted the “laws of nature” in the first place. We would not have trusted them sufficiently. And “even” the Vatican, in its verification of miracles, sticks with this position that a naturalistic explanation is more probable than a miraculous explanation, and is the avenue to be explored first (nor an avenue to be hastily abandoned). Of course, opinions differ as to what constitutes a sufficient search for naturalistic explanations, before abandoning the presumption of the likelihood of a naturalistic explanation in favor of granting that an event was likely miraculous.

 

[polytropos]

Agreed. If, however, (1) had been formulated, “if miracles occur with almost as great a frequency as non-miracles occur, we would not know how to apply physical laws” then the above would not be false. It would, of course, be an open question as to what the threshold of frequency would be – 10% of the time; 20% of the time? Even this would be high, such as to permit one not to assume naturalistic explanations as the most likely ones (even though, technically, they still would be the most likely, at 80% or 90% of the time).

If miracles occurred with almost as great a frequency as non-miracles occurred, they might itself lead one to believe that there is a pattern in the miracles; though, presumably, discerning a pattern would prove fruitless, and discerning a mechanism by which miracles are affected would prove fruitless.

I think one can say: “If miracles with almost as great a frequency as non-miracles occur, then possibly we do not know how to apply physical laws.” For, as I pointed out, one could (given the current scientific/technological climate) consistently suppose that occasionalism is true, in which case everything that happens is a miracle. So universality of miracles is consistent with scientific practice. So it cannot be necessarily the case that miracles cause issues for scientific practice.

So I do not think that the occurrence of miracles causes problems for the application of scientific laws, because I don’t really think the following two propositions are significantly disputable:

(1) Our level of scientific knowledge is vast.
(2) It is consistent with our state of scientific knowledge to suppose that miracles occur.

The problem with the conditional, “If miracles can occur, then we don’t know how to apply physical laws” (substituting whatever stronger/weaker claim you like for the antecedent) does not seem to be miracles–because some miracles are consistent with the current state of science–but with the consequent. I think we would need some other account of physical laws to be true. It seems that if occasionalism is true (for instance), then it is just the case that we have improperly conceived of physical laws, since I don’t regard it as disputable that whatever physical laws are, we do apply them frequently.

(Ironically, if someone has a pragmatist or Humean view of physical laws, the problem seems to disappear entirely.)

What isolated cases of miracles reasonably permit one to do is to assume that, in any case, a miracle is improbable and that one should not concede that a miracle has occurred until one has exhausted all naturalistic explanations (though our ignorance of nature may leave doubt as to whether all naturalistic explanations definitively have been excluded).

Hmm. I tend to agree with a philosopher like John Searle on the point that we simply know too much about the natural world to seriously doubt our substantial body of scientific knowledge. I don’t think anyone needs to commit to certainty that a miracle occurred, but it seems implausible to me that, given what we know about the world, we should be able to generate a rule that a miracle is always less plausible than some further naturalistic explanation.

 

[tonyrey]

I think your rephrase amounts to the same thing, really.

Consider the most basic form of argument in logic known as modus ponens: 1) x implies y. 2) x is true. Conclusion) y is true. Almost everything else in logic is built on this. Now imagine that this form of argument doesn’t work every time, but merely most of the time. For all we know, any given application of modus ponens might be the occasion where it doesn’t work, so everything in logic that depends on modus ponens becomes uncertain.

Apply this same thinking to the predictability of the universe. For the universe to be predictable, it must operate by certain rules. But since you are arguing that not all of the rules can be known by us, everything becomes uncertain. We might be right most of the time, but we can still never be certain about anything in this framework.

Example: Let’s say Einstein’s understanding of gravity was flawless. But because he was merely a limited human, his field equations are missing a crucial detail: they don’t apply when God has a tummy ache. Since we can’t know when God will have his tummy aches, we can never be sure if Einstein’s field equations are going to work. One uncertainty makes everything uncertain.

It doesn’t follow that we cannot know anything from the fact that we cannot know everything. The amazing success of science is ample evidence that some aspects of human knowledge are as near to certainty as makes no practical difference.

