Does the Context of a Miracle Determine if it is really a miracle or not?
A miracle is what is not naturally possible. It is a supernatural occurrence. It is paranormal.
Religion uses miracles as evidence for the truth of its
claims.
Miracles are events that seem to be against nature or the
way natural law usually runs. In other words, they cannot be explained by
nature. Examples are the Blessed Virgin Mary appearing to children, the
unexplained cure of incurable illness, blood coming out of nowhere on Catholic
communion wafers, the sun spinning at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 and most
importantly Jesus Christ coming back to life after being dead nearly three days.
It is thought that only God can do these things.
Some say that miracles are not proofs that God exists but
merely evidences or indications. They are reputedly signs of his providential
love.
For miracles to take that role, they must be God's way of trying to teach us
something. That is where the notion that a supernatural event must have a
religious context to be counted as a miracle comes in.
The context then must be far more important than the miracle. So if it is that
important what does God need to do the miracle for?
The trouble is that you need to see the context,
God must make it clear enough, Or you need to be told the context by God.
You cannot just assume. You need a bit more than just thinking, "Maybe God
would work in this situation. He might do x or y but not z." Michael
Licona said, "The stronger the context is charged in this direction, the
stronger the evidence becomes that we have a miracle on our hands."
Believers claim that the evidence for God and his indicator of what the true
religion is comes from the factors surrounding the miracle, its context. So it
is not the miracle itself. It’s the context. So if a statue of Abraham Lincoln
starts bleeding supernaturally it is evidence for nothing. If a statue of Mary
starts bleeding supernaturally it is a miracle showing that Mary should be
honoured as the mother of God. Is this not rather arbitrary and unfair and
irrational? It is like saying that if the sun eclipses in the twentieth century
it is a sign from God and if it eclipses in the twenty-first it is not a sign
from anybody. If miracles are so useless, reporting them or teaching they have
happened is superstition not godliness. Anybody that doesn’t want to provide
justification for deceitfulness would say nothing.
William Lane Craig in The Case for Faith has the nerve to say that a miracle
must take place in a religious context to be a miracle. Otherwise if the Queen
of England died and rose again without a religious context it wouldn’t be a
miracle but just an anomaly (page 91). If this happened it would show that
violations of natural law that God had nothing to do with happen. If we can’t
trust nature then how can we trust that miracles are exceptions to natural law
for you would need a strong faith in natural law before you could come to such a
judgement or determine if a miracle has happened?
It makes no sense to say that the queen rising is not a miracle. Of course it is
– it is still a suspension or changing of natural law. Why should her rising be an
anomaly and the rising of Jesus be a miracle just because the latter took place
in a religious context? What if her rising was better attested and even more
astounding than Jesus'?
Craig would probably believe that events on a par with the queen rising do
happen. He might think of alien abductions and apparitions of monsters at Loch
Ness. Even if such events didn’t occur and he believed that, in order to believe
that miracles were signs, he would have to necessarily hold that miracle like
events outside the religious context were not miracles but strange events or
anomalies. So belief in miracles from God then requires you to have this stupid
attitude towards these strange events or anomalies should they occur. That means
that belief in miracles is itself stupid and bigoted. It is bigoted because it
is saying, “I will believe in events that seem to contravene nature that only
God or a supernatural power can do called miracles only if they happen in a
religious context, even if such events take place outside that context.” It is
also grossly dishonest. It means, “I only regard events as miracles if they suit
my prejudices”. That is the kind of people we trust if we believe in their
reports about miracles!
Do you want to believe that Jesus rose from the dead miraculously? Then have you
checked how many unnatural events like that happen? If odd events happen often
then why would you be so sure that the rising of Jesus means anything?
What if Jesus rose and it was not a miracle but an anomaly and then he set about manufacturing a context so that he was able to turn the anomaly into a fake miracle? So the supernatural being real does not mean any event is really a miracle if you use the definition of individuals like Craig.
