Atheists often claim that it’s contradictory for believers to assert that God is at the same time both the universal cause of all being and immutable. In other words, God can’t be changeless and at the same time changing, in the sense that he causes things to come into and go out of existence.

Consider, for example, that my act of typing this article right now is a reality ultimately because God causes it to be. His causal activity is not in opposition to my free action, but the presupposition for it. For whatever has being is ultimately caused to be by the source of being, God. Since my act of typing has being (it actually exists), it follows that God ultimately causes my action to be (even if he doesn’t cause every typo or imperfect metaphor that I choose).

By the time you read this article, however, my act of typing it will no longer exist. I’ll be engaged in other acts, such as throwing the football with my sons.

So, what God is causing to exist now (me typing this article in real time), he will no longer cause to exist when I shut down the computer. And what God was not causing to exist (me throwing the football with my sons), God will cause to exist.

But this seems to entail that God changes in his acts, acting to cause one thing at one moment in time, ceasing that act at another moment in time, and engaging in a new act to cause something else at some other moment in time.

If God brings about new effects in time, so it’s argued, he would have to engage in new acts of the will. And if that were true, he would change.

So it seems that if we affirm God as the ultimate cause of all temporal effects, we would have to say God changes. If we say God can’t change, then we couldn’t affirm that he’s the ultimate cause of all temporal effects. Neither of the two options is available for one who believes in the classical understanding of God.

Is a theist trapped?

Notice how the objection assumes that God’s causal action is located in time just like the effect is located in time, as if we can point to some moment in time before which he doesn’t act and after which he does. But there are good reasons to think this assumption is false.

God is eternal, and therefore doesn’t exist or act in the flow of time. He’s entirely outside the succession of moments in time, having all moments of time (our before and after) present to him simultaneously. Consequently, God doesn’t have a “before” and an “after.” And if that’s the case, then it’s not correct to assume that he begins to act after a certain time, before which he didn’t act.

Moreover, as the first and universal cause, God not only ultimately causes my act of typing but also the time at which he wills this act to be (5:00 pm October 14 in Brisbane, Australia). For if he were only the first cause of the action, and not the time at which the action occurred, then there would be some aspect of being (the temporal aspect of being) that would have escaped God’s universal causality. Since that can’t be, we know he must not only cause the action, he must also cause the particular moment in the flow of time at which the act takes place.

And because God can’t be conditioned by that which he causes to be (the particular moments in the flow of time at which all activity takes place), his causal activity can’t possibly be subject to time. In other words, God’s causal activity has no “before” and “after” because God’s causal activity itself determines the “before” and “after” of all activity. We have to be careful not to confuse, “God causes some things to be at some moments of time,” with “God, at some moment in time, causes some things to be.”

Since God’s causal action is not in time, it’s not necessary that he change in his act of causing new temporal effects (i.e., go from not causing to causing). Therefore, the assertion that God is the universal cause of temporal effects doesn’t contradict the claim that God is immutable.

Now, an atheist might respond, “Perhaps God doesn’t undergo change in his causal activity because he acts in time. But he must undergo change inasmuch as he acts as a cause, for change necessarily belongs to what it means to be a cause. So God, therefore, can’t be immutable and the universal cause of all things at the same time.”

The problem with this counter is that it assumes change necessarily belongs to what it means to be a cause.

Sure, the causes that we experience undergo change when they bring about an effect (e.g., me going from not engaging in the act of typing this article to engaging in the act of typing this article). But just because a cause of our experience changes when it causes an effect, it doesn’t necessarily follow that anything whatsoever that acts as a cause must undergo change.

All that’s necessary for a cause to be a cause of an effect is for the effect in question to be brought about by that cause. In other words, without the activity of the cause the effect would not be. There’s nothing in this understanding of a cause that necessitates the cause undergo change when it acts as a cause.

And that’s all a theist is saying when he says God causes temporal effects. Something comes into existence at a specific moment of time due to God’s causal action, and it goes out of existence ultimately because of God’s causal action.

So, the idea that some things are brought about at different moments of time, and that God is the ultimate cause that brings those things about at their distinct moments of time, in no way shows God must undergo change when he acts as a cause. There’s nothing in the notion of a cause that entails change and God’s causal action is not characterized by time.

At least on this front, theism passes the coherence test.

Can the universe be a mere brute fact? Can we say, “The universe just exists and that’s that—it has no explanation at all”?

Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, thinks so. In a recent interview at Salon.com, Carroll says, “There’s certainly no reason to think that there was something that ‘caused’ it; the universe can just be.”

Carroll is in good company with such an assertion. Bertrand Russell, the late British atheistic philosopher, argued the same thing in the famous 1948 BBC radio debate with Fr. Fredrick Copleston: “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all.”

Notice neither Carroll nor Russell says the universe is self-explanatory in that its existence belongs to its nature, which would be the sort of explanation for God’s existence. Nor are they saying we don’t know what the explanation of the universe is. They are saying there is no explanation for why the universe exists rather than not. In essence they are denying the principle of sufficient reason, which states, “Everything that is has a sufficient reason for existing.”

How should we respond? Are we to exchange brute fact for brute fact and say, “Things just need an explanation, and that’s that”? Or is there a way we can show the appeal to brute facts is unreasonable? I answer the latter.

There are several arguments one can employ when arguing against the brute fact view, but for the sake of brevity, I will offer only five.

Double Standards

First, I find it interesting how it’s permitted for an atheist to appeal to unintelligible brute facts but not the theist. If a theist were to say, “God is just a brute fact, there is no rhyme or reason to his existence,” then an atheist would feel justified in denying him membership among the intelligentsia. This is manifest when atheists such as Richard Dawkins object to theistic arguments with, “Who designed the designer?”, thinking theists arbitrarily posit God as the terminus of causal series. If theists aren’t allowed to play the “brute fact” card (which we don’t do anyway), then atheists shouldn’t be allowed to do so either.

