Aren't miracles impossible because they violate the laws of nature?
The laws of nature are established by uniform human experience: dead men stay dead and water does not turn into wine. A miracle would break those laws, so the evidence against any miracle is always greater than the testimony for it. It is always more likely that a witness was mistaken or lying than that nature was suspended.
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), section 10, 'Of Miracles'
Laws of nature describe what happens when nothing outside nature acts. They cannot tell us whether something outside nature exists or ever acts. If God exists, a miracle is not a broken law but a new cause entering the system. Hume's argument assumes experience against miracles is 'uniform', which is the very thing in question. Whether a miracle happened is decided by evidence, not ruled out in advance.
What Scripture says
1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
If God made nature, nature is not a closed box he cannot reach into.
17“Oh, Lord GOD! You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too difficult for You!
Nothing is 'too hard' for the God who made heaven and earth.
1On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2and Jesus and His disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to Him, “They have no more wine.” 4“Woman, what is that to you and to Me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.” 6Now six stone water jars had been set there for the Jewish rites of purification. Each could hold from twenty to thirty gallons. 7Jesus told the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” So they filled them to the brim. 8“Now draw some out,” He said, “and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not know where it was from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10and said, “Everyone serves the fine wine first, and then the cheap wine after the guests are drunk. But you have saved the fine wine until now!” 11Jesus performed this, the first of His signs, at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.
Jesus' first 'sign' at Cana. John presents miracles as signs that reveal who Jesus is, not as random marvels.
30Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.
The signs were written down so readers may believe. They are offered as testimony to be weighed.
22Men of Israel, listen to this message: Jesus of Nazareth was a man certified by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him, as you yourselves know.
Peter appeals to Jesus' miracles as public facts his Jerusalem audience already knew.
3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. 6After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one of untimely birth.
The central Christian miracle, the resurrection, rests on named witnesses who could be questioned.
The case
Hume's argument
The modern form of this objection comes from the Scottish philosopher David Hume. In section 10 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), he wrote: "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined."
In Part 2 of the essay he adds practical reasons for doubt: miracle reports have not been confirmed by enough educated and reputable witnesses; people love to spread astonishing stories; such reports flourish mainly among "ignorant and barbarous nations"; and the miracles of rival religions cancel each other out.
Hume's argument has been enormously influential. It has also been heavily criticized, including by philosophers who are not Christians. Philosopher of science John Earman, writing as a non-believer, titled his study of it Hume's Abject Failure (2000).
Problem 1: What is a law of nature?
A law of nature describes what regularly happens when no outside cause interferes. If I drop an apple, gravity predicts it will fall. If you catch it, you have not broken the law of gravity; you have added a new cause.
C. S. Lewis gives an analogy: if you put six coins in a drawer on Monday and six more on Tuesday, arithmetic says there will be twelve on Wednesday. If a thief has taken some, the laws of arithmetic have not been broken; something outside the system has acted (Miracles, ch. 8). A miracle is like that. If God exists, a miracle is not nature contradicting itself but its Maker acting within it.
So the real question is not "can laws be broken?" but "is nature a closed system, or is there a God who can act?" That cannot be settled by observing nature's regularities, because those regularities are exactly what we would expect either way.
Problem 2: The argument assumes its conclusion
Hume claims there is "uniform experience" against miracles. But how could he know that? Only if every reported miracle in history were false. Yet that is the very question being debated. If the disciples really did see the risen Jesus, then experience is not uniform against resurrection. To declare every miracle report false because experience is uniform, and experience uniform because every report is false, is to reason in a circle.
Problem 3: Unusual is not the same as unbelievable
Hume's approach, taken strictly, would rule out any sufficiently unusual event, no matter how good the evidence. Yet we routinely believe reports of unrepeated or one-time events when the testimony is strong. Hume's contemporary Richard Price argued that the testimony of several independent and honest witnesses can establish events that are very improbable on background experience alone (Four Dissertations, 1767). The right question is not "how often does this happen?" but "how good is the evidence that it happened this time?"
| Question | Hume's approach | A fairer approach |
|---|---|---|
| Can God act in nature? | Treated as near impossible | Depends on whether God exists |
| Weight of rare events | Always outweighed by regularity | Weighed against specific evidence |
| Witness testimony | Always more likely false | Assessed by number, independence and character |
| Competing miracle claims | Cancel each other out | Each examined on its own merits |
Miracles in the Bible are not random
Biblical miracles are relatively rare and clustered around key moments: the exodus, the prophets Elijah and Elisha, and above all Jesus and the apostles. They are not fairy-tale magic but signs with a purpose: to show who God is and to confirm his message. Jesus' miracles reveal the kingdom of God breaking in, with sickness healed, hunger fed and death reversed. They are previews of the renewed creation.
