The Order of Nature Upheld

This affirmation follows directly from the deist picture of a God who creates a lawful universe and does not interfere with it. It sets deism against the revealed religions, whose scriptures rest heavily on miracle and prophecy, and it connects to the deist reliance on reason over revelation and to the belief that God does not intervene in the world. The rejection of miracles was among the most influential and controversial deist claims, and it is described here as the position deists maintained.

The philosophical version of this argument had already been made most rigorously by David Hume in "Of Miracles," the tenth section of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), which argued that because a miracle is by definition a violation of the laws of nature established by "firm and unalterable experience," no testimony could ever be strong enough to make believing a miracle more reasonable than believing the witnesses mistaken, deceived, or lying. Hume's essay became the central reference point for all subsequent philosophical debate on the credibility of miracle reports, and later apologists, including the twentieth-century philosopher and former atheist C. S. Lewis in his 1947 book Miracles, have continued to write specifically in response to its argument.