More Philosophical Concerns about the Resurrection

I have been thinking for a couple years about writing a book arguing that the Resurrection of Jesus actually occurred. You say there are too many books on that subject already? Including from acclaimed specialists in the New Testament like N. T. Wright? Don't worry, if I write such a book, it will break new (maybe alien) ground -- you'll understand when you see the title.

Such is the danger of anti-Christian arguments: they make me write more books. Because whenever I follow the arc of such arguments, they tend to boomerang around and hit the critics on the butt. Along their flight path, they open up new fields of evidence for the Gospel that Christians had generally overlooked.

Of course, our critics also help us weed out bad arguments for the faith -- God bless them! So many of my books begin as rebuttals of people like Richard Dawkins, John Crossan, Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier, and Reza Aslan. But following the flight of the boomerang, they ultimately wind up in distant lands -- Upper Egypt, Polynesia, 19th Century India, Narnia, exoplanets -- where they turn up new evidence for the Christian faith. That is especially true of How Jesus Passes the Outsider Test: The Inside Story, and my new book, How Jesus has Liberated Women, both of which were superficially inspired by attacks on the Gospel by John Loftus, but end up offering sweeping historical arguments for the truth and value of the Good News that, in effect, tell the story of the human race in two new ways.

Last month, I responded to arguments against the Resurrection of Christ from a young philosopher named Eric Van Evans. Yesterday morning he offered more reasons for rejecting this central Christian doctrine as an historical fact.

Again, such challenges are a chance to brainstorm, and look at life, along with life from the dead, from fresh perspectives. So let's cautiously dip our toes in, and see how the swimming might be. I'll quote Van Evans' comments, then offer ten preliminary considerations:

"The primary reason (for rejecting Christianity) is that I don’t find the resurrection particularly plausible. How could I possibly ground my entire identity in a historical claim made thousands of years ago? Does God truly expect humanity to believe that he entered history as a human being, was executed, rose bodily from the dead, ascended into heaven, and will one day return? God must understand how extraordinary, opaque, and even absurd such a claim appears to us. (1) If God exists, surely he knows how difficult this is to believe. Why doesn’t he perform a resurrection now? Maybe God should enter history, say, every 2,000 years or so to let us know that he’s here. In fact, some Christian apologists argue that God has some sort of special obligation to become incarcerate. Well, why not do it again? (2)

(1) Doesn't God see how hard ("extraordinary, opaque, absurd") it is to believe in the Resurrection? 

The problem with this objection is that billions of people HAVE believed in the Resurrection, and not found it absurd.  Evans uses the phrase "to us," as if he were speaking for people in general, or modern people in general, who find Easter ridiculous.  But he is not.  He is speaking for himself, in a peculiar way, because he grants that God exists, and that miracles may happen, yet rejects one that is particularly well-established.  (So well established, that it is marked on the calendar as a Holy Day.)  

So the answer to this argument is simple.  If billions of people have believed that God raised Jesus from the dead, and Eric says he believes in God and is open to miracles, why does he find it so hard?  If something IS done, then it must be possible to do it.  If it is done billions of times, then it can't be that hard.  But perhaps he explains his own difficulties below.    

(2) Why doesn't God do resurrections more than once, to press home his point? 

I find this objection question-begging and (to be frank) aesthetically vulgar.  

Question-begging, because there are in fact records of other people coming back from the dead -- even in the New Testament, and yes, in modern times as well.  Read Craig Keener on the latter.    

Vulgar, because as Jesus himself said, "They have Moses and the prophets.  If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, why would they listen even if someone came back from the dead?"

Now we have Jesus come back from the dead.  If some still refuse to listen, or recognize the extraordinary evidence for that event, the demand for more, yet more miracles -- greater than Easter itself -- does seem vulgar, like a child throwing his quiche on the floor and demanding scrambled eggs with ketchup instead.     

For Evans is ruining the story arc.  It is vulgar to ask for a story to simply repeat.  The universe began in a moment of Creation, a counter-entropic explosion of space itself, then participles that congealed into atoms, and into stars and planets over billions of years. The Resurrection was a similar and parallel counter-entropic event on our planet.  By it, all Nature is brought up.  It is the hinge of history, even in the crude sense that we date history around the pivot of Jesus' life.  

Others may be healed, and it seems sometimes are.  Others may even be raised again to life.  But asking for a second Resurrection is like asking the stars to be made anew.  What we have in the gospels already is vastly more than those for whom "Moses and prophets" were the sum total of the Scriptures: we can see how the Old Testament, and in How Jesus Passes the Outsider Test I argue even Chinese, Indian, Greek and Norse cultures, were fulfilled.

The Resurrection is to human history what Creation is to cosmic history.  Asking for it twice, shows poor taste.  It is like insisting that because the scene where Gollum falls into the Cracks of Doom was so cool, he crawl back up, snatch the ring again, and plunge into the magma a few times extra, as a kind of curtain call  

Eric insists:   

"If salvation, truth, or a relationship with God hinges on believing an extraordinary historical claim from 2,000 years ago, then God seems to be asking humanity to carry an unreasonable burden. One standard Christian answer is that the incarnation is a “once-for-all event,” that is, decisive, complete, and final. But that answer assumes what it’s meant to prove. It presupposes that God’s self-disclosure must take the form of a single rupture, rather than an ongoing, recurring presence. (3) From the outside, that looks totally arbitrary. (4) If God has an obligation to reveal himself, then repeating the act would seem to strengthen the case, not weaken it. (5) (3) In part such a criticism seems a false dichotomy or straw man. Christianity describes both a "once for all" event, and an "ongoing, recurrence presence." What else can one say? Read the Book of Acts, and see the "ongoing, recurring" work of God happening before your eyes. Or read a modern missionary account like Peace Child or Lords of the Earth, or my new How Jesus has Liberated Women.

Analogously, what is marriage? A one-time event? Or a recurring commitment? Yes, and yes. The romance would seep out without both: without an initial public disclosure of love, and then an ongoing working out of that love in practical, real-world, often difficult, conditions.

What Eric is really getting at here is his objection to exclusive religion. He doesn't want one religion to be wholly true, and other religions to be mere errors. I object to exclusivism too, because I think both it and Eric's own pluralism are alike unbiblical and simplistic.

The Resurrection is the fulfillment of many hints and promises throughout the Old Testament. But it is also the fulfillment of hints and promises in Chinese culture, as I show in True Son of Heaven: How Jesus Fulfills the Chinese Culture, and Nordic tradition, as I show in How Jesus Passes the Outsider Test. (C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were keenly aware of this latter.)

The Resurrection, I would further argue, is the fulfillment of Nature itself, as it manifests itself in Spring. And it points forward to some greater Spring.

That is artistic. That is a beautiful outline of history. But truth must also recognize and account for areas of darkness -- the crucifixion before Easter. To simply say all is light, is to falsify reality and again, to ruin the plot, which needs the darkness and then the dawn.

"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." So Christianity has a standard. It is well that this is so, or the gurus of the world - many of whom are the wolves and false prophets that Jesus warned against -- would break down boundaries and consume our souls.

