MIRACLES, EXCEPTIONS TO NATURE?
I believe that miracles – alleged events like Jesus rising from the dead - if they happen, speak against the existence of God.
1 Are miracles violations to the law of nature?
Believers say they are not violations of nature for God set up natural law and will not change his mind about it for he is always right. If miracles violate nature then they mean that God is not God but stupid and incompetent and mad. He has to force natural law to go against itself as if he is not in control.
When a miracle report is
judged credible,
believers only assume it is not a violation of nature. They assume so they don’t believe
its a non-violation though they lie saying they do. They are
only guessing. When we have to guess
that so-called miracles are not anti-nature what is the point of any God doing
them for they are just left guessing?
They would prove his stupidity which amounts to disproving God! Miracles still may be a violation of nature
which means that their assuming is as reckless as assuming that triggering a
nuclear bomb won’t make it go off. It is
less serious to trigger the bomb than it is to question that natural law is free from
supernatural interference because it is our belief in nature that enables us to
have a life at all. Belief in nature is
our basic need. It is absolutely necessary to hold that the supernatural has a
natural explanation for holding to anything else is evil.
2 Are miracles exceptions to the law of nature?
This does away with the idea of God having to fight the laws he created. Exceptions must prove the rule. They can only do that if you clearly prove the reasons for the exception. In other words, the rule might be that your charity does not pay out money to drunks. That's the rule. But there might be a very unusual and extreme case where you might have to pay the money out to a drunk. This is not contradicting the rule for it means you have no choice but to give the money. No rule can be kept at all costs. An exception will be allowed to the rule IN CASES WHEN IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KEEPING THE RULE. We need to see the reasons and prove them before we can consider any miracle to be an exception. Religion replies that God knows these reasons and that is enough. But what if evidence appeared that some priest was turned into a frog? Religion universally says miracles like that are nonsense no matter what evidence is produced. It can only say that if it can come up with reasons why such miracles didn't happen. The Catholic Church refuses to investigate miracles and apparitions that contradict Catholic doctrine for it says regardless of the evidence they were not real or from God when they contradict the Church. If you say that dead people stay dead. If the Christian says that Jesus was an exception. The burden of proof then is on the Christian. They need to know why the exception had to be made but they cannot and they don't claim to. They need to know how it was made as well. Because if there is no question of how then there is no question of why either for how matters more than why.
If you start saying that bad people are not really bad but just making exceptions to ethical obligations when you don't know what the exceptions are that is bad and so is saying miracles have happened when you don't know what justification there is for the exceptions.
If you need very strong evidence that will fill books that somebody committed murder imagine how much evidence you need to prove that Jesus rose from the dead. Religion's evidence for the resurrection isn't that good. It is always more likely that the witnesses of miracles are lying or mistaken or both than that any miracle they report must happened.
To say, "this miracle really happened because it was an exception to the law of nature and it was an exception because it really happened" is circular reasoning and is no good. You may as well argue, "This miracle didn't really happen for it was an exception to the law of nature and such exceptions do not happen." In fact, if there is a circle to choose from it should be the latter for the latter respects nature and what we can see. It doesn't look for unnatural explanations. Remember, if we start looking for unnatural explanations or far fetched ones we will soon become total nuts and incompetents.
Exceptions to the rule are bad. They are necessary evils. To say that God needs to make exceptions to his laws means he can't run the universe and has to fix his mistakes by suspending or changing the way nature works.
3 Are miracles just religiously significant coincidences, eg a prediction of the future coming true despite the odds being nearly 100% against this?
That means miracles are natural. But if miracles are natural then it follows that we should always assume that there is a natural explanation for them even if we don’t have one yet which means they are not miracles!
Miracles are not evidence for God. Miracles are blasphemy. Miracles do not give us any reason to take any religion to be true.