The Facts of Ordinary Life

A second response is to point out that we don’t appeal to brute facts when dealing with things in ordinary life. For example, suppose a team of police officers come across a dead body on their shift and begin conjecturing possible explanations. “It’s murder,” one says. “No, I think this was a suicide,” the other officer responds. Another officer says, “No, I disagree, I think the cause is a heart attack.” The last officer says, “We’re wasting our time here—it’s just an unintelligible and inexplicable brute fact that this corpse is here. Let’s keep going.” What would we think of such a police officer? How about, “He’s not a good one!” I think his chief would concur.

So, why should an appeal to a brute fact when faced with the existence of the universe be reasonable when an appeal to a brute fact when faced with a dead body is not?

Can’t Get Out of the Taxi

Our atheist friend might object, “I’m not saying we should accept the police officer’s appeal to a brute fact. I acknowledge everything in the universe probably has an explanation for its existence. But there is no reason to think the universe has to have an explanation for its existence.”

Besides the fact this objection begs the question against the theist—if God exists then the universe would have an explanation for its existence—it commits what some philosophers have aptly called the “taxicab fallacy”; thus a third argument against the brute fact view. Why commit to the idea “Whatever exists has a reason for its existence” and then dismiss it like you dismiss a taxicab once you arrive at the universe as a whole? Such a move is arbitrary and thus unreasonable.

“But,” an atheist might say, “isn’t a theist guilty of the same fallacy in saying God doesn’t have a cause for his existence?” The answer is no, because the theist is not saying God is a brute fact, i.e., he has no reason or explanation for his existence. It is essential to classical theism that God’s existence, though not caused by another, is explained by his essence. His essence is existence itself—ipsum esse subsistens. This is not something theists arbitrarily assert but is the conclusion of deductive reasoning that starts with certain features of the world—motion (change), efficient causality, contingency, degrees of being, and final causality.  So the theist is not guilty of the taxicab fallacy.

Skepticism of the Senses

Another reason the brute fact view is unreasonable is because it entails radical skepticism about perception. As philosopher Alexander Pruss argues in his essay “The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument” (in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland), if things can exist without any sufficient reason, then there might be no reason for our perceptional experiences.

For example, according to this line of reasoning there might be no connection between your experience of reading this article on a computer and the actual article the computer is showing on its monitor. Your experience might just be a brute fact having nothing to do with any of the objective things with which we normally would associate your experience.

Do we want to go down that bleak road of skepticism and say all our sensory experiences are untrustworthy? There might be some radical skeptics who choose to walk that path (such skeptics can read this article). But for most reasonable people this is not a path that can be traveled, because such a path leads to the demise of science, which is something I assume Carroll wouldn’t endorse because he would be out of a job.

We need to be able to trust our sensory perceptions if we intend to discover truths about reality through empirical observation. So, unless one is willing to throw science out, one shouldn’t allow brute facts in the game.

No Arguments Allowed

The last argument I’ll offer for consideration comes from philosopher Edward Feser in his book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. Feser argues the denial of the principle of sufficient reason is at the same time a denial of rational argumentation, including any argument for brute facts. Consider how when we accept the conclusion “Socrates is mortal,” we do so based on the premises “All men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man.” In other words, we recognize the conclusion as rational because the premises are true and the argument is logically valid.

But if brute facts are possible, and the principle of sufficient reason is false, then it follows that our conclusion “Socrates is mortal” might have nothing to do with the truth of the premises and their logical structure. It might also be possible our cognitive faculties themselves had no role to play in explaining why we came to that conclusion.

The bottom line is, if brute facts are possible, there might be no reason whatsoever we believe what we do, even the belief that we believe on rational grounds. This applies to any conclusion we might draw, even the conclusion “Things can exist without a reason for their existence.” But if the conclusion “Things, like the universe, can exist without a reason for their existence” might itself be a brute fact—namely, it has no connection to truth or logic—then we would have no reason to accept it as true. So to deny the principle of sufficient reason undercuts any ground one might have for doubting the principle. It’s self-refuting and thus unreasonable.

Conclusion

Sean Carroll is a brilliant man. He is courageous in taking on heavyweights of the likes of Dr. William Lane Craig. But why such a great mind can’t see the rational implications of denying the principle of sufficient reason, I do not know. Perhaps he just hasn’t thought it through. Or perhaps he just isn’t willing to open the door to a line of reasoning that leads to theism. Whatever may be the case, the appeal to brute facts is not a good parry when in the ring with a theist.

If God is a God of miracles as theists claim, then why doesn’t he perform more to stop evil?

I must admit this is one question I’ve wrestled with in solidarity with my atheist friends.

My initial response is to recall the words of the prophet Isaiah: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD” (Is. 55:8). While I acknowledge this as true, it leaves me dissatisfied.

As a Christian I believe, with St. Paul, that God “works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28), but I’m still often left wondering if there is any sense in God not performing more miracles to stop evil.

Though this is a mystery, I think we can make some sense out of it.

Is God Really Idle?

Let’s begin by distinguishing between moral evil and physical evil. Moral evil is evil caused by the abuse of human freedom, i.e., sin. Physical evil refers to any sort of suffering, decay, or corruption caused by nature.

Now, if speaking of evil in general  (moral and physical), one response is to wrongly assume God hasn’t done anything. It may well be that God has already prevented and is preventing horrendous crimes or natural catastrophes that could wipe out the entire human race. There is simply no way, given our spatial and temporal limitations, to know he hasn’t already done this. As Norris Clarke says, “Our ignorance cannot be a basis for blaming God for what he is already doing” (The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, 288).

Let’s Not Obscure Things

If the question concerns physical evil in particular, one possible answer is that an overwhelming presence of miracles might obscure the supernatural character of the miraculous.

Consider a scenario where miracles are as common as rain. In such a scenario, it would be difficult (though not impossible) to distinguish between the supernatural and the natural, since we can only know the supernatural by contrast with the natural.