This is, frankly, one reason I also disagree with Eric's repeated affirmations of Karl Marx and socialism. I think he was a ravenous wolf. And any model of religion that fails to take the darkness fully into account, is both inartistic, and crude. The Gulag cannot be swept under the rug: the blood of millions cries out. Neither, of course, can "Christian" sins.

(4) Again, Eric takes his opinion as objective, ignoring the fact that billions have found "Jesus is Lord" anything but arbitrary.

(5) Why should we agree with those unquoted "apologists" who say God had an "obligation" to reveal himself? The traditional Christian doctrine is that revelation is an act of Grace.

God does reveal Himself, through Christ, and through those who follow Him, explicitly or implicitly. The act is repeated in that sense. Read Lords of the Earth, for instance, and see how Stan Dale dies in a flight of arrows by a stream in New Guinea, as Jesus died on the cross. Many have followed Christ to the cross. But there is nothing irrational about setting up an ultimate standard for human life, or in seeing Jesus as its fulfillment, rather than putting every hero or saint on the same level.

The greatest saints recognize their limits. Thus Confucius, whom Mencius described as a "phoenix among chickens," the greatest of the sages, himself said he did not even hope to meet a true sage. Socrates, too, recognized that his greatest wisdom lay in his ability to admit the limits of his knowledge. This is their glory, not their weakness.

Here, my essay on the Prior Probability of the Resurrection might be helpful. I have studied world religions for decades, feel great respect for thinkers like Lao Zi and Confucius, but find no one comparable to Jesus of Nazareth. As the great Chinese man of letters Lin Yutang put it, after a lifetime of searching, and reviewing Chinese philosophy, "Blow out the candles, the sun is risen!" But in a sense Lin's metaphor is misleading, because in his eyes, the life of Jesus deepened the value and meaning of these other great sages, as he does with Isaiah and David.

This is the fundamental error of both exclusivism and pluralism: they assume that the Messianic character of Christ is a Zero-Sum Game: that Jesus being Lord, that negates the prophets and sages. No, he comes to fulfill, not abolish. (But as the Good Shepherd, he does set wolves out of the pasture.)

"Another response is that repeated incarnations would undermine faith. In other words, belief must involve risk, trust, or distance to be genuine. But this raises an uncomfortable implication for me: Does God really value epistemic insecurity? (6) Why should ambiguity be preferable to clarity? If God is perfectly loving, why design a world where salvation depends on navigating ancient testimony, translation disputes, and historical uncertainty?" (7)

(6) I don't think "epistemic insecurity" is a proper definition of "Christian faith." Tim McGrew and I defined it, rather, as something like "Holding firmly to, and acting on, what you have good reason to believe is true, in the face of difficulty."

What does God value? Certainly, if he created this world, ambiguity and uncertainty must be a useful part of life -- and any relationship. What good is your love for your wife if it is never tested? Trials not only prove, but strengthen, bonds. Trees that grow by the ocean develop tough roots, because the wind blows stiffly on their boughs.

So yes, if Christianity is true, faith must be tested. But that fits with everything else we know about the world. And it is consistent with the view that our object of faith is objectively reasonable. One marries hopefully in part because one has found a partner worthy of one's trust. Faith means trusting a worthy partner even when under stress, not marrying a fool or a cheat.

(7) What salvation depends on is a separate question. I do not claim to see into the afterlife. Nor am I the judge of souls.

Translation disputes need not concern us. I read the New Testament in Greek, and have read it in Chinese, English, and some in Japanese, and a few verses in Russian and French. The translators of the main English versions of the NT seem quite competent. The main sense of the NT is not confused by translation, IMO.

You may believe the testimony of the apostles or deny it. I have argued, in several books, that you should believe it, because it is strongly evidenced on dozens of levels.

"Now, even if I did find the resurrection plausible, I still don’t think I would be a 'Christian' in the conventional sense. (8) Why does one have to *be* anything at all? Belief in God does not require allegiance to a particular religious identity, nor does it require anchoring one’s moral and spiritual life to a single tradition. (9) What ultimately matters is how you live. Strive for virtue. Pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful. In my view, you move infinitely closer to God through such pursuits than through merely affirming the correct doctrines or identifying with the correct tradition." (10)

(8) I'm not much for convention myself.

(9) Because Jesus is Lord.

I expected we'd come more explicitly to the question of World Religions before we got to the end of Eric's remarks. It's a question that he cares a lot about. It's also the central topic of four of my books, including my doctoral dissertation.

I love the Chinese tradition, and often take fire for that these days, when America and China are at odds.

But in a sense, I would argue that all modern traditions are in fact "anchored" to the life of Jesus. Neither modern society, nor our consciousness of what is right, can be explained apart from the teachings and example of Jesus. You can't escape his impact, even in rebellion. Marx was a Christian heretic, and so are the New Atheists.

And as Bob Dylan put: "It might be the devil, or it might be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody."

Setting oneself as the judge of Right and Wrong is both historically naive, because we are all contingent beings, and psychologically damaging, because it makes us little gods, knowing good and evil for ourselves. Lordship does not suit us. It damages us, and makes us demons in practice. That is, in fact, what happened to Marx.

(10) This is a bit of a false dichotomy, and also ignores the fact that our conceptions of what is "good" or "true" cannot be anchored in ourselves. Because that deifies our souls, which ensnares them more profoundly.

C. S. Lewis and I would agree that the Stoics were the most noble of ancient Greeks and Romans.

If we could return to theistic Stoicism, that would indeed be a giant leap forward for mankind.

But can we? How did Stoicism actually play out in the ancient world? I would argue that it found its fulfillment when it met St. Paul in the market of Athens, and then heard his message about the Resurrection of one whom God had chosen to bring sense to the human story, on Mars Hill. Before that, even the greatest ancient moralists were a people walking in darkness. Now they had seen a great light, and that made all the difference -- historically and psychologically.

Contra Van Evans on the Resurrection

 

Recently, a philosophical theist named Eric Van Evans has been explaining his reasons for doubting the Resurrection of Jesus in various forums.   

Van Evans is a teacher of some sort, and is intelligent and fairly even-keeled.  But I don't think he has even begun to come to grips with the full case for the Resurrection of Jesus.  I'll respond to his comments in one recent post line by line, noting important facts and factors he has missed, along the way.  

“It’s rather striking how many people today take the resurrection as literal history.”

Perhaps more striking is how many people, when faced with several early accounts that record the same event from within a few decades of its occurrence, choose to deny that it happened.  Not irrational, necessarily, but such choices demand an explanation. 

“What I’ve noticed is that this belief often seems less like a conclusion reached at the end of an evidential investigation, and more like a starting point driven by a prior worldview.  There’s also a deep psychological dimension here.  We have a profound desire for meaning, justice, and the triumph of life over death.  A story where death is defeated satisfies one of our most ancient longings, that is, to survive death.”

This paragraph has nothing to do with history, but appears to be a psychological analysis of those with whom Eric disagrees.  Notice he uses the words “we” and “our” rather than “your” and “their,” as if he were including himself in this portrait – but he is not. 

