Miracles

Note: Last Updated 6/4/2025.

E. B. White:

     “Have you heard about the words that appeared in the spider’s web?” asked Mrs. Arable nervously.

     “Yes,” replied the doctor.

     “Well, do you understand it?” asked Mrs. Arable.

     “Understand what?”

     “Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider’s web?”

     “Oh, no,” said Dr. Dorian. “I don’t understand it. But for that matter I don’t understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.”

     “What’s miraculous about a spider’s web?” said Mrs. Arable. “I don’t see why you say a web is a miracle—it’s just a web.”

     “Ever try to spin one?” asked Dr. Dorian.

(E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web, [New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1999], pp. 108-109.)

The Possibility of Miracles.

John Chrysostom:

For if He did not rise again, but remains dead, how did the Apostles perform miracles in His name? But they did not, say you, perform miracles? How then was our religion instituted? …For this would be the greatest of miracles, that without any miracles, the whole world should have eagerly come to be taken in the nets of twelve poor and illiterate men.

(John Chrysostom, A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Homily 1; trans. NPNF1, 11:5.)

C. S. Lewis:

     There is also an objection to Hume which leads us deeper into our problem. The whole idea of Probability (as Hume understands it) depends on the principle of the Uniformity of Nature. Unless Nature always goes on in the same way, the fact that a thing had happened ten million times would not make it a whit more probable that it would happen again. And how do we know the Uniformity of Nature? A moment’s thought shows that we do not know it by experience. We observe many regularities in Nature. But of course all the observations that men have made or will make while the race lasts cover only a minute fraction of the events that actually go on. Our observations would therefore be of no use unless we felt sure that Nature when we are not watching her behaves in the same way as when we are: in other words, unless we believed in the Uniformity of Nature. Experience therefore cannot prove uniformity, because uniformity has to be assumed before experience proves anything. And mere length of experience does not help matters. It is no good saying, “Each fresh experience confirms our belief in uniformity and therefore we reasonably expect that it will always be confirmed”; for that argument works only on the assumption that the future will resemble the past—which is simply the assumption of Uniformity under a new name. Can we say that Uniformity is at any rate very probable? Unfortunately not. We have just seen that all probabilities depend on it. Unless Nature is uniform, nothing is either probable or improbable. And clearly the assumption which you have to make before there is any such thing as probability cannot itself be probable.

     The odd thing is that no man knew this better than Hume. His Essay on Miracles is quite inconsistent with the more radical, and honourable, scepticism of his main work.

     The question, “Do miracles occur?” and the question, “Is the course of Nature absolutely uniform?” are the same question asked in two different ways. Hume, by sleight of hand, treats them as two different questions. He first answers “Yes,” to the question whether Nature is absolutely uniform: and then uses this “Yes” as a ground for answering, “No,” to the question, “Do miracles occur?” The single real question which he set out to answer is never discussed at all. He gets the answer to one form of the question by assuming the answer to another form of the same question.

     Probabilities of the kind that Hume is concerned with hold inside the framework of an assumed Uniformity of Nature. When the question of miracles is raised we are asking about the validity or perfection of the frame itself. No study of probabilities inside a given frame can ever tell us how probable it is that the frame itself can be violated. Granted a school time-table with French on Tuesday morning at ten o’clock, it is really probable that Jones, who always skimps his French preparation, will be in trouble next Tuesday, and that he was in trouble on any previous Tuesday. But what does this tell us about the probability of the time-table’s being altered? To find that out you must eavesdrop in the masters’ common-room. It is no use studying the time-table.

(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Touchstone, 1996], XIII: On Probability, pp. 135-136.)

C. S. Lewis:

     The second assumption which Professor Price attributes to the scientific method is ‘that laws can only be discovered by the study of publicly observable regularities.’ Of course they can. This does not seem to me to be an assumption so much as a self-evident proposition. But what is it to the purpose? If a miracle occurs it is by definition an interruption of regularity. To discover a regularity is by definition not to discover its interruptions, even if they occur. You cannot discover a railway accident from studying Bradshaw: only by being there when it happens or hearing about it afterwards from someone who was. You cannot discover extra half-holidays by studying a school timetable: you must wait till they are announced. But surely this does not mean that a student of Bradshaw is logically forced to deny the possibility of railway accidents. This point of scientific method merely shows (what no one to my knowledge ever denied) that if miracles did occur, science, as science, could not prove, or disprove, their occurrence. What cannot be trusted to recur is not material for science: that is why history is not one of the sciences. You cannot find out what Napoleon did at the battle of Austerlitz by asking him to come and fight it again in a laboratory with the same combatants, the same terrain, the same weather, and in the same age. You have to go to the records. We have not, in fact, proved that science excludes miracles: we have only proved that the question of miracles, like innumerable other questions, excludes laboratory treatment.

