A Short Discourse on the Question of Miracles

The following is a response I wrote for an atheist friend who asked for personal accounts of miracles, which they then defined as “something that defies the known laws of physics.” They stated that while they had heard many stories of unusual events, they believed the causes to be perfectly rational and natural. In my response, I both relayed a personal experience I had a couple of years ago and made the argument that miracles are in fact perfectly rational and natural and that the definition which she used is a modern straw man created by David Hume, and not the classical definition of a miracle.

A Personal Experience of a Miracle

To begin, I'd like to describe an event that happened to me two years ago, which doesn't defy any laws of physics, but which was extremely (on orders of magnitude) unlikely. I was moonlighting as a security guard, with a number of properties to watch during the night, including a lot with a large number of U-Haul trucks. I never visually checked inside the cabs if they were locked (which they always were) as the windows were above my eye level, and generally just walked around without investigating the particular trucks too closely. My attention instead was on making sure there was no visible damage or noticeable signs of a break-in. One night, I was walking in front of one of the rows of trucks, when the truck immediately to my left suddenly flashed its lights. This was obviously extremely startling. When I checked the cab, I found a small boy sleeping (perhaps 8-9 years old), who must have accidentally kicked the lights causing them to engage at the exact moment I walked by.

Long story short, the boy had been missing for a week, and hadn't eaten or drunk anything for a number of days. He was very frightened, exhausted, without a jacket or any protective clothing, and the temperatures were sub-freezing. After calming him and assuring him that he wasn't in any trouble, I was able to give him my jacket and small sips of coffee while I called the police, who came with paramedics and child services. I am convinced that if I hadn't found him that night, he likely would have succumbed to the elements.

Now did this break any laws of physics? No, it did not. But if I hadn't been in that exact position, at that exact moment (with maybe a second or two of leeway), and if he hadn't kicked that light (I assume he did) and it hadn't engaged for a split second to alert me to his presence, then there’s a very real likelihood that he would have died. Due to its extreme improbability, I consider that a miracle, whereby God (maybe on a subconscious level) interacted with both our minds to cause us to be at the exactly right place at the exactly right time.

The (Often Misunderstood) Nature of Miracles

A miracle doesn't have to break the laws of physics. That has never strictly been its definition, even in ancient times. It simply needs to be evidence of an outside Intelligence interacting within those laws, to effect a result that is outside our normal human experience. As Thomas Aquinas wrote, a miracle is simply an event whose source is “apart from the general order of things” and not necessarily contrary to it (1). As far as I can tell, Hume was the first to insist they break natural laws, so that he could build a straw man to knock down using circular reasoning (that miracles can't happen since they break the laws of nature, and human experience shows the laws of nature unbroken, because miracles are never observed)(2).

I perceived God's presence in that moment the same way I perceive that those I interact with through social media are actual people, based on their tweets, shares, and comments. I don't have any proof that the letters which are posted aren't just a random arrangement of electrical signals that erroneously appeared in the system. I don't have any proof that a social media account is not a non-human bot. But our online interaction demonstrates to me that you exist; in a similar way to how the episode that I experienced above demonstrated to me God's miraculous care in that moment. That interaction between minds, and the perception of outside consciousness intervening in the situation still constitutes a genuine miracle. It is the very unlikelihood of an event occurring naturally and without interference which alerts us to the presence of intelligent interaction (whether among humans or with the Divine).

The Granddaddy of All Miracles: The Resurrection of Christ

So, what about the reports of miracles we have that are less subtle and truly extraordinary? For that, I suggest we look at the miracle of miracles, the singular one on which the entire Christian faith rests, the resurrection of Jesus. Now, the popular argument that I hear most often against it runs along the circular reasoning of Hume referenced above. Resurrections don’t happen, because if they did happen, it would be observed within the laws of nature and would consistently happen all the time under the right conditions. The problem is that the laws of nature are by necessity generalizations of human experience and not immutable realities. “Laws of nature” are predictive and descriptive, not proscriptive the way we think of human laws. They are simply what we have consistently observed in nature. Since we have not consistently observed all possible conditions, we cannot know all characteristics of the natural order. This uncertainty is highlighted by discoveries over the past several decades within the field of quantum mechanics.

