(Circa 30 CE)
Arthur and a large group are following a man called Brian[1]: They believe that he is the messiah – and Brian is trying to dissuade them of their belief.
FOLLOWER#1: Give us a sign!
ARTHUR: He has given us a sign! He has brought us to this place!
BRIAN: I didn't bring you here! You just followed me!
FOLLOWER#1: Oh, it's still a good sign by any standard.
ARTHUR: Master! Your people have walked many miles to be with You! They are weary and have not eaten.
BRIAN: It's not my fault they haven't eaten!
ARTHUR: There is no food in this high mountain!
BRIAN: Well, what about the juniper bushes over there?
FOLLOWERS: Hhhh! A miracle! A miracle! Ohh!...
FOLLOWER#1: He has made the bush fruitful by His words.
FOLLOWER#2: They have brought forth juniper berries.
BRIAN: Of course they've brought forth juniper berries! They're juniper bushes! What do you expect?!
ARTHUR: It’s a miracle! In this high mountain with virtually no vegetation, you conjured up juniper bushes.
BRIAN: But you agree that juniper bushes can grow here – even if they are not numerous – right?
A: (Nods)
B: Well, wouldn’t a miracle be something a little more spectacular?
A: Like to raise someone from the dead?
B: But what makes that a miracle?
A: Because dead people, once dead, stay dead. That’s the law of nature.
B: But what if the dead person was my friend and accomplice? It is claimed he has died, but it ain’t so[2].
A: But you can’t fake death. If he’s not breathing, he’s dead[3].
B: He can hold his breath for a long time. He has been subsequently entombed for four days[4], cloistered away so no-one can confirm or disconfirm his deadness. When I roll back the stone from the front of the tomb, on my command, he walks out alive.
A: But that’s cheating!
B: It’s magic! You said earlier, I ‘conjured up juniper bushes.’ Perhaps I’m simply a master magician. If I am good at it, you might never know you have been duped.
A: What if I was to bring you someone I knew to be dead, someone you didn’t know.
B: Ah, so you would simply seek more evidence to support your supposition of a miracle. Not sure where this will end, but sure, let’s say you bring me someone newly dead.
A: Right.
Brian: What if I had some technique for resurrecting him. By striking a newly dead man in the chest, I am able to revive him.
A: That’s a miracle.
B: But what if any person could do it? Or even say a bolt of lightening could revive him. What then?
A: It would still be a miracle. Bringing someone back from the dead is a miracle under any circumstances.
B: But what if it is a technology that you simply don’t understand. Like magic[5]. For instance, do you think that turning water into acid counts as a miracle?
A: Don’t you mean water into wine?
B: What’s the difference? Aren’t they both against the law of nature?
A: I would be more impressed if you turned water into wine.
B: OK, so water into wine is a miracle, and water into acid is… something else!. Was the great flood not a miracle wrought by god? Not a lot of joy for those that missed the boat, ‘ark, ‘ark!.
A: God has his reasons which we cannot understand.
B: OK, but let’s return to who creates miracles later. For now, I want to nail down what type of event counts as a miracle. I’ll return to the stock standard of water into wine. If I added grape juice to the water, and turned it into wine, would that be a miracle?
A: No! We know that grape juice turns into wine anyway by law of nature.
B: Not always. Still, imagine the first person to discover wine. He foolishly left some grape juice in a vat for six months or so. Rather than throw it out, he tastes it and lo and behold, he tastes that it is good. How would he feel?
A: Pretty good!. However, it has been repeated so many times since, we now know that is an act of nature, it happens all the time.
B: Now. But not then! On the first occasion, it is a miracle, but with repetition it becomes a law of nature?
A: A miracle is an improbable, an infrequent event.
B: If time extends for not just millennia, but billions or trillions of years, something improbable becomes increasingly probable over time, so even that becomes a trivial way of defining miracles.
A: Look, people know a miracle when they see one.
B: Well, that’s not so clear to me. However, I’m not interested in quibbling about what constitutes a miracle. Does it not strike you as amazing that grape juice – water with some sugar in it – turns to wine? Imagine that is all happening through the operation of say a little animal that is invisible to our naked eye, it eats up the sugar and poops out alcohol. Is that not awe-inspiring?
A: Humph. Unlikely! Nevertheless, grape-juice to wine is indeed awe-inspiring.
B: OK. Is not life itself is a miracle. Life may be commonplace now, but it was not always so. The creation of life is a miracle. Even if only one life had been created, all subsequent generations from that one life would be amazing[6].
A: OK, yes, it is a miracle. You agreeing with me? Miracles prove that God exists?
B: Steady on. The existence of exceptional or extraordinary events may be labelled as miracles. However, I do not agree that miracles imply a sign of the hand of god. Why do you not simply doubt your understanding rather than attribute to it to be an act of god?[7]
A: But if the event were delivered in response to prayer, then wouldn’t that count as evidence of a miracle at the hands of God?[8]
B: OK. But whose god? The inhabitants of ancient Rome, Turkey, Thailand and China support their belief in their gods by pointing to miracles[9].
A: They are ignorant and barbarous peoples[10]. Their miracles are probably fabricated.
