Miracles: A Preliminary Study

Lewis begins by examining the argument from experience—namely, the premise that miracles happen because someone claims to have experienced one. He compares this claim to the corollary claim that someone has seen a ghost and suggests that neither argument from experience is compelling on its own merits. Rather than beginning a defense of miracles with an argument from experience (either personal experience or the historical experiences of biblical accounts), he suggests that the appropriate place to start is by examining the philosophical foundations of the question. Otherwise, our philosophical presuppositions will entirely determine our assessment of experiential or historical evidence, making it pointless to look at the evidence to begin with: “The result of our historical inquiries thus depends on the philosophical views which we have been holding before we even begin to look at the evidence. The philosophical question must therefore come first” (2). Anyone who discounts experiential evidence due to their philosophical presuppositions is not dealing honestly with the evidence, Lewis writes: They are merely begging the question—that is, beginning their inquiries from an unstated and unexamined premise.