Hume and His Responses

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David Hume

David Hume suggested that miracles don't actually prove anything because he was an empiricist and a sceptic.

As an empiricist, he believed that our

knowledge of the world should come from the observations made by our senses. For instance, our knowledge is mostly grounded in our experience of things in the world, like we know that when we hit a ball with a cue on a snooker table that this will hit another ball which will hopefully go into the pocket we are aiming for. We know this will happen because our experience has shown us many times that striking the ball at a certain angle and in a certain manner will produce a particular effect with other balls on the table.

As a sceptic, he believed that we

cannot reason accurately beyond what we see and hear as this requires us to

make assumptions.

From such knowledge of the world, we have established laws of nature, which are, according to Hume, always upheld.

Hume defined miracles as "violations of the laws of nature", or in other words, it

must be something that never happens in the normal world – and therefore

miracles do not happen by their very definition! (Are examples such as Jesus' resurrection and the weeping statue of Civitavecchia violations or is there a way they can happen?)

Hume believed that claims of miracles had to be tested against our experiences of the world. For instance, the claim that someone has been raised from the dead needs to be 'tested' against our normal experience of what dead people do.

Hume's argument does not prove that miracles (or other forms of religious experience) do not happen - it just suggests that it is rarely (to the point of never) rational to accept reports of such events, let alone use them as the basis for faith or religious belief.

"When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediate consider myself whether it may be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that fact, which he relates, should have really happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsity of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event he relates, then, and not till then, can he command my belief or opinion."

Hume makes good use of inductive logic in order to reject the occurrence of miracles.

Inductive logic involves using examples to derive a conclusion true for all circumstances. This type of logic is concerned with the probability, rather than an absolute answer.

Hume looks at examples of miracles and suggests a definition from them, as well as examining what he says to be 'the laws of nature.'

Hume's argument follows this inductive logical pattern:

1) The laws of nature are fixed and unchanging.

2) Raising someone from the dead contradicts these laws, as this doesn't normally happen.

Conclusion: This cannot happen.

Hume would thus reject the resurrection of Jesus Christ because of these laws of nature.

Since the laws of nature dictate that dead people cannot come back to life, and these laws cannot be changed, it's more probable that the people who saw him were mistaken than for the laws of nature to have been broken.

"A

wise man proportions his belief according the evidence."

Miracles such as the Feeding of the 5000 clearly claimed to have witness. However, Hume says that this makes little difference to the validity of the miracle:

"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; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us assurance to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior."

This means that Hume would reject the Feeding of the 5000 because the testimonies of the people there are more likely to be false.

Considering that they were originally gathered to hear Jesus speak, shows that to some extent, they believe in him. Therefore, any miraculous story or experience of mass hysteria goes in their favour to assert their beliefs as correct. Thus, it is more likely for their testimonies to be mistaken or outright false than for the miracle to be true.

Hume is operating with the argument that, for instance, based on past experience, we know that water cannot just spontaneously turn into wine, therefore, why should we believe that this happened in Jesus' lifetime?

Four more reasons why miracles don't happen

1) Lack of convincing testimony from educated people

There has never been "in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good-sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time, attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable."

By 'educated' Hume means open-minded and studied. However, Swinburne has criticised this, and asks at what point does a person become educated enough to reject miracles.

Hume's argument is also sexist, as he refers to men, instead of people. This could be because of a cultural belief that women are too emotional to give a clear testimony, and thus cannot be trusted or understand their experiences properly.

2) Miracles only seem to happen among ignorant and barbarous people:

"It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilised people has ever given admission to any of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors, who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority, which always attend received opinions."

Once again, 'ignorant' refers to uneducated people.

'Barbarous' refers to people who live in basic civilisations, with old values, perhaps with traditional gender roles, and a lack of modern inventions such as the internet for entertainment. Because of their lack of learning and other forms of entertainment, miracle claims are taken much more serious in simple, third world countries.

However, this argument has a cultural bias, as Hume simply assumes that Western scepticism is correct.

Furthermore, Swinburne also criticises this argument because earlier nations may now seem uneducated compared with modern times (such as the 18th Century civilisation, in which Hume lived, seems primitive to us now). The nation would have seemed to have been very educated for the time period, as standards of what counts as educated changes.

