Miracles reconsidered

Abstract

The broadly Humean definitions of ‘miracles’ as violations of the laws of nature, and their usefulness, are critically scrutinised in the light of various advances in the philosophy of science in recent decades. It is suggested that we may never have the absolutely true laws of nature in our possession. Moreover, confirming that the laws of nature have actually been violated would require that the exactly correct initial conditions and various auxiliary hypotheses are also known. However, all this may require an astronomical amount of extremely precise knowledge. Therefore, it may be virtually impossible to establish cogently that a particular event qualifies as a miracle in this sense. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the garden-variety examples of purported miracles tend to concern macro-level phenomena that fall largely within the domain of, for example, the biological and medical sciences. However, there are hardly any genuine laws of nature in such special sciences. Consequently, Humean definitions of ‘miracles’ do not have much applicability within their extensive domain.