If a miracle is a supernatural event with a religious
context then what if the event was random and happened to fit into a religious
context? What if the context was unintended? If God had to raise Jesus in a
religious context it only means that God had to do it not that God intended the
context. If wonders happen often enough many of then will slot into a religious
context just by chance. And if a power is tampering with nature randomly you
cannot trust the resurrection of Jesus for it might be that unreliable dabbler
up to its old tricks again.
And if the religious context is needed then what religious context? Catholic,
Protestant, Mormon or Islamic? The religious context doctrine really means
something like this, “I will only accept miracles as signs from God should they
fit the religious context I like. If I am a Protestant I will believe in the
miracles reported by my Church and if the Catholic Church produces miracles even
better one I am going to pay no heed to them and refuse to believe in them.”
Jesus taught his miracles were signs and disparaged everybody else's miracles as
nonsense. By introducing belief in miracles into his cult, Jesus Christ quenched
genuine charity. Charity and miracles are incompatible. If you were fair and
cared about the truth you would not be adopting only the miracles that fitted
what you wanted to believe. It is totally disrespectful towards people of other
faiths and shows what you really think of them deep down.
All miracle claims could be understood as being about indicating that there is
something paranormal there and nothing more. If miracles happen in pagan and
Christian and non-religious contexts it could be that they are a message that
these contexts do not matter and are not the point.
A miracle tale you hear from people you know though it is hearsay is not as much
hearsay as an account from two thousand years ago. The context thing is too
easily manipulated in principle and in practice. It is really a charter for
religious manipulation.
Some miracle tales do not really have that spiritual or religious of a context
and so believers have to stretch the truth and tell lies to sort that out. For
example, a sick person may pray to several saints or holy people say John Paul
II before his canonisation. The Church will say that if the person is healed
miraculously it is a sign that John Paul is in Heaven and should be proclaimed a
saint. But how could it be when the person prayed to others besides him and when
the Church teaches that if you mistake somebody for a saint and they are not and
you ask them to pray for you then Jesus will delegate the praying to a real
saint? And what if the praying the person does is not what cured him but the
prayers of others for him? A lot of lies have to be told to make it look like
the cure took place in response to a prayer to the pope.
And what about good spiritual and religious contexts in which no miracle
happens? Why are priests who are shot dead by Islamists not rising from the dead
to tell them that their religion of violence is sinful? Why not say that
Islamists who are clearly not brainwashed and who live a normal life and then
start butchering people of a different religion have been turned that way by a
miracle? Where do you draw the line?
Is it the case that a supernatural wonder without a religious context should be
believed more quickly than one with one? Yes. It makes no sense to say that a
supernatural event with a context matters more than a merely supernatural event.
It is the supernaturalism of the event that gives the context significance so
supernatural events are important in themselves.
The context theory is based on the notion that there are contexts in which we
might expect God to intervene with a miracle. But is it not cruel to take a
dying person and put them in a context where God might do something? Are you
going to haul them from their deathbed and into the chapel or to the healer? Are
you going to give them false hope by making the circumstances okay for a
possible intervention? If you wouldn't do that, that does not matter. In
principle you are still saying it could be done and that is okay.
A miracle must take place in a religious and faith context if it is to inspire
us and communicate God’s truth. But the argument presupposes you know when to
expect a miracle. A context is too easily made. What if I say, “Okay Venus,
somebody will send me flowers unexpectedly in the next seven days if you are
truly divine”? Making a context for people to get cured by God when they will
not is cruel.
The context argument leads to cherry-picking truth and to outright and cruel
lies.
If believers are happy with that state of affairs do they really care about
people? Are they about defending their religious prejudices in the name of
faith? Aren't they the ones who say that faith is not prejudices? And they
accuse atheists of being prejudiced against miracles!
Miracles and belief in them leads to the context argument so in the big picture
they are nothing to celebrate. They are not harmless.