Undesigned Historical Coincidences in the Gospels

(I will give total credit for this to Dr. Timothy McGrew from Western Michigan State University who I am simply synthesizing the information in some of his interviews for publication here on Logical Theism.)

Often when we are reading the Gospels we miss, or rather, skip over certain statements that are made in passing. These statements frequently add nothing to the narrative or even might raise questions that the narrative is unable or uninterested in answering. It is only when we compare them to the parallel account found in another of the gospels that we find some details that explain them. That is, that these stories are told in ways that the inconsequential details dovetail together in such a way that show that neither was copied from the other but also that they reveal real and reliable testimony. They are undersigned but no gospel writer was writing something intentionally inconsequential hoping that one day another writer would come along and fill in the necessary detail only for a third person to come along and piece it all together just to try and fool people to believe that the original document wasn’t forged. These narratives fit together in such a way to show that there is a real event that the witnesses are describing.

This raises a problem for those liberal scholars who would like to say that the stories developed as myth, are allegory, are not the result of eyewitness testimony or were produced far to late to be reliable. We will see as we examine just some of these “undersigned coincidences” that they are the hallmark of good eyewitness testimony and indicate reliable authorship rather than forgeries.

1. The Transfiguration

First lets look at Luke 9:36: “And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.”

This is found in the story of the Transfiguration. So Jesus takes three of his disciples up onto the mountain and after a while they fall asleep. When they wake up they find Jesus glowing and talking with two guys who have come down from heaven! Then a cloud covers them and they hear the voice from heaven, then “when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.” But I’m sure most of you have a question at this point.

The question that this story almost screams out for an answer is why did they not tell anybody? If you or I were to see such an event, we would undoubtedly tell people, and a lot of people, about it. So why did they not tell anyone? Luke simply doesn’t tell us.

Now flip over to the same event as it is told in Mark 9:9: “And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.”

So what Mark is recording (which some scholars think is actually the testimony of Peter as Peter is reporting it to him) is that Jesus actually commanded the disciples not to tell anybody. So what we find in Mark is a detail not found in Luke that gives a fuller picture of what Luke was reporting. It explains something puzzling about Luke’s account. This also gives rise to a problem with what is known as Markan Priority, that is, that Luke is copying from Mark. If Luke was copying from Mark, why would he leave out a detail from the narrative that would explain a very puzzling fact that he left in? Why hold on to the part about the disciples not telling anyone but leave out the reason why they didn’t tell anyone? If Luke was coping from Mark, he would have carried over the detail that Jesus had commanded them not to tell anyone.

2. Herod’s household

In this next passage, Jesus has begun his ministry and Herod has become aware of it and wants some more information on it. So we read in Matthew:

Matthew 14:1-2: “At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, 2 and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.””

Now the question comes up, why does Herod, with all the resources at his disposal, go to the servants in his household to get information about Jesus? Right if Obama wants information about what is going on in Egypt, he doesn’t go to the cleaning crew. But that is what Herod does. Now why would he do that? Why would he think that his servants would have the answers? If you look through Matthew you will not find the answer. It is simply an off the cuff comment that Matthew makes when reporting the narrative, that Herod goes to his servants.

But now flip over and look at Luke 8:3. Before we look at it we should point out that this is not meant as a passage to explain Matthew 14. It is not found in a parallel passage. It is not addressing why Herod asks his servants. It is what Tim McGrew calls “fly over territory”. These are the boring parts that are almost totally inconsequential and we like to just skip over.

But look at what Luke says in an off the cuff comment totally unrelated to Matthew 14. Luke 8:3 says in listing some of the people who were followers of Jesus, “and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.”

In other words, in passing, Luke drops the information in passing that Jesus had followers who had family that worked in Herod’s household. And a household manager or steward is no lowly position. And Herod is not a fool. He would know this. He would undoubtedly know that he had followers of Jesus, or at least the family of followers of Jesus at his disposal in his own household. If he has questions about Jesus, like he did, he wouldn’t have to go further than his own household. So this passage explains what is going on in Matthew 14. Why is he asking his servants? Because he knows that they know.