As philosopher Edward Feser points out in his lecture for the symposium “God, Reason, and Reality,” such difficulty lends itself to either of two extremes. One extreme is an occasionalist view of the world, a view that holds that God does everything directly without the cooperation of any natural causes. The other extreme is the view that there is no order to the universe at all, which has the potential to lead to an extreme David Hume–like skepticism, or even atheism, since causal regularity is needed to reason to God’s existence as manifested in St. Thomas Aquinas’s five ways.

So, one may conclude that God doesn’t will a more overwhelming presence of miracles to stop physical evil for the sake of not obscuring the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders of reality.

God Values Choice

What about moral evil? Why wouldn’t God perform more miracles to stop moral atrocities in the world?

One response is that it would violate his divine wisdom. Why would God make man with the capacity to choose good or evil in order to merit man’s eternal reward and then rob him of that capacity the second he chooses to exercise it? It doesn’t make sense.

This would be analogous to someone installing an air conditioning system in his or her home and then turning the system off every time it turns on to cool the house. (Having lived in Southern Louisiana the majority of my life, I can affirm this would be a stupid thing to do.) One might be inclined to ask, “Why did you install the air conditioning system in the first place?”

Similarly, it seems contrary to reason for God to create human beings with the capacity to choose for him or against him and then take away that capacity every time they choose to exercise it against him.

“But,” you may say, “perhaps God doesn’t have to take away man’s capacity to choose evil but could stop the evil effects of man’s bad choices—like changing a fired bullet into butter.”

The answer to this question is that God values the power of choice with which he created man. If God never allowed the choices of man to have bad effects, there would be no real value in man’s ability to do good or evil.  In this case the alternative of a bad choice would never be a real alternative. Why give humans the capacity to choose evil if there would never be any real effects from that choice? One might summarize the argument as follows:

If no real effects are possible from man’s choice, then there is no value in man’s power to choose good or evil.

But God values man’s power to choose good or evil.

Therefore, there must be real effects that arise from man’s power to choose good or evil.

It’s reasonable to conclude God doesn’t ordinarily perform miracles to stop bad effects caused by bad choices because he values the power of choice he desires man to have.

Conclusion

These answers by no means fully dispel the darkness of the mystery of why God doesn’t perform more miracles to stop evil. However, they do shed a bit of light that may help one navigate the darkness.

At the heart of the philosophy of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas is the idea that we come into contact with reality through the senses. But what if our senses are not a reliable source? Perhaps our senses are deceiving us, and everything we perceive isn’t real but is merely an illusion like in the movie The Matrix.

Descartes

This skepticism of sense knowledge was part of René Descartes’s methodic doubt, which many radical skeptics have adopted. Descartes argued:

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive me, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once (Meditations, I, pp. 12f.).

Descartes’ point is, if our senses have deceived us before, how do we know our senses aren’t deceiving us now? One example Descartes gives as evidence our senses deceive us is the fact that objects at a distance look smaller than what they actually are.

But this is not deception. The sense of sight is reporting accurately what it perceives, namely the person appears small at a distance and then appears big when close up. As D.Q. McInerny says, “This is the sense of sight functioning just as it should, in order to give me a proper knowledge of distance” (Epistemology, 192). Error would come in only if one made the judgment, “That man is small and then becomes big.” Truth and falsity do not reside in sensory perception but in the act of judging that perception.

St. Thomas Aquinas makes the point this way:

Truth and falsity exist principally in the soul’s judgment. . . . Hence, a thing is not said to be false because it always of itself causes a false apprehension, but rather because its natural appearance is likely to cause a false apprehension (Questiones Disputatae de Veritate 1:10; emphasis added).

Another problem with Descartes’s reason for doubting sensory perception is that he relies on only one sensory power. It’s often the case that in order to test whether one sense is deceiving us, we must use another sense.

To use an example that many radical skeptics do to justify their doubt of sense knowledge, I may perceive the stick partially immersed in water as crooked. How do I determine if what I perceive is actually the case? I pick up the stick. When I do so I judge the stick is not actually crooked. But notice that in order to make a correct judgment about the stick, I employ another sensory power—namely, touch—that I must trust in order to make the proper the judgment.

With regard to Descartes’s example, in order to make a proper judgment about the size of the man walking up the street, Descartes would have to make contact with him through the sense of touch and measure him in order to determine that he is not small, which requires trust in sense knowledge.

Furthermore, Descartes’s recognition of the man’s small stature as unusual presupposes his trust in his previous sensory experience of the man’s tall stature. As Ralph McInerny notes, “[Descartes] must trust his senses in order to doubt them” (A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas, 37).

So, if it’s reasonable to trust sense knowledge, and the senses put us into contact with the world outside the mind, then we can have certitude that what we perceive is objectively real.

Dreams

The appeal to dreams is another way radical skeptics attempt to undermine trust in the senses. Taking their cue from Descartes again, they argue, “How do I know I’m not dreaming right now?” We can respond in two ways.

First, we experience ourselves being awake. As such, the skeptic must shoulder the burden of proof and not merely make an assertion (as Descartes did) but give reason to believe we’re not awake.

Second, in order to determine if our experience is a dream state, one must be able to identify a dream state. But as the philosopher Kenneth Gallagher explains, one can identify a dream state only by comparison with our waking consciousness:

It would be literally nonsensical to ask: how do I know that waking is not what I ordinarily mean by dreaming, because if it were, I wouldn't know what I ordinarily mean by dreaming (The Philosophy of Knowledge, 41].

Conjecture about whether waking is dreaming is literally of no practical use. If our waking is dreaming, then there is no point in talking of dreaming.

Malignant power

Some skeptics may argue that our defense of sense knowledge assumes our sensory and cognitive faculties are real. Following in the steps again of Descartes, they argue, “What if our perception is merely the product of a malignant being manipulating our sensory and cognitive powers, thus making our experiences and knowledge mere illusions?”

Look, just because it is logically possible that we are being deceived by a malignant power does not mean it is plausible. Logical possibility means only that there is no logical contradiction. Plausibility is present whenever there are good reasons for thinking something to be the case. Are there any good reasons to think we are being deceived by a malignant power? The obvious answer is no.

