|
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 (up
to this point in time) we have found, experienced, no disqualifying
instance (yet), 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.
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.
Printable PDF Version

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
|