(C. S. Lewis, “Religion Without Dogma?” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], p. 134.)

Charles Babbage:

…if independent witnesses can be found, who speak truth more frequently than falsehood, it is ALWAYS possible to assign a number of independent witnesses, the improbability of the falsehood of whose concurring testimonies shall be greater than that of the improbability of the miracle itself.

(Charles Babbage, The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment: Second Edition, [London: John Murray, 1838], “Appendix E,” p. 202.)

Thomas Sherlock:

     Suppose you saw a man publicly executed, his body afterward wounded by the executioner, and carried and laid in the grave; that after this you should be told that the man came to life again; what would you suspect in this case? Not that the man had never been dead, for that you saw yourself; but you would suspect whether he was now alive. But would you say, this case excluded all human testimony, and that men could not possibly discern whether one with whom they conversed familiarly was alive or not? On what ground could you say this? A man rising from the grave is an object of sense and can give the same evidence of his being alive as any other man in the world can give. So that a resurrection considered only as a fact to be proved by evidence is a plain case; it requires no greater ability in the witnesses than that they are able to distinguish between a man dead and a man alive; a point in which I believe every man living thinks himself a judge.

     I do allow that this case and others of like nature require more evidence to give them credit than ordinary cases do. You may therefore require more evidence in these than in other cases, but it is absurd to say that such cases admit no evidence when the things in question are manifestly objects of sense.

(Thomas Sherlock, The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Christ, [New York: Lane & Scott, 1849], pp. 65-66.)

The Nature of Miracles.

C. S. Lewis:

     It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn’t. If I knock out my pipe I alter the position of a great many atoms: in the long run, and to an infinitesimal degree, of all the atoms there are. Nature digests or assimilates this event with perfect ease and harmonises it in a twinkling with all other events. It is one more bit of raw material for the laws to apply to, and they apply. I have simply thrown one event into the general cataract of events and it finds itself at home there and conforms to all other events. If God annihilates or creates or deflects a unit of matter He has created a new situation at that point. Immediately all Nature domiciles this new situation, makes it at home in her realm, adapts all other events to it. It finds itself conforming to all the laws. If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. We see every day that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to the point where she is invaded, as the defensive forces rush to a cut in our finger, and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern. It does not violate the law’s proviso, ‘If A, then B’: it says, ‘But this time instead of A, A2,’ and Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies Then ‘Then B2’ and naturalises the immigrant, as she well knows how. She is an accomplished hostess.

(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002], pp. 94-95.)

Henri Blocher:

…the idea of violation of the laws of nature is not at the forefront of the scriptural narrative when miracles are treated. It might be wondered whether this is strictly speaking a biblical notion—especially when terms as loaded as “transgression” and “violation” are employed. Many phenomena called miracles in Scripture took place according to causal chain reactions, in an entirely ordinary manner, which did not bring about any apparent transgression of the normal workings of the cosmos. It is mainly through the interpretation which several evangelical Commentators have given to miracles which, on the surface and perhaps due to the heritage of Sunday school, seem to be transgressions of the laws of nature. If the language of the Bible is better understood, however, this is not the case.

     Let us consider, for example, the famous episode of the sun that Joshua would have caused to stand still—implying that the entire solar system had paused for a few hours, entailing the abrogation of all the laws of gravitation. Is that what the text really says? It does not appear so. An evangelical scholar and expert in ancient languages (professor at the Princeton School of Theology), Robert Dick Wilson, was able to demonstrate by citing Mesopotamian astronomical tables that the biblical language signifies that, in reality, an eclipse took place. God so ordered this natural phenomenon to occur at that precise moment, thus throwing confusion into the enemy ranks and permitting Joshua to seize the victory. The miracle was the coincidence, in God’s plan, between the battle and the eclipse (which informed astronomers would have predicted, with its exact time).

     Concerning the crossing of the Sea of Reeds (yam sûf, and not the Red Sea—later texts speak of the Red Sea but the text in Exodus, Exodus 14, speaks of the Sea of Reeds), often the phenomenon is imagined whereby all the laws of nature were violated, where the waters, all of a sudden, stood vertical, forming an aquatic wall as if frozen (with salt water no less!). The language of Exodus and the references made later to the episode can be interpreted in an entirely different sense. The waters formed a rampart, a wall, but not in the literal sense of a straight-cut panel. They formed a rampart with respect to the Egyptians, who were on the attack (as is evidenced by the translation “fortified wall” in Exodus 14:22 and Psalm 78:13), is probable that, in a marshy area of a depth of one or two meters, with systems of small lakes interconnected by narrow passageways, an extremely powerful wind drove and backed up a mass of water of one of the swampy lakes to another, making a dry passage. The waters thus piled up formed a kind of rampart, which permitted the children of Israel to pass through. Then, when the Egyptians threw themselves headlong after the Israelites (would they have done so if they had seen a wall of water ten meters high?), God changed the direction of the wind, and the piled-up waters gushed down upon them. This is likely what happened. It is a plausible interpretation of the biblical texts, which remains faithful to them. Here again, no particular transgression of the laws of nature occurred, but only a synchronization in conformity with the Lord’s plan.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], pp. 95-97.)

