Miracles
- Created by: Ellen Hannah
- Created on: 04-06-14 13:19
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- Miracles
- Supporters
- Aquinas
- Definition of miracles = as ‘those things done by divine power apart from the order usually followed in things’. This view suggests that God can do what he wants with his creation.
- Identified 3 types of
miracle
- Events done by God that nature could never do; e.g. stopping the sun in the sky as in Joshua 10, or at Fatima in Portugal, when the sun moved in the sky.
- Events done by God that nature can do, only God does not use the laws of nature; e.g. healing someone by forgiving them their sins.
- Events done by God that nature could do, but not in that order; e.g. bringing someone back to life (Lazarus), or healing someone of blindness (Blind Bartimaeus).
- Miracle = act of G-d which = beneficial to recpient which may break natural law but doesn't have to
- Tillich
- Miracles = signs from G-d (rel sig) - should reveal something about him to people
- argues that a miracle is an event that does not contradict the rational structure of reality
- Miracles have to violate laws of nature to be out of ordinary, not G-d violating laws of nature. Must go against laws of nature to be a miracle
- Miracles have to reveal something about God's nature - focuses more on the consequences and effects it has on the person. Means - natural events may be perceived as miracle + have rel dig for person witnessing events
- C.S. Lewis
- Stated that we're either naturalists or super naturalists [believe in God] and if we're super naturalists, we can accept the possibility of miracles
- Polkinghorne
- Science cannot completely disprove it's occurrence
- Laws of nature don't change yet consequences may
- Consequences may change if God begins to deal with humans in a new way
- Aquinas
- Critics
- Wiles
- G-d who intervines selectively wouldn't be worthy of worship because of his failure to act on wider scale
- God either performs partisan and arbitrary miracles, in which case he is not worthy of miracles, or he does intervene at all.
- against a God that would act in the world and is good, but won't prevent the holocaust of WW2. This raises q's about his omnipotence and goodness - PROB OF EVIL
- idea of God acting in special or particular cases in response to prayers = rejected. God actions leads to q's about God being biased.
- Arbitary - based based on random choice
- Partisan - favours some but not all
- If miracles violate laws of nature then they would have to occur infrequently to avoid laws of nature becoming meaningless
- Leaves view that G-d = disinterested + only intervenes in world occassioanlly
- Hume
- impossible to prove them – he is an empiricist (bases knowledge on experience).
- ‘A transgression of a law of nature brought about by a particular violation of a Deity’.
- Nothing that can happen in nature should be called a miracle
- 5 arguments:
- Not enough evidence of miracles to outweigh our general experience. Rationality requires that belief is proportionate to evidence. ‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence
- People tend to exaggerate and are drawn towards the sensational and drama. The often have a desire to believe.
- conflicting claims that cancel each other out. Hick’s response would be that all religions lead to one God though.
- testimonies usually came from ignorant and barbarous nations.
- Insufficient witnesses – must be witnessed by a highly credible, good sense, well-educated person. How much education is ‘enough’?
- Occurrence of miracles must be very rare event - skeptics + believers
- Holland
- miracles = interpretations as imagine if a child was playing of a railway and got stuck when a train was coming and the train miraculously stops, his mother would call this a miracle but in actual fact the train driver collapsed onto the dead man's handle.
- Vardy
- miracles show God to take sides and be immoral: why does God not intervene to stop big disasters but seems to save a small choir group in Nebraska?
- Wiles
- On the fence
- Swinburne
- Quantum Laws prove that the universe is probabilistic - miracles do not violate laws
- Humans have created these laws, this means that miracles could be thought of as being natural - 'Perhaps God can suspend natural laws on occasions'
- If God = all loving he would want to interact with his creation and may do so through miracles
- Miracles, in their very nature, have to be occasional - if they were regular life would be confusing + would not consider them amazing
- The Principle of Testimony: In the absent of special consideration = reasonable to believe that experiences of others = probably as they report them. In other words you should believe other people
- The Principle of Credulity: If it seems that X = present, then probably x = present. In short what one seems to perceive = probably the case (It is a principle of rationality). He puts the onus on the sceptic to disprove religious experience otherwise it should be taken at face value.
- Swinburne
- Supporters
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