3) Those testifying to the miracle will have a natural tendency to suspend their reason and support the claim:

"The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events, from which it is derived. And this goes so far, that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately, nor can believe those miraculous events, of which they are informed, yet love to partake of the satisfaction at second-hand, or by rebound, and place a pride and relight in exciting the admiration of others... A religionist may be an enthusiast, and imagine he sees what has no reality: he may know his narratives to be false, and yet persevere in it, with the best intentions in the world, or the sake of promoting so holy a cause."

Hume is suggesting that people have a strange fascination with unexplainable things, and that to some extent, we want to believe that an event is a miracle, because of the excitement it causes.

The reference to an 'agreeable emotion' may be a referral to mass hysteria, where a particular individual or party can claim to see something and others, wanting to believe it, and being influenced by a group mentality, start to see or experience the same thing.

Furthermore, Hume says that because of our fascination with miracles, it's exciting to spread the word about such unexplainable events. He suggests that people spread these stories, sometimes despite knowing they are false, with the intention of promoting their religion.

4) Contradictory reports of miracles occurring in different religions:

"Let us consider, that, in matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary; and that it is impossible the religions of Ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, and of China should, all of them, be established on any solid foundation. Every miracle, therefore, pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions (and all of them abound in miracles), as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is attributed; so has it the same force, though more indirectly, to overthrow every other system. In destroying a rival system, it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles, on which that system was established; so that all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts, and the evidences of these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other."

Hume is claiming that because different religions have miracles associated with them, and they have contradicting theological beliefs, the miracles do not prove anything about the religions themselves, otherwise, only a single religion would have miracles and be identified as the true religion.

Different religions use their own miracles to destroy the theological support of other religions, but this is undermined by the numerous miracles found in other religions.

However, William James argued from a perspective of pluralism and pragmatism, where all religions point to a single spiritual reality, and there is no one truth, just simply different interpretations of what it is, because truth is what is most suitable to the individual. Hume's argument rests on the assumption that there is a singular truth, and that there is a religion that is right about the spiritual reality. Without these, Hume's argument is largely invalid.

"I

flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if

just, will, with the wise and the learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds

of superstitions and delusions and consequently will be as useful as the world

endures."

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Richard Swinburne

Swinburne defines a miracle as "an occurrence of a non-repeatable counter instance to a law of nature."

Richard Swinburne chooses to address the shortfall of Hume's argument of lack of testimony or the quality of testimony in relation to miracles.

Hume argued that only ignorant and barbarous people claimed they've experienced a miracle, however, why should we distrust what they say because they are simply being looked down upon by Hume? The veracity of an observation is not undermined by the level of education or the social status of the witness. e.g) If a ten year old and a twenty year old were to tell the same story, both are likely to be believed.

It then follows that there can be 'good' evidence of miracles, because the testimonies of others do count.

In The Concept of A Miracle, (1974), Swinburne argues that Hume is wrong to assume that no evidence for a miracle is reliable enough. He identifies four types of historical evidence for miracles:

Memories of our experience

Testimony by others about their experiences

Physical traces of the event, such as a medical examination of a person that have been healed e.g) Lourdes, tests done on blood of statue of Civitavecchia

Understanding of modern science and what is thought to be physically impossible or highly improbable e.g) humans flying is impossible, cancer disappearing is highly improbable

For Swinburne, the possibility of miracles relies on the principles of testimony and credulity.

The Principle of Testimony

People who give their stories of personal experience and opinion of miracles are usually being truthful.

Unless we have positive evidence that they are lying or misremembering, we should believe the testimony of experience.

"Other things being equal, we usually think that what others tell us that they perceived, probably happened."

However, it is also a possibility that people who have never lied may tell their first one about a miracle.

Principle of Credulity

We must accept what appears to be the case, unless we have clear evidence to suggest the contrary.

Clear evidence may be that you have reason to doubt the person is untrustworthy, you can prove that God does not exist, or you can prove that the miracle was not caused by God.

However, this is very subjective and biased argument, because different people will define 'clear evidence' differently.

Swinburne continues his attack on Hume's argument by considering what is meant by natural law.

The problem for Swinburne is that Hume emphasises the fixed and universal nature of natural laws.

Although Swinburne agrees that natural laws are based from people's experiences of observing the world, but he emphasises two points distinctly from Hume:

1) Laws of nature are generalisations (they communicate a general picture of how things work simply, but we cannot possible be 100% correct about them because we make them by assuming from our experiences).

