Reading books by people alleging being eyewitnesses to miracles may easily cause one to believe that the event in description actually occurred. However, David Hume drives them to think otherwise. Hume’s suggestion against the belief in miracles because they are witness testimonies is regarded one of the most famed contributions to the philosophical debate concerning the question of miracles, and it is among the most hotly debated ideas. Most people suppose that Hume’s perspective is a reasonable approach to understanding the reality of miracles while others do not back the idea. This paper describes Hume’s premises as presented in his Of Miracles. Best of all, Hume argued against miracles, stating that miracles are transgressions of laws of nature through specific volition of the deity and interpositions of some visible agents.
Hume’s Primary Premises on Miracles
Premise #1: Wise People Proportion their Belief on Evidence
In this premise, Hume posits that wise people consider which sides of an argument on miracles have the most significant evidence level. One may call this premise the proportionality principle 1 . For instance, if one considers the story of Jesus turning water into wine in the Bible, then there no other evidence supporting the idea that people cannot turn water into wine apart from the single instance in which Jesus did it, which is a reason enough not to believe in such a miracle. In his sense, Hume thought that it is never possible, until a specific law is followed, to turn fresh water into wine.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Premise #2: People should choose the Lesser Miracle
Hume’s idea in this premise is the consideration that the simplest explanations are always the correct ones. In his sense, for miracles to be true, denying such miracles needs to be more miraculous than accepting its explanation. If the argument was to consider the story of Jesus’ resurrection, Hume would argue and advice that think about what is more probable: that those who hold this claim could be mistaken or that Jesus actually resurrected, and in his case, the first option would be simple—more substance is needed to justify the claim of resurrection.
Premise #3: All Claims of Miracles have Limited Evidence
Hume refutes the plausibility of miracles on ground that none of them depends of adequate evidence. In Hume’s proposition, witnesses should be properly educated and intelligent—the reputation to lose and nothing at all to gain from their claims 2 3 . Hume posits further that there should be sufficient witness numbers for miracle claims to be considered. In his ideology, Hume dismisses human beliefs in miracles because they inherently love the fantastic—the belief in miracles seeks to promote their religious beliefs, which is why they should be dismissed.
Premise #4: Miracles come from Barbarous and Ignorant Societies
The origin of miracles in barbarous and ignorant backgrounds makes believing in them unreliable. Hume, for example, claims boldly that miracles recorded in the Bible should not be believed because they are accounts of uneducated and poor peasants, and that they should not be believed at all because they do not have adequate sources 4 5 .
Premise #5: Miracles are Only Credible from Single Religious Perspectives
In Hume’s defense of miracles, miracles from different religions cancel each other out. He elaborates that miracles from Islam and Christianity cancel those from Buddhist and Hindu backgrounds. Hume dismisses all miracles because all of them have the same unreliable mechanisms of explanation.
Conclusion of Hume’s Idea of Miracles
Hume believes that miracles cannot be plausibly believed because they defy the laws of nature in ways that is explicable through any forms of evidence. Importantly, most of the miracles that he pinpoints in his argument against believing in miracles depend on the idea that none of the events mentioned in the miracles have been replicated elsewhere to give evidence for the alleged miracles. The strongest point that he makes, therefore, is the fact that it is never possible to have exact events of a miracle repeated elsewhere is the primary argument against evidence for the occurrence of miracles.
Objection
Hume’s argument depicts strongly that he must have been irreligious. Importantly, miracles are only believable from religious perspectives because faith is not testable by empirical evidence. In fact, the beauty of miracles lies in their religious backgrounds—miracles in one religion may be senseless in another because the mechanisms of explaining faith and belief in the miracles do not have an overlapping standpoint, except that what laws of nature cannot explain could possibly be explained by religion. The notion of true miracles exists in the fact that a significant number of people, educated and uneducated, have repeatedly healing through mistake ways, which can possibly be replicated elsewhere. Therefore, to some consideration, miracles can happen, especially when Hume’s definition of miracles is revisited to acknowledge their roots in religion.
Response to the Objection
Understanding the plausibility of miracles on religious grounds does not always satisfy Hume’s ideology of a true miracle. Precisely, while it dismisses the postulation that not enough evidence exists to justify miracles, the objection does not suggest and argue plausibly that miracles can be explained empirically, which on scientific grounds, will not take away the idea of anomaly. Rational people, as Hume postulated, should not easily adopt explanations that cannot be explained by all the applicable and extant laws of science.
Bibliography
"Chapter 5: Epistemology". n.d. Qcc.Cuny.Edu . http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences/ppecorino/INTRO_TEXT/Chapter%205%20Epistemology/CONTENTS.htm .
Hume, David. "An enquiry concerning human understanding and other writings." (2007).
Hume, David. "1748. An enquiry concerning human understanding." Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (1955).