You can formulate the idea that evil is the mere absence of good as the idea that evil is the absence of order. Good is proper order and organisation. Evil is disorder. Miracles change order in our thinking and in the laws of nature. It follows then that miracles are evil. If miracles are evil then we lose the only real reason to believe in religion or God. We can't say miracles are signs that God exists for only he can perform them. Miracles are either compatible with natural law or they are not. In other words, some natural illusion could make a statue seem to cry tears of blood. It might be inexplicable but natural. But if its a magical event then the blood is coming out of nowhere and its supernatural. Many say, even religionists, that if miracles are against the laws of nature then they are ridiculous and impossible and the reports that they happened are wrong. So to keep believing they deny that they are against natural law. They have to believe that miracles are not a break in order. If they are right then miracles are not intrinsically evil.
Their view tells us a few things about the religionists.
a No matter how good the evidence is that a violation of nature has happened the religionists will reject the evidence or they will ignore it which is the same thing. Christianity believes that the miracles reported of witches in the Middle Ages didn't happen because they violated nature and were absurd. If miracles are contradictions of nature and that means they are impossible, it follows that believers are only accepting miracles that are not a contradiction of nature and ignoring the ones that claim to be contradictions. If many miracle reports describe a contradiction, how can ones that don't be trusted? How can you say that the evidence for a miracle that is not a contradiction may be accepted but if the miracle is a contradiction then it must be rejected? That is merely admitting that evidence is only receiving lip service and the evidence isn't the reason the miracle is accepted as real at all. Miracles then would be guilty of producing and encouraging deceit.
b There are so many miracles reported in the world - most of which are spiritualistic in tone. Some of them seem to be saying a violation has happened. People who believe that miracles are a violation of nature experience miracles as evidence or confirmation that their understanding is right. It is only a few philosophers and theologians who deny that miracles are a violation. In popular spirituality, miracles are thought of as a kind of magic or almost as magic. If a miracle happens and is a sign, it only confirms beliefs the recipients already have and the main relevant belief is that the miracle is a contradiction of nature like the magic.
c If God does not do miracles that violate nature, then it follows that if he does do miracles they happen for sound reasons and because of that they do not violate nature. For example, its a violation of the law to preserve life to kill a man at random but to kill him in self-defence is not a violation of the law. It is down to the reasons. It follows that if a miracle was accepted as genuine and it never happened at all then religion is putting forward evidence that a violation of nature has happened. False miracles and claimed violations of nature amount to the same thing. There is no way a Christian can prove all the miracles reported in the Bible. There are too many miracle claims in the world to investigate them all. Religion cannot claim that miracles are not violations of nature for there is evidence that it is wrong. There can be evidence in favour of false miracles. Religion is merely picking out the miracles and proposing these for belief as long as they suit religion's aims and schemes. It has no business claiming to be rational and properly investigative.
d Correct Christian belief says that miracles that violate nature are impossible for God is in control. If miracles are impossible if they are violations of nature, then the believers are agreeing with sceptics who say that miracles that are violations of nature didn't happen no matter how much evidence there is for them. They are agreeing with the sceptics that natural law is fixed and immoveable and cannot alter - though this is the major criticism most miracle believers make against the sceptics. If the believers really believe, they believe that if for example a prophet predicted God would part a river and a strange wind took place that blew a gap in the water that this would count as a miracle. God did not use nature to restore Jesus to life after three days dead. That was a contradiction of nature. They cannot accept the resurrection as a non-contradiction of nature. Some sceptics would say that the scenario with the prophet fails to be compatible with nature. They would say that God still violated nature though he used it to make the miracle. They would say that a transsexual uses nature to change gender but this is still a violation of nature. They would say that just because nature was used does not mean that nature wasn't violated. Also nature might only SEEM to have been used. Just because it looks like the wind had natural causes that doesn't mean that it did. Strange coincidences do happen but we don't think of most of them as miracles so why should we think of a few coincidences in a religious context that happen even more rarely than non-religious coincidences as miracles or as religiously significant? So the notion that nature wasn't violated is outnumbered by three possibilities.
A miracle must be believed to be a contradiction of order and therefore evil. Without miracle being a sign from God, we have no reason to take the God concept seriously or to insult sufferers by looking upon their suffering as the mere absence of evil and non-existent for God must be blamed.
Conclusion
Miracles are either supernatural or they are not. To say they are natural makes no sense and neither does saying they are supernatural. We should not waste time studying them.