The principle of analogy, presented above, is really just a summary of David Hume’s argument involving the likelihood of miracle stories.  Hume’s argument says that since our uniform experience does not include miracles, it’s very unlikely that miracles have occurred in the past.  This is analogous reasoning.  It’s not that miracles are impossible; it’s just that we should remain agnostic towards them since it’s far more likely that a natural explanation is a cause.  Now the principle of analogy has its shortcomings, especially when generalized to mean rare events.  What if, for example, Einstein didn’t move forward with his theory of relativity because it contradicted his present-day uniform experience?  What if we observed a nuclear explosion and explained it as a conventional explosion just because we had no experience with nuclear physics?  Moreover, there are many quantum mechanical phenomena that appear to violate the laws of Newtonian physics.  Do we also outright reject these, at the time, very rare events just because they don’t agree with our current background knowledge?

The answer to the above questions is obviously no.  If the new observation, model, or prediction pans out empirically and is corroborated by other means, then we must accept it.  So it has been argued by many philosophers that Hume’s argument is circular, that the definition of miracle need not be a violation of natural law, and that Hume, in a Bayesian sense, does not take into account all the probabilities involved, to name just a few.  So the principle of analogy, in my view, is most useful as a heuristic—a guiding principle rather than a law.  It’s there to tell us that if a claim doesn’t square away well with what we already know as plausible (things measured against our background knowledge), then it’s probably false.  A caveat is that if something conflicts with our background knowledge, but, we have a suspicion that it’s true because of good evidence, then we must test it or observe many other instances to change the state of our current background knowledge.  Since Hume primarily had miracles (violations of natural law) in mind, we will investigate miracles further.

So, more specifically, how can we adjudicate the validity of miracle claims in the Gospels?  I argue here that a historian can’t say much of anything about them.  This is not born out of prejudice from metaphysical naturalism; in other words, I’m not saying this because a worldview doesn’t permit me to do so.  A historian can’t say much about it because the way in which we understand how the world works—today, yesterday, and tomorrow – is at odds with the way in which miracles occur.  This knowledge accumulated over the centuries is known as background knowledge, which comes from our scientific testing of claims and observations.  And miracles contradict our present-day background knowledge.  We will show in the next post thru Bayesian’s theorem that if things aren’t plausible (a technical term), then, not surprisingly, the probability of them occurring is low.  And in the case of miracles, there is, in my view, an insurmountable amount of contradictory evidence, presented as background knowledge, to overcome.

Our scientific knowledge base gives us a relatively reliable way of understanding how the world works – from predicting the speed of light to understanding complex human behavior—it has a pretty good track record.  It doesn’t have all the answers—for example, why are we here or why is there something rather than nothing—but it’s the best we’ve got to work worth.  Moreover, it’s important to understand that history is not the proper purview for establishing the kind of world we live in, for that should be reserved for the scientific community.  And, as of today, there are no peer-reviewed periodicals by forensic scientists or medical professionals confirming a single miracle.  That is not to say that one can’t or hasn’t occurred, but they just haven’t been able to stand up to scientific scrutiny.  A good example, one of many, is a large study in 2006 on whether or not prayer would assist one in recovering from major cardio surgery.  It was found that prayer had no effect on the experimental group, while in some cases the control group actually fared better.  So, as to another point, miracles are within the realm of experimental science—that is, they can be tested.

Some of our background knowledge includes not only our inability to observe and reproduce miracles in the scientific community but also our understanding of how human nature functions.  For example, we know that humans as a species are fairly creative and inventive, in addition to having a deep need for meaning-making.  In fact, humans have lots of faculties that collectively make them receptive to mythology, like a strong tendency to see agency (intentionality in the inanimate), to see design and purpose in the natural world (a river’s purpose is for us to fish in), and to detect patterns out of otherwise meaningless stuff (Marian apparitions).  In other words, we have a tendency, starting at a very early age, to connect-the-dots in order to explain why things happen.  These meaningful patterns we create become our beliefs and guide us to understand reality, regardless of their accuracy.  And these explanations can give us psychological comfort as a reward.

This above is a powerful way of explaining why people believe and create mythology but falls short in explaining the genesis of the Gospels.  On the contrary, I believe the Gospel writers invented literary miracles to highlight Jesus Christ’s role as Lord and savior that primarily functions as propaganda.  Lastly, we know that there has been plenty of mythology created in the past that is not believed now, see “Why is Jesus so special?”.  So why do we dismiss other mythology but not the mythology of the Gospels?  There are various explanations to this question, but argument by analogy says that since those were creative inventions, there is a likelihood that the Gospels’ mythology is as well.  In conclusion, our background knowledge thus far tells us that miracles aren’t plausible.  However, we noted early on that things can contradict our background knowledge and nevertheless be true if good evidence exists.  In the next post, we will gain insight into this problem with the aid of probability theory.  Probability theory says that there exists two probabilities, a prior probability—chances a miracle can occur in light of what we already know—and an explanatory probability—how expected the evidence is if the miracle is true.  As a hint, the explanatory probability is a miracle’s only hope.

References

[1] Boyd, Gregory A. The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Book Group.

[2] Byas, Jared. Genesis for Normal People (Study Guide Edition): A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible. Patheos Press.

[3] Carrier, Richard. Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn’t Need a Miracle to Succeed.

[4] Carrier, Richard. On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press.

[5] Carrier, Richard. Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith. Philosophy Press.

[6] Copan, Paul. That’s Just Your Interpretation. Baker Publishing Group.

[7] Harrison, Guy. Simple Questions for Every Christian. Prometheus Books.

[8] Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism . Penguin Publishing Group.

[9] Loftus, John W.. God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions. Baker Publishing Group.

[10] Loftus, John W. The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True . Prometheus Books.