BIBLICAL MIRACLES UNDER THE TEST OF REASON

Reasonable people need sufficient objective evidence to transform the alleged negligible amount of human testimony found in the Bible into verified or corroborated eyewitness testimony when it comes to miracles. But such evidence does not exist.

David Hume argued that “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous [i.e., more improbable] than the fact which it endeavours to establish.” All claims about natural laws in the objective world require sufficient evidence appropriate to the nature of the claim. The amount and quality of the evidence required is dependent on the type of claim being made. This applies to ordinary claims, extraordinary claims, and miraculous claims.

An alleged miracle is not merely an extremely rare event within the natural world, or something that just happened “at the right time.” Otherwise, such an event does not require a God and consequently offers no reasonable proof of a God.

We know from statistics that extremely rare events take place regularly in our lives. Believers will quote their believing doctors, who say that the odds of being healed were “one in a million,” as evidence of a miraculous healing. But a one in a million healing is not equivalent to a miracle in a world of eight billion people!

Statistician David Hand convincingly shows that “extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.” He does not believe in truly supernatural miracles, though: “No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive.” We should expect extremely rare events in our lives many times over. No gods made these events happen.

A legitimate miracle claim--one that requires a God--calls for the highest level of the strongest objective evidence. The fact that a miracle requires this is not an unreasonable demand. It’s the nature of the beast, especially in the distant past from sources we cannot cross-examine or fact-check for consistency and truth.

To justifiably believe a biblical tale of a miracle requires more than mere human testimony. Just think of what it would take to believe someone who told you that he consecutively sank eighteen hole-in-ones on a golf course. It would take some strong objective evidence (in terms of quality and/or quantity) to justifiably believe him. Believing an event which is naturally impossible occurred, especially in the distant past, would be equivalent to believing a golfer who claimed that he flew in the air from tee to tee while making eighteen consecutive hole-in-ones!

When it comes to miracles a supernatural bias has a very high reasonable burden of proof to meet. By contrast, the so-called bias of science has been very well established.

If a scientist cannot establish biblical miracles using the scientific method, based on sufficient objective evidence, then faith cannot do so times a hundred thousand.

Bart Ehrman, an agnostic historian of Christianity, tells us: “From a purely historical point of view, a highly unlikely event is far more probable than a virtually impossible one like a miracle.” Why is this wrong? By what else can we judge that which did or did not take place?

James McGrath, a liberal historian of Christianity, has said: "All sorts of fairly improbable scenarios are inevitably going to be more likely than an extremely improbable one. That doesn’t necessarily mean miracles never happened then or don’t happen now—it just means that historical tools are not the way to answer that question.”

If a historian cannot establish biblical miracles using the historical method, based on sufficient objective evidence, then faith cannot do so times a hundred thousand.

So Christian theists don’t have an objective method to justify claims that biblical miracles occurred as reported in the Bible. They cannot do so by objecting to the philosophical arguments given by David Hume. They cannot do so based on the scientist’s requirement for sufficient objective evidence. Nor can they do so based on the historian’s requirement for sufficient objective evidence.

One thing is for sure: we know what does not count as extraordinary evidence of the objective kind. Second-, third-, and fourth-hand hearsay testimonial evidence doesn’t count, nor does anecdotal evidence as reported in completed documents that postdate the supposed events by about three centuries, documents that were additionally copied by scribes and theologians who had no qualms about including forgeries.

We also know that subjective feelings, experiences, or inner voices don’t count as objective evidence when it comes to biblical miracle claims, and neither does testimony from someone who tells others that his writings are divinely inspired, whether through dreams, visions, or anything else. Nor can the special-pleading appeal to psychic communication from the supposed Holy Spirit constitute such evidence, as William Lane Craig has asserted.