Henke 2022cm

No Evidence of Miracles in Lewis (1960)

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I wrote the following about verifying history and the supernatural:

“According to his second essay, Lundahl (2022b), there are two ways to verify the existence of the supernatural; namely, metaphysics and history. He is definitely wrong to claim that history is capable of verifying the supernatural. C.S. Lewis (1960, p. 2), a source used by Lundahl (2022a), even agrees with me that “history can never convince us that a miracle occurred.” We can never rule out the strong possibility that “witnesses” to a past “supernatural event” outright lied and made-up a story, or misinterpreted what they saw. These are the bases of Hypotheses #3 and #4 for the Talking Snake, which Lundahl (2022c) utterly fails to adequately address as discussed in Section 5.0 of this essay.

Lewis (1960, p. 87) is also correct when he states that the “progress of science” has not eliminated the possibility of miracles and that science has not demonstrated that miracles are impossible. However, again, Lewis (1960, pp. 17-85) fails to demonstrate that human reasoning or another other process involves the supernatural. He also failed to realize that the burden of evidence for miracles are on those that argue for miracles. Despite his often vague rambling, Lewis (1960) presents no evidence of miracles.

The only way to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural is to have it demonstrated under strictly controlled conditions with multiple investigators from diverse backgrounds. These investigations would certainly involve logic and mathematics, but not any unnecessary pedantic and flawed metaphysical arguments.

As an example, someone might claim that he witnessed a “prophet” raising a cat from the dead. Obviously, this claim could be a lie or a misinterpretation. So, how could anyone confirm that this prophet has the ability to raise animals from the dead? The only reliable way is to test the prophet under strictly controlled conditions. First, you collect a DNA sample from a cat that has just died. Get three veterinarians to independently confirm that the cat is indeed dead. Next, place the cat in a well-secured storage area where it can rot for a week. Then under strictly controlled conditions involving videos, get the prophet to raise the cat from the dead. If the cat comes back to life, immediately collect another DNA sample to confirm that it’s the same cat.

Let’s say that someone was actually able on their own without technological assistance to resurrect a cat from the dead. Perhaps, he lays his hands on dead animals, prays, and in all cases the animals come back to life. Now, some superskeptics might simply argue that the individual has discovered a new, but totally natural, way of resurrecting the dead and that the supernatural remains undemonstrated. For example, someone might argue that aliens from space could have hidden advanced technologies or natural powers that would allow them to resurrect dead animals even after a week. The process would look supernatural to our primitive minds even though natural law was not violated. It is said that advanced technologies appear as “magic” to less technical societies. If this is a genuine concern, have the “prophet” do a bigger task, such as producing a complete solar system from nothing within a light year of Earth. The prophet could be given six days to do it. Now, someone might groundlessly speculate that in a million years people might develop the technology to raise the dead or create solar systems from nothing – ex nihilo creation. Maybe, but if humans every gain the ability through either technology, now unknown natural powers or magic to raise the dead or create entire solar systems from nothing; that is, utterly control space and time, then they might meet the definitions of a god and they might deserve the right to be called gods. However, that doesn’t mean that they deserve worship as gods. Their moral character still may be quite human and flawed. Nevertheless, I’m skeptical that humans will ever be able to do ex nihilo creation and resurrect the decayed dead.

Now, I fully understand that a god, prophet, psychic, ghost, demon, or angel probably would never agree to submit to testing, but this is the only way to verify the supernatural. So, believers in the supernatural are in the unfortunate position of not being able to demonstrate that their claims are real. Too bad for them. Nevertheless, skeptics have no rational reason to lower their standards so that believers’ likely nonsense could be labeled as reality. Advocates of the supernatural have to find some way to meet strict scientific standards and demonstrate their claims.” [my emphasis]

Lundahl (2022m) then comments on the bolded paragraph of this section:

“He absolutely did not do so. He most definitely considered, once naturalism was out of the way, once dualism and pantheism were out of the way too, and once deistic views on "impropriety" of miracles were out of the way, it definitely was up to an examination of history to check if God had in fact chosen to speak to us through miracles.

The chapters named The Grand Miracle, Miracles of the Old Creation, Miracles of the New Creation deal with providing historic proof accompanied with metaphysic discussion of propriety (within general Theism) of the miracle of God become man, born in Bethlehem, of the miracles He worked that shortcut natural processes, and of the miracles involving reversal of death. In other words, in the end CSL is providing at once historic proof and metaphysical answer to objections, for Christianity. Did Henke even arrive at those chapters? Because, his distaste for what he considers as "vague rambling" seems to have been a possible obstacle against his actually arriving there. In the 2012 paperback (translated to French 2018) they are on the pages 173 to 275.”

Here, Lundahl (2022m) totally fails to realize that Lewis’ quoting from the Bible is not evidence that God became man, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that Jesus resurrected from the dead or that he performed any miracles or did or said anything else (Henke 2022ar). When Lewis (1960) is carefully evaluated, his arguments are shown to be full of holes and lacking evidence. Where’s the evidence that any citation that Lewis (1960) made from the Bible is reliable? Where’s the extra-biblical confirmation in Lewis (1960) that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Even John 7:40-43 indicates that there were doubts back then about where Jesus was born. Where is the evidence that Jesus performed any miracle or said anything attributed to him in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Why should we believe the Gospels? Why should we believe unsubstantiated Bible stories, especially when even Lewis expressed doubts about the historicity of Job and Jonah (Jeffrey 2000, p. 98)? As I explained in Henke (2022b), Henke (2022be) and Henke (2022aj), there’s no such thing as “historic proof”, and “metaphysical answers” are no answers at all if they are not supported by solid evidence. There are only probabilities in history and both Lewis (1960) and Mr. Lundahl totally fail to provide suitable evidence to place any confidence in the Gospel stories. Mr. Lundahl and Lewis (1960) are just assuming that these New Testament stories happened without giving a shred of archeological or other external evidence that they actually did.

Now, C.S. Lewis is highly respected among conservative Christians. He was a man that started out as an atheist and then became a Christian, although he was not a biblical inerrantist, at least not towards the end of his life (Jeffrey 2000). Too often people just want to blindly believe whatever their heroes say and sometimes when members of the crowd question the claims of the heroes and don’t go along with the “group think”, their colleagues may condemn them for being idiots or heretics for not understanding the heroes’ “brilliant logic.” For too many of Lewis’ followers, “if Lewis (1960) claimed to have disposed of naturalism, dualism, pantheism and deism, well then he must have demonstrated that miracles occur.” Nope. Skepticism is always warranted until the evidence comes forward. Even back when Lewis (1960) was written, the book did not contain the required archeology and other science to back up his brash proclamations.

As I stated in Henke (2022as), I read Lewis (1960) many years ago when I was still a Christian. I was not impressed with his arguments back then. Although his rambling is often hard to follow, for this debate, I read Lewis (1960) again and I’m still not impressed.

References

Jeffrey, D.L. 2000. “C.S. Lewis, the Bible, and Its Literary Critics” Christianity and Literature, v. 50, n. 1, pp. 95-109.

Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2^nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.