Dr. Absar Ahmed
The
term “miracle” is quite often used to refer primarily to the
response of the user. It covers a wide spectrum of application from
odd, unusual to rare and in a weaker sense “miracle” connotes
extraordinary coincidence of a beneficial nature. But the senses of
“miracle” that are of philosophical and methodological interest are
stronger and less subjectively oriented. Although they include the
idea that wonder is called for as at least part of the appropriate
response, the crux as well as the ground for the wonder is that a
miracle should consist in an overriding of the order of nature. A
miracle is something which would never have happened had nature, as
it were, been left to its own devices. In this strong understanding
of miracles, they are events which cannot be explained in terms
intelligible to the natural scientist or observer of the regular
processes of nature. Many would agree and there are historical
evidences to the effect that miracles occur or that they have
occurred. However, the topic of miracle has occasioned considerable
philosophical debate.
As
stated above, a widespread view of miracles sees them as breaks in
the natural order of events in the material world. Sometimes these
breaks are referred to as violations of natural laws and it is often
said that these breaks or violations are brought about by God or by
some extremely powerful being whose action can interfere with the
normal course of nature’s operation. Aquinas gave a perfectly clear
and unequivocal definition of miracles that makes no bones at all
about the heart of the matter, namely, that “those things are
properly called miracles which are done by divine agency beyond the
order commonly observed in nature.1 A classical
definition of miracles given in these terms also comes from David
Hume who wrote on miracles in Chapter X of his Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding.2 ‘A miracle’, says Hume, ‘may be
accurately defined as a transgression of a law of nature by a
particular volition of the deity or by the interposition of some
invisible agents.’ Again, in the 20th century, Dr. Eric
Mascal, remaining in the same forthright tradition, insisted in his
article in Chamber’s Encyclopaedia that the word “miracle”
signifies in Christian theology a striking interposition of divine
power by which the operations of the ordinary course of nature are
overruled, suspended, or modified. In the perspective of the Holy
Quran, miracles are not only overriding but also signs and portents
for all those who ponder and reflect. I shall explicate the manifold
nuances and derivatives of the words “aijaz” and “mu’jaza”
(miraculous and prodigious) in the later part of this article.
Let
us first, very briefly and schematically deal with David Hume’s
position - the main and strongest opponent of miracles (as
understood in the theistic framework) in modern Western thought. His
main contention was, in his own words, that “a miracle can never be
proved so as to be the foundation of a system of religion.” For him,
all other questions about the miraculous were officially, at least
merely, incidental to this basic tenet. Hume is supposed to have
demonstrated the irrationality of the belief in miracles. If Hume is
right, it is never rational to believe that some event is a miracle,
or a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of
the Deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent. Recently,
there have been attempts, made largely by analytical philosophers,
to show that there are circumstances in which it is not irrational
to believe that some events are miraculous. Steve Clark’s article
“Hume’s Definition of Miracle Revised”3 and Paul Dietl’s
article “On Miracles”4 are admirable attempts in this
direction. Against Hume, Clark has argued that we can construct a
set of circumstances under which it would be rational to believe in
miracles, more rational indeed than any alternative account of the
anomalous occurrences. Thus, if we are confronted with repeated,
reliable reports of a type of event which is an anomaly to a
well-established law of nature, then Hume’s probability objection
does not hold. If further we are unable to justify allowing the
exception as a ceteris paribus clause to the law, and we have
no realistic expectations of being able to do so in the foreseeable
future, then it becomes rational to believe that miracles have
occurred; that is, there has been a supernatural violation of
natural laws. Believing in miracles under these circumstances has
the advantage of putting the anomalous occurrences within a
theological framework, thus, protecting the well-established law of
nature by securing its universality over naturally caused events.
Following this strategy, the defence of the belief in miracles is
not bogged down in the charge of incoherence, because there is no
natural violation of a natural law, or alternatively, no
violation of a natural law as it applies to naturally caused events.
