Posted by Chris Blair 03/25/26
Why not Naturalism? Part 2
Since the secular humanists deny that God is the designer of the universe, it is no surprise that they deny his supernatural interventions in the form of miracles. A prominent secular humanist, David Hume, all but completely denies the possibility of Miracles. Although he does not directly state that miracles are impossible, he states that natural laws are “simply uniform (with no credible exception)”.[1] Hume’s position is that miracles break the natural laws, making them counter to a uniformed experience by the whole of mankind.[2]
Hume makes the argument that no miracle has been confirmed by enough credible witnesses by stating, “That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish”.[3] By Hume’s logic, If a man walks down a path in spring and witnesses a woman bend over and pluck a flower out of a meadow, the required credibility of the witness is low because this event is in line with uniform experience. However, if during springtime the same man is walking down the same path and witnesses a large flower bending down and eating a woman, the credibility of the witness would have to be of a measure higher than the doubt cast by the incredibility of the event. Because a giant flower eating a woman is counter to the natural laws that are experienced by the multitudes of people walking the earth, the burden of credibility on the witness would be impossibly high for belief. In that way all miracles are beyond belief.
To counter the idea that only the observable is real, we have to look at the massive hole in Hume’s logic. They are ignoring the very thing they use to make their arguments, their own minds. To his chagrin, David Chalmers admits, in his book The Character of Consciousness, that non-material processes like the conscious experience cannot be proven by physical processes.[4] To only accept what can be proven through physical processes is to throw out the reliability of our own minds. The problem for the secular humanist is that consciousness itself is a non-material process. You cannot weigh a thought, you can’t measure the height of a feeling, and you can’t find the color spectrum of the soul, but almost everyone would agree that these things are real. As C.S. Lewis pointed out in his book Miracles, if our thoughts are just the accidental result of atoms bumping into each other in our brains, then we have no reason to trust that those thoughts are even true, including the thought that miracles are impossible.[5]
The argument Hume makes that a witness to a miracle must have a greater level of credibility than the supernatural event itself[6], is circular logic. Think about it this way; if a person already believes that miracles are possible, or if they have actually seen one themselves, then they don’t need some impossible level of proof to believe the story of a witness to a miracle. The witness would be held to the same standard of credibility used for many other claims. The only reason Hume demands such an impossibly high burden of credibility is that he has already decided, beforehand, that miracles don’t happen. The other issue Hume faces with his circular logic is when he claims a uniform experience against miracles. He would first have to discredit the multitude of miracles witnessed. He only discredits them by way of his argument, making this a circular argument. Before claiming experience to be uniform, he would first have to debunk innumerous reported miracles throughout history.
As the Designer of the universe and everything in it, God can directly intervene in a supernatural way, beyond the natural laws that we bear regular witness to. As noted in Psalms, God is the “God who works wonders,”(Psalm 77:14); meaning He has the authority to mute or intervene with the system He created. All miracles described in the Bible are done through the direct intervention of the power of God with purpose. God has created the order and reliability of the natural laws we have discovered through both scientific observation and His Word. We can read in Hebrews how God, “upholds the universe by the word of His power” (Hebrews 1:3). We can rest assured gravity will continue to work and we will not float out into space at any moment thanks to the Word of God. A universe without Him gives no guarantee that the natural laws we have observed until now will stay the same tomorrow.
There is ample historically recorded evidence of miracles: God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). God sent ten plagues to Egypt (Exodus 7:14-11:10). God parted the red sea to lead the Israelites to safety (Exodus 14:21–31). God sent mana from heaven to feed the Israelites as they wandered through the desert (Exodus 16:13–36). The virgin birth of Jesus Christ (Luke 1:26–38). Jesus turning water into wine (John 2:1–11). Jesus feeding the five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish (Luke 9:10–17). Jesus walking on water (Matthew 14:22–33). The resurrection of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:1–8). These miracles and many more were witnessed, testified to, recorded, written, and professed even to the death of the witnesses.
[1] Norman Geisler, “Miracles and Modern Scientific Thought,” in Christian Apologetics: An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. Khaldoun A. Sweis and Chad V. Meister (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 319
[2] Paul M. Gould, R. Keith Loftin, and Travis Dickinson, Stand Firm: Apologetics and the Brilliance of the Gospel (Nashville, Tennessee: B & H Academic, 2018), 55.
[3] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (London: Electric Book, 2019), 127, ProQuest Ebook Central.
[4] David J. Chalmers, The Character of Consciousness, Philosophy of Mind Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 47. Ebrary.
[5] C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (London: Geoffrey Bles, The Centenary Press, 1947), 22-24. ProQuest Ebrary.
[6] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (London: Electric Book, 2019), 127, ProQuest Ebook Central.
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