Second, the only possible way to settle the question is to use the very faculties that are being called into question. It is impossible to reflect upon our sensory and cognitive faculties apart from their activities. As the late philosopher Peter Coffey writes:

[C]ognitive faculties cannot be tested or examined in themselves and abstracting from their activities: whatever we know or can know about the nature of the mind and its faculties we can know only through their activities: there is no other channel of information open to us (Epistemology vol. I., 93).

If doubting our cognitive faculties presupposes their use, then there is no way to question their validity.

Finally, the objection is subversive of the argument itself. If the skeptic is correct, then it’s possible the soundness of the skeptic’s argument is yet another illusion generated by the malignant power.

Conclusion

The attempt by radical skeptics to undermine the perennial philosophy of knowledge as found in Aristotle and Aquinas can be a major stumbling block for the pursuit of truth. But showing how one cannot doubt the senses without trusting them, and eliminating the possibility of our waking state being a dream state along with the possibility of manipulation by a malignant power, can remove the stumbling block and open the path to knowledge of the real.
 
 
(Image credit: The Creators Project)

Skeptics argue that miracles are impossible because the laws of nature are necessary. A miracle, they argue, involves a violation of a law of nature. But the laws of nature cannot be violated. Therefore, miracles must be impossible.

One modern skeptic of repute who argues this is Richard Dawkins. In his book The God Delusion, he says, “[M]iracles, by definition, violate the principles of science” (83).

Dawkins and other modern skeptics derive this argument from philosophers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example, Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher, argued:

"[I]f miracles are, strictly speaking, all above nature, then you must admit a break in the necessary and immutable course of nature; which is absurd." (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, c. 6)

In the eighteenth century, Scottish skeptic philosopher David Hume wrote:

"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is an entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined." (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sec. X)

I'd like to offer two responses to these objections.

Response 1: Miracles are not violations of nature’s laws

We should at first challenge the understanding of a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. In order to understand why miracles do not violate the natural order God created, it is necessary to understand what laws of nature are.

Laws of nature are not mere descriptions of causal regularities (e.g., When A, then B) that a miracle would disprove. The laws of nature express what things are capable of exhibiting by virtue of their inherent causal tendencies or dispositions. In other words, the laws of nature are descriptive of what objects are capable of producing given the powers they have by virtue of their nature.

So, for example, the law of nature that tells us water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit is simply a description of the nature of water having a tendency or disposition to freeze when the temperature reaches 32 degrees. The law of nature that tells us fire burns is a description of the inherent power fire possesses given its nature.

The laws of nature, therefore, describe laws of natures—essences with inherent dispositional properties that manifest themselves when certain conditions are met. One could say the phrase “laws of nature” is shorthand for speaking about causal powers inherent in the nature of things.

It is this understanding of the laws of nature that allows one to see how miracles are not violations of the laws of nature (proving a law to be false) and thus not a violation of the natural order set by God.

Miracles are extraordinary sensible effects wrought by God that surpass the power and order of created nature. Miracles are occurrences that can be brought about only by God’s direct causal activity and not by natural forces operative in created objects. As such, a miracle does not prove a law of nature to be false but simply indicates a cause beyond the natural causal powers of a thing is at work, and such causal power is divine.

For example, the natural forces operative in a human body cannot produce the effect of the body rising anew in living health after it has died. But God can produce such an effect by directly giving life to a dead body. When he does this, as he did in the case of Jesus, it does not disprove the law of nature that states that dead bodies stay dead. It still remains true that dead bodies have no inherent power to come back to life.

God can also suspend an inherent power from manifesting itself without proving a law of nature to be false. Consider, for example, the miracle involving Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3. The fire into which they were thrown did not burn them.

Does this disprove the law of nature that states fire burns? No. God simply willed that the inherent power of fire not manifest itself in this particular situation. Fire still retains its natural tendency or disposition to burn, and thus the law of nature involving fire remains valid.

God has not only the power to suspend an object’s inherent disposition from manifesting itself but also the power to give an object a new property it doesn’t have by nature. Jesus’ miracle of walking on water is an example of this (Matthew 14:22-23).

Water does not have power within its nature to allow a human being to walk on it. But Jesus, being God, can give water such a property in a particular circumstance. This doesn’t disprove the law of nature that states you will sink if you try to walk on water, because water still lacks within its nature a property that would suffice to hold up a human being.

So miracles do not violate the natural order created by God because they do not violate the laws of nature—they are not contrary to nature but above or beyond nature.

Response 2: Laws of nature are not absolutely necessary

The second response to these objections is that they confuse hypothetical necessity with absolute necessity.

The skeptic assumes the laws of nature are absolutely necessary—that is to say, the phenomena they describe must always occur no matter what. Just as God cannot make a square-circle or make a triangle with four sides, God, even if he did exist, could not suspend the laws of nature.

But this is simply not true. The laws of nature have what philosophers call hypothetical necessity, which means they will hold on the condition that no external cause intervenes. As the prominent Christian apologist William Lane Craig writes:

"[N]atural laws are assumed to have implicit in them the assumption 'all things being equal.' That is to say, the law states what is the case under the assumption that no other natural factors are interfering." (Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 263)

For example, the law of gravity tells us a rock will fall to the ground every time when I drop it. But it is not an intrinsic contradiction to imagine someone quickly catching the rock before it hits the ground. The law of gravity will hold provided nothing else happens, i.e., all things being equal.

As with the law of gravity, all laws of nature are hypothetically necessary and not absolutely necessary. They are not inviolable in the sense their violation—or, more properly speaking, their suspension—implies a contradiction.

Since the laws of nature are merely hypothetical, it follows the laws of nature cannot preclude God’s causal activity in miracles. Any denial of miracles based on the laws of nature, therefore, is unjustified.

Conclusion

This understanding of miracles and their relation to the laws of nature dispels the myth that one has to abandon science in order to accept miracles. Skeptics often pit miracles and science against each other, claiming you have to choose one or the other. But this is a false dichotomy.

