In "The Nature of the Claim" (TSR, March/April, 1997), Farrell Till discussed miracles. His comments tend to confuse the issue, especially with regard to Biblical miracles. It would be advantageous for future discussion to clarify how one should view miracles.
To do this, we first define a miracle. A miracle is an event that contradicts natural law. In other words, a miracle does not and cannot occur on its own initiative or under circumstances that could be explained by natural phenomena. Somebody outside the natural system must interfere with the laws governing that system in order to cause a miracle. Within a natural system, many rare, strange, or unique things can happen, which people can label as miracles even though no outside force has interfered with the system to cause the event. These would not be miracles, especially not from a Biblical perspective.
Basically, there can be no true miracles in a natural system, since all naturally occurring events can be explained by natural laws no matter how mysterious they may seem. Within the Biblical context, miracles occur only if God interferes with natural laws and causes the miracle to occur. In the broader religious context, a miracle is a supernatural event precipitated by a supernatural agent.
By defining miracles in this way, a person is not required to believe in either God or miracles. All that is required is that one recognize the interdependence between a miracle and the miracle worker.
Now, let's apply this to Till's arguments. In commenting on his debate with Michael Horner, Till says that Horner "was arguing from `a priori assumption,' because he was assuming that if a god exists, it is a god who intervenes in human affairs to perform miracles." Till misunderstood the argument. The "a priori assumption" underlying Horner's argument is not that God exists or that God interferes in human affairs. The assumption is that the historical account of God's actions, as recorded in the Bible, is true.
If we make the a priori assumption that the Biblical account is true, then the miracles it describes require a supernatural agent to cause them. For example, if the account of an ax head floating on water is true, then someone had to interfere with natural law to cause iron to float on the water. Consequently, we have Horner drawing the conclusion (not assuming) that a supernatural agent, God, exists based on the a priori assumption that the Biblical account of miracles is true.
The reason we must argue in this direction rather than taking Till's approach and first assuming the existence of God is that we begin with a written record of miracles. Nobody has seen God, but people have witnessed miracles (e.g., parting of the Red Sea, walls of Jericho, raising of Lazarus). The parting of the Red Sea was a supernatural activity witnessed by the writer of Exodus. Assuming that it is a true account, we can conclude that a supernatural agent exists who caused it. Not surprisingly, this agrees with the Biblical record.
Till adds that Horner assumes that God intervenes in human affairs to perform miracles. No such assumption is necessary because the Bible clearly states that this is exactly what God does. So, again, the initial (and a priori) assumption that Horner and other Christians make is that the Bible provides a true record of historical events. Building on this assumption, Christian apologists are able to conclude that God exists and that God intervenes in human affairs.
Till later argues that, "If, however, the claim [made in a historical document] is something that the reader knows is completely out of the ordinary, he/she rejects it if there is nothing but the mere word of the writer to support the claim." Is this true? Should we reject an eyewitness account of a historical event if all we have is the written account of the writer? For example, we have a historical account of some Jews who said that they saw Jesus alive after He was crucified. We also have a historical account of some Jews who tell of death camps and gas chambers in the 1940's. Should we reject these accounts if all we have is the mere word of the writer and no other corroboration? Till says, "Yes."
Till may justifiably use such a standard with regard to the Bible so long as he consistently applies that same standard to all other historical documents (and even all issues). However, that standard does not tell us whether a historical account is actually true or false. It simply provides a criterion for rejecting the historical account regardless of whether it is true or false. Certainly, it is possible to accept false accounts as truth by accepting historical accounts at face value without obtaining corroborating evidence. However, it is also possible to reject true historical accounts in the absence of corroborating evidence.
Consistent application of this standard could cause Till to reject information that is true just as it can cause people to accept information that is false. Of the many standards that could be used to determine the validity of historical documents, this one seems the least useful. It can lead people to reject claims of the Bible, or other historical documents, without first determining whether those claims are true. Perhaps Till can devise a more responsible and accurate standard.
