Category: Miracles
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Spinoza’s Epistemic Theory of Miracles
Chapter Six of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is entitled, "Of Miracles." We do well to see what we can learn from it. Spinoza makes four main points in this chapter, but I will examine only two of them in this entry. We learned from yesterday's discussion of Augustine that there is a certain tension between the…
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Augustine and the Epistemic Theory of Miracles
In The City of God, Book XXI, Chapter 8, St. Augustine quotes Marcus Varro, Of the Race of the Roman People: There occurred a remarkable celestial portent; for Castor records that, in the brilliant star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer, there occurred so strange a prodigy, that it changed…
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Swinburne on Miracles: Quotes and Notes
Herewith, a bit of commentary on R. G. Swinburne's "Miracles" (Phil. Quart. vol. 18, no. 73, October 1968. Reprinted in Rowe and Wainwright, pp. 446-453) To be fair, I should consider what Swinburne says in his later publications on this topic; perhaps in subsequent posts. 1. What is a miracle? Swinburne writes, I understand by…
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Three Senses of ‘Law’ Distinguished
1. There is a distinction between a law of nature and a law of science. If there are laws of nature, they have nothing to do with us or our theorizing. They are 'out there in the world.' For example, if we adopt a regularity theory of laws, and I am not saying we should,…
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The Supernatural and the Miraculous
I think it is important to distinguish the supernatural from the miraculous especially inasmuch as their conflation aids and abets the 'Dawkins Gang.' (That's my mocking moniker for Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and their fellow travellers.) Let's briefly revisit Daniel Dennett's definition of religions as . . . social systems whose participants avow belief in…
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Two Aspects of Miracles
What makes a miracle a miracle? Is it the type of causation that issues in the miraculous event? Or is it the fact that the miraculous event fails to fit an expected pattern? Suppose God parts the Red Sea in the manner depicted in the movie "The Ten Commandments." Does the miraculousness of this event…
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Are Miracles Logically Possible? Part II
The problem raised in the first post in this series is whether we can make logical room for miracles, specifically, divine interventions in, or interferences with, the natural course of events. Now nature is orderly and regular: it displays local and global ('cosmic') uniformities. If that were not the case, it would not be possible…
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Are Miracles Logically Possible?
John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford 2000), p. 8: . . . if a miracle is a violation of a law of nature, then whether or not the violation is due to the intervention of the Deity, a miracle is logically impossible since, whatever else a law of nature is, it…