3. The Feeding of the 5000

Here we will be looking at John 6:5 in the set-up for the feeding of the 5000. We find Jesus and his disciples just arriving on the opposite shore of the Sea of Galilee and becoming confronted with a large crown gathering. Now at this point John does something rather strange.

John 6:5: “Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?””

If you were going to forge a story or make up details, you would bring up well known characters. Well here Jesus doesn’t not address Peter or John or even Judas (who we might expect since we know that Judas was the one responsible for the group’s money bag), but rather he addresses Philip. Outside of the calling of Philip told in the gospels, Philip is only mentioned 2 times, in this story and then again basically as just a messenger in John 12:21-22. This is not a heavy hitter in the NT. And yet this is who Jesus looks to when he wants them to buy bread. Why?

Well we know from John 1 and John 12 that Philip was from Bethsaida. John 12:21 says, “They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee” or John 1:44 that says, “Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida.”

But now let’s look at the parallel passage to the feeding of the 5000 in Luke 9:10. Here Luke is telling the same story about Jesus and the disciples trying to get away from it all but he adds an important little detail that John leaves out. Luke says, “On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida.”

Well what John doesn’t tell us is that the feeding of the 5000 happens not just in Galilee (where most of disciples were from) but specifically in the town of Bethsaida – where Philip is from. So in effect, Jesus was asking Philip, “Hey, you’re from around here… Where can get some bread?”

But notice that whereas John doesn’t mention the setting of the miracle, Luke doesn’t mention Philip. So neither is copying from the other. They are not taking details from each other.

(Here McGrew makes a helpful interjection at those who would be tempted to say that these are just two legends that developed congruently. He points out that we would never open Treasure Island to try and help us fill in details in Moby Dick.)

But it goes further. If we look at Mark’s account of the story we read in the prologue this in Mark 6:30: “The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”

Well the question is raised, why there is suddenly so many people out and about? Skeptics have actually tried to use this to find an error in the passage pointing out that we wouldn’t have thousands of people from one small town coming out to hear a sermon. So where are all these people coming from? Well turn back to John 6.

We read in John 6:4-5, “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him…”

So whereas Mark simply tells us about the crowd, John fills in the details and tells us that this event took place right before the Passover. This would mean that there would be thousands and thousands of sojourners traveling on their way to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. So this does not mean that there were thousands of people living in this little town of Bethsaida, but that this crowd would have been from all over Israel.

Again, this is simply another historical detail that one author leaves out but another author provides to dovetail all these accounts together.

4. Peter, do you love me?

Here we find Jesus chatting with Peter after the resurrection and he asks him what comes across as a pretty harsh question.

John 21:15 reads, “When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?””

Why is Jesus picking on Peter? Why does he not ask him if he loves him as much as the other disciples? Why does he put Peter on the spot and ask him if he loves him more? Well search high and low in John and you wont find the answer. But look to a pretty well known passage in Matthew 26:33 and we find, “Peter answered him, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.””

Now when we see the two passages together, why is Jesus asking Peter if he loves Jesus more than any others? It is because Peter had boasted that he would be more faithful than anyone else, but he hadn’t. But we don’t get any of that in John, not even in his telling of the same upper room narrative in John 13. It is only when we fill in the blanks from Matthew that we see the whole picture.

5. Jesus before Pilate

In this next scenario we will be looking at the passage in John when Jesus is brought before Pilate. He has been accused and arrested by the Chief Priests and now is standing before Pilate and they begin to have a conversation where Pilate asks Jesus in v33, “are you the king of the Jews?” Now, for those following the narrative in John, this is NOT one of the accusations that the Jews have been using to get Jesus arrested in the gospel. They accuse him of being a troublemaker and of blasphemy but never of claiming to be king of the Jews. Pilate might as well have asked him if he was the Mr. Universe of the Jews. It was just a question that in John is completely out of left field.