There is no need for a scientist to give up his own research that shows water has no surface tension to support a human body because, as shown above, a miracle doesn’t prove water has such an inherent property. The scientist’s scientific knowledge remains secure. As such, there is no need to abandon science in order to believe in the miraculous.
 
 
(Image credit: Jagannath Puri HKM)

After reading some exchanges on Facebook that were inspired by my recent blog post concerning miracles, it became clear I need to explain exactly what a miracle is.

A miracle is defined as an extraordinary sensible effect wrought by God that surpasses the power and order of created nature.

That’s a mouthful, so let’s unpack it. There are five aspects to the definition.

Aspect #1: Exclusively attributable to divine power

Only God can be the cause of a miracle. This excludes any sort of occurrence that may have unknown created causes—whether it be a hidden force of nature, a force of nature applied by man in an artificial way, or the forces of nature utilized by pure spirits acting with only their natural faculties. Such effects would be wonderful and marvelous, but not miracles.

Aspect #2: Beyond the power of created nature

An effect can be beyond created powers in three ways.

First, a miracle may surpass created powers in the essence of the effect produced. The glorification of the resurrected body at the end of time is an example of this. Such glorification is—by its nature—beyond the power of any created cause. Another example would be the sun moving east instead of west, or standing still as recounted in Joshua 10:13.

Second, the miraculous effect may surpass created powers with regard to the subject in which it manifests and not the essence of the effect, which may be produced in another subject. For example, nature produces life in humans, but it cannot do so in a corpse. It is natural to have sight, but not for the blind. Notice the miraculous is not identified in the essence of the effect—life and sight—but in the subject—a corpse and damaged eyes.

The third way a miracle may surpass created powers is according to themode or manner that produces the miraculous effect. In other words, God may cause an effect that nature usually produces but contrary to the way nature produces it. For example, it belongs to the order of nature for a fever to pass. But if the fever leaves by command, then it is a miracle. A broken bone naturally mends itself over time, but if by the power of intercessory prayer the bone heals immediately, then it is a miracle. Rain is another example. Created powers within nature produce rain, but we consider it a miracle if by the command of a prophet rain falls from a clear, blue sky.

In sum, effects can supersede created powers by the essence of the effect produced, with regard to the subject in which the effect occurs, or according to the mode in which the effect is produced.

Aspect #3: Beyond the order of created nature

So far a miracle has been shown to be solely the work of God—beyond all created powers. But the creation of the world and the soul are effects attributable exclusively to God. Are these divine acts considered miracles?

The answer is no. While the creation of the world and the soul are effects that only God can cause, it is not beyond the order of created nature. The creation of the world is the beginning of the order of created nature, and the creation of the soul completes human nature, which is a part of creation. Both actions bring about things belonging to the order of created nature and thus are not miracles. This idea that a miracle must be beyond the order of created nature constitutes the third aspect of our definition.

Aspect #4: Extraordinary

In saying a miracle is extraordinary we simply mean it is contrary to the ordinary natural and supernatural course of things. To return to our example of the creation of the human soul, it is not extraordinary, because God decreed from all eternity that creating human souls would be part of the ordinary course of things, especially considering the human soul completes human nature.

Miracles must also be contrary to the ordinary supernatural course of things. For example, the infusion of grace in the soul through the sacraments and the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit to perform saving and meritorious acts are not miracles because God wills them as a regular occurrence in the supernatural order.

Aspect #5: Sensible

The last aspect of a miracle is that it is sensible—subject to perception by the senses. This follows from the purpose of miracles defined by the First Vatican Council:

"[I]n order that the submission of our faith should be in accordance with reason, it was God’s will that there should be linked to the internal assistance of the Holy Spirit external indications of his revelation, that is to say divine acts, and first and foremost miracles and prophecies, which clearly demonstrating as they do the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are the most certain signs of revelation and are suited to the understanding of all." (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, ch. 3; emphasis added).

The Council Fathers make it clear that miracles are meant to prove the authenticity of God’s revelation. Such revelation must be marked with a divine character plain to see in order that all, including the ignorant, may know it is authentic. Here miracles have their function, serving as a seal to authenticate God’s communication to humanity, putting the revelation’s authority beyond all doubt.

Furthermore, as miracles confirmed the authenticity of Jesus’ revelation in the apostolic age, the miracles performed throughout the history of the Catholic Church prove the Church’s claims to be true—namely, that it is the church founded by Christ.
 
 
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When confronted with the early Christians’ testimony about the Resurrection of Jesus, it is natural to question whether it’s credible. A healthy skepticism demands we test the claims of such an event.

One way to do so is by offering alternative explanations, and one such explanation is the conspiracy theory. This theory purports to explain Christ’s empty tomb and postmortem appearances by claiming the early Christians stole the body and made up the Resurrection story.

I don’t fault anyone for raising the question, because it's natural to ask, “Did the early Christians make this stuff up?”

I contend they did not, and there are two good reasons to think so.

The Apostolic Dilemma

First, the early Christians had nothing to gain and everything to lose in lying about Jesus’ Resurrection. As I learned from my mentor and friend Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, this kind of jeopardy makes for the most credible witness, and St. Paul understood this. Paul uses this fact to argue for the credibility of the early Christian testimony and presents his argument in the form of a two-horned dilemma in 1 Corinthians 15:

[I]f Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised (1 Cor. 15:14-15).

St. Paul presents the second horn in verse 19 and then expounds on it in verses 30-32:

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied . . . Why am I in peril every hour? I protest, brethren, by my pride in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

Notice in the first horn St. Paul argues that if he and the witnesses believed in God, then they would be bearing false witness in their proclamation of Jesus’ Resurrection—“we are even found to be misrepresenting God.” What would the early Christians have to gain from a lie while still believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Damnation! Is it reasonable to think the early Christians believed their eternal salvation was worth risking for such a lie?

