Miracles

December 1, 2005 11:16 AM

This question is for people who believe in religious miracles.

Do you believe that demanding proof of God prior to worshipping is unreasonable (or perhaps sinful)? Do you believe that faith-without-evidence is important? If so, why does God provide miracles? Do you regard the miracles as constituting a proof of God, or do you think that a significant amount of faith-without-evidence is required to classify them as miracles? Finally, can you suggest why it might be that God provides proof of His existence occasionally and rarely, as opposed to providing either no proof (and requiring faith-without-evidence), or providing clear proof to everyone?

posted by ab'd al'Hazred to religion & philosophy (38 comments total)

that's a fuckload of questions for a single thread. anyway:

re: miracles and God's presence in human affairs.
In Deuteronomy, God tells Moses, "I shall hide my face from them," and She promptly disappears (at least in the Hebrew Bible -- which, by the way, is a more neutral term than "Old Testament", for the politically correct Mefites out there), anyway, after that God shows up less -- miracles become less frequent, then cease. if you're Jewish, that's it, more or less. if you're a Christian, move on to the next paragraph.

re: faith and evidence
If you're a Christian and read John, it's all about the Signs -- semeia. but miracles themselves cannot be analyzed by the scientific tools available to the historian, and become mostly a matter of faith. that opens another can of worms -- if God intervenes in human history, this makes Her immutability a trickier concept than it was already
posted by matteo at 11:49 AM on December 1, 2005

oh, and as for myself, yes, I believe in miracles if you demythologize the term -- for Christians, for example, the Resurrection of the Word is certainly a miracle (if you believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus instead, well, I cannot follow you there). John P. Meier has written a great book on miracles, by the way.

other miracles, here. a good suggestion is to assume that "here on earth, God's work must truly be our own"
posted by matteo at 11:55 AM on December 1, 2005

I'm not among those to whom this question is directed (I should probably stop there...); but I have a follow up question:

If you do need proof; what proof would satisfy you? A personal meeting? And in that case, how would H/he or S/she prove themselves to you?

A possibly unrelated note: I've heard that Steve Martin does not usually sign autographs for fans; instead he hands out business cards that read: "This certifies that you have head a personal encounter with me and that you found me warm, polite, intelligent and funny. Steve Martin." I wonder if a deity would do that instead of performing miracles.
posted by weirdoactor at 11:58 AM on December 1, 2005

Define "miracle." I'd call the existence of a stable universe with planets that revolve around stars without crashing into them at just the right distance to support life, and life-forms that evolve from one state to another through a subtle, almost imperceptible process of mutation and natural selection, to be miracles in their own rights, and good circumstantial evidence of the existence of a creative force. Sadly, the most vocal American Christians don't seem to agree with me.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:59 AM on December 1, 2005

I think this is a question that AskMeFi is probably not well suited for-- maybe someone here does believe in literal miracles and will prove me wrong.

Have you tried posing this question to a religious discussion forum? Although as presently worded, it might be interpreted as a troll.
posted by justkevin at 12:05 PM on December 1, 2005

Faint of Butt, scientists who consider the possibility of parallel worlds would regard that scenario as inevitable rather than miraculous. I speak of more direct evidence of God.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 12:06 PM on December 1, 2005

In the Bible, miracles were generally used not to prove God himself, but to confirm the messenger. They generally showed that the person doing the miracle was working with God (and as a result, God would give them a little bit of his power). Some miracles were not done through a specific person but were rather God's answer to someone's prayer.

Christian faith is, to use a Biblical definition, "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1). The Bible never promises that God will prove himself or his existence to us. Instead, we're asked to make the leap. But it does promise that "he is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27), making such a leap possible.

So to answer your first question, if someone is waiting for clear and decisive proof that God exists before worshiping, they may be waiting for a long time.
posted by wallaby at 12:09 PM on December 1, 2005

wallaby, am I wrong in thinking that many of those miracles would prove God at the same time as proving the messenger?
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 12:12 PM on December 1, 2005

ab'd al'Hazred- yeah, technically they would, but Biblical miracles were generally performed by someone (or through someone) who would later have something important (i.e. a message from God) to say. Also, they were usually done for the benefit of people who already believed in God so they weren't really about proving God's existence. In the exceptions I can think of, it was more about proving God's supremacy than his actual existence.
posted by wallaby at 12:24 PM on December 1, 2005

I think the "punchline" at the end of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus states pretty well a theme that Jesus and Paul made througout the New Testament : that people will still doubt even in the presence of miracles.

The NT view, at least from a reformed perspective, is that salvation/a meaningful belief in God comes from faith, not mere observation. Miracles may/may not happen, but they're incidental to true belief.

