(under construction) Let's start with an allegory like that Dennet uses in his debate with Plantinga. What if a an expert in forensics were called upon in order to investigate the mysterious death by head injury of a victim by head injury. His goal would be to find the criminal IF there was one. But the first thing he must do is to rule out natural causes, which he can do only by taking seriously the possibility that natural causes were the source of his death. To achieve his goal, therefore, of uncovering any possible evidence of human agency being involved in the death being investigated, our forensic expert must first of all look for possible natural causes. In the example given by Dennet, the head injury and the proximity of small but heavy sphere indicate that the latter smashed the former. Instead of rushing to the conclusion that someone used this in an attack, however, the investigator notes that this sphere was very recently photographed on a bookshelf just above the victim's head and an earthquake occurred at the time that the injury occurred. This natural explanation suffices to explain what happened. A good forensic scientist also looks for evidence that someone entered and attacked the victim, but in the absence of such evidence, the natural (albeit coincidental) cause will do.
One who uses science to investigate purported miracles follows a similar path. He is interested in finding out if there is a personal cause of seemingly miraculous events. But he privileges the natural explanation even more than the crime investigator: if a plausible explanation from nature can be found then there is no reason to ponder the possibility of a miracle.
Imagine the defense's arguing on the day of the trial that the prosecutor is looking for someone to blame when natural explanations suffice. Such a defense would be quite appropriate if a plausible natural explanation were ready at hand. But if there were plenty of evidence that someone intentionally caused this death, it would be ridiculous to attribute it to natural causes. The former scenario is analogous with a naturalistic explanation of a purported miracle. But the latter is not quite like an argument for a miracle. For in the case of the crime, both the evidence that incriminates the suspect and the suspect himself can be observed at least imagined. The same cannot be said for miracles. The cause of a miracle is by definition beyond the scope of observation: there is no means used to perform a miracle, for God does it without the mediation of creatures. And God is by nature beyond our imagination as well as our intellect. This disanalogy may tempt the skeptic to deride believers in miracles by comparing the apologist to a prosecutor who wants to blame a mysterious death on an invisible spaghetti monster.
At this point, however, the natural theologian should intervene like a judge breaking up a debate between two lawyers. The question of miracles, says the natural theologian, is distinct from the question of whether God exists. For we can demonstrate that God exists even if we have no conclusive evidence of whether any miracles have occurred. And this demonstration looks nothing like the positing of an invisible spaghetti monster. In fact, our best arguments for the existence of one Supreme Being have their roots in the cogitations of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle who rejected their own culture's fanciful images of many all-too-human deities. These arguments in no way rely upon belief in revelation or miracles: nature itself provides the best argument for God's existence. So the question in play is not whether or not marvelous events are to be attributed to the confluence of chance and the laws of nature or to some non-observable, fanciful and capricious being. Rather, the question is as follows: Given that an event occurs that so defies our understanding the laws of nature that it doesn't seem even plausible that present laws can explain it AND given (for reasons already discussed in natural theology) that God exists, then are we to judge that the laws of nature must be radically different than we heretofore suppose? Or do we judge that God did it for some good reason? In either case, we are assuming that reality is rational. Of course, there is also the alternative of retreating from reason and instead return to a view of nature as governed by fanciful and capricious beings. But atheism is just as likely to lead to that third alternative than a robust monotheism buttressed by natural theology. And philosophically based theism is preferable to atheism with fanciful demi-gods, given Ockham's law.
***
Slightly new but related thought: the ID fan, when trying to argue from scientific grounds, must try to speak in a way that leaves open the question as to whether the intelligence being posited is a demi-god or the God of classical theism. And the vagueness that is concomitant with that openness might be interpreted by opponents as a breaking down of a purported wall between science and religion. But it need not be so: it may be a mere peeping through the cracks. Anyone who peeps through these cracks will be unable to tell definitively whether they are gazing upon the divine or some other form of intelligence. But they may reasonably make an act of faith that God has visited us.
Comments