Hume has shown miracles do not exist

AS and A Level Religious Studies & Philosophy

“Hume has shown miracles do not exist” Discuss

David Hume is an empiricist and a sceptic; he believed that our knowledge of the world comes from the observations made by our senses. He also believed that we cannot reason accurately beyond what we see and hear as this requires us to make assumptions. Hume suggests that miracles are impossible. The laws of nature that we experience are uniform and constant; we assume that these laws will not be changed in the future and that they were constant in the past. To understand Hume’s criticism of miracles it is necessary to consider his ideas on induction.

Hume states that we develop cause and effect relationships based on our experiences of the world. This leads us to make predictions about what will happen in similar cases in the future. So, for example, you will predict that your kettle will come to the boil at 100 degrees, just as it has always done. The more experiences we have of ‘normal events’ seems to make miracles less likely, yet there is no way of absolutely disproving them. Hume therefore suggests that the only evidence available to us are accounts written by others. What is more probable – that a miracle occurred of that the accounts are mistaken? Hume suggests that we ought only to believe a miracle story if it would be more incredible that all witnesses were mistaken than if the event were true; “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracles unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the facts which it endeavours to establish”. Hume doesn’t believe in chance or in supernatural intervention. Hence, he asks for us to go with the evidence and consider which state of affairs is more probable, a miracle or a more ordinary explanation. Hume’s argument from induction asks us to rely on logic

Hume continues to argue against the existence of miracles in his practical arguments. He gives four practical arguments regardless of whether miracles are theoretically possible, Hume tries to persuade us that, practically speaking, they just don’t or cannot happen.

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His first argument is that miracles don’t generally have many sane and/or educated witnesses, and so they can’t be justified. His second argument is psychological. We have a natural interest in things that are unusual or surprising. This tendency towards things of surprise and wonder is exploited by religious people. Hume suggests that some religious people know that the stories they use are false, but they continue to spread them because it is in a good cause. This argument could be used to devalue examples or miracles from the Bible, perhaps these stories were sensationalised in order to gain more followers. His third point is that miracles are generally reported and believed amongst the ‘ignorant and barbarous nations’. Hume believed that miracles don’t happen with such regularity in modern times. This point can be backed up by evidence that in the past society was more religious and being less educated, or simply not knowing what we know today, would imagine many situations to occur because of a miracle. For example, having a baby or getting over an illness. His fourth, and final point, is that almost all religions carry miracle stories, yet they cannot all be true. The sets of testimonies would seem to cancel each other out because each faith alleges that the miracles they believe in provide evidence that their particular faith is true

However, there are various arguments against Hume’s rejection of the existence of miracles. Hume’s appeal to the laws of nature is inconsistent with his own writings. He suggests that our ideas of scientific laws may just be psychological habit based on what we repeatedly see. He famously observed that there was no good reason to expect the sun to rise in the morning, yet we do all expect this.

Hume’s points can also be seen as sweeping generalisations. It is unclear how many witnesses Hume thinks would be sufficient to make a miracle credible. He also fails to define what ‘ignorant and barbarous nations’ are. This comment is old fashioned and entirely disproved by the fact that miracles are also claimed in modern society.

Richard Swinburne defends the belief in miracles. He argues that it is important to be clear about what the laws of nature are. They are not necessarily fixed truths. Many of the scientific laws we adopt, such as Kepler’s law on planetary motion and quantum theory, are merely statistical laws, they tell us what will almost certainly happen, but the individual particles in question are all behaving randomly. He also argues that perhaps God can suspend natural laws on occasions. Take the analogy of a loving parent who gives child boundaries. This parent may at times relax certain boundaries in response to a child’s pleading. This could be like God, if he is all loving; he would want to interact with his creation and may do so via occasional miracles. Miracles by their nature have to be occasional. If miracles were regular then it would be confusing as we would not know whether laws were going to operate, It also encourages us to be active in making progress, if we knew that God regularly cured cancer, humans would not actively seek a cure.

John Polkinghorne defends the possibility of miracles and states that all science can tell us is that a given event is against normal expectations; it cannot completely disprove its happening. The laws of nature do not change yet the consequences of these laws can change when one moves into a ‘new regime’. Consequences of the laws of nature may change if God begins to deal with humans in a new way. The resurrection of Jesus is a crucial miracle as it beings a new age in God’s dealing with people.

In conclusion, although Hume’s arguments are perhaps more realistic than that of fundamental Christians such as Richard Swinburne and John Polkinghorne I find it very hard for miracles to be either proved or disproved entirely. The whole idea of a miracle is that it is a miraculous event which cannot be explained nor predicted, so although David Hume does well to make the idea of a miracle not existing likely he faces an impossible task in rendering Miracles impossible.

By Dom Ansell

6PWL