Henri Blocher:

The principal biblical terms for speaking of the miracles do not imply per se that there is a discontinuity in the causal chain, or transgression of the laws of nature. …None of these terms lays emphasis on the violation of the laws of nature, but rather on a series of traits: something highly unusual which surprises, which displays a power that is not at the disposal of man. Something humans only dream about without ever being able to carry out on their own now takes place! Whether improbable coincidences that occur at just the right moment or certain unhoped-for expectations that are fulfilled! It is the power of God that is thereby denoted. This power does not act simply to be seen. Rather, it is designed to challenge, to instruct, and always to reveal the presence of God. The biblical perspective on miracles beckons first and foremost to show interest in their meaning.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], pp. 97, 98.)

Henri Blocher:

     For all the biblical writers, miracles are conceived of as divine interventions in a system where God is active and directs everything that takes place. Miracles are unusual, it goes without saying. However, at bottom, they do not differ from other events which occur, since everything proceeds from God. God directs everything that happens according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11). It has been stated, a bit tongue in cheek, that it should be not said that “it rains,” but rather that “God rains,” or more precisely, that “God makes it rain.” Everything that takes place issues from the activity of the Most High who superintends all things and who orders all things with wisdom. Miracles belong to the workings of God. An ancient expression for them is most apropos: they are “extraordinary providences.” God governs all things and provides for the needs of his creatures, sustaining them. Without him, everything would collapse, as Psalm 104 states. God acts in his providence, in a regulated and usual manner. However, he dispenses freely as well certain “extraordinary providences.” Thus, God intervenes, provides in another manner, according to need, while drawing ever more attention to his superintending and redemptive work. In sum, in response to ill-informed objections, it must be emphasized: in the biblical worldview, miracles are integrated into a larger whole which might simply be called divine providence.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], pp. 98-99.)

Note: Christ raising Lazarus from the dead is no more an “act of God” than His causing the sun to rise this morning. Whether He ministers directly—primary causation—or through the “ordinary” workings of nature—secondary causes—God remains the sovereign source of every effect. He is no more or less the ultimate cause when He operates through secondary means. In His transcendence, He is beyond creation; in His immanence, He sustains it continuously. At every moment and in every event, God both governs and upholds all things (Revelation 22:13; Colossians 1:17; Acts 17:28).

Cf. Sir Francis Bacon:

     That notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from Creating since the first Sabbath, yet, nevertheless, he doth accomplish and fulfil his Divine Will in all Things, great and small, singular and general; as fully and exactly by Providence, as he could by Miracle and new Creation, though his Working be not immediate and direct, but by Compass; not violating Nature, which is his own Law upon the Creature.

(Francis Bacon, A Confession of Faith, [London: W. Owen, 1757], p. 17.)

Note: See further: Providence.

Cf. John 5:17:

But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”

(New American Standard Bible: 1995 Edition.)

John Polkinghorne:

Miracles are not to be interpreted as divine acts against the laws of nature (for those laws are themselves expressions of God’s will) but as more profound revelations of the character of the divine relationship to creation. To be credible, miracles must convey a deeper understanding than could have been obtained without them. Hence the language of ‘signs’ used in the fourth Gospel.

(John Polkinghorne, Science and Theology: An Introduction, [London: SPCK, 1998], p. 93.)

Henri Blocher:

The Lord God has arranged the natural world with an order, he has established regular correlations, but he has not thereby tied his own hands! His is not a system that would stand on its own and remain closed in on itself. The correlations and operating rules are at the disposal of the Lord and need him to exist.

…Given that God established certain regularities, the researcher can examine them, carry out experiments with a view to unlocking their mechanisms, repeat them in the laboratory, and finally quantify them. That does not exclude God from acting, too, if he so pleases, outside of these regularities.

     We are obliged to affirm that God does this very thing, that he acts outside of these regularities which scholars call the “laws of nature.” We have given several examples of biblical miracles in which that has perhaps not taken place, as some suppose. In certain cases, however, we must simply admit that God acts outside these laws. He does not constrain himself to the ordinary correlations.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], p. 100, 100-101.)

