1. 3 F. Comparative study of two scholars

2. Starter Write a one - five word summary of – Hume Aquinas – x3
Swinburne
Holland

3. 1. David Hume
A miracle may be accurately defined as ‘A transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent’
‘nothing is esteemed a miracle if it ever happens in the common course of nature’

4. First Challenge to Miracles The laws of nature are based on past experience
A miracle is the violation of the laws of nature
Therefore Hume believes it is impossible to prove that a miracle has happened
Why? Discussion point – see info on next slides

5. Because…
Laws of nature are well established: they have been supported for thousands of years
An example is- millions of human beings have died but do not return to life!
No-one has ever defied the law of gravity; in as much as people have survived falling from a great height but they haven’t floated to the ground

6. But what if someone witnessed an unexplainable event?
No matter how reliable and trustworthy the witness, it would be always more likely that the testimony of the witness to be false than it to be true
Laws of nature are stronger!

7. Something to think about…
If you were to witness one exception to the law of gravity, what would you expect to happen next time you dropped something?
Why might an exception to a rule not necessarily have to outweigh all those cases which supported it?

8. Hume’s other argument against miracles!

9. 2a People
Most testimonies supporting miracles come from people whose minds lack complexity, good sense, education and learning
They tend to be gullible and under-educated
Is this a fair assessment?

10. Problems with this challenge
Does Hume explain precisely what would constitute a reliable witness?
Swinburne? The Principles of
Testimony

11. 2b Communities
Stories of miracles tend to be common amongst ‘ignorant and barbarous communities’ e.g. the fishermen who observed the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament

12. Problems with this challenge
Swinburne calls this challenge arrogant – why?
Write a list of miraculous occurrences –
What ‘types’ of nations do they occur in?
Is it reasonable to claim they are all ‘ignorant and barbaric’?

13. 3 Beliefs
These sorts of people are prone to looking for something magical in life so when something unusual and unexplainable happens, they have no urge to question the events.
Instead, they talk about them endlessly in miraculous terms

14. Problems with this challenge
Swinburne claimed that while some people might lie – others would not
If you want to believe something is true, will you always be willing to set aside truths and accept a lie?
Why might your desire for truth outweigh your desire to believe what you what?

15. 4 Conflicting Claims
4. Most religions claim that they each have the truth and they support this with miraculous stories
i.e. Christians claim Jesus is the truth; as evidence they point to the miracle of his birth and resurrection
Because there are so many religions that claim miracles happen within their faith, Hume would suggest:
They can’t all be right

16. Problems with this challenge
If a Christian and a Jew were both, simultaneously to witness a miracle (as happened in the Bible) what would this say about Hume’s argument?
What arguments can be used against Hume’s fourth criticism?

17. Example of a miracle is Islam
6. The moon split
The polytheists at the time of the Prophet (pbuh) keep insisting that they wanted a miracle. They said they will believe if The Prophet (pbuh) could show them the splitting of the moon in half. When Allah granted the Prophet the ability, he called them all to witness, and the moon split in two. And indeed it was a clear manifestation. This incident is also narrated in the Holy Quran.

18. He referred to the fact that all religions claim to have miracles and they all can’t be right; i.e. he states Christianity bases it’s credibility on miracles
However, no mainstream religions actually claim to be based on miracles alone
Even the miracles of Jesus were not performed for credibility, but performed out of compassion e.g. for the sick or dying

19. Swinburne’s response
A miracle is ‘a non-repeatable counter-instance to a law of nature.’ He avoids the term violation as it is too close an analogy between the laws of nature and civil or moral laws

20. Swinburne’s three observations that ‘a non-repeatable counter-instance to a law of nature’ would have to fulfil
If we have good reason to believe an event E occurred contrary to prediction L (what we assume to be the law of nature) and we think that the event will not be repeated – it is a reasonable to see L as a law of nature.
If we modified the law to attempt to predict event E then this modified law would have to give false predictions in all other circumstance
If we leave the law of nature as it is we have to have good reason to believe it will give correct predictions in all other circumstances.
Swinburne then attempts to address the issue of how we know that at event E is non-repeatable.
Swinburne believes we historical and scientific evidence can give only limited support – we also have to look at the character, mind and competence of the original witnesses and any physical changes .
He concludes ‘the wise man in these circumstances will surely say that he has good reason to believe that E occurred, but also that L is a true law of nature and so that E was violation of it’.
Swinburne also believes for E to be classed as a miracle it needs to have been performed by God

21. Hume
Swinburne
Laws of nature
Laws of nature can be broken
Witnesses lack education
Testimony
Communities ignorant and barbarous
Arrogant
Witnesses sympathetic
Some might be
Others are honest
Conflicting claims
Miracles are not about doctrine and so are not in conflict
Only teach about God’s power etc.

