Philosophical Questions mmiweb哲学问题 mmiweb.uk.pptVIP

Miracles V Miracles as interpretations A boy is in his toy car, the car gets caught on the train track, the train is approaching. The mother can see both her son and the approaching train. The train starts to slow even though the driver could not have seen the boy. The train stops a few metres from the boy. The mother sees this as a miracle, even when she was told later about the driver’s heart attack which caused the automatic break to come on. Roy Holland presents this as a “miracle of interpretation” an event that has taken place within natural law but than can be taken as a religious sign, he calls this a “contingency miracle” Holland seems to argue for the concept of “divine providence” Some call this an “anti-realist” approach - a miraculous event is an event that is a disclosure, it is not a supernatural event but a supernatural interpretation of a natural event Strauss and Bultmann used this approach to the gospel miracles - the mythological world-views as portrayed by the gospels was unacceptable and needed to be reinterpreted and the spiritual truths made clear. Miracles VI Is it reasonable to believe in miracles? This depends on the definition of miracles - if we accept Holland’s interpretation then miracles occur whenever someone interprets an event as a miracle. Most debate centres on the more traditional understanding of miracle. Hume: As an empiricist he believed that all questions of truth should be based on experience - which involves an enquiry into evidence. It will always be more reasonable to assume that the laws of nature have not been broken - especially as there were no modern day equivalents of biblical miracles Hume argued that no miraculous event could be proved to be true because: No miracle has a sufficient number of witnesses: A quantity of educated trustworthy witnesses who would have much to lose if found to be lying People are prone to look for marvels and wonders: We all like stories and are prone to repeat them even when we do not