Most human knowledge is based on probability anyway.

 

[Portofino]

I think one can say: “If miracles with almost as great a frequency as non-miracles occur, then possibly we do not know how to apply physical laws.” For, as I pointed out, one could (given the current scientific/technological climate) consistently suppose that occasionalism is true, in which case everything that happens is a miracle.

The idea that everything that happens is a miracle is something that even Voltaire could appreciate – “the real miracle,” he wrote, “is not walking on water, but walking on the ground.”

Still, walking on water would be a different kind of miraculous phenomenon than walking on the ground, assuming one would describe both as miraculous occurrences. Walking on water, levitating, disappearing, and the like, presumably would be immune to being understood systematically, or predicted (if x, then y). Miraculous occurrences like disappearing in mid air presumably could not be predicted in advance, whereas the behavior of gravity on the moon could be predicted in advance.

universality of miracles is consistent with scientific practice. So it cannot be necessarily the case that miracles cause issues for scientific practice.

Those kinds of miracles (e.g., spontaneous disappearance) would wreak havoc; if I put a pound of cold cuts in the refrigerator, I could not be confident that they would still be there in an hour, even if no one ever opened the door. Anything would be possible. Perhaps we’re talking about different types of miracles?

but it seems implausible to me that, given what we know about the world, we should be able to generate a rule that a miracle is always less plausible than some further naturalistic explanation.

If everyone were considered a miracle, not only would some miracles be predictable – a link between calorie consumption and weight gain – and others non-predictable (a link between inordinate calorie consumption, zero exercise, and a perfect athlete’s physique) but some miracles – such virgin birth – would occur with less frequency than others, or even have no known instances of having occurred. In that sense, probabilistically, one would seek for the most likely “miracle” – in terms of not only what’s known to have transpired with greater frequency, but also what has proven predictable, given certain variables (e.g., with no sexual intercourse or no fertilization, one can predict no pregnancy with a high probability of certainty) before seeking for the less likely miracle (e.g., abstinence resulting in an unplanned pregnancy).

Another example – if someone tells me that they’ve seen someone who died three years ago, walking around, I’m first going to explore whether they are a. honestly mistaken or b. telling a lie, before I’m going to conclude that they probably have seen a person who died three years ago walking around. The odds are against it, in terms of actually manifested experience. Again, even the Vatican adopts this rule of thumb. A miraculous healing – or a demonic possession, for that matter – is not the probable explanation, nor is it the first explanation they look for. If everything is a miracle, not all miracles are created equal.

 

[CatholicSoxFan]

I think one should use other arguments for the existence of God as background information in favor of the Resurrection, because one can no longer just handwave miracle claims because after all, there’s no reason ti believe that there’s a god that could have done those miracles. The skeptic has to take the claim seriously now.

 

[tonyrey]

I think one should use other arguments for the existence of God as background information in favor of the Resurrection, because one can no longer just handwave miracle claims because after all, there’s no reason ti believe that there’s a god that could have done those miracles…

???

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. " Matt 6:27

 

[Ion]

In 2000 years the world have changed a lot… In those times people did not question the miracles in themselves, but they questioned Jesus. Now they question the miracles and use the science for this purpose. Even to the extent of “if it can’t be explained by science then it does not exist”.“must be a trick because never have happened something like this” “something extraordinary happened but anyway I am not going to experience it again anyway…” “we do not have the scientific explanation but in the future people will have it for sure” . What can be said about Fatima? Can one seriously consider mass hypnosais of 70000 people?. I think some people question something anyway because they do not want the conclusions and their heart is set on some other things.

 

[Bahman]

The main question is whether the miracle, in general existence, is explicable by a set of laws, so called laws of nature. If the answer is yes, then miraculous phenomena is a sub-category of all phenomena that could be explicable by laws of nature hence either everything is miraculous or miracle, in other word something outside this set of all phenomena, does not exist.

