The Case Against Miracles

by John W. Loftus

If everything is a miracle then nothing is..

Humes maximum: The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), “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.”

We now

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.

In the two and a half centuries since Hume wrote this passage we have learned much about deception and self-deception from the study of human perception, memory, and cognition, especially the plethora of cognitive biases that distort our picture of reality, so Hume’s Maxim is even more supported today than it was in his time. People are routinely deceived by others, they deceive themselves, and they misperceive how the world works. When someone tells us of a miracle they witnessed, or of a miracle someone told them about, it is far more likely that they “either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened.”

scepticus, for “inquiring”

or “reflective.” Further variations in the ancient Greek include “a seeker after truth; an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definite convictions.” So skepticism is reflective inquiry into the truth, and in many cases we have adequate grounds for certainty as to the truth of many propositions. For example: There are over 500 pages in this book, The Case against Miracles. True by observation.

but it is so unlikely we need not waste our time considering it.

Finally, it is telling that among the tens of thousands of government emails, documents, and files leaked in recent years through Wikileaks, there is not one mention of a UFO cover up, a faked moon landing, or that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration. Here the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. This has implications for miracle claims.

The null hypothesis is that your claim of a miracle is not true until you prove otherwise. Here we say that the burden of proof is on the miracle claimant, not the skeptic or scientist to disprove the miracle claim.

“god-of-the-gaps” type arguments for miracles will fall, and with them the last epistemological justification for religious belief beyond blind faith. Perhaps this is why Jesus was silent when Pilate asked him (John 18:38) “What is truth?”

A miracle must be an event caused by a supernatural force or being, a god. Such

an event could not take place on its own in the natural world without the action of a god. It must be an event which involves the interfering, or suspension, or transgressing, or breaching, or contravening, or violating of natural law. Such an event could not be explainable by science because it would be an event impossible to occur by natural processes alone. A miracle is therefore an extraordinary event of the highest kind.

different gods answering these prayers then one god answers them all, thus creating conflict and wars between believers over who possesses the right god.] Believers will quote their believing doctors who say the odds of being healed were “one in a million,” as evidence of a miracle healing. Listen, a one in a million healing is not equivalent to a miracle. The reason is because of the statistics of large numbers. Statistician David Hand shows us this in his book, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day. He convincingly shows that “extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.” He is not a believer in supernatural miracles though. “No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive. All we need is a firm grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near enough.”[7] There are a growing list of books making this same point.[8] Extremely rare events within the natural world are not miracles. Period. We should expect extremely rare events in our lives many times over. No gods made these events happen.

The opposite is even more miraculous

‘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 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 mi...

Michael Levine

There are basically three philosophical questions of interest about miracles. The first is whether miracles are possible. The second is whether anyone can ever be justified, epistemologically speaking, in believing that a miracle has occurred. With regard to this question it is important to note that the fact one can imagine conditions in which belief in a miracle would be justified does absolutely nothing to show that anyone has been so justified. The third question is whether anyone is or has been so justified…The first two questions have sheltered philosophers from dealing with the only philosophically significant question about miracles per se—the third question. The first two questions…may be worth pursuing in their own right, but they are of little consequence when it comes to the important third question about miracles. Is anyone epistemologically justified in believing in a miracle—for example, on the basis of Scripture and historical evidence?

Philosophical discussion about miracles frequently ignores the question of whether there exists historical evidence, testimony—including testimony in the form of Scripture—or first-hand experience, that justifies belief in the miraculous. Those who wish to champion miracles either argue that such evidence exists or else they merely assume it. But the question of whether such evidence does exist, by itself, is the crucial question about justified belief in miracles.”[19]

adults. I never once said we should stop thinking and arguing about religion or religious doctrines. It was actually the opposite. We should do so until such time as religions no longer exist, if that should ever happen. My requirement is that philosophers of religion should put up the requisite evidence for their respective faiths, or proverbially shut up.