Here's John Calvin, speaking on that same passage:

But if God were pleased to comply with all their foolish wishes, it would be of no advantage to them; for God has included in his word all that is necessary to be known, and the authority of this word has been attested and proved by authentic seals. Besides, faith does not depend on miracles, or any extraordinary sign, but is the peculiar gift of the Spirit, and is produced by means of the word.

(And, of course, there are lots and lots of different strains of Christianity/theism in general that would disagree with Calvin, no doubt. Wesley, for instance, takes a different perspective on that passage, though the theme is similar in that witnessing miracles does not bring about true faith/true belief.)
posted by mragreeable at 12:26 PM on December 1, 2005

Hebrew Bible -- which, by the way, is a more neutral term than "Old Testament"

Not if you aren't a fundamentalist Christian or a Jew it isn't.

In the Bible, miracles were generally used not to prove God himself, but to confirm the messenger.

I think ab'd al'Hazred is referring to the burning bush or Jesus on a tortilla type miracles rather than the staff into a snake/Daniel in the lion's den/walls of Jericho type. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Those types do exist in the Old Testament (as above in the burning bush reference) just not as often.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:26 PM on December 1, 2005

no, my point is valid. if you use "Old Testament" it means that the "New" one has some validity. plus, "Old" sounds like "outdated". and Jews don't say "Old Testament", "Old Testament" is a Christian definition of Tanakh (plus, possibly, the -- frankly, minor -- deuterocanonical works)
posted by matteo at 12:43 PM on December 1, 2005

Miracles aren't 'supposed' to be proof of God's existence, et cetera. To say that would assume that we know God's mind. The holy books of most of the religions I know make it clear that 'God' is just a word for a force beyond our understanding, and that pretending to comprehend his intentions is somewhat inadvisable.

Some people believe that the world is perfectly and wholly rational, and that it can be comprehended by the human mind. 'Miracles'-- instances which defy our logic and show that there is something which we don't understand-- are only affirmed by those of us who think that the world is more difficult to comprehend than that. In fact, the bare possibility that miracles might occur, even the possibility that there is a possibility, is a significant problem for rationalists.
posted by koeselitz at 1:12 PM on December 1, 2005

When thinking about clear proof, a verse from Romans comes to mind, Romans 1:20. To me, this means that there's enough innate evidence that I don't need to demand "proof."
posted by Mike C. at 1:12 PM on December 1, 2005

I'm answering because I meet your criteria of belief, but I do think others are correct in saying that AskMe is probably not the best forum for your question.

St Augustine said: "Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." (as commonly paraphrased; much, much more on Augustine and the nature of faith here). I think that answers your first question for me - the demand to see something implies a certain lack of faith, and yet a gift of having faith may lead you to see things you wouldn't see otherwise.

I don't think I'll attempt to answer the rest of your questions, because they're part of the unanswerable, mysterious nature of God and would merely be the weakest conjecture on my part.

Finally, I want to tell Faint of Butt that I love his definition of miraculous, and I'm at least somewhat vocal about my Catholic-flavored American Christianity.
posted by donnagirl at 1:16 PM on December 1, 2005

See also this post from today at the Volokh Conspiracy, which is very similar in content to this question.
posted by evinrude at 1:18 PM on December 1, 2005

(I wish I had linked to this instead: the same post, only on its own page, with folks' answers included)
posted by evinrude at 1:20 PM on December 1, 2005

People have died over less, matteo, the "apocrypha" is not a minor point. For most of the 2 billion Christians on earth (not to mention the 1 billion Muslims), "Hebrew Bible" and "Old Testament" are not synonymous.

Jews of course don't use the term "Old Testament" because they don't believe that Jesus provided a new one, but that doesn't mean we can just throw out a large section of 2 and a half billion people's holy book in order to find a convenient neutral term for political correctness's sake!
posted by Pollomacho at 1:21 PM on December 1, 2005

As I was thinking about the miracles in the Qur'an, all of those that come to mind were given to people who already had a strong faith in God, either prophets or their followers, or just normal people who already had strong faith and were being oppressed for it. In fact, it would be foolish to trust "miracles" as proof of divine intervention for many reasons, including that:
1.) Many things that once seemed miraculous are now easily explained by people with even an elementary understanding of modern science, indicating that some things that may now seem miraculous could be easily explained in the future.
2.) The shayateen (demons) can cause things to happen that seem miraculous, but would actually be explainable if we had all the relevant information.
3.) The masih ad dajjal (antichrist) is going to perform miracles, but to put it mildly, it would not be wise to follow him.
As for proof of God's existence, really, just look at a tree and consider that it came from a seed you could hold on one finger; nothing was added but dirt, sun, and water, and look what it became. Or consider the way a baby develops. Consider, in particular, the way the dividing cells, which originally are identical, suddenly begin to differentiate, until the various organs and tissues of the incredibly complex baby are assembled. And that this organic material, made of many individual cells, takes on a new, individual identity, apart from the parents, and apart from the individual cells. Just look at anything in the natural world, and the ordering of the universe, all of it. Even look at the big bang and consider where that bang came from. Is some flashy "miracle" of a face appearing in toast or a dead person coming back to life really more significant than any of that?
posted by leapingsheep at 2:11 PM on December 1, 2005

There are really two questions here: the first about proof, the second about miracles. As regards the first: most Christian philosophers now reject the idea that religious belief has to be 'proved' before it can be accepted. I'm not going to discuss this now, because it would take us some way away from the question of miracles; but if you want to pursue it any further, I suggest you read some of the writings of Alvin Plantinga and his numerous exegetes.