 

[tonyrey]

The main question is whether the miracle, in general existence, is explicable by a set of laws, so called laws of nature. If the answer is yes, then miraculous phenomena is a sub-category of all phenomena that could be explicable by laws of nature hence either everything is miraculous or miracle, in other word something outside this set of all phenomena, does not exist.

The main question is whether God - and persons for that matter - is subject to any laws at all! Are you compelled to think and act like a cog in a machine?

 

[Ion]

The main question is whether the miracle, in general existence, is explicable by a set of laws, so called laws of nature. If the answer is yes, then miraculous phenomena is a sub-category of all phenomena that could be explicable by laws of nature hence either everything is miraculous or miracle, in other word something outside this set of all phenomena, does not exist.

Science was invented to explain what regularly happens around us, and to use the nature, and not to explain the miracles. It has at his basis the experiment.

 

[polytropos]

Those kinds of miracles (e.g., spontaneous disappearance) would wreak havoc; if I put a pound of cold cuts in the refrigerator, I could not be confident that they would still be there in an hour, even if no one ever opened the door. Anything would be possible. Perhaps we’re talking about different types of miracles?

I take “miracle” to mean “direct activity of God on the world (as opposed to mediated by secondary causes).”

Occasionalism is essentially the idea that there are no secondary causes; everything that happens is directly caused by God, and there just seems to be natural causality. It essentially implies that everything is a miracle. Gravitational attraction is not just a natural disposition of all mass-energy in the universe. When a leaf falls to the ground, God is directly moving it. We have the law of universal gravitation because in all instances we have seen, God has in fact been moving things according to the law we’ve generalized.

I am not endorsing occasionalism, but I am pointing out that it is consistent with the way the world is, and since scientific practice works, occasionalism is therefore consistent with scientific practice. (In such a case, we have just misconceived what the “laws of physics” are.*) Since occasionalism is just the case where miracles are universal (everything is directly caused by God), miracles are consistent with scientific practice.

The above is a case where miracles are consistent and predictable. Let us take the other case that they are not consistent and predictable. Suppose, for instance, a team of doctors pronounces someone to be terminally ill. He dies. After several days he comes back to life and there is no evidence of his illness (or even, indeed, that he was dead). The Church pronounces such an event a miracle. (Suppose that it is, in fact, a miracle.)

Scientists, say, go on to investigate the incidence. They cannot replicate the effect in any case. In the end they consign that while the event might have had a natural explanation, but they cannot figure out what it is, and direct evidence is no longer at hand.

It seems to me that such a case is consistent with scientific practice (it does not cause any issues or doubt in our continued application of “laws of physics”) and provides rational (if not completely indefeasible) grounds for believing in miracles. For I do think that we know too much about the way the world works for such an event to occur and for us to say, “We can’t quite rule out a naturalistic explanation.” But I think it is a weak epistemology (that does not properly credit our current knowledge of the natural world) that would suggest that in such a case as I have outlined, we would not have plausible (again, if not indefeasible) grounds for believing that the event was miraculous. We know enough to reasonably suppose that advances in knowledge will not reveal naturalistic explanations for prolonged periods of death followed by revival and complete health. (I don’t claim that everyone who hears of such an event ought to believe it, just that it is implausible to say that it is irrational to believe it.)

Another example – if someone tells me that they’ve seen someone who died three years ago, walking around, I’m first going to explore whether they are a. honestly mistaken or b. telling a lie, before I’m going to conclude that they probably have seen a person who died three years ago walking around. The odds are against it, in terms of actually manifested experience. Again, even the Vatican adopts this rule of thumb. A miraculous healing – or a demonic possession, for that matter – is not the probable explanation, nor is it the first explanation they look for. If everything is a miracle, not all miracles are created equal.

I agree that if everything is a miracle, then not all miracles are created equal. But I don’t believe the antecedent (I am just providing the example of occasionalism, which I claim is consistent with our view of the world, in which laws are applied, to show that the occurrence of miracles is not just consistent with application of the laws of physics–but that universality of miracles would be consistent with application of the laws of physics). And I believe the consequent anyway. Not all miracles are created equal. I am not sure how I could predicate equality (or inequality, even) of such a diverse array of events as miracles.