A philosophical exploration of whether it is rational to believe in miracles.

What are the principles involved here?

And that is part of what today people call philosophy of religion.

Philosophers had sort of cast out religion in the early 20th century and even before that. It was not really a serious

topic. That began to change around the 1970s, in particular with Richard Swinburne and Ivan

Plantinger and others. And now it's a huge field. So many philosophers are writing about theological

topics such as, well, I mean, the existence of God, certainly, but also

so-called hiddenness of God or the questions of an afterlife, religious experience, theodicy,

even atonement, believe it or not, and miracles. And so there we are, miracles. And miracles that's in itself a complex and far-reaching topic, and I cannot treat all of that tonight.

I mean, we can get into all sorts of directions in the question and answer.

But I thought I'll do two parts.

First part is about the possibility of miracles. And the second, the actuality

of miracles. If something is not possible, then by definition it's not actual.

On the other hand, if something is actual and proven to be actual, then it must be possible.

That's implied. That's how they're two hang together.

Now before I get into these two parts, just a few general introductory kind of comments.

If I ask whether it's rational to belief in miracles, probably the contemporary knee-jerk reaction

would be no, it's not, you know.

And it might be something for superstitious people or simple-minded people or for bygone ages.

And those kind of outlooks are not limited to secular minds.

Even theologian and scripture scholars say things like that.

So here's a quote from Rudolf Bultmann, famous

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