It’s just that all religious beliefs are ridiculous to some degree. That doesn’t mean we should just ridicule ridiculous religions and paranormal beliefs. This book is evidence against that misinterpretation. But the more we ridicule religion then the more we marginalize religious faith-based claims. I further argued that the best way to treat religions isn’t to do so philosophically by treating some religious doctrines more seriously than others, but by treating religion and its doctrines according to the already existing parent discipline of Religious Studies and its subsidiaries, Comparative Religion, and Anthropology of Religion, along with Biblical Studies, Koran Studies, and so on, if done correctly as I explain, by eschewing faith in the classroom just as surely as we should do in other disciplines of learning. Faith in any specific religion shouldn’t get special treatment in the university. The doctrines of religions and their miracle stories should

Study of religion should/will be treated equally to all philosophical issues beliefs

“apologetics” as referring to any attempt to defend belief in a god or gods as reasonable; our focus here will be on apologetics for the Christian God. A persuasive case for the existence of God is one that it is irrational to reject. We might call such a case an instance of strong apologetics. Weak apologetics seeks to defend one’s belief against the claim that it is irrational to believe in God. Strong apologetics mounts

establish the credibility of this testimony. To determine whether the report of a miracle is credible, we need to consider the reliability of the source. Suppose subject S reports some state of affairs (or event) E. Are S's reports generally true? Clearly if she is known to lie, or to utter falsehoods as jokes, we should be reluctant to believe her. Also, if she has any special interest in getting us to believe that E has occurred—if, for example, she stands to benefit financially—this would give us reason for skepticism. It is also possible that S may be reporting a falsehood without intending to do so; she may sincerely believe that E occurred even though it did not, or her report may be subject to unconscious exaggeration or distortion. Aside from the possibility that she may be influenced by some tangible self-interest, such as a financial one, her report may also be influenced by emotional factors—by her fears, perhaps, or by wishful thinking. We should also consider whether other reliable and independent witnesses are available to corroborate her report. We must also ask whether S is herself a witness to E, or is passing on information that was reported to her. If she witnessed the event personally, we may ask a number of questions about her observational powers and the physical circumstances of her observation. There are quite a few things that can go wrong here; for example, S may sincerely report an event as she believed it to occur, but in fact her report is base...

aim is to show that belief in miracle reports is not rational, but that “our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason.”[36] Hume surely intends some irony here, however, since he concludes by saying that anyone who embraces a belief in miracles based on faith is conscious of “a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding”;[37] this is very far from an endorsement of a faith-based belief in miracles.

Hume tells us that we ought to proportion our certainty regarding any matter of fact to the strength of the evidence. When we examine some of the considerations that go into assessing the strength of testimony, there is no denying that testimony may be very strong indeed when, for example, it may be given by numerous highly reliable and independent witnesses.

no testimony can be adequate to establish the occurrence of a miracle. The problem that arises is not so much with the reliability of the witnesses as with the nature of what is being reported. A miracle is, according to Hume, a violation of natural law. We suppose that a law of nature obtains only when we have an extensive, and exceptionless, experience of a certain kind of phenomenon. For example, we know that it is a matter of natural law that a human being cannot walk on the surface of water while it is in its liquid

Hume needs in order to make his argument is that a miracle is an exception to the course of nature as we have previously observed it. Thus, given that we have a very great amount of experience regarding dense objects being placed onto water, and given

that in every one of these cases that object has sunk, we have the strongest possible evidence that any object that is placed onto water is one that will sink. Accordingly, we have the best possible reasons for thinking that any report of someone walking on water is false—and this no matter how reliable the witness.