All
the objections raised by Hume against the possibility of miracles
are conjectural, hypothetical or at least tentative and based on
whimsied opinion. As a matter of fact contained within the general
idea of believing in miracle are many different ideas, such as the
law of nature, the “transgression” of such a law, a supernatural
agent or God, when it is rational to believe something, and, so on,
each with its own logical structure. It is not surprising at all,
rather it is quite conceivable that opportunities exist for
adjusting the structures of the constituent ideas to render the
belief in miracles rational. For instance, Richard Swinburne5
has argued that the notion of “transgression” can be understood in
such a way that a miracle is not a violation of any law of nature.
Alternatively, laws of nature can be conceived in such a way as to
allow for miraculous violations of them.6 Similarly Brian
Davies, Antony Flew and J. C. A. Gaskin make strong and convincing
criticisms against the Humean rejection of miracles. For example,
Brian Davies presents an elaborate critical review thus.7
Suppose that some event occurs and is monitored by strict scientific
methods. Let us suppose that some amazing planetary motion is
observed and that the whole process is noted by the most reputable
scientists in the world. If we now say that this event can be
explained in terms of some law of nature, we will evidently have to
show that it exemplifies some previously noted phenomena and is
understandable. But it may be that nobody observing it would say
that it does exemplify some previously noted phenomena - at least,
not in the sense that it exemplifies any phenomena reported and
assimilated by scientists. If we want to deny that any natural law
has been violated in this case, we will therefore have to revise our
theories about the behaviour of the planets. The trouble now is that
it might be enormously expensive to do so. We might have to agree,
for example, that in accordance with perfectly natural laws it is
more than conceivable that the planets should behave in the way
observed on the occasion now in question. And such a position might
play havoc with a vast amount of scientific theory. In such
circumstances it might, in fact, be more economical and more
reasonable to accept that a law of nature has been violated. But if
this is correct, it follows that a law of nature can reasonably be
said to be violated and that Hume is wrong to say that miracles are
absolutely impossible.
Nor
does it seem that this conclusion of Hume’s is entirely consistent
with some other things that he says. As is well-known to students of
Hume, he denies any necessary connection between cause and effect.
So how can he be so sure that certain reported events, like those
said to have occurred in the Bible and the Quran could never happen?
Antony Flew8 suggests that when Hume declares that
certain miracles are ‘impossible’ he means that they are physically
impossible, not logically impossible. Flew adds that ‘the criterion
of physical as opposed to logical impossibility simply is logical
incompatibility with a law of nature in the broadest sense. But in
that case Hume is saying either that certain events do not happen or
that what is said to happen conflicts with what we take to be laws
of nature. But the first suggestion is not equivalent to the
assertion that certain events could not happen and is in any case
simply over-dogmatic and hardly a proof of anything relevant to a
philosophical discussion of miracles. And the second suggestion
seems open to the reply that what we take to be a law of nature may
just not be so. This point is well brought out by J. C. A. Gaskin:
Consider an example. Hume could have said (with complete
justification) that it was physically impossible, according to the
best nomologicals [propositions stating supposed laws of nature] at
his disposal, for a man in England to be able to talk to and see a
man who is at the same time in America. Now if he had taken this to
mean ‘it could not happen that ….’ Then we would simply retort it
has happened. In short, if we are to employ the notion of
physical impossibility, the most this can mean is that: within ‘our’
experience of the world the event has not happened, nor are we able
to conceive how it could happen, nor could it possibly happen if
the laws of nature have in fact the form and content which we
attribute to them. What force then has such impossibility got as
used by a ‘just reasoner’ against a report of a miracle? No more
force than Hume’s original argument that the event is against all
our past and what we presume to be our invariable experience. That
is, there is a strong and rational presumption against the event but
not a demonstration of its ‘absolute impossibility’ in any sense of
that phrase in which it can be taken to imply ‘could not happen’.9
Two
very serious faults in Hume’s presentation of his denial of miracles
may be formulated thus: The first fault is a rather unwarranted
dogmatism of disbelief. For against all his own high, sceptical
principles, Hume tended to take it for granted that what in his own
day he and all his fellow men of sense firmly believed about the
order of nature constituted not just humanly fallible opinion, but
