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OF SCIENCE AND OF MIRACLES

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 LASU Journal of Religions and Peace Studies. Vol. 3 (1): 1-9 (2018)

OF SCIENCE AND OF MIRACLES

Afisi, Oseni Taiwo, Ph.D.

Department of Philosophy
Lagos State University, Ojo
oseni.afisi@lasu.edu.ng
ABSTRACT

The mainstream view in physical science is that empiricism and experimentation lie at the
centre of science. From this perspective, there is no compelling evidence for thinking that
any mystico-spiritual activity, such as miracles or other incorporeal affairs, are tenable
enough to tangibly represent observable reality. Miracles, in particular, are believed to be
divine actions, which are inexplicable activities that are not backed by natural or scientific
laws. This validates the basis upon which science would denounce miracles as violations of
established laws of physics, and why it is physically impossible to confirm the nature of its
operations. This makes the case for why David Hume asserts that a miracle is a
contravention of the law of nature. While Hume may be justified in his denial of any
empirical substance to miracles, this paper seeks to establish that the spiritual is incidental
to the physical.

Keywords: Science, miracles, Hume,

INTRODUCTION

Well known explanatory contents have sprawled in literatures about the entailment of the
nature of science. This is why this paper will not delve too long into a comprehensive
description of the nature of science. However, the fundamentals of science that is relevant
to this project rest primarily upon the bedrock of both verificationism and experimentation.
These two fundamentals spawn other methodological characteristics, such as “refutability,
falsifiability, testability, empiricism, predictive and explanatory powers, fecundity,
unification, and simplicity”1, upon which the scientific condition is based. The most
encapsulating of all these features of science is the principle of “intelligibility”, which is
predicated on the assumption that every aspect of the physical cosmos is comprehensible in
principle, and can be explained with the same general principles which governs any natural
activities. As such, appeals to “mystery”, to the “mystical” or to “supernatural” are excluded
as a matter of principle, because they are inherently irrational and unscientific 2.
In contradistinction to what science entails, the phenomenon of miracles are not backed by
observatory evidence, and quite impossible to explain by known laws of nature. Miracles, in
the monotheistic sense, foreground the possibility of God’s direct or indirect intervention in
the natural order of things. Miracles are supernatural acts, which require adherents to
believe and accept such activities as acts of God without questioning or needing to provide
evidence for it.

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EPISTEMIC THEORY OF MIRACLES

In miracles, especially the theistic ones, the acts are supposedly powered by divine
intervention. This accounts for reasons that Wayne Gruydem views a miraculous act as “a
less common kind of God’s activity in which God rouses people’s awe and wonder and bears
witness to himself”3. So through the divine medium, miracles function as a spectacular
manifestation of God’s direct intervention in promoting a divine plan, and to inspire
religious sentiments4. For all intent and purposes, a miracle must be an extraordinary and
unusual activity contrary to natural and/or empirical expectations. Necessarily, the notion of
miracles invites the discourse on Divine Action, since God is construed as the acting agent.
The divine action takes place in several ways chiefly among which include; God’s action of
creating and sustaining the world, and particularly the notion that distinguishes between
general and particular acts of providence. God’s act of providence takes a general form
when it is exercised on all creatures of the world. However, God’s act of particular
providence is exercised as special providence towards his own people5. Consequently,
particular providence has affinity to miracles as God acts at particular times and places to
achieve specific ends. This ends affirms “the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, for example, on
how it portrays God as engaging human beings through a series of revelatory and
redemptive actions in history. God calls Abraham and his descendants into a covenant
relation; God rescues the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and gives the law at Sinai;
God raises up kings and prophets; God acts in myriad ways to judge, sustain, and redeem
this people through all the vicissitudes of their history”6. This is the principle of divine action
that most theistic religions, which especially Christianity and Islam incorporate much into
their history, and because each tradition develops these stories in a different way, they
generate distinctive understandings of God’s purposes and identity 7.
William Vallicella’s “epistemic theory of miracles” is the phrase he coined in his efforts at an
evaluative analysis of the theory of miraculous events as explained by St. Augustine and
Baruch Spinoza. Augustine had argued that miracles do not violate the generally acceptable
principles of the laws of nature, because events in the world happen according the way God
wills them to be, so laws of nature are willed by God, therefore, a miracle is not contrary to
nature as it is in itself, but contrary to nature as man perceives it 8. Similarly for Spinoza, laws
of nature are laws as decreed by God. So if there is any event in nature which transgressed
nature’s universal laws, it would necessarily also contravene the Divine decree of God.
Consequently, if anyone holds the notion that God’s action, especially in miracles, is in
contravention to the laws of nature, such is an assertion that God acted against His own
nature, which to every sound mind is –an evident absurdity9.
Vallicella’s evaluation is to the effect that what both Augustine and Spinoza present as
ratiocination for the existence of miracles and the will of God is laced with great concern if it
is not built on the platform of an epistemic theory of miracles. The expectation here is that
since miracles are events in nature that surpass human intellect and understanding, the
human mind cannot comprehend it. Again, since God’s nature can only be known through
the fixed and immutable order of nature, and not from miracles, this would be the basis for
the knowledge of God. The pointer to this is that since humans can only accept miracles
epistemologically as events of causes of which they do not understand, then they have no
basis for knowledge of God10.

