Miracles

Miracles and Explanations

An extraodrinary event that is not explicable by the natural or scientific laws and is attributed to a divine agency.
'There is no shortage of miracles; and one can only think that those theologians who thought that modern man can no longer believe in miracles must have had a remarkably limited range of acquaintances.' This means that people should be allowed to believe in their own miracles.
Natural law remians in a closed system and miracles break into this closed system contained with natural laws so therefore miracles violtae our natural world and aee unexplainable and even science cannot explain into our world.

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Realists view miracles as events that actually happen and miracles are objective events that are caused by God.
An example of a miracle that actually has happened in 1971 when a plane hit a thunderstorm and free falled 10,000 feet and 85 of the 86 passengers were killed and Juliane Koepke survived the incident survibing a 9 day journey through the jungle to reach safety.
The chances of life were nearly zero and can be described as an event outside of our natural law.
Miracles are bought about by God and God exists as a transcendant being; nevertheless miracles are evidence of Gods existence and for his care of the world.
These things are true despite the fact that we do not understand everything about Miracles.
We dont need direct proof of a miracle rather that the evidence is so overhwhelming that for a realist it can be considered to be a proof.
Problems: As miracles break from the laws of nature, miracles are impossible as we still have natural law and some people have different perceptions of miracles such as people seeing they only come from God and some being coincidences making them 'God blind'

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Deny that we can have knowledge of a mind independant world since the phenomena observed by our senses are interpreted by the mind. Talk of God has no cognitive content so cannot be meaningful.
It is not the view that miracles dont happen, nor is it the view that miracles are real. They view the question on whether miracles are real or not real. We should focus on the significance and meaning of miracles.
We have no knowledge of a transcendant realm so miraculous intervention in this realm is not a sensible idea. Miracles are mental states that are understood in terms of psycology.
An anti realist is informing us about their state of mind and not an event itself and Tillich and Holland offer anti realist views of miracles.
Problems- It dissaporves of God having any divine intervention in Miracles and whether the event can be seen as a miracle depends on the way it is interpreted from who the miracle concerns.

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Tillich does not understand miracles in the realist understanding of divine intervention in the world by a transcendant God. Miracles are sign events that cannot be divorced from religious context.
Miracles have three components: 1. an event that is astonishing and unusual without contradiciting the rational structure of rationality. 2. Ppints to the mystery of being 3. An occurence which is recieved as a sign event in an ecstatic experience.
Miracles are part of our subjective reality. Tillich is ant realist because he regards objective reality or the mystery of being as something we do not understand.

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Hick says that miracles reveal the precense of God and therefore are religiously signficant. Miracles can involve the breaking of our natural law and therefore Hick has a realist stance towards Miracles believeing they alter the natural laws and has divine intervention.
Holland sees miralces as remarkable conincidences.
He uses the example of a child who runs his toy car onto a railway track where it gets stuck at the same time a fast train is coming along the line. The driver miracolously faints and this activates the emergency stop. This is seen by the mother as a miracle but how it came about everyone is unsure.
It would be a confusion according to Holland. The mother interprets the miracle in a miraculous fashion praising God for the miracle. Realising the Driver fainted it makes the miracle anti -relaist as God done nothing to cause the driver to faint making the situation an incredible coincidence.

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Hume takes the empiricist view that knowledge dervies from sense experience. The more evidence we have for any event the higher its probability.
Hume understands miracles as something that breaks the laws of nature and has a supernatrual cause or being involved with it. Miracles are unexplainable and any miracle that can be explained did not break the laws of nature and therefore did not happen.
There is no evidence for a miracle actually happening and Hume is empirical so believes no one cannot tell the truth as nobody can explain a miracle to someone else.
Hume doesnt actually believe miracles happen. This is because the feeling of suprise and wonder bought about by a miracle makes human lose their common sense; the probability that the witnesses are lying or mistaken is always the greater than the probability that a miracle has occured and miracles across religion cancel eachother out, religions believe miracles happen from their God, but there can only be one God.
Miracles dont happen mainly because there is not enough empirical evidence to prove them but if they were to happen they would alter the laws of nature which makes Hume a realist

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Wiles main argument is that God does not act in the world through miracles. Wiles approves of Tillich view thst miracles are 'sign events'
For Wiles the belief that God controls the laws of nature and interferes with this in order to perform miracles can no longer be upheld.
Wiles means that if we think of God using miracles to help people, we know that miracles only happen to certain people, so it means that the idea of miracles are merely implausible and religiously unsatisfactory.
In events such as the holocaust it would be strange not to see a godly intervention.
It is not just a question of why God does not intervene to save people more often; it is more important to us to insist that God does not intervene at all. Problem of evil not solved.
Wiles takes an anti realist view of miracles. They are to do with our fight against evil.
There has only been one miracles, that of creation itself, and we shouldnt see miracles happening in the world after the miracle of creation. God created the universe and leaves it to work through natural laws.

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