Deism and Miracles

0:00This episode is entitled, Deism and Miracles. Hello, I'm Jay Forrest. Welcome to the Spiritual Deism Podcast. In the 1980s, Televangelis Peter Popoff dazzled crowds at Faith Helene Crusades with divine revelations and miraculous cures until skeptic James Randy exposed the scam. See, Popoff's wife was relaying information from prayer cards and pre-service chats via hidden radio to his earpiece. This infamous takedown backed by recordings shattered his empire and exemplifies how purported miracles often crumble under scrutiny.

1:04I believe in God, but I don't believe in revelation, miracles, prophecy, or answered prayer. This view is called Deism. Deism is a belief in a transpersonal creator God who does not directly intervene in affairs of the world. First, we should define a miracle. A miracle is defined as a specific act of divine intervention that transcends or overrides the established laws of nature. Now, if you say that God does perform miracles, then explain why God has to fix a situation. So I believe God makes masterpieces, not mistakes. Yet if God has to intervene in His creation, then He made a mistake. Why did God fail to design the universe so it didn't need a repairman? If God intervenes in the world, then you have to answer the problem of evil, both moral, evil, and natural evil.

2:09Epicurus stated it clearly, is God willing to prevent evil, but not able, then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing, then He is malevolent? Is He both able and willing, then where does evil come from? Is He neither able nor willing, then why call Him God? Natural laws are unchangeable and therefore cannot be violated. For a violation would involve a change in the unchangeable laws, therefore miracles are impossible, at least in my view. If God performs miracles for some, then why does it He do it for all? Where was God during the Holocaust? Six million Jews were murdered. No intervention for God supposed chosen people. More than 370 million girls and women, alive today, that's roughly one in eight, experienced rape or sexual assault during their childhood. Where were their miracles?

3:16Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say I put a red button in front of you. This stop button will stop any action someone is doing. Now imagine, a little girl, four years old, is about to be raped and murdered. At what point do you press the stop button? Yet God never pushes the button and just watches it happen. He can step in and stop it for he performs miracles for other people, but not for this innocent four year old. The fact that all of us would press the stop button makes it clear that either God does not exist. God does not care or God cannot intervene. There are no other options. So if you believe in miracles, you have to conclude that God does not care about everybody. But evil is not limited to human free will. There's natural evil as well. Think of bone cancer in children. God could heal them.

4:23For he performs miracles for other people, but not for 4,000 children worldwide that die from it yearly. Where were the miracles of God during the bubonic plague when at least 75 million men, women and children were killed by the plague? Or where were the miracles of God during the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia that killed about 230,000 people? If, on the other hand, God does not perform miracles as I contend, apparent ones require natural explanations. The first and the most common is psychological in nature, mass hysteria, collective delusion or hallucination, where perception itself becomes the source of the event, not any external suspension of natural laws. Second, apparent miracles occur among people of every faith, monotheist, polytheist, pantheist alike, as well as among unbelievers.

5:30They happen to both those who pray and those who never prayed at all, showing that God has nothing to do with them. Third, many of the so-called miracles could be traced to the placebo effect, the mind's capacity to influence the body, producing real improvements without any supernatural cause. Fourth, psychosomatic illnesses can likewise have psychosomatic cures, manifestations of mind over matter, where belief and emotion influence the body as powerful as any medicine. Fifth, many supposed miracles result from simple misdiagnosis, conditions thought incurable or fatal were, in fact, misunderstood from the start. Sixth, spontaneous remission, when the body's own immune system unexpectedly eliminates a disease, could give the appearance a miraculous healing without any divine cause.

6:35Seventh, coincidence and timing, many naturalist hold, that so-called Provencial Events, are merely natural occurrences that happen at moments of deep personal or historical significance, mistaken for divine interventions. Eighth, confirmation bias, people naturally notice and remember events that affirm their existing beliefs, while overlooking countless similar cases that yield no miraculous results. Now, many questions, of course, remain unanswered and unresolved. Yet a coherent view comes into focus. God designed the universe perfectly, granting limited freedom within an ordered hole that needs no correction. A flawless creation requires no intervention, thus revelations, miracles, prophecy, and answered prayer, belong not to divine activity, but the human search for meaning.

7:39All religions, beautiful, though they may be, are human constructions, born of our shared need to interpret the sacred through culture and imagination. God, all knowing, perceives every act of gratitude, yet stands beyond response or interference. In this light, deism best décords with reason and evidence. A non-interventionalist God, whose only scripture is nature itself, a cosmos complete, intelligent, and sufficient unto its own perfection. Thank you for listening. You can find me online at jforest.org