To understand the religious notion of divine intervention and the ramifications of its existence we must first understand what is meant by the term “miracle”. Like all theistic terminology, the world miracle suffers semantically from the fact that the concept of the supernatural is undefined, that is to say that the notion of the supernatural is not one we can define based on our experiences or observations, because all or our interactions, thoughts and observations occur in the natural universe.
In the absence of an adequate definition for the supernatural we can’t exactly define what a miracle is, but we could define a miracle by what it is not. The general notion of a miracle held by most theists could be described by what it is not as follows; an observable event for which the only possible explanation of its cause is not natural.
This definition side-steps the problem of meaninglessness which it would suffer from were it defined in terms of supernatural causality, such an issue is inescapable though; we can side-step it now for the sake of argument, but upon taking our leave of this argument so as to consider divine intervention in another vein of thought we would have to return this problem of “what is the supernatural?”.
Can We Know a Miracle to Have Happened?
Now that we have a definition to work with, we should be able to recognize a miracle when we see one right? Not exactly.
To be able to recognize a miracle when we see one we would need a definition of what a miracle is. We have defined a miracle by describing only what a miracle is not. We do have a definition to work with, but it is a negative definition. We can identify something using a negative definition- If you had a complete definition of what light is not, then you would be able to use that definition to discover what light is; when you encounter something that according to your definition is not what light is not then you can determine that what you have encountered is light.
So, based on our definition of what a miracle is not if we encounter a miracle we should be able to determine it to be so by recognizing that it is not that which our definition tells us a miracle is not.
The alternative to this would be to use a positive definition, if we could describe what a miracle is then upon seeing a miracle we would be able to recognize that it is a miracle based on what it is as opposed to what it is not. However, as I have already discussed above we are unable to form such a definition because it requires the use of a terminology which is not meaningful.
How then can we use our definition to prove that something is a miracle? Well let’s suppose that we are trying to evaluate the miracle status of event X. We will look at X and check our definition to see whether or not it fits the definition of what a miracle is not- if it does not then it must be a miracle. This seems simple enough, so we will go right ahead and begin checking off our definition with regard to X. We have defined a miracle as “an observable event for which the only possible explanation of its cause is not natural”. The genus of the definition is positive, and it is that a miracle is “an observable event”. X must be observable, because if it was not then we would not know that it was an event, this much is not a problem for us.
But we encounter a problem when we come to the second part of the definition- the differentia of our definition is that a miracle is that “the only possible explanation of its cause is not natural”. So, it seems that to know that our event is a miracle we are required to know an awful lot. We not only have to know all possible natural explanations, we have to know that they are all false.
Now naturalistic explanations of events, without exception, are explanations of how an event is necessitated by or produced by natural laws.
Our definition requires us to not only know all the possible naturalistic explanations; it also requires us to know that they can’t be true. To know that they can’t be true we must understand all the natural laws which should be in play, and to know that none of them could have caused the event; a tall order, to say the least.
What all this would entail for the miracle observer is complete knowledge of the universe. It would not entail knowledge of anything outside of the universe because according to our definition we only need to know what a miracle is not, not what a miracle is. Of course we do not have complete knowledge of the universe; it is not possible for a human being to know so much, so we must conclude that knowing a miracle to have occurred based on a negative definition is not possible.
We must also look at the nature of human understanding of natural law, because we might be able to come to a probable conclusion on whether or not an event is a miracle rather than a completely deductive one, which would at least give us a likely answer.
By definition a natural law does not have exceptions, so if I were to see an exception to a natural law, say hypothetically I were to see an exception to the first law of thermodynamics, and while observing a closed system some amount of energy just vanished- poof.
Assuming that I can know that what I have witnessed is without a doubt a violation of thermodynamics, there are two obvious conclusions I could draw here-
1) I could assume that the first law of thermodynamics is infallible within the universe and what I have just witnessed is something along the lines of a “miracle”.
2) The other obvious explanation I could come up with is that, given that the laws of thermodynamics are human interpretations of observations rather than infallible truths, based on this new observation our understanding of thermodynamics until now has been inaccurate.
The question becomes which of these explanations is more probable? Obviously it is more probable that thermodynamics has only been a partial explanation which we wrongly assumed to be a complete explanation and I have just witnessed the naturally occurring exception than it is that some indefinable mystical event just occurred.
Do Any of Us Really Believe in Miracles?
What would it mean for us to believe in miracles? Well, quite literally it would mean that we would be of the belief that “anything” is possible. If I believed that there was a God in existence that had both the ability and the desire to perform miracles what could I take in life as certain?
If God is all powerful then it would be possible for him to change the colour of the sky to yellow, the colour of the grass to pink and the ocean to orange. Now no one really believes that such a thing is possible, when we get out of bed in the morning we can do so with a high degree of certainty that the changes I mentioned will not occur, I can say that tomorrow when I wake the sky will not be yellow and there are very few people who would object.
But the kinds of miracles I just mentioned wouldn’t really change the way we lived, even if I did believe that it was possible for the sky to be yellow tomorrow it wouldn’t really change my behaviour.
So what about miracles that would change our behaviour? Surely if we believe in miracles then we must behave in a way that is conscious of some of these possibilities. If anything is possible by God’s omnipotence, then it is possible that as of tomorrow my car will run on toothpaste instead of petrol. Now I do not believe that this is a possibility, so I am not going to check, but if it is a possibility, even if I assume that it will not happen, I have to assume that it is possible for it to happen, I can not assume that it can’t happen.
There is a difference between assuming that something won’t happen and that something can’t happen. I assume that I won’t crash my car tomorrow, but I do not assume that it can’t happen. Why is this significant? Because if something can happen then we often alter our behaviour, even if probability tells us that it won’t happen. In the case of me crashing my car I assume that it won’t happen (if I assumed that it would happen then tomorrow I would be taking the bus), but I do not assume that it can’t happen- because of this I alter my behaviour- If I assumed that it could not happen that I would crash tomorrow then I would have no reason to wear my seatbelt. Because I assume that it can happen, even though I assume that it won’t, I will be wearing my seatbelt.
If miracles are possible then it would be natural for us to behave consciously of them, even if we assume that they will not happen. I assume that my house won’t catch on fire, but that it could happen, therefore I keep smoke detectors in the house. I not only assume that my house will not levitate off the ground, I also assume that it can not levitate off the ground, so I will not take any precautions for the case of this occurrence.
If there is a God who has the ability and the motivation to perform miracles then even if I see no reason for God to do such a thing, I have to assume it is possible for him to levitate my house, or make my car run on toothpaste or turn the sky yellow or turn the grass pink or turn the oceans orange.
Does anyone really believe all this is possible? And in the case of those who say they do, one has to wonder why they act, as the rest of us act; - as though they assume not only the improbability of these events, but also their impossibility.
By Will Keates
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