(2026)
Introduction
McIntosh’s First Major Goal
1) Are There Laws of Nature?
2) The Problem of the Problem of Induction
My First Response
My Second Response
My Third Response
3) Miracles and Laws of Nature
McIntosh’s Second Major Goal
McIntosh’s Third Major Goal
1) Miracles of Cosmology
2) Miracles of Prophecy
3) Miracles of Experience
Conclusion
[This article is forthcoming in the Trinity Journal of Natural & Philosophical Theology, Vol. 4 (Fall 2026) in collaboration with the Trinity Graduate School of Apologetics and Theology, with a response by Don McIntosh forthcoming in Vol. 5 (Fall 2027). The version presented here is slightly modified in formatting. Used with permission.]
ABSTRACT: In a previous paper Don McIntosh showed an exceptional awareness of the major objections to belief in miracles. In his attempt at a comprehensive rebuttal to them, his first goal was to argue that there are no fixed, exceptionless laws of nature, and thus nothing to prevent reasonable people from accepting miracle reports from reliable witnesses. His second goal was to argue that miracles are best understood as divine activity that merely defies our expectations and so miracles are akin to “signs” and “wonders.” His final goal was to offer a positive case for miracles that doesn’t lean on human testimony, which is generally considered weak as part of a defense of belief in miracles. Here McIntosh defended three categories: (1) miracles of cosmology; (2) miracles of prophecy; and (3) miracles of experience. In this reply John W. Loftus offers a comprehensive rebuttal to McIntosh. Loftus concedes that there are indeed fixed, exceptionless laws of nature as far as we experience, where our experience is good enough. Denying their existence raises twin problems. On the one hand, such denial would open the flood gates to include false miracle claims in the absence of any way to check them against laws of nature. On the other hand, such denial would undercut the basis for belief in biblical miracles since it would concede that biblical authors didn’t require solid evidence for their occurrence. Loftus goes on to argue that this is exactly what we find in the Bible—unevidenced, superstitious miracle stories. Finally, he concludes that McIntosh’s miracles of cosmology are based on a kind of ignorance, as are the alleged Hebrew Bible prophecies of the promised land and McIntosh’s conclusions from his own personal testimony.
Introduction
Christian philosopher Don McIntosh and I have previously debated the problem of God and horrendous suffering.[1] Now he has written a superb paper in defense of a justified belief in miracles. After reading it I must say that he has dealt with the best that atheists can throw at him in that article.[2] I find that refreshing. He shows awareness of the major objections to believing in miracles and attempts to answer them, calling me out in particular. So it’s a real pleasure to disagree with him, and I do. Perhaps now we can make some headway in our disagreements.
In his paper McIntosh lays out three main goals. I will address them head on.
McIntosh states his first major goal: “I will argue first that in light of the problem of induction and the incompleteness of our knowledge of nature’s perceived regularities, there are no grounds for believing in natural laws that are universally binding” [p. 73]. Consequently, “there is nothing to prevent rational acceptance of miracle claims on the testimony of evidently reliable witnesses” [p. 78]. Let’s divide this into three parts.
1) Are There Laws of Nature?
McIntosh claims that there are no laws of nature. Now I’m no expert in this area, but philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen agrees that there are no natural laws.[3] According to him there are “regularities” in nature, but no metaphysical account of the laws of nature can succeed. Nonetheless, he says that science can continue without recourse to such laws.[4] Particle physicist Victor J. Stenger seemed to agree: “the laws of physics are not restrictions on the behavior of matter. Rather they are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behavior.”[5] Given quantum mechanics, Werner Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle, and Albert Einstein’s equations, a whole lot of strangeness is taking place at the subatomic level, or near the speed of light.
Whether or not chaos theory can make sense of it all, we know that there are regularities of nature on a mega scale, and that should be good enough.[6] We count on them in our daily lives as if they are fixed laws of nature. Take gravity, for instance. Anyone who jumps off of a high-rise building and hits the concrete below will certainly die. Since gravity is based on such a certainty, we might as well call it a law of nature. It can be described by math. In fact, several important mathematical equations describe these regularities of nature, regardless of what we call them, and regardless of what takes place below our mega plane of existence.[7] Isaac Newton’s F=ma equation helped us get to the Moon and back. James Clerk Maxwell’s equations provided the basis for making and using electric motors. These and other equations always work above the level of quantum soup (yes, I said always).
Regardless of philosophical debates about laws of nature, we still cannot walk on top of water, be thrown into a fiery pit and survive, have a virgin-conceived baby, or be whisked up bodily into the sky. So the issue before us is not whether there are laws of nature operating on a subatomic level or when traveling near the speed of light. For on our plane of existence we can always count on Newton’s laws up until we factor in the speed of light. E=mc2 anyone? Einstein’s science didn’t overthrow Newtonian science. Newtonian science continues to work perfectly well, up to the speed of light.
McIntosh brought up this first goal to escape from underneath a heavy burden of proof. For if nature operates according to fixed laws, he must defend miracles against David Hume’s powerful arguments.[8] I have just argued that he still has that burden of proof, since Newton’s laws are still in play.
2) The Problem of the Problem of Induction
In inductive reasoning scientists make a series of observations and then infer something based on these observations, or they predict the results of the next observation under the same exact test conditions. It’s argued that there are two problems with this process. The first problem is that regardless of the number of observations, it’s never certain that the next observation of the same exact phenomena under the same exact test conditions will produce the same exact results. For scientists to inductively infer something from previous results, or predict what future observations will be like, it’s claimed they must have faith that nature operates by a uniform set of laws. Why, you ask? Because scientists cannot know if nature is lawful from their observations alone. The second problem is that the observations of scientists in and of themselves cannot establish with certainty the validity of inductive reasoning.
McIntosh states the problem as follows: “The problem is that inductive reasoning is circular. To justify induction requires a belief that the laws of nature operate uniformly; but at the same time to justify a belief that the laws of nature operate uniformly requires induction” [pp. 81-82]. He quotes Samir Okasha “that our inductive inferences rest on the uniformity of nature assumption. But we cannot prove uniformity of nature is true, and we cannot produce empirical evidence for its truth without begging the question.”
My first response is that we’re not looking for certainty. We only need to think exclusively in terms of probabilities. To someone who objects that we cannot know enough to determine what the actual probabilities are, we only have to look at the overwhelming evidence. The daily evidence from scientists down through history and around the globe is that when they replicate the same exact tests of the same exact phenomena under the same exact conditions they receive the same exact results.
Theists conclude that since I cannot ultimately—and certainly—justify induction, I cannot say that miracles have probably not occurred. Now I admit that I might be wrong. However, I claim that certainty is an impossible standard to achieve for any of us. We all work in terms of probability. While McIntosh might go on to say that there’s no way we can calculate the probabilities, I respond that there are some very important equations that we can rely on with a very high probability.
René Descartes, Hume, and Immanuel Kant wrestled with the problem of certainty. When it came to certainty, the rationalist Descartes could only conclude that one thing was certain after doubting everything else. He knew that he existed with certainty due to the awareness of his own consciousness. “I am thinking, therefore I exist,” he reasoned. Hume, the empiricist, subsequently raised some serious doubts about the knowledge of God, the self, and cause and effect. Since we don’t have direct empirical awareness of them, he argued that we cannot claim to know them, either. Since he denied that we can know that a specific billiard ball caused a different one to move upon being hit, Hume presented a direct attack on certainty. He argued that our belief the first ball caused the second one to move is based on custom and past experience, not on logical certainty.
The rational-empiricist Kant sought to solve the problem that Hume posed. He ended up arguing that the only world we can know is the one originated by twelve a priori categories of our minds. Therefore, we do not know reality as it is independently, but rather as it appears to us. How do we know the categories of the mind accurately represent reality? We don’t. So with Hume and Kant the quest for certainty died, and along with it, the standard that McIntosh claims I should meet when it comes to justifying the scientific process of induction. What arose out of the grave of certainty was the standard of a wise person who proportions his or her belief according to the strength of the evidence.
My second response is that if believers demand that we prove with certainty that induction works by poking a tiny pinprick of doubt about it, then this emphatically does not mean there is any parity between depending on induction and depending on religious faith. It’s surprising how believers claim to have certainties based on little or no evidence, and then demand that scientists must prove their results with a level of certainty beyond proof.
My third response is that science is a human endeavor, and like any human endeavor, there is a human element to it. So if science proceeds with theory-laden data, probabilities rather than certainties, and is done by scientists who are not completely objective, this is not a problem with the scientific method itself. Science progresses because the objective evidence has a way of eventually changing people’s minds. It progresses because the objective evidence has a way of breaking through. It is therefore self-correcting by nature, as scientific experiments can correct false conclusions. In the end, if all we ever do is think exclusively in terms of the probabilities, then the problem of induction is pretty much solved.
Is it relevant to us that the process of induction may not work at the subatomic/quantum level, or into the far reaches of the universe (or multiverse)? No. Scientific induction works extremely well in our mega plane of existence. It is also worth noting that quantum physics is still in many ways in its infancy.
McIntosh concludes: “My point is simply that induction is not strictly rational, and therefore provides no reason to think there are not and have never been exceptions to even the most well-established inductively derived generalizations—miracles, in other words.” [p. 82] Now there may indeed be some exceptions to what we think we know. But until this is shown, rational people shouldn’t change what they think.
All that we have are probabilities, some higher or lower. McIntosh believes that it’s probable that his God exists and that he does miracles, even though he has never seen a man born blind who was instantaneously healed, or a dead man who arose from the grave, or an amputee whose limb was restored before his own eyes. So it should not be a question of whether I can ultimately justify induction, since Christians cannot ultimately justify their faith. The question is whether or not we should believe in miracles contrary to all of our known experiences throughout our entire lives, regardless of whether subatomic nature is completely chaotic, or we’re dreaming, or we’re living in a Matrix right now.[9]
3) Miracles and Laws of Nature
McIntosh concludes with an important philosophical debate over a justifiable definition of miracles. The usual definitions, he says, fall into “two basic categories”: “(1) miracles defined as violations of the laws of nature (contraventions, interruptions, breaches, suspensions, etc.); and (2) miracles defined as ‘signs and wonders’ that demonstrate the power of God to alter the course of human affairs” [p. 75].
The first definition, he argues, is more commonly accepted by today’s scientifically minded intellectuals in that the “laws of nature are physical regularities so often and consistently confirmed that they should be considered absolute, exceptionless laws.” Such a definition is objectionable, McIntosh argues, quoting Peter Harrison: “If there are miracles, this tends to destroy the very concept of a law of nature” [p. 75]. I happen to agree with this—it’s just that it gets things reversed. The opposite conclusion is more likely the case. Since miracles by definition are extremely rare events, it’s much less likely that they occur than that they don’t occur, and more likely that the laws of nature are exceptionalness than otherwise. Stated differently, since the physical regularities of nature are in fact so often and consistently confirmed, it’s much less likely that miracles take place at all, or disrupt the workings of nature, or violate the equations that describe how nature works.
Hume’s definition is in focus here. I agree with McIntosh that Hume “does not explicitly argue in circles or reject miracle claims a priori” [p. 78]. Hume was focused on human testimony to miracles. A report of a miracle would require sufficient evidential corroboration.
Miraculous events by definition involve divine supernatural interference in the natural order of the world. Miraculous events which are supposed to convince the unconvinced require the suspending, transgressing, breaching, contravening, or violating of natural law; otherwise they’re just extremely rare extraordinary events within what the laws of nature describe. If you recover after being told you have a one-in-a-million chance of being healed, that’s not equivalent to a miracle, an event that suspends the laws of nature. It simply means that you beat the odds—and it happens every day, every hour, and every minute around the globe.
McIntosh goes on to tell a hypothetical story of three amputees who were sequentially healed, whereupon a skeptical psychologist refused to believe that miracles healed them. I would much rather have had McIntosh tell us of actual cases than hypothetical ones, since hypothetical stories can be stretched far beyond anything that we ever see. Regardless, he says that the burden of proof for believers would be “strictly impossible to meet because there is no conceivable form of evidence that could not be interpreted in naturalistic terms” [p. 76]. He adds: “If a putative miracle cannot be replicated, skeptics need not trust human testimony affirming it, nor even their own senses; but if it can be replicated, they may safely regard it a natural occurrence rather than a miracle” [p. 77].
David Conner anticipated such a suggestion in the first chapter of my book, The Case Against Miracles (2019). In order for the apologist to succeed by appealing to miracles as evidence for the existence of God, the appeal must overcome three hurdles:
It must first show (1) that the testimonial reports of an event the apologist wishes to identify as a miracle are strong enough to force us to acknowledge the event really did occur. If this can be done the apologist has the additional burden of showing (2) that this exceptional event cannot be explained by natural causes. Should the apologist succeed in surmounting these two obstacles, she will have shown that we must adopt a picture of nature by which not every event has a natural cause. But this leaves open the possibility that a putative miracle really represents what we might refer to as a “natural anomaly.” A natural anomaly would be an event that is not consistent with natural law, but which provides no grounds for asserting divine intervention. Thus, the third hurdle for the apologist (3) is to show that the event in question is not a natural anomaly, but something that could only be brought about by God. [p. 30]
Conner’s focus was to argue that “the apologist cannot surmount any of these three hurdles, much less all of them at once, and that the apologetical appeal is doomed to fail.” Conner subsequently directly addresses McIntosh’s point: “If we were confronted with an apparent exception to natural law, we would no doubt continue to operate with our previous understanding of the law until we discovered the circumstances under which the exception might be repeated.”
We are left with three options:
1) The event is the result of a natural cause that we are as yet unable to identify.
2) The event is the result of a supernatural cause.
3) The event has no cause at all. [p. 50]
Conner comments:
The issue here is whether we should suppose that our failure to observe any cause for the event is due to our (perhaps temporary) inability to fully identify all of the natural forces that were operating to produce it, or whether it is because the cause, being supernatural, is in principle unobservable. So in order to identify the event as a miracle, we must find some way to rule out the possibility of ever finding a natural cause for it. But it is possible that the event is simply uncaused or has occurred spontaneously. It is clear that there can be no observable difference between an event that has a supernatural cause, since such a cause is in principle unobservable, and one that fails to have any cause at all. [pp. 50-52]
McIntosh goes on to point to the perceived circularity of it all: “We know the experience against miracles is uniform, that is, because miracles have never been observed, and we know miracles have never been observed because the experience against them is uniform.” The view that he describes here is clearly a prejudiced one. By contrast, we know what reasonable people need in order to believe that a miracle took place. We need evidence—solid, relevant, objective evidence (if possible)—the kind that could convict a person of a crime in a court of law with Exhibits A, B, C, D… along with eyewitness testimony of an expert under cross-examination who can say how this evidence was found and maintained. The more numerous the miracle claims that turn out to be false, the more confident we can be that miracles have not taken place.
Verifiable miracles are probably nonexistent. That’s my conclusion. At best any miracle claims that remain seem to be undecided. The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) once offered a one-million-dollar prize “to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.” In the half-century that JREF offered the challenge, from 1964 until 2015, no challenger had even gotten past the preliminary test. While this doesn’t show that all paranormal and miracle claims are false, it’s consistent with what we would expect to find if all of them were false.[10]
McIntosh showcases his verbal skills by saying “given that there is no method available to verify the exceptionless regularity of the laws of nature, there is nothing to prevent rational acceptance of miracle claims on the testimony of evidently reliable witnesses” [p. 79]. But there’s no need to come up with such a method. I suppose that if we did it might presuppose its own conclusion. All that science needs is the working hypothesis of the exceptionless regularity of the laws of nature. This hypothesis is consistent with the exceptionless regularity of the laws of nature, and has been verified millions of times. It is still the best hypothesis by far when scientists study and experiment on nature. What’s an alternative hypothesis? Miracles might have it tough, but I’m as sure as I can be that an omnipotent God could do a massive amount of miracles if he wanted to.
If the point is that reasonable people should be open to the testimony of evidently reliable witnesses, this goes without saying. But what counts as proof from the alleged eyewitnesses doesn’t change. We still need sufficient, objective evidence. Just ask what you would require if your daughter said God impregnated her with a baby. Why would your requirements be any different when it comes to the Virgin Mary?[11]
The best evidence for miracles would be personally witnessing a miracle as a sane sober person under test conditions, according to the criteria that David Kyle Johnson provides:
One is justified in believing that a natural law has been broken (and thus that a miracle has occurred) IFF (a) one is justified in believing that a law of science, X, has been broken and (b) one is justified in believing that X accurately describes a law of nature.
If both conditions are met, one would be justified in believing a law of nature had been violated; and since supernatural intervention would be the best explanation for such a violation, belief that a miracle had occurred would be justified.[12]
Johnson goes on to present a good case against the possibility of miracles, even questioning alleged first-hand eyewitness accounts of them. McIntosh offers only one response: “Johnson can maintain that ‘justified belief in miracles is impossible’ only if he can first justify belief in induction—which appears itself impossible” [p. 81]. But I’ve already discussed this red herring.
Second-hand testimony of miracles is one step further removed from first-hand testimony. Consider the following biblical passage from Hebrews 2:1-4 (NIV):
How will we escape if we neglect a salvation as great as this? It was first proclaimed by the Lord himself, and then it was confirmed to us by those who heard him, while God added his testimony through signs, wonders, various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.
According to this passage second-hand reports of miracles are supposed to verify the gospel message of salvation. The story of “doubting” Thomas makes this explicit (John 20:24-29). Thomas wouldn’t believe that Jesus arose from the dead: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” I might not even demand such a high evidential bar. Regardless, Thomas was admonished for not believing second-hand reports of his resurrection coming from the other disciples. Jesus told him to “Stop doubting and believe.” Then Jesus “proved” to Thomas he arose from the dead. The lesson learned is what Jesus said to him and to us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Here faith is praiseworthy, unlike the doubts of Thomas (see John 20:30-31). Elsewhere we’re told, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
This story touts the need for objective evidence by playing lip service to it. For the doubting Thomas story doesn’t offer us any objective evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. It only offers us a story. That’s a huge difference. Thomas cannot be our substitute. We never personally met the risen Jesus in the flesh, nor stuck our fingers in his side. This is the case even if Thomas actually saw the risen Jesus and stuck his fingers in his side! Let’s say he did. We still don’t know that he did. We only have an ancient story that he did. Such a story, even if true, cannot be considered objective evidence for the rest of us; we still need proof that it happened as reported.
But it gets worse. Next we have the four canonical Gospels, beginning with Mark. Subsequent Gospels borrowed from Mark and/or fact-checked the previous ones. The authors chose which stories to include, which ones to exclude, along with their order. They also slanted their stories to make theological points about Jesus to their readers. They had debates between themselves. Luke fact-checked the Gospel of Matthew[13], while the Gospel of John fact-checked earlier gospels.[14] How else should we think about them when we find glaring differences between them? Which Gospels are right? Which ones are wrong? So before we read of any miracle in the Gospels, we encounter third-hand testimonies about Jesus, his life, and his miracles that we only find in the Gospels. As such, there is no way for us to personally fact-check alleged eyewitness miracle-tellers, much less the Gospels. We would need to personally cross-examine the third-person Gospel writers—and their sources. We would want to ask a back-and-forth set of questions, including on responses, corroborated by sufficient evidence. Without this process we cannot verify these stories. We cannot cross-examine any of the earliest Church Fathers, either.
German critic Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) emphasized this point with his “Ugly Broad Ditch” analogy. He wrote: “Miracles, which I see with my own eyes, and which I have opportunity to verify for myself, are one thing; miracles, of which I know only from history that others say they have seen them and verified them, are another.” His point is this: “The problem is that reports of miracles are not miracles … they have to work through a medium which takes away all their force.”[15] What is Lessing getting at here? Namely that memories fail with time. Evidence can be lost, damaged, or destroyed. Witnesses can die. Whole generations have died since Lessing made the point.
McIntosh’s second major goal is this: “I will argue further, miracles are best understood as ‘signs’ of divine activity that defy the expectations borne of human experience rather than events that run against, around or beyond the laws of nature (whatever those are supposed to be).”
Let’s remind readers again that the laws of nature are best described by means of important equations by Newton, Maxwell, and yes, Einstein.
McIntosh’s next goal is to argue that miracles are not to be understood as events that run against, around, or beyond the laws of nature, laws which neither the ancients nor McIntosh understand. Instead, they merely defy what people expect to happen. They were known as “signs” of divine activity.
This is descriptive of what prescientific people believed about miracles during the millennium when the Bible was written. That’s because they didn’t have a conception of the laws of nature, much less a strong conception of them. In the ancient world it was believable that a star could lead Magi to the city of Bethlehem and that it “stopped over the place where the child was.”[16] All they needed was a false understanding of prophecy[17], plus an unusual story that could only have been done by God, along with a need to believe. Keep in mind, the stars moved in the sky: “The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises” (Ecclesiastes 1:5; see also Joshua 10).
The biblical writers didn’t understand how the world worked. Theirs was a magical age. They had little understanding of the natural processes that made rain fall, crops grow, or babies begin developing (hint: it required both a human egg and a sperm). So they performed religious rituals and petitioned God for the outcomes that they desired. Whatever phenomena they could not explain, they attributed to God, and there was a great deal they couldn’t explain. For them nature was governed by God. He was the master behind it all. In a world like that the ancients could believe, without evidence, that a person was whisked up into the sky, or that a handkerchief, pool of water, or shadow of a holy man could heal people. They could believe that some people could instantly speak in foreign languages they had never learned. And they did not find it difficult to believe God sent a worldwide flood because he was angry. God was continually surprising the ancients by continually doing these miracles.
In such an age all kinds of spectacular or unusual events were on the boards, so to speak. In the story handed down about Moses, who confronted the Egyptian Pharaoh of his day, Aaron threw down his staff and it became a snake. We read that Pharaoh’s magicians did the same exact thing with their magical arts, we’re told, and no one in the story was surprised by this. Then Aaron’s snake swallowed up their snakes (Exodus 7:10-12). Pharaoh’s magicians were also able to turn water into blood (Exodus 7:19-22), as well as duplicate Moses’ plague of frogs (Exodus 8:18). These tales depended on believing that the Egyptian magicians actually did those miracles.
McIntosh’s aforementioned definition of miracles was certainly in play here. Their expectations were not guided by what the laws of nature would allow. There was no need to require extraordinary objective evidence for them, either. How would these claims be fact-checked, according to McIntosh? He doesn’t say. For me the only testimonies that can legitimately count for miracles are corroborated/verified testimonies under cross-examination, which require solid, sufficient evidence.
Consider also the tale of Samson (Judges 13-16). It begins with him having supernatural strength due to the length of his hair. In one incident when he was deceived by Delilah, the Philistines captured him and cut off his hair, which did away with his strength. But Samson’s hair grew long again, and he eventually brought the temple down upon himself and many Philistines. This is certainly surprising, but in the ancient world anything could happen.
In a previous incident the Philistines came upon Samson. He fought back by using “a fresh jawbone of a donkey” and he “struck down a thousand men.” When he was finished “he threw away the jawbone.” But when we subject this superstitious tale to a detailed analysis, it doesn’t make any sense. In order to take on fully armored swordsmen and archers all at the same time, Samson would’ve needed speed way beyond what any human body could possibly endure! Imagine the speed required. For Samson to shield himself with that jawbone from fifty archers and swordsmen at the same time, he had to swing it faster than the speed of sound, which would have shattered it! If he could swing it this fast, his own flesh would be ripped away from his bones.[18] But questions like these just don’t arise in the mind of a believer.
I take it that Christopher Hitchens was dead on: “One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge.”[19]
Old Testament scholar Bernard Anderson describes that era like this:
The Biblical view of miracles is something different from our conception of miracle as a disruption of natural law. As a matter of fact, the Biblical writers had no conception of ‘nature’ as a realm for which God has ordained laws. Rather, God himself sustains his creation, and his will is expressed in natural events, whether it be the coming of the spring rains or the birth of a child…. God is constantly active.[20]
New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman tells us about this prescientific world:
Spectacular deeds happened all the time—it was spectacular when the sun came up or the lightning struck or the crops put forth their fruit…. For these people there was no ‘closed system’ of cause and effect, a natural world that was set over against a supernatural realm.[21]
Ancient historian Richard Carrier explains the ancient zeitgeist in his early paper “Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire:
The age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection and remarkable religious acumen. It was an era filled with con artists, gullible believers, martyrs without a cause, and reputed miracles of every variety. In light of this picture, the tales of the Gospels do not seem very remarkable. Even if they were false in every detail, there is no evidence that they would have been disbelieved or rejected as absurd by many people, who at the time had little in the way of education or critical thinking skills. They had no newspapers, telephones, photographs, or public documents to consult to check a story. If they were not a witness, all they had was a man’s word. And even if they were a witness, the tales above tell us that even then their skills of critical reflection were lacking. Certainly, this age did not lack keen and educated skeptics—it is not that there were no skilled and skeptical observers. There were. Rather, the shouts of the credulous rabble overpowered their voice and seized the world from them, boldly leading them all into the darkness of a thousand years of chaos. Perhaps we should not repeat the same mistake. After all, the wise learn from history. The fool ignores it.[22]
So in his attempt to escape from under a strong standard for miracles based in the laws of nature, McIntosh ends up with an ancient prescientific superstitious standard. This is a subjective standard that depends entirely on what people believed could happen. Lacking a way to fact-check tales of miracles entails that any surprising story could be believable, like having an ax-head float, or a serpent or donkey who spoke perfect Hebrew. The ancients could believe that a man walked on water, created bread and fish out of nothing to feed thousands people, changed water into wine, and stilled the wind and the waves of Galilee. All that they needed was a belief in a caring God in their time of need, and a reason why he should intervene, or an authority who said that God did it.
In the end, McIntosh renders biblical miracles untenable. What he gains with one hand is taken away with the other. His intent is to make miracles more acceptable to scientifically minded people in the modern era. But what he gains on the modern side of Christian history effectively destroys the basis for his whole religious faith on the ancient side of Christian history. For with his inferior concept of miracles we have less of a reason to believe the miracle stories that we read about in the Bible than we had beforehand.
McIntosh’s third major goal has three parts: “I will briefly describe three categories of miracles which do not invoke the testimony of witnesses and in which belief appears justified: (1) miracles of cosmology; (2) miracles of prophecy; and (3) miracles of experience.”
This is his most interesting claim. Usually when skeptics and atheists question miracles, we follow in the footsteps of Hume by arguing that mere testimony—uncorroborated testimony—is insufficient to establish miracles. But if McIntosh could eliminate relying on human testimony in his defense of belief in miracles, his task would be easier. The question is whether McIntosh can actually make such a defense.
McIntosh begins this next part by highlighting the work of Craig Keener. I have published two good chapters that critically engage his work, the first by Darren Slade and the second by Edward Babinski.[23] So let’s start with Keener.
According to Keener:
Eyewitness reports of miracles number in the many millions: A 2006 Pew Forum survey of just ten countries on four continents suggests that about two hundred million Pentecostal and Protestant charismatics in those countries alone claim to have witnessed divine healing. Perhaps more surprisingly, some 39 percent of Christians in those countries who are not Pentecostals or Protestant charismatics also claim to have witnessed divine healing. [24]
Elsewhere Keener wrote:
Indeed, another survey suggests that nearly three quarters of doctors in the United States believe in miracles. More importantly, over half … noted that they witnessed what they considered to be miracles.[25]
McIntosh adds: “The fact that so many highly educated observers have reported witnessing miracles immediately puts the lie to Hume’s supporting premise that belief in miracles is the product of ignorant and superstitious minds” [p. 85]. To be fair with Hume, in his day (the 18th century) the “wise and learned” didn’t believe that miracles occurred.[26]
Overall, Darren Slade expertly commented:
The problem is that Keener’s work is limited in its apologetic value, oftentimes proving only anecdotally that people continue to believe they have witnessed or experienced a miracle. The author not only admits these limitations, but he also declares that he avoided a thorough fact-finding investigation to authenticate the credibility and accuracy of these stories. Keener simply leaves the work of substantiating miracle claims to future investigators. What is interesting is Keener’s use of the term “credibility” in his subtitle when, in fact, neither the credibility, suitability, nor accuracy of his catalog of miracles (or the New Testament accounts) are corroborated with a forensic investigation or other fact-finding techniques.[27]
McIntosh concludes differently: “It appears far more likely, that is, that of the millions of miracle accounts given by credible witnesses, at least a few of them are true, than that the so-called laws of nature—as the latest scientific formulations have led us to understand them, that is—have not once failed to hold” [p. 86]. However, given the number of time scientific equations have worked without fail, it’s more likely Keener’s uninvestigated miracles have a better natural explanation than a miracle.
Earlier in this paper I mentioned the results of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) investigations, which looked for, but didn’t discover, a verified miracle or paranormal claim. One way to fact-check miracle claims is to consider the millions of miracle claims alleged at Lourdes, France. The most credible ones have been investigated by the Catholic Church. Philosopher Matt McCormick tells us the results of their investigations:
The Catholic Church has officially recognized sixty-seven of them. A rough estimation of the general reliability of human miracle testimony from Lourdes comes out to be a mere .0000167. That is, in general, when humans give miracle testimony, their reliability is orders of magnitude worse than it needs to be for us to even provisionally accept it. This dismal fact alone seriously undermines the acceptability of early Christian reports about the miracles of Jesus.[28]
McIntosh says: “Belief in miracles would be justified, then, to the extent that the miracle appears—at least to a particular observer given his background knowledge and prior beliefs—to be the best explanation for the facts in evidence” [p. 86]. What I’m doing here is providing a corrective set of background knowledge and prior beliefs. Let me do more of that.
Consider statistician David Hand, who convincingly shows that “extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they’re commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.” But verbal flourish aside, he does not believe in genuinely supernatural miracles: “No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning three times and still survive.” This is especially true since there are 8 billion people on Earth, each one whom has hundreds of experiences every single day. So extremely rare events within the natural world are not miracles, period. A key reason why believers see evidence of miracles in rare coincidences is simply because they’re ignorant about statistics and the probabilities built upon them. There can be no reasonable doubt about this.[29]
To believe someone’s testimony that God performed a miracle requires enough objective evidence to overcome our extremely well-founded conviction that the world behaves according to natural laws that can be understood and predicted by scientists. David Hume put it this way: “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.”[30] However, human testimony of a miracle is woefully inadequate for this task, as Hume went on to argue. For if we wouldn’t believe someone’s testimony to have sunk eighteen hole-in-one’s in a row on a par-3 golf course, we would all rightly dismiss the additional testimony that the golfer flew in the air like Superman from tee to tee in scoring that perfect eighteen.
At this point McIntosh wants us to consider a unique claim of three categories of miracles that do not involve inadequate testimonies coming from human witnesses, ones in which belief appears justified. Let’s now consider them.
1) Miracles of Cosmology
From the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, McIntosh concludes that “the origin of the universe was a miracle” [p. 87]. But there are two ways to understand the law.
On the first understanding the law does not apply to the universe as a whole. That’s because the law is based on the assumption of a closed system, and the universe is not a closed system. In fact, the universe is expanding, which means that the laws of physics are not constant over time.
On the second understanding that law suggests that the total energy in the universe has always existed and will remain constant. This challenges the idea that the universe was created from nothing, as it would violate that law.[31] Why must we assume otherwise? Mathematics professor James Lindsay says this about that:
Eternal cosmologies deny the existence of a beginning. Eternal means no beginning and no end. No first moment. No last moment. In an eternal cosmological model, we have to reckon time only from defined moments, and we can imagine a timeline of infinite length in both directions from any point that we choose. The way we conceive of that is not of a beginning infinitely long before or an end infinitely long after but rather as “there’s always an earlier moment than any we describe and always a later moment than any we describe.”
Now the point isn’t that we know the universe is eternal. It’s that we don’t know that it isn’t. The whole point, by definition, of an eternal cosmology is that there is no first moment (i.e., no beginning).[32]
McIntosh also brings up the law of biogenesis, that “life can only come from other life.” This was a conclusion that Francesco Redi (1626-1697) and Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) held. But science has moved beyond their early research. Recent research tells us otherwise:
It does not explicitly address the question of the Origin of Life or how life began. Rather, it focuses on the continuation and propagation of life once it has emerged. The very primitive life on Earth was not as structurally complex as modern life is, thus, the contemporary context of Abiogenesis could explain how such a transition from a prebiotic world characterized by non-living molecules and chemical reactions to a biotic world where living organisms of increasingly complex molecules abound could have occurred billion years ago.[33]
So the law of biogenesis only applies to existing life. It doesn’t say anything about the procreation of existing life. At the present time the origin of life still remains a mystery, although see item #7 below.
This kind of question is asked in different contexts about the ultimate origins of existence and life. “Where did the universe come from?”, “Where did life come from?”, and ultimately, “Who created God?” There are ten options to consider:
- God exists in our minds because he was created by prescientific superstitious peoples who didn’t have a clue about the universe, how it works, or how it all might have originated. This is my view and that of many millions of others.
- The options are that something popped into existence out of nothing, or something has always existed. Both options seem irrational, but one is correct and the other is false.
- The best answer is to acknowledge that we don’t know yet. This is a good answer barring sufficient objective evidence. It’s the answer that should have been given many times throughout history, up until the point when science solved a difficulty. We can only go as far as the evidence allows. Admitting our ignorance is better than pontificating with certainty.
- There is no reason to substitute one mystery to solve another. Magical thinking that invokes God is substituting one mystery to solve another one. It’s mysterious why we exist as complex beings, yes. Believing in a mysterious God doesn’t answer why we exist, especially when it comes to invoking a Trinitarian God. This is a God who always co-existed, who never disagreed within the Godhead, who were perfectly happy needing nothing, but who created this world anyway, even knowing that it would introduce horrendous suffering into creation. And it’s a God who would need to send one of his personalities to die a horrendous death for our sins, and eventually send sentient creatures to Hell for the unforgiveable sin of not believing in Jesus because the whole story makes no sense.[34]
- Evolution was a very difficult thing to prove—but it has been proven. Even believers agree that microevolution has taken place. But if there is microevolution, then there is macroevolution. All that’s missing is time. Reject young-Earth creationism, and the time needed is there. Gone is a sin in the Garden of Eden and the need for redemption. In any case, the biblical texts describing creation are no evidence at all as to what happened. In fact, it’s self-referentially incoherent to believe in a Creator who didn’t know anything about the universe! One thing that we know is that the biblical authors didn’t have a clue how the universe came into existence. Why shouldn’t we wait for science to discover how life began?[35]
- The ultimate beginnings of the universe seem to be much harder to determine than evolution. We can start with an equilibrium of positive and negative energy, which is as close to nothingness as we can get. Such an initial state is utterly unstable, as physicist Victor Stenger argued: “Since nothing is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable.” Given the laws of nature, “the probability for there being something rather than nothing can actually be calculated; it is over 60 percent.” As such, “only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.”[36]
- When it comes to the origins of life, there are fifteen main theories of how life began.[37] Once life begins the process of evolution takes care of the rest.
- It is true that science has not explained the origins of life. However, scientists are making progress on it, even while creationists continue to poke at them for not yet getting to the full truth. What we know is that evolution is the case. No one in history thought that this could be established, but it has been established. Let’s be patient. Given what science has already established, it will do likewise with the origin of life, if it can be established at all. Given the number of times that the Bible has been upstaged by science, there’s no reason to think that the Bible has the answers.
- It’s also possible that the explosive power of the Big Bang (or earlier Big Bangs, if there have been many of them) destroyed all of the evidence. It could literally be lost in space. To admit our ignorance seems to be the best answer at this point.
- In any case, we should always accept the consensus of scientists working in their respective fields on anything relevant to understanding the beginnings of existence, the nature of Nature, or its workings. There isn’t any higher authority. No nonscientist, or outlier scientist, can legitimately challenge the consensus until that consensus changes. Only further science can change the consensus.
2) Miracles of Prophecy
McIntosh lists some prophecies and says: “Space forbids discussion of these in an article like this one.” I agree that this is a huge topic, and have published about it elsewhere.[38] Space also forbids this of me. But when it comes to the divine-land promise to the Jews in the Hebrew Bible, McIntosh does indeed need human scholarly testimony in the form of an exegetical understanding that correctly tells us what is being prophesied, when it’s supposed to be fulfilled, and how it will be fulfilled as promised. Is this not “testimony” when biblical scholars testify to what the texts say, just as an expert witness in court? Do we not quote them to dispute the testimony of other scholars who disagree? One would think that if God wanted us to recognize a miracle, he would be clearer about what was being predicted. If this is not the case, is McIntosh saying that the texts don’t require an accurate exegesis, that they are self-explanatory or self-authenticating?
Think of it this way. On the one hand we have the texts. On the other hand we have theologians who put forth exegetical understandings of those texts. If theologians disagree with each other over the fulfillment of this prophecy, we need to deflate the probabilities that the miracle occurred as prophesied. How can the texts predict a miracle until we know which miracle is predicted? Who is to judge which miracle is correct if disputed?
McIntosh argues that the physical restoration of the nation of Israel was prophesied in various biblical books, most notably Ezekiel. They were fulfilled in 1948, he argues, after 1,800 years of banishment, wandering, and persecution. This is a view consistent with premillennial eschatology, one of five hotly disputed distinct interpretations of when the reign of Christ begins on Earth.[39]
Theologians and biblical scholars study these texts with the goal of understanding what they predict. So if McIntosh thinks that he’s cutting out the middleman, so to speak, this fails. That’s because there probably isn’t any other prophecy in the Bible that is disputed and debated, short of the Second coming of the Son of Man, which is also tangled up with the land promise—and with it, Zionism and the political struggles of the Middle East. It would be impossible to retrace these discussions here, but I wrote a chapter describing them with regard to End Time prophecy.[40] Suffice it to say that the debate between believers themselves, despite McIntosh’s one-sided presentation, are intense and abundant.[41]
Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has raised significant questions about the reliability of the Bible, including the land promise. He argues for a fifth understanding of the alleged prophetic texts: that the biblical accounts of the conquest of Canaan and the establishment of the Promised Land are based on legend and are not historical events.[42]
To put this alleged prophecy in context, we know of many prophecies that have failed. Paul Tobin refers to some of them. I’ll quote him:
- Isaiah 19:5-7 claims the river Nile will dry up. The passage was written almost three thousand years ago and was clearly meant for his time. Yet to this date, the Nile has yet to dry up.
- Isaiah 17:1-2 asserts Damascus will cease to be a city forever. I think most people living today in Damascus, the capital city of Syria, would find such a prophecy rather funny.
- Ezekiel predicted (26:7-14) that Nebuchadnezzar will destroy the city of Tyre. Yet even by the prophet’s own later admission, the prophecy failed (Ezekiel 29:17-20).
- Ezekiel tried his hand again at prophecy when he predicted that Egypt will become desolate, completely uninhabited, and that Egyptians will be scattered to other countries (Ezekiel 29:8-12). Yet Egypt has never been desolate, or completely uninhabited, and there never was an Egyptian diaspora.
- Hoping for a third time, Ezekiel tried again. He predicted that Nebuchadnezzar will conquer Egypt (29:19-20). Nebuchadnezzar never did this.
- Jeremiah 36:30 prophesied that Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, shall have no successor. Yet 2 Kings 24:6 says he was succeeded by his son, Jehoiachin.[43]
One of the techniques that modern psychics use in their continuing effort to fleece the public is called “postdiction.” This involves claiming, after the occurrence of something sensational, that you predicted the event before it happened, but for some reason the prediction had been ignored or missed. We find such a method distasteful, yet some biblical authors were not above such tactics. A case in point is the author of the book attributed to Daniel. That book presents itself as being written by the prophet around the 6th century BCE.[44]
Even as early as the 3rd century, pagan critics such as Porphyry (234-c.305) had already pointed out that Daniel’s prophecy was remarkably accurate for events leading up to the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem in 167 BCE, but totally off for events following it. Modern scholars are now in agreement that Daniel was written a year or two after 167 BCE.[45]
Why did the author of Daniel do this? Obviously the answer is that if he could present some of his “postdictions” as accurate, people would give more credence to his book and to its predictions of the future. The one “real” prediction in it that could be verified—the location of the death of Antiochus IV—has been shown to be completely off the mark. Daniel 11:45 predicted that Antiochus IV (c. 215-164 BCE) would die in a location between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea, but he uncooperatively died in Persia.[46] One wonders how different such authors were from the likes of modern-day “psychics” who fleece the gullible in order to enrich themselves.
3) Miracles of Experience
McIntosh ends with some personal experiences of miracles. He says: “Most of my life as a Christian believer has been routine, unremarkable, often difficult and sometimes even desperately painful. But I have also experienced a handful of miracles and I remember them distinctly” [p. 93]. He shared two of them. I think chance is an explanation, but he will disagree. I wasn’t there to see it myself. Plus, given his view of miracles based on signs and wonders, it’s just too easy for him to believe. I’m sure he has no solid evidence for them to convince others.
I’m forced to admit that we cannot, technically speaking, completely rule out the possibility of a God who performs a small amount of hidden unevidenced miracles throughout history. If God does private miracles for some people but not me, what can I say in response? I respond by saying that no other person should believe that he did. There are three good reasons why I say this:
1) First, if a God performs private miracles, no one but that person should believe them until there is sufficient objective evidence to accept them. Reasonable people need sufficient objective evidence to accept them. Private miracles without this evidence might as well not occur at all.
Christians claim that any prayer request granted for believers in different religions is done by their Christian God out of compassion, because only one God exists, theirs. So their God becomes the explanation for the answered prayers of a Muslim, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Roman Catholic, or a liberal Christian, or a Jehovah’s Witness, or a Mormon, or a Hindu.
But through answering these prayers non-Christians will take them as evidence that their faith is true. This means that God, the Christian God, is providing confirming evidence against the truth of Christianity to other believers in false religions, who will be condemned to Hell. So Christians must either give up the belief that their God answers the prayers of other believers, or admit that their God is helping to send them to Hell. If nothing else, McIntosh should show us why their own answered prayers have more evidence for them than others.
2) Second, if God does private miracles, believers must show why organ failures, viruses, and the things that we eat are always the best explanations for why we get sick, rather than curses, sins, or spells. They must also show why the best explanation for healings in fact comes from doctor-prescribed medicines and surgeries rather than prayers. Miracle explanations have become unnecessary and pointless.
3) Third, if a good God does private miracles, then why aren’t they being done to alleviate the most horrendous sufferings in the world? God could have stopped the underwater earthquake that caused the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami before it happened, thus saving a quarter of a million lives. If God had done that, none of us would ever know that he did it. But since there are many clear instances of horrendous suffering where God should have intervened with a miracle, but didn’t, we can reasonably conclude he doesn’t do private miracles at all.
—
Conclusion
Let me end with my own miracle story. I told it a number of times when I was a Christian believer and minister. You see, I myself had some experiences that I couldn’t explain except by a miracle. On one occasion as a seventeen-year-old in 1973, I was driving my 1969 Pontiac Firebird with a friend named Scott. We were talking and laughing. It was nighttime. Then for some reason he told me that he was a Satanist. I’m not sure why. I was raised to be a nominal Catholic Christian and was shocked by what he said. We talked about it and discussed whether Satan has more power than God. He said he would prove Satan had more power than God. So he told me that he was going to make it rain. He saw a self-serve car wash and asked me to turn in. Then he spray washed my car (without soap, just plain water—a detail I remember). As I drove out of the car wash it started to rain, slowly at first, then it turned into a downpour.
I was stunned. How did he do this? It’s not that I first looked up into the sky to see if there were any clouds. But it caused an existential crisis in my head. Given that I had watched some horror movies, I did the only thing I knew to do. I held up my hand to the windshield and commanded the rain to “Stop in the name of Jesus!” Then we watched. The rain immediately and noticeably slowed down. Then within just a few minutes it completely stopped.
After it stopped raining, I held up my hand again and commanded the sky: “Do not rain for the rest of the night.” I looked at Scott and smiled a smile of relief. I had seen the power of God in my life. God did a miracle for me. All Scott could do was shrug his shoulders. That night I personally witnessed a rainless night, since I distinctly remember it wasn’t raining when I went to bed at 3 AM (another remembered detail).
I was really flying high with my emotions after that experience because I positively knew that there was a God who wanted me in his life, and who had a mission for me. It wasn’t long afterward that I got involved in a local youth ministry, and the rest, they say, is history.[47]
Notes
[1] John W. Loftus and Don McIntosh, “The Loftus-McIntosh Debate [Index]” (March 1, 2024). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/loftus-mcintosh-debate/>. Reprinted in John W. Loftus, God and Horrendous Suffering, 2nd ed. (Marlborough, MA: eBookIt.com, 2026).
[2] Don McIntosh, “Signs, Wonders, and Justified Belief in Miracles.” The Trinity Journal of Natural & Philosophical Theology Vol. 3 (Fall 2025): 73-96.
[3] See Bas van Fraassen’s Princeton University faculty page.
[4] Bas van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989).
[5] Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008). See also his The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).
[6] For a general overview, see the Wikipedia entry for chaos theory.
[7] Dipan Kumar Rout, “20 Equations that Changed the Fate of Mankind Forever” (May 27, 2024). Dipan Kumar Rout: Living Life Between Backspaces blog. <https://dipanrout.com/20-equations-that-changed-the-fate-of-mankind-forever/>.
[8] John W. Loftus, “Questioning Miracles: In Defense of David Hume” (April 6, 2024). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/library/modern/questioning-miracles/>.
[9] John W. Loftus, “Psychic Epistemology: The Special Pleading of William Lane Craig” (October 31, 2022). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/psychic-epistemology-the-special-pleading-of-william-lane-craig/>.
[10] The conditions of James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge can be found on an Internet Archive WayBackMachine snapshot of his educational foundation’s page on the challenge. On miracle claims in the modern world, see: Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York, NY: Random House, 1996); Joe Nickel, Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2013); and Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (New York, NY: Henry Holt & Co., 2002). Especially noteworthy are: Guy Harrison, 50 Popular Beliefs that People Think are True (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012) and Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn, How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age, 6th ed. (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010).
[11] On this, see Loftus, “Hail Mary: Was Virgin Mary Truly the Mother of God’s Son?” (December 25, 2024). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/library/modern/hail-mary/>.
[12] Don’t be put off by the title, but see David Kyle Johnson, “Justified Belief in Miracles is Impossible.” Science, Religion and Culture Vol. 2, No. 2: 61-74.
[13] John W. Loftus, “Luke’s Gospel Rejects Matthew’s Previous Gospel!!” (April 15, 2025). Debunking Christianity blog. <https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2025/04/lukes-gospel-rejects-matthews-previous.html>.
[14] John W. Loftus, “The Eccentric, Inflated, Dangerous Theology of John’s Gospel” (July 21, 2023). Debunking Christianity blog. <https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2023/07/the-eccentric-inflated-dangerous.html>.
[15] G. E. Lessing, “On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power” in Lessing’s Theological Writings trans. Henry Chadwick (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956): 51-55.
[16] See Loftus, “Hail Mary: Was Virgin Mary Truly the Mother of God’s Son?,” §5 (“There was No Star of Bethlehem“).
[17] Matthew’s Gospel faked the prophecies—see Loftus, “Hail Mary: Was Virgin Mary Truly the Mother of God’s Son?,” §6 (“The Nativity Prophecies are Fake News“).
[18] I wrote a long chapter (13: “The Strange and Superstitious World of the Bible”) that describes the ancient mind. See John W. Loftus, Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008), pp. 255-294.
[19] Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York, NY: Twelve, 2007), p. 64.
[20] Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1957), p. 43.
[21] Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 194.
[22] Richard Carrier, “Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels” (October 2, 1997). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard-carrier-kooks/>.
[23] See Darren Slade, “Properly Investigating Miracle Claims” in The Case against Miracles ed. John W. Loftus (United States: Hypatia Press, 2019): 114-147 and Edward Babinski, “Assessing Keener’s Miracles” in The Case against Miracles ed. John W. Loftus (United States: Hypatia Press, 2019): 148-201.
[24] Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, Vols. 1 & 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), p. 85.
[25] Craig S. Keener, Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God in the Modern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021), p. 25.
[26] See the paragraph beginning “For the record, Hume is not alone” in John W. Loftus, “Questioning Miracles: In Defense of David Hume” (April 6, 2024). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/library/modern/questioning-miracles/>.
[27] Slade, “Properly Investigating Miracle Claims,” pp. 114-117.
[28] Matt McCormick, Atheism and the Case Against Christ (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012), p. 395. Elsewhere McCormick also compared the evidence for the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus with those alleged during the Salem witch trials, concluding: “The Salem case shows that by the ordinary standards of skepticism and evidence that most of us employ in other cases, we would not accept the claim that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.” McCormick, “The Salem Witch Trials and the Evidence for the Resurrection” in The End of Christianity ed. John W. Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books): 195-217, p. 217.
[29] Back cover explanation of David J. Hand, The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day (New York, NY: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). See also: Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2009); Joseph Mazur, Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2016); and Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, Knock on Wood: Luck, Chance, and the Meaning of Everything (Toronto, Canada: HarperCollins Publishers, 2018).
[30] David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), chapter 10, part 1, para. 13.
[31] See Anaya Nolan, “The Universe: Breaking the First Law of Thermodynamics?” (January 14, 2025). LawShun website. <https://lawshun.com/article/does-our-universe-break-the-1st-law-of-thermodynamics>.
[32] John W. Loftus, “Infinity is not a Number, So the Kalam Argument Fails” (March 21, 2016). Debunking Christianity blog. <https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2016/03/infinity-is-not-number-so-kalam.html>.
[33] Biology Online Editors, “Law of Biogenesis” (October 6, 2023). Learn Biology Online website. <https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/law-of-biogenesis>.
[34] See John W. Loftus, “The Christian Faith Makes No Sense at All” (December 24, 2025). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/christian-faith-makes-no-sense/>.
[35] John W. Loftus, “Does God Exist? A Definitive Biblical Case” (May 1, 2023). The Secular Web. <https://infidels.org/kiosk/article/does-god-exist-a-definitive-biblical-case/>.
[36] Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis, pp. 132-133. See also Stenger, The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From?, supplement H.
[37] Trista Smith, “15 Theories About the Origin of Life—From the Strange to the Plausible” (September 3, 2025). Science Sensei website. <https://sciencesensei.com/15-theories-about-the-origin-of-life-from-the-strange-to-the-plausible/>.
[38] Robert J. Miller, “How New Testament Writers Helped Jesus Fulfill Prophecy” in The Case against Miracles ed. John W. Loftus (United States: Hypatia Press, 2019): 255-277. This is an excerpt from Miller’s massive Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2016). See also Loftus, Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, pp. 349-369 [chapter 17: “Prophecy and Biblical Authority”].
[39] See Logos Staff, “What is Eschatology? 4 Views, Why There’s Disagreement & More” (April 29, 2022). Logos Bible Study website. <https://www.logos.com/grow/what-is-eschatology/>.
[40] John W. Loftus, “At Best Jesus was a Failed Apocalyptic Prophet” in The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010), pp. 316-343.
[41] See, for instance, the Wikipedia entry for Promised Land.
[42] Bart D. Ehrman, “Israel’s Conquest of the Promised Land: Did Any of that Happen?” (August 25, 2021). The Bart Ehrman Blog: The History & Literature of Early Christianity. <https://ehrmanblog.org/israels-conquest-of-the-promised-land-did-any-of-that-happen/>.
[43] Paul Tobin, “The Bible and Modern Scholarship” in The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails ed. John W. Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010): 164-165. See also: A. D. Howell Smith, In Search of the Real Bible (London, UK: Watts, 1943), pp. 40-41; and C. Dennis McKinsey, The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 304.
[44] Although in the first half of the book Daniel is spoken of in the third person, later portions of the book clearly present themselves as being composed by Daniel (see Daniel 7:1,28; 8:2; 9:2; 10:1, 2; 12:4,5).
[45] See: G. W. Anderson, A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament (London, UK: Duckworth, 1979), p. 211; and J. Alberto Soggin, Introduction to the Old Testament (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1976), p. 477.
[46] A detailed treatment of Daniel’s prophesies can be found Tim Callahan’s Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment? (Altadena, CA: Millennium Press, 1997), pp. 149-177.
[47] I tell all in my book Why I Became an Atheist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012).
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