the incorrigible last word. He was thus betrayed into categorically
dismissing as downright impossible certain reported phenomena which
the later progress in the study of human psychology and
psychosomatic medicine has since shown to have been perfectly
possible. There is no gainsaying the importance of the canons of
historical criticism and the determination of possibility and
probability in evidence, but one must not fail to appreciate that
all such canons are themselves subject to criticism, correction and
updating. I have above called Hume’s dogmatic disbelief unwarranted
because the radically different ideas (different from those held in
Hume’s days) have undermined the old notion of solidity of matter
and a mechanistic worldview. Though Hume rightly emphasized the role
of sentiments and emotion in human nature, his overall vision was
extremely myopic. Recent development, growth and depth of psychology
has, on the other hand, opened up a new window on unravelling the
inner denizens of human psyche, especially in the work of Stanislav
Grof, which has revolutionized the psychodynamic theory with
profound implications for religion.10
The
second major fault in Hume’s treatment is more serious. He was
unable to provide an adequate account of the logical character of a
law of nature. Hence, he could not offer any sufficiently persuasive
rationale for employing propositions which express, or which are
believed to express, such natural laws. The way may thus seem to be
open for a historian who holds different presuppositions, yet still
remains truly a historian, to endorse as veridical stories of events
which, had they occurred, would have been truly miraculous. In my
considered opinion few topics have in fact been more misunderstood
or mishandled than miracles. Hume and all his acolytes put entirely
the wrong interpretation on the prominence of miracles in the
revealed narratives and unduly oversimplify the issue. We shall find
the position not radically different in the cases of Muslim scholars
who were under the spell of 19th century naturalism. It
was as a result of deistic view of God and His relation to the
universe that Sayyid Ahmad Khan denied the possibility of miracles
and efficacy of prayer. As is well-known, he did not accept miracles
as violation of nature for the “law of nature”, according to him,
“is a practical promise of God that something will happen so, and if
we say it can happen otherwise we are accusing Him of going against
His promise and this is inconceivable.”11 Very strangely
he maintains that he does not deny the possibility of miracles
because they are against reason, but because the Quran does not
support the happenings of events or occurrences that are against the
law of nature or those that violate the usual course of things.
Sayyed Ahmad Khan was definitely wrong in this view as the Quran is
full of the accounts of miracles of earlier prophets and Prophet
Muhammad himself. It is solely on account of naturalist/ apologetic
interpretation of miracles very clear and oft-reported that his
Tafsir did not gain popularity among the devout Muslims. If God
is the mere Cause of causes and cannot rise above the laws of
nature, then he is God only in name. God is really dethroned and all
religious emotion and life become extinct. Sayyed Ahmad Khan is
perhaps excusable as he was enchanted and overzealously influenced
by the invading culture. The West had cast religion aside by
submitting to the sovereignty of science. The world was no more
located in God’s omnipotence, nor was it explainable through
revelatory knowledge but only through man’s sensory experiences,
explainable through a mechanistic materialism. Einstein and Planck’s
non-material view would take some time before it made its presence
felt.
In
the Quranic perspective, God is the Alpha and Omega of being and as
such there is no duality or opposition between the natural and the
supernatural. From the point of this theistic conception, the
autonomy of nature, as it is increasingly confirmed by the sciences,
offers no contradiction to religious belief and faith. The sciences
are exploring a universe which is divinely created and sustained,
but which has its own God-given autonomy and integrity. The Quran
repudiates the conception of science as a simple, exclusively
materialistic and totalising discourse. The entire cosmos and
natural processes are important phenomena pointing beyond themselves
to Divine activity. The Quran, and for that matter all revealed
scriptures, know nothing of nature as a closed self-regulating
system of law. Indeed from this point of view the very word “nature”
as understood by mechanistic naturalists is un-Quranic. There is a
continuum as one moves from the natural to the supra-natural. For
the Quran, the whole of nature is one firm, well-knit structure with
no gaps, no ruptures, and no dislocations. It works by its own laws,
which have been ingrained in it by God, and is, therefore,
autonomous, but it is not autocratic, for in itself, it has no
warrant or ultimacy for its own existence and cannot explain itself.
Those who think that nature is “given” and therefore somehow
“necessary” are like a child for whom toys are a “given” and
therefore somehow “necessary”.
