Realist viewpoint

If a realist says “A miracle has occurs” they are telling us

There was an actual event in the objective world that was fulfilling the criteria to be considered a miracle

If an anti-realist says “a miracle has occurred” they are telling us

An event has happened that they understand as miraculous, due to its definition of a miracle

Miracles are events which are independent of our minds. They are actual events which happen in reality – we can know about them through observation.

Having observed them, people can interpret and understand them differently, according to realists

A realist understanding of miracles might be

1. An event could be considered a miracle if it is within the laws of nature but is an extraordinary coincidence of a beneficial nature

2. America is an event brought about by God (or other spiritual power) working through people (e.g. prophets, saints)

3. A miracle is an event that violates The laws of nature. The laws of nature describe natural processes. A miracle is an event that natural processes could not bring about; it is an event that violates natural laws. As the event could not have been caused by natural processes, it must have been caused by the intervention of a supernatural power which for many is God this is the idea of an interventionist God.

Mackie explain explains this in terms of the natural world being a closed system – a system that works according to its own set of laws

If something happens within that system that the internal factors could not produce then that event must’ve been caused by something intruding into the system from outside – it is caused by a supernatural intervention

Some challenges definition and argue that the laws of nature cannot be violated – this claim is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific laws

Natural laws are descriptive – they describe the way in which natural processes have occurred. They are probabilistic, they suggest what is likely to happen rather than predicting what will happen

How are the laws of nature established? (Scientific method)

Observe something that doesn’t fit your viewpoint → Investigation → Hypothesis→ Test→ (Repeat]

Hick - religious- epistemic distance with God

• in the case of an event, which is an exception to the laws of nature, the scientific laws simply expand to include the exception

• Violations are natural events – the absence of a natural explanation does not mean that the course must be supernatural; it just means that we do not currently know what the natural explanation is

• God doesn’t need to fill the gaps (this should be God of the gaps)

Chaos theory

Suggest that the movement of particles is random and therefore exceptions to the laws of nature are possible

Flew-Not religious

• challenges the idea that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature

• Even though the evidence of extraordinary events at pieces like Lourdes is good this does not prove that they have been brought about by my God. What about the power of the human mind?

• There’s still a lot we do not know about yhe human mind

Response to Flew

Can the mind (which is not a material substance) bring about physical change (i.e. changes in matter)? No

Keith Ward argues that even if the laws of nature understood in the way discussed above, some events are so improbable that intervention by God cannot be ruled out…

“ It is possible that an event, or a series of events, could be so improbable that even a specific set of probabilistic laws could not be formulated to include it. At the level of common sense observation, rare events which seem to be well beyond the possibilities of natural explanation available to us will be candidates for miraculous action… It is logically possible that truly anomalous events could occur, and if they do, strictly scientific explanations will simply have to ignore them or set them on one side for the moment at least”