But now flip over to Luke 23:2-3 where Luke is telling the same story and gives the charges that the priests actually present to Pilate: “And they began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king.” 3 And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?””

Now, Pilate’s question make sense. It is not that John got the question wrong. It is that John simply left out a piece of historical detail that would make the question make more sense that Luke fills in for us. A Roman Procurator has to take the charge of someone claiming to be king had to take care of. So Luke gives us a detail that John leaves out, that helps us better understand John.

But it gets better. Let’s keep reading in Luke 23:3-5

“3 And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” 4 Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no guilt in this man.” 5 But they were urgent, saying, “He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place.””

Now when Pilate asks Jesus if he was king he responds with a normal Greek idiom. In our translations it says something like “you have said so” or “you say it is so” or something like that. It actually was a common idiom something like our “from your mouth to God’s ears.” Basically he is saying “yup, you said it buddy.” It’s an admission.

So this raises a huge problem in the text. Here is a Jew, accused of claiming to be king, one of the biggest offenses in Roman society, and a Roman procurator saying that he finds no guilt in the man? What? No guilt? He just admitted to it! So what is going on? That doesn’t make sense in Luke by itself.

But now go back to John 18. After Pilate asks if he is king, they have a little back and forth and in v36 we find Jesus saying, ““My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”” Then after a little more back and forth at the end of v38 we read, “After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.”

So now it is a fact that is missing from Luke that we find in John that explains the narrative. They both find details in the other account that help us understand the story itself. We don’t know in John why Pilate asks if Jesus is a king, but we don’t know from Luke why he says that Jesus is innocent. Neither one is copying from eachother or they would have left those details in but neither one is making up an event on their own because the other source assumes some background information that is not essential to their own version that happens to fill in the other version.

6. Healing the sick

In Matthew 8 we have Jesus at Peter’s house and he heals his mother in law. Then we are told in 8:16, “16 That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.”

Now anyone familiar with gospels knows that healings were not isolated events. They were large crowds, cutting open roofs, pushing through crowds. So why is it that these people didn’t come to Jesus until evening? Why werent they standing in line like the new iPhone was coming out?

Well flip over to Mark 1 where the parallel is we read this in Mark 1:21, “And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching.”

After this we are told that he did some healings in the synagogue and then went to Peter’s house and healed his mother, then in v32 we read, “That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. 33 And the whole city was gathered together at the door. 34 And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.”

So why do people wait in Matthew to come to Jesus at sundown? Well Mark tells us. It was the Sabbath. Well at this time who was the dominate sect in the Jerusalem at the time? It was the Pharisaical sect and they taught that you could not work on the Sabbath, not even carrying someone to be healed or walking more than a few hundred steps outside of your house. So the people wait until sun is down then immediately start leaving their houses and carrying their sick to Jesus. This is a trivial statement in Matthew that people did not come until evening, but it is fully explained Mark.

I am working on documenting more of these but I will post these for now.

The Problem With the Problem of Suffering

The most persistent, and probably the strongest, argument against the existence of the Christian God is the argument from evil (or pain). The first major formulation of the argument is the logical problem of evil. This argument seeks to prove that the existence of evil (or pain in some formulations) and the existence of the Christian conception of God are contradictory. It can be stated as follows (first as a simple modus tollens, then as more complex series of syllogisms):

1. If God exists, then there would be no suffering.
2. It is not the case that there is no suffering.
3. God does not exists

Or more complexly,

1. God exists.
2. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.
3. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.
4. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence.
5. An omnipotent being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
6. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
7. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then no evil exists.
8. Evil exists.
9. God does not exist. (reductio ad absurdum from 1-3)

The second formulation, the Evidential problem of evil, while not insisting that evil and God are contradictory, does seek to show that the existence of evil makes the existence of God highly suspect if not entirely untenable. Two major formulations are by William Rowe and Paul Draper. They are:

Rowe:
1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
3. There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.