As for psychology, I think the truth of the gospels is revealed both explicitly and implicitly.  (Origen saw the need for this.)  On the explicit level, there is a vast network of evidences supporting the truth of the gospels which historians and other scholars can seek out.  The gospels also carry an inchoate truth-telling quality that often resonates with ordinary people who lack time or capability to analyze why they perceive the gospels as truthful.  By analogy, one can test a person’s psychosomatic reactions to questions and determine whether they’re telling the truth – but also on a personal level, face to face, one can gauge another person’s honesty informally, and often quite accurately.  People can be good liars, but we can also be pretty good about detecting efforts by others to deceive us. 

“But looked at strictly as a historical claim, the resurrection demands that we judge every natural explanation (grief hallucinations, visionary experiences, bereavement phenomena, memory reshaping, myth-making, theological reinterpretation) as *less* probable than a man returning from the dead and ascending physically into the sky.”

The topic under discussion is the Resurrection, not the Ascension. 

And it sounds as if Jesus is said to have risen by some fluke of Nature.  But the hypothesis is that God raised him from the dead.  Of course spontaneous resurrections after three days of death are extraordinarily improbable – comparably as improbable as that our early universe should appear in the low-entropy state it actually enjoyed.  But the hypothesis is that the God responsible for Creation is also responsible for Easter.  Given God, Paul asks the Athenians, why do you find a miracle incredible?    

Also, Christians do not compare these explanations in the abstract, but in a concrete and particular case.  Eric’s argument takes roughly the form of, “The claim that a man was assassinated by respectable gentlemen including a close personal friend who all stabbed him with knifes demands that we judge every other explanation (killed in a random mugging, died of heart attack, story-telling, lies by enemies, never lived at all) as *less* probable than that citizens and statemen would conspire to murder the most popular man in Rome with their own hands – and on the Ides of March, rather than on any of the other 364 days of the year.”

No.  We believe such things because there is historical evidence that Julius Caesar was assassinated by his colleagues, and that Jesus rose from the dead.  We are not comparing probabilities in the abstract: if we did, EVERY historical event would be far-fetched.  Are not billions of alternatives more a priori probable than the career of Donald Trump? 

In short, to paraphrase Chesterton, we are asked to disbelieve an extraordinary story that has some evidence for it, in favor of an ordinary story that has none.  

But those points can be counted as framing.  Eric then takes a far more serious misstep:    

“Every part of our background knowledge about biology, neurology, and human psychology pushes us toward natural explanations, however messy or incomplete they may be.”

This begs the question, and contradicts a great deal of “background knowledge,” apart from which the Resurrection story cannot be evaluated.    

For one thing (elephant in the room), miracles sometimes do seem to happen.  I have heard from many people who say they experienced them, who were talking privately, gave specific details, and seemed honest.  I have read many detailed accounts from apparently credible missionaries, along with entire books by Craig Keener and Eric Metaxas describing numerous modern miracles.  I have run across others while reading about important historical events.  Furthermore, when I ask audiences how many have had such experiences, typically about 40% raise their hands. 

Why should we ignore that vast historical experience?  To deny it all based on some abstract theory of “human psychology” is just to beg the question.  As if skeptical theorists weren’t human, too! 

Yes, we know about Entropy.  Yes, it is a law of the universe.  But the claim Christians are making, and Eric supposes himself to be challenging, is not that Entropy is unreal, or that people spontaneously rise from the dead, but that God chose to raise the most famous, influential, and wise man in history, who had a unique relationship to God, to set in motion a liberating movement that would sweep the world, as a fulfillment of many prior promises and future plans.  What makes matters particularly odd, is that Eric says he believes in the existence of God, and accepts that miracles may happen, so cannot claim the excuse of atheism for question-begging talk about the normal course of "biology." 

He is also ignoring an enormous amount of data that ought to be set into the background of this investigation, of which records of miracles are only the tip of the tip of a huge iceberg. 

In an article that has been read tens of thousands of times but never (so far as I know) been effectively refuted, I argued thirteen years ago that many facets of background knowledge make the resurrection of Jesus remarkably probable a priori.  Eric does not mention the categories of facts in that article, which I argue render the Resurrection of Jesus exponentially more likely than that of some other famous person, say Gandhi or Martin Luther King.  Nor did he mention them in his debate with Pallman.  He seems never to have taken such important facts into account.   

If my arguments are correct, the Resurrection may exceed almost any other miracle in prior probability.    

“So, to affirm the resurrection as a literal historical event isn’t just to endorse a miracle. Rather, it’s to say: ‘All normal explanations are more improbable.’  We have (to) remember that these people were prone to all sorts of cognitive biases, memory distortions, and emotional motivations. Think about it: grief, hope, the desire for meaning after a traumatic event like Jesus’ crucifixion could easily make these people interpret dreams, visions, or memories as literal encounters with a risen figure.”

David Hume made similar arguments against miracles in general.  Christians have refuted those arguments for centuries, and skeptics seem to have ignored those refutations for just as long.  Tim McGrew’s article on “Miracles” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy mentions many such responses.    

What is striking in the gospel accounts is the initial disbelief, even shock, of those who meet Jesus.  They thought he was dead, for good reason.  There is little trace in the historical records of the sort of self-delusional wishful thinking Eric posits.  

Fishermen know about Entropy.  When I worked as a young man aboard Mys Obrucheva, a Russian fishing trawler, we understood that once the fish came on deck, the men working in the factory had a limited time to gut, clean, and freeze the hake and rock cod, or our catch would go bad.  (Even in the relatively cool climate of the US West Coast in early spring.)  Jesus’ followers were mostly fishermen, living in a hot climate, therefore intimately familiar with the normal course of Nature upon flesh and blood.  (Indeed, people in general were less able to avoid the sight of death then than we are.  They knew what happened next.)    

And if the posited cascade of psychological events leading to belief in resurrections were so likely as Eric supposes, why didn’t the family and friends of John F. Kennedy claim that Kennedy had risen from the dead?  If probability is related to frequency, and such a course is probable, then we should find many such accounts about major figures who had died traumatically.  There have been claims that certain Indian gurus came back to life.  Ancient Greeks often claimed that a deceased great man ascended into heaven as a spirit.  

So show us your best gospel, a historical account about someone else in the ancient world who was allegedly raised to life.  I have carefully examined claimed parallels, and in Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels, show how stretched they invariably turn out to be.  Claims about Apollonius of Tyana, the most popular alleged parallel, are outright amusing, when you actually read Life of Apollonius of Tyana.  I have analyzed and debunked many such alleged parallels, especially in Jesus is No Myth, and have always found the exercise intellectually stimulating.  

Human beings do suffer from cognitive biases.  But that observation is a double-edged sword.  All our knowledge depends on human observations.  If we are too skeptical OR too gullible, we must remain eternally ignorant, and civilization becomes impossible.  Skeptics and Christians alike can serve as witnesses in court, but must be cross-examined.  History has demonstrated that skeptics can be as gullible as anyone. 