Jürgen Moltmann:

When Jesus expels demons and heals the sick, he is driving out of creation the powers of destruction, and is healing and restoring created beings who are hurt and sick. The lordship of God to which the healings witness, restores sick creation to health. Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly ‘natural’ thing in a world that is unnatural, demonized and wounded. As parables of the kingdom, Jesus’ parables are also parables of the new creation in the midst of the everyday life of this exhausted world. Finally, with the resurrection of Christ, the new creation begins, pars pro toto, with the crucified one.

(Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, trans. Margaret Kohl, [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993], pp. 98-99.) Preview.

Cf. C. S. Lewis:

     How a miracle can be no inconsistency, but the highest consistency, will be clear to those who have read Miss Dorothy Sayers’ indispensable book, The Mind of the Maker. Miss Sayers’ thesis is based on the analogy between God’s relation to the world, on the one hand, and an author’s relation to his book on the other. If you are writing a story, miracles or abnormal events may be bad art, or they may not. If, for example, you are writing an ordinary realistic novel and have got your characters into a hopeless muddle, it would be quite intolerable if you suddenly cut the knot and secured a happy ending by having a fortune left to the hero from an unexpected quarter. On the other hand there is nothing against taking as your subject from the outset the adventures of a man who inherits an unexpected fortune. The unusual event is perfectly permissible if it is what you are really writing about: it is an artistic crime if you simply drag it in by the heels to get yourself out of a hole. . . . Now there is no doubt that a great deal of the modern objection to miracles is based on the suspicion that they are marvels of the wrong sort; that a story of a certain kind (Nature) is arbitrarily interfered with, to get the characters out of a difficulty, by events that do not really belong to that kind of story. Some people probably think of the Resurrection as a desperate last moment expedient to save the Hero from a situation which had got out of the Author’s control.

     The reader may set his mind at rest. . . . If they have occurred, they have occurred because they are the very thing this universal story is about. They are not exceptions (however rarely they occur) nor irrelevancies. They are precisely those chapters in this great story on which the plot turns. Death and Resurrection are what the story is about; and had we but eyes to see it, this has been hinted on every page, met us, in some disguise, at every turn, and even been muttered in conversations between such minor characters (if they are minor characters) as the vegetables. If you have hitherto disbelieved in miracles, it is worth pausing a moment to consider whether this is not chiefly because you thought you had discovered what the story was really about? — that atoms, and time and space and economics and politics were the main plot? And is it certain you were right? It is easy to make mistakes in such matters. . . . it is a very long story, with a complicated plot; and we are not, perhaps, very attentive readers.

(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Touchstone, 1996], XII: The Propriety of Miracles, pp. 130-131.)

False Teachers / False Miracles.

Henri Blocher:

     The Bible emphasizes that false teachers, which is to say purveyors of false doctrine, will work miracles. . . . False prophets and false Christs will come with miracles “so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24 RSV). If we were left to ourselves, we would fall into the same trap as well, so strong in our hearts is this unhealthy craving, but God protects his elect! The Old Testament, likewise, solemnly warned long ago that if one tried to turn the people of God toward idols, even if he did great signs and wonders, he should be shown no quarter and must be completely shunned (Deuteronomy 13). The Bible envisions that wonders, through the power of Satan, may very well be wrought, as outside causalities which overrule the framework of cause and effect. Since the forces of evil are very much real, they can produce real effects.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], p. 102.)

Henri Blocher:

     The Bible warns believers not to allow themselves to fall into deception. Miracles are given as confirmatory signs of the message. When the Lord does bestow them, they must not be dismissed out of hand either, as if we were wiser or more correct in our understanding than God! The gospel was confirmed by miracles (Hebrews 2:2-4), so they indeed have a positive role. But it must first be the Word itself, in the continuity of revelation, which is determinative. If there is no continuity of revelation, nor harmony with the teachings of the prophets of old, then the miracles are worthless and must instead be denounced as so many snares, as poisonous lures.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], pp. 102-103.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria

Mind/Consciousness

Note: Last Updated 4/26/2025.

Mind.

C. S. Lewis:

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen for physical or chemical reasons to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a bye-product, the sensation I call thought. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk-jug and hoping that the way the splash arranges itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I can’t believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.

(C. S. Lewis, Broadcast Talks, [London: Geoffrey Bles; The Centenary Press, 1943], Part II: What Christians Believe, §. I, pp. 36-37.)

C. S. Lewis:

     I was taught at school, when I had done a sum, to “prove my answer”. The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this. When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonizing it with some particular truths which are imbedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole. Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of the primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test. This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the night mare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.

(C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” In: C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes a Toast: And Other Pieces, [London: Fontana Books, 1965], pp. 57-58.)

