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Miracles

• Miracles: An introduction
• Miracles in the Bible (Part 1): Introduction
• Miracles in the Bible (Part 2): Issues and responses

Critiques

• David Hume: 'Of Miracles'

Philosophy of Religion

• Arguments for the Existence of God
• The Problem of Evil and Suffering
• Atheism and Agnosticism
• Immortality and Life after Death
• Miracles
• Religious Pluralism

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David Hume: 'Of Miracles' (Part 1)

Information: This is part 1 of an article reviewing some of David Hume's main arguments against miracles as presented in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and 'Miracles and Revelation' in Gaskin, J. C. A., Hume's Philosophy of Religion, The Macmillan Press LTD, 1988. A version of this article was originally published on the website www.faithnet.org.uk.

Introduction

In chapter 10 ('Of Miracles') in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1784), philosopher David Hume discusses the matter of miracles. In particular, he is concerned with two things related to them:

• The probability (or improbability) of a miraculous event occurring.
• The validity of any testimony from someone claiming to have witnessed a miraculous event.

Not only is Hume concerned to question the very idea of miracles occurring, but he particularly focuses on whether a miraculous event can (or should be) be the basis of a religious system of belief. Being a well-known atheist of his time, we should not be surprised when he says that they cannot:

'I beg the limitations here made may be remarked, when I say, that a miracle can never be proved, so as to be the foundation of a system of religion.'

However, rather than take a pot-shot at a wide range of religious beliefs in the miraculous, Hume is particularly concerned to address the Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead; an event which is said to demonstrate the truthfulness of Christianity (and therefore validate the Christian faith as being true):

'If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless... And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins... But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead... just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man.' (1 Corinthians 15:12-21)

Hume is not so much concerned with setting out reasons as to why the resurrection of Jesus never occurred, but to assess the reliability of the evidence which provides evidence for believing that it did occur (and as such pass doubt on the resurrection-event as having actually occurred).

Four areas of concern

In 'Of Miracles', Hume lists four reasons as to why he questions the validity of miraculous events:

• We cannot trust that those who testify to miraculous events occurring are not being deceived, deluded or even lying.
• Humans are naturally drawn towards the miraculous, and love being 'dazzled' by the mysterious, and they can often form unreasonable beliefs on the basis of these 'experiences', which should not trusted.
• Stories of miraculous occurrences abound amongst 'primitive and barbarous people', who are not yet sophisticated enough in their understanding to know what is really going on.
• Miracles are 'contrary facts'! Different religions claim that miracles performed by members of their faith show that their belief-system is true, but they cannot all be true at the same time - so they cancel each other out!

Something to do: Watch the entire video clip below and think about this in relation to Hume's 'four areas of concern' about miracles, before reading on.

Hume on knowledge

In terms of knowledge, Hume was an Empiricist. This means he believed that the primary basis for knowledge, is grounded in what we experience of things in the world. For example, we know that when we hit a ball with a cue on a snooker table, that (provided our aim is good) this will hit another ball which will hopefully go into the pocket we were aiming for. Now we know that this will happen because our experience has shown us many times that striking a ball at a certain angle and in a certain way, will produce a certain effect with other balls on the table. This is empiricism in action - learning about the nature of the world through experience!

Hume actually took this a stage further. He said that although we might have knowledge of the ways the balls move on a snooker table because of what they have done up to now, that we cannot then use this knowledge to say we know what they will always do in the future. For Hume, this is going beyond empiricism.

In terms of miracles then, Hume believed that claims of the miraculous needed to be tested against our experience of things in the world. For instance, the claim that someone has been raised from the dead needs to be 'tested' against our normal experience of what dead people do.

Something to think about: Although dead people might be said not come back to life (based on our experience of what dead people normally do), in what way could Hume's theory of knowledge provide a means for people to justify the belief that someone might rise from the dead?

