Critically assess Hume's dismissal of miracles.

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Vicki Rounding

11th January 2005

Critically assess Hume’s dismissal of miracles.

In his dismissal of miracles David Hume argued not that miracles were impossible, but that it would be impossible to legitimately prove that one had actually happened. He said, for example, that if one was to say that through miracle a person returned to life after death then this would go against the laws of nature, which have been repeatedly supported over hundreds of years:

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.

                           (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748)

Or in other words you cannot prove something to be completely reliable unless the alternative to what you are trying to prove is even more implausible. Therefore, if one uses Hume’s theory it can be said that one is more likely to be hallucinating than to be experiencing a miracle, which is a direct violation of natural law.  

This dismissal of miracles can be easily challenged. A miracle, by definition is a one off occurrence- it in no way challenges the general rules of nature except on that particular occasion. Brian Davies, in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, comments that:

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…. until someone walked on the moon, people were regularly observed not to walk on the moon. And people, in time, have come to do what earlier generations would rightly have taken to be impossible on the basis of their experience.

        

When people watched the footage of the first moon landings they did not refuse to believe what they were seeing just because it contradicted all previous knowledge, but instead accepted it as true.

Richard Swinburne also criticises Hume’s arguments by referring to what he believes to be the three types of historical (not scientific) ...

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