Miracles, Wonders, Signs: God's Interactions with the World

 "And from the great and well-known miracles a man comes to admit to hidden miracles which are the foundation of the whole Torah. A person has no portion in the Torah of Moses unless he believes that all our matters and circumstances are miracles and they do not follow nature or the general custom of the world …rather,Guest Posting if one does mitzvoth he will succeed due to the reward he merits …" (Nachmanides, or Ramba"n on Exodus 13:16)

“This Universe remains perpetually with the same properties with which the Creator has endowed it… none of these will ever be changed except by way of miracle in some individual instances….” (Maimonides, Ramba"m, Guide for the Perplexed, 2:29).

"(N)othing then, comes to pass in nature in contravention to her universal laws, nay, nothing does not agree with them and follow from them, for . . . she keeps a fixed and immutable order... (A) miracle, whether in contravention to, or beyond, nature, is a mere absurdity ...  We may, then, be absolutely certain that every event which is truly described in Scripture necessarily happened, like everything else, according to natural laws." (Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologica-Politicus)

"Those whose judgment in these matters is so inclined that they suppose themselves to be helpless without miracles, believe that they soften the blow which reason suffers from them by holding that they happen but seldom ... How seldom? Once in a hundred years? . . . Here we can determine nothing on the basis of knowledge of the object . . . but only on the basis of the maxims which are necessary to the use of our reason. Thus, miracles must be admitted as (occurring) daily (though indeed hidden under the guise of natural events) or else never . . . Since the former alternative is not at all compatible with reason, nothing remains but to adopt the later maxim - for this principle remains ever a mere maxim for making judgments, not a theoretical assertion ... (For example: the) admirable conservation of the species in the plant and animal kingdoms, . . . no one, indeed, can claim to comprehend whether or not the direct influence of the Creator is required on each occasion ...  (T)hey are for us, . . . nothing but natural effects and ought never to be adjudged otherwise . . . To venture beyond these limits is rashness and immodesty . . . In the affairs of life, therefore, it is impossible for us to count on miracles or to take them into consideration at all in our use of reason." (Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone)

Can God suspend the Laws of Nature, or even change or "cancel" them?

I. Historical Overview

God has allegedly created the Universe, or, at least, as Aristotle postulated, he acted as the "Unmoved Mover". But Creation was a one-time interaction. Did God, like certain software developers, embed in the world some "backdoors" or "Easter eggs" that allow Him to intervene in exceptional circumstances and change the preordained and predestined course of events? If he did, out go the concepts of determinism and predestination, thus undermining (and upsetting) quite a few religious denominations and schools of philosophy.

The Stoics were pantheists. They (and Spinoza, much later) described God (not merely the emanation of the Holy Ghost, but the genuine article Himself) as all-pervasive, His unavoidable ubiquity akin to the all-penetrating presence of the soul in a corporeal body. If God is Nature, then surely He can do as He wishes with the Laws of Nature?

Not so. Philo from Alexandria convincingly demonstrated that a perfect being can hardly be expected to remain in direct touch with imperfection. Lacking Check This Out  , wanting nothing, and not in need of thought, God, suggested Philo, uses an emanation he called "Logos" (later identified by the Apologists with Christ) as an intermediary between Himself and His Creation.

The Neoplatonist Plotinus concurred: Nature may need God, but it was a pretty one-sided relationship. God used emanations to act upon the World's stage: these were beings coming from Him, but not of Him. The Council of Nicea (325 AD) dispensed of this multiplication: the Father, the Son (Logos), and the Holy Ghost were all of the same substance, they were all God Himself. In modern times, Cartesian dualism neglected to explain by what transmission mechanisms God can and allegedly does affect the material cosmos.

Finally, as most monotheistic religions maintain, miracles are effected by God directly or via his envoys and messengers (angels, prophets, etc.) Acts that transgress against the laws of nature but are committed by other "invisible agents" are not miracles, but magick (in which we can include spiritualism, the occult, and "paranormal" phenomena).

II. Miracles and Natural Laws

Can we even contemplate a breach of the natural order? Isn't this very juxtaposition meaningless, even nonsensical? Can Nature lapse? And how can we prove divine involvement in the un-natural when we are at a loss to conclusively demonstrate His contribution to the natural? As David Hume observed, it is not enough for a miracle to run contra to immutable precedent; it must also evidently serve as an expression of divine "volition and interposition". Indeed, as R.F. Holland correctly noted, even perfectly natural events, whose coincidence yields religious (i.e. divine) significance, amount to miracles. Thus, some miracles are actually signs from Heaven even where Nature is not violated.

Moreover, if God, or some other supernatural agency stand outside Nature, then when they effect miracles, they are not violating the Laws of Nature to which they are not subjected.

Hume is a skeptic: the evidence in favor of natural laws is so overwhelming that it is bound to outweigh any evidence (any number of testimonies included) produced in support of miracles. Yet, being the finite creatures that we are, can we ever get acquainted with all the evidence in favor of any given natural law? Our experience is never perfectly exhaustive, merely asymptotically so (Rousseau). Does this leave room for exceptions, as Richard Purtill suggested in "Thinking about Religion" (1978)? Hume emphatically denies this possibility. He gives this irrefutable examples: all of us must die, we cannot suspend lead in mid-air, wood is consumed by fire which is extinguished by water ("Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding"). No exceptions here, not now, not ever.

In "Hume's Abject Failure" (2000), John Earman argues for the probability of miracles founded on multiple testimonies by independent and reliable observers. Yet, both Earman and Hume confine themselves to human witnesses. What if we were to obtain multiple readings from machines and testing equipment that imply the occurrence of a miracle? The occasional dysfunction aside, machines are not gullible, less fallible, disinterested, and, therefore, more reliable than humans.

But machines operate in accordance with and are subject to the laws of nature. Can they record an event that is outside of Nature? Do miracles occur within Nature or outside it? If miracles transpire within Nature, shouldn't they be deemed ipso facto "natural" (though ill-understood)? If miracles emerge without Nature, how can anything and anyone within Nature's remit and ambit witness them?