DEBATENATE

Topics / Faith and God

The challenge

“Miracles are impossible”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

Miracles are only impossible if you've already decided there's no God. That's the whole trick. David Hume defined a miracle as a violation of laws that unbroken experience has established. That rules out every miracle report before he reads one. It's the conclusion smuggled in as the premise. Second, laws of nature tell you what happens when nobody steps in. If I roll a pool ball and you catch it, you didn't break physics. You added a cause. C. S. Lewis made that point in Miracles. Third, the big one is on the record. Paul lists the people who saw the risen Jesus in First Corinthians fifteen, and I believe it happened. You'll say extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Then look at the evidence. How do you know miracles can't happen unless you already know there's no God? That's not a conclusion. That's an assumption wearing a lab coat.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Hume's argument assumes its conclusion. He defines the laws of nature by unbroken experience, which throws out every miracle report before anyone looks at it.

    In Section Ten of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, laws he says are established by firm and unalterable experience.

  2. Laws of nature describe what happens when nothing outside acts. A miracle doesn't break them. It adds a cause, the way a hand catching a ball doesn't break physics.

    In Miracles, C.S. Lewis argued that natural laws describe what will happen if nothing interferes, using the example of coins in a drawer: the laws of arithmetic aren't broken when a thief takes some.

  3. The central Christian miracle, the resurrection, is a claim about history with early testimony you can examine. I believe it happened.

    In First Corinthians 15:3-8 Paul passes on a report that the risen Jesus appeared to Peter, to the twelve, to more than five hundred people at once, to James and finally to Paul himself.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A man rising from the dead is about as extraordinary as it gets, and ancient testimony just isn't strong enough.

Nate: That's a standard for weighing evidence, not a reason to refuse to look. If no evidence could ever count, you've slid from improbable to impossible, and that slide rests on assuming there's no God. Let the evidence speak before you rule on it.

What he grants the other side

Plenty of miracle claims turn out to be fraud or mistakes.

The lines

Sources

  1. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Of Miracles (1748)
  2. C.S. Lewis, Miracles (1947)
  3. The Bible, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (first century)
  4. Carl Sagan, Cosmos, television series (1980)

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