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The Uniformity of Nature, Miracles, and the Atheist’s Dilemma

Chris Hume by Chris Hume
June 11, 2025
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The Uniformity of Nature, Miracles, and the Atheist’s Dilemma
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One of the most common challenges leveled against the Christian worldview, particularly when discussing the miraculous, is the assertion that miracles fundamentally contradict the uniformity of nature. “If someone drops an apple, will it fall to the ground?” the atheist asks, implying that a miracle – say, a floating apple – would violate this fundamental principle. It’s a question rooted in a deeper philosophical challenge for the atheist, one that reveals a significant weakness in their own foundational assumptions.

(To clarify, a miracle in the Christian worldview is a special act of God’s providence, where He works outside His usual patterns of sustaining creation to accomplish His divine purposes, often to reveal His glory or confirm His revelation – e.g., the resurrection of Christ.)

The atheist has no coherent basis to assume the uniformity of nature in the first place. They observe patterns, yes, but observation alone cannot guarantee future consistency. This is precisely the “problem of induction” so famously highlighted by David Hume – ironically, an atheist himself – who noted that merely because the sun has risen every day in the past is no logical ground to assume it will rise tomorrow. To simply declare, “Nature has always functioned this way, so it will continue to,” is to beg the very question at hand. It’s a bare assertion, a leap of faith for which no rational justification can be offered without circularity.

Contrast this with the Christian worldview. We do have a robust basis for the uniformity of nature: God. The God of the Bible is not a God of chaos, but of order. As Scripture affirms, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17), and He promises, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Genesis 8:22). He upholds, sustains, and governs His creation in a consistent, predictable manner. The “laws” of nature are not inviolable, independent forces that constrain God Himself. Rather, they are descriptive accounts of the regular ways in which God typically acts to uphold His creation. They are derived from agent causation – God is the ultimate agent behind all natural processes. They are not like the immutable laws of logic, which are a direct reflection of God’s unchanging nature.

Therefore, when God intervenes and stops the apple from falling to the ground, He is not violating some independent natural law. He is simply intervening in His own creation, exercising His sovereignty over the very processes He established. It’s loosely analogous to a human catching an apple before it hits the floor; we wouldn’t say the human violated the “law of gravity” in a metaphysical sense, but merely intervened in the apple’s trajectory. God, being the ultimate author of nature, can intervene in His own narrative at will.

In point of fact, it is the very concept of the uniformity of nature – an orderly cosmos – that allows us to recognize miracles in the first place. If nature were not uniform, if every moment were a random, unpredictable anomaly, then a floating apple would be no more remarkable than a falling one. We would have no baseline, no expectation of ordinary function, against which to discern the extraordinary. Miracles are identifiable precisely because they deviate from the expected pattern of God’s ordinary sustenance, a pattern that the Christian worldview alone can rationally ground.

Now, some atheists, attempting to mimic the Christian presuppositionalist, might claim, “Well, I simply presuppose the uniformity of nature, and it doesn’t need a basis.” Here, the atheist is caught in a profound dilemma.

Firstly, if a presupposition truly needs no rational basis, if it can be an arbitrary claim, then the atheist has no grounds whatsoever to reject any arbitrary claim a Christian makes. I could simply respond, “Okay, well I presuppose God’s existence, and I don’t need a basis for it. My claim is just as rational as your arbitrary presupposition of natural uniformity!” In this scenario, the atheist’s arbitrary presuppositions destroy any basis for logically refuting the Christian claim, undermining the very preconditions for knowledge itself. If arbitrary claims are foundational, then all rationality collapses.

Secondly, and crucially, the Christian does, in fact, give a rational basis for his presuppositions. We recognize that the Christian worldview uniquely accounts for the preconditions of intelligibility. We do not make bare assertions. The transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG), demonstrates that the preconditions for intelligibility – logic, morality, the uniformity of nature itself – are only coherent within the Christian worldview. TAG asserts that without a rational, consistent, and sovereign God, there is no basis for expecting nature to behave uniformly or for human reasoning to be trustworthy. The uniformity of nature, for example, makes sense because a consistent, rational God upholds it. The atheist’s attempt to copy the Christian presuppositionalist by claiming their own arbitrary “properly basic beliefs” falls flat because they lack any corresponding justification. They have no argument to defend their “presuppositions” when pressed for a rational foundation.

Prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins often dismiss miracles as unscientific, claiming they violate natural laws. Yet, Dawkins assumes the uniformity of those laws without justifying why they should hold universally in a godless universe. His rejection of miracles, as argued in works like The God Delusion, inadvertently exposes the weakness of his naturalistic worldview, which cannot account for the very order he takes for granted.

Other atheists might counter that their belief in uniformity is justified by empirical observation, claiming, “Science works, so we don’t need God.” However, this is circular reasoning. Science depends on the assumption of uniformity to function, yet it cannot prove uniformity without assuming it in the first place. Others might appeal to probability, arguing that uniformity is likely based on past experience. Yet, probability assumes a stable, orderly framework in which probabilities can be meaningfully calculated – a framework that naturalism cannot guarantee without an intelligent, purposeful cause.

Thus, the atheist is left with a clear choice: Either stick to the claim that presuppositions need no rational basis, and therefore surrender any ability to argue against the Christian’s claims, or admit that presuppositions do require a rational basis, in which case they cannot simply assert the uniformity of nature as “properly basic” without providing the very justification they lack.

The Christian worldview, by contrast, provides the necessary preconditions for understanding both the ordinary (the uniformity of nature) and the extraordinary (miracles) within a coherent, God-ordained reality. For Christians, this coherence is not just a philosophical victory but a call to trust in the God who governs all things.

Tags: atheismmiraclesuniformity of nature
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Chris Hume

Chris Hume

Chris Hume is the host of The Lancaster Patriot Podcast and the author of several books. Like his father and grandfather, Chris is a veteran of the U.S. armed forces. He holds the MA degree in Literature from Clarks Summit University and the MBA degree from Wesley College. Chris currently resides in Lancaster County, with his wife and children.

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