And not all the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection wanted it to happen.  (None seem to have really expected it, despite Jesus’ warnings.)  Paul was biased against not for Christianity, before he met the risen Christ.  He had colluded in murder, after all: a powerful motivation to not admit his crimes.  And how eager were the disciples to be crucified like their leader?  They must have felt strong disincentives to publicly proclaim this miracle if they lacked rock-solid evidence.  It is, at least, naïve to simply assume all the motivation lay on the side of credulous faith, even to the point of mass self-delusion.  It is even more unreasonable to credit people so allegedly gullible and pathologically fearful, for production of the world’s most remarkable biographies, full of incomparably profound truth, as even many great non-Christian thinkers have conceded. 

“Add in centuries of oral transmission, community reinforcement, and the human tendency to mythologize, and the story can grow in power and certainty even if the original event wasn’t actually observed.”

Here is Eric’s second big error, which shipwrecks his argument entirely.  Or maybe second and third. 

No “centuries of oral transmission” passed between the resurrection of Jesus and its first reports.  There weren’t even the “generations” which skeptical NT scholars often claim.  The gospels were written within the lifespan of some, at least, of Jesus’ first disciples.

Scholars set the production of the gospels at between 50-100 AD, roughly speaking.  So “centuries” is out right away.  As with every mobile group of reformers or revolutionaries, most of Jesus’ followers would have been younger than him.  Some were almost certainly in their teens.    

If Jesus died in 30 AD, after three years of ministry, how much further time on earth might his followers anticipate?  Some argue that life expectancy was extraordinarily low in the 1^st Century, so Jesus’ disciples would probably have died young.  But the main reason life expectancy was low, was because of infant mortality, which killed about half of children (in densely-populated regions) before the age of five.  For the human race to reproduce, most adults must have retained a reasonably long life expectancy, with added dangers in childbirth for females, especially to very young woman, and battle or murder (state or private) for males.  That people often lived into their 60s, 70s, and even 80s, is also demonstrated by the biographies of ancient scientists, for instance. 

Among the large post-millennial cohort of Jesus’ followers, one would expect many to survive until 70-90 AD, and a few past 100 AD.   So there is nothing extraordinary in the notion that the youngest disciple contributed to the Gospel of John in 90 or 95 AD.  And Paul’s claim that of 500 eyewitnesses, most were still alive when he wrote I Corinthians 15, is demographically credible.   

The evidence Bauckham gives in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that the gospels were, in fact, based on eyewitness accounts – which Eric has not mentioned – is far more credible than talk about “generations,” or Bart Ehrman’s “Chinese whispers” analogy, which I refute in Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels.

Do the gospels LOOK like eyewitness accounts?  We have described rich patterns of evidence, internal (“forensic”) and external, which show that they almost certainly are.  In Jesus is No Myth, I describe thirty separate patterns of evidence which converge on the strong historicity of the gospels.  Others, like NT Wright, Bauckham, Craig Blomberg, Lydia McGrew, and Tom Gilson, have described some of those patterns in much greater detail, or found other supportive patterns. 

Eric tells his readers they must read opposing arguments before dismissing them.  He has made this point emphatically.  Good!  I tell my students the same.  And Eric says he has read some Christian arguments for the resurrection.  But in attacking the historical claim that lies at the foundation of the Christian faith, he dismisses that claim without showing awareness of these mountains of evidence. 

“None of what I’m saying here proves Christ didn’t rise from the dead.”

No it does not.  I would go further: it doesn’t lay a glove on the Christian case for the Resurrection, or show a very deep awareness of that case. 

“Maybe he did!  Who knows.  It just shows why, from a historical perspective, relying solely on human testimony from decades later is quite tricky. If you think about it deeply, this sounds exactly like a story that people would want to believe so badly. It’s absolutely human to its core. It’s the kind of story that ancient people would cling to. I am fully convinced that in any other context, we would not accept such an event as real. I have no doubt. But this one? Somehow, we do.”

Here Eric retreats to his original psychological line of reasoning.  It would be better to deal with the evidence more carefully. 

And what does Eric know about “how ancient people would think?”  He recently objected to arguments from authority, to people who say, “I’m a professor at MIT, so I’m right about X.”  But I’m sorry, the Internet aside, people do not all have an intellectual right to offer an opinion on every subject.  Don’t ask me where pistons go, how to fix your computer, or what “offside” means in soccer.  I don’t know. 

I have spent a lot of time reading ancient writers, and far from finding them inclined to “cling to” stories about resurrections, I find them scoffing at such tales.  NT Wright finds the same, having read more than I have.  St. Paul’s audience in Athens also scoffed.   

Eric has not shown that ancient people did, in fact, tend to invent or “cling to” such stories – Wright says they did not, and he has been recognized as among the most sophisticated historians of early Christianity, even by secular writers. 

Neither has Eric shown that the ad hoc psychological mechanisms he posits to have caused belief in the resurrection are either present in the earliest accounts, or tend to create resurrection stories where they are active. (Aside from an expectation that Jesus would soon return.)  

He has not shown much awareness of the historical evidence for the Resurrection, at least not in this short article.

Neither has he explained why, believing in God, we should be super skeptical about miracles, so any report (a la Hume) of a miracle must Ihe seems to imply) be inherently less probable than even the most unevidenced and unlikely materialistic explanation.

Nor has he mentioned evidence that miracles do, in fact, sometimes occur, given by the likes of Craig Keener, and many others.   

Nor again has he taken into account the five factors I describe, which make the resurrection of Jesus vastly more likely, even before we look at all that evidence, than that of any other famous man or woman. (Indeed, he later posits the story of a teacher from New Jersey supposed to parallel the life of Jesus, without drawing any such a priori parallels.) 

In addition, he overlooks the dozens of patterns in the gospels, and in historical and archeological research, which set the gospels securely on an historical foundation.  (Evidence that really does “demand a verdict.”)    

So set the psychology aside for now, Eric, and treat the miracle that began the Christian faith historically.  Begin by reading the books you seem to have overlooked, in your efforts to “understand the other side of the argument.”  Because there is a whole lot more to that argument than you have addressed so far, and it logically must be taken into account.  

Problems with Ferguson's Presuppositions against Miracles

In my last post, I described several problems I perceive at least with the "short" version of the Minimal Facts approach to proving the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  (Which appeals to scholarly consensus to support those points.  But John Fraser, who has studied with Gary Habermas for several year, argues that Habermas, at least, does not really relying on authority so strongly as I was assuming.)  But the original question posed was actually in regard to Matthew Ferguson's critique of that approach.  So I posted that first thought experiment (it may not rise to the category of "essay"), in view of the danger of allying on this point with Ferguson, who of course is an opponent of Christian thought (and, in the past, of mine). 

So now let me critique part of Ferguson's argument.  

Answering Nicholas Kristof's Questions on Faith

I've always liked Nicholas Kristof, though not reading the New York Times, I seldom see his essays.  I find something sincere and earnest about his work.  Traveling around the world on assignments, he seems to view people with real compassion.  I probably disagree with his politics, but he is one liberal whom I really respect -- what one would hope for from someone who calls himself a "liberal."  (Though I don't know if Kristof uses that word.)  

This morning someone posted a series of questions which Kristof posed to the New York City pastor Tim Keller.  (I won't give the poster's name, since this was on a closed forum.)  He asked us to try to answer Kristof's questions without looking at Keller's replies.   While I wasn't planning to write a blog piece this morning, the questions proved interesting, and on important issues that I've pondered a lot.  Here's what I came up with.  

I'll come to your freethinker meeting and PROVE the Resurrection for $145!

A scholar named Richard Miller wrote a book earlier this year proposing a supposedly "new" theory on how that delusion about Jesus rising from the dead arose.  It involves our friend Romulus, legendary founder of Rome.  The book costs $145. 

Here's an interesting and well-written review from Amazon, by one Simon Albright, which predicts that the book will excite frenzied and worried opposition from the ranks of Christians.  Then following that, my somewhat shorter response. 

Matthew McCormick's Spectral Evidence IV‏

In our last installment, we saw that Matthew McCormick argues that the evidence for genuine witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts was much stronger than the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus.  Oddly, however, he is remarkably coy about citing that evidence in detail, though he offers nebulous claims for reems (thousands of books) of the stuff.  Indeed, like the "evidence" for witchcraft itself, the evidence for that evidence, in McCormick's own telling, appears to be of the kind best described as "spectral," a terms  our anonymous friends at Wiki explain:  

"Spectral evidence is a form of evidence based upon dreams and visions. It was admitted into court during the Salem witch trials by the appointed chief justice, William Stoughton. The booklet A Tryal of Witches taken from a contemporary report of the proceedings of the Bury St. Edmunds witch trial of 1662 became a model for and was referenced in the Trials when the magistrates were looking for proof that such evidence could be used in a court of law.

Matt McCormick, Part III: the Salem Witch Trials

The Gem in the Crown of McCormick's argument against Christianity is probably Chapter 3: "You Already Don't Believe in Jesus: The Salem Witch Trials."   At least that is what I have seen quoted most often, and largely what attracted me to this book.  McCormick also refers to this chapter and the one preceding it, which we have already analyzed later in the book, as if he had in these two chapters convincingly overthrown the Christian faith.

His argument is simple.  McCormick asserts that the evidence for the actual existence of witches in Salem, Massachusetts, between 1692 and 1693, is far stronger and more immediate, than the evidence for the Resurrection.  Since we reject the former, we should therefore also reject the latter. 

Hector Avalos debunks all historical knowledge.

Sergeant Avalos: "We know nu-theeng!" 

Perhaps the phrase "cut off your nose to spite your face" was coined with atheists of a logical positivist mindset in mind.  Logical positivism, or scientism, is the doctrine that the only really useful way of finding truth is through science, or through direct sensual testing of physical objects. 

The unstudied contempt Richard Dawkins sometimes seems to express towards disciplines like history, philosophy, and theology, may make him our generation's patron saint of scientism.  But some scholars who are not themselves scientists, who in fact spend years studying and writing about history, in effect deny the very history from which they gain a living.

Some seem to do this in order to deny that miracles really happen.  By definition, miracles are historical reports, unrepeatable because God does them when He wants to, not because we add 200 grams of the right reactant to a test tube, or pray loudly in Jesus' name, facing Mecca and standing on one leg in a graveyard.  So the reasoning seems to be (whether conscious or not): deny that history can furnish us with real knowledge at all, and you can deny miracles, and God, with a clean conscience and perfect logical consistency. 

At any rate, once one gets beyond petty personal attacks, that seemed to be Hector Avalos' strategy in his response earlier this year to me, "Alexander the Great, Jesus, and David Marshall: A Simpleton's Approach to History."  (I bring it up now, because an historian-in-training named Matthew Ferguson -- Celsus on Amazon, who I think has visited these pages before, to I hope his immense embarrassment -- cited this article recently, in a discussion that some friends pointed out.) 

I actually think the subtitle of Avalos' article here is catchy, and deadly accurate.  What Avalos betrays, not so much in the article itself (which is pettifogging and irrelevant, more on that later), but in the comments section below it, after some interrogation, is indeed a "simpleton's approach to history."  The simplest thing one can do to history, is deny it.  "History is bunk!"  Which, while foolish, also rather impressive, coming from someone who makes his living teaching history.

Your nose may hurt for a while.  But will this ever embarrass your face! 


Back Story

Dr. Avalos and I have traded arguments, and sometimes barbs, for three years, now.  Four months ago, in a discussion about the resurrection of Jesus by Avalos, a former debate partner also of William Lane Craig, I came across the following intriguing line of reasoning:

Of course, we have no “existing knowledge” that there was an empty tomb, or that Jesus resurrected.  These are simply claims made by ancient authors. We have no existing knowledge that people resurrect, but that does not stop (William Lane) Craig from positing something that is not “existing knowledge.”

           

On the other hand, people lying, having hallucinations, and not dying after severe  injuries are part of our existing knowledge, and so can be used as explanations where the evidence fits.

 

I responded as follows:

 
By that standard, we also have no "existing knowledge" that Alexander the Great faced elephants on the battlefield in India, or that Confucius climbed Mount Tai in the state of Lu.  These, too, are "simply claims made by ancient authors."

But again, the question is not "whether people resurrect," but whether God (an all-powerful, benevolent being) may have resurrected one or more people.  One needs to be careful not to phrase this to make a miracle sound like spontaneous combustion, or some other arbitrary, inexplicable event. 

Craig Keener argues, in effect, that miracles may also be taken as part of our existing knowledge.  Certainly I have met far more people who have experienced miracles, than who have hallucinated on the scale required to explain the resurrection appearances, or who have survived crucifixion and then been well enough to walk through walls to tell the story afterwards.

Avalos responded not by answering the main substance of my argument (of which this was a part) but by turning the full force of his scholarly apparatus on a casual phrase here that he found vulnerable.  He wrote a long article for Deconstructing Christianity in "response" entitled, "Alexander the Great, Jesus, and David Marshall: A Simpleton's Approach to History," focusing almost entirely on my fairly off-the-cuff example of Alexander's visit to India. (Which no, did not occur to me because of Josh McDowell.) 

Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that I really am a simpleton.  In my simple way, let me point out that the real question is not about Marshall, Craig, Alexander the Great, or elephants in India, but whether we have reason to believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead -- and whether we know anything about history, in general. 

So I pressed Avalos.  After going down many tangents, I extracted the following confession:

But, if you wish a more direct answer, then I am saying that claims by ancient authors “or human witnesses generally” DO NOT constitute “KNOWLEDGE” unless corroborated by independent empirico-rationalist evidence.

So what does constitute "knowledge?"  What, if anything, can we "know?" Avalos explained:

I use the word KNOW only for the highest types of available certainty, which would be conclusions that I can directly verify with one or more of my five senses and/or logic on the presupposition that those faculties can provide reliable data.

Now this opens quite a can of worms. 

Does that mean no school child "knows" that Washington, D. C. is America's capital, because that knowledge depends entirely on other witnesses?   Or does any adult though that, even the president at the White House?  Obama cannot verify that he lives in Washington by logic or senses alone, without human testimony.  His aides are human as were his teachers.  Look at a map, and people put those names on the map.  I don't "know" that I have lungs, since I rely on authority and human testimony for that "pseudo-knowledge."  Practically none of us "knows" that Mars has two small moons, or that Uranus exists at all.

In fact, it appears that Avalos is thus limiting "knowledge" to things he has himself touched, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen.  But even there, does he mean only those things he senses at this exact moment?  Or is he including things he merely remembers seeing, etc, as "knowledge?"

Note that this definition also undermines his other claim:

On the other hand, people lying, having hallucinations, and not dying after severe  injuries are part of our existing knowledge, and so can be used as explanations where the evidence fits.

But how do I know anyone ever has hallucinations?  I've never had one.  I believe they happen, because other people report them, not because I have witnessed them myself.  In fact on Avalos' premises, the very term "our existing knowledge" is rendered null and void.  There is no "we," since reports from others are no longer genuine "knowledge," which is why Avalos uses the pronoun "I"  above. 

And if we exclude memory, even I "know" about ten things right now, if I attend to them.  (Which I cannot do all at once -- so I can only "know" one thing at a time?)  If Avalos accepts his own memory as providing genuine knowledge, then on what basis does he trust it in addition to his senses?  We all know how fallible that is -- extending Elizabeth Loftus' research on auto accidents to support general skepticism being a familiar plank in the skeptical platform for some time, now.  (I recall arguing about this matter more than a decade ago, when we lived in Japan.) 

In any case, what gives Avalos the right to impose his special definition of "knowledge" on William Lane Craig?  Avalos is using a very special definition of "knowledge."  He has no right to assume everyone else, including myself, Bill Craig, or the readers of DC,  assume that vocabulary. 

For instance, Samuel Johnson said, "Why, Madam, the greater part of our knowledge is implicit faith."  (Life of Johnson, 1917, 382)  As author of a renowned English dictionary, Dr. Johnson ranks higher as an authority on word use than Hector Avalos, and I think higher also as an epistemologist. 

Put bluntly (and here's the logical problem), why should Avalos privilege his own brain processes, over those of other people? Maybe his logically faculties are defective. (Read our previous debates and tell me that is so incredible!) Why should he assume that his own faculties, sensory and cognitive, should be preferred over those of billions of other people?

And is it not true, in practice, that sometimes our senses and reason are less dependable than the authority of another person?   Isn't that why people with bad eyes sometimes ask their children for help making out a prescription? 
 
So I'm glad for Avalos' attempted rebuttal, however far afield he took the discussion. Eventually we come to a serious problem in his understanding of science, an arbitrary and narrowly-focused skepticism that comports neither with normal word use, nor with reasonable epistemology, nor with common sense, nor hardly even with itself.   One might even describe it as a "simplistic" philosophy.  In embracing this kind of positivism, Avalos may indeed cast doubt on the gospels -- but at the steep price of 99.9% or more of what human beings used to call knowledge.

Indeed, in order to debunk the Resurrection, Hector Avalos seems to have justified the saying of that great German philosopher, Sergeant Shultz:

I know nu-thing! 
 
Now that's what I call dedication.

(Next, I respond to some of the ankle-biting.)

Fact-Checking Carrier II: Looking for Aliens

I now continue with a more detailed analysis of Richard Carrier's initial argument in our debate in Alabama last month, especially his attempted rebuttals of my arguments for Miracles, God, and Jesus.  This will be the second and probably final part, unless I decide to take another shot at Carrier's "Problem of Evil" argument.

Several posters have kindly responded to my request for alternative and, hopefully, better rebuttals. Here, by Darrin Rasberry, an Orthodox Christian.  Here, by John Fraser, a missionary who is educated in philosophy.  Matthew Schultz has posted his response in the comment section for Carrier's talk.  Steve Hays posted this response, and then decided to have a little fun with Carrier's remarkable remarks about how Jesus' raising of the dead might have just been psychosomatic.  Thanks, guys!  More responses may yet come in. 

Carrier's arguments below, even more than in the first part, are of the scatter-shot, blunderbluss variety, and do not seem aimed even roughly in the vicinity of my actual arguments he is attempting to rebut, as I will show.  Yet he claims, at the end of his talk, to have "rebutted every one of his arguments that's relevant to this debate."  I therefore allow myself, in a few cases, to offer somewhat flippant responses. 


Jesus and Space Aliens?

I want to give you another example. Is it reasonable to believe an alien spaceship was recovered at Roswell, New Mexico, and alien bodies were autopsied by the government? Books written within forty years of the event in 1947 claim dozens of witnesses saw these things and gave detailed narratives of them.

Hector Avalos is on the War Path (again)!

Sorry to readers who are tired of my debates with New Atheists -- I do have a bunch of stuff I'm looking forward to write about soon, including the remarkable story of Ranald Macdonald, the half-Chinook Indian who was the first American to voluntarily visit Japan, and maybe some good stuff from Plato, too.  But the fireworks shop has just gone up in a blaze of glory.  Hector Avalos is on the warpath, John Loftus is swearing at me (whether for good or bad reason, I'm not quite sure myself), and I still need to go through my debate with Richard Carrier and sort out fact from fiction.  So sit back and enjoy the show, if that's your leaning, or throw water on the conflagration, if you're a responsible citizen.  Or grab a few bottlerockets yourself, and come join the fray.   

Avalos on the Resurrection: Some challenges

Dr. Hector Avalos, Religious Studies  professor at Iowa State University, with whom I've locked horns in the past, posted a long piece on the resurrection yesterday at the "Debunking Christianity" website.  I say it is on the resurrection to keep things simple: Avalos introduces a large cast of scholars, and considerable "back-story." He is as much arguing against the scholarship of William Lane Craig in defending the resurrection (but even that's simplifying things), as against the resurrection per se.  But I haven't read Avalos' book on biblical scholarship, and am less concerned with that at the moment.  Let's keep it as simple as possible, and focus especially on those points most relevant to actually discussing the resurrection of Jesus. 

Response to Law III

A few days ago, I responded to some of Dr. Stephen Law's arguments against the Resurrection, both here and on his blog.  Law answered back, and we went a few rounds, with helpful contributions from some readers. I think Law made a couple good points, but those points were almost lost in a cloud of rhetorical cliches, careless assertions, unexamined assumptions, and half-forgotten references.  In a way, I admire Law for wading in against (initially) unknown on-line opponents.  The tricky thing for an eminent scholar in these forums, is that one clearly can't take as much time in a casual conversation, as for, say, an exchange of ideas in a journal.  So one either has to opt out of such conversation, or risk a few hasty claims, from time to time. And the more eminent (therefore busy) one is, the more hasty one must be.  So I admire eminent scholars who wade into the fray, regardless of their dignity.  And I think it's a good idea to test one's ideas like this.

Anyway, I think Law's arguments, at least at this stage, do more to illustrate why the Resurrection is credible, than to undermine it.  Here I post an interesting recent round of debate from below in one place where it's easy to find, which also allows me to add highlighting and links, and hopefully make it more readable.   

Marshall - Law: Is the Resurrection Epistemic White Noise?

Stephen Law, editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Journal and professor at the University of London, argues here that many accounts of apparently miraculous events are to be expected, on naturalistic premises, even if nothing supernatural is going on.  He suggests that the story of Jesus resurrecting from the dead is no surprise, then: a naturalist would expect such odd tales to turn up, from time to time. 

I reproduce (I) his argument below, (II) give my initial reply to it, and then (III) his response to that.  Finally, (IV) I explain why I still think his argument fails (though the objection is of value to the discussion, and worth further investigating), plus a few brief comments on why I think the evidence for the resurrection remains convincing. Readers may well pick up points I miss, and I welcome other perspectives. 

The "Shrouded" Sign: Can Thomas de Wesselow explain the Rez?

Skeptic theories about Jesus, C. S. Lewis noted more than half a century ago, tend to succeed one another with "the restless fertility of bewilderment."  Indeed, while the idea that Jesus was, say, a "copy-cat savior" like Osiris or Mithras were old hat already in his day, even Lewis might be surprised to hear some of the wilder recent theories, such as that Jesus was a "hippy in an age of Augustan yuppies," a rip-off from his beloved Iliad, or just a fictional excuse for people to inject hallucinogenic mushrooms. 

No, we have not quite reached the end of this road, yet.  The ingenious, we still have with us.  A Cambridge-trained art historian has just come out with a new one, tracing the rise of Christianity back to the Shroud of Turin.   Jesus' followers took him down from the cross, his wounds were printed (don't know how, yet) on his burial cloth, and the resulting image launched the whole Christian myth!  Judging by the introduction, this is not the most poorly-written or weakly-imagined "Christ of Doubt" yet to have been conceived. Certainly, this Thomas De Wesselow fellow has wit and smarts, has read a bunch of books (but already, it seems, not nearly enough), and has that impregnably cool Enlightenment "Tude" down double kosher.

Who knows?  Maybe De Wesselow will be the one who finally strikes paydirt, and the Christian church will have to pack up its tent and use its spare crosses as stakes to hang laundry lines from by mid-summer! 

Or maybe, yet again, the evangelists and the facts they report will find a way to outwit their oh-so-scientific, Ivy-League, Oxbridge-educated critics, once again. 

Let's see how be does, section by section, sometimes chapter by chapter. 

Against Stephen Law: Miracles and the Parable of Bert

The editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal Think, Stephen Law, has just posted an article called "Evidence, Miracles, and the Existence of Jesus," arguing that the occurance of miracles in the Gospels undermines the credibility of those documents, and even the likelihood that Jesus ever really lived.  (This article was originally published in  Faith and Philosophy last April.)

I am inclined to respond by asking, "What took you so long?"  As Machen observed the better part of a century ago, the "liberal Jesus," who told people to be nice, made few ostentatious claims about himself, and having died, remained politely in the grave, never was so very plausible.  Morton Smith observes that not only every Gospel, but every layer of Gospel material, portrays Jesus as having worked miracles.  And by the standards of David Hume (Law begins his paper with a quick bit of what John Earman has called "genuflecting at Hume's altar" [Earman: 2000, Preface], speaking of Hume's allegedly great contributions to the debate over miracles), one cannot countenance anything that smacks of a miracle, or anything in the neighborhood of a miracle. 

But in my opinion, Law does not understand what a miracle is (neither does Hume), and therefore literally doesn't know what he is talking about.  Nor has he fully taken in the empirical nature of the Gospels, and the quality of the evidence they carry.  He may even have overlooked some important matters going on in the world today.  For these reasons, his critique, I will argue, fails.  Indeed, his critique helps shed light on the uniquely persuasive character of the Gospels.   

(Note: an updated version of this argument can now be found in my book, Jesus is No Myth: The Fingerprints of God on the Gospels, along with much else.)

Prior Probability of the Resurrection

People have been arguing for centuries over the evidence for, or against, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

What is often forgotten, though, is that the probability of an event requires relating two things: (1) the evidence for that event (which is what we usually think of), but also (2) the prior probability that the event would occur. 

The confidence of Keith Parsons against miracles.

The eminent atheist philosopher, Dr. Keith Parsons, recently defended Hume's critique of miracles.

I think Dr. Parsons is wrong on both his main assumptions: (1) the prior probability of the resurrection is, I think, pretty high, and (2) the evidence given in the NT for that event is remarkably strong. I don't see how these two points could be adequately explained in less than a book, though: I will not try to do it here.

I was, though, intrigued by these comments:

"How low can I reasonably put my priors for the occurrence of an event that I regard as physically impossible, like resurrecting a dead body? Well, pretty much as low as I like. If I want to put it at one in a million, I can put it at one in a million. Show that I can’t. Prove that this would be unreasonable. If you can’t (and you can’t), then that is the burden of proof you have to meet: one in a million."

Does this mean Dr. Parsons is that confident that his honesty and clarity of thought are superior to those of intelligent believers who have thoroughly examined the evidence for miracles, or who have experienced them themselves, critically examined those experiences, and come to the conclusion they were real? Or who have examined the evidence for God in general, and concluded that it is solid? He thinks there is a less than one in a million chance that they have observed accurately or thought more clearly, than that his own view of the universe could be wrong?

I wonder if one could justify such self-confidence on any objective grounds? Beginning, perhaps, with a theory of evolution that would bless one man with such vast cognitive superiority over his fellows, in a single generation?

I hope this doesn't sound too sarcastic; I am serious about the question.

What is a Miracle?

Why believe in God?  Maybe the best reason is miracles.  Debates about the truth of Christianity often revolve around the reality of the most famous miracle in human history, the resurrection of Jesus.  In this era in which Christianity has spread rapidly beyond its old borders, Christians around the world also often explain their conversion by some event in which God seemed to step into their lives in an amazing way.  Two chapters of my new book, Faith Seeking Understanding, tell such stories. 

But this brings up a lot of questions.  Wwhat is a miracle?  Are miracles possible?  Does science disprove them?  If Christians believe the resurrection, does that oblige us to admit Joseph Smith really received the Book of Mormon from the angel Moroni, or that Mohammed rode a white horse to heaven?  Do miracles provide good evidence for Christianity? 

I think they do.  But we can't tackle all these questions in one post, so let's start with the first, which is foundational to all the others. 

The word "miracle" is given at least three different meanings:

(1) People often use the word to refer to "an amazing event."  "We have all benefited from the miracle of science."  "We'll be telling our grandkids about that miraculous fourth-quarter comback!" "I held her hand as the baby emerged, and witnessed the miracle of new life."

Language is a set of mostly arbitrary signs that we use to communicate.  So there is nothing "wrong" about using the word miracle this, or any other, way.  If you like, you define "rose" as "a large mammal that lives in the swamps on Yoda's home planet."  You can write a science-fiction novel using the word that way, and your readers will get used to the term quickly enough.  But then if your neighbor tells you, "I'm putting in roses in my yard next spring," don't criticize him for harboring dangerous animals: his use of the word is more in agreement with convention, than your own.   

So there is nothing "wrong" with using "miracle" to mean "an amazing event."  But it is irrelevant to the debate between skeptics and theists, and its frequent use tends to confuse that issue.  An atheist can see miracles around him all day long, in this sense, without upsetting his atheism.  So let us bracket this common meaning of the word "miracle." 

(2) Miracle is also commonly taken to mean, "An event in the material world that violates the laws of Nature."  In a post article at The Secular Outpost, the philosopher  Brad Owen argued, "In order for an event to be a miracle, it must satisfy at least the following two conditions:  1. The event must involve the violation of a law of nature. 2. The event must be brought about by God."

The first part of this definition seems to have been popularized by 17th Century Scottish philosopher, David Hume:

"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature." 

Hume went on to explain:

"Sometimes an event may not, in itself, seem to be contrary to the laws of nature, and yet, if it were real, it might, by reason of some circumstances, be denominated a miracle; because, in fact, it is contrary to these laws.  Thus if a person, claiming a divine authority, should command a sick person to be well, a healthful man to fall down dead, the clouds to pour rain, the winds to follow upon his command; these may justly be esteemed miracles . . . " 

I responded to the word "violation" that both Owen and Hume use, as follows:

"One reason I object to the word 'violation,' is that it seems to imply a discontinuity between the 'laws' of nature and miracles. But there is actually a deeper continuity. Miracles are not like random street noise that interrupts a concert (magic). They are like the symbols that dramatically break up the horn soliquy with a sudden 'crash,' but were written into the music by the composer to climax the piece."

C. S. Lewis offers a similar explanation in his book, Miracles. 
Brad responded by citing the Christian historian Gary Habermas, and softening his language, to say miracles must involve a "suspension" of natural law. 

That helps, but I also see two larger problems with this assumption. 
First, what are miracles like, in the Bible, or as people experience them today?

Some do seem to involve suspension of natural law.  For example, the first "sign" John reports, is when Jesus changes water into wine at a wedding feast in the lakeside village of Cana.  This is a chemically impossible reaction: alcohol contains carbon, for instance, while water does not. Nor does Jesus appear to have acted on the water to stimulate any kind of reaction. 

On the other hand, a few chapters later, mere words at a well in Samaria, and then in a village nearby, convince some Samaritans that Jesus is "the Savior of the world."  No laws of physics or chemistry are obviously "suspended" in the process.  But the people are convinced, and the reasons are good.  

The same is often true of "miracles," today.  I have never seen the laws of physics suspended or violated.  But several times, I have seen what looked like "miraculous" answers to prayer.

Once when I was working as a missionary in Taiwan, I ran out of money.  I went to a park in Taipei and prayed, "God, why don't I just go home!  I don't even have enough money to buy a hamburger!  The hymn says, 'Great is thy faithfulness,' but I just don't see that faithfulness!"

On my way out of the park, I stopped to talk with a Chinese girl reading an English newspaper.  (The paper was an excuse.  "At least she answers!"  I told God.)  As I was getting up to leave, the girl asked me my name.  "Ma De Wei," I said.  "Ma Dewei?  You're Ma Dewei!  Really?"

I soon learned why she was so surprised.  Years before, I had found a wallet some miles away, and taken it to the Taiwan University Lost and Found.  I put my Chinese name in the wallet, and wrote, "God loves you."  In a city of four million, this girl turned out to be the owner of that wallet.

She took me to McDonalds for lunch.  Eating a cheeseburger, I remembered the jibe about money for hamburgers.  

My other needs were met in almost equally surprising ways.

None, however, involved the suspension of any natural laws.  But they did give me reason to think God had not forgotten me. 

An opposite phenomena from the one Hume mentioned is often cited by modern skeptics: when a natural explanation (either "folk" or "scientific") is later found for events that at first seem supernatural.  Maybe Jesus was a "psychic," in other words exploited some little-known physical powers to read the Samaritan woman's mind.  Maybe his disciples did good research on her.  Either way, the "sign," while compelling to those who converted, need not involve God (skeptics may reply), nor need it clearly violate known laws of science. 

Some miracles in the gospels are like that: Peter's catch of the fish with the gold coin in its mouth, the disciples' big catches of fish under Jesus' instruction, occasions when Jesus seemed to know things without being told.  Some of his healing might be explained away as psychosomatic. 

Even the toughest miracles might, in theory, be explained in terms of quantum physics.  The philosopher Michael Martin, for example, suggests that even the resurrection might theoretically be explained by a random quantum fluctuation.  So might Jesus walking on water, or multiplying the loaves and fishes, or healing anyone of anything. 

So there are two problems with the definition Brad Owen and David Hume (among others, both skeptics and Christians) use. 

First, the Bible uses another term, "sign," which seems to put the stress on the probative value of the event in persuading those who experience it to trust God, and act on that trust.  Some "signs" seem to involve what we would ordinarily call "violations of natural law," others do not.

Second, given quantum physics and modern technology, it is increasingly difficult to absolutely differentiate between what physical laws do or do not allow.  One might also explain Jesus' healings, for instance, as those of a medical doctor from an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, Dr. McCoy in Palestine. 

Of course there are all kinds of problems with these counter-claims.  The odds such an enormous quantum flux, for example, are greater than the number of fundamental particles in a universe the size ours would be, if every particle in it became a universe of its own.  But it has become more difficult, now, to draw a clear line between the "improbable" and what is genuinely impossible in the course of nature. 

It seems, then, that we need a definition of "miracle" that includes both how the Bible actually uses the word, the root meaning of the word, and in terms of probilities rather than mere possibilities. 

So here's the definition I prefer:

(3)  "A miracle is an event in the natural world that points probatively to God's work, and gives us compelling reasons to trust Him." 

The most common Greek word is σημειoν, or sign, the root for semiotics. A miracle does not need to violate a law of nature, but should give good reasons for faith.

In Jesus and the Religions of Man, chapter 10 and 11, I give an in-depth description of what a miracle in this sense involves, and compare miracles to magic.  Briefly, miracles in the biblical sense tend to share five characteristics (one of which Brad Owen has already mentioned):

(1) "Miracles ask to be verified; magic insults the intelligence."  This is related to their root meaning of "signs," and to their purpose in guiding us to God.   

(2) "Miracles tend to be practical; magic is often showy." 

(3) "Miracles enhance human dignity; magic makes us more or less than human."

(4) "Miracles point to God; magic points elsewhere." 

(5) "Miracles come in response to requests; magic to demands."  One consequence of this quality is that it is often difficult to test miracles scientifically, but may be possible to check them historically.  God, being our Lord, not our servant, will act when and where, and in whatever way, He chooses.  Therefore miracles are not "repeatable," but they can be rationally deduced.

These five qualities not only help define Christian miracles, they also help differentiate true miracles from faked or even demonic supernatural acts.  That's what I'm doing in Jesus and the Religions of Man.