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Clearly, providence and the acts of miracles have connections. The monotheistic God is one
with the powers to perform miracles with his divine action. He is believed to possess the
foreknowledge ability for the future, and intervenes in the world through his miraculous
divine actions. This perspective puts God as one who controls the world through both his
divine providence and special divine intervention in miracles. What this point emphasizes is
that God’s involvement in the world goes beyond just miracles, it is he who guides and
sustains human everyday lives and activities.
There is a sense of fatalism in this representation of God. This sense is wholly inconsistent
with some notions in monotheistic religion that God renders to man his freewill to choose.
Freewill is the capacity of the human subject to cause events in the world, in such a way that
human actions become necessary for the occurrence of some events in the world without
which those events would not have happened. However, such human freewill or volition
become problematic upon a providential activity of a supernatural deity whose sole aim is
to guide and control the world as well as intervenes miraculously in order to sustain the
world supernaturally. In this kind of situation, man is necessarily fated by divine action, and
his freewill becomes otiose.
Another aspect of miracles that is essential for consideration is the miraculous done by
proxy. Claims of miraculous activities performed through divine powers by individuals other
than God have been well documented, especially those miracles claimed to have been
performed by Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus was believed to have performed many miracles in his lifetime. While it is not
disputable if he lived, had disciples or taught about love and oneness of all mankind, it is the
veracity of the claims to the miracles he supposedly performed that science would disbelief.
The very first recorded miracle Jesus was said to have performed was when he turned water
into wine at the wedding feast in Cana. This was believed to be a supernatural marvellous
feat. However, science would question the possibility of turning ordinary water into wine
without the normal known process of harvesting of grape, crushing and pressing,
fermentation, clarification, and aging and bottling, with which wine making entails. It would
actually be difficult to explain or an outright impossibility to credit Jesus with such
miraculous feat if he indeed did not follow this age-long process of wine making.
Among many other miracles performed by Jesus were two unrelated events but with similar
results. Jesus was said to have raised a widow’s son from the dead in Nain (Luke 7:11-17), as
well as raised Lazarus from the dead in Bethany (John 11:1-45). Both accounts are regarded
as miraculous, especially that of Lazarus who had been dead for four days. However, science
would not consider these events as extraordinary or miraculous because there have been
many cases of people who died and auto-resurrected. This is known in science as
autoresuscitation, which is a spontaneous return of blood circulation after some failed
efforts at resuscitation. Meanwhile, such persons are not usually pronounced dead before
the autoresuscitation. Moreover, there are both traditional and medically advanced ways of
determining if and when a person is actually dead. So the possibility of a miraculous raising
of Lazarus who probably was not dead, in the first instance, is fraught with hitches because
no recorded history of medical autopsy was given and no mention was made in recorded history if
any medical specialist pronounced Lazarus dead, giving the level of medical advancement in
relation to the ancient period. However, it must be stated that at that time issuing of death
certificates was not in practice.

