Most forms of arguments from miracles usually focus on contemporary examples, since those are, it seems, much easier to verify than those in the distant past. However, there are those who argue it is impossible even in principle to verify historical accounts of purported miracles. It should be worth noting, of course, that there are those who argue that it is impossible in principle to even verify contemporary reports of miracles.
David Hume famously argued that no amount evidence could ever demonstrate the truth of a miracle claim because, according to Hume, we have the evidence of the regularity of nature in opposition. Now, arguments in favour of the existence of God notwithstanding, this certainly seems like question begging. The reason for this is because the regularity of nature only precludes the possibility of miracles if you already believe miracles are by nature impossible.
It should be worth noting that the laws of physics, which govern the regularity of nature, are descriptive. They are not necessary truths like the laws of logic and mathematics. We can easily imagine other universes with differing laws of physics. As such, whilst our experience provides good evidence that the universe behaves in a regular manner, it is not evidence that miracles are impossible.
If God exists, then the reason the universe behaves the way it does is because either God is micromanaging every little detail or else wound up the universe and generally leaves it alone. Assuming a position of agnosticism, the real reason the universe behaves the way it does is simply a mystery.
Any approach that just declares something impossible without proper investigation is, quite frankly, sloppy and intellectually lazy. Carl Sagan famously stated that extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence, but this is very faulty epistemological approach because what is and what is not considered extraordinary is entirely subjective.
If you can't bring yourself to admit that miracles are at least possible, then you may need to rethink your epistemology. However, what of miracle claims in the distant past? Even if we grant that miracles are at least possible and therefore in principle verifiable or falsifiable, what of non-contemporary miracle claims?
As aforementioned, some argue that miracle claims cannot be historically verified. Bart Ehrman, for instance, offers the following two arguments. First, he says that the historian is committed to methodological naturalism and so cannot confirm if a miracle has occurred or not. Second, he says that historians are only capable of reconstructing what probably happened and miracle are defined as the least probable scenario.
Regarding the first argument, methodological naturalism is not a prerequisite of historical research. It is a staple of the majority of scientific inquiry since it is exclusively concerned with how the natural world operates. Historians have no such burden since they are investigating the past. To assume that all past events are explainable within the purview of naturalism is question begging.
The second argument, however, manages to be even worse. Because the argument commits the fallacy of equivocation and also presents a loaded definition of miracle that clearly seems to be based on question begging as well. We can grant that the historian is concerned with the most probable reconstruction of past events, but we must clearly define in what sense we mean by the term 'probable'.
Do we mean purely statistical probability or epistemic probability? The first clearly seems ill-suited to the field history, which deals with non-repeatable often one-off events. We can grant therefore that a miracle is the least probable event statistically but only a proper investigation can determine what is most probable epistemically.
However, need we even define miracle that way? There really is no widely agreed upon definition of miracle, after all. Do we simply mean supernatural events? But then what is the difference between natural and supernatural? I think we could plausibly grant that a miracle is any event that at least seemingly defies the current understanding of the laws of nature, including the laws of probability.
This seems sufficiently robust to me and does not beg the question. So, unless we are postmodernist who believes historical knowledge is impossible, vis a vis Keith Jenkins, then we can conclude that historical knowledge of miracles is at least in principle possible.
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