Miracle

==Supernatural explanations==
A miracle is a phenomenon not explained by known [[Physical law|laws of nature]]. The criteria for classifying an event as a miracle vary. Often a [[religious text]], such as the [[Bible]] or [[Quran]], states that a miracle occurred, and believers may accept this as fact.

===Philosophical explanations===

====Aristotelian and Neo-Aristotelian====
The [[Aristotelian view of God]] has God as pure actuality<ref>{{cite web |last1=Adamson |first1=Peter |title=The Theology of Aristotle |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theology-aristotle/ |website=stanford.edu |access-date=31 July 2018 |archive-date=11 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180611162132/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theology-aristotle/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and considers him as the prime mover doing only what a perfect being can do, think.<ref>{{cite web |title=Aristotle on the Existence of God |url=http://www.logicmuseum.com/ontological/aristotleontological.htm |website=logicmuseum.com |access-date=31 July 2018 |archive-date=31 January 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140131212318/http://www.logicmuseum.com/ontological/aristotleontological.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Jew]]ish neo-[[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]] [[philosophy|philosophers]]<ref name="Afterman 2016 p. 102">{{cite book | last=Afterman | first=A. | title='And They Shall Be One Flesh': On The Language of Mystical Union in Judaism | publisher=Brill | series=Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy | year=2016 | isbn=978-90-04-32873-0 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FOEzDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA102 | access-date=31 July 2018 | page=102 | archive-date=30 June 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230630130753/https://books.google.com/books?id=FOEzDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA102 | url-status=live }}</ref> who are still influential today include [[Maimonides]], [[Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon]], and [[Gersonides]]. Directly or indirectly, their views are still{{As of?|date=July 2023}} prevalent in much of the religious Jewish community. <!-- Christian and Muslim neo-Aristotelian philosophers should also be discussed in this section; also please note if their works are still studied and accepted today, and if so, by whom. -->

====Baruch Spinoza====
{{See also|Epistemic theory of miracles}}
In his ''[[Tractatus Theologico-Politicus]]'', the philosopher [[Baruch Spinoza|Spinoza]] claims that miracles are merely lawlike events of whose causes we are ignorant.<ref>{{cite book|author=Benedictus de Spinoza|others=translated by Robert Willis|title=Thelogico-Political Treatise|chapter=Chapter 6: Of Miracles|url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Theologico-Political_Treatise_1862/Chapter_6|access-date=2014-09-12|archive-date=2014-09-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140912093628/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Theologico-Political_Treatise_1862/Chapter_6|url-status=live}}</ref> We should not treat them as having no cause or of having a cause immediately available. Rather the miracle is for combating the ignorance it entails, like a political project.{{clarify|date=July 2014}}

====David Hume====
{{Main|Of Miracles}}
According to the philosopher [[David Hume]], a miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent".<ref name="Miracles" /> The crux of his argument is this: "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 endeavours to establish." By Hume's definition, a miracle goes against our regular experience of how the universe works. As miracles are single events, the evidence for them is always limited and we experience them rarely. On the basis of experience and evidence, the probability that miracle occurred is always less than the probability that it did not occur. As it is rational to believe what is more probable, we are not supposed to have a good reason to believe that a miracle occurred.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com/9781138793934/A2/Hume/HumeMiracles.pdf |title=Archived copy |website=documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com |access-date=15 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170320215642/http://documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com/9781138793934/A2/Hume/HumeMiracles.pdf |archive-date=20 March 2017 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

====Friedrich Schleiermacher====
According to the [[Christian theologian]] [[Friedrich Schleiermacher]] "every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant".<ref>{{cite book|title=On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despirers|year=1893|location=London|publisher=Paul, Trench, Trubner|page=23|chapter=Second Speech: The Nature of Religion}}</ref>

====Søren Kierkegaard====
The philosopher [[Søren Kierkegaard]], following Hume and [[Johann Georg Hamann]], a Humean scholar, agrees with Hume's definition of a miracle as a transgression of a law of nature,<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1198939 | jstor=1198939 | last1=Popkin | first1=Richard H. | title=Hume and Kierkegaard | journal=The Journal of Religion | date=1951 | volume=31 | issue=4 | pages=274–281 | doi=10.1086/484179 | s2cid=170254469 | doi-access=free }}</ref> but Kierkegaard, writing as his pseudonym ''Johannes Climacus'', regards any historical reports to be less than certain, including historical reports of miracles, as all historical knowledge is always doubtful and open to approximation.<ref>[http://www.stolaf.edu/collections/kierkegaard/newsletters/Newsletter43.pdf Kierkegaard on Miracles] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100606165846/http://www.stolaf.edu/collections/kierkegaard/newsletters/Newsletter43.pdf |date=2010-06-06 }}</ref>

====James Keller====
[[James Keller (priest)|James Keller]] states that the "claim that God has worked a miracle implies that God has singled out certain persons for some benefit which many others do not receive implies that God is unfair."<ref>Keller, James. "A Moral Argument against Miracles", ''Faith and Philosophy''. vol. 12, no 1. Jan 1995. 54–78</ref>