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Miracles and God's Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

J. C. Thornton
J. C. Thornton
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
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Extract

Suppose I have a friend (whose good sense on most matters I respect) who takes seriously the possibility that some at least of the miracle storiesassociated with the origin of the Christian religion are substantially true. He does not say that he knows them to be true, but given his belief in the existence of an almighty, all loving creator-god, he sees no reason to think it impossible that they are, and considerable reason for thinking one or two of them highly probable. He regards those who claim that (say) the resurrection of Jesus could not have happened as being unreasonably dogmatic, and as displaying an attitude of mind more appropriate to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than the latter half of the twentieth century. To rule out the very possibility of the truth of such stories on a priori grounds seems to him to manifest a simplistic philosophical faith which is at least as naive and arbitrary, and perhaps considerably more arrogant,than his own religious faith. Could he be right?

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Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 59 , Issue 228 , April 1984 , pp. 219 - 229
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1984

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References

1 Hume, David, ‘Of miracles’, Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, Selby-Bigge, L. A. (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1902), sect. 10.Google Scholar

2 Hume, David, An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature, Keynes, J. M. and Straffa, P. (eds) (Cambridge University Press, 1938) 13-14 (italics in original).Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Ninian Smart, Philosophers and Religious Truth (London: SCM Press, 1964) 54f.Google Scholar

4 See his classic discussion of Hume's essay in Antony Flew, Hume's Philosophy of Belief (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961) ch. 8.Google Scholar

5 Wadia, P. S., ‘Miracles and Common Understanding’, Philosophical Quarterly 26, No. 102 (01 1976), 76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 P. S. Wadia, op. cit., 74.

7 Though at this point he falters, I regard Wadia's discussion as a whole as the most illuminating interpretation of what Hume was on aboutsince the publication of Flew's book referred to in note 4.Google Scholar

8 In this section I owe a great debt to Diehtl, P., ‘On Miracles’, Philosophical Quarterly 5, No. 2 (April 1968), 130–134.Google Scholar

9 More elaborate safeguards against the possible future discovery of coveringlaw explanations of such events are suggested by Diehtl, op. cit., 131-132.Google Scholar