In the second horn St. Paul seems to consider what they might gain from the lie if they were unbelievers and didn’t believe in God or the Resurrection. Notice in verse 19 he writes, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ” and then in verse 32 “What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus.” Paul’s argument is thatnothing except persecution and death is to be gained from such a lie. For Paul, if this is the reward, then we might as well “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

There may be alternative explanations for the falsity of the Resurrection testimonies that are worthy of consideration, but for St. Paul the conspiracy theory is not one of them.

The Testimony of Women

The second reason to think the early Christians were not making up the Resurrection story: they included women as the first witnesses.

One of the many criteria historians use to test historicity is the criterion of embarrassment. This refers to any action or saying the early Christians would have found embarrassing and apologetically unappealing. No Gospel writer would want to include such information, because it would undermine the Gospel’s purpose. Having women as the first witnesses of the Resurrection fits the bill for such a criterion.

In first-century Judaism, the testimony of women was inadmissible in a court of law: “But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 4.8.15).

If a woman’s testimony was not considered credible in a court of law, it would seem that the apostles would not use the testimony of women to convince their hearers about the truth of the empty tomb and the appearances of the resurrected Christ. It is more reasonable to conclude, if the Gospel writers were fabricating this story, that they would have chosen men to be the first witnesses—perhaps Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.

The atheist activist and historian Richard Carrier, in chapter 11 of his book Not the Impossible Faith, objects to this appeal to women. He argues that because the Gospels are history and not court documents, it is improper for the Christian apologist to go from “courtroom decorum to everyday credibility.”

Furthermore, he contends, while the testimony of women was not accepted in a court of law, it was admissible as a source for historical claims. Carrier appeals to Josephus’s account of the massacres at Gamala and Masada, both of which have two women as their sources.

In response to Carrier’s first objection, I think it is legitimate for the Christian apologist to use the inadmissibility of women’s testimony in the court of law, because the Gospel writers were making an apologetic case to convince their hearers of the truth of the Resurrection. They were not merely recounting a historical event but presenting a convergence of evidence for the truth of Jesus’ rising—empty tomb, multiple post-mortem appearances, conversions, etc.

Moreover, notice the reason Josephus gives for not admitting the testimony of women: “on account of the levity and boldness of their sex.” The word levity means to treat a serious matter with humor or in a manner lacking due respect. While this view of women might not lead to an utter dismissal of a woman’s testimony, it would surely make such a testimony less desirable if one is fabricating a story, especially when it is just as easy to use men as the first witnesses.

Neither does Carrier’s appeal to Josephus using women as sources for his account of the massacres at Masada and Gamala undermine the Christian apologist’s argument.

In reference to the slaughter at Gamala, Josephus states that the two women who served as his sources were the only ones who escaped (The Wars of the Jews, 4.82). While not explicit when recounting the massacre at Masada, Josephus seems to imply the two women who were his sources for that event were sole survivors as well (The Wars of the Jews 7.399).

So it’s obvious Josephus is going to use the testimony of women for these events, since no one else survived.

With that in mind, it’s easy to see why Carrier’s appeal to Josephus’s reliance on these women does not undermine the Christian argument. The Gospel writers had options when deciding whom to place as witnesses of Christ’s Resurrection, but Josephus did not have options when considering on whose testimony to base his account of the massacres.

The unreliability of the testimony of women in first-century Judaism still stands as a legitimate case of the criterion of embarrassment and thus can be used when making the case for the historicity of Jesus’ Resurrection.

There are many more reasons one can give to show the conspiracy theory is unreasonable. But I think the two presented above are sufficient—namely, people don’t die for what they know to be a lie; and liars don’t use unreliable testimonies to convince audiences of their fabricated stories.

In this Easter season, we can rest assured that faith in the resurrected Jesus is at least not based on a lie.

Should I believe in miracles? This question doesn’t pertain to whether I should believe in this miracle or that miracle. It has to do with whether I’m rationally justified in believing in miracles as such.

David Hume's Wisdom for the Wise

The eightenth-century Scottish skeptic philosopher David Hume argued the wise man should not believe in miracles. The basis for his assertion was what might be called the “repeatability principle”—evidence for what occurs over and over (the regular) always outweighs evidence for that which does not (the rare). Since miracles are rare and contradict our uniform experience, Hume argues the wise man ought never to believe in miracles.

While it’s true that a wise man should base his belief on the weight of evidence, it’s not true that evidence for uniform experience always outweighs evidence for what is singular and rare.

We know this for several reasons, but I’ll give you four.

Why Uniform Experience Doesn't Make Belief in Miracles Irrational

First, if Hume’s principle concerning uniform experience were correct, then we would have to deny many things we hold as true. For example, the Big Bang was a singular event that is unrepeatable. Have you experienced any Big Bangs lately? I would also venture to say you haven’t experienced anybody landing on the moon in recent times.

Now, if we hold to Hume’s principle, it would be irrational to believe the scientific account of the Big Bang and the historical fact that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, since these occurrences contradict our uniform experience. But this is absurd. The Big Bang is one of the most rigorously established theories in all of science, and all who are not obsessed with conspiracy theories hold Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon is a historical fact.

Moreover, Hume’s principle nullifies science itself. As an inductive discipline, science necessarily presupposes the possibility of discovering new things that may contradict uniform experience. Scientific laws are revised all the time based on new contrary evidence. But if Hume’s principle were correct, scientists would never have reasonable grounds to revise laws, and thus replacing the Newtonian view of the universe with Einstein’s view would have been irrational. No skeptic can hold this and still be seen as intellectually credible.

A third reason why Hume’s argument from uniform experience fails is that it sets the standard for authenticating a miracle too high. It views rarity as that which disqualifies rational belief, yet rarity is of the essence of a miracle. A miracle, by definition, is an unusual event, something contrary to the ordinary course of things. So, according to Hume’s view, every miracle is disqualified from the start, because every miracle is a rare event.