The question of miracles is more complex than perhaps you realise. It would be very naive to claim that miracles provide a knock-down proof of God's existence; and I don't think you will find many Christian philosophers or theologians prepared to make that claim. Nor does belief in God necessarily commit one to a belief in miracles. Rather, there are a range of different attitudes to miracles -- different ways of believing in miracles, you might say -- none of which constitutes 'proof' in the formal sense.

The most intellectually defensible of these, to my mind, is the one advanced by Calvin under the heading of 'general providence' (though I believe it actually goes back to Aquinas, or even further). According to this view, God is performing a continuous miracle simply by holding the world in being and preventing it from collapsing into entropy. Plantinga has a similar argument: God might have averted some massive catastrophe -- a giant asteroid crashing into the earth, or whatever -- that we know nothing about.

Another argument was put forward by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers trying to explain why miracles no longer seemed to happen very often, or at all. (Locke, for example, writes of the 'withdrawal of miracles'.) According to this view, God had caused miracles to happen in the time of Jesus and the apostles, in order to kick-start the Christian church; but there was no longer any need for miracles now that Christianity was widely established and accepted. This no longer seems a particularly persuasive argument (because it rests on a view of 'providential history' that few people would now agree with), but it does illustrate the point I made above, that belief in God does not necessariy require you to believe in miracles happening all around you.

Yet there are, of course, many Christians who do believe that there are miracles happening all around them on a daily basis -- that Doris's recovery from cancer, or Fred escaping injury in a car-crash, can be attributed to the direct intervention of God (what Calvin would call God's special providence, as distinct from his general providence). There is, of course, no way of disproving this -- though it does pose a problem for the believer: why does God intervene to protect Fred and Doris, while at the same time allowing tens of thousands of people to perish in wars and natural disasters? I personally find this an insuperable problem. But it doesn't necessarily pull the rug from under the other ways of believing in miracles that I have already mentioned.
posted by verstegan at 4:37 PM on December 1, 2005

Any miracle is in the eyes of the beholder. There is no event so transcendental and unexplainable and faith-inspiring that it can not be refused, denied, mocked, or ignored.

That said, I think you can see why "miracles" "happen" to people who believe: miracles are part of their way of interpreting reality. If you are a person who does not believe in god but wishes to, you would do better to put yourself amongst those who most need or rely on the god-aspect of humanity: the poor, the suffering, the ruined. It is certainly one way of discovering that your own life itself is miraculous.

I do believe in real miracles, but I also believe that reality is flexible and part of believing in a force beyond belief is being open to the fact that the unexplainable may not manifest in ways that are to your liking. Disasters can appear in miraculous foms just as blessings can. If you wish to find god, go out and seek actively. If you hope to be the passive observer of a miracle and then spend time deciding whether it proves anything of consequence, I guarantee that the part of you that craves this world will always dominate.

I do so many things to deepen my faith that often make me feel pretty silly, and assault my intellect (which our world trains us to value over faith) but in the end it is that willingness to at least meet god halfway that has given me the privelege of experiencing things I will never be able to explain or share in a way that captures the magic of those moments.
posted by hermitosis at 5:50 PM on December 1, 2005

I think it is foolish to demand anything from God. He was not created to fulfill our desires.

He provides miracles because doing so is in accord with his nature. He has no other reason for doing anything.

Given our own epistemic limitations it is impossible for experiences (of miracles or any other things) to constitute proof of anything beyond the trivial. They are, at best, evidence that might be used in generating a proof. Though, of course, a strong skeptic would deny even that.

Attempting to understand God's motivation is one of the surest ways to experience failure.

Faith is all the proof for the existence of God that one could ever need or have; it is what allows you to accept without making demands.
posted by oddman at 7:13 PM on December 1, 2005

Can you suggest why it might be that God provides proof of His existence occasionally and rarely, as opposed to providing either no proof (and requiring faith-without-evidence), or providing clear proof to everyone?

When you can tell me what you mean by "proof", not only will I be able to answer your question, but you won't need my answer, because you will have answered it yourself.