Draper:
1. Gratuitous evils exist.
2. The hypothesis of indifference, i.e., that if there are supernatural beings they are indifferent to gratuitous evils, is a better explanation for (1) than theism.
3. Evidence prefers that no god, as commonly understood by theists, exists.

We could add another third kind of formulation, a probabilistic version, which would merely affirm that the existence of some kind of severe evil or evil at certain volumes counts as evidence against God such that the level of evil and suffering we see in the world makes the existence of God improbable.

Yet one more can be added. So I do not appear to be setting up a straw man, I believe that the atheist has an even better argument that they often do not even consider using because to assume it, is to intentionally borrow a Christian doctrine. What better example of suffering is there than eternal damnation in the fires of hell? The existence of hell cannot be attributed to human free will, even if  the reason why any humans are sent there may be. That is, God created hell.

So what can we say to this? What is a proper response? Let me first say that I do not intend to respond to this pastorally. I would never use this line of reasoning to comfort the afflicted or to show kindness to the widow who just lost a spouse to seemingly senseless tragedy, or someone who lost a child who who is suffering with horrific kinds of abuse and victimization. So if this comes across as cold and logical, that's not what I intend but often is how these kinds of logical arguments can feel.

With that said, I do believe that the answer to this logical dilemma is actually surprisingly quite easy. The basic answer is that the problem of evil (in nearly all forms) is a false dilemma.

How so?

The question of evil presupposes God in order to deny his existence. It is like the small child who must crawl onto his father’s lap in order to slap his father’s cheek.

The problem of evil is only a potential problem in a theistic universe. In an atheistic universe, there can be no basis for absolutely morality other than something like “social contract” or “herd preservation.” Yet these are not absolute foundations for morality but are expressions of Darwinian necessity. For the strong to survive, the strong must cooperate so to speak. This then makes a moral fiction. There is no real morality only a kind of social code that we ascribe to. So if a man decides to forcibly take another man’s wife, he is not actually breaking an absolute moral law, but rather is creating his own social contract, albeit and unpopular one. We do not say that the lion is immoral for eating the sick and aged in the herd, we say it is survival. Thus, the atheist, no matter how much they attempt to find an absolute basis for a relative morality, can never find one.

So when an atheist points to suffering and calls it “evil” he is actually borrowing a truth from the theistic worldview. But if the theistic worldview is necessarily correct in order to make the argument, he must either relinquish his insistence on the argument as a false dilemma, or give up his atheism as a false worldview. Either God exists and his denial of God is in error, or God does not exist and the problem of evil is invalid.

Yet who would look at a child suffering from seemingly meaningless starvation and think, “oh that’s only the appearance of evil.” Who would be a victim to brutal assault or rape or attempted murder and then turn to the nurse and say, “I don’t mind, there is no such thing as real evil. That man was just acting out of his own moral system that happens to be different from mine.”

We all know that there is such a thing as real, absolute evil, but the question is “Why?!”

The answer however, is not to deny the existence of God as incompatible with the pain. The answer is to realize that evil points to us that this is not how the world is meant to be, and that one day God will make things right again. God is not oblivious to our suffering and he sent his own Son to take our suffering onto himself so that one day we would enter his rest where there will be no more pain or sickness or suffering.

So the next time an atheist tries to use pain and suffering and evil to discredit the existence of God, don’t be afraid to show him that he is borrowing our worldview. Don’t let him.

TED Bans Talk Challenging Scientism

This was a talk BANNED by TED... how does a group dedicated the Free Thought and skepticism BAN a talk that challenges the worldview of Scientism in order to make science more free? What's next? A science inquisition?! "Burn the witch!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg

 I was just so surprised to find out an institution like TED would ban such a talk. I wonder if Nagel will ever get invited to speak given his recent book expressing major doubts about naturalism and materialism... 