This is analogous to making a fifty-foot bar the qualifying height for a good high jumper, when no jumpers can even clear an eight-foot bar. It is simply unreasonable to set a standard so high that no one can ever reach it. If skeptics desire Christian beliefs to be subject to falsification, then they ought not set standards where Christian beliefs cannot be proven true.

A fourth critique of Hume’s argument is it commits the fallacy of special pleading, a fallacy in which one deliberately ignores aspects unfavorable to his point of view. Hume is basing his argument on his experience, or perhaps the experiences of those he knows. Perhaps there were people in Hume’s time, or even people of the past, whose common experience involved miracles. This is precisely the claim of the early Christians. While Hume is within his rights to speak authoritatively about his own experience, he cannot do so with regard to others. His own uniform experience cannot be used to exclude the testimony of another person’s experience.

The Improbable is Too High a Hurdle to Jump

A skeptic may not articulate his or her skepticism about miracles as does Hume but simply might express the inability to overcome the hurdle of accepting something so improbable. A skeptic might say, “The miracles in the Bible are just too far-fetched for me to believe—a man rising from the dead? Blind people seeing? You expect me to believe that?”

While I can sympathize with someone who has a healthy skepticism when it comes to improbable events, we can’t reject something outright simply because it’s improbable.

First, an event might be improbable when considered relative to our general background knowledge, but, relative to other specific knowledge or evidence, improbability can decrease.

For example, it’s highly improbable that the winning number for the California Lottery would be 6345789. If the newspaper, however, says this is the winning number, then the probability changes, making the odds for it being the winning number higher. Furthermore, if the news anchor broadcasts it as the winning number on the nightly news, then the odds for it being the winning number become even higher.

Similarly, miracles, like Jesus rising from the dead, are improbable relative to our background knowledge—men don’t usually rise from the dead. But the improbability decreases when it’s considered relative to specific evidence, namely, eyewitness testimonies. If the testimonies are sound, then belief is rational despite the event’s improbability.

A second response to help a skeptic overcome the high hurdle of a miracle’s improbability is Hume’s principle:

"[N]o testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the miracle be of such a kind, that its falsehood be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish." (David Hume, Of Miracles).

Many skeptics consider only how improbable a miracle is but hardly ever consider the improbability of a miracle not occurring despite the testimony.

Take for example the Resurrection of Jesus, to which the early Christians testified. Skeptics rightfully consider this event as improbable and are rational when they exercise caution concerning the testimonies of it. But very seldom do skeptics consider how improbable the alternative explanations are.

For example, it’s much more improbable that the early Christians stole the body and lied about the Resurrection only to gain death. People don’t die for what they know to be a lie. Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely the apostles would give simple, nondramatic accounts—not to mention giving women the role as first witnesses—if they were lying about the Resurrection.

Another improbable alternative to the literal Resurrection of Jesus is that the Christians hallucinated. It’s improbable because St. Paul records Jesus appearing to many different people on several different occasions as well as appearing to more than 500 disciples at the same time (see 1 Cor. 15:6)—occurrences not typical of hallucinations.

So, when facing the obstacle of improbability, the question should not be “Should I believe in miracles as such?” but “Is there sufficient evidence to believe this or that miracle?” If the evidence for a particular miracle is trustworthy—say, the resurrection of Jesus—then belief in that miracle would be reasonable, even though it’s an improbable event.

The wise man surely needs to exercise caution when confronted with accounts of the miraculous. But the wise man should also be open to following the evidence where it leads, no matter how extraordinary and improbable it is.

Is science the only legitimate form of rational inquiry? The evolutionary biologist and popular atheist Richard Dawkins thinks so.

In a 2012 debate with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dawkins claims that religion, as opposed to science, is “a betrayal of the intellect.” He asserts that appealing to God to explain the universe is “a phony substitute for an explanation” and “peddles false explanations where real explanations could have been offered.” What counts as a real explanation? For Dawkins, it’s science.

The belief that real explanations can only be offered by science is a worldview known as scientism. But is scientism itself a real explanation? Is scientism worthy of the human intellect?

I suggest no, and here's why.

A Betrayal of the Human Intellect

First, scientism is self-refuting. The statement “Scientific knowledge is the only legitimate form of knowledge” cannot be verified by scientific methods. It’s a metaphysical proposition and thus not subject to scientific inquiry. No matter how successful science is, it is restricted to physical reality. Metaphysics deals with foundational truths about reality that go beyond the merely physical (e.g., questions about existence itself, time, space, etc.). Science can never go beyond the boundaries of its data source, so, in principle, cannot verify the truth of scientism.

But if science cannot verify the truth of scientism, then scientism is self-refuting.

Moreover, scientism is self-refuting because it undermines science as a rational form of inquiry. Consider that science presupposes various philosophical assumptions that are not subject to scientific verification—e.g., there is an external world outside the minds of scientists, the world is governed by causal regularities, and the human intellect is capable of uncovering these regularities.

Now, in view of scientism, how could science be a legitimate form of rational inquiry if its presupposed assumptions are not the product of scientific inquiry? It can’t. Scientism seeks to exalt science, but it actually undermines it in the process.

No Human Minds Allowed

The second reason why scientism is unsustainable is because it leads to the denial of the human mind. Philosopher Edward Feser argues such in his article “Blinded by Scientism.”

Feser explains how scientism is based on the divide in modern science between the quantitative-objective-real and qualitative-subjective-appearance images of the world. According to this divide, anything that cannot be quantifiably measured is not real. Since scientific inquiry is subject only to the quantitative aspects of reality, scientism views knowledge of such things as the only real form of knowledge. But this causes a problem.

Concerning the mind, Feser correctly argues that it falls on the qualitative-subjective-appearance side. The mental activities in the practice of science such as the formulation of hypotheses, the weighing of evidence, technical concepts, and the construction of causal chains cannot be described in the language of mathematics. There is no microscope or telescope that can show us the existence of mental beliefs. They do not fall within the purview of the quantitative-objective-real image of the world. Consequently, the activities of the mind fall on the side of the divide that is subjective and mere appearance—that is to say the mind is not real.

