Which religions have miracles

In this respect, miracle stories resemble family secrets or family photo albums—things meant to be shared, appreciated and understood only among those within the community. In most interfaith dialogues, therefore, miracle stories are excluded. Bruce Chilton Christianity , Richard Davis Hinduism , Jacob Neusner Judaism , Nerina Rustomji Islam , and Kristin Schieble Buddhism —will relate what he or she regards as paradigmatic miracle stories from his or her tradition by way of elucidating the meaning and function of miracles within each tradition.

Proofs for the Existence of God. From Experience Miracles. The Questions. Problems with Miracles. Final Questions. Many but not all of the religions of the world have as part of their traditions claims of Miracles. The Miracles have different forms and play different roles within each religion. The religions of the West have many things in common that have a bearing on the way in which they view Miracles. They share in being religions of the holy book or sacred text. They place importance on events which have been reported to have occurred in history.

They rely on the existence of Miracles The events which are reported to have taken place in the time of Moses are key to the acceptance of the idea of the One God for the peoples of Israel and all who follow after them. The events during the times of Jesus, the Christ, are also the basis for the acceptance of Jesus as being the Son of God by the followers of Jesus. The spread of Islam is also an event regarded as miraculous and a proof of the legitimacy of the claims of Mohammed.

So, Miracles are important for the Western religions. The Miracles have served as the foundation for the historical proof of the existence of the God of the western religions. The leadership of the religions of the West do not want miracle taken lightly and do not want false claims of miracles. These religions will often be the first to investigate claims of miraculous events in order to disprove them!

The concern is that if people come to accept the claim of a miracle and it later turns out to be disproved, then those who had come to believe in it might come not only to stop believing in that particular "miracle" that had been disproved but in all other such claims and thus might come to loose their faith altogether.

The fear is that people would think something similar to this: "If I could be fooled into thinking this recent event was a miracle, then what about those people long ago who reported experiencing a miracle? Could it be possible that they too were deceived? Or mistaken?

Current cinema offers several movies that have miracles as their theme. A few have a member of a church sent to investigate the legitimacy of a claim of a miracle. The movies are for entertainment and most of these films result in some sort of confirmation for the audience.

In real life it does not work out that way. Claims of apparitions and cures are usually quickly dispelled by investigators. There is an event that has taken place that violates the laws of nature. If the laws of nature are violated it could only be by a power that could violate the laws of nature that could only be the power that would have created those laws-the law maker, the deity.

Thus, the power that would have created those laws-the law maker, the deity must exist. The criticisms of this argument or proof attack the first premise. What evidence is there that there has ever been an event that has taken place that violates the laws of nature. What would be required to establish that such an event has , in fact, taken place? What exactly are Miracles? Do they prove the existence of a supernatural realm? What does it take to prove that a miracle has taken place?

Could it ever be proven that a miracle had taken place? Anyone who wants to claim X is a miracle needs to satisfy the two conditions presented above for an event to be accepted as a miracle.

The Burden of Proof is on defending that X is a miracle and not the other way around. Yes, people choose to believe that events are miracles even though they do not satisfy the conditions and even though there is evidence against the events being miracles and even though if the reports were true it would not necessarily mean that the event was the result of the Supreme Being bringing about the events.

Those that assert the affirmative have the burden of proof within the community of reasoning beings. This goes for claims that there are purple elephants with yellow stripes, that there are miracles and that there is a single Supreme Being.

So difficult that several philosophers have concluded that there have been none thus far. To be a miracle an event would need to violate the laws of nature. For any report to be accepted the evidence would need to be pretty convincing and all alternative explanations would need to be ruled out completely eliminated!

That is a very difficult thing to do. The evidence would come from witnesses but the more unbelievable violating the laws of nature the event was the more we would doubt the witnesses. Given the lack of reliable witnesses and the inability to completely eliminate all other possible explanations fraud, delusions, greed, optical illusions, advanced technology, alien activities, etc The Problem of Definition Exactly what constitutes a miracle is a matter for careful consideration , given the importance of the reports of such events, should they be correct and truthful.

A miracle is an event believed to be caused by interposition of divine intervention by a supernatural being in the universe by which the ordinary operation of Nature is overruled, suspended, or modified. The term is derived from Latin word miraculum meaning "something wonderful". Unusual or Extraordinary Event. Some consider any unusual event as a miracle or at least an unusual event with a positive outcome, e. Negative events with less probability being hit by lightning, three separate times are not considered as miracles.