Since nature is well-knit and working with laws that have been made
inherent in it, there is undoubtedly “natural causation” and Quran
recognizes this and calls it sunnat-Allah. This, however,
does not mean that God creates nature and then goes to sleep; nor
does this mean that God and nature or God and the human will are
rivals and function at the expense of each other; nor yet does it
mean that God operates in addition to the operations of man and
nature. Nature’s magnitude and utility for man, as well as the
stability and regularity of natural phenomena are stressed. If you
sow seeds and nurture the saplings, you can expect to reap the
harvest; otherwise not. The working of natural causes, therefore, is
inevitable and undeniable. The Quran uses both naturalistic and
religious idioms to describe all world phenomena, with no question
of contradiction between the two. On the contrary, the religious
idiom presupposes the naturalistic language, and far from
supplanting it, envelops it: winds and clouds do cause rains but it
is God who brings rain and Who is working within the natural causes.
Quran is replete with historically authentic accounts of tangible
miracles which provided evidence in support of the Prophet’s claim
to be designated by God. The Quraysh unbelievers had repeatedly
asked the Prophet (Peace be upon him) to produce such signs. Quran’s
philosophy with regard to showing “signs” or “miracles” to people
however was that once people witnessed such miracles and still
refused to believe it, they inevitably invited God’s chastisement
upon themselves. Such people were not spared from destruction. If
they did not care to accept the truth even after witnessing
miracles, then they were bound to meet the calamitous end of nations
like the Thamud. Miracles were never performed to entertain people.
Their underlying purpose had always been to make people realize that
the Prophets enjoyed the support of God’s infinite power.
Additionally they served to warn people of the dire consequences of
disobeying Him.
If
people are concerned with miraculous signs in order to determine
whether or not the message of the Prophet (Peace be upon him) is
indeed true, then let them look around with open and attentive eyes.
If they actually do so they will find the world full of such signs.
Let them take any species of animal or bird they like. They can
reflect upon the superbness of its organic structure. They will
notice how its instinctive urges are in complete conformity with its
natural requirements. They will also observe how wonderfully
adequate are the arrangements for providing it with nourishment; how
marvellously well-determined are the limits within which it lives,
how tremendously efficient is the system under which each living
creature is protected, provided for, looked after and directed
towards self-fulfilment; how strictly each one is fitted into the
framework of the discipline devised for it, and how very smooth is
the operation of the whole system of birth, procreation and death.
Were one to reflect on this alone from among the innumerable signs
of God, one would perceive fully how true the teaching of the
Prophet is concerning the reality, unity and other attributes of God
and how necessary it is to live a righteous life in conformity with
the concept of God preached by Him (Al-An’am: 38).
When the pagans of Mecca demanded “signs” or miracles from the
Prophet, the Quran’s usual response was to point out the complexity,
the regularity, and the order of nature itself, and to emphasize
that the universe and all that is in it could not have brought
themselves into existence. This claim appears to rest on the
assumption, or rather seeks to prove, that the same God who created
nature and displayed His wisdom therein so clearly has also revealed
the verses (ayat, also meaning “signs”) of the Quran. Thus
Muhammad’s claim of prophecy stood vindicated. Thus, whereas natural
miracles are, in a sense, weak for most mankind and in the Quran are
usually called simply ayat, the historical (portents)
miracles, the supernatural miracles, and much more patently the
revelation, are called ayat bayyinat, or simply bayyinat:
clear, manifest, and indubitable signs. Previous nations had been
shown supernatural miracles at the hands of their prophets exactly
as they had demanded them, but the people still rejected the
prophets. Similarly if Muhammad (Peace be upon him) were to bring a
thousand miracles to the Meccans or to Jews, it still would do them
no good.