Special Edition of the Freed Thinker Podcast - Discussion of Moral Philosophy pt 3

In this episode we continue our joint discussion with Nicholas Bruzzese (host of The Skeptic's Testament) and our friend Brandon Christen. We continue my presentation of Theistic Objective Moral Realism in which we touch on:

Divine Command Theory
Divine Attribute Theory
The Rebuff of Nihilism
The Price Tag of Rejecting Theistic Objective Moral Realism
Nihilism and Cognitive Dissonance

You can find the show by searching for The Freed Thinker Podcast on iTunes or stream it live at

http://freedthinker.podbean.com/2013/03/19/special-edition-discussion-of-moral-philosophy-part-3/

Enjoy the show!

The Invisible Gardener In The Jungle

John Wisdom writes gives us a parable in his article “Gods,” where he writes,

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

The purpose of this parable is to show that even if God were to exist, that a God as described by the theist (or at least Wisdom’s and the common skeptical understanding of it) would be indistinguishable from no God at all. So why not simply accept Occam’s razor and believe that there is no God at all rather than believe in an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive one?

The problem with all of this is that the analogy is not, well, analogous to what theists in general and Christians in specific say that God’s activity in the world is like. Let us alter the analogy to make it more analogous.

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many blue flowers and many weeds. When they looked more closely at the garden they found that it was actually extremely well tilled, that flowers not indigenous to the jungle had been planted there – all of them blue. They found an intricately designed watering system whereby the foreign plants would be kept alive and without it they not only would die off, but they never would have been able to be planted in the first place. Along with these flowers they find genetically engineered plants that were found to have extremely specific medicinal applications or other plants that were needed to absorb the natural acidity found in the jungle soil that would otherwise kill off these other flowers. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?" And yet later in that day the skeptic comes down with a very severe illness unknown to either explorer. He is sick for several days and it looks as though he is going to die. Suddenly one morning, they both awaken to a man from tribe X in the jungle standing above them. The tribesman states that the gardener of the forest had directed him to come to garden and tell the men that he found there that all he has to do is drink tea made from a red flower in the garden because the gardener put it there the night before for the dying explorer. They look and find that where all of the flowers had previously been blue, there was now a small patch of red flowers. Later in the day, a man from tribe Y comes and tells the explorers the same thing (even though the tribes have no knowledge that other even exists). At dusk 5 more villagers from previously unknown villages, all unknown to each other, come and tell him the same message about the gardener. After drinking the tea the explorer recovers.”

Now, what should the skeptic think? That it is all coincidence at that there just must be a natural explanation for it all because there is no direct empirical evidence of the gardener? Or is it possible that indirect evidence, in the form of design, fine tuning, information, and varied independent experience can count as evidence?

A Hume Divided Cannot Stand

The New Atheists frequently will appeal to Saint David (Hume) in their rejection of miracles. In this article, in brief, I will present why I find Hume’s On Miracles to be fundamentally flawed on numerous levels. More can be said on Hume than what I present here however so please, if you have any questions leave them in the comment section and I will do my best to reply in a timely manner.

1.      His primary argument relies on what he has already said is impossible in the first half of On Miracles, that is, the logical use of induction. Hume spent the first half of On Miracles refuting the notion of induction only to turn around and use it (and a pretty vague concept of it at that) to attempt to disprove miracles.

His basic argument against induction is that there is no guarantee that the future will be like the past. Partly due to his thoughts on causality, Hume says that just because every time the cue ball hits the billiard ball in the past and the billiard ball moved, we do not know that such a causal correlation will occur in the future. Maybe tomorrow when they collide, the cue ball will be turned into an egg. Every morning when we get out of bed our feet land on solid flooring. But maybe tomorrow our floor will be viscous and we will sink right through it. We can see more clearly Hume’s problem with induction by looking at a simple argument:

P1) Every jelly bean I have eaten from the jar tastes like licorice.

P2) Therefore all the jelly beans in the jar will taste like licorice.

The question is, can we ever be justified in positively or certainly claiming P2? Hume despairs and says no.

