Miracles and the Primacy of Consciousness

The notion of miracles has enjoyed tremendous staying power in one form or another throughout virtually all cultures. Along with other expressions of supernaturalism, they are the stuff of much story-telling. In modern-day entertainment, supernaturalism oozes in everything from Stephen King novels to science fiction space operas. It is featured in campfire stories and also ancient religious texts.

It is curious, however, how some who will not take the campfire ghost story seriously will be up in arms when you don’t take the ancient religious story seriously. But if you ask these same people whether or not they believe wishing makes it so, they’ll typically say no, even emphatically. And yet the very notion of a miracle traces its roots to instances of some consciousness commanding reality to conform to its intentions, and reality obeying those commands. 

Some years back I had an exchange with an apologist on the notion of miracles. He asked me if I “believe in” miracles. I replied that I do not and of course he wanted to know why. So I explained the difference between the primacy of existence and the primacy of consciousness and went on to explain how the notion of miracles assumes the primacy of consciousness orientation between the subject of consciousness and the objects of consciousness. (For readers who are unfamiliar with these topics, see here, here and here for starters.) Essentially, I explained that I do not believe in miracles for the same fundamental reason why I do not believe that wishing makes it so. 

The apologist responded to this by stating the following:

The very idea of a volitional physical action would seem to involve the use of consciousness (with the mind as subject) over the body (as the mind’s object) such that the body conforms to the intentions of consciousness. So the primacy of mind is a valid idea on its very face. If this is your critique of miracles, I think you need to take it back to the drawing board.

Of course, this is a deflection. What the apologist describes here is an expression of mind-body integration. Human beings have volitional consciousness, and we are able to move our bodies volitionally, within certain limits. I can choose to pick up a violin, for instance, but I’ll never be able to play the solo part of a violin concerto, no matter how much I want. So even though my limbs and fingers can do what I want, to varying degrees, I won’t be able to make them do everything I’d like them to do. So even here, wishing doesn’t make it so. 

What’s noteworthy here, however, is that the miracles we read about in the Christian bible are not instances of superhuman mind-body integration. Even in the case of the wondrous curing stories, such as a blind man’s sight being restored or a lame man being able to walk again, these are cases of one person’s body responding to another person’s intentions. That’s not mind-body integration. It’s wishing makes it so. What we do not see in the biblical stories is something akin to someone who has never picked up a violin before suddenly being able to perform a Paganini capriccio flawlessly from beginning to end. This would be an amazing example of a “body conform[ing] to the intentions of consciousness.” What the biblical stories exemplify are closer to instances of puppetry – one consciousness manipulating another person’s body. 

The apologist seeks to evade the Objectivist critique of miracles by ignoring the distinction between mind-body integration and conforming independently existing objects to one’s intentions. A man’s own body is not an object existing independently of his own biological functions, including his conscious functions. In fact, volitional action only attests to the naturalness of consciousness; it is not an example of a consciousness wishing objects into existence and having independently existing entities obey its wishes. 

And as indicated above, even in the case of volitionally directing your body to move, it can only move within a limited range; a human being cannot run 100 mph if he wanted to, nor could he lift a grand piano with his pinky, or play that piano like Gavrilov without putting in comparable years of torturous practice. Similarly, he will not grow a third arm if he finds that two are not enough, nor will he be able to put his right elbow into his left ear, no matter how much he wants to. No matter how hard he wants to fly, he will not be able to fly like a bird by flapping his arms up and down. And the reach of his direct volition stops at his fingertips. 

By contrast, the notion of miracles involves the use of consciousness to conform objects other than one’s own body parts to his intentions, such as parting the Red Sea, turning staffs into serpents, stilling storms, wishing mountains into the sea, cursing fig trees so that they wither and die, turning water into wine, sitting in hot furnaces without a single hair being singed, or raising dead people from the grave, all essentially by wishing. 

The apologist’s attempt to surface a counterexample to the primacy of existence in order to discredit it fails to provide any credence to the primacy of consciousness and therefore fails to validate the metaphysical basis for the notion of miracles. But it is clear that by pointing to man's volitional direction over himself as a counterexample to the primacy of existence principle, the apologist senses a need to find some way to legitimize the primacy of consciousness, for he probably recognizes that the notion of miracles is in fact an expression of the metaphysical primacy of wishing makes it so. 

But think this through for a moment: what is it to say that any statement is true? If I say that it's true that the moon orbits the earth, am I saying that this is true only so long as I want it to be true? Who would affirm such an absurdity? Would it not be true even if I denied it? Would it not remain true regardless of whether I affirmed or denied it? The primacy of existence is inescapable. You have to assume its truth even to try to find counterexamples against it. 

by Dawson Bethrick