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The Impossibility of Miracles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Nicholas Everitt
Nicholas Everitt
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Extract

Traditional discussions of miracles focus primarily on the issue of whether miracle reports are credible, either in fact or in principle, and whether they could be used as the foundation for theistic belief. Some commentators (such as Hume and Mackie decide that such reports are not credible; others decide that they are, or at least that they can be (Swinburne, Davies). All parties to this dispute presuppose that there is a coherent concept of miracle about whose application we might sensibly dispute. A good example of this assumption explicitly stated is found in a recent book by Davies. Davies implicitly takes over Hume's definition of a miracle as ‘a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity’, and, after making clear that he is using ‘impossible’ in the sense of ‘logically impossible’, he comments

…it is hard to see that miracles are impossible when considered as violations of the laws of nature…it is hard to see that there is any contradiction involved in saying that they [miracles] have happened. Where would the contradiction lie?

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Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 1987, pp. 347 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

page 347 note 1 Hume, David, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.Google Scholar

page 347 note 2 Mackie, J. L., The Miracle of Theism (Oxford 1982).Google Scholar

page 347 note 3 Swinburne, Richard, The Existence of God (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

page 347 note 4 Davies, Brian, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

page 347 note 5 Hume, David, op. cit. sec. 10.Google Scholar

page 347 note 6 Davies, Brian, Thinking About God (Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), p. 53.Google ScholarPubMed

page 347 note 7 Others to define ‘miracle’ at least in part in terms of the violation or transgression of laws of nature include: Gaskin, J. C. A., The Quest For Eternity (Penguin, 1984)Google Scholar and Davies, Paul, God and The New Physics (Penguin, 1983).Google Scholar

page 348 note 1 Mackie, , op. cit. p. 21.Google Scholar

page 348 note 2 Swinburne, , op. cit. p. 229.Google Scholar

page 349 note 1 Among those who have taken this line, or at least toyed with it, are Smart, Ninian, Philosophers and Religious Truth (SCM, 1964), p. 38;Google ScholarHolland, R. F., ‘The Miraculous’ in Phillips, D. Z. (ed.), Religion and Understanding (Oxford, 1967), p. 155f;Google Scholar and Gaskin, J. C. A., op. cit.Google Scholar

page 349 note 2 Mill, J. S., A System of Logic, Bk. III, ch. 25, sec. 2:Google Scholar ‘We cannot admit a proposition as a law of nature, and yet believe a fact in real contradiction to it. We must disbelieve the alleged fact, or believe that we are mistaken in admitting the supposed law’.