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A New Look at Miracles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Douglas K. Erlandson
Douglas K. Erlandson
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, The University of Nebraska
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Extract

Recently several philosophers have claimed that miracles cannot occur or that belief in them involves a misunderstanding of the scientific enterprise. In this paper I will argue that these claims, particularly the latter, are mistaken. By examining the characteristics of the believer's conception of the miraculous I will be able to show how he can meet these sceptical challenges. In particular, I will argue that the believer can hold that certain particular events are the result of intervention by divine agency and are thus not to be explained scientifically but nevertheless can grant the scientist autonomy to investigate all types of events. While I urge that belief in the miraculous does not rest on a confusion I do not argue whether or not this belief is rational or justified.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 417 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 417 note 1 McKinnon, Alastair, ‘”Miracle” and “Paradox”’, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 4 (1967), p. 309Google Scholar

page 417 note 2 A similar point is made by Diamond, Malcolm, ‘Miracles’, Religious Studies, Vol. 9 (1973), pp. 316–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 418 note 1 Nowell-Smith, Patrick, ‘Miracles – The Philosophical Approach, A Reply to Mr. Arnold Lunn’, The Hibbert Journal, Vol. 58 (1950), pp. 154–60Google Scholar, reprinted in Rowe, Wm. L. and Wainwright, Wm. J. (eds.), Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 392–400.Google Scholar

page 418 note 2 Swinburne, Richard, The Concept of Miracle (London: St Martin's Press, 1970), pp. 27–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Swinburne's argument is also contained in ‘Miracles’, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 18 (1968).Google Scholar

page 419 note 1 Boden, Margaret A., ‘Miracles and Scientific Explanation’, Ratio, Vol. xi (1969), p. 140.Google Scholar

page 419 note 2 While I direct this comment at both Swinburne and Boden, I must mention that Boden's discussion is in part redeemed by several of her subsequent comments, which indicate that she is aware of some of the possibilities that I note later in this paper.

page 419 note 3 Robinson, Guy, ‘Miracles’, Ratio, ix (1967), pp. 155–66Google Scholar; Diamond, Malcolm L., op. cit., and Diamond, Contemporary Philosophy and Religious Thought: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), ch. 4.Google Scholar

page 420 note 1 Robinson, , op. cit. p. 159.Google Scholar

page 420 note 2 Diamond, , Contemporary Philosophy and Religious Thought, p. 66, and ‘Miracles’, p. 321.Google Scholar

page 421 note 1 Robinson, , op. cit. p. 165.Google Scholar

Dietl, Paul, ‘On Miracles’, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 5 (1968), p. 132.Google Scholar

page 426 note 1 Part of the burden of Boden's article is to point out that Robinson's account suffers from this difficulty.