Doctrine of Creation (Part 14): 18th century crucible

2.  18^th century crucible

         a.  The attack on miracles

The roots of the 19th century collapse in the belief in miracles among biblical theologians lay in the 18th century and even earlier. The skepticism of modern man with regard to miracles arose during the Enlightenment, or the so-called Age of Reason, which dawned in Europe in the 17th century. The attack upon miracles was led by the Deists. Deists believed in the existence of God as well as his conservation of the world in being and his general revelation in nature, but they denied that he had revealed himself in any special way in the world. They were therefore very exercised to demonstrate the impossibility of the occurrence of miracle, or at least of the identification of miracle. They were, in turn, countered by a barrage of Christian apologetic literature defending the possibility and evidential value of miracle. Today we want to examine some of the principal arguments used by the Deists against miracles.

(1) The Newtonian World-Machine

First, the Newtonian world-machine. Although the most important philosophical opponents of the belief in miracles were Benedict de Spinoza and David Hume, much of the debate was conducted against the backdrop of the mechanical worldview of Newtonian physics. Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (that is to say, of science – in the 17th century and 18th century science was called natural philosophy). Newton's treatise published in 1687 was on the mathematical principles of natural philosophy. By explaining the world in terms of his famous three laws of motion together with some definitions, Newton was able to deduce the corollaries and theorems of his physics. By treating the world in terms of masses, motions, and forces operating according to these laws, the need for God's providence seemed to be eliminated by Newton's physics, and it gave rise to a picture of the universe that has been appropriately characterized as the Newtonian world-machine.

Newton's model of mechanical explanation was enthusiastically received as the paradigm for explanation in all fields. This attitude was epitomized by the claim of the French scientist Pierre Simone de Laplace that a supreme intelligence equipped with Newton's Principia and with knowledge of the present position and velocity of every particle in the universe could predict the exact state of the universe at any other point in time. When the Emperor Napoleon remarked to Laplace on his failure to mention God anywhere in his treatise, a non-plussed Laplace retorted, “Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.”[1] This worldview promoted the Deist conception of God as the creator of the world-machine who wound it up like a clock and set it running under the laws of matter and motion, never to interfere with it again.

In fact, this harmoniously functioning world-machine was thought to provide the best evidence for the existence of God. The 18th century French philosophe Denis Diderot exclaimed, “Thanks to the work of these great men, the world is no longer a God, it is a machine with its wheels, its chords, its pulleys, its springs, and its weights.”[2] But it was equally thought that this world system also made it incredible that God should interfere with the operation of this world-machine via miraculous interventions. Diderot’s contemporary Voltaire said that it was absurd and insulting to God to think that he would interrupt the operations of what he called “this immense machine,” since God designed it from the beginning to run according to his divinely decreed, immutable laws.[3] For these 18th century Newtonians, such miraculous interventions could only be described as “violations of the laws of nature” and therefore were impossible.

(2)  Benedict de Spinoza

Let's turn to our first philosophical figure Benedict de Spinoza. The philosophical attack upon miracles actually preceded Newton's Principia. The philosopher Benedict de Spinoza in his work Tractatus theologico-politicus (or Theological-Political Treatise), published in 1670, argued against both the possibility of miracles and the evidential value of miracles. Two of Spinoza's arguments, I think, are of special significance for our discussion.

(a)         First, he argued that miracles violate the unchangeable order of nature. Spinoza argues that nothing happens contrary to the eternal and unchangeable order of nature. He maintains that all that God wills is characterized by eternal necessity and truth. For there is no difference between God's understanding and his will, so it's the same thing to say that God knows a thing or to say that God wills a thing. The same necessity that characterizes God's knowledge also characterizes his will. Therefore, the laws of nature flow from the necessity and the perfection of the divine nature. If some event contrary to these natural laws could occur, then the divine will and knowledge would stand in contradiction to nature, which is impossible. To say that God does something contrary to the laws of nature is to say that God does something contrary to his own nature. Therefore, miracles are impossible.

(b)         Let me move on at this point to the next argument by Spinoza, and that is to say that miracles are in any case insufficient to prove God's existence. Spinoza believed that a proof of God's existence must be absolutely certain. It is by the unchangeable order of nature that we know that God exists. By admitting miracles, Spinoza warns, we break the laws of nature, and this will create doubts then about the existence of God thus leading us right into the arms of atheism. So he thought that miracles would actually promote atheism because it would lead us to doubt the unchangeable order of nature's laws.

Spinoza also develops two sub-points under this objection. First, a miracle would not in any case prove God's existence because a lesser being such as an angel or a demon could be the cause of the event. The second sub-point is that a so-called miracle is simply a work of nature not yet discovered by man. Our knowledge of nature's laws is limited, and just because we cannot explain the cause of a particular event doesn't imply that it is a miracle having God as its supernatural cause. One might say in a case of a supposedly miraculous healing that it was just a spontaneous remission of the disease. It has a natural explanation, but our knowledge is too limited for us to know what it is.

