“Assess Hume’s reasons for rejecting miracles.”
A miracle is held to be an action of God, or an invisible agent, which goes against the laws of nature and has some religious meaning or significance.
Miracles have traditionally been taken as validations of religious claims. As the Christians believe in the Bible they say that the miraculous signs and wonders they see testifies that it was God working through him accompanied Jesus’ ministry. His resurrection from the dead is seen to be the greatest of these miracles and even till this day it is regularly taken as a sold reason for believing in the existence of God.
According to Hume no matter how strong the evidence for a specific miracle maybe, it will always be more reasonable to reject the miracle than to believe in it .He distinguished that there are two factors to consider in deciding whether to believe any given piece of testimony. The first one is the reliability of the witness and the second one is the probability of that to which they testify. For Hume the testimony of a witness that is both honest and a good judge of that to which they testify are worth much. The testimony of a witness who is either dishonest or not in a position to know that to which they testify are worth little. The reliability of the witness is therefore something that is to be taken into account in deciding whether to believe anything on the basis of testimony. The probability of that to which they testify, however is also relevant. Hume was arguing that it is always more reasonable to reject extraordinary events as being contrary to the weight of human experience. There is no evidence to count against this weight of human experience as the testimonies of people who claim experiences of the miraculous are rarely of any quality. The evidence to support miraculous events is often contradictory and in Hume’s estimation is always tainted with primitive superstition. He described the accounts as being sourced from “ignorant and barbarous” people.