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It is also important to examine the miracle of feeding the multitude, which Jesus was said to
have performed with five loaves of bread and two fishes. The people were numbered about
five thousand, and records have it that Jesus looked unto the heaven, gave thanks and broke
the loaves. The five thousand people ate and were very satisfied, to the extent that twelve
baskets full of broken pieces of bread and fishes were left over (Matthew 14:13-21, Mark
6:31-44, Luke 9:12-17, John 6:1-14). From a rational perspective, it would be ludicrous, to
say the least, that a miraculous feat such as claimed to have been performed by Jesus was
possible. Within the ambit of science, first, it is not practicable that five loaves of bread and
two fishes would suitably feed five thousand people to satisfaction. Second, a magic trick
might have occurred which stamped a visual illusions on the minds of those who thought
they saw the multiplication of five loaves of bread and two fishes becoming a multitude.
Here there is disconnect between perception and reality. The people were said to have been
very hungry. As a result of the effects of visual illusions it is possible for their brains to create
an illusory world, outside of the physical, where Eldorado existed to satisfy their yearnings.
Aside from the miracles that Jesus supposedly performed, contemporary Pentecostal
gatherings have produced a monumental number of other individuals who claim to perform
miracles in the name of Jesus. Conversely, while Jesus called onto God, the father, when
performing his miracles, miracle performers after him engaged in their own miraculous
activities in the name of Jesus, the only begotten son. The similarity in both is that they
seem to call unto a higher authority either for authenticity or for some powers.
In spite of the accentuated claims of miracles as a basis on which things are inexplicably
done supernaturally, one of the serious criticisms that miracles have, as it is with any other
mystical or supernatural claims, is the onus of evidence and proof of their tangibility. If we
go by the three rules of evidence as enunciated by James Pearce, vis-à-vis, evidence must be
empirical, evidence must be public, and evidence must be repeatable, it is clear in that
regard that the structure and nature of miracle claims do not have empirical substance.
Although claims of the miraculous are in the depth of religious support for God’s
intervention in human affairs, such are claims of knowledge of divine acts that people of
religious persuasions cannot provide any possible evidence. There is no denying the fact
that knowledge, most especially scientific knowledge, is a property of evidence, which
necessarily provides ground for believing that a certain knowledge claim is true. For it is in
this kind of grounds for evidence that any claims to miracles become deficient. It is based on
this ground of evidence that I discuss next David Hume’s refutation of miracles.
DAVID HUME’S REFUTATION OF MIRACLES
David Hume’s argument against miracles has become the most potent outpouring
assertions on the subject matter, which have continuously motivated scholars to revisit and
revise his reflections on the issue. It is helpful to begin with how Hume defines a miracle as
“a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity, or by interposition of
some invisible agent”11. In this outlook of Hume, two views are deductible, that:
1. miracles violates an established law of nature;
2. a deity or invisible agent (perhaps God) is the cause of this contravention.
It is from these two perspectives that Hume vigorously pursues his argument against
miracles. His skepticism about the testimony of miracles is set out in the section X of his An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hume places emphasis on the weight of