This objection to the identification of miracles has come to be known as the God-of-the-gaps objection. This is the notion that it's illegitimate to appeal to God to plug up the gaps in our scientific knowledge because the explanation could always be some as-yet-undiscovered aspect of the natural world. And as those gaps are progressively closed with the advance of science, God gets squeezed out of nature. Therefore, the God-of-the-gaps is almost universally vilified today. One should not use God simply as a stopgap for scientific ignorance.

(3)  David Hume

All right, let's then move to our next figure in this debate, which is the Scottish skeptic and philosopher David Hume. In 1748, Hume published his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding which includes a chapter called “Of Miracles.” While Spinoza had attacked the possibility of the occurrence of a miracle, Hume attacked the possibility of the identification of a miracle. He presents a sort of two-pronged attack upon the identification of miracles which we could characterize as an “even if . . . but in fact . . .” argument; that is to say, in the first part of the argument he argues on the basis of certain concessions that he's willing to grant, but then in the second part of the argument he argues on the basis of what he thinks is in fact the case. We can refer to the first half of his argument as his “in principle” argument and the second half of the argument as his “in fact” argument.

(a)         Let's look first at the “in principle” argument. Here Hume maintains that it is impossible in principle to prove that a miracle has occurred. A wise man, he says, proportions his belief to the evidence. If the evidence makes a conclusion virtually certain, then we may call this a “proof,” and the wise man will give whole-hearted assent to that conclusion. If the evidence makes a conclusion simply more likely than not, then we may speak of a “probability,” and the wise man will accept the conclusion with a degree of confidence that is proportionate to the probability. Now, Hume argues, even if we concede that the evidence in favor of a particular miracle amounts to a full proof, it is still impossible in principle to identify that event as a miracle. Why? Because standing opposed to this proof is an equally full proof, namely the evidence for the unchangeable laws of nature, and that is a proof that the event in question is not a miracle.

Hume seems to imagine a scale in which the evidence is being weighed. On one side of the scale is the evidence for a particular miracle, and he's willing to concede for the sake of argument that the evidence for that miracle amounts to a full proof. But on the other side of the scale is the evidence of all the people of all the ages for the regularity of the laws of nature, which also amounts to a full proof. Thus he writes,

So proof stands against proof, and the scales are evenly balanced. Since the evidence doesn't incline in either direction, the wise man cannot hold to a miracle with any degree of confidence.

Indeed, Hume says, in order to prove that a miracle has taken place one would have to show that it would be an even greater miracle for the testimony in support of the event to be false. So with regard to the resurrection, Hume asks, which would be the greater miracle: that a man should rise from the dead or that the witnesses should be deceived or try to deceive?[5] He leaves no doubt as to his answer: he asserts that even if all historians agreed that on January 1, 1600, Queen Elizabeth publicly died and was buried and her successor installed on the throne, but that a month later she reappeared, resumed the throne, and ruled England for three more years, Hume says he would not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous an event as her being raised from the dead. He would accept the most extraordinary hypothesis for her pretended death and burial rather than admit so striking a violation of the laws of nature. Thus, even if the evidence for a miracle constituted a full proof, the wise man should not believe in miracles.

(b)         Let me say something about Hume’s in-fact argument. We've seen that he argues that even if the evidence for a miracle amounts to a full proof, the wise man will not believe in miracles. But, in fact, says Hume, the evidence for miracles does not amount to a full proof. Indeed, the evidence is so poor, it doesn't even amount to a probability. Therefore, the decisive weight falls on the side of the scale containing the full proof for the regularity of nature, a weight which is so heavy that no evidence for a miracle could ever hope to counter-balance it.

Hume gives four reasons why in fact the evidence for miracles is negligible. First, no miracle in history is attested by a sufficient number of educated and honest men, who are of such social standing that they would have a great deal to lose by lying. Secondly, people crave the miraculous and will believe the most absurd stories, as the abundance of false tales of miracles proves. Third, miracles occur only among barbarous peoples. Finally, number four, miracles occur in all religions and thereby cancel each other out, since they support contradictory doctrines. For those four reasons Hume concludes that the evidence for miracles is not even a probability.

He concludes that miracles can never be the foundation for any system of religion. “Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason,” pontificates Hume, all the while laughing up his sleeve. He says,

In other words, it's a miracle that anybody could be stupid enough to believe in Christianity!

What we'll do next time is have some assessment of these arguments. These arguments of Spinoza and Hume are still very much at the center of contemporary discussions of miracles. For example, the New Testament critic, Bart Ehrman, basically repeats warmed-over versions of Hume’s argument against miracles as the reason that he thinks no proof or evidence of the resurrection of Jesus is possible. So these arguments continue to be of contemporary relevance and will merit our discussion next time.