In other words, you cannot answer the substantive question "Based on the evidence, does God exist?" until you've decided the criteria by which the "evidence" will be evaluated. And because that criteria itself must be in place before any evidence is considered, the criteria simply cannot be chosen on the basis of evidence (or else you wind up with circular reasoning). That means that the criteria cannot be chosen "rationally" - it must instead be based on "blind faith".

Even so, it is tempting to embrace the apparently minimal faith commitments of enlightenment empiricism. But that simply cannot be made to work, as W.V.O Quine and others showed (the must-read paper here is Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism). What Quine shows is that the faith commitments needed to make empiricism work are so large that they dwarf the rational content of empiricist epistemology.

So empiricism isn't empirical, rationalism isn't really rational, and pragmatism (as the old joke goes) doesn't work. If you want to avoid skepticism, you must embrace some form of what the enlightenment liberal sneeringly calls "blind faith". (The enlightenment liberal can sneer for the same reason that a fundamentalist can sneer: because he or she is either ignorant or a partisan who possesses infallible truth).

Anyway, you might find the following exhange, between Stanley Fish (Former Dean of the University of Illinois) and Father Richard John Neuhaus, helpful:

Why We All Can't Just Get Along, by Stanley Fish.

Why We Can Get Along, by Richard John Neuhaus.

A Reply to Richard John Neuhaus, by Stanley Fish.
posted by gd779 at 7:14 PM on December 1, 2005

When you can tell me what you mean by "proof", not only will I be able to answer your question, but you won't need my answer, because you will have answered it yourself.

That doesn't make any sense, but since rationalism isn't rational that's obviously a good thing.
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 7:54 PM on December 1, 2005

That doesn't make any sense, but since rationalism isn't rational that's obviously a good thing.

Though I am tempted here to start throwing koans at you, I can sense the sneer of an empiricist in your voice (having once shared that sneer, I am intimately familiar with it) and so I will make one or two more points within the framework of what most people think of as rationalism. I hope that these points will make my argument clearer to you.

First, when one controls the rules of evidence - that is, when one can determine what counts as evidence and what does not, how evidence is to be weighed, what evidence means, etc. - one can from that ability alone always create any "rational" conclusion that is desired. Within the context of religion, for example, Stanley Fish points out that:

"The idea is simple enough, and as usual it seems unexceptionable: regard those with whom you disagree not as enemies to the death but as partners in the search for truth, and hold yourself ready to change or modify your point of view if you are unable to refute a reasoned challenge to what you believe. But the imperative will begin to seem less "reasonable" and commonsensical if you ask a simple two-part question: "Where do the challenges to your belief come from, and when should you be distressed if you cannot meet them?"

If the challenges come from within the structure of your belief (since you have already acknowledged that all men are created equal, how can you support a policy of racial discrimination?), then the standard to which you are being held is one you have already acknowledged, and what is being asked of you is, simply, that you be consistent with yourself. If, however, the challenge comes in terms not recognized by the structure of your belief, why should you be the least bit concerned with it since it rests on notions of evidence and argument to which you are in no way committed? If you tell a serious Christian that no one can walk on water or rise from the dead or feed five thousand with two fishes and five loaves, he or she will tell you that the impossibility of those actions for mere men is what makes their performance so powerful a sign of divinity. For one party the reasoning is: "No man can do it and therefore Christ didn't do it." For the other the reasoning is: "Since no man could do it, he who did it is more than man." For one party, falsification follows from the absence of a plausibly empirical account of how the purported phenomena could have occurred; for the other, the absence of a plausibly empirical account is just the point, one that does not challenge the faith but confirms it.

What Gutmann and Thompsan will say is that the second party is not really reasoning. This is what they mean when they distinguish between "respectable and merely tolerable differences of opinion". A difference of opinion you respect is an opinion held by someone who argues from the same premises and with the same tools you do; an opinion you merely tolerate - although we won't imprison you for holding it, neither will we take any account of it in the process of formulating policy - is an opinion held by someone who argues from premises and with tools you and your friends find provincial at best and dangerous (because fanatical) at worst. It is at this point that you dismiss those premises (such as biblical inerrancy) as ones no rational person could subscribe to, whereas in fact what you have done is define "rational" so as to make it congruent with the ways of thinking you and those who agree with you customarily deploy. "Mutual respect" should be renamed "mutual self-congratulation" since it will not be extended beyond the circle of those who already feel comfortable with one another.

-- Stanley Fish, The Trouble with Principle

In other words, imagine that you want to evaluate the "evidence" for Proposition X. How would you do so? Rationally, you would need evidence in the form of Proposition X-1. This would justify and, if adequate, prove your belief in X. But if Proposition X-1 is to be taken on more than blind faith, it too must be proven, requiring the existence of Propoxition X-2. And so on - on and on it goes, at which point there are only three alternatives. 1) The chain is endless, it is "turtles all the way down", and there are no first premises. This is irrational. 2) The chain is circular, and the proposition to be proved is itself used as proof. This is irrational. 3) The chain ends at some "first premise" which is itself unproven (and not subject to rational scrutiny at all).