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empirical evidence for whatever claims to knowledge one has. In the case of miracles, Hume
enjoins that the general principle present in the proportions of evidence is to be applied.
Miracles are based on elements of probability, which presupposes an opposition of
experiments and observations12.
In assessing the basic principle of miracles, Hume asserts that those who promote the reality
of miracles justify it on the basis of “the opposition of contrary testimony; the character or
number of the witnesses; the manner of delivering their testimony; and/or the union of all
these circumstances”13. As a reaction to this, Hume proceeds to deploying four arguments
against miracles for failing to meet up with any of the following paragons.
First, no miracle in history has in fact been sufficiently well attested by sufficiently many
reliable witnesses14. Secondly, the pleasant passion of surprise and wonder makes miracle
stories particularly prone to invention and fantasy, all the more so if they are propagated to
promote religion15. As the history of forged miracles amply demonstrates, a religious person
may lie ‘for the sake of promoting a holy cause’, or out of vanity, or he may be gullible or
swayed by eloquence. Thirdly, miracle stories almost all ‘abound amongst ignorant and
barbarous nations’, suggesting that they are indeed products of imagination rather than
provable fact16. Finally, if a miracle is supposed to establish the religion (or sect) to which it
is attributed, and since the various religions are incompatible, it follows that the evidence
for any miracle will be opposed by the evidence in favour of the far greater number of
miracles reported in other religions. Hume illustrates this point with some apparently well-
evidenced miracles that he is confident may be ousted. In his own words:
That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a
kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours
to establish: And even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the
superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains,
after deducting the inferior.”* When any one tells me, that he saw a dead man
restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that
this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates,
should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according
to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the
greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the
event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief
17
or opinion .

Hume’s overall position in all of this is that miracles exist as a product of unchecked
imagination of the weak, the gullible and especially a deceiver. Hume’s view suggests that
since a claim to miracles is based on probability there is no observable criteria that would
set out an event or an activity as a miracle. Since, the character and structure of the natural
order has a bedrock in empirical observation a miraculous event would be impossible to
achieve. Its possibility would be a contravention of law of natural order.
Well known criticisms have been made against Hume’s arguments on the refutation of
miracles. It is essential to ask Hume what the law of nature is, and at the point at which the
law of nature is transgressed, as well as what it would take for an event to transgress a law
of nature18. Hume’s objection in the regard that a law of nature is transgressed seems to
imply that humans have infallible knowledge of these laws, and that these laws are not
subject to modifications. What Hume fails to realise is that the laws of nature are not
transfixed. This is not an indication that some natural events or activities are not all time the
same. The natural law of gravity is an all age law of nature. However, if one were to have

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lived some four centuries ago, the knowledge of the laws of nature he knew would possibly
have been modified if he came back to life in the 21st century, as advancements in science
and technology have changed the face of the cosmos. The history of physics, for instance, is
replete with instances of revolutions. This is also echoed by Alfred North Whitehead that
“science is even more changeable than theology19. No man has full knowledge of the
operation of nature. There is, therefore, no epistemic justification that humans possess a
full grasp of the workings of nature.
Furthermore, from his treatment of the notion of probability, Hume’s argument
presupposes that the process of acquiring knowledge is to believe in repeated sensory
experience and evidence from singular experiences over testimonial evidence. This is the
idea of proportioning our belief to repeated evidence. This outlook is suspect, for it will
make changeability, growth and revolution in science to serve no practical purposes.
Such a principle would not only be problematic for scorekeepers at record breaking
sports events; it would also be problematic for scientists confronted with evidence
challenging long-held scientific theories. Any long-held scientific theory is long held
because the predictions made by the theory are confirmed through repeated, uniform
experience. Yet many such theories ultimately proved to be false when later
experiments upended certain other predictions. If Hume were right, such experiments
and their results would have to be rejected since they amount to nothing more than
20
single experiences which don’t cohere with past uniform experience .

