Dr. Timothy McGrew elucidates a philosophical perspective on miracles on the CrossExamined Podcast with Dr. Frank Turek. Listen to the interview here: http://crossexamined.org/podcast/ Leave your comments below! ...
Read More[I]n general it may be affirmed, that the credulity of the ignorant operates under the control of their strongest passions and impressions, and that no class of society yield a slower assent to positions, which manifestly subvert their old modes of thinking and most settled prejudices. It is then very unphilosophical to assume this principle as an explanation of all miracles whatever.
Read MoreIn decreeing from all eternity that a dead man should remain without life, that wood should be consumed by fire, God has not deprived Himself of the power of derogating these two laws, of restoring life to a dead man, of preserving a bush in the midst of flames, when He wills thus to awaken the attention of men, to instruct them, or to convey His positive precepts.
Read More[I]t is hard to imagine Anselm convincing, say, the Norsemen with this sort of thing. As Hume has Philo say, “men ever did, and ever will, derive their religion from other sources than from this species of reasoning.” How different is the case with miracles. The most notable religious miracles have to do with seas and storms, with wine and blood and the grave, and these subjects move the heart as well as the intellect.
Read MoreThere is a wide difference betwixt establishing false miracles, by the help of a false religion, and establishing a false religion by the help of false miracles. Nothing is more easy than the former of these, or more difficult than the latter.
Read MoreYou present what you acknowledge to be spurious to discredit what is claimed to be genuine. In respect to the alleged miracles, account of which we have outside the Bible, we have no dispute. So far as any superhuman power is concerned, we both count them spurious. What you have to do is to answer the arguments presented going to show that those of the New Testament are genuine.
Read MoreIt ought … to be admitted at once by [skeptical] Natural Philosophers that the unscientific character of prayer for rain depends really not upon its conflict with any known physical law, since it need involve no greater interference with the order of nature than is implied in a request to a gardener to water the garden—it does not really depend upon the impossibility of causing rain to fall when otherwise it might not—but upon the disbelief of science in any power who can and will attend and act.
Read MoreThe improbability of the Christian Testimony being untrue is, not that of any testimony being untrue, but of such testimony being untrue, from such persons, in such circumstances; and that not in one case, but in many, men living and dying for the truth.
Read MoreThe question can never be … as to the possibility of a miraculous interference; but it always must regard the fact, and that fact must be established by testimony, and without the evidence of testimony, no person who was not present can be required to believe. There does not, and cannot exist, any individual or tribunal, with power to require or command the humblest mortal to believe without evidence.
Read More