Explore "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher" by Charles Babbage on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It has always occurred to my mind that many difficulties touching Miracles might be reconciled, if men would only take the trouble to agree upon the nature of the phenomenon which they call "Miracle. " That writers do not always mean the same thing when treating of miracles is perfectly clear; because what may appear a miracle to the unlearned is to the better instructed only an effect produced by some unknown law hitherto unobserved. So that the idea of miracle is in some respect dependent upon the opinion of man. Much of this confusion has arisen from the definition of Miracle given in Hume's celebrated Essay, namely, that it is the "violation of a law of nature."
Now a miracle is not necessarily a violation of any law of nature, and it involves no physical absurdity.