Miracles, part 1

We may identify two senses of the word "miracle." The first simply denotes that which evokes wonder; "miracle" comes from the Latin mirari, "to wonder at, be astonished" (sharing a common etymological origin, incidentally, with the English word "smile"). The second stipulates, in the words of St. Thomas, that "those things must properly be called miraculous which are done by divine power apart from the order generally followed in things." It is miracles in this second sense that here concern me.

The difficult I have run up against while thinking about miracles is that it seems one should never believe one has occurred in any specific case (even though one certainly believes miracles to be possible).

In order to evaluate a purported miracle, we would have to examine the strength of evidence both for and against it. Since we are dealing with empirical events, we cannot speak with apodictic certainty; rather, we will be dealing with relative levels of confidence. We would begin by analyzing the evidence in favor. In this case, we may suppose ourselves to have the testimony of the person who tells the miracle story (the writer of a text, say, or a televangelist). Our confidence in this testimony might vary based on a number of factors. For example, is the testifier giving a firsthand account, or is he recounting the story from another source? Does the testimony combine a number of different witnesses? How credible is our testifier -- do we know enough to call him a person of exceptionally sound judgment and perception? Does this person have an interest in there being a miracle? Does the text (written or spoken) even intend to convey an empirical description of factual events? Many such questions would need to be raised. Furthermore, how confident are we in the purity of the transmission of his story? How error-prone has the process of copying and revision through which it comes to us been? And if we answer in a high degree of confidence in all of these respects, what is our basic level of confidence in human "eyewitness" testimonies as such? Finally, we must assess our level of confidence in our own hearing and interpretation, which also falls short of apodeixis. Through such a process, we could measure the confidence we have with respect to evidence in favor of a miracle. Next, we would have to then assess our level of confidence in the evidence against the supposed miracle. What testimony do we have against the allegation of the miraculous?

But herein lies the problem. Because a miracle runs contrary to the order of nature, the testimony against a supposed miracle consists in the entire weight of our confidence in that order. Let us suppose that we have received a written record of a man levitating: a person claimed levitation abilities, began to meditate, and soon rose unaided into the air. One of the spectators recorded the event in writing as a miracle. Either this person is incorrect, there being no levitation or levitation by some natural means, or he is correct, there being a miracle. We might have the utmost confidence in our testifier and in the transmission of his text to us; we might take him to be an incisive skeptic and thorough analyst of such situations; we might even corroborate his story with a number of other noteworthy sources. Perhaps we received an original manuscript of his account sealed with his seal, having no signs of tampering, and it may be written in such a way as to remove almost all doubt concerning proper interpretation and understanding. All told, we have a very high level of confidence in this testimony. But what is the testimony against this event? Every testament we have in favor of the operation of gravity and the other regularities of physics! What level of confidence in the testimony of a witness -- even supposing ourselves to be that witness, observing the levitation -- could possibly bring us to say, "I am more confident in your testimony and my interpretation of it than I am in gravity and all the laws of physics"?