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Miracles: Nature
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It is significant that the Bible appeals constantly to the reign of law in nature, while it attests the actual occurrence of miracles. Now human will, in acting on material forces, interferes with the regular sequences, but does not paralyze the natural forces or destroy their innate tendency to act in a uniform manner. Thus a boy, by throwing a stone into the air, does not disarrange the order of nature or do away with the law of gravity. A new force only is brought in and counteracts the tendencies of the natural forces, just as the natural forces interact and counteract among themselves, as is shown in the well-known truths of the parallelogram of forces and the distinction between kinetic and potential energy. The analogy from man's act to God's act is complete as far as concerns a break in the uniformity of nature or a violation of its laws. The extent of the power exerted does not affect the point at issue.
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H. E. G. Paulus dismisses the miracles as " exaggerations or misapprehensions of quite ordinary events." A. Ritschl has been unjustly charged with this treatment of miracles. But what he emphasizes is on the one hand the close connexion between the conception of miracles and the belief in divine providence, and on the other the compatibility between miracles and the order of nature. He declines to regard miracles as divine action contrary to the laws of nature. So for Schleiermacher "miracle is neither explicable from nature alone, nor entirely alien to it." What both Ritschl and Schleiermacher insist on is that the belief in miracles is inseparable from the belief in God, and in God as immanent in nature, not only directing and controlling its existent forces, but ... as initiating new stages consistent with the old in its progressive development.
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What Hume has done is to take the commonsense Anglican argument against the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and applied it to miracles, the basis of all religious sects. The laws of nature have not been established by occasional or frequent experiences of a similar kind, but of uniform experience. It is "more than probable," says Hume, that all men must die, that lead can't remain suspended in air by itself and that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water. If someone were to report to Hume that a man could suspend lead in the air by an act of will, Hume would ask himself if "the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates." If so, then he would believe the testimony. However, he does not believe there ever was a miraculous event established "on so full an evidence."
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The "relative" theory of miracles is by far the most popular with non-Catholic writers. This view was originally proposed to hold Christian miracles and at the same time hold belief in the uniformity of nature. Its main forms are three.
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"The suspension or violation of the laws of nature involved in miracles is nothing more than is constantly taking place around us. One force counteracts another: vital force keeps the chemical laws of matter in abeyance; and muscular force can control the action of physical force. When a man raises a weight from the ground, the law of gravity is neither suspended nor violated, but counteracted by a stronger force. The same is true as to the walking of Christ on the water and the swimming of iron at the command of the prophet.
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Theologians of the Old & New Testament religions consider only God-willed contravention of the laws of nature to be true miracles. However, they admit others can do and have done things which contravene the laws of nature; such acts are attributed to diabolical powers and are called "false miracles." Many outside of the Biblical based religions believe in the ability to transgress laws of nature through acts of will in consort with paranormal or occult powers. They generally refer to these transgressions not as miracles, but as magick.
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