Thomas C. Oden:

     The emergence of mind in evolutionary history requires the hypothesis that God exists. The pervasive presence of intelligibility in the evolving world and in our minds requires the premise of God. There cannot be a universe without a Universal Mind that in some ways corresponds with our own finite minds (cf. C. S. Pierce, Collected Papers VI, pp. 345 ff.; F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theol. Il, chap. IV, pp. 79 ff.; H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. 60 ff.; Calvin, Inst. 1.5; 1.14 ff.). The argument from mind differs from the arguments from order or design in that they use largely inanimate or animal metaphors (arrows, clocks, animal adaptation), whereas the argument from mind proceeds from the empirical observation of emerging intelligence in history and natural-historical development, especially human mind.

     This argument begins with the remarkable fact that intelligent consciousness undeniably exists in the world. Not only is the world itself intelligible, but also our minds are capable of grasping that intelligibility. That we live in an intelligible world is a fact that is absolutely necessary to any language or discourse whatever. The premise of intelligibility is a necessary precondition of our minds’ even thinking about this question or any other (cf. Clement of Alex., Strom. V.13, ANF II, pp. 465 ff.; Calvin, Inst. 1.3). That intelligence exists to apprehend that intelligibility is itself the most astonishing fact of natural history’s development.

(Thomas C. Oden, Systematic Theology: Volume One: The Living God, [Peabody: Prince Press, 2001], p. 147.)

C. S. Lewis:

     Perhaps this may be even more simply put in another way. Every particular thought (whether it is a judgment of fact or a judgment of value) is always and by all men discounted the moment they believe that it can be explained, without remainder, as the result of irrational causes. Whenever you know what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach any importance to it. But if naturalism were true, then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. Therefore, all thoughts would be equally worthless. Therefore, naturalism is worthless. If it is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat.

(C. S. Lewis, “Religion Without Dogma?” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], p. 137.)

Barry Stroud:

     I can illustrate it by starting with an extreme naturalist view. I would say that it is a ridiculously extreme position, were it not for the fact that many philosophers I respect appear to hold it. It says that the natural world is exhausted by all the physical facts. That is all and only what the natural world amounts to on this view; there is nothing else in nature. First of all, this view is probably not itself reached by purely naturalistic means. It not only states all the physical facts, which presumably can be determined by broadly naturalistic means. But it goes on to say that those are all the facts there are—that they are the whole truth about the world. And that claim is more than the conjunction of all the physical facts. It excludes everything else from being true, as they alone do not. Is the exhaustiveness that is essential to physicalism something that is naturalistically or physicalistically arrived at? That is one question.

     Second, a natural world conceived of only as the totality of all the physical facts obviously does not contain any psychological facts. There are no truths to the effect that someone believes, knows, feels, wants, prefers, or values anything. Of course, anyone who holds that the physical is all there is might hold that everything we think along those lines is really just physical facts in disguise. In any case, that would leave no psychological facts for a naturalistic theory of the world to explain. The study of human beings on such a restricted physicalist conception would be just a study of physical goings-on, including some that happen to go on in human organisms.

     The case is extreme because it does not include very much for a study of human beings to explain. Without at least biological facts in your naturalistic conception of the world you will not have much to investigate that is distinctively or interestingly human. But if the physicalist conception is expanded to include biological facts as well, what exactly are such facts thought to add? Do biological facts include the “intentional” facts of human beings believing, knowing, feeling, wanting, preferring, and valuing certain things? Some would say not, since these are just “folk” ways of speaking. Organisms inhabiting the natural world are not be thought of as having any such attitudes, or as acting from them, on that view. That would mean that naturalism could never be faced with the problem of explaining how and why human beings come to believe and feel and want the things they do. There would be no such facts. Naturalism as to what is so would be so restrictive as to leave naturalism as a method of investigation with much less to do.

     There is an embarrassing absurdity in this position which is revealed as soon as the naturalist reflects and acknowledges that he believes his naturalistic theory of the world. If persons with attitudes like belief and knowledge are not really part of nature, he cannot consistently say that about himself. I mean he cannot say it and consistently regard what he is saying as true. In fact he cannot say anything and regard it as true, or think of himself as saying it, if he holds such a restricted naturalistic conception.

(Barry Stroud, “The Charm of Naturalism;” In: Barry Stroud, Philosophers Past and Present: Selected Essays, [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011], pp. 230-231.) Preview.

David C. Downing:

     Besides his reading, Lewis’s new acquaintances at Oxford after the war helped contribute to his spiritual healing, a gradual moving away from his sense that the physical world was “wholly diabolical & malevolent.” In 1919 he met Owen Barfield, whom he would later call “the wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.” It was Barfield who first brought home to Lewis the problem with any philosophy that saw the physical world as “rock-bottom reality.” If one believes that human thought is merely an expression of neural activity, an evolutionary survival tool, then how can one have any confidence in that thought itself? If we are to assume that abstract thinking provides valid insights about external reality, then we cannot be strict empiricists, believing that all truth is ultimately derived from sense impressions of the physical world.