Till further states that Christians are biased because there are many religions in the world each of which claims its own miracles but Christians reject the miracle claims of all religions save their own. In comparing Christians and Muslims, Till states that "(t)he reason why each religion rejects the other's claim is essentially the same as the skeptic's reason for rejecting both." This is not really true.
Members of one religion reject the claims of all other religions simply because they believe that there can be only one true God, and He is their god. If the Christian god is the true and living God, then all other gods must be false. Any claims of miracles attributed to false gods must also be false. If people believe the miracle claims of a religion, they also must believe in the existence of that religion's god(s) who caused the miracles. A person who believes that God is Jesus Christ must conclude that the Muslim "Allah" is a false god, and that the miracles attributed to "Allah," such as splitting the moon in two, could never have happened. For the religious person, there can only be one true religion and one true God; all other Gods, and the miracles attributed to them, must be false.
If the skeptic wants to reject every miracle claim of every religion, he must first be able to prove that there can be no God and thus no God able to perform miracles. While atheists arbitrarily reject the notion that God exists, I am not aware that skeptics have devised a proof that allows them to say that God cannot exist. While there is no definitive proof of God's existence other than the Biblical accounts and common sense, there is also no definitive proof that God cannot exist. Thus, the skeptic, while he may require proof of God before he will accept the existence of God, cannot discount the possibility that God can exist or that God can cause miracles. The skeptic can reject miracle claims one at a time through scientific research, but he cannot reject any miracle claims of a religion in the absence of such research.
Skeptics, reasoning like religious folk, could reject the miracle claims of all religions except one based on the impossibility of there being two Gods. However, the problem for skeptics is that they cannot determine which god is the real God. Thus, they cannot reject the miracle claims of any one religion unless they can show that the god(s) of that religion are false. Both religious people and skeptics can reject miracle claims, but they do so for entirely different reasons.
Does the skeptic have a basis for disbelieving miracles? Till notes at the beginning of his article that, "Christian apologists argue that skeptics are unreasonably illogical when they reject biblical miracle claims." Later, he states, "A skeptic who rejects a biblical miracle claim is doing nothing more than applying to the Bible the same standards he would apply to... other documents." What are these "standards," and do skeptics apply them reasonably and logically with respect to the Bible?
Basically, skeptics reject miracles either because they do not believe direct eyewitness or secondary accounts of the miracle and/or because the miracle runs counter to personal knowledge of and experience with scientific laws. In other words, the "standards" that skeptics apply are nothing more than judgments based on the current base of knowledge.
The issue, then, is whether it is reasonable and/or logical to reject something that one has not personally witnessed and that cannot be corroborated in some scientific manner. So long as the skeptic is consistent in rejecting any and all accounts that he has not personally witnessed or that no one has been able to corroborate through other means, then the rejection of miracles is reasonable. In doing such, the skeptic may actually reject truth, but that is the price to be paid for guarding against the acceptance of something that is false.
It is the perception of an inconsistent application of such "standards" by skeptics that leads Christian apologists to argue that skeptics are unreasonable and illogical in rejecting Biblical miracle claims. In other words, some people who call themselves skeptics appear to believe things they want to believe (e. g., macro-evolution) and not things they do not want to believe (e. g., Biblical miracles) when consistent application of standards would result in both being rejected. Also, some people like to think that science is able to explain what it observes when science is usually only able to measure what it observes without the foggiest notion of why it occurs. Scientists are prone to speculation and hypothesis that many take for fact. So much for standards.
Till puts it in more favorable terms. He states that "(i)f there are no sound reasons to believe the claims, the skeptic rejects them regardless of whether they are recorded in the Bible or some other book." Since there are no sound reasons to reject the idea that God exists, we should expect those who call themselves skeptics to be either Deists (at a minimum) or liars.
(Roger Hutchinson, 11904 Lafayette Drive, Silver Springs, MD
20902; e-mail, rhutchin@aol.com)
