Miracles: Some Objections Answered

Introduction:

A Christian cannot deny the miraculous and be consistent. After all, if the Incarnation never happened, then Jesus was not God as He claimed to be. If Jesus was not who He claimed to be, then Christianity is a sham. And people who are not Christian may not be bound to believe in miracles, anyway. So, to be a Christian is also to accept the possibility of miracles. [1]

Now, by miracle, I do not just mean an event that is highly unlikely or that happened in a bizarre way or that is a happy coincidence. [2] Rather, by miracle, I mean something that is due to direct intervention of a supernatural intelligence bringing about ends that are at odds with the normal course of events. [3]

There are a variety of arguments that people give for why miracles are impossible. Here are two such arguments: [4]

   1. Miracles are impossible because they are violations of the Laws of Physics.

   2. Miracles would make God a liar, which is impossible. [5]

Violations of the Laws of Physics:

Before we address the objection, we really need to understand what the Laws of Physics (or Science) are. For instance, what are Kepler’s Laws? Kepler’s Laws describe the motion of the planets around the sun.

Notice the word in italics, describe. That is what all of the Physical Laws do, they describe how things normally happen. Newtonian Physics was a good description of what happens in our normal experience. If Newtonian Physics had been prescriptive, then there would be no such thing as Quantum Mechanics or Relativity Theory.

In the course of scientific discovery, it was found that Newtonian Physics did not properly describe what was happening in certain circumstances, and thus we now have such things as Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory. But just as Newtonian Physics only described and didn’t prescribe what happened, so with our modern theories. [6]

So, when people claim that miracles cannot happen, because they violate the Laws of Physics, they are claiming that these Laws are prescriptive, but this just isn’t the case.

For example, a piece of paper that is on fire, in the normal course of events, will be consumed to ash. But this does not mean that the normal course of events couldn’t be superseded by a person blowing the fire out. Likewise, if I drop a rock from the top of a cliff, the normal course of events would be that it would fall to the bottom of the cliff. Except if my friend supersedes the Law of Gravity by catching the rock right after I drop it.

While we would not call either of these two examples miraculous, they do illustrate quite well what is going on. In the case of a miracle, at least as I have defined it, we have the intervention of a supernatural intelligence in the normal course of events.

So, here we see that the Laws of Physics do not in any way interfere with miracles. Rather, miracles are possible or not based upon whether supernatural intelligences exist and if they would choose to intervene in the normal course of events. In other words, if God exists, then miracles can happen, in spite of the Laws of Physics.

Science is normally done utilizing methodological naturalism. This means that it is assumed that in an experiment, only natural processes are taking place. And since Science is concerned with how things normally happen in the natural world, this assumption is just fine. But because of this assumption, Science is mute when it comes to the supernatural, and hence, Science cannot really say anything about miracles. [7]

Making God a Liar:

If God performs a miracle, it looks like Y happened, but because He intervened in the normal course of events, X actually happened. This is deception on His part, so miracles are equivalent to God lying. And since God doesn’t lie, miracles are impossible.

However, does our perception determine what can and cannot happen? [8] Or does our perception merely help us to discover what has happened?

Let’s look at the first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of John, the changing of water into wine. (This can be found in John 2:1-11, if you want to read it.) We will actually ignore most of the details and just address the miracle itself.

This definitely counts as a miracle by the definition given above, because it is outside the normal course of events for water to turn into wine. This is not a case where natural intervention in the normal course of events could cause the result, either. So, this is a case of supernatural intervention in the normal course of events.

As noted, we already know that water does not turn into wine naturally. In fact, when we see wine, we already have an understanding of how it came about:

   1. Grape vines grew at some point.

   2. Grapes grew on the vines and matured.

   3. The grapes were harvested.

   4. The grape juice was extracted in some way.

   5. The grape juice was caused to ferment in some fashion for a sufficient amount of time.

In fact, in this episode in John, that is exactly what the people who hadn’t seen the miracle would have understood. Only those who were in on the events as they happened would have even understood that a miracle had taken place.

So, would the direct conversion of water into wine, rather than the normal process given above, make Jesus into a liar? By no means. Our perceptions of what must have taken place do not have bearing upon the truthfulness of God. After all, the ones who had seen the miracle would have perceived things one way, while everyone else would have perceived them differently. Our expectations of reality do not determine, as in cause, what has actually taken place, nor do they constrain God to act in a particular way.

Our perceptions of what has taken place are more about us than about the truthfulness of God. Whether we perceive what actually happened or not does not make God truthful or a liar. In other words, our perception does not make miracles impossible. Again, miracles are possible or not based upon the existence of supernatural intelligences and their willingness to intervene in the normal course of events. While our perceptions may help us to discover truth, they do not actually make things true or false.

In Conclusion:

The Laws of Physics do not make miracles impossible, and neither do our perceptions of how things have happened. The Laws of Physics are descriptive and not prescriptive. Likewise, our perceptions do not create truth. Rather, miracles are possible, or not, based upon the existence of supernatural intelligences who may or may not be willing to intervene in the natural course of events.

[1] While Christians must accept the possibility of miracles, at least to be consistent, this does not mean that we are compelled to believe every miraculous claim. That would be the height of foolishness, if for no other reason than that at least some of these claimed miracles are things that actually happened, but were not miraculous, and some of them are things that were claimed to have happened, but did not actually happen.

[2] Things do at times happen as if some Rube Goldberg machine had been set up to accomplish it. While such unlikely or bizarre things do happen at times, these are not what I am talking about here.

[3] A type of miracle that will not be addressed here is a supernatural intelligence utilizing natural means to affect an outcome. Events such as these would be rather hard to distinguish from the normal course of events.

[4] I am not quoting anyone in particular here. These are two arguments that I have seen various contexts, though.

[5] This argument is generally seen when people are arguing against Young Earth Creation. However, if the argument is valid, it is valid in the context of all miracles.

[6] The descriptions in the case of Quantum Mechanics are statistical in nature. While this makes things more complicated, it is still description that is taking place and not prescription.

[7] This is not to say that Science is useless here. There may be some forensic role that Science could take, which could help to discover the truth. Read the next section, though. If Science had been used to examine the wine that Jesus made from water, it would probably come to the wrong conclusion. It may have discovered that the wine was of an incredible vintage, but could probably not find that it was the result of a miracle. I can only think of one exception to this. If there were data that had been properly collected before the miracle and after, data that could be shown to have not been tampered with. Data collected during the course of the miracle would also be useful. Most reported miracles happen where this is not a possibility, though.

[8] In Quantum Mechanics, the act of observation can in fact make a particular result certain. In this way, someone could perhaps say that perception determines, as in causes, the truth. However, this is not our normal experience of the world, so the objection is not really relevant to our discussion here. In our normal experience, our perception helps us to discover the truth; our perception does not cause the truth.