(David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004], p. 94.) Preview. 

C. S. Lewis:

     If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents — the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts — i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy — are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.

(C. S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” Q. 6; In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], pp. 52-53.)

Denis O. Lamoureux:

…the belief that truth is only found through scientific investigation. This view of knowledge is known as positivism reductionism. It asserts that all phenomena, including religious experience, can be reduced by science into nothing but simple physical laws. Ironically, atheists fail to recognize that there is no scientific test or experiment to prove this claim. They put their faith in the methods of science in a way similar to religious people who embrace belief in God. But even more troubling is the fact that this view of origins trusts the human brain, an organ that supposedly evolved merely by blind chance and that was never intended to discover truth. In a dysteleological world, the brain would have arisen for the sole purposes of fighting, fleeing, feeding, and “fertilizing.” But how can an organ fashioned by irrational processes make true statements about ultimate reality? Why should atheists believe in such claims worked out in their brain? It is clear that dysteleological belief is contradictory and self-referentially incoherent.

(Denis O. Lamoureux, I love Jesus & I Accept Evolution, [Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009], pp. 36-37.)

James W. Sire:

…could a being whose origins were so “iffy” trust his or her own capacity to know? Put it personally: If my mind is conterminous with my brain, if “I” am only a thinking machine, how can I trust my thought? If consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, perhaps the appearance of human freedom which lays the basis for morality is an epiphenomenon of either chance or inexorable law. Perhaps chance or the nature of things only built into me the “feeling” that I am free but actually I am not.

(James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog: Fifth Edition, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009], p. 93.)

James W. Sire:

     Naturalism holds that perception and knowledge are either identical with or a byproduct of the brain; they arise from the functioning of matter. Without matter’s functioning there would be no thought. But matter functions by a nature of its own. There is no reason to think that matter has any interest in leading a conscious being to true perception or to logical (that is, correct) conclusions based on accurate observation and true presuppositions. The only beings in the universe who care about such matters are humans. But people are bound to their bodies. Their consciousness arises from a complex interrelation of highly “ordered” matter. Why should whatever that matter is conscious of be in any way related to what actually is the case? Is there a test for distinguishing illusion from reality? Naturalists point to the methods of scientific inquiry, pragmatic tests and so forth. But all these utilize the brain they are testing. Each test could well be a futile exercise in spinning out the consistency of an illusion.

     For naturalism nothing exists outside the system itself. There is no God—deceiving or nondeceiving, perfect or imperfect, personal or impersonal. There is only the cosmos, and humans are the only conscious beings. But they are latecomers. They “arose,” but how far? Can they trust their mind, their reason?

     Charles Darwin himself once said, “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” In other words, if my brain is no more than that of a superior monkey, I cannot even be sure that my own theory of my origin is to be trusted.

     Here is a curious case: If Darwin’s naturalism is true, there is no way of even establishing its credibility, let alone proving it. Confidence in logic is ruled out. Darwin’s own theory of human origins must therefore be accepted by an act of faith. One must hold that a brain, a device that came to be through natural selection and chance-sponsored mutations, can actually know a proposition or set of propositions to be true.

     C. S. Lewis puts the case this way:

If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us—like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform.

     What we need for such certainty is the existence of some “Rational Spirit” outside both ourselves and nature from which our own rationality could derive. Theism assumes such a ground; naturalism does not.

(James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog: Fifth Edition, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009], pp. 103-104.)

James W. Sire:

     Virtually no one is a full-fledged epistemological nihilist. Yet naturalism does not allow a person to have any solid reason for confidence in human reason. We thus end in an ironic paradox. Naturalism, born in the Age of Enlightenment, was launched on a firm acceptance of the human ability to know. Now naturalists find that they can place no confidence in their knowing.

     The whole point of this argument can be summarized briefly: Naturalism places us as human beings in a box. But for us to have any confidence that our knowledge that we are in a box is true, we need to stand outside the box or to have some other being outside the box provide us with information (theologians call this “revelation”). But there is nothing or no one outside the box to give us revelation, and we cannot ourselves transcend the box. Ergo: epistemological nihilism.

     A naturalist who fails to perceive this is like the man in Stephen Crane’s poem:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this; I accosted the man.

“It is futile,” I said,

“You can never—”

“You lie,” he cried,

And ran on.

     In the naturalistic framework, people pursue a knowledge that forever recedes before them. We can never know.

(James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog: Fifth Edition, [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009], p. 106.)

C. S. Lewis:

If all that exists is Nature, the great mindless interlocking event, if our own deepest convictions are merely the by-products of an irrational process, then clearly there is not the slightest ground for supposing that our sense of fitness and our consequent faith in uniformity tell us anything about a reality external to ourselves. Our convictions are simply a fact about us—like the colour of our hair. If Naturalism is true we have no reason to trust our conviction that Nature is uniform. It can be trusted only if quite a different Metaphysic is true. If the deepest thing in reality, the Fact which is the source of all other facthood, is a thing in some degree like ourselves—if it is a Rational Spirit and we derive our rational spirituality from It—then indeed our conviction can be trusted. Our repugnance to disorder is derived from Nature’s Creator and ours. The disorderly world which we cannot endure to believe in is the disorderly world He would not have endured to create. Our conviction that the time-table will not be perpetually or meaninglessly altered is sound because we have (in a sense) eavesdropped in the Masters’ common-room.

(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Collier Books, 1978], XIII: On Probability, p. 105.)

Charles Darwin:

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

(Charles Darwin, Letter [C. Darwin to W. Graham, Down, July 3rd, 1881]; In: The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Including an Autobiographical Chapter: In Two Volumes: Vol. I, ed. Francis Darwin, [New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887], p. 285.)

C. S. Lewis:

     All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since is a real perception of how things outside our own minds really “must” be, well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them—if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work—then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.

     It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound—a proof that there are no such things as proofs—which is nonsense.

     Thus a strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given long ago by Professor Haldane: “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” (Possible Worlds, p. 209.)

(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Collier Books, 1978], III: The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism, pp. 14-15.)

Cf. J. B. S. Haldane:

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter.

     For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

     In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.

(J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds: And Other Papers, [London: Chatto and Windus, 1937], p. 209.)

William Desmond:

There seems no explanation of mind that does not presuppose mind. And indeed, if claims to truth are made, this presupposes that fidelity to reality or being is better or superior to infidelity; but these are irreducibly qualitative distinctions or differences which seem impossible to uphold on the homogeneous terms claimed within the theory. If this theory were true, its truth could not be upheld. If it were true, it would lose its claim to be the truth about mind. Its overt claims are urged in terms of covert presuppositions that truth is better than falsehood. But these covert presuppositions cannot be explained in the particular terms of this theory, since they are presupposed by every theory claiming to be true.

(William Desmond, Is There a Sabbath for Thought? Between Religion and Philosophy, [New York: Fordham University Press, 2005], “On the Betrayals of Reverence”, pp. 274-275.) 

Cf. Arthur Schopenhauer:

For materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself.

(Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosophical Writings, The German Library: Volume 27, ed. Wolfgang Schirmacher, [New York: Continuum, 1994], “On the Fundamental View of Idealism”, p. 59.)

C. S. Lewis:

It is only when you are asked to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt, for, if you don’t, all thought is discredited. It is therefore obvious that sooner or later you must admit a Reason which exists absolutely on its own.

(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Collier Books, 1978], IV: Nature and Supernature, p. 28.)

Cf. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Collier Books, 1978], Chapters 3 (The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism) & 4 (Nature and Supernature), pp. 12-34; Victor Reppert, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003]; Victor Reppert, “The Argument from Reason”; In: The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, eds. William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, [Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009], pp. 344-390.

Cf. C. S. Lewis:

If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

(C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” In: C. S. Lewis, They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses, [London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962], pp. 164-165.)

C. S. Lewis:

The theory that thought therefore is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words “true” or “false”.

(C. S. Lewis, “Transposition”; In: C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1979], p. 24.)

C. S. Lewis:

…if a man is nothing but a Natural organism . . . then, as we have seen, all thoughts would be equally nonsensical, for all would have irrational causes. Man must therefore be a composite being—a natural organism tenanted by, or in a state of symbiosis with, a supernatural spirit.

(C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Touchstone, 1996], XIV: The Grand Miracle, pp. 166-167.)

Cf. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, [New York: Touchstone, 1996], XIV: The Grand Miracle, pp. 168-170.

J. P. Moreland:

     In fact, the existence of finite minds can be used as evidence for the existence of God. If we grant what Churchland implicitly acknowledges, namely, that there is no scientific explanation for the origin of mind, including no evolutionary explanation, then if scientific and theistic explanations are the best live alternatives, we can explain the origin of finite minds best by appealing to a Divine Mind as its most adequate cause. If we limit the alternatives to what are live options for most people in Western culture, “in the beginning” were either the particles or the Logos (Mind). It is easier to see how finite mind could come from a universe created by a Mind than it is to see how mind could come from non-rational particles.

(J. P. Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters, [Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2014], p. 95.)

Thomas Nagel (Atheist Philosopher):

Evolutionary naturalism provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself. I will have more to say about these problems of reductionism later; here let me sketch them briefly.

     Inevitably, when we construct a naturalistic external self-understanding, we are relying on one part of our “sense-making” capacities to create a system that will make sense of the rest. We rely on evolutionary theory to analyze and evaluate everything from our logical and probabilistic cognition to our moral sense. This reflects the view that empirical science is the one secure, privileged form of understanding and that we can trust other forms only to the extent that they can be validated through a scientific account of how and why they work. That still requires reliance on some of our own faculties. But some faculties are thought to merit more confidence than others, and even if we cannot provide them with a noncircular external justification, we must at least believe that they are not undermined by the external account of their sources and operation that is being proposed. A core of cognitive confidence must remain intact, even if some other faculties are rendered doubtful by their evolutionary pedigree.

     Structurally, it is still the Cartesian ideal, but with the leading role played by evolutionary theory instead of by an a priori demonstration of divine benevolence. But I agree with Alvin Plantinga that, unlike divine benevolence, the application of evolutionary theory to the understanding of our own cognitive capacities should undermine, though it need not completely destroy, our confidence in them. Mechanisms of belief formation that have selective advantage in the everyday struggle for existence do not warrant our confidence in the construction of theoretical accounts of the world as a whole. I think the evolutionary hypothesis would imply that though our cognitive capacities could be reliable, we do not have the kind of reason to rely on them that we ordinarily take ourselves to have in using them directly—as we do in science. In particular, it does not explain why we are justified in relying on them to correct other cognitive dispositions that lead us astray, though they may be equally natural, and equally susceptible to evolutionary explanation. The evolutionary story leaves the authority of reason in a much weaker position. This is even more clearly true of our moral and other normative capacities—on which we often rely to correct our instincts. I agree with Sharon Street that an evolutionary self-understanding would almost certainly require us to give up moral realism—the natural conviction that our moral judgments are true or false independent of our beliefs. Evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn’t take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends.

(Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012], pp. 27-28.)

For more on this see: Alvin Plantinga, Warrant And Proper Function, [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], pp. 216ff. See also: archive.com

See also: C. S. Lewis, “Religion Without Dogma?” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], pp. 136-138.

Consciousness.

J. P. Moreland:

Start with matter and tweak it physically and all you will get is tweaked matter. There is no need or room for mind and consciousness to enter the picture. However, if you begin with God, then Mind is the fundamental reality (not matter) and its appearance in cosmic history is not the ontological problem it is for the scientific naturalist.

(J. P. Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters, [Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2014], p. 76.)

J. P. Moreland: 

Here’s the point: You Can’t Get Something From Nothing . . . It’s as simple as that. If there were no God, then the history of the entire universe, up until the appearance of living creatures, would be a history of dead matter with no consciousness. You would not have any thoughts, beliefs, feelings, sensations, free actions, choices, or purposes. There would be simply one physical event after another physical event, behaving according to the laws of physics and chemistry. …How, then, do you get something totally different—conscious, living, thinking, feeling, believing creatures—from materials that don’t have that? That’s getting something from nothing! And that’s the main problem. 

     If you apply a physical process to physical matter, you’re going to get a different arrangement of physical materials. For example, if you apply the physical process of heating to a bowl of water, you’re going to get a new product—steam—which is just a more complicated form of water, but it’s still physical. And if the history of the universe is just a story of physical processes being applied to physical materials, you’d end up with increasingly complicated arrangements of physical materials, but you’re not going to get something that’s completely nonphysical. That is a jump of a totally different kind. 

     At the end of the day, as Phillip Johnson put it, you either have ‘In the beginning were the particles,’ or ‘In the beginning was the Logos,’ which means ‘divine mind.’ If you start with particles, and the history of the universe is just a story about the rearrangement of particles, you may end up with a more complicated arrangement of particles, but you’re still going to have particles. You’re not going to have minds or consciousness. 

     However—and this is really important—if you begin with an infinite mind, then you can explain how finite minds could come into existence. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense—and which many atheistic evolutionists are conceding—is the idea of getting a mind . . . into existence by starting with brute, dead, mindless matter. That’s why some of them are trying to get rid of consciousness by saying it’s not real and that we’re just computers. …However, that’s a pretty difficult position to maintain while you’re conscious!

(J. P. Moreland, “The Evidence of Consciousness: The Enigma of the Mind: An Interview with J. P. Moreland;” In: Lee Strobel, The Case For A Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence that Points Toward God, [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004], pp. 263-264.) Preview.

Thomas Nagel (Atheist Philosopher):

Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science. The existence of consciousness seems to imply that the physical description of the universe, in spite of its richness and explanatory power, is only part of the truth, and that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for everything. If we take this problem seriously, and follow out its implications, it threatens to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture.

(Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], p. 35.) Preview. 

Personality.

John Eldredge:

How can human personality have come from something impersonal? …only personality begets personality.

(John Eldredge, Epic: The Story God is Telling and the Role that is Yours to Play, [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004], pp. 21, 22.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria