The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880Calderwood, Henry
Religion
The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880
Calderwood, Henry
Religion and science
It is not necessary here to discuss the credibility of miracles, as
affected by the question whether there can be sufficiency of testimony
to support the occurrence of a miracle,--a question which has engaged an
amount of attention disproportionate to its intellectual worth. The
suggestion of the question was nothing better than an example of
misleading ingenuity, allowed to stand on the page on which it was
indited in manifest violation of the laws of evidence and the essential
conditions of human knowledge. The value of testimony does not depend on
the nature of the thing to which it applies, but on the character of the
witness, and the opportunity for observing and testing the facts
described. There are, for example, a series of surgical operations being
performed in Edinburgh for removal of tumors (Ovariotomy), and being
repeated at intervals of two or three weeks, which have hitherto been
declared by the profession to be impossible without sacrifice of life;
and yet they are successfully accomplished, leaving only an exceedingly
small percentage of death. The whole combined testimony of preceding
ages has been against the possibility of such operations; but this is a
consideration of no value whatever in view of the testimony of the
surgeons who take part in the hazardous and responsible, but most
beneficent work, and of those professional men who have come from
France, and Russia, and other lands, to witness the operation, and of
citizens well acquainted with patients who have been delivered from a
burdened life, overshadowed with prospect of early death. The laws of
evidence are too well understood to call for abstract reasoning as to
the credibility of the witnesses who are at present giving their
testimony to the scientific world, of the successful repetition of an
operation hitherto believed to be impossible. The bearing of such an
illustration on the discussions raised concerning the credibility of the
evidence of our Lord's disciples to the miracles He performed is
obvious. Nor is there need for occupying time in trampling out the
beaten straw by lingering over the argument that no evidence can be
sufficient to establish a miracle, _because_ a miracle is contrary to
common experience; for, it is obvious that a miracle must be contrary to
common experience, since that which is matter of common experience can
not be a miracle, but must be an event determined by some law of nature.
The uniformity of the laws of nature is even a necessary condition for
the evidential value of miracles.
We pass to the real merits of the question in discussing the possibility
of the miracles of Christ without violation of any of the laws of nature
as ascertained by the most recent advances of science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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