Now, as Feser points out, rather than seeing scientism as an absurdity and rejecting it in this light, many proponents of scientism follow their logic and reject the mind outright, viewing human thoughts as mere physiological events. But one has to wonder, “How can one argue for scientism when such argumentation presupposes the very thing scientism logically denies—namely, the mind?”

The answer is, you can’t. Therefore, since scientism denies the reality of the human mind, which is needed to argue in support of scientism itself, scientism is not reasonable.

Confusing Methodology with Ontology

Finally, scientism is unreasonable because it confuses methodology (method of knowing) with ontology (reality). Due to the success of the quantitative methodology in modern science, many think the method exhausts nature. But such success shows only that the method is useful for dealing with those aspects of nature that are quantifiably measurable.

To use Feser’s popular analogy, the claim that nothing exists beyond the boundaries of scientific inquiry is like saying plastic cups do not exist on the beach because of the metal detector’s failure to detect them. The metal detector’s failure says nothing whether or not plastic cups exist. It’s simply a manifestation of the limitations of its detecting powers.

Similarly, science’s inability to detect entities that are not quantitatively measurable or empirically verifiable (immaterial entities) says nothing whether or not such things exist. It’s simply a manifestation of the limitation of science’s detecting powers—science detects only physical reality.

Scientism, therefore, commits the fallacy of confusing method with reality—letting the method dictate what is real rather than letting reality dictate the proper method for studying it.

Whether appealing to God in explaining the universe is the best explanation is something worthy of consideration—theists and atheists need to present arguments to substantiate their worldviews. But what is not worthy of consideration is scientism. It’s self-refuting, it undermines science, and it commits the blunder of confusing method with reality.

Dawkins may reject God as the best explanation for the universe on the basis of bad arguments, but he can’t reasonably reject theism on the grounds that it’s not scientific knowledge. To do so would be to betray the human intellect.
 
 
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Christians have always heard that only God can make them happy. In fact, some Bible translations render Psalm 16:2 as, "You are my God. My happiness lies in you alone."

But an atheist would say, “I don’t need God to be happy. I can get along just fine without him.”

It is true that an atheist can experience kinds of happiness without living for God. But if an atheist persistently and culpably rejects God, Fr. Robert Spitzer argues in a new book, he will not be able to experience ultimate or perfect happiness.

In Finding True Happiness: Satisfying Our Restless Hearts, Fr. Spitzer, founder and president of the Magis Center, elucidates four levels of happiness. The first level of happiness is the happiness associated with sensory pleasure obtained through food or drink and the pleasure experienced with the possession of material goods. The second level is happiness experienced when the comparative advantage over another is gained. The third level of happiness consists in the pleasure experienced when one contributes to the good outside of self and makes a positive difference. An atheist can attain these first three levels.

The fourth level of happiness that Fr. Spitzer identifies is transcendent happiness—the happiness experienced when the deepest human desires for perfect and unconditional (infinite) knowledge/truth, love, goodness/justice, and beauty are satisfied by the transcendent God, who is perfect and unconditional knowledge, love, goodness, and beauty itself.

Such transcendent desires are universal—that is to say, they belong to all human beings, including those who reject God. Consider the desire for perfect and unconditional knowledge. Have you ever recognized answers to your questions as incomplete? If so, what was your response? You probably were a bit frustrated—unhappy—and sought a better answer.

We have to ask ourselves, “Why do we get frustrated (unhappy) with imperfect or limited manifestations of knowledge?” As many great thinkers throughout the centuries have concluded, it is because we desire perfect and unconditional knowledge. If we didn’t desire this type of knowledge, then we would be content with imperfect and limited manifestations of it. But we are not content with imperfect and limited manifestations of knowledge. Therefore, we desire perfect or unconditional (infinite) knowledge—what Fr. Spitzer likes to call “the complete set of answers to the complete set of questions.”

Consider love. Have you ever been frustrated when someone manifested imperfect love? Those involved in any sort of relationship will affirm this to be true. But why do we get frustrated when we experience imperfect manifestations of love? As with knowledge, the answer is because we desire perfect or unconditional love.

What about justice and goodness? Have you ever been frustrated when an injustice occurs? Atheists acknowledge this to be true when they object to theism by pointing to the problem of evil. Have you ever experienced a bit of discontentment when you were confronted with imperfect goodness? Maybe you are a boss and your employees are not performing up to par. Maybe you are frustrated with your son or daughter who is not taking school seriously. We have to ask, “Why do we get frustrated with injustices and imperfect manifestations of goodness?” I think the answer is because we desire perfect and unconditional justice and goodness.

Finally, we desire perfect beauty. This desire manifests itself in various ways. We do not look good enough—neither do other people. The house layout could always be better. The beauty of the valley from a vantage point on the mountain could always be better. We are always looking for a little more beauty. But why is this? Why are we always discontent with forms of beauty in this world? You have probably guessed it—because we desire perfect and unconditional beauty.

Now, philosophers throughout the centuries have persuasively argued that God is perfect and unconditional truth, love, goodness, and beauty. From this it follows that if God does not exist, then the only things available to satisfy these natural desires are imperfect and conditioned things. But the imperfect and conditioned things of this world cannot possibly satisfy the desires for the perfect and unconditional. Therefore, without God, the desire for perfect and unconditional knowledge/truth, love, goodness/justice, and beauty go unsatisfied. But if these intrinsic human desires for the perfect and unconditional are perpetually unsatisfied, then human happiness is unachievable. If human happiness is unachievable, then life is absurd.

The bottom line is that an atheist, while able to attain some degree of happiness on this earth—at levels 1, 2, and even 3—will never attain the happiness that comes from orienting one's heart toward ultimate or perfect happiness (transcendent happiness). As St. Augustine writes in reference to God, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” In other words, we are transcendent beings, and as such we have a desire for transcendent things. Stifling or ignoring this desire eliminates the greatest peace and joy possible during our earthly existence.
 
 
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