In addition, a believer in the reality of miracles may object to Hume’s conception of miracles
and the standard for adjudging a miraculous event from a monotheistic angle. Hume fails to
acknowledge the existence of what these apologists may term "indirect evidence" 21. This is
a development from his claims that when one claims a miracle, it is always more likely that
one’s belief about the laws of nature are actually mistaken than seeing a law transgressing
an established law of nature. Hume here is aimed at showing that we are never rationally
entitled to believe that an event is genuinely anomalous. And since all miraculous events are
anomalous, we are never entitled to believe that an event was miraculous 22.
The fourth objection concerns Hume’s idea that the supernatural agency (God) is directly
responsible for breaking an established law. This is conceived by Hume on the subject of
miracle to mean that it is better to believe that an anomalous event occurred than to point
to a causal agency in the divine. However, what can be advanced is that an anomalous event
could be a magical act. Christopher Hitchens mentions that if an anomalous event occurred
one simple explanation is to say that it was a supernaturally-caused one. He insists that
“…the razor of Ockham is clean and decisive. When two explanations are offered, one must
discard the one that explains the least, or explains nothing at all, or raises more questions
than it answers”23. This raises the question of whether to establish the existence of a divine
being who is said to be the direct causal agency that causes supernatural events to occur.
When that has been established, one could then begin to ask why the Deity often times fails
to act when his people call upon him to intervene, especially when prayers are said for the
sick, or in many other cases of needed intervention. It thus seems that the God who
performed direct miracles in the holy books no longer functions as he used to. This may
account for why there are cases of monumental proportions of miracles more replete in the
holy Books than it is in current reality.

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The fifth rebuttal of Hume’s skepticism about the testimony of miracles, takes us again to
the definition of miracle as an event that breaks an established law of nature. Richard Purtill
raises this objection that a law which may be broken fails to be a law:
The United States…has a large set of laws regulating human behavior, but occasionally
exceptional procedures are introduced, like presidential pardons. A miracle may be
compared to a presidential pardon, in that the origin of the pardon is outside the
ordinary legal procedures. It is unpredictable, and plays no role in the maneuvering of
a lawyer in the court, since it cannot be brought about by the means available to him
during a court procedure. Similarly, the creation of miracles is not within the scope of a
scientist’s activities. Yet, a presidential pardon does not constitute a violation of the
legal system: it is not illegal, it is outside the legal system. In a comparable manner a
24
miracle does not violate, but is outside, the system of nature’s laws .

Despite the depth and originality of Purtill’s objection, it could still be pointed out that while
the causal agency in the legal procedure is known and established even by law, Hume’s
response would be that there is no way we can be sure that a divine agency is responsible
for an acclaimed miracle. This argument rests on skepticism about the possibility of
necessary connection between events.
CONCLUSION
No doubt, the nature, methodology and features of what is termed scientific are different
from what entails the non-scientific, what Karl Popper called pseudo-science. Popper had
demarcated science from pseudo-science suggesting that what is scientific is falsifiable. For
Popper, falsificationism is the thesis that a hypothesis can be termed scientific only if it has
the potential to be refuted. A theory is scientific only if it is falsifiable. Popper thus used
falsification as a criterion for demarcation to distinguish the true scientific attitude from the
unscientific. The true scientific attitude, according to Popper, is witnessed in Newton’s
theory of gravitation as well as Einstein’s theories of relativity. The true scientific attitude
differs from that by Marxists toward their Marxism, or by Freudians toward their
psychoanalysis, or by Adler towards his individual psychology, for by their attitude these
various thinkers render what they espouse immune from potential falsification. They are
dogmatic rather than critical, so what they offer is mere pseudo-science 25.
Miracles fall within the category of pseudo-science. Miracles do not appeal to observation
and experimentation, which are very well the core of the scientific. Clearly, the
methodology involves in miracles do not possess any overwhelming empirical evidence in its
favour based on observation.
In spite of these lack of empirical verifiability or the capacity for falsificationism that entails
the methodology involves in any claims to miracles, miracles are metaphysical activities with
which recourse is made to God, Spirits, Magic, witchcraft and destiny while explaining the
forces of nature26.That is to say, series of events in nature is traced to its source which is
exclusive to the series. That is, causes of events in nature are traceable beyond nature. So in
answering the question of “why” such and such events occurred rather than the other,
causal explanation employs gods, personified forces, and other spiritual beings.
Modern scientific method of enquiry would reject this view, as the starting point is the
rejection of any non-empirical method because science cannot accept anything as real
whatever is in the realm of magical, animistic, and above all, personal idioms27, in which the
wills of the gods and ancestors circumscribe human thought and actions.

