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A Lawyer Evaluates Philosophical Arguments for Miracles


(2024)

I. Physical Facts Rule
II. Philosophical Arguments
     A. No Supernatural Exception
     B. A Priori Reasoning
     C. Uniformity of Nature
     D. Inductive Reasoning
     E. Einstein Did Not Invalidate Science
     F. Natural Laws Worked in the Past
     G. Two-Part Historical Test
III. Conclusion

I. Physical Facts Rule

The physical facts rule bars all evidence of miracles in courts of law. Lawyers often ignore issues when they have no intelligent response, and no legal apologist has ever so much as mentioned the physical facts rule.

Likewise, I am still waiting for someone—anyone—to accept my repeated invitations to debate legal apologetics (August 31, 2023, September 30, 2023, and May 17, 2024). Even though 1 Peter 3:15-16 requires Christians to “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you,” I cannot find any Christian lawyer to defend legal apologetics.

II. Philosophical Arguments

Instead of making a legal argument to overturn or distinguish the physical facts rule, legal apologists and other evidentialists make philosophical arguments for considering evidence of miracles.[1] You can choose to believe whatever philosophical argument or religious belief strikes your fancy. However, legal apologists cannot honestly claim that they can prove Jesus’ resurrection by legal rules of evidence.

No lawyer has ever made, or ever would make, these philosophical arguments in court. Judges do not decide cases based on philosophy, especially when there is a clear legal rule on the issue.

A. No Supernatural Exception

Some apologists argue that miracles don’t contradict science, but occur outside of science.[2] I cover this issue in another article.

B. A Priori Reasoning

Evidentialists typically argue that there is something unfair about “presuppositions” against miracles and that a priori rejection of miracles is intellectually dishonest.[3] Dictionary.com defines “a priori” as reasoning “from a general law to a particular instance.” There is nothing inherently wrong about applying general rules to reach a conclusion. In fact, the Code of Judicial Conduct requires judges to use a priori reasoning to resolve most legal issues. Judges must impartially apply general law (e.g., statutes, rules, and case law) to the particular case on trial. Jesus’ resurrection contradicts natural laws, so impartially applying the physical facts rule establishes that evidence of the alleged resurrection of Jesus is worthless.

Rather than consider miraculous evidence as a priori worthless under the physical facts rule, evidentialists believe that we should investigate the alleged evidence. Gary Habermas argues that neither “history, science, nor any other discipline can rule out miracles without an investigation” unless “we have prior knowledge that they can never be factual.”[4] The physical facts rule requires no such investigation. Legal rules of evidence do not exclude evidence only after a complete investigation proves that such evidence could never be factual. Evidentiary rules exclude categories of evidence that the law considers too unreliable to support a verdict. Unsubstantiated rumors may sometimes be true, for example, but courts exclude such hearsay.

C. Uniformity of Nature

Evidentialists argue that natural laws provide unsound grounds for excluding miraculous claims because the applicability of laws of nature depends on assuming the uniformity of nature. For example, C. S. Lewis argues: “Unless Nature is uniform, nothing is either probable or improbable.”[5] For a variety of philosophical reasons, Lewis claims that we cannot know that nature is uniform through experience, and other evidentialists argue from several variations of this same theme. However, the law takes no notice of such philosophical quibbling. Courts allow experts to establish physical facts by scientific experiments “because the observed uniformity of nature raises an inference that like cause will produce like results.”[6]

D. Inductive Reasoning

A scientific hypothesis sometimes begins as an “inductive generalization.” Inductive generalization is reasoning in which you infer a general conclusion from individual observations. We make inductive generalizations all of the time without thinking about them. You have observed numerous objects falling down toward the Earth. You have never observed objects falling up into space. You therefore infer a general rule that things fall downward, and you naturally assume that you will fall to your death if you jump off of a tall building. Justice Ruggero J. Aldisert explains:

The principle that underlies all inductive argument is that nature is sufficiently regular to permit the discovery of causal laws having general application. The laws of nature will operate today as they did yesterday because in basic ways nature is uniform. Therefore, we may rely on past experience to guide our conduct in the future.[7]

Evidentialists criticize scientific inference because inductive reasoning is merely “probabilistic.” C. S. Lewis claims that, because “the principle of Uniformity of Nature” is philosophically ungrounded, “the fact that a thing had happened ten million times would not make it a whit more probable that it would happen again.”[8] I would be happy to jump out of an airplane with anyone who believes that and discuss the issue on the way down. I will wear a parachute.

Natural laws are more than mere inductive generalizations. You might infer from numerous personal observations that steel never burns, but you would be wrong. Scientists discover natural laws through the “scientific method”—systematic observation and/or experimentation to formulate, test, and modify hypotheses. Chemists have used the scientific method to develop physical and chemical laws that explain why steel wool burns and steel beams do not. The same sort of natural laws explain why dead people stay dead.

Being human, scientists sometimes make mistakes, and they still have not figured everything out. Nonetheless, natural laws work well enough to visit the Moon and eradicate smallpox. Natural laws also work well enough that no court has ever questioned the physical facts rule.

E. Einstein Did Not Invalidate Science

According to evidentialists, arguing from natural laws is groundless because “The Newtonian outlook which dominated the scientific world for nearly 200 years has been found insufficient.”[9] Lawyers say that a statute or case is “not good law” after it has been repealed or overturned, but Newton’s laws of motion are still legally admissible in American courts.[10]

John Warwick Montgomery claims that, after Einstein, we cannot “rule out the possibility of events because of prior knowledge of ‘natural law’.”[11] Because of my prior knowledge of Newton’s law of universal gravitation, I rule out the possibility that you can drop a rock up into space. Try it. The rock falls down every time. Rocks fell down before Einstein, and they still do.