The
demonstration of life after death, the incidence of the quickening
of four birds for Abraham,12 the birth of a child to the
infertile wife of Zechariah, the miraculous birth of Jesus, the
consumption by a fire from the sky of the sacrifice accepted by God.13
Prophet Saleh’s she-camel, numerous miracles of Moses,14
Job’s (Ayyub) striking the ground with his foot and flowing of a
spring15 are some of innumerable occurrences of miracles
narrated by the Quran. They are, so to speak, macro-miracles which
do not admit of any apologetic reduction, attenuation or
reinterpretation. From the religious point of view, all attempts at
naturalist interpretation of such authentic happenings are at best
irrelevant, and at worst, they take away the religiousness of the
belief in miracles, depriving the believer an important expression
of religiousness. The belief in the veracity of miracles, to be a
religious belief, is an expression of a certain passion, and is not
a matter of cognition and hence not a matter of sense-based limited
rationality. On the other hand, we cannot rule out God’s hands even
in the ordinary affairs of life - the level of, what may be called,
micro-miracles. Here even process/activities like speaking or
lifting one’s arm are nothing less than a miracle (all neuro-physiological
explanations notwithstanding). Even intending to move my arm
involves what Nicolai Hartmann has aptly called ‘a plus of
determination’ which uses physical processes without wholly
suspending them. The element of nescience and uncanny in the field
of mind-body relationship puts in bold relief subtle affinity
between my sense of micro-miracles and Flanagan’s mysterianism.16
Flanagan uses the term “Mysterian” for the position that there is
something fundamentally inexplicable about how physical processes
result in conscious experience. According to his view, mysterianism
in its strong sense means our inability to explain consciousness.
And it reflects a built-in cognitive limitation. Week mysterianism
remains more agnostic. We cannot understand how consciousness would
be physical, and, what is more, this is a fundamental sort of not
understanding; not the sort that is alleviated by a little more
research along the same lines we have explored already. Indeed many
philosophers today openly express their epistemic puzzlement on the
issues and plead to live with puzzlement. And, in my view, it
corroborates and affirms the Quranic assertion:
O
men, you have been granted very little of (real) knowledge
(Bani
Israel 17:85)
Man
is endowed with as much knowledge only as he is capable of
understanding and utilizing; and a knowledge of the nature of soul
does not lie within his purview. Even the physical nature of life is
not quite easy for modern science to explain, and this is admitted
by the leading biologists themselves. And quite a few materialist
philosophers have been led to confess: “The more we learn about
nature, the more do we become aware of our own ignorance.” The
sphere of the Unknown is infinite; the sphere of the Known may be
expanding but is always finite.17
There are, however, people who cannot swallow the notion of
epistemic puzzlement or mystery. Perhaps it would be useful to draw
their attention to this passage by Albert Einstein. “The fairest
thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental
emotion which stands at the cradle of true science. He who knows it
not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good
as dead.” Einstein’s view was shared by other great scientists -
Niels Bohr, Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg - who concluded (at the
end of their life-long enquiries) that there is room in a rational
universe for incomprehensible wonders. We must, therefore, realize
that the biggest, most fascinating mysteries are to be savoured, not
resolved.
References
1.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 2, Chap. 10,
Trans. Vernon J. Bourke (New York, 1956), P.82.
2.
Enquiry,
P.115.
3.
See his article in American Philosophical Quarterly,
36 (1999): 49-57. Also immensely thought provoking his earlier
piece. “When to believe
in Miracles”, American Philosophical Quarterly, 34 (1997):
95-102
4.
See his article in American Philosophical Quarterly,
5(1968): 130-34.
5.
Richard Swinburne, The Concept of Miracles (London and
Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1970).
6.
M. Leckey and J. Bigelow, “The Necessitarian Perspective:
Laws as Natural Entailments” in F. Weinert ed. Laws of Nature
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 1995), pp. 92-119.
7.
Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of
Religion, (Oxford: OPUS Books, 1993), PP. 110-11.
8.
Antony Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief (London,
1961) P. 168.
9.
J.C.A Gaskin, Hume’s Philosophy of Religion (London,
1960), Ch.7.
10.
See Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), P.427-29.
11.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Tafsir-ul-Quran, Volume III,
P.28.
12.
Al-Baqarah:
259,260.
13.
Al-Imran
40,47,183.
14.
Bani Israil:
59,101,102; Taha: 40,67-70.
15.
Al-Anbia: 83.
16.
Flanagan, D. (1992), Consciousness Reconsidered.
Cambridge, MD, The MIT Press.
17.
Dr. Absar Ahmed’ “Science & Philosophy of Mind”, Science
Religion Dialogue Vol-I No.2, (Mansehra: Hazara Society For
Science Religion Dialogue, 2003) P.13.
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