Now, I actually think that defenses of induction are possible and disagree with Hume that we can never make inductive claims like P2, especially considering that I think one of the main differences between induction and deduction is varied degrees of certainty. So I think induction can be reframed such that the conclusions are not statements of certainty but rather something like P3 “Therefore it is plausible (to a varied degree) that all the jelly beans in the jar will taste like licorice.”

Here we can also bring in things like justification. What if there are 5000 jelly beans and P1 is true, but I have only eaten 5. Would I be justified in asserting P3? Not really. But if I ate 3000 then maybe or if I ate 9 out of only 10 then probably yes.

One of the inductive problems for Hume however is that he does deny induction. And yet when he begins to discuss miracles, one of his arguments is that we have the universal experience of no miracles occurring and therefore we should conclude no miracles will occur in the future. Yet this is only possible if we say something like,

P1) No miracles have occurred in the past.

P2) Therefore no miracles will occur in the future.

Besides the fact that this is not really even a syllogism where the conclusion is drawn from true premises, it would rely on some principle of induction in order for it to work. Something Hume has already said we should not allow.

Another inductive problem is that another one of Hume’s arguments, that miracles cannot happen because they violate the laws of nature, assumes that natural laws have been or will always be the same. Think of the billiard ball. If Hume wants to deny induction by saying that the billiard ball isn’t guaranteed to move simply because it has always behaved that way in the past, then how is he able to say that a natural law cannot be violated in the future because they have not been violated in the past? One possible recourse would be to say that laws of nature just are things that are inviolable. Yet again, all he is doing is assuming that because natural laws have been the kinds of things that are inviolable in the past that they are guaranteed to be inviolable in the future.

And before you go on to say that these are facts that can be observed through science, you have to realize that you are still only appealing to induction – science has lead to true knowledge in the past, therefore it will lead to true knowledge in the present and the future. It is still circular and still relies on induction.

Now, you may resolve the issue by simply agreeing with me that Hume is wrong on his rejection of induction and therefore be free to make his argument against miracles. However, it must be stated explicitly which position you will take. Do you deny the 1^st half of On Miracles or the 2^nd? Do you deny his arguments against induction or do you deny his arguments against miracles? We simply cannot have both.

2.      The next problem is that of the utter circularity of the probabilistic argument against miracles. Basically he says that we can know that miracles do not occur because we have the universal experience of no miracles occurring. Yet can he know such universal experience? Well we can only know that there is universal experience of no miracles occurring if we know that all the reports of them are false. But we can only know that they are all false if we know that no miracles have occurred. The syllogism would be as follows,

P1) We know that miracles do not occur because we have universal experience of no miracles occurring.

P2) We know that we have such universal experience or no miracles occurring because we know that all reports of miracles are false.

P3) We know that all reports of miracles are false because we know that no miracle has occurred.

      

That is a circle of the most vicious kind. 

Ok, those are the obvious problems. The next ones become a bit more complicated.

3.      Next is Hume’s assertion that miracles are impossible because they just are violations of the inviolable natural laws. We have already seen that this poses a problem for his objection to induction, but now we will see that it also presupposes the truth of naturalism – which is his intended conclusion.

In order for this objection to work, we must accept two of Hume’s definitions, neither of which I think we should. The first is the definition of a natural law as inviolable. This seems a bizarre stance to take in modern times considering that most scientists and philosophers of science would define natural laws merely as descriptions of the normative behaviors of the natural world. All of science, and indeed natural laws, function on the assumption of “caeteris paribus” or “all things being equal.” Science and natural law are only descriptions of what happens when nature goes about its merry way without any interruption, injection of new information, or exertion of some other force, natural or otherwise.

This is where C.S. Lewis’ famous example of arithmetic comes in. I do not say the bank thief who robbed my bank broke the laws of arithmetic because the ledgers do not balance, but rather the laws of California. The laws of arithmetic have not been violated, new circumstances arose. Not all things were equal.