As Heisenberg observed, there are limits to the extent to which we can measure the complementary variables (such as position and momentum) of particles. For instance, if we know a photon’s exact position, we can’t know it’s momentum and vice versa. So our knowledge of these particles includes a probabilistic range of behavior. As we’ve learned more about the cosmos, we’ve realized that the classical assumptions about its deterministic behavior are wrong. The future isn’t a predetermined reality, it is an uncreated (until it is created as the present) range of potentialities, many of which are much more likely to happen than others.

Within this almost infinite range of realities, there are quite possibly (but extremely unlikely) conditions which lead to the resurrection of a body. If an outside Intelligence, with perfect knowledge of those conditions, interacts with the cosmos in a way that doesn’t change the probability of such an event happening in any given moment, then they cannot be said to have necessarily “broken” the laws of nature, even by effecting a resurrection. Since such an event is so extremely unlikely, if credible reports of a resurrection arise, it does not necessarily mean they are false (unless the reports themselves are unreliable). Rather, with numerous credible reports (which Christians believe we have in the New Testament and early Apostolic accounts), the likelihood of the source being an omnipotent Intelligence increases.

Additionally, given the wide range of possibilities within the natural order, it may be that God acts in such a way so as to not upset the likelihood of expected outcomes. This does not mean miracles are violations of the natural order (as David Hume presumed) but rather unlikely events which disturb the natural operation of the cosmos, suggesting to us the presence of and interaction with an outside Intelligence, in the same way that every day interactions with the effects of other human’s actions convince us that there are other intelligent beings which exist besides ourselves. Miraculous effects then are observed to be within the natural order, but their source (whether by degrees or outright) is beyond it (3).

Christians, just like skeptics, recognize the extreme improbability associated with miracles. And we should insist that all possibilities be investigated when reports arise. However, given the wide range of human experience and the very nature by which we perceive Intelligence, I do not think we can simply brush aside credible reports when they arise with the outdated Humean response that “miracles don’t happen because the laws of nature prohibit them.” The laws of nature do no such thing because the laws of nature (as characteristics of observed effects) don’t actually do anything.

Sources

(1) Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles. 3.101.1. Transl. by Vernon J. Bourke.

(2) Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 10.1.

(3) Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles. 3.101.2.

*Edited for clarity.

#miracles #theism #atheism #philosophy #reason #science #experience

Understanding God's Love vs. God's Wrath

My sister recently commented that of all the questions she'd want to ask God is first and foremost, "How do you balance the whole wrath and fury thing with love and compassion?"

Here is my response.

That question used to bother me a ton (it sometimes still does). How do we reconcile ideas about God's wrath with those about God's love? I think the key is in realizing that wrath isn't the opposite of love. It's the opposite of mercy and is the consequence of justice (just as mercy is the consequence of compassion). Showing mercy to one is denying justice to another; and yet both justice and mercy are attributes of love.

Understood this way, we see that wrath isn't an expression of God's anger at being hurt (just as we often confuse "love" with an emotional response, we do the same for "wrath"). It is an expression of his justice in consequence of our abusing not only God, but also creation and each other. Wrath is as much a part of God's love as is compassion. If there was no wrath, no justice, then how could a rape victim cry out to God in their anguish? How could a homeless man, repeatedly beaten down by the world, turn to God for any kind of hope? Who could an abused child turn to?

Hypothetically, if God had just decided to forget our past sins and skip the Incarnation, death, and resurrection; the blood of the innocent would still cry out from the ground and our cycles of injustice, oppression, violence and death would spiral ever deeper until humanity wiped out all life (including itself). So God took the wrathful death which we deserved as a consequence of justice (itself being a characteristic of God's love for the innocent and downtrodden) on himself in Christ and conquered it in the resurrection.

A perfect example of this is the story of Noah's Ark, which is as much a warning for the future as it is a story about the past. In that story, the ark could be said to be Christ carrying the world through the waters of death into new life (think of baptism) and a new covenental relationship between God, humanity and the rest of creation. If there were no ark, no flood, and no new covenant; then humanity would have perpetuated the pre-flood cycles of violence to the point that it would have wiped out all of creation, with no remnant left to be saved.

It becomes less a question of balance, and more one of fulfillment. How could God's love toward a selfish, death-dealing, abusive humanity be realized to its fullest extent? Only in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus...

#God #love #wrath #justice #compassion