Step 2 of 9 · Philosophy
Are miracles possible?
In brief
If God exists, miracles are possible: nothing in science shows that the Creator cannot act within what he made. Whether any particular miracle happened is a separate, historical question, and most extraordinary claims deserve caution.
The 2-minute version
A miracle is best understood as an unusual act of God within creation, not a thing breaking a rule. So the first question depends on the last step: if nature is all there is, miracles cannot happen; if God exists, they can. Saying “miracles are impossible” therefore assumes the answer. The harder challenge is David Hume's. Our experience that the dead stay dead is vast, so testimony to a resurrection is always more likely to be mistaken. Christians should agree with much of that caution; Scripture itself tells believers to test signs. But whether testimony can ever establish an unusual event depends on how likely the event is given everything else we know, and on the quality of the evidence, not on a rule that settles every case in advance. Rival miracle claims have to be examined one at a time. The resurrection is the test case the rest of this path examines.
The strongest objection
Our uniform experience that nature follows regular laws is the strongest evidence we have. Testimony to a miracle is always more likely to be mistaken, exaggerated or deceptive than a law of nature is to have been broken, and the miracle claims of rival religions cancel each other out.
“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”
A response
Hume is right that ordinary claims of the extraordinary usually fail, and Christianity has no interest in defending gullibility.
But the argument either assumes that miracles cannot happen, which is the question at issue, or it becomes a matter of weighing probabilities: how likely an event is given the context, and how strong the particular evidence is. That weighing cannot be done in advance for every case. Competing miracle claims are not a reason to reject all of them, but to examine each on its evidence.
The evidence
From Scripture
- Deuteronomy 13:1–3 — Signs are to be tested, not simply believed.
- 1 John 4:1 — Test the spirits.
- 1 Corinthians 15:14–17 — The faith stakes itself on a public event that could be false.
- John 20:30–31 — Signs recorded “that you may believe”.
From philosophy and science
- The definition matters. Many theologians avoid calling a miracle a “violation”: if natural laws describe how things ordinarily behave, divine action need not be pictured as breaking them.
- Possibility depends on God. Ruling out miracles because nature is all there is assumes naturalism rather than showing it.
- Probability and testimony. Modern philosophers debate Hume in probabilistic terms: prior probability, the reliability and independence of witnesses, and what else would have to be true if the claim were false.
Primary sources
3 sources for this step
- , An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, “Of Miracles” — The classic statement of the objection (Project Gutenberg eBook #9662, crediting L. A. Selby-Bigge).
“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”
- , “Miracles”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — The definition, possibility and evidence debate after Hume.
- , “Hume on Religion”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Context for Hume's argument.
Read the full case
- Explainer deck Can Miracles Happen? Hume and His Critics