Hume's examples are quite commonsensical: All human beings must die, lead cannot remain suspended in the air, fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water.[38] So regardless, it is still true that we can only assign a negligible probability to the occurrence of a counterinstance to any of these generalizations. At times Hume sounds as though he thinks the probability of such an event is zero, given its unprecedented nature. However, regardless of Hume's original intent, this is a more extravagant claim than his argument requires. He is free to admit that some small probability may be attached to the prospect that a dense object might remain on the surface of a lake; it is sufficient for his purposes that it will always be more likely that any witness who reports such an event is attempting to deceive us, or is himself deceived. After all, there is no precedent for any human being walking on water, but there is ample precedent for the falsehood of testimony even under the best of circumstances. Accordingly, Hume says[39] 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 endeavors to establish.” We must always decide in favor of the lesser miracle. We must ask ourselves, which would be more of a miracle: That Jesus walked on water, or that the scriptural reports of this event are false? While we may occasionally encounter

The best that human testimony could possibility produce on behalf of a miraculous event is to equal or match the evidence from the laws of nature against it.

So even if it’s remotely possible this burden could be met, we should suspend judgment on whether or not a miracle took place.

Consequently, no one should believe any miracle actually took place, or religion having miracles as its foundation. In what follows we’ll consider both parts and deal with a few objections.

To be clear, Hume consistently expressed himself in probabilistic terms, not certainties, so it’s obvious he’s not rejecting miracles a priori (before examining the facts) or arguing in a circle, or begging the question. See for yourselves:

Hume expressed himself with this general maxim: 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.[85]

which is special pleading, something I pointed out elsewhere.[93] He needs to put forth one such example and justify it. Of course, to do so would require producing extraordinary evidence which is what the ECREE is all about. Beyond this, he should show us how to evaluate other similar extraordinary claims made by the millions, especially coming from the religions he doesn’t accept. Just tell us how to evaluate the claim that Joseph Smith was visited by an angel Moroni, who gave him some inspired golden plates, then go and do likewise to thy own claims.

Hume’s general maxim is about the weight of human testimonial evidence to miracles given the natural world that precludes them. But what we find exclusively on behalf of miracles in the Bible is human testimony, ancient pre-scientific superstitious human testimony, second- third- fourth-handed human testimony, conflicting human testimony filtered by editors, redactors, and shaped by early Christian debates for decades and/or centuries in the ancient pre-scientific world, where miracle claims were abundant without the means to discredit them.

Let’s take at face value the extraordinary miraculous tale that a virgin named Mary gave birth to the god/baby Jesus. There’s no objective evidence to corroborate her story. None. We hear nothing about her wearing a misogynistic chastity belt to prove her virginity. No one checked for an intact hymen before she gave birth. Nor did she provide her bloodstained wedding garment from the night of her wedding that supposedly “proved” she was a virgin before giving birth (Deuteronomy 22:15–21). After Jesus was born Maury Povich wasn’t there with a DNA test to verify Joseph was not the baby daddy. We don’t even have first-hand testimonial evidence for it, since the story is related to us by others, not Mary, or Joseph. At best, all we have is the second-hand testimony of one person, Mary, or two if we include Joseph who was incredulously convinced Mary was a virgin because of a dream, yes, a dream (see Matthew 1:19–24), one that solved his dilemma of whether to “dismiss her quietly” or “disgrace” her publicly, which would have led her to be executed for dishonoring him.[97] We never get to independently cross-examine them, along with the people who knew them, which we would want to do, since they may have a very good reason for lying (pregnancy out of wedlock?).

Now one might simply trust the anonymous gospel writer(s) who wrote this extraordinary story down, but why? How is it possible they could find out that a virgin named Mary gave birth to a deity? Think about it. No reasonable investigation could take Mary and/or Joseph’s word for it. With regard to Joseph’s dream, Thomas Hobbes tell us, “For a man to say God hath spoken to him in a Dream, is no more than to say he dreamed that God spake to him; which is not of force to win belief from any man.” [Leviathan, chap. 32.6] So it’s down to Mary. Why should we believe her? On this point believers are faced with a serious dilemma to their faith. For if this is the kind of research that went into writing the gospels, we shouldn’t believe anything else they say without requiring corroborating objective evidence. But if research was unnecessary for writing their gospels—because they were divinely inspired—why do gospel writers give us the pretense of having researched into it (see Luke 1:1–4)? Why not simply say their stories are true due to divine inspiration and be done with the pretense? Then the gospel authors would be admitting their tales lack the required corroborating objective evidence, which in turn means there isn’t a good reason to believe them. But let’s suppose these anonymous gospel authors were given the required objective evidence for the virgin birth. It doesn’t change a thing, for they don’t produce it or tell us about it! We’d still be forced to trust an anonymous ...

