Hume claims that, if we balance on one hand the improbability of miracles occurring and on the other hand the evidence that they have occurred, we will always come to the conclusion that it is more likely that natural laws occurred rather than miracles.
On the other hand, Hume was working with Newton’s understanding of Natural Laws being fixed whereas the modern understanding is that of the chaos theory. The chaos theory teaches us that the movement of particles is random and therefore exceptions to natural laws are possible.
Hume argues that a miracle is a breach of a law of nature. As I said earlier, he believes that the belief in miracles is not rational. He maintains that if you were a rational human being, you would not believe in miracles. Hume states that we have a uniform past evidence for laws of nature. For example, when people walk on water, they sink and when someone dies, they do not rise from the dead.
However, Hume only deals with reports of miracles and doesn’t look at them from first hand experience.
Hume furthers his argument by saying that the reports of witnesses are unreliable and untrustworthy. He makes the point that people who are claiming a miracle has happened should have a reputation to lose and absolutely nothing to gain.
Hume advances on this argument to say that reports of miracles generally come from ignorant and barbarous people. He states that humans love the fantastic. People love the idea of something unlikely happening since wonder and excitement are enjoyable emotions.
This argument seems to be weak since he only deals with word of mouth miracles whereas today there is much more scientific research into miracles. For example, the miracles at Lourdes. There have been 68 carefully checked claims that Natural Law has been broken and the church has declared them miracles. Physical things have happened when all the evidence point to the fact that it cannot happen e.g. bone re-growth. The doctors involved are those whom Hume would have agreed with since they would have had a reputation to lose and nothing much to gain.
Hume expands his argument to talk about religions. Since all religions claim miracles, miracles are not rational. All religions base the truth of those religions on miracle stories therefore all religions have equal claims to truth. Different religions are not compatible hence their differing miracle stories must simply cancel out. As Hume puts it, this provides a
“complete triumph for the sceptic”. It seems like Hume is saying that, for a religion to be credible, it must not be based on miracles since it would be irrational to base any religion on miracles alone. If you associate yourself with a religion that is based on miracles then you are indirectly a believer in miracles.
Even though Hume has a good argument, one could make an argument that Hume is wrongly saying that we ought not to believe in religions based on miracles. Religion is a major part of society. The majority of the world has faith in a religion and it thought to believe in miracles. Also religion has helped the world grow to where it is today and if Hume says that we should not have even believed in religion, and then society would not have grown and developed into various civilizations. Religion brings mass amount of people together. In history the church was the main government and also in charge of the education. Now if the miracle that brought all these people together never were believed in we would never have had any basis for government or any basis for education.
Miracles do seem to happen. They have happened in the past and will, almost certainly, remain to occur in the future. The question is not whether or not miracles exist, but whether we should believe in them or not.
Anthony Flew is of a similar perspective to Hume. He claims that although there is strong evidence for extraordinary events like those at Lourdes, it does not prove that they have been brought about by God. There is still much that we don’t know about the human mind and it may be possible, that under the right conditions, out minds can bring about changes in our bodies.
It seems difficult to fault Hume’s argument if one is going to look at the evidence of miracles logically. If a miracle is a “violation of a law of nature” then Hume has good reason for not believing an account of any such event. However, as we have seen, what makes something ‘religious’ is often a matter of interpretation, rather than fact.
In conclusion, I will repeat the point I made in the opening of this essay. Hume’s argument is not that miracles cannot happen, but that, given the amount of evidence that has established and confirmed a law of nature, there can never be sufficient evidence to prove that a law of nature has been violated.