2) All natural laws are 'corrigible'. This means that it is the best description of how the world works that we currently have. A new discovery may not mean that a law of nature has to be modified or changed, and Hume does not allow this consideration in his argument.

In other words, a miracle is an event which does not fit in with 'our laws of nature', as we understand them, but equally, the event on its own is not enough to prove the law of nature inaccurate. You cannot define a new law from this one instance when an event occurs which does not fit in with the law. It is a one-off, and therefore, unrepeatable. Swinburne thus concludes:

1) It would be illogical to say that the law of nature is wrong because of one incident.

2) It would also be wrong to doubt the occurrence of an incident simply because it breaks our 'natural laws'.

In summary, Swinburne believes that the laws of nature are good general descriptors of how the world works, but, that does not remove the possibility of a miracle (a counter instance to a law of nature) occurring.

Swinburne's ideas suggest that perhaps God can suspend natural laws on occasions – e.g. sometimes a loving

parent relaxes certain rules in response to a child pleading.

However, his ideas also claim that miracles

have to be occasional, as one-off events – besides which, if they were more regular life would be confusing.

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Peter Vardy

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xOI4CQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI&redir_esc=y&...

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The Case for Miracles

Philosophers in support of miracles include:

Thomas Aquinas

Steven Evans

John Macquarrie

Macquarrie

‘Principles

of Christian Theology’, 1966

A miracle has to be something which is attributable to God, in addition to it being a wonderful

event.

"In a minimal sense, a miracle is an

event that excites wonder... but it is evident in a religious context the

word ‘miracle’ carries more than just this minimal sense... It is believed that

God is in the event in some special way, that he intends is the author of it

and intends to achieve something special by the end of it."

Evans

‘The

Philosophy of Religion’

Evans argued

that miracles are not just magic tricks.

"Obviously

the miracles of a religion such as Christianity are not merely bizarre events

or stunts. They have a function and a

purpose, and usually that function is a revelatory one."

Aquinas

Summa Contra Gentiles, 13th

century

Aquinas attempted

to define different events which could be

interpreted as miraculous.

He recognised

that to call an event miraculous is to put an interpretation onto what happened

and express an opinion about it.

He therefore argued

that for an event to be properly worthy of the name miracle it has to be an

event which is intrinsically wonderful, not just wonderful to this person but

not to that person (this would rule out the ordinary birth of a healthy baby).

Thus, it

must have a cause which is absolutely hidden.

C.S. Lewis

Lewis defended the Christian belief in miracles.

He said that we’re

faced with a choice about how we view the world. We

are either naturalists (reality is totally physical) or supernaturalists (non

–physical things may exist such as the soul or God).

He claimed that naturalism

is self-defeating. If you are just a

physical being subject to laws of cause and effect as all physical objects are

then your decision to believe in naturalism is physically caused, you have no

choice about what you believe. Your

decision is caused by physical factors.

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Tom Morris

"Another philosopher shook his head and said with

a weariness of disgust ‘while the cancer wards and the

hospital wards of the world are full of suffering and dying people, you get

your beach ball back. Somewhere in the

world at that very moment , people were being murdered and you got your beach

ball back.'" - Tom Morris

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Quantum Physics

Science and the laws of nature

Hume emphasises the fixed nature of natural laws, leaving little room for them to develop or change as scientific understanding of the world progresses. The theories of special and general relativity of Albert Einstein are the basis of much work in modern physics. Einstein's work replaced much of Sir Issac Newton's views, which Hume would have learnt.

Quantum Physics

The laws of nature seem pretty solid. It is impossible to literally pull a rabbit out of a hat. That is, until you look into advanced Quantum Physics. Recent scientific discoveries have found evidence for particles which come in and out of existence. At the sub-atomic level, the 'laws' of cause and effect appear to break down, with things spontaneously coming into being. These Virtual Particles spring in and out of nothingness. In other experiments, it has been discovered that sub-atomic particles change their behaviour when under observation!

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John Hick

Generally, there are two views on miracles:

1) The realist view - stating that miracles actually do have to have happened to be meaningful. Faithful people actually believe God has literally caused a miracle.

