Questions About Miracles – Part 2

By: Dr. Norman Geisler; ©2000

As we continue a look at miracles, Dr. Geisler examines two more questions: Are Miracles Scientific? And Are Miracles Historical?

Questions About Miracles—Part Two

ARE MIRACLES SCIENTIFIC?

Many people refuse to believe in miracles because they feel that if God were allowed to intervene in nature, then there could be no scientific method. This method is built on the prin­ciples of uniformity and regularity, and any irregular causes would make science impossible. As Dr. Allan Bloom has written, “Scientists are to a man against creationism, recognizing rightly that, if there is anything to it, their science is wrong and useless…. Either nature has a lawful order or it does not; either there can be miracles or there cannot. Scientists do not prove there are no miracles, they assume it; without this assumption there is no science.”^[1]

There are several arguments used to show that miracles are contrary to the scientific method, but we will look at the one used by Patrick Nowell-Smith. He objects to the super­naturalist using miracles as an explanation for things, for science might find a natural expla­nation in the future. His objection can be summarized as follows:

1. Only what has predictive capabilities can qualify as an explanation for an event (such as natural laws).

2. A miracle cannot be predicted.

3. Therefore, a miracle does not qualify as an explanation of any event.

In short then, only scientific explanations for things will do, and all other explanations must conform to science or be silent.

While Nowell-Smith claims that the scientist should keep an open mind and not reject evidence that ruins his preconceived theories, it is clear that he has closed his mind to the possibility of any supernatural explanations. He arbitrarily insists that all explanations must be natural ones or they do not really count. He makes the grand assumption that all events will ultimately have a natural explanation, but doesn’t offer any proof for that assumption. The only way that he can know this is to know beforehand that miracles cannot occur. It is a leap of naturalistic faith!

Scientists claim that explanations must have some predictive value, but there are many events in the natural world that cannot be predicted. No one can predict if or when an automobile accident might happen, or when a house might be robbed, but no one claims that it is a miracle when it happens. Even the naturalist admits that he cannot always pre­dict events in practice, only in principle. No weatherman in his right mind would claim otherwise. The supernaturalist makes the same claim: a miracle occurs whenever God deems it necessary. If we had all the evidence (if we knew all that God knows), we could predict when God was going to intervene as well as the scientist can predict natural events.

But miracles do have some explanatory value in the scientific method. Some events can easily be explained by natural forces. It is easy to see that the Grand Canyon was caused by erosion and wind as the river cut through the rock. Natural forces that we know well can explain how that was caused. But what about Mount Rushmore? Is there any natural force that can explain how the faces of our first, third, sixteenth, and twenty-sixth Presidents emerged out of the rock suddenly between 1927 and 1941? Obviously, it needed an intelligent cause. In the same way, certain events are clearly purposeful and have meaning when understood in their context, like giving someone a hug. These are also caused by intelligent causes. Miracles belong to this class of events. God doesn’t intervene just to play around and confuse us; He has a purpose and communicates something with each miracle. Moses’ miracles confirmed that God had sent him and mocked the Egyptian gods whose domain the miracles overcame (Ex. 7:14-12:36). Elijah didn’t call down fire for nothing (1 Kings 18:16-40). The whole day had been spent waiting for Baal to do some­thing, but Elijah’s God acted immediately, proving His reality and power. These kinds of events call for an intelligent cause, and this is a principle that is both regular and uniform. So when an event occurs which is purposeful, like the Red Sea parting so that the Israel­ites can escape from Pharaoh, the scientific method tells us that we should not look for a natural cause, but for an intelligent cause. Miracles do not destroy science. But trying to explain miracles by means of natural causes is definitely unscientific! Science actually points to an intelligent cause for these events.

ARE MIRACLES HISTORICAL?

Science is not the only discipline that rejects miracles. The study of history also claims that miracles cannot be included in its method. If they were to occur, the historian could never know them or believe them. Antony Flew develops the argument in this way:

All critical history depends on the validity of two principles:

1. The remains of the past can be used as evidence for reconstructing history only if we presume the same basic regularities of nature held then as now.

2. The critical historian must use his present knowledge of the possible and probable as criteria for knowing the past.

But belief in miracles is contrary to both of these principles. Therefore, belief in miracles is contrary to critical history.

The historian must reject all miracles. Anyone who believes in miracles is naive and uncritical in his thinking. This argument does not say that miracles are not possible; they are just unknowable by any objective study of history.

Like David Hume, whose thought he attempts to refine, Antony Flew makes the error of adding evidence rather than weighing it. He will not accept any evidence for events in particu­lar, but only for events in general. So whatever is common and repeated should be believed, but what is uncommon and unique should be rejected. So we should believe that a peasant woman washed her clothes in the river (though we have no direct evidence of it) but reject the idea that Alexander the Great conquered Egypt (for which we have massive evidence).

Flew’s two principles of history are really just a restatement of Hume’s maxims that “uni­form experience amounts to a proof” and “the wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” But assuming absolute uniformity sets his bias against any supernatural occurrence. It hinders the search for truth rather than helping it because it legislates the meaning that can be found instead of looking for it. And wise men do not proportion their belief to mere probabilities, but to the facts. This recycling of Hume’s argument does nothing to advance historical study and suffers from the same naturalistic bias that its predecessor had.

The significance of refuting this objection is that there is no reason that miraculous events cannot be examined and verified by the historical method. The miracles recorded in the Scripture are as open to investigation as any event recorded in ancient history.

Notes

1. ↑ Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1987), p. 182.

Read Part 3