There are some people who say that science cannot be invoked to prove a miracle because science only studies what is natural, and miracles, if they occur, are supernatural. But I dunno.
Science can be used to verify that somebody is alive. Science can also be used to verify that somebody is dead. And science can be used to verify that dead people don't rise from the dead by any known natural processes as long as they've been dead for a certain amount of time. So if science can be used to show that somebody was alive, then dead for two days, then alive again, can't we infer that a miracle happened?
Maybe you could say that the inference to miracle isn't a scientific explanation even though the inference was made on the basis of scientific premises. If all one means when they say that science can't prove a miracle is that the inference to a miracle isn't a scientific inference, then who cares? We're just quibbling now over what kind of argument we're making, not whether it's a sound argument or not. Whether it's a scientific argument or a philosophical argument, or whatever, the important thing is whether or not the argument is sound.
If you're a scientist publishing a paper for a professional journal about the strange case of some guy who was alive, then dead, then alive again, maybe you'd be forbidden by the conventions of scientific publications from saying that a miracle occurred, but it seems to me that as a rational human being, you're well within your rights in drawing the conclusion that it was a miracle. It's doesn't need to be a scientific claim in order to be a true claim.
According to Bart Ehrman, the resurrection of Jesus can't be an historical claim, either, but he seems to base this merely on the conventions of historical methods. It has nothing to do with whether or not the resurrection actually happened or whether there are good reasons to think the resurrection happened. So one could agree, merely by convention, not to call it an historical claim, and still maintain that it's true and that there are good reasons to think it's true. It doesn't matter whether the inference is labeled an historical inference or not. All that matters is whether it's a sound inference.
I'm curious what you think about something. Consider this claim: George Armstrong Custer died at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Is that a scientific claim, or is it an historical claim? Or is it both? If it's not scientific, is it any less true? Suppose a bunch of historians got together and agreed that any such claims cannot be considered historical claims since historians lack the expertise to declare biological organisms to be dead. Let's suppose this became the convention, and because of it, nobody could publish in professional historical journals that individuals died on the battle field. Would their having made this agreement change whether we had good reasons to think inviduals did die on the battle field? Surely not!
2 comments:
I don't see any clean Essentialist demarcation to be made between something called "scientific facts" and something called "historical facts", any more than with "geological facts" or "psychological facts". It's all on a continuum of various empirical efforts meant to form parsimonious models of experience. The types of evidence and degrees of certainty just come in, well, degrees.
However, there's a problem with the "unless a miracle occurs" clause that I have never once seen an apologist even recognize, much less deal with.
When you invoke the "unless a miracle occurs" clause, there is no limiting principle. It applies equally to anything and everything we think is a parsimonious description of a pattern in experience.
If you can plead it to make an unparsimonious special exception in one case, you can special plead it in any case.
Yes, you were in another city with an airtight alibi on the night of the murder, and people don't just teleport... unless a miracle occurs.
Yes, the answers you put on your test, including the essay portion, are word for word identical to the person's sitting in front of you, and you're vanishingly unlikely to get those same answers by chance... unless a miracle occurs.
Yes, people don't normally [swoon on the cross then recover/ have a detailed group hallucination with identical details/ die for a lie/ steal the body/ make claims about eyewitnesses that could have been debunked at the time]... unless a miracle occurs.
Notice that none of this has anything to do one way or another with "naturalism". It is metaphysically agnostic on that score, except granting arguendo that "miracle" can even be a coherently defined term. Nor does this point in any way depend on demarcating Science from Non-science. As a matter of naked logical possibility, sure. Fine. It's nakedly logically possible that any wildly implausible claim contrary to all experience is true "because a miracle occurred". But you don't really care to rest your beliefs on what's nakedly logically possible in your daily life, do you?
In fact, when you think about it, the entire practice of considering one thing as evidence for another thing requires expectation, and expectation requires patterns. Otherwise, how would you ever know what to expect? The opposite of non-random is random, not miraculous. But I'm afraid randomness is the most you can hope for with this style of argument -- randomness in the sense of not fitting a pattern, which is the opposite of having an explanation.
(There is a reasonable-ish reply available here along the lines of invoking what "Christian theology as a whole" says we should or shouldn't expect Yahweh to do vis-a-vis protecting his earthly messengers. But this has difficulties of its own.)
In response to the above comment:
As you clearly point out, the limiting factor is actually Occam's Razor. Only when all of the simpler explanations are impossibly improbable is one forced to reasonably accept the conclusion that a miracle occurred.
For some reason, I get the feeling that an axiom of yours is that such an event, where a simple first-century man rose from the dead by means supernatural, is simply impossible. It is only in the absence of this option that you are left with taking one of the few arguably impossible guesses at what could have happened.
Of course, you are correct in stating that there is not enough data to find the mechanism of miracles. But as Sam pointed out, that is not the only way to arrive at a conclusion.
Beyond the well-reasoned argument though... How would it change your worldview if you did believe in the resurrection? For me, it definitely comes with some challenges, like wondering why miracles aren't wrought for the many innocents that die in wars, but it also leaves me with a hope for this life. Something more than just vanishing into nonexistence when I die. A hope that I too, could perhaps share in the resurrection, not just after I die, but also right here and now with how I can be a healing force in this world. It allows me to have eternal faithfulness with my friends and family -- I can with confidence now say that everything will be alright, even in the midst of the blackness of moral and natural evils that occur. I have the strength to move forward, and help those that are grieving to move forward and help humanity.
What do you think?
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