Do you reject the possibility of miracles?

In a previous post, I said that I’m a naturalist not because I assume the natural is all there is, but simply because I haven’t seen sufficient evidence for the supernatural. That makes the question of how I respond to miracle claims very relevant. Now, I should note before going any further that there are two different types of usages for the word “miracle.” The more casual usage is simply of a very unusual or unlikely event, but not one that anyone thinks is inexplicable from a natural standpoint. But the other, the one we’re talking about here, is the usage where the event could not possibly have happened without a deity interfering with or suspending the natural laws. In short, something that would be impossible without the intervention of God.

Given that conception of miracles, it naturally follows then that a recognition of miracles happening is an admission that some type of God must exist. Since I don’t believe in God or the supernatural, you can easily infer that I don’t believe in any miracle claims either. From there, you might make the further inference that I’m rejecting all miracle claims just as a general rule. This wouldn’t be an entirely unwarranted assumption, since there have been prominent atheists who held this position. Probably the most well-known is David Hume; I’m an avid watcher of religious debates, and his name comes up a lot in those debates that involve discussing the validity of miracle claims (usually the issue of whether Jesus’ resurrection was a historical event). Hume’s position was that, given the very nature of miracles, a miracle will always be the least probable explanation for any given event.

Think about it like this; if a friend told you that they saw someone walking and talking who you both thought was dead, what possible explanations could there be for that?

1. Your friend is mistaken.
2. Your friend is lying.
3. That other person was never really dead in the first place.
4. A miracle has occurred, and this person has risen from the dead by the supernatural power of God.

Now, think about the general likelihood of these options. #1 is always a possibility. Unless the claimed miracle has been recorded on video (and isn’t it just amazing that this never seems to happen with the more visually-dramatic types of miracles?), then I can’t imagine any possible scenario where the person claiming the miracle couldn’t simply be mistaken. #2 is a little more variable in terms of how trustworthy you consider the person who’s claiming the miracle, but at the end of the day, it’s still more likely that a trustworthy person might be lying (perhaps they’re simply playing a joke on you, with no real malicious intent), than that a person has been raised from the dead. Someone telling a lie is a common occurrence that we all know and agree does happen on a regular basis. Resurrections are nothing of the kind. So even if you trust the person as honest, them being dishonest in this one specific case is still more likely than a dead person coming back to life.

#3 is pretty unlikely, but it’s still something that has been known to happen in the real world. Though it’s much more common in the realm of fiction, it’s not unheard of for someone to fake their own death, or for someone to be pronounced dead and then still end up reviving later (this was much more common in the past, when the medical procedures for determining that someone was dead were more primitive). Or, going back to the first two options, the news you and your friend received that this person was dead could have been inaccurate in the first place. None of these things are commonplace and ordinary, but they’re still more likely (in the sense of there already being known and verified cases of this happening) than a dead person coming back to life.

Now, consider #4 again. Any of those first three options would still be viable whether God exists or not. This option, however, would be entirely impossible if God (or some other supernatural power) doesn’t exist. But then, even if God does exist, this option would still be wildly unlikely, because even most people who fully believe in God don’t believe that resurrections are a regular occurrence. Even the Bible, where the existence of God is a given, and miracles (in general) are quite commonplace, people being brought back from the dead only happens a small number of times. So even if you are completely convinced that God exists, this explanation is still less likely than the first three.

So, as I understand it, that’s basically how Hume’s line of thought goes. He rejects miracles because they’re always going to be the least likely explanation for any given miracle claim or phenomenon. To an extent, I agree with his reasoning, but I don’t keep pace with his train of thought all the way to its destination of rejecting the possibility of miracles completely. I think this is a compelling argument for why miracles should be seen as wildly improbable, and thus be subject to a very high standard of evidence. But I won’t go so far as saying that makes them impossible, because wildly improbable things can and do happen in reality.

Basically, then, my stance is that I’m going to approach any miracle claim with a high level of skepticism and demand a high quality of evidence, but I’m not going to simply rule them out completely. I try not to rule anything out completely.

There’s one other thing that’s worth keeping in mind, though. The way that the very definition of miracles makes the existence of God (or something supernatural) necessary for them to be real, causes it to be very problematic to use miracles as an argument for the existence of God. It seems like a sound deductive argument to say, “a miracle happened, and miracles can only happen if God exists, therefore God exists.” But the problem is, in most cases that first statement (“a miracle happened”) won’t have actually been properly established. The only reason you don’t have any trouble believing a miracle really did happen is because you already believed in God anyway. So using this as a purported proof of God’s existence can very easily be just Begging the Question, and I don’t think it would be especially compelling if this were your primary argument for the existence of God.