22. AO1 and AO2 Reasons to believe in miracles
Several reasons are put forward by philosophers and theologians as to why miracles should be accepted as evidence of the existence of God. These include:
The theologian, Charles H. Dodd, considers ‘A miracle is not so much a breach of the laws of nature, but rather a remarkable or exceptional occurrence which brought an undeniable sense of the presence and power of God.’
A miracle may be seen as an event that is caused by an everlasting or timeless God; this is either in accordance with natural laws or brought about by another person.
A miracle is evidence of an ‘ultimate agent’ at work in the world.
Miracles still continue in the world today. Within Christianity, and especially Catholicism, there are still events that appear to go against the laws of nature. Examples on the next slide - Lourdes

23. Starter Hume’s challenges
Write a summary of each challenge.
1.Draw a symbol to represent each of Hume’s challenges Or
2. Create a mnemonic to remember his five main challenges
Natural laws
People and communities
Beliefs
Conflicting claims
3. Can you think of any other challenges to belief in miracles?
Create a list of reasons why some scholars might reject the idea that miracles occur.

24. Miracles against the Cosmological and Teleological arguments for God
Miracles are pointless
The placebo effect
Other challenges to belief in miracles
Wiles – use your knowledge to explain why he rejected miracles
Nelson Pike – find the information in booklet 1

25. Arguments against violations of natural law and exceptions from science – natural explanations and God of the gaps – use Jordan
Challenge
Explanation
Definitions of natural laws – Hick ‘generalisations formulated retrospectively to cover whatever has in fact happened‘
 We can declare ‘a priori’ there are no miracles because unusual events should make us widen our knowledge and understanding of natural laws to take into consideration the new event. Widen laws not say they have been broken
Science – placebo effect
 Power of the human mind
God of the gaps
 Religion is the explanation for things not understood by science.
Eventually
Quantum Mechanics
 At the level of subatomic particles there is an element of unpredictability which might, in the future, help to explain what we call miracles today.

26. Religious responses to Hume’s arguments 1
Hume only deals with reports of miracles
Nothing in his argument says that you should ignore a miracle you have experienced for yourself
If Hume himself had experienced a miracle, he probably might have believed it, even if he insisted on rejecting second-hand reports!
So perhaps we should apply Swinburne here
“The principle of…”
Activity: apply the above principles to an example of a claimed miracle

27. Problem 2… Activity - What can we apply here?
Hume talks of ‘laws of nature’ as fixed, and that they cannot be broken, that our knowledge of these laws is secure and cannot be shown to be false
However, scientific knowledge is not secure and is simply a current version of the truth
Many scientific developments in recent years have forced us to accept as possible, things that would once have been considered impossible upon the basis of past experience
Activity - What can we apply here?

28. Example given by Brian Davis- In Hume’s day the law of nature was that man did not walk on the moon
This was based on past experience
However, when this happened it obviously contradicted past experience and laws of nature!

29. Therefore scientific laws of nature are descriptive not prescriptive
They cannot dictate what must happen, they just summarise what has been found to happen in the past
You can make predictions about what will happen in similar situations in the future, however, as we have seen, there are exceptions to the rule! (man walks on moon!)

30. Problem 3…
Hume was writing at a time when the only support for miracles came from word of mouth reports
Today, claimed miracles are sometimes supported by scientific evidence
See hand-out on the attested miracles from Lourdes

31. At Lourdes there have been 68 attested claims that natural laws, as an independent team of doctors & scientists understand them, have been broken
The Church, therefore, has declared that a miracle has occurred

32. Problem 4
Modern theologians would object to Hume’s definition of miracles as it misses out the most important bit about miracles which is their revelatory nature – events of special significance, revelations from God

33. Problem 5
Swinburne argues against the idea that natural laws always outweigh evidence in favour of miracles.
He claims there are three types of historical event that could support miracles
Our apparent memories
The testimony of others
The physical traces left by the event in question.
In anticipation of Hume’s challenge that scientific laws are more objective Swinburne emphasises that our knowledge of scientific laws is based on these types of evidence

34. 5 continued
In anticipation of Hume’s challenge that scientific laws are more objective Swinburne emphasises that our knowledge of scientific laws is based on these types of evidence

35. Arguments in defence of the miraculous
Read pages 62 and 63 On the back page of your booklet complete a spider diagram of the main arguments E.g. Hume’s challenges are not longer valid – scientific support for miracles Ockham’s razor Biblical basis – tells us something about God Miracles have a point/religious significance The laws of nature can be broken – man in space God can act in time as well as being timeless - Aquinas

36. Plenary Can we accept Hume’s criticisms?
Which is the strongest counter argument