This is a very weak use of the term "miracle". This can not be the basis for a proof for the existence of God because unusual events occur all the time and have explanations using natural factors.

Surviving an auto accident is NOT a miracle. This event happens often and has an explanation using the laws of nature. Such survivals do NOT violate the laws of nature. However, we do not hear people say : He died in the accident! It was a miracle! There are many happy events.

Winning Lotto, surviving a crash and surviving a disease. They are not miracles in the sense that we need for an event in order to use it to prove that there is a supernatural being. A person survives cancer. The chances were 1 in A person survives a car crash. The survivals are happy events but if the survivals are miracles and indicate that a deity is behind them and caused them then the deity also caused the deaths of the 49 from disease and the 5 from the crash.

Those deaths would be miracles as well. Most would not want to call them miracles. To accept some event as being a miracle in order to use it to prove the existence of a supernatural being we must satisfy two conditions: 1.

It is highly unusual for someone to die from a fall of less than 4 feet, say off of a chair or step stool. It is highly unusual for someone not to die after falling over 10,00 feet. BOTH events have happened. People fall off of a chair and hit their heads and die and people fall out of planes and live. We call those who live after an unusual fall a miracle but not those who die after an unusual fall.

If we call the event a miracle because it is so unusual and not at all what was expected why not call the event of someone's dying after falling off of a chair a miracle? The following events appear on lists of world records and not as miracles. Chisov of the former Soviet Union was flying his Ilyushin 4 on a bitter cold day in January , when it was attacked by 12 German Messerschmitts. Convinced that he had no chance of surviving if he staged with his badly battered plane, Chisov bailed out at 21, feet.

With the fighters still buzzing around, Chisov cleverly decided to fall freely out of the arena. It was his plan not to open his chute until he was down to only ft above the ground.

Unfortunately, he lost consciousness en route. As luck would have it, he crashed at the edge of a steep ravine covered with 3 ft of snow. Chisov awoke 20 min later, bruised and sore, but miraculously he had suffered only a concussion of the spine and a fractured pelvis.

Three and one-half months later he was back at work as a flight instructor. Physics: Calculus. Flight Sergeant Nicholas Steven Alkemade was on a bombing mission over Germany on 23 March when his Lancaster bomber flying at 18, feet was blazed apart and in flames when he was forced to jump, without a parachute or be burned to death. He dove out of his destroyed aircraft hoping on a quick death.

His speed accelerated to over miles per hour and he impacted on a snow covered sloping forest. He was completely uninjured and later captured by the Germans who refused to believe his story. The longest survivable fall, 26 January , was Vesna Vulovic a stewardess in a DC-9 which blew up at 33, feet. These early accounts, written within the lifetime of the apostles, are corroborated by thousands of ancient manuscripts. Oral tradition in the form of a creed, which is dated by the majority of experts to within five years of Christ, also testifies to the bodily resurrection of Christ 1 Cor.

By contrast, the sources which testify to the alleged miracles of Muhammad arose over a century after his life. These Islamic accounts lack early, independent attestation by multiple sources. Furthermore, they lack any attestation by enemy or unsympathetic sources. Finally, we must consider whether God might have reasons for working a miracle outside of the Christian context. From a biblical perspective, we know that such miracles are not impossible.

Consider how God healed Naaman the Syrian from leprosy 2 Kings 5 or the angelic vision of the unbaptized Cornelius Acts God may act in the life of a non-Christian in order to increase his faith in a divine, personal being as a preparation for the gospel. Such an act of providence would obviously be one small part of a larger plan to bring the person to belief in the one true God. Skeptics are wrong when they assert that miracles claimed by other world religions nullify the authenticity of Christian miracles.

This is a hasty and unreasonable conclusion. Miracle claims exist outside of Christianity, and these claims emphasize the need for careful examination of each claim. There are simply more resources for explaining how the ecclesiastical stories, which were promoted to an established and favorably disposed audience, could have arisen and been believed without there being any truth to the reports.

There is not yet anything approaching a comprehensive survey of these responses. As Charles Sanders Peirce notes Peirce , the Humean in-principle argument has left an indelible impression on modern biblical scholarship. The Humean objection has also been vigorously contested as destructive not only of miracle stories but of common sense as well. Each of these satires makes the same point.

