A Belief in Miracles: God Favors Some But Not All of His Creation
‘A Belief in Miracles Leads to the Concept of a God Who Favours Some but Not All of His Creation’ – Discuss
The word miracles can be defined in a variety of ways. Some may consider it to be a sign of God’s presence within the world and his dynamic power, with other believing that a miracle is an event that lacks an explanation, whilst others can believe a miracle simply breaks the laws of nature. This therefore leads onto the constant questioning of if God does perform miracles and they are not a violation of the laws of nature, then why does God only perform them on certain people.
On one hand we may argue that only God has the potential to create miracles, and because God is good and has created his creation in his own image he is loving to them and is the only one who is able to bring about miracles, this shows the omnibenevolent of God. Therefore there would be no reason for God to favour some of his creation over others, because initially everyone was create in this image. In order to portray his love towards his creation he helps them only when they need them the most, because if God performed miracles every time something happened it would lose the value of it being ‘supernatural’ or ‘rare’, as people would start assuming that God will fix everything and this would take away the blame from the person who is suffering from the result of their own actions, they would never realise they are wrong. We could use the example of a parent who in order to teach their children, the value of life and responsibility can only be taught through punishment when a child misbehaves and reward when they behave well. We may see God’s nature similar to that of a parents. This shows that if we don’t call a parent cruel when teaching discipline to their children as cruel and evil, then why do we see the acts of God towards his creation as cruel?
Swinburne argues that “If God has reason to interact with us, he has reason very occasionally to intervene and suspend those
The word miracles can be defined in a variety of ways. Some may consider it to be a sign of God’s presence within the world and his dynamic power, with other believing that a miracle is an event that lacks an explanation, whilst others can believe a miracle simply breaks the laws of nature. This therefore leads onto the constant questioning of if God does perform miracles and they are not a violation of the laws of nature, then why does God only perform them on certain people.
On one hand we may argue that only God has the potential to create miracles, and because God is good and has created his creation in his own image he is loving to them and is the only one who is able to bring about miracles, this shows the omnibenevolent of God. Therefore there would be no reason for God to favour some of his creation over others, because initially everyone was create in this image. In order to portray his love towards his creation he helps them only when they need them the most, because if God performed miracles every time something happened it would lose the value of it being ‘supernatural’ or ‘rare’, as people would start assuming that God will fix everything and this would take away the blame from the person who is suffering from the result of their own actions, they would never realise they are wrong. We could use the example of a parent who in order to teach their children, the value of life and responsibility can only be taught through punishment when a child misbehaves and reward when they behave well. We may see God’s nature similar to that of a parents. This shows that if we don’t call a parent cruel when teaching discipline to their children as cruel and evil, then why do we see the acts of God towards his creation as cruel?
Swinburne argues that “If God has reason to interact with us, he has reason very occasionally to intervene and suspend those