In fact I noticed something quite ironic a while back. This exact defense is used by evolutionists against creationists who assert that the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics makes evolution impossible. They claim that because evolution is the tendency toward increased complexity and that the 2^nd Law is that all nature tends toward entropy, that evolution violates the 2^nd Law and is therefore not possible. Besides that this is not the best understanding of either evolution or thermodynamics, evolutionists often point out the same response we should give to Hume. Evolutionists quite rightly point out that other factors are at work that lead to less entropy. That is, the 2^nd Law is not violated, it is superseded. The influence of outside actors can override the normal operation of the natural world. Like before, it is not all things being equal.

This leads us to Hume’s definition of a miracle just as a violation of a law of nature. Why must we accept that definition? Why can it not simply be the influence of an outside actor overriding the normal operation of the natural world. We can think of resurrection as an example of this. Many anti-theists seem to have a love affair with calling it a “zombie” apocalypse but that is really just a deficient way of understanding it. Imagine that I died of cardiac arrest right now and was rushed the hospital. The doctors would try CPR and defibrillation on me and hopefully my heart would suddenly  start again. Now, do we say that the doctors have violated the law that dead bodies stay dead? (There is no actual natural law to this effect but I think it is a common enough belief that dead bodies stay dead.) Well no. We recognize that if I was truly dead (and not just swooning or something), and all things being equal, no one did anything I would have stayed dead. But there was the intervention of an outside actor, the infusion of new information (in the form of energy), etc. The law was not violated, the circumstances simply did not remain “caeteris paribus”.

Yet if we allow for doctors to revive patients dead for a short period of time, why is it logically impossible (for that is Hume’s contention) that a being like God could not simply do something of the sort for people dead for a longer period of time? It would not be the violation of natural law, but merely the intervention of an outside actor inserting new information into the system.

The only recourse to deny this as logically possible, is if one is already precommitted to naturalism. That is, that no such being or action can possibly exist. But then one is arguing from the premise that no such action can possibly occur to the conclusion that no such action can possibly occur. It simply begs the question. Therefore this argument of Hume’s fails.

4.      The final argument I would like to look at is his argument from probability – “that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish”.

Firstly, it should be pointed out that this is not actually one of Hume’s arguments. It is set up in Part 1 of the book as the ground work for his later argument. It is not an argument against miracles (as many try to cast it now) but rather is a contention about the kind of evidence that should be permissible in the demonstration that miracles do or do not occur.

Hume continues,

“(T)here is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of Men of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning as to serve us against all delusion in themselves; of such undaunted integrity as to place themselves beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world as to render the detection unavoidable...”

Well one could argue that it has been found that there is in history an event which was attested by a sufficient number (what counts as sufficient for Hume?) of eyewitnesses, who give no sign of lack of good sense, education (how much is needed to know – “Hey… he was dead and entombed… and now he is eating fish with us”), we have no reason to think that they intentionally deceived others (especially since they gained nothing from their testimony and did actually “have a great deal to lose incase of their being detected of any falsehood,” and were even more disadvantaged in some brutal ways for even asserting it. Not to mention that they did assert it publically and allowed for contradiction even though none came.

In fact Hume states,

“There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person, than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abbé Paris, the famous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people were so long deluded. The curing of the sick, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But what is more extraordinary, many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in the world. Nor is this all. A relation of them was published and dispersed everywhere; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civil magistrates, and determined enemies to those opinions, in whose favour the miracles were said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where shall we find such a number of circumstances, agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility, or miraculous nature of the events which they relate? And this, surely, in the eyes of all reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation.”

This is just one of several examples that he gives where all of his criteria have ostensibly been met. And yet he goes on to say he would "still reply that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena" that he would rather believe that it was a conspiracy than a miracle. So, ironically even Hume basically admits that his standard is so high that even in his most modern time if all the criteria were met, that he would still reject it! Why? Because it’s just impossible. It just has to be wrong and that his just saying so should “be regarded as a sufficient refutation” to “all reasonable people.” Well that’s not an argument. It’s mere presumption and circular reasoning.