This was the attempt made, starting with Descartes, to find some foundational belief which did not require justification. The problem has been that, after hundreds of years, people are still arguing about which beliefs are properly "foundational", and no end is in sight. (Notably, the question of whether belief in God is properly foundational remains unresolved). In any event, because differing foundational beliefs by definition cannot be rationally evaluated or compared, this choice too is ultimately irrational (or, properly, arational).

And it does no good to try and make sense perception your "foundational beliefs" - that simply hides the problem rather than resolving it, as Quine showed, because there are always an infinite number of ways to interpret sense perception that are consistent with the "web of experience" (i.e., raw sense perception).

Here, then, is Hans Kung making much the same piont:

If someone demands a logical justification for everything, he must either be continually looking back and asking for the causes of the causes (in an infinite regress) or be going around in circles and assuming as justified the very principle that needs justification (in a vicious circle), or he must break off the process of justification and declare an intuition marked by evidence (in experience of one kind or another) to be the Archimedean point of knowledge; this last alternative amounts to dogmatism, a dogmatic assertion the truth of which is supposed to be certain and to have no need of justification. In a word, if anyone tries to justify everything strictly logically, if he wants (deductively, inductively or transcendentally) to provide himself with rational support, to be free of all doubt, he will land himself in the Munchhausen trilemma from which he cannot raise himself by his own bootstraps… For, since it is a question of reality as a whole -- that is, of the totality of all that exists -- outside which there is nothing but nothingness itself, all external arguments are ruled out. And any attempt at a rational demonstration… can end only in a vicious circle. The reasonableness of reason can actually be accepted only in a resolute trust [faith], to which there is always the alternative of fundamental mistrust.

Hans Kung, Does God Exist?: An Answer for Today, pg. 448-449

Thus:

Anything can, by suitably reweaving the web of belief, be fitted either into an anti-naturalistic worldview in which Divine Providence is a central element or into a naturalistic worldview in which people are on their own… "Evidence" is not a very useful notion when trying to decide what one thinks of the world as a whole.

-- Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth., Vol. 1 of Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1991).

And as the eminent German epistemology has summarized the problem:

The problem of evidence is absolutely insoluble; the question whether there is insight or not is absolutely impossible to decide… All arguments for evidence involve a vicious circle and all arguments against it are self-contradictory… If someone maintains that there is evidence and thinks he is giving reasons for this, he is himself disguising the fact that he is merely expressing his belief in the evidence…We can believe or not believe in insight, but we cannot justify this belief or unbelief unless we mean by 'justifying' producing certain motives for doing or not doing something. It is a 'prerational primordial decision' that has to be made here and in fact on every single occasion when something is supposed to become known…

-- W. Stegmuller, Metaphysik, Skepsis, Wissenschaft [Metaphysics, Skepticism, Science], 1954, rev. ed. Berlin/Heidelberg/New York, 1969, pg.168-169

Note, by the way, the nature of the sources upon which I am relying. Whether one is a Catholic theologian or an outspokenly atheist Professor, an careful epistemologist or a scientific pragmatist, a continental thinker or a philosopher in the analytic tradition, a very careful consideration of the issue inevitably leads to an unavoidable conclusion: pure reason, without faith, is completely mute. We must choose between faith in some form and skepticism, and if we do choose faith, the content of that choice will completely determine our "substantive" beliefs. In any event, until that fundamental choice has been made, the concept of "evidence" is, rationally speaking, totally useless.

Welcome to the hermeneutical circle, sometimes called the human condition.
posted by gd779 at 8:45 PM on December 1, 2005

re gd779's manifesto: I don't agree that recognizing some or another principle as self-evident is an irrational act.
posted by thirteenkiller at 9:02 PM on December 1, 2005

I'll try and digest all that tomorrow. At first glance, I will comment that your decision to apply such a massively general concept (that attempting to judge anything as true or false is a waste of time) solely to the very specific question of whether God exists or not, and not to the myriad other questions in your life (such as whether there is mayo in the fridge), indicates that your primary concern is to prevent the question of God being treated rationally, and not to prevent rationality being applied to life in general. If that were so, you would have great difficulty getting up in the morning, let alone curing polio or sending rockets to the moon.

a very careful consideration of the issue inevitably leads to an unavoidable conclusion: pure reason, without faith, is completely mute.