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Undoubtedly, science rejects any notion of knowledge that has inexplicable properties.
However, certain notions of belief that may be termed superstitious, supernatural or
esoteric, are not at all baseless and nonsensical, they play certain emotional, moral and
spiritual roles in human condition. In fact, these notions are unique in their own right to
become the collective worldview of their adherents concerning man, nature and society.
In all of these, what can be deduced is the notion that there are realities beyond the natural
phenomenon. This gives credence to the notion that there is more to the world than what
can be explained within the physical cosmos. Invariably, science exists, miracles exist. What
then becomes pertinent is to know whether science and miracles can have some practical
relevance to development in the world. While science has proved beyond reasonable level
its capacity to change the world through its various advancements in technology, the realm
of the supernatural, even if it cannot be verifiable empirically, can also be said to be pivotal
to both the spiritual and material developments of mankind. Human history has revealed
that the idea of the supernatural and the knowledge or belief of it continued to hold sway
while science emerged. In fact, spiritual and religious beliefs were integral to the motivation
of the development of science. Science, even at its current advanced stage, tries to
understand the mechanisms by which God had constructed the world. So spiritual
knowledge of non-empirical orientation, is quite compatible with the claim that the spiritual
is incidental to the physical. This is to the extent that it is believed that the spiritual affects
physical phenomena.
In conclusion, Hume may be right to have asserted that a miracle is a violation of the law of
nature, it is not a testament that science is light years distant from supernatural activities.
Both science and the supernatural are concerned with finding answers to the meaning of
life, human destiny and the existence of god. The support that the supernatural requires is
to be more open, critical, conceptual and reconstructive. This will open up the possibility of
a critical engagement that would allow for more practical grounds, which would be relevant
to contemporary human realities.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1
James J. Pearce. What makes a theory scientific? Unpublished. Posted on his Facebook
status on 5th May, 2017
2
James J. Pearce. What makes a theory scientific?
3
W. Gruydem. Systematic Theology. (New York: Pocket, 1994). 46
4
G.N. Schlesinger. “Miracles” in Taliaferro, C., Draper, P., Quinn, P.L., (Eds.). A
Companion to Philosophy of Religion. (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 398
5
T.F. Tracy. “Divine Action” in Taliaferro, C., Draper, P., Quinn, P.L., (Eds.). A
Companion to Philosophy of Religion. (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 309
6
Tracy, “Divine Action”, 309
7
Tracy, “Divine Action”, 309

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8
St. Augustine. The City of God. Book XXI, chapter 8: 776.
9
Baruch Spinoza. Tractatus Theologico-Polticus
10
William F. Vallicella. A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated.
(Berlin: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002). 86
11
David Hume [orig. 1748). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007). 114.
12
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 111
13
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 112-113.
14
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 116
15
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 117-119
16
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 119-121
17
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 116
18
J.M. Murray and M.C. Rea. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008). 201
19
A.N. Whitehead. [orig.1925]. Science and the Modern World. (New York: Pelican
Mentor Books, 1948). 182
20
J.M. Murray and M.C. Rea. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 203
21
J.M. Murray and M.C. Rea. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 204
22
J.M. Murray and M.C. Rea. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 204
23
C. Hitchens. God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. (New York: Twelve
Books, 2007). 99
24
R.L. Purtill (1978). Thinking about Religion. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1978). 70
25
Karl Popper. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. (London and New York: Rutledge, 1959).
39
26
G. S. Sogolo. Foundations of African Philosophy: A Definitive Analysis of Conceptual
Issues in African Thought. (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1993). 166
27
A Fadahunsi and O. Oladapo. Philosophy and the African Prospects: Selected Essays of
Prof. J. O. Sodipo. (Ibadan: Hope Publications, 2004). 99

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