John Earman's principle in his book Hume’s Abject Failure is much the same as my own: "An epistemology that does not allow for the possibility that evidence, whether from eyewitness testimony or from other sources, can establish the credibility of a UFO landing, a walking on water, or a resurrection is inadequate." Basically, there is the appearance of reason in the standard but when it is examined it is intentionally set up so as to be impossible to appease. The standard itself is on principle that no evidence could ever meet the requirement and thus no fact could ever be brought to bear against the truth of naturalism.

No eyewitness will ever be credible enough. No experiment that has the outcome of a miracle would ever be more likely than conspiracy, etc. It is not reasonable, it is presumptive. It is the empiricist equivalent of a fanatical conspiracy theorist riddled with confirmation bias. Now, I am skeptical about a great many things. I think skepticism is healthy. But skepticism that is so extreme, almost Cartesian, cannot be helpful in anyway. Try to convince someone who has their mind made up that we are living in the Matrix that we are not and you will be frustrated indeed. There is nothing you could ever point to in this world that would prove otherwise because everything will be infused with the air of conspiracy. Everything would simply be a part of the construct.

To illustrate this, let us imagine that we live in a universe where miracles have in fact occurred. If we accept Hume’s epistemological standard then we would have set up a standard, by assuming naturalism, whereby we could not only not know a fundamental fact about the universe, but where we would actually be positively irrational if we believed what was actually true. It seems to me that any standard where by true knowledge = irrationalism has a fundamental flaw somewhere contained within its assumptions.

Another problem is one that even Hume’s contemporaries noticed. They gave the example of a Prince from a tropical land who had never seen ice. By Hume’s line of reasoning, the Prince would be just as validated in not believing in ice as the skeptic is for not believing in miracles. Hume tried to counteract this by saying that just because the Prince might be reasonable for denying the existence of ice, there were other humans who did experience ice and therefore it is reasonable for them to believe in ice (and indeed for others to take their word for it.) The problem here is that this just reduces down to a subjective argument from experience – a kind of argument skeptics are loathe to endorse. If we accept this principle, then the atheist must accept the Christian’s statement of belief based on religious experience as a reasonable means of knowledge. They might have no experience of God, but others have. The prince had not experienced ice, but others had.

It is further undermined by Earman who responds by saying that if this is so, then if homo sapiens arose in Africa, "there was a stage in human history where the total collective experience of the species coincided in relevant respects" with that of the prince who lived in a tropical climate. This means that we could literally echo Hume’s argument that we have the universal experience of “no ice” and therefore any testimony about ice existing in the future are more likely to be false.

Hume then went on to attempt to argue that for the prince, the existence if ice could possibly be deduced by analogy to something else. He stated that the Prince could come to believe in a solid form of water simply by a positive analogy from other phase changes in water.  Earman makes a good point in one of his footnotes: "If one sees a positive analogy for a solid form of water in other phase changes, why not see a positive analogy for resurrection in near death experiences, catatonic states, and the like?"

I will end with Earman's summary which is important as a critique even in the midst of him praising Hume for at least identifying an important problem and dealing with it in an interesting manner:

“In 'Of Miracles,' Hume pretends to stand on philosophical high ground, hurling down thunderbolts against miracles stories. The thunderbolts are supposed to issue from general principles about inductive inference and the credibility of eyewitness testimony. But when these principles are made explicit and examined under the lens of Bayesianism, they are found to be either vapid, specious, or at variance with actual scientific practice...[Hume] was able to create the illusion of a powerful argument by maintaining ambiguities in his claims against miracles, by the use of forceful prose and confident pronouncements, and by liberal doses of sarcasm and irony...I find it ironic that so many readers of Hume's essay have been subdued by its eloquence...No doubt this generous treatment stems in part from the natural assumption that someone of Hume's genius must have produced a powerful set of considerations. But I suspect that in more than a few cases it also involves the all too familiar phenomenon of endorsing an argument because the conclusion is liked. There is also the understandable, if deplorable, desire to sneer at the foibles of the less enlightened -- and how much more pleasurable the sneering if it is sanctioned by a set of philosophical principles!”