miracle (essay)

Two weeks ago, I looked up and asked for a pen. I was passed one by a friend, but the sort of friend who quickly forgot I was there and I quickly forgot to give the pen back. A day later I decided to write something on my desk, scanned it for a pen and couldn't find one. Remembering the loaned pen I headed downstairs to get it and brought it up. After half an hour writing I looked up again for a moment's reflection. Absent mindedly I put the pen down on top of my paper and pondered. Only a brief moments reflection in the autumn sun. I looked back down and another identical pen sat lying on my desk. The borrowed pen had become two. I immediately noticed it and was genuinely startled. Leaning back in my chair I picked up the twin pens and inspected them. Identical levels of ink, weighed the same in my hands, exact same brand and make, clones.

Not only was the event significant but unlike other unexpected occurrences (looking for your phone and finding it in your pocket) this time I was certain, straight away, that it was miraculous. I didn't think for a moment that the other pen might have been on my desk all along, perhaps hidden and now it had rolled in to sight, it didn't cross my mind that maybe I'd brought two pens up and forgotten about the other one, I immediately and intuitively felt I had just witnessed a miracle.

But what would that mean?

Defining the word: miracle

The root cause of many problems in life, and especially philosophy, is miscommunication. It's hard to overestimate the importance of ensuring the words you're using mean the same thing to you as they do to the person with whom you're speaking. Because of this, and the undeniable ambiguity of the word "miracle", I'd like to first discuss and decide upon an appropriate definition.

The dictionary is traditionally the authority on words, so let's look there first. Merriam-Webster gives us "an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs" and the Collins English Dictionary reads "an event that is contrary to the established laws of nature and attributed to a supernatural cause". Both these definitions reveal the paranormal connotations of the word, but do they reflect it's common usage?

I think the first definition lacks the assumed positive connotations of a miracle. If God were to strike down all of life in a fierce and mighty blow that shattered bones and boiled blood then that would undeniably be divine intervention in human affairs but I don't think that's what we usually mean by a miracle. Indeed, Christians rarely refer to the Biblical flood as a miracle, or to the Book Of Job as a tale of miracles. This is a minor point and it doesn't effect this node's goal so I'll move on. An extraordinary event is a sort of hyperbolic or metaphorical use of the word miracle but it is quite common. "I miraculously guessed the password first time!" I'll stick to the words philosophical use and as such I'll address the aspect of miracles that is the most extraordinary: the claim that they defy/break the laws of nature. From this point on I'll be using the word "miracle" to mean:

"a violation of the natural/physical laws of the universe"

Are there such things as miracles?

Of course there are such things as miracles! If there weren't, then to what would the word "miracle" be referring? Could it be referring to not a thing? That seems a little odd, and if it were true then the statement "There are no such things as miracles" is about as meaningful as saying "There are no such things as r$6hrwxlcjws". It seems to me fairly apparent that there are such things as miracles. So perhaps they're a thing that doesn't exist? To answer this will require a precise definition of "existence" and I don't want to wrestle with that in this node. I'm not sure I ever want to wrestle with that.

No, to me the more important question is "Have miracles ever happened, will they happen, or can they ever happen?" That is to say:

Can the event of a miracle take place?

I've gladly got out of the task of defining existence, but let me just reiterate my use of the world miracles. I will be using "miracle" to mean "a violation of the natural/physical laws of the universe". This implies the existence (uh oh) of such a set of laws, and this claim can only be validated with a clear definition of what the laws are, so here we go again: I'll define "physical laws" as "the set of laws or rules that govern the behaviour of all reality". I won't go in to defining "laws" or "rules" because I WOULD LIKE TO GET TO THE POINT!

Do such a set of laws exist?

If it wasn't a set of laws that made the world behave in the way it does, what could it be? What could cause nature to act in a certain way but not be described as a law? Perhaps if the universes behaviour was utterly random, if each action was causeless and caused nothing, independent and unique, then such a world could be lawless. In this random, impossible to predict world, miracles could not occur. For no matter how strange or out of place an event seemed, it would truly be no more odd or defiant than the rest of existence. You can't break any laws if there are none to break.

To prove the occurrence of a miracle, you must also prove we do not live in a lawless world.

It looks like with miracles, the rules really are made to be broken. You must prove that something has caused the ant to be small, and the same thing caused the elephant to be big. You must show that the whole world is obeying some sort of universal rules. For if each object or event was governed by its own set of separate laws then miracles too could be governed by their own laws, and thus not be miraculous at all. All events must have common laws to allow for something truly extraordinary to happen else "amazing" events are really just rare, but lawful, events or objects with their own unique, idiosyncratic set of laws.

For a miracle to exist a causation must be more than a common coincidence. A turkey is not right in assuming that after being fed everyday for two years, the week before Thanksgiving he has nothing to fear from the farmer. The life long observance of the farmer arriving before being fed is no proof that when the farmer arrives he'll feed you. In coming to this conclusion the poor turkey has confused repeated correlation for causation, and it will come as quite a shock to him when the farmer chops of his head.

Perhaps we are making the same mistake in thinking that just because every time we've observed an action we've also observed an equal and opposite reaction, there is some link between the two, and that the first caused the second. It's plausible that one day we will be like the turkey, shocked and afraid at the observance of an action without an equal and opposite.

Could such an event be labelled a miracle? I think not, it would only be amazing because we'd made a silly mistake in our world view and not because it had violated some universal law.

Let's imagine our world is obeying some universal laws.

Perhaps the physical laws don't encompass everything?

Perhaps the laws of reality are themselves just one piece of a larger system. Suppose there are other parts of this system that do not obey physical laws but instead some other set of rules as governed by some universal law that controls the whole system. Both our real world and this other world would be obeying the overarching universal law but this other world would not be obeying our natural law and we would not be obeying their strange laws. A similar example would be of two people speaking different languages. They'd both be obeying the laws of physics but then within that they'd each be obeying their own separate rules on grammar and syntax etc.

Could the events occurring on this other world be labelled miracles? They certainly fit my definition proposed earlier, as whilst they'd be conforming to their own private set of laws they'd be undoubtedly violating our own natural law. Of course, proving the existence of such miracles would be impossible, and observing them an even more absurd idea.

There is also a sense of miscommunication in saying they break laws that don't apply to them. Like saying someone was breaking the rules of football (soccer for you Americans) when they picked up the ball, even though they were playing Rugby. Can a law ever truly be broken by something it doesn't apply to? Can I claim I am breaking a rule because in some prison inmates aren't allowed on the internet? I feel this is a misunderstanding of the word "law" and so I shall refrain from allowing events on other planes of existence the name "miracles".

So?

So I have failed to provide any reason to believe in the occurrence of miracles! Hardly an impressive feat. And what of the pens? I suppose after thinking it through it's fairly clear I can't consciously believe I did witness a miracle, not seriously at least. Oh well.

At least I got a free pen.