It seems to me that some masters of faith decry reliance on miracles as immature and unimportant. I, in contrast, am happy to have miracles (if there actually are miracles) as evidence for the existence of God.
For many believers, belief in the existence of God is mainly built on a very vague, squishy, hard-to-grasp but strong foundation: the “perception” of God or “innate” knowledge of God. God is just “present” in the lives of those believers and that kind of “experience” is the main “evidence” they have for the existence of God.
Now, even if this kind of vague-but-strong sense of knowing there is God should be a very legitimate and also the most important ground for belief (as philosophers Plantinga, Alston, etc. argue and as I agree), it opens the door wide for skepticism. The reason is that this sense is so hard to grasp.
And that’s where miracles enter: They are something rock-solid. They are something very concrete. They are something in the physical realm – a realm we feel much more secure about in our knowledge and which is easier to grasp than the mental or even the spiritual realm.
To me, even if the best argument for the existence of God should be based on the common human “experience” of God, miracles complement this purported best argument in a very important way. They are like little “anchors” that tie that whole huge but vague sense of knowing God down to earth.
(Here’s an analogy that’s a bit weird but to the point. Assume that you have two painters who both paint abstract, modern art. You can only judge intuitively and with your aesthetic sense which of the two truly produces art and which of the two is just straining after the effect. How to distinguish which of the two really has the ability to express in extraordinary ways something deep through paintings? Of course, the important way to judge this is by your inner impression of their pictures. But then, even if that’s the important test, this test is very vague, squishy and hard to grasp. So, one might occasionally ask the two artists to do a concrete, realistic painting and that will separate the wheat from the chaff. Similarly with miracles: they’re the occasional down-to-earth thing which helps us sort out whether that impresson that there’s more to reality than the natural world, is true or not.)
The problem for me is when you take the “squishy” belief as a given, and then interpret certain events as miracles, because the belief allows the possibility of miracles. What happens when you start to question the belief? You are left with the miracles. But do you only regard them as miracles (rather than “unexplained phenomena”) because you had the belief in the first place? It’s hard to be objective about the miracles, because your perception of them is coloured by the very belief that you are seeking to use them to support.
PS – I think many, many people constantly ask the artist for just one realistic painting. But he rarely seems to work to order. More like, one of the painters occasionally leaves an unsigned work hidden where a few people will find it – but they never truly know which artist painted it!
hey big Dan
you’re great! Thanks for your very thoughtful and thought-provoking comments! I hope I a lot of people are profiting from that kind of dialogue with you.
concerning your first comment: yes, you’re so right. I think we have to judge the two issues IN CONJUNCTION. IF we start to trust that inner sense of God’s reality as reliable THEN it makes more sense to take purported miracles at face value. And IF we take purported miracles at face value, THEN it makes more sense to take that vague, intangible experience of God as reliable. AND: vice versa!
oofh, it’s all so complicated!!
I looooove the way you spun on my metaphor in the second comment!
And I think there’s a lot to be said for the point you’re making (even though I am not sure whether you would really endorse it or whether you are just exploring different thoughts). Some atheists see it just as a kind of “trick” by theists to say that God doesn’t work to order and that it’s only a few people who find his signs and even then are not certain about how to interpret it.
But then, IF God should truly exist, THEN it wouldn’t seem too surprising to me that he wouldn’t want to work to order. And it wouldn’t seem outlandish to me that he wouldn’t want to make his artwork/existence obvious in some way.
But I think, that’s something very deep that I should really pursue further. Thanks for provoking that…
“I hope I a lot of people are profiting from that kind of dialogue with you.”
Not really! I find such conversations are quite hard to have face to face, because I worry about offending people by questioning their beliefs. Or maybe deep down I’m more worried that people will find out how little I believe! Internet conversations are handy, because (a) you can conduct them whenever you have free time, and (b) because you can go away and think about something before replying.
It just happens that you are asking some very similar questions to me – and have taken the effort to set them out properly in a blog. Well done to you for that.
Re 4 – we’re getting into “what I would do if I were God” territory, which could be dismissed as pointless, but I think has at least some value. God (IHE) must make SOME kind of logical sense, even if many of his ways are mysterious. So if you were God, would you only give obscure and ambiguous signs, or would you just give a clear “hello” to anyone who asked? You could argue that the less clear answer causes the pray-er to think harder, resulting in a deeper faith. But I think the opposite is true – with some clear signs, the WHOLE WORLD would pretty quickly realise that God is real, and get into a relationship with him, and start loving each other a lot more. It seems so easy, God – why do you have to do things the hard way?
I agree very much. When I first re-entered an era of doubt I didn’t speak much about it. I kept my thoughts/doubts often to myself (even though WHEN I talked about them it felt SO good and it helped SO much). My reasons were very similar: I didn’t want to shake the faith of those who do have faith or encourage the agnosticism/atheism of those who don’t have faith. It felt to me like if I would just inform everybody of the arguments I have in my head, people would just turn into atheists upon hearing them. My own doubts seemed so convincing to me that I felt they were too dangerous to spread in the world.
Also, like you, it takes a lot of courage to admit how little one believes to those people with whom one shares in worship and prayer and whom one encourages in their faith.
Re: Does God have reason to be hidden and mysterious?
First, it is very liberating to hear from you (in contrast to what one sometimes hears from theologians and christians) that God must at least make SOME kind of logical sense. I like that.
Recently someone asked me what the minimal conditions were for my faith to continue. And I think “at least SOME kind of logical sense” could count as a MINIMAL requirement.
I wont swallow the idea of a COMPLETELY mysterious God.
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My heart goes 100% with you when you say:
But my mind tells me that God (IHE) COULD have an answer to that. It’s not OUTLANDISH to suppose that he has one (even though definitely not the initially more plausible position).