What are We to Make of
Miracles?

Rehabilitating the Notion of the Miraculous
By: Geoffrey
K. Mondello
The phenomenon of miracles ...
what are to make of them?
If as the Scottish Skeptic and Philosopher
David Hume maintained the reason for the uniformity of the events
we observe is not discoverable; that is, if we can perceive nothing
in the way of necessity linking putative causes to supposed
effects and if, therefore, the succession of observed events can
always be otherwise than what we observe without implying contradiction
then while we have not answered why miracles occur, we have
nevertheless arrived at an explanation of how miracles are
able to occur, how miracles are possible.
Miracles,
by this reasoning which I think is correct are not understood to
occur in violation of laws inherent in nature for there are
in effect no laws to be violated; only observed uniform events.
From this perspective, what we call miracles are no more than a reordering
of an anticipated sequence of events that were never
necessary to begin with. And this is simply another way of saying that
in effecting a miracle, God merely suspends but does not
violate what we construe to be laws at
work in the universe.
Uniform
events, in other words, or uniform sequences of events, for which we
have found, experienced, no disqualifying instance, suggest something
of necessity.
It is precisely
at this point that we make a subreptive leap from statements concerning
observations, to illicitly interpreting these observations in
terms of laws analogous to the types of laws to which we appeal
in, say, geometric models at least in the way of perceived necessity.
This, however,
is a psychological, and not a logical, much less a
mathematical, phenomenon for what we designate as
laws,
when examined carefully, we can neither discover through reason
nor prove through experience. Such
laws
are, and without exception, always formulated retrospectively,
in view of past empirical observations. The concatenation of
events that science articulates as putative
laws
are, one and all, assembled a posteriori (after the observation)
and therefore possess nothing characteristic of the nature of a priori
necessity. Simply that such and such observations have (... up
to this point) exhibited unbroken historical pedigree does not
rationally qualify them as necessary. Such
laws
are nothing more than historical statements and are inherently,
intrinsically, susceptible to one disqualifying instance sufficient
in itself to abrogate the
law.
We observe an unbroken and historically precise sequence of events
which we interpret as linear "causes" that culminate in what we construe
as an
effect.
What we perceive are apparently uniform events. What we do not, and
cannot perceive, are the presumed
causal
connections between successive events in which we have as yet
experienced a disqualifying instance, one exception that deviates from
the anticipated event and produces another event altogether. The supposed
cause,
however uniform, remains a mystery to us. That
such and such
has, up to now, always been the case
is altogether different from
such and such
must be the case.
It could be otherwise without invoking any logical contradiction
whatever. It is simply the case that it has always simply been
the case and no more. This is the genius, the perspicacity, really,
of David Hume.
What has
all this to do with miracles? This is really a penultimate question,
for what we really want to know is this:
Is
it absurd to give credence to miracles and at least implicitly,
through miracles, to God?
Let us
attempt to answer it this way:
If the
suspension of laws is presumed to be attributable to God in the occurrence
of miracles and such unanticipated or miraculous events are (insofar
as reason can discover) at least as likely
to occur as the effect we have come to anticipate then on on
what grounds would we be persuaded from ascribing the uniform
events that very clearly occur, to God as well, and simply because God
wills them?
Such a
proposition implies no more contradiction than the problematic inherent
in the notion of causality itself. Since causes are not discoverable
to reason we have no warrant to ascribe necessity to any event.
It is,
I suggest, at least as cogent to argue that God
is the cause of this unqualified but unexplained uniformity as to
argue that there is no cause at all. The skeptic will argue,
You cannot produce
God.
We will argue,
You cannot produce
causes.
In our experience,
will"
is at least intelligible in any concept of agency.
Nothing
is not.
If this
indeed is so, it would be of great consternation to David Hume who
did not believe in God and there is something terribly condign that
a correct line of reasoning, formulated to discredit the existence of
God through a disabused notion of causality, should all the more corroborate
it.
Geoffrey K. Mondello is
the author of:
The Metaphysics of
Mysticism
A Commentary on the Mystical Philosophy of
St. John of the Cross
http://www.johnofthecross.com
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