Asses Humes reason for rejecting miracles. (35)

Hume defines a miracle as a transgression of a natural law by a particular volition of the deity. This does not imply that a miracle is an extraordinary event but it is one that breaks the natural law and that it is brought about by the action of God. Other two definitions would be that a miracle is an event that has religious significance and this does not need to have broken the laws of nature to be regarded as a miracle but it needs to reveal something about God. The last definition of a miracle is a view of Thomas Aquinas who defines miracles as an event caused by God. In this essay I will be discussing why Hume rejects miracles and arguments for and against his theories.

Hume was an empiricist, so he believed that it was more likely that the report of a miracle was mistaken than the laws of nature were violated. He did not say that miracles did not happen, but that it would be impossible to prove them.
Hume’s argument is based on the principle of induction, which is the suggestion that future events will take place based on previous evidence. This is because evidence from people’s experience of observing the world showed the laws of nature to be fixed and unvarying. For example, the sun has risen every day in the past, so it is very likely that it will rise again and not stand still in the sky. However, Hume did accept that whatever happened countless times in the past did not guarantee such would happen again in the future. If we take the example that animals and people need oxygen to survive, the more time we see this happening, the more probably is the conclusion that all animals need oxygen to survive. Hume then argues that it is rational to believe what is highly probable and irrational to believe the opposite. Miracles are highly improbably so it is irrational to believe in them. The laws of nature for Hume are probable, whereas miracles break the highly probable laws of nature.

Adding on, Hume says that the evidence for the miracle has to be so persuasive and strong as to overthrow the evidence that supports the existence of natural laws. He therefore says “no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact which it endeavours to establish.” We can deduct that what Hume meant is that there is no such evidence for miracles to exist which would allow us to stop our understanding of natural laws as it would be “irrational to believe the highly improbably as this is to believe against the evidence.

Overall, Hume had five arguments against believing in miracles - one philosophical and four psychological. The first one, we already discussed it above as there is not enough evidence of miracles to outweigh outgeneral experience. The second reason is that there are always insufficient witnesses, meaning that there must be witnessed by a highly credible, good sense, well educated person. Miracles only seem to happen to the uneducated according to Hume. The uneducated, were described as ‘ignorant’ and barbarous’ nations. Also, people tend to exaggerate and are drawn towards the sensational and dramatic which means that these people often have the desire to believe. Lastly, if a religion claims that a particular miracle proves their religion to be true then this claim is devalued by similar claims from other religions. The probability weakens with each further contradictory claim, therefore it is more reasonable to believe that either none of them are true or to establish the truth of one particular religion.

Based on these facts, I can see some faults in his argument as his argument from induction can be challenged. Highly probability counts against the explanatory power of a theory. This does not necessarily mean that Hume is wrong, but we need to question whether our experience of the world and our knowledge means that miracles are improbable or not.

PARA3 responses to Hume.
Swinburne
Taylor
Vardy

PARA4
Problem with the problem of induction.

PARA5
Conclusion,