Neither Montgomery nor any other evidentialist ever explains exactly how Einstein supposedly destroyed science’s ability to explain and predict how the world works. Einstein said: “The natural laws of science have not only been worked out theoretically but have been proven also in practice. I cannot believe in this concept of an anthropomorphic God who has the power of interfering with these natural laws.”

F. Natural Laws Worked in the Past

Evidentialists also claim that natural laws do not apply to historical events. Montgomery pontificates that “the only way we can know whether an event occurred is to see whether in fact it has occurred…. And note that a historian, in facing an alleged ‘miracle’ is really facing nothing new. All historical events are unique, and the test of their factual character can be only the accepted documentary approach.” This “accepted documentary approach” seems to involve Montgomery reading the Gospels as historical documents and taking descriptions of miracles at face value.[12] I doubt that he feels a similar need to investigate North Korean documents stating that the deceased leader Kim Jon-il did not defecate.

History and law both look at past events, and every case that applied the physical facts rule dealt with some past event. The physical facts rule applies both to recent events and Jesus’ alleged resurrection 2,000 years ago.

G. Two-Part Historical Test

Although they do not use the term “physical facts rule,” secular historians follow the rule because history happens in the physical world: “Historians simply assume, as do most people, that the world is logically and materially consistent.”[13] No historian thinks that Amelia Earhart magically flew her plane to the Moon because airplanes do not leave the Earth’s atmosphere.

Of course, history has no hard and fast rules, and religious historians do consider historical evidence for miracles—at least from their own religion.[14] Evidentialists agree that the historian must seek a natural explanation before considering a miraculous one[15], and they have developed two requirements for historical evidence of a miracle.

First, the purported miracle must have no plausible natural explanation. This is grounded by an argument from ignorance, a logical fallacy first identified by the philosopher John Locke:

Another way that men ordinarily use to drive others and force them to submit to their judgments, and receive their opinion in debate, is to require the adversary to admit what they allege as a proof, or to assign a better. And this I call argumentum ad ignorantiam.[16]

Courts have no such exception to the physical facts rule, and never consider divine intervention to resolve unsolved mysteries. Courts presume that every event has a natural explanation, even if no one knows exactly how it happened.

Second, evidentialists claim that the chances of an event being a miracle increase when the purported miracle occurs in a “context charged with religious significance.”[17] Evidentialists argue that we should believe the Resurrection because Jesus supposedly claimed beforehand that he would return. Therefore, Jesus “created a context in which his resurrection from the dead would not be a surprise. He claimed he was divine.”[18]

This argument has some superficial appeal. No one believes that Amelia Earhart magically flew to the Moon, but she never claimed that she would. If she had, some people would probably believe that she succeeded. Nonetheless, this is rather like claiming that a track meet increases the chances of someone pole vaulting a hundred meters. If anyone could pole vault a hundred meters, he or she would probably do it at track meet—a context charged with pole-vaulting significance. However, the current world record is 6.16 meters, and no one burdened by Earth’s gravity can pole vault a hundred meters.

The physical facts rule has no exception for predicting violations of natural law. Christian Scientists claim that prayer will heal their children, but courts do not consider this context sufficient to deny life-saving medical care. Purveyors of quack medicines predict that their panaceas will work miracle cures and invariably produce satisfied customers to testify in court. But courts are not impressed. In Capon Water Co. v. Fed. Trade Comm’n, sellers claimed their mineral water would cure fifty-two ailments ranging from nephritis to sterility.[19] Despite the testimonials, the court held that no sane person could believe such claims.

III. Conclusion

No American court has admitted evidence of supernatural events since the Salem witch trials in 1692, and the physical facts rule has been part of Anglo-American common law since the British case of Rex v. Luffe in 1807. The rule does not prove that miracles cannot happen, or that they have not happened in the past. The rule means that, even if a miracle happened, evidence of miracles is not admissible in court.

This pragmatic rule is based on the simple truth that such evidence is inherently unreliable, and the rule has worked quite well for the last two or three centuries. Philosophical arguments do not change this reality.

The indisputability of the rule probably explains the cowardly and hypocritical failure to respond to my multiple invitations to debate the issue. No one is willing to step forward to inevitably lose the debate.

Notes

[1] John Warwick Montgomery, Human Rights and Human Dignity (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986), p. 151.

[2] Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), p. 62.

[3] Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), pp. 350-368.

[4] Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press Publishing Co., 2005), pp. 58-59.

[5] C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2001), p. 163.

[6] State v. Pennington, 254 Kan. 757, 760, 869 P.2d 624, 627 (1994).

[7] Ruggero J. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers: A Guide to Clear Leal Thinking (Notre Dame, IN: National Institute for Trial Strategy, 1997), p. 90.

[8] Lewis, Miracles, p. 162.

[9] McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, p. 359.

[10] Twin County Elec. Power Ass’n v. McKenzie, 823 So. 2d 464, 470 (Miss. 2002).

[11] John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity: A Vigorous, Convincing Presentation of the Evidence for a Historical Jesus (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1965), p. 75.

[12] Montgomery, History and Christianity, p. 75.

[13] C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 28.

[14] McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions, p. 28.

[15] Gary Habermas & Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), p. 82.

[16] G&R Produce Co. v. United States, 281 F. Sup. 2d, 1323, 1329 n. 8 (2003), aff’d, 381 F.3d 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2004).

[17] Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), pp. 162-163.

[18] Habermas & Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, p. 171.

[19] Capon Water Co. v. Fed. Trade Comm’n, 107 F.2d 516, 518 (3d Cir. 1939).

Copyright ©2024 by Robert G. Miller. This electronic version is copyright ©2024 by Internet Infidels, Inc. with the written permission of Robert G. Miller. All rights reserved.

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