Granting for the sake of argument that a reported miracle, in the sense of an event beyond the productive capacity of nature, has been established, what follows? Historically, many participants in the discussion have been ready to grant that, at least when the religious significance of the event is obvious and the doctrine or claim it ostensibly attests is not otherwise objectionable, the miracle must have been worked by God and that it provides significant confirmation for the doctrine or claim.

There are two exceptions to this general acquiescence in the evidential value of miracles. First, there is a question regarding the identity of the cause. If God alone can work miracles, this is easily settled; but this claim has been a point of contention in the theological literature, with some writers Clarke ff; Trench maintaining that lesser, created spirits may work miracles, while others e.

Farmer , Wardlaw , Cooper vigorously deny this. The point is of some interest to the evaluation of arguments for miracles, since as Baden Powell points out, there is a distinction.

Powell is quite right to say that testimony is not the proper source for evidence of the supernatural nature of the event. But it does not follow that all opinions on the point are equally reasonable. The very description of the event—and even more, of the context in which it occurs—might render any naturalistic alternatives non-starters.

Whether this is the case will depend, not on general considerations, but on the details of the case in question. Second, it is occasionally argued that, contrary to what most philosophers and theologians have assumed, actual confirmed cases of miracles could not count in favor of the existence of God. George Chryssides argues that a miracle, conceived as a violation of a scientific law, could never be attributed to any agent, divine or otherwise, since the assignment of agency implies predictability.

This bold contention has not attracted many defenders. Gregory Dawes pursues a related but more moderate line of argument, urging that it is difficult to meet the standard necessary to attribute particular events to the personal agency of God. But Dawes does not present this as an absolute barrier to theistic explanations. Overall argues for the more radical contention that a miracle would count as evidence against the existence of God, on three grounds: 1 if order and harmony are evidence for the existence of God, then a miracle, which entails a breach in the order and harmony of the universe, must count against the existence of God; 2 the inevitable controversies over the identification and authentication of a miracle are an impediment to the growth of scientific knowledge and philosophical comprehension; and 3 an omnipotent God who does intervene in His creation would be obliged, on pain of moral defect, to intervene more often and more evenhandedly than He is supposed to have done in the Christian tradition.

Claim 2 is arguably simply false, as such controversies do not appear noticeably to have impeded the progress of science or philosophy.

Argument 3 will be effective against a certain sort of theological position, but it is not one that many believers in miracles actually hold. For further discussion of this issue, see the exchanges between Larmer and Overall Larmer 75—82, Overall , Overall , and Larmer In the final analysis, the relevance of background beliefs looms large.

That is not to say that they could not be an important or even, under certain circumstances, a decisive piece of evidence; it is simply that neither a positive nor a negative claim regarding the existence of God can be established on the basis of evidence for a miracle claim alone, without any consideration of other aspects of the question.

For the evidence for a miracle claim, being public and empirical, is never strictly demonstrative, either as to the fact of the event or as to the supernatural cause of the event. It remains possible, though the facts in the case may in principle render it wildly improbable, that the testifier is either a deceiver or himself deceived; and so long as those possibilities exist, there will be logical space for other forms of evidence to bear on the conclusion.

Arguments about miracles therefore take their place as one piece—a fascinating piece—in a larger and more important puzzle. Concepts and Definitions 1. Arguments for Miracle Claims 2. Arguments against Miracle Claims 3. Arguments from Miracles 4. Concepts and Definitions The philosophical discussion of miracles has focused principally on the credibility of certain claims in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Some stable background is, in fact, presupposed by the use of the term, as William Adams 15 notes: An experienced uniformity in the course of nature hath been always thought necessary to the belief and use of miracles. These are indeed relative ideas. There must be an ordinary regular course of nature, before there can be any thing extraordinary. A river must flow, before its stream can be interrupted. Mackie sums up this perspective neatly: The laws of nature … describe the ways in which the world—including, of course, human beings—works when left to itself, when not interfered with.

A miracle occurs when the world is not left to itself, when something distinct from the natural order as a whole intrudes into it. Thus, Samuel Clarke —12 writes that the true Definition of a Miracle , in the Theological Sense of the Word, is this; that it is a work effected in a manner unusual , or different from the common and regular Method of Providence, by the interposition either of God himself, or of some Intelligent Agent superiour to Man, for the Proof or Evidence of some particular Doctrine, or in attestation to the Authority of some particular Person.

