I wanted to address this as an argument for God’s existence. Some have argued against the existence of miracles (most famously atheist David Hume), in part because if the miraculous is not possible, then God is not possible. If there are no miracles, then there is just the natural, physical world and the laws which govern it.
Regarding David Hume’s argument against miracles, “Hume’s argument can be abbreviated in the following way:
(1) “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; firm and unalterable experience has established these laws.
(2) “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
(3) “[Therefore,] the proof against a miracle … is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”
Hume concludes, “There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event. Otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. [Consequently,] nothing is esteemed a miracle if it ever happened in the common course of nature”[1]
Essentially, personal experience, which often lacks miraculous / violations of natural laws, is the dominant evidence that the miraculous does not occur. If a person lives 75 years and personally observed one miraculous event over the course of their life, yet every single other experienced event in life followed the natural laws, Hume would tell the person to simply disregard that one miraculous event.
The question: is that a valid way to evaluate an event as being miraculous. Using Hume’s definition, “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” If such occurrences were more frequent, they would be regular or normal. Part of something being a miracle is the rarity of such an event. How often has a person gone to the doctor and undergone treatment for some condition, and in the process the condition disappears (when it should not) and the doctor simply has no (natural) explanation for the healing which took place? To have some idea of those types of miracles, I recommend Craig Keener’s two volume work titled Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Keener records thousands of documented instances where “violations of the laws of nature” have occurred.
I don’t recall having seen a formal structured argument for God’s existence from evidence of miracles. As I thought over this topic, here is what I’ve come up with:
- If God exists, miracles are possible
- Miracles, by definition, are an event where a violation of natural law occurs, which has no natural explanation (miracles are extra-natural / supernatural events)
- The most reasonable explanation for miracles (supernatural event) is a Supernatural Cause
- Miracles have and do occur
- Therefore, a Supernatural Cause for miracles (God) exists
This is a rough, unrefined argument. Over time I am certain it will be reworded / reworked to be more structurally sound, however in its current form, it suits my purposes. The evidence that miracles occur is beyond dispute, though the cause of such events is highly contested and debated. For the Christian, the Bible has numerous records of miraculous events taking place. Believing that there is an all-powerful God Who not only created the universe but also interacts with His creation is reasonable within the Christian worldview.
I will end this by sharing a miraculous account from several years ago. During one of the Easter programs my church performed, the theme was testimonies of what God has done in individuals’ lives. At one point, the pastor stood up and shared an account of a young man who was horribly injured in an accident; several of the vertebrae in his neck were broken. X-rays were taken the night before he was scheduled to have surgery in attempt to repair some of the damage and alleviate possible paralysis that could result from such an injury. The boy’s father reached out to other Christians and the church asking for prayers. The next morning, as part of the pre-surgery prep, another set of X-rays was done. The vertebrae were not only healed, they showed no signs of having ever been broken or damaged. The doctors had no explanation for how this occurred. When the pastor finished sharing this story, he pointed into the audience to the young man and his father who lived through this miraculous event.
Frank Turek is fond of saying that the greatest miracle in the Bible is Genesis 1:1—God creating everything out of nothing. If God exists, and He’s powerful enough to create the universe out of nothing, walking on water, changing water into wine, raising people from the dead, etc. would be simple for such a Being to make happen. Some struggle to believe in the supernatural due to a bias against such events occurring. In light of the evidence that miracles do happen, perhaps it is time to rethink one’s bias against the evidence, especially if there is no other reasonable answer to what has taken place in a blatant disregard for natural laws.
~In Christ!
[1] Geisler, N. L. (2002). Systematic theology, volume one: introduction, Bible (p. 54). Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.
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