And what do we name the methodology behind this consideration? Rational thought, perhaps?
posted by ab'd al'Hazred at 9:03 PM on December 1, 2005

Do you believe that demanding proof of God prior to worshipping is unreasonable (or perhaps sinful)?

i think it's unrealistic ... it's more a case of learning to keep your eyes and heart open to see it than getting some kind of "proof"

Do you believe that faith-without-evidence is important?

yes ... but learning how to see the evidence is more important

If so, why does God provide miracles?

a non-existent universe didn't suit him

Do you regard the miracles as constituting a proof of God, or do you think that a significant amount of faith-without-evidence is required to classify them as miracles?

it's all in the way you choose to look at it

Finally, can you suggest why it might be that God provides proof of His existence occasionally and rarely, as opposed to providing either no proof (and requiring faith-without-evidence), or providing clear proof to everyone?

it's all around us and within us ... we only need to learn how to see it

i'm sorry if this sounds impossibly vague and mystical but there's no other way i can explain it ... i see it and feel it and i'm grateful for it

but i can't convince you or give you that experience ... you have to find it on your own
posted by pyramid termite at 9:04 PM on December 1, 2005

gd779 ... very well put
posted by pyramid termite at 9:09 PM on December 1, 2005

Not to be cheesy, but I have found that faith definitely requires a leap -- otherwise it wouldn't be faith.

This is from a Christian perspective.

By nature I'm very skeptical, want logic in everything, so faith can sometimes be tough for me. In my experience though, faith is the ticket to seeing the evidence, not the other way around. Let me explain. Before that "leap of faith" I would allow for miracles, but always assume there was a logical explanation. In contrast, once I decided to believe, I began to see the evidence for God more clearly.

Non-believers might explain my seeing evidence as wanting to justify my faith, but I see that as evidence of their wanting to justify their lack of faith. :-) I think faith puts yourself in tune with God and tends to build on itself; the more you believe, the more you know why you believe (which makes you believe more).

As my faith occasionally weakens, I can tie it directly to a drifting away on my part, not the other way around, not God moving away from me. When I commit a more attention to God, I begin to get back "in tune" and the evidence is as clear as ever.

Either way, as to your last question, miracles are incredibly wide-spread if you know where to look and are "in tune" with God's presence.
posted by mumeishi at 9:22 PM on December 1, 2005

At first glance, I will comment that your decision to apply such a massively general concept (that attempting to judge anything as true or false is a waste of time) solely to the very specific question of whether God exists or not, and not to the myriad other questions in your life (such as whether there is mayo in the fridge), indicates that your primary concern is to prevent the question of God being treated rationally, and not to prevent rationality being applied to life in general. If that were so, you would have great difficulty getting up in the morning, let alone curing polio or sending rockets to the moon.

Not at all. First, you mistake my motivation: I am not religious in the slightest.

Second, I do apply this line of reasoning to all aspects of my life. I recognize the role of faith in determining the existence of mayonaise just as I recognize its role in determining the existence of God. That doesn't mean that I can't function: skepticism would keep me from functioning, but I am not a skeptic. I have faith in certain propositions which, when applied to the world, allow me to reliably determine whether or not there is mayonaise in the refridgerator. It's just that I recognize the fundamental limits of reason in creating that certainty.

And what do we name the methodology behind this consideration? Rational thought, perhaps?

Certainly. Rationalism can and should be be rationally considered. The problem is that rationalism undermines itself, thus establishing that rationalism is incoherent. I was working within your existing belief system, and attempting to show you how you cannot believe everything that you believe without self-contradiction.

I don't agree that recognizing some or another principle as self-evident is an irrational act.

thirteenkiller: Strictly speaking, you're quite right. The recognition of a principle or belief as self-evident is properly speaking not irrational but arational; such a decision does not contradict reason, but instead is simply made on a completely different basis.
posted by gd779 at 9:29 PM on December 1, 2005

I don't believe anyone has directly attempted to answer all the questions, and while I'm no theologist, I am Christian and do believe.

Do you believe that demanding proof of God prior to worshipping is unreasonable (or perhaps sinful)?

I don't think its sinful, but its a very rational viewpoint. How can gravity exist until an apple falls? It essentially is a question of having faith, believing in something without that desired piece of cold, hard, evidence to back it up.

Do you believe that faith-without-evidence is important? If so, why does God provide miracles?

Its very important, but faith with evidence is hardly lesser. The Apostles were almost constantly having to be convinced of Jesus' divinity. I think God provides miracles because human beings are fickle, we are his creation and he knows us best. Perhaps sometimes a little nudge here or there is needed to keep us on the right path.

Do you regard the miracles as constituting a proof of God, or do you think that a significant amount of faith-without-evidence is required to classify them as miracles?

