Miracle

:For other uses, see Miracle (disambiguation).

Miracles as acts of God

Adherents of many religions assert that miracles, if established, are logical proof of the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent God. In this view, a miracle can be defined as a violation of laws of nature by a supernatural being. To wit:

Related Topics:
Logical - Omnipotent - Omniscient - Laws of nature - Supernatural

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• There are events that seem to be miracles.
• The best explanation for these events is that they were performed by a supernatural being.
• Therefore, there is probably a supernatural being (i.e., God) that performs what appear to be miracles.

A number of criticisms of this point of view exist:

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• While the existence of miracles may imply the existence of a supernatural miracle worker, that supernatural miracle worker need not be an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent God; it could be any supernatural being.
• Some argue that miracles, if established, are evidence that a perfect God does not exist, as such a being would not want to, or need to, violate its own laws of nature. Roman Catholic theologians accept this reasoning, and only conclude that the miracles are from an omnipotent God, because they believe to have previously logically proven (through concepts like the prime mover) that there must be a single omnipotent, omniscient, God.
• Laws of nature are inferred from empirical evidence. Thus if an accepted law of nature were ever violated, it could simply be that the accepted law was an erroneous inference from an insufficient set of empirical observations, rather than a supernatural disruption of the ordinary course of nature.
• All claims of miracles are premature until such time as complete knowledge of all natural laws is held by all making and examining the claim and the miracle is demonstrated to be not natural. As all claims of natural laws are falsifiable and therefore complete knowledge is impossible, it is not now nor has it been nor ever will it be time to claim that an event has broken a natural law.