B: Which they would say about yours. Give me your reasons why you reject their evidence; they are the reasons I would use to reject your evidence!
A: Well, it is my god that performed their miracles.
B: As they would say about yours. Returning me to my key question. How can you ascribe a miracle – or anything else for that matter – to a god?
A: OK, maybe we can’t say which god, but it is a god, or even a collection of gods.
B: You might be encouraged by a fortuitous circumstance of an unusual event apparently coinciding with a request, but I do not think the evidence is compelling. Many prayers are unanswered, and I daresay many unusual events are unrequested! It is not clear that anyone ‘asked’ for creation or the great flood. In which case, we must conclude that some god decided to create these miracles of his own volition.
A: Well I already believe in God. So, I don’t need miracles to prove His existence. And given that I believe He exists, His existence gives me an explanation for miracles[11]. That’s one more explanation than you have!
B: So your belief in the existence of god has been established independently of miracles?
A: Yeah. And the existence of miracles simply serves to strengthen my belief in God.
B: Why do you need the arguments strengthened? Why would you or god bother to strengthen the argument if his existence is already established? We seem to agree that miracles can’t prove his existence. Just for interest, how is god’s existence established to your satisfaction.
A: Well, you said it yourself. The miracle of creation that gave rise to nature. Who could have created this complex world if not God? There must be a designer!
B: God is certainly one possible explanation, but not the only one. It could be that nature has provided us with an unlikely event. It maybe that Life, the universe and everything was created by some other entity[12]. Or perhaps it sprung into existence spontaneously. It seems no more unlikely to me than that god created it.
A: Is not God a simpler explanation[13]? God is the prime mover, the first cause, the creator all of nature – and the miracles that violate nature.
B: Your argument reduces to a singularity. God creates everything - nature, and all events violating nature. Is there some alternative against which we can test this idea? Besides, using god as an explanation still leaves us with the problem of explaining how god came to exist.
A: Nothing that I can imagine. Is that not as it should be? God is the ultimate beginning.
B: We are returning to what I would call magic. A miracle is an event for which we do not have an explanation. Neither miracle nor creation - nor nature by the same reasoning - proves the existence of god.
A: At some point, one must simply rely on faith. To do otherwise tempts eternal damnation[14].
B: That may well explain why so many are willing to believe in a god, but it does not prove that there is one entity – or more – who created everything.
A: Some things cannot be understood with reason. ‘I have neither hope nor expectation of convincing a skeptic simply by miracles’[15].
B: Ha! You would have me dismiss reason in this instance. Would not any man losing a debate seek to have their opponent abandon reason – especially if the opponent’s reasons do not fit the defender’s beliefs?
A: But aren’t miracles and everything prove there is a god.
B: I have an alternative theory… it proves you’re an ignorant and barbarous fool!
A: Ah, but didn’t that fellow Anselm say that ‘the fool hath said in his heart, ‘There is no God’. Does that not make you the fool?
B: Perhaps I am because Anselm said that a fool, with some understanding of God, would be forced to admit that he could not conceive that God does not exist.
A: Huh?
B: Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel too.
A: God you’re a pain to talk to.
B: They said the same about Socrates! Let’s call it quits. I agree there are miracles: (sings)
“Believe in miracles cause I’m one
I have been blessed with the power to survive
After all these years I’m still alive[16]”.
[1] The section in italics is extracted from the script of The Life of Brian by Monty Python, 1979. The remainder of the script has been created to illustrate a variety of arguments for and against the existence of god based on miracles.
[2] Hume, ‘Of Miracles,’ R+W, p.498
[3] In 30CE, death would presumably have been established by breathing, the knowledge of heart and its measurement through pulse not having been understood then.
[4] John 11 recounts Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus of Bethany who has been four days dead.
[5] C.f., Arthur C. Clarke’s observation that “Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
[6] Given that no other life has been yet found in the universe, the existence of life must count as an extreme, even singular example of an exceptional event, ‘E’ as defined by Swinburne in his paper, ‘Miracles’, R+W, p.500. As an interesting aside, the film The Life of Brian featured a bizarre scene where Brian was saved miraculously from a premature death, quite coincidentally, by a passing alien spaceship.
[7] Hume, ‘Of Miracles,’ R+W, p.495
[8] Swinburne, ‘Miracles,’ R+W, p.505
[9] c.f., Hume, ‘Of Miracles’ R+W, p.496
[10] c.f., Hume, ‘On Miracles,’ R+W, p.496
[11] Swinburne, ‘Miracles,’ R=W, p.505, from his argument that if god exists, then an explanation that an exceptional event “E is due to activity of a god is more adequately substantiated, and the occurrence of E gives further support to the evidence for the existence of a god.”
[12] Not to be confused with Douglas Adams, the author who did create a book entitled LIfe, the Universe and Everything
[13] Swinburne, ‘Miracles,’ R+W, p.506 invokes Occam’s razor to justify god as the simplest explanation.
[14] Pascal’s Wager
[15] Kathryn Kuhlman, I believe in miracles, Gainesville, FL : Bridge-Logos Publishers, 1990, p.1
[16] “I believe in miracles” by The Ramones, 1986, later re-recorded by Pearl Jam, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDwFydcnAVQ The Ramones
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