Certainly miracles constitute a proof of God, but as others have mentioned, what would you classify miraculous events without calling them miracles? A miracle without faith is an event merely awaiting scientific or rational explanation. Yet, this point of view will provoke at least a certain amount of doubt, unrest, in the mind of the possessor. No matter how rational anyone claims to be, I think their greatest fear is to something they cannot explain, categorize, or subject to the laws of science or mathematics. Faith, in a way, was and always will be the instrument to allay such fears.

Finally, can you suggest why it might be that God provides proof of His existence occasionally and rarely, as opposed to providing either no proof (and requiring faith-without-evidence), or providing clear proof to everyone?

The greatest gift that God gave to man was free will. If he gave undeniable proof to us that he existed, wouldn't this deny us the ability to disbelieve? Wouldn't absolute proof of God sway the hearts of mankind? If you woke up tomorrow and knew that God existed, that Heaven existed, that Hell existed, and for a fact, one path would take you to the former and one to the latter, would you be convinced to have faith? In more simple terms, absolute proof negates faith. God gives us faith to allow us to choose to believe or not. If God never gave us evidence of his existence, then we would have nothing to form our basis of faith around. Thus, miracles for some, total proof for none.
posted by Atreides at 10:45 PM on December 1, 2005

I think it is foolish to demand anything from God. He was not created to fulfill our desires.

God was created? by whom, by God's Daddy? and why does Scripture never mention that guy?
posted by matteo at 11:10 PM on December 1, 2005

Matteo, way to take that claim as uncharitably as possible.

God is either uncreated or self created (let's just ignore the very real possibility that they amount to pretty much the same thing). If the former, then the statement is false because the first half of the conjunction, God is created, is false. If the latter then the statement is false because the second half, God is meant to fulfill our desires, is false. God created himself to fulfill his own nature, it seems unlikely that his nature is to satisfy our desires.

But, since this topic is a complete derail (at least the long winded debate about rationalism is related to the question) feel free to send any follow-up snarks to my e-mail.

GD779, of course, skepticism is self-refuting. The question that you are asking is "what constitutes evidence" but there is another question "why do we think we need to be certain in order to have knowledge". I know that I am typing on a keyboard, if I can't be certain of the same (by some suitably strict definition of certainty), then isn't that evidence that I don't need to be certain in order to know? (Sure you could deny that I know that I'm typing on my keyboard (perhaps I fail to know because I'm not certain). But, do you have something a bit more substantive than simply denying my premiss?)

Further it seems to me that there is at least one area where a rationalist can achieve objectively foundational knowledge, mathematics. Geometry and her sisters (and their aunt logic) are not very informative about our world, granted, but still they offers some hope that a rational methodology can succeed (just because we have yet to find a foundation that everyone can agree on does not mean it doesn't exist).
posted by oddman at 9:44 AM on December 2, 2005

The question that you are asking is "what constitutes evidence" but there is another question "why do we think we need to be certain in order to have knowledge". I know that I am typing on a keyboard, if I can't be certain of the same (by some suitably strict definition of certainty), then isn't that evidence that I don't need to be certain in order to know? (Sure you could deny that I know that I'm typing on my keyboard (perhaps I fail to know because I'm not certain). But, do you have something a bit more substantive than simply denying my premiss?)

This is an interesting point. You're quite right in that, analytically, there are two ways of approaching this question. First, you can do what I did: define what it is we want when we say that we want "knowledge" (certainty that our beliefs correspond with the world as it really is) and then see if we can achieve that goal. Alternatively, you can see what it is we have (beliefs) and define "knowledge" as "whatever it is that we have when we say think we know something".

The conclusion this brings us to is that a rose, by whatever name, still smells as sweet. We do not and, short of a revelation from God or a revolution from foundationalism, we can not have "knowledge" as I use the term (certainty that our beliefs correspond with the world as it really is). But if you want to take uncertain belief and call that knowledge, that is a valid course. It doesn't change the underlying state of affairs, but perhaps that does not bother you.

As another point, its worth noting that the question of what counts as "knowledge" is another one of those questions which is endlessly debated. The only thing we know is that, since Gettier (google his name for details) the old conception of knowledge as "justified true belief" can't be made to work.

Whatever. If we don't have certainty, then we must have a measure of faith. That much, I imagine, is clear. And once you have opened the door for faith, then you must acknowledge that there is no rational way to prove my faith wrong and yours right. Even if you salvage knowledge by redefining it, that is clearly the death of rationalism.

Further it seems to me that there is at least one area where a rationalist can achieve objectively foundational knowledge, mathematics.

Heh. You might try googling Goedel's theorem. But, more to the point, what you're describing is the classic distinction (from Kant onward) between analytic judgments (truths which hold true come what may: math is the archetype) and synthetic judgments (judgements which are contingent matters of fact: beliefs like "there is a cup in this room"). But this is the very distinction that Quine et. al. demolished - it is a distinction which does not stand under scrutiny. See the Two Dogmas of Empiricism, which I linked above.

just because we have yet to find a foundation that everyone can agree on does not mean it doesn't exist.

