And miracles, the typical miracles, they're called signs, wonders, and powers. Okay? Let me say this about biblical miracles. Sometimes a biblical miracle doesn't supersede the laws of nature, like the physical laws of nature, like gravity, the normal way nature works, okay? Sometimes a biblical miracle is all about timing. So Jonah disobeys God, he gets on a ship. It just so happens, when he's disobeying God, trying to go out of God's will, 2,000 miles out of God's will, he doesn't want to go to Nineveh and preach, just coincidentally a storm occurs, a horrible storm. out, or cast lots, it points out that Jonah's the guy, coincidentally. So they throw him off the boat. Coincidentally, the storm stops. He's about to drown. Coincidentally, a large fish swallows him. Three days later, he repents. I would have repented a lot quicker. Three days later, he repents. The large fish goes to the shore and vomits him on shore. None of those, the storm, the casting the lots, a storm stopping, being swallowed by a large fish and surviving for a couple days, being vomited on the shore, none of that involves a superseding of natural laws. But the timing shows that this is something, the whole event is something supernatural. So the biblical definition of a miracle It doesn't have to supersede the laws of nature, but it usually does. But the philosophical definition of a miracle, put it down as an event which supersedes the physical laws of nature. That's the philosophical definition of a miracle, and so that's what we've got to deal with here. Now we're going to look at two guys who often get confused, even, I would be surprised a couple blocks from Benedict Spinoza's argument against miracles from David Yelms, but they came from totally different perspectives. Benedict Spinoza, he was a rationalist, an ultra-rationalist, though he proved to be found for reason alone. His concept of God was a non-personal force God. Non-personal force gods don't make choices. He didn't believe in sin. He didn't believe that man was fallen. And so, in his way of thinking, the laws of nature cannot be violated. And he defined the miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. And if the laws of nature cannot be violated, and a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, miracles are impossible. Now keep in mind, as a rationalist, he's going to deal with deductive arguments, he's a rationalist, he's going to deal with deductive arguments and he's going to try to prove that things are either certain or impossible. That's the way rationalists thought. Whereas David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, okay, he's an empiricist. So he's not going to argue that miracles are impossible. He's going to argue that miracles are improbable. three different arguments that miracles are improbable. And he's going to say, wise men will only accept what is the most probable. If a guy is wise, he's not going to say, well, I believe that because it's very unlikely. No, he's going to say, I believe the most probable thing occurred. He also says that other religions, different religions, make competing miracle claims. So, you know, these guys got miracle claims and they believe Jesus is not God. These guys got miracle claims and they believe Jesus is God. And then he says, when you look at the eyewitnesses, 1st century AD, Jewish peasants, pre-scientific, not well-trained, they're fishermen. No, we're not going to go there, we're not going to accept what they say. So, let's start with Spinoza, the rationalist. By the way, let me make this statement real quick here. This guy was somewhat of a pantheist, where God is the universe, God is everything, everything emanates from God. Very unique kind, but he's somewhat like a pantheist, this concept of God. David Hume was a deist. God doesn't perform miracles. In fact, Enlightenment rationalism had argued that the laws of nature are pre-scriptive. So the laws of nature prescribe what can and cannot happen. And miracles contradict the laws of nature, so they're impossible. So David Hume, he was like lightning rationalist, always figured out that lightning and thunder is not really the gods fighting each other. So, eventually, we'll figure out a natural cause for everything. And so, belief in miracles is nothing but superstition. So, he believed in a God that doesn't perform miracles. Immanuel Kant was another guy who attacked traditional arguments for God. These are, like, three of the biggest heroes for all the atheist philosophers out there. They'll talk about, oh, Spinoza, yeah, Spinoza would lie today, me and him would be buddies, and, oh, David Hume, he's one of my guys, and Immanuel Kant, oh yeah, we're right there. None of them were atheists. Okay? If you listed the 100 greatest philosophers who ever lived, probably at least 85 to 95 was that 100? would believe in the existence of some type of God. So atheists very conveniently put in the list of atheists every non-Christian thinker they could find. No matter, it was irrelevant whether the guy believed in God or not. So whenever Benedict Spinoza, David Hume, or Immanuel Kant is enlisted on the side of atheism, remind the professor that those guys believe the existence of some type of God. Whatever the case with Benedict Spinoza, he said the laws of nature cannot be violated. A miracle by definition is a violation of the laws of nature, therefore miracles are impossible. First thing what he's doing is he's defining miracles out of existence. Benedict Spinoza's God could not If you don't like the word, I don't like the word violate, what about supersede? Who's to say that the laws of nature cannot be superseded? Benedict Spinoza's God is not a creator. He's a God that isn't it. A God that has to do what it does. But, if there's good evidence for the theistic God, a personal God, then he can. supersede the laws of nature. If there's a personal God, he's the one who set up the laws of nature. He's above the laws of nature. He can interrupt or supersede the laws of nature whenever he wants. And if he wants to get our attention, I