Genius— virgin birth!

isolated reports of people walking across the surface of the water. Given the testimony of the first kind, how are we to evaluate the testimony or of the second sort? The testimony of the first sort does not show that the testimony of the second sort is false; it does, however, create a strong presumption—unless countered, a decisively strong presumption—in favor of its falsehood. That is Hume’s argument, and there is nothing circular or question begging about it.[101] Others have criticized Hume as if he’s saying it’s impossible for miracles to occur

Take for example the progress of science. As it progresses the science of yesterday was not false, just incomplete.

by discussing the changing views of the shape of the earth, from flat to spherical to pear-shaped (it’s now considered an oblate spheroid, or oblate ellipsoid). The same thing can be said about Newton’s laws of motion as completed (not falsified) by Einstein’s relativity equations. Newton’s equations were not wrong you see, even though he didn’t factor time into them, as Einstein did. They just don’t work at or near the speed of light. In a like manner, Hume gave us the initial questioning paradigm to evaluate testimonies to miracles, which still holds true. But now with Bayes’ Theorem we might now have a better way to think about miracles with a more complete paradigm.

Outsider test for faith

Private subjective messages

There are two of them. One) Christians claim the gospel writers received private subjective messages from the spirit world who subsequently wrote down these messages known as the divinely inspired Scriptures. On this see David Madison’s excellent chapter for a refutation. Two) Apologists also argue that Christians receive their own private subjective messages that lead them to trust the private subjective messages of the gospel writers. At this point it’s private and subjective all the way down without any foundation for their beliefs. I call this what it is, paranormal activity, the giving and receiving of psychic messages from beyond. Christians would scoff at my description of these messages as psychic, but what else are they? Spirit communication would be coming from a god on this account. But there would be no difference as to the medium, or the reliability of these messages, when compared to others who claim to have psychic abilities.

The divine authority of Scripture seems to me not something that one could really establish at all. Some of us came to believe it at our parents’ knee. (But then, how’d they come to know it?) To accept the authority of Scripture on the authority of my parents will work all right as an explanation of why I do believe it, but hardly works as a justification of the belief itself (why I should believe it). My own view is that no amount of historical scholarship can establish the inspiration and authority of scripture.

What sort of evidence could there be about God inspiring the Gospel writers (say) or the selection of the Canon that would underwrite belief in those? My suspicion is that [Alvin] Plantinga is right: our warrant in believing the Bible to be the authoritative Word of God owes to the work of the Holy Spirit. Full stop, pretty much.[150]

Apologists argue Christians are warranted in believing they experience private subjective miracles from their god, and that this provides all the proof they need for their sect-specific religion to be true, notwithstanding the fact that their god reveals himself in the same exact private subjective way as the other Christian and non-Christian gods do. These kinds of private subjective miracles are claimed by Muslims on behalf of Mohammed and the Koran, or Orthodox Jews and the Old Testament, or Hindu’s and the Bhagavad-Gita (“Song of God”), or Joseph Smith and the Mormon Scriptures.

Just look at it from a different perspective. Imagine apologists for Scientology honestly admitting there’s no objective evidence that body thetans exist, or apologists for Mormonism honestly admitting there’s no archaeological evidence that confirms the Book of Mormon. Imagine those apologists saying, as did Blaise Pascal, that “the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing”, or as the Protestant John Wesley said, that his heart was “strangely warmed”? Imagine they continued believing even though they openly admitted no objective historical evidence or archeological evidence for the basis of their faith. Wouldn’t we all think they were delusional? This is exactly what we’re seeing from Christian apologists: the demise of the reasonableness of Christianity by the very intellectuals who are supposed to defend it.