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Hume v Sherlock

In the eighteenth century there was wide debate concerning the validity of miracles as a basis for religious facts (E.g. If Jesus rose from the dead, then Christian faith is true). For example, Thomas Sherlock in the, Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection (re-printed 1729), argued that the testimony of the Apostles was a sufficient basis on which to establish the resurrection of Jesus as a historical fact (and therefore justify the Christian-faith as being true).

It is widely believed that Hume's Enquiry was written in response to Sherlock's book.

Sherlock refutes the charge that Jesus was a trickster (fraud), that the evidence for the resurrection was forged by the Apostles, and that no evidence would be sufficient to support such an extraordinary event. However, it was in claiming that the resurrection is empirically verifiable ('It requires no greater ability in the witnesses, than that they be able to distinguish between a man dead and a man alive'), that Hume took particular exception to.

As we have already noted, Hume was an Empiricists and regarded experience as the basis for what we can know to be true about things in the world. Thus, it could be argued that because we do not see people regularly rising from the dead after being in a grave for three days, that we should reject the resurrection of Jesus as being true (as this does not concur with our normal experience). Sherlock's argument against this idea had been to to ask whether a person who lived in a warm climate - who had never seen a river freeze up - could ever believe with no evidence, that rivers freeze in colder places (as this is improbable according to the regularity of their experience)?

Walking on a frozen lake

Hume's response (aka the 'Indian Prince' argument) was to suggest that although there is an obvious gap in the man's experience here, that there is no obvious gap when it comes to people rising from the dead (as it just does not happen no matter where one lives). Of course, the religious skeptic's experience might still limited (as the Indian Prince's was), but Hume does not address this concern. Instead, he argues that a 'wise man' would disbelieve reports of a resurrection, until the evidence for it became overwhelming:

'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.'

Something to think about: If a world-renowned atheist (such as Richard Dawkins), were to suddenly claim that they had witnessed a miracle and believed in God, could this be counted as reliable evidence that the miracle they had witnessed had occurred (and that God existed)?

On the so-called evidence for miracles

It is Hume's belief that sufficient evidence has not, (and could not) be produced in support of a miracle. His argument is presented in the following manner:

1. A weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger one.
2. A wise man proportions his beliefs according to the evidence.
3. Some events happen with such regularity in our experience, that 'laws of nature' may formed (E.g. Once you are dead, you are dead!).
4. Other things do not occur so regularly within our experience (such as people rising from the dead), and as such these constitute probabilities ranging from the strong (almost certainly could happen) to the weak (very unlikely to happen).
5. Human testimony is normally truthful, and can be assumed to be a proof as to what has taken place.
6. Sometimes human testimony is not truthful (E.g. when witnesses contradict each other, are of a dubious character, have an interest in what they affirm, hesitate in their testimony, make violent assertions etc.).

When something is said to have happened which is contrary to our experience, we have a probability (4) opposing a certainty (3). So what are we to do then? Hume's argument is that the 'wise man' will believe the certainty (2 based on 3). Why? Because it is what we have come to normally expect to happen. If (according to Hume) a miracle is a 'transgression of a law of nature', then there is some normative experience which forms the backdrop for the miraculous occurrence, and as such this experience should be considered a 'proof' against the miracle being genuine.

For example, we do not expect that when someone hits a ball with a cue on a snooker table, that the balls will start flying around in the air. If someone did claim to see balls 'flying around', we would normally say they meant something different by this (i.e. that the balls were flying-off the table due to being hit too hard), rather than they were literally flying around (sans gravity).

The only time Hume considers that a miracle might have reasonably occurred, is if the person recounting the story had no invested interest in the event being true (i.e. they were not trying to prove their faith to be true, or they were a world renowned skeptic of miracles telling us about the event, or maybe even if David Hume himself had said he had witnessed a miracle etc.).

Hume is not saying that miracles are logically not possible. He is merely offering a check for the 'wise man' as to the validity of witnesses and their testimonies concerning the miraculous, based on our normal experience of how things 'work' in the world.

David Hume: 'Of Miracles' (Part 2)

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