Here, for example, is a deductive reconstruction of an argument given by William Paley , broadly modeled on the version given by Richard Whately — and other Victorian logicians: All miracles attested by persons, claiming to have witnessed them, who pass their lives in labors, dangers, and sufferings in support of their statements, and who, in consequence of their belief, submit to new rules of conduct, are worthy of credit. The central Christian miracles are attested by such evidence.

Therefore, The central Christian miracles are worthy of credit. Various non-Christian miracles are worthy of credit. Paley does not cast his own argument into a deductive form, but he does attempt to forestall this sort of criticism by adding, in rounding out Part 1, an additional claim for which he offers several lines of argument: [T]here is not satisfactory evidence, that persons professing to be original witnesses of other miracles, in their nature as certain as these are, have ever acted in the same manner, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and properly in consequence of their belief of those accounts.

Paley 2. That it be done publicly in the face of the world. That not only public monuments be kept up in memory of it, but some outward actions to be performed. That such monuments, and such actions or observances, be instituted, and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done.

His disciples subsequently had experiences which they believed were literal physical appearances of the risen Jesus. The disciples were transformed from fearful cowards into bold proclaimers who were willing to face persecution and death for their message.

Paul, who had previously been a persecutor of the Christians, had an experience that he also believed was an appearance of the risen Jesus. And unless the whole series of things which may be alleged in this argument, and every particular thing in it, can reasonably be supposed to have been by accident for here the stress of the argument for Christianity lies ; then is the truth of it proved: in like manner, as if in any common case, numerous events acknowledged, were to be alleged in proof of any other event disputed; the truth of the disputed event would be proved, not only if any one of the acknowledged ones did of itself clearly imply it but, though no one of them singly did so, if the whole of the acknowledged events taken together could not in reason be supposed to have happened, unless the disputed one were true.

As Charles Babbage puts it: [I]f independent witnesses can be found, who speak truth more frequently than falsehood, it is ALWAYS possible to assign a number of independent witnesses, the improbability of the falsehood of whose concurring testimony shall be greater than the improbability of the alleged miracle.

Babbage , emphasis original; cf. Holder and Earman Ahmed argues that the anti-Humean argument leveled by Babbage , Holder , and Earman requires an assumption of the conditional independence of successive testimonies to the putative event, an assumption that is plausibly always violated both conditional on the assumption of its truth and conditional on the assumption of its falsehood.

Arguments against Miracle Claims Arguments against miracle claims, like arguments in their favor, come in a variety of forms, invoke diverse premises, and have distinct aims.

His argument for this claim is somewhat difficult to follow, but it appears to run approximately like this: The will of God is identical with the laws of nature. A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.

Therefore, Miracles cannot happen. By the very exposition itself, a miracle is a contradiction in terms: a law cannot at the same time be immutable and violated. He could not … derange the machine but with a view of making it work better; but it is evident that God, all-wise and omnipotent, originally made this immense machine, the universe, as good and perfect as He was able; if He saw that some imperfections would arise from the nature of matter, He provided for that in the beginning; and, accordingly, He will never change anything in it.

Hume immediately illustrates this maxim by applying it to the case of testimony to a resurrection: When anyone 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 or opinion.

A very simple version of the argument, leaving out the comparison to the laws of nature and focusing on the alleged infirmities of testimony, can be laid out deductively following Whately, in Paley 33 : Testimony is a kind of evidence very likely to be false. The evidence for the Christian miracles is testimony. Therefore, The evidence for the Christian miracles is likely to be false.

Another crude argument that focuses solely on the improbability of miracle claims Ehrman — may be laid out thus: A miracle is by definition the most improbable of events; the probability of a miracle is infinitesimally remote. An historian can establish only what probably happened in the past. Therefore, An historian can never establish that a miracle happened.

An alternative reading of Hume, proposed by Dorothy Coleman — , is that an event that has no ready natural explanation is not necessarily an event that has no natural cause. To be a miracle, an event must be inexplicable not in terms of what appears to us to be the laws of nature but in terms of what laws of nature actually are…. Counterinstances of what are taken to be natural laws are not by themselves evidence establishing that no natural law could possibly explain them: at most they provide grounds for revising our formulations of natural laws or seeking an improved understanding of the nature of the phenomena in question.

At the very least they provide grounds for suspending judgments about the nature of their cause until more evidence is available.