2) The anti-realist view - stating that miracles are not literally 'caused' by God, rather they are symbolic and reveal something about God to the believer. God doesn't literally have to have done a real action for the miracle to have meaning.

The anti-realist approach offers a solution to the criticisms of Hume, and is supported by John Hick.

Hick contested Hume's position that a miracle was highly unlikely to occur, arguing that the very point of miracles is that they are highly infrequent events.

He argues that if miracles happened all the time, then God's existence would be obvious and this would have a negative impact on our free will. He says that an epistemic distance is necessary in order for religious ambiguity to remain. The faith of a believer can be compromised by having no choice but to believe in God. God wants us to have a free relationship with him, so his existence cannot be self-evident.

Following this, Hick argues that if God did intervene all of the time, then life would become impractical. We need the laws of nature to be regular and predictable so that we can have some stability in the decisions we make.

Hick asserts that God can be seen to cause miracles rarely, but this is indirect and through human agency. He will simply give humans inspiration to act in a particular way.

These events will be ordinary, but will be seen as miracles through the eyes of faith. This links to...

The contingency definition of miracles = the word 'miracle' is applied to a set of coincidental events that are given religious significance then and after the event.

Supporters of the event include:

R.F. Holland: "A coincidence can be taken religiously as a sign and called a miracle."

Paul Tillich: Miracles are astonishing but "without contradicting the rational structure of reality."

Hick's arguments successful counter Hume's criticisms of miracles. Firstly, Hume's main objection was the lack of evidence to support miracles, and Hick explains that miracles are meant to be grey-areas that we are supposed to wonder about. Secondly, he argues that God doesn't intervene directly, but instead does so indirectly through the eyes of faith and human agency. Therefore, no laws of nature are broken for a miracle to occur.

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Keith Ward

Ward attacks Hume for setting up miracles to fail. Hume did not want to believe in miracles and felt that miracles cannot happen, that they are absurd. Hume was an empiricist, and a firm believer in the fixed laws of nature and felt that these were more reliable than any miracle story.

"Hume's status as an empiricist is one again used to highlight an inadequacy within his text, namely that in keeping with the definition of an empiricist. Hume's philosophical outlook predisposes his rejection of the supernatural world. Therefore it is folly to talk of miracles with a supernatural originator as it is apparent that Hume by nature of his empirical stance will not be able to discuss these phenomena without bias."

- Martin Dobson and Dominic Gibben, David Hume and Miracles

Keith Ward argues that Hume's definition of a miracle as a 'violation of a law of nature by a God or spirit' is a 'totally unworkable definition' for two reasons.

1) 'Laws of nature' didn't exist in people's minds before Issac Newton

People in the ancient world and the authors of the Bible didn't think things happened according to fixed, unbreakable laws of nature. They believed that things could happen that were out of the ordinary and they had plenty of evidence to support this. Modern physics and quantum theory in particular suggest that the 'laws of nature' are not absolute or unbreakable.

Ward talked about two types of law; probabilistic laws and deterministic laws:

Deterministic laws are those which say that 'if you do x, y will definitely happen.' e.g) 'If I let go of my pen, it will definitely fall to the ground.'

Probabilistic laws are different. They say, 'If I do x, y will probably happen.' e.g) 'If I let go of my pen, it will probably fall to the ground, but there is a small chance that it will hover in mid-air.'

Ward argued that modern physics knows that it is impossible to prove that something will definitely happen. Laws of nature are inherently flexible; this means that it is possible for improbable things to happen (like a hovering pen). As Ward said, 'Physics cannot rule out miracles.'

2) 'Hume is using a verbal con-trick'

Hume felt that by definition, miracles cannot happen. The trouble with that is, that by his definition of a miracle, they cannot happen. Ward argues that there are other definitions of a miracle. Ward claims that 'Hume is using a verbal con-trick', which is a de dicto argument used to define miracles out of existence, when reality (de re) might be very different.

Miracles do happen!

For Ward, "a miracle is something that doesn't obey a general law of nature." He argues that there is more to a miracle than breaking a law of nature, they are events that simply do no come under any law of nature.

According to Ward, a miracle achieves two things:

It is a wonderful event. (from the Latin miraculum)

It is an event that shows something about the nature of spiritual reality, of the nature of God, and the purpose of God.

Ward suggests that you can respond to a miracle in two ways:

a) You could respond as an atheist and argue that you can't have