Well, best of luck to you, then. Strictly speaking, you're quite right, and I hope you succeed. But if hundreds of years of thought from the most brilliant minds in Western history has not produced a single consensus regarding the proper foundations of knowledge, then I sort of doubt your prospects.
posted by gd779 at 12:54 PM on December 2, 2005

Yeah, did I mention I'm not a big Quine fan? No? Well I'm not. Suffice it to say that attempting an analysis of meaning is akin to attempting an objective analysis of qualia. That is, it's a project more or less doomed to failure. Any conclusions drawn from this failure are a bit hard for me to swallow. (It's too easy of a reductio.) Also, I'm not so sure that Gettier was doing anything more than pointing out that underspecified descriptions can be a vexing problem for epistemologists. Big deal.

And what does Goedel have to do with this? Just because we can't, in first order logic, provide a complete list of axioms for a given system (for most systems) how does that impugn the knowledge we have about the axioms we already know to be true of the system?

Finally, I'll assume that you date the beginning the Rationalist project with Descartes (you could go with Plato, but let's stick with convention). If this is the case then why should we be surprised that we haven't figured it out yet? I mean it took us well over 2000 years to get physics into something we think is pretty good and that project is a heck of a lot easier than providing a foundationalist counter argument to skepticism.
posted by oddman at 4:35 PM on December 2, 2005

And what does Goedel have to do with this? Just because we can't, in first order logic, provide a complete list of axioms for a given system (for most systems) how does that impugn the knowledge we have about the axioms we already know to be true of the system?

Eh, it was a throwaway comment. What Goedel's theorem shows, as you probably know, is that in certain circumstances in math, a system will contain true statements that it cannot possibly prove. That can't easily be made to fit with the rationalist's demand that all knowledge be objectively provable. In fact, as I understand it, Goedel was driven to discover the incompleteness theorem in large part as a reaction to Wittgenstein and to the Vienna Circle - Goedel wanted to affirm his Platonist/mathematical realist beliefs.

(Here, of course, my target was not realism per se, but rather logical positivism, broadly construed. At the time I made the comment, I assumed that's what you were attempting to defend).

I mean it took us well over 2000 years to get physics into something we think is pretty good and that project is a heck of a lot easier than providing a foundationalist counter argument to skepticism.

Don't you think that ought to tell us something? I mean, constructing a decent model of the underlying laws of the universe should be (one would think!) much harder than determining with certainty whether or not there is a chair in my bedroom.

But my point is this: how, exactly, do you expect to make progress? Foundations are, well, foundational - by their very nature, they are not susceptible to rational scrutiny or discussion. (If they were, they couldn't be foundational!) To borrow from Stanley Fish in his slight misreading of Locke: "Every church is orthodox to itself; to others, erroneous or heretical." Which is why the central problems of philosophy are perennial, and why philosophers inevitably divide into schools of thought: it is only within the context of a school or tradition that reason can start to perform work.

So, without reason, and assuming that you're not waiting on a revelation from God, how do you expect to make progress and settle the debate regarding the proper foundations of knowledge?
posted by gd779 at 7:07 AM on December 3, 2005

This is why philosophy is awesome so much hinges on what parts you think are the most important. (Oh, as a side note, If I ever defend positivism, please shoot me.)

gd779 writes "What Goedel's theorem shows, as you probably know, is that in certain circumstances in math, a system will contain true statements that it cannot possibly prove. That can't easily be made to fit with the rationalist's demand that all knowledge be objectively provable."
Good point, but I assume that while a Rationalist would argue that all knowledge is, in principle, deducible from first principles, I don't think they are committed to the claim that we can actually arrive at every piece of knowledge. Perhaps Goedel just stumbled upon a formally valid way to express the intuition about our limitations. Further, I assume, that Goedel doesn't have to be a problem for all conscious beings (yes I'm aware that this is a big, mostly unfounded assumption). Finally, I've generally thought that you can't apply Goedel to non-formal systems. If knowledge of the world is such a system the Rationalist project may not be doomed after all. Then again, I'm not big on the intersection of formal logic and broader philosophical spheres so I may be missing something.


gd779 writes "But my point is this: how, exactly, do you expect to make progress? Foundations are, well, foundational - by their very nature, they are not susceptible to rational scrutiny or discussion."
See, the way I see it the very fact that foundations are not susceptible to rational scrutiny is what makes knowledge of them possible. I don't see the need to prove that I'm sitting on chair. Like Moore with his hand and Descartes with this thought, I know that I'm sitting on a chair. This knowledge is unassailable, I deny that anyone can prove to me that I'm not and I find any attempts to prove that I am somewhat silly.
posted by oddman at 10:06 AM on December 4, 2005