Miracles and Conceptual Systems

When trying to prove the existence of miracles, one must first determine the worldview of your philosophical opponent. By determining one's opponent's worldview, the fundamental structure of beliefs of a person, one is then able to produce a viable plan of attack against one's opponent.

In the matter of miracles, most worldviews agree that miracles do indeed exist, thus do not need convincing on this matter. However, there are those who oppose their existence. The most outspoken worldview with an opposition to miracles is that of the metaphysical naturalist. Naturalism is built upon five basic tenets:

1. Only nature exists, that is to say nothing outside of the universe exists; this is it.
2. Everything is made of some material or can be explained in terms of some material.
3. Nature is uniform and regular (thus, miracles are in conflict with this and cannot exist because they are irregular and not uniform to the laws of nature.)
4. Nature is self-explanatory, meaning it, in principle, can be explained in terms of its parts.
5. Everything in nature is caused by something else (i.e. cause and effect.)

Therefore, on the terms of the naturalist it is impossible to prove the existence of miracles to them, because their framework of beliefs cannot support the concept. Thus, one must attack the tenets of their worldview to reveal its inconsistencies.

One of the most prominent inconsistencies of naturalism is the belief of order produced by random chance. For instance, one is walking down the road and finds pebbles in a certain position, so that they read, "One mile to Red's Deli," one has two choices. One can believe that they were arranged by some intelligent person or they just fell in that order by random. If one believes they were arranged by someone of intelligence, then one could decide whether to trust this information or not. However, if one would believe they just happened to read, " One mile to Red's Deli," then it would be unreasonable to believe that Red's Deli was a really one mile away. This illustration holds a parallel to the contradictory thinking of the naturalist. Naturalists believe all of nature happened by random chance and furthermore believe everything that exists can be observed or explained in terms of what can be observed. Observation can only be made by the five senses. Thus, a conflict arises. If it is unreasonable to put confidence in that which is brought about by chance, how then does the naturalist put confidence in his senses if they came about purely by chance.