Something to help everyone with revision

I have an idea that could help everyone revise for philosophy of any kind.
Basically, you decide which area of philosophy is your favourite and explain it in reasonable depth to help others who aren't as strong in that area. It can all be here in the same place and I think it could be a great help to many people.

Ok, I'll start you off. I know quite a lot about miracles' definitions and scientific explanations of them (which many philosophy students struggle with).

I'll post them after this. I hope this works!

If you want to contribute but aren't sure what, you could just look into one specific idea in depth and put your findings here too. Most wider philosophical reading is helpful in an exam.

Reply 1

Conor Tickner

Miracle definitions by scholars
Aquinas
Definition: “Those things that are done by divine power apart from the order usually followed in things.”
Three types of miracle:
An event done by God which nature cannot do under any circumstances. The most traditional approach to miracles. E.g. reversal of the sun.
An event done by God which nature could in theory, but doesn‘t do. E.g. recovery from terminal illness or paralysis.
An event done by God that nature can do but has divine assistance. E.g. recovery from a cold quickly after praying to God.
Allows for a wide range of events called miracles but all difficult to verify.
Primarily identified by God’s intentions in intervening.

Swinburne
Definition: “Very occasional intervention to suspend the laws of nature that control our lives.”
Swinburne believes that: historical evidence > scientific evidence
An omnipotent God could easily suspend the laws of nature without making them obsolete but only occasionally as otherwise it would interfere with free will and the scientific process.
Many events could invalidate a law if nobody has discovered how an exception to the law works.
Principle of Credulity: If it seems that X is present, then X is probably present unless there is significant reason to believe otherwise.
Principle of Testimony: Unless there is significant reason to believe otherwise, people’s experiences are probably as they report them.

Holland
Definition: “A remarkable and beneficial coincidence that can be interpreted in a religious fashion.”
Miracles are not necessarily a violation of the laws of nature.
There is no ‘hand of God’ intervening, but a series of events set in motion from the moment of creation to allow certain events to happen.
Identified as miracles by their religious significance or interpretation which, although subjective and can be seen as unreliable, allows a person to believe in a God who helps His creation without removing a belief in scientific laws.

Tillich
Miracles are not identified by the breaking of the law but by the effect on the recipient and its significance on the nature of God.
Miracles seen as sign-events which point to an attribute of God or change the life of a person or many people.

Hume
Definition: “A transgression of a law of nature brought about by a particular violation by a Deity”
Nothing can happen in nature that should be called a miracle.
5 reasons not to believe in miracles:
Rationality demands that we proportion our beliefs to the amount of evidence which makes belief in miracles irrational.
Credibility of witnesses is always under scrutiny. The witness could always be lying, drug taking or have psychological problems.
Large proportion of testimony comes from the very young, the uneducated, the mentally ill/unstable and the very old.
Humans naturally exaggerate accounts to make them sound better. Humans also have tendencies to want to believe in the extraordinary and supernatural.
Miracles are credited to different religions so they conflict with each other. They cannot all be right so the rational person should realise that perhaps none of them are.

Wiles
Definition: “A very rare but phenomenal intervention in the world by God.”
If miracles do occur then God is to be seen as very arbitrary and not fit for worship. Why would an omnipotent omniscient benevolent God reserve His time for trivial cases such as weeping statues. If God fed the 5000 in the bible then why can’t He eliminate world starvation today?
A Go who intervenes selectively and trivially is not worthy or worship due to His failure to act on a wider scale.
Wiles doesn’t deny God’s existence or claim that He doesn’t care but claims that the only miracle performed by God is in the act of creating the universe (along with maintaining and preserving it).
If God doesn’t intervene then what happened with regards to Christ’s incarnation and resurrection?
Wiles proposed a way in which the incarnation and resurrection could have occurred:
Mary responded perfectly to God’s grace and in doing so incarnated God into the world via Jesus. Jesus is fully human filled with God’s grace therefore having God’s power. He was able to suspend the laws of nature in a unique way that didn’t occur before and hasn’t occurred since.

Scientific explanations next...
Feel free to correct any misunderstandings or missing parts.

Reply 2

Conor Tickner

The main parts which people don't understand are chaos theory, probability and quantum phenomena.

The following should be considered with respect to miracles:

Normally objects are predictable with constants like the speed of light, the mass of a proton and the formulae and equations that link everything together. Chaos theory states that this is only the case when considering bodies of matter and energy. As we go smaller, down past the atomic level to the subatomic level of quarks, neutrinos, and all other kinds of things, we find that things get a whole lot more unpredictable. Particles seem to appear out of nowhere and behave unexpectedly. It turns out that at a subatomic level we cannot predict what will happen like we can in the middle scale, we can only model the situation as a probability. For example, if the chance of a particle doing X is 50% and the chance of it doing Y is 50%, then no matter how much we know about the particle and all the effects of various forces etc. on it, we will still be wrong about what it will do 50% of the time.

To put this in perspective, think of throwing a ball. If you know the exact angle and direction of motion, the mass, speed, and all the necessary information and physics, you can predict with absolute certainty 100% of the time, exactly what it will do and where it will land.

There are some probability issues often misunderstood too.
Science knows for a fact that all particles with energy will move, even if it's onlly tiny vibrations.
Think of a statue. It is possible for the vibration of the particles in the arm of the statue to align so that it waves at a passer by and then returns to it's original position. Obviously the probablity is so great that it isn't even worth considering but it is not impossible. In a universe so big as ours, the possibility is so huge that it could happen.

Quantum theory demonstrates that things aren't as logical as they seem and the effects of observation are much greater than we think.
The following is true:
An electron is fired at a solid plate with two slits in. Logically there are three outcomes- either it goes through the left slit, the right slit or bounces off. In reality, it has been shown to go through both slits at the same time! When the slits are monitored to 'see' which slit it goes through, it acts as logic expects and does one of the three outcomes.

The implications on the idea of miracles is very serious. What was previously thought impossible, now is not so certain.

Something to help everyone with revision

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