don't know any better way of doing it than superseding the laws of nature. So, my response to him, Benedict Spinoza, would be twofold. Number one, If a theistic God, a personal God exists, by definition, He can supersede the laws of nature if He chooses to do so. Now, we spent I don't know how many hours, 12 or 13 hours so far in this course providing evidence for the theistic God. We've got some pretty good evidence for the existence of a personal God. If a theistic God exists, He's the one who put the laws of nature in motion. He's the one He's not going to have any problem superseding the laws of nature, or interrupting the laws of nature, or however you want to look at it, if he chooses to do so. So that's number one. Number two, we now, scientists now are not, we've got a little bit of humility now, we now realize the laws of nature are destructive. prescriptive. They're the opposite of moral laws. Moral laws prescribe the way things ought to be. Moral laws don't describe, you know, murder is wrong. If moral laws were descriptive, it would just be murder is. Murder happens. But because it's prescriptive, it says murder is evil. Murder is wrong. But with the laws of nature, they just describe the way things are. They don't prescribe the way things must occur. It's just humans making generalizations and saying, okay, laws of nature, this is the way we describe the general way things occur, but that doesn't mean there cannot be any exceptions. We don't have access to enough information scientifically. If a theist of God exists, he can make exceptions to the rule, okay? So that was a two-fold response to Benedict Spinoza. His God can't choose, can't make any choices. So he doesn't believe in the theistic God. So there can't be miracles. So now we come to David Hume, he's an empiricist, and he says miracles are improbable. He says the wise man only accepts what is the most probable explanation. doesn't accept the improbable. Well, see, the problem here, though, we're not asking somebody to accept every single miracle claim that has ever been made, okay? If the wise man only, if you just say, in general, the wise man will only accept what is the most Then that means you're going to throw out any unique event there is. You can even throw unique people. You're not going to believe in the existence of that Napoleon ever existed, or Alexander the Great, because they were very unique people. The things they did were not probable in the general sense of all mankind. It is highly unlikely that somebody in this room is going to go and unite all of Europe. That's very improbable. Yet, it is possible that somebody living today might unite all of Europe. A European Union, you can argue whether or not it's been united already. In the last days, the Antichrist will unite it. But basically, wise men, I would agree with them. The wise man is going to accept the most probable explanation, but not of miracles in general. but of each individual miracle claim. Okay? So, if somebody tells me that people all over the country are rising from the dead, and I say, well, how come I don't read about it? Well, because they're all trying to hide this fact. They don't want you to know it. Well, I'm a wise man. I'm going to just say, that's probably not true. Until I see some evidence, I'm not going to believe that. OK? But what would a wise man do if he saw Jesus in Nazareth dead? And then three days later, he sees that there's an empty tomb. The apostles, did they believe when they saw the empty tomb? No. Maybe only John, when he saw the grave close, said that he believed. But the rest of the apostles, the ladies told him, eyewitnesses told him, the ladies, they said, it's woman's tales, we don't believe it. Then they went and saw the tomb was empty. Most of them, maybe with the exception of John, still didn't believe. Then he appears to them in the upper room, and they believe. But Thomas wasn't there. So now the ladies are telling him, he knows the tomb's empty at this point, And now the apostles are telling him, and he still says, I won't believe unless I see him and I put my hands in his wounds. So he's basically being hyper-skeptical. But when Jesus appears to him, if he still doesn't believe, he's not a wise man, he's a fool. So in other words, a resurrection from the dead is very improbable. But, if the guy who rose from the dead appears to you, and you touch his wounds, all of a sudden the probabilities shift, and now the wise man is going to accept what is probable, and that is that Jesus rose from the dead. So, miracles in general, okay, question is, did that improbable event really occur? Well, you've got to look at that individual, the evidence for or against that individual event. When he says other religions contradict each other, okay, first of all, look at the five major religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and and Hinduism, okay? These two right off the bat. Whenever there's a power guru who's performing miracles, the Eastern religions try to teach you that the physical realm is an illusion. So how can you have an event which supersedes the physical laws of nature when your guru doesn't even believe in the physical laws of nature? So if the universe is an illusion, at best, his supposed miracle is just another illusion within a larger illusion. So miracles don't even make sense in Buddhism and Hinduism. What about the miracle claims of Judaism in the Old Testament? Well, guess what? The Christians say, we accept that. The Jews say, well, we reject the Christian miracles of the New Testament. Oh good, well then let's talk about the evidence there. And Islam accepts many of the miracles from Judaism and Christianity, and then adds a few of theirs, but we can reject them. But the key though is, what we've got to do to decide whose views are the most probable and most believable, you've got to again look at the individual miracle claims. I think that we should investigate every miracle claim with a healthy amount of skepticism at the start. But if the evidence points in the direction of a genuine miracle, then I think the wise man is going to accept the miracle. So the idea that these rule each other out, it would be like if I lose my Bible, If I come here after a break and the Bible's gone, I say, OK, who took my Bible? And you tell me it's over there behind a television set, and I look and it's not. And then you tell me, oh, it's back there behind those flowers, I look and it's not. And then you tell me it's in the other room, I look there and it's not. I don't have the right to say that six different answers to where it is. Even if I checked out and disproved five of your explanations, that doesn't automatically mean, well, I examined five, therefore the sixth one is false as well. If you owe me money and you give me a counterfeit $20 bill and I see it's counterfeit, and then you give me a counterfeit $20 bill and I see it's counterfeit, that doesn't mean that I have the right to assume that everybody in this room only has counterfeit money. So just because there's counterfeit miracles in some religions doesn't mean, and they have competing truth claims, doesn't mean we have the right to throw them all out. So there's nothing that Jung is saying which would totally rule out miracles. And then the eyewitnesses He says, look, these were uneducated men, they were fishermen, they were peasants, okay? First century AD. All the fallacies coming out of this Scottish philosopher. You got chronological snobbery. They didn't have PhD degrees. You have academic snobbery. I can't remember, I came up with a third one earlier today. They call them peasants. Oh, cultural. What kind of snog read did Paul have? What's that? What kind of snog read did Paul have? Was it really this? He was human, he was all of those ages. He probably had it. We probably We're probably all snobs to one degree or another. But he had it to where he killed. Oh, you're talking before? Yeah, before. No, there he was zealous. He was sincere. He was passionate. But his view was not true. And so he's like a Usama bin Laden. It's not snobbery. It's being passionate for what he believes is true. But if what you believe is true is actually false, then you're killing good people. And that's what Paul is doing by having Christians arrested. But here, this is just in the realm of argumentation. And he's saying, because these guys were lived 2,000 years ago, they're pre-scientific. They were idiots. And they didn't even have PhD degrees. They were fishermen. I'm telling you, I can get in as complex of a philosophical discussion with my garbage man or my mailman if they have no college training whatsoever. I might have to stop every once in a while and define the philosophical terms, but to be totally honest with you, You show me an ignoramus, you show me an idiot and he gets a PhD degree, that's an idiot with a PhD degree with an increased vocabulary. You show me a very intelligent guy without a PhD degree, he doesn't have the vocabulary and he doesn't have the education, but he's a very intelligent guy. If I explain the concepts well enough, we can have a really good discussion. But he's acting like, don't believe the apostles, because they were pre-scientific, they weren't academically trained, and plus they were just Jewish peasants anyway. And that's just prejudice, okay? Let me tell you, the apostles had nothing to gain from claiming they saw Jesus risen from the dead, they had everything to lose. Men do not die, for what they know to be a hoax. These are sincere, reliable eyewitnesses. When people take the witness stand, unless they're being called up for their expertise, like a clinical psychologist, to determine whether or not the defendant is insane, is criminally insane, with the exception of that, They can care less if you're an old guy or a young guy. And they can care less what culture you're coming from. They just want to know, are you telling the truth? OK? And we have good reasons to believe the apostles were telling the truth. So miracles in general, are they improbable? You bet. That's why they're miracles. If miracles happened all the time, we wouldn't recognize them. If dead bodies kept coming back to life, the apostles wouldn't have worshipped Jesus when He came back to life. So yeah, miracles in general are improbable, but a wise man will still believe a miracle has occurred if the evidence points to that. The fact that competing religions have competing miracle claims, that just means we've got to do our homework and investigate those miracle claims. And when it comes to the eyewitnesses, the issue is What are they claiming that they saw, and is there good evidence that they saw what they claim they saw? And so, the argument against miracles fails. If you remember nothing else, remember that the laws of nature describe the way things generally occur. They do not rule out miracles. And, if a personal God exists, Okay, so a personal God exists. We provided good evidence for that. Miracles are possible. But that doesn't tell us they occur. No, we've got to look at the pages of history. And that's what we'll start doing next Monday. We'll start looking, why should we believe the Old Testament is historically reliable? Why should we believe the New Testament is historically reliable? Why should we believe that we have the right books? in the Bible. Maybe there's some other books that should be there. Maybe some of the books that are there shouldn't be there. How do we know Jesus is God? How do we know He rose from the dead? How do we know the Bible is God's Word and without error? Okay? That's what we're going to be looking into next. That's called Evidentialism or Historical Apologetics and we'll start that next week. We've cleared the way for it though by arguing There is really strong evidence that God exists. I would say it's actually undeniable. I agree with Aquinas on that. It's actually undeniable that the theistic God exists. And the problem of evil does not rule out God's existence. see if God did miraculously intervene to reveal himself in human history and that's what we'll start next week. So God bless you everybody.