Why it matters
If God exists, miracles are possible. The question then becomes historical: did God in fact act? Christianity stakes everything on one such act, the resurrection of Jesus, and invites people to examine the evidence (1 Corinthians 15:14). An open mind is not one that has ruled out the conclusion before looking. It is one willing to follow the evidence, even to an empty tomb.
Word study
greek · “sign” · John 2:11
John's favorite word for Jesus' miracles. A sign points beyond itself. Biblical miracles are not arbitrary interruptions of nature but purposeful acts that reveal God's character and confirm his messenger.
greek · “power, mighty work” · Acts 2:22
Acts 2:22 uses three words together: mighty works (dynamesi), wonders (terasi, G5059) and signs (sēmeiois). Together they present miracles as acts of God's power that provoke awe and carry meaning.
“But what about…?”
But we never see miracles today, so isn't it more rational to doubt them?
Many people around the world report experiences they regard as miraculous, especially healings. New Testament scholar Craig Keener has gathered and examined a large number of such accounts, some with medical documentation, in his two-volume Miracles (2011). Not every claim is credible, but the assumption that no one today reports miracles is false.
Don't all religions claim miracles, so they cancel each other out?
Hume made this argument. But claims differ greatly in quality: how early the sources are, how many independent witnesses there are, and whether the event is public. The Christian case rests mainly on one public, early, multiply-attested event, the resurrection. Investigating each claim on its merits is fairer than dismissing them all together.
Isn't it always more probable that the witnesses were mistaken?
Only if we assume beforehand that a miracle is almost impossibly unlikely. Richard Price, a contemporary of Hume who helped publish Bayes' work on probability, argued that the testimony of several independent, reliable witnesses can make even very improbable events credible. We accept many surprising reports this way.
Doesn't science assume there are no miracles?
Science assumes nature is regular, and Christianity agrees: miracles stand out only because nature is normally orderly. Science studies natural causes; it does not prove that only natural causes exist.
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 1947Miracles: A Preliminary StudyC. S. Lewis
- book · 2000Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against MiraclesJohn Earman
- book · 2011Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament AccountsCraig S. Keener
- book · 1997In Defense of MiraclesR. Douglas Geivett & Gary R. Habermas (eds.)
- book · 1748An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 10, 'Of Miracles'David Hume
Sources (5)
- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), section 10, 'Of Miracles', Parts 1–2
- Richard Price, Four Dissertations (1767), Dissertation IV
- C. S. Lewis, Miracles (1947), ch. 8, 'Miracles and the Laws of Nature'
- John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford University Press, 2000)
- Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (Baker Academic, 2011)
Related questions
Hasn't science disproved God?
Science studies how the natural world works; it cannot, by its own methods, show whether nature is all there is. That is a philosophical claim, not a scientific result. The God of the Bible is not one more cause inside the universe competing with gravity or chemistry. He is the reason there is a lawful universe at all. Modern science grew up largely among people who believed exactly that, and many working scientists still do.
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
A small set of facts is granted by nearly all historians who study the period, including skeptics: Jesus died by crucifixion; his disciples sincerely believed he appeared to them alive; the church persecutor Paul and the skeptic James were converted by what they believed were appearances; and the tomb was very likely found empty. Natural theories each explain one or two of these facts but fail on the rest. The resurrection explains all of them, and it is exactly what Jesus predicted.
How did life begin without a Creator?
There is no agreed scientific explanation yet for how life first arose from non-living chemistry. Researchers have made real progress on pieces of the puzzle, but building a self-replicating, information-rich cell remains an unsolved problem. Christians should not rest their faith on that gap. The deeper point is this: even a complete chemical pathway would not explain why the universe has laws and chemistry capable of producing life. Scripture presents God as the giver of life, however he brought it about.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.