Hume's Challenge and Wiles' Alternative
David Hume launched the most famous attack on miracles, arguing from his empiricist perspective that we should never believe miracle claims. His logic is brutally simple: miracles violate natural laws, making them maximally improbable events. Since witnesses can lie or be mistaken, it's always more likely that testimony is false than that a miracle actually occurred.
Hume also pointed out psychological factors - miracle stories often come from "ignorant and barbarous people" with poor education. Plus, if every religion claims miracles, they can't all be right, can they?
Maurice Wiles offers a different critique entirely. As a Christian theologian, he doesn't reject miracles because they're scientifically impossible, but because they're morally problematic. If God can intervene selectively to help some people but not others, this creates serious questions about divine justice and goodness.
Wiles argues that God's only miracle was creation itself. After that, God allows the universe to operate according to natural laws without interference. This preserves both scientific understanding and moral consistency, though it challenges traditional Christian beliefs about biblical miracles.
Remember: These debates aren't just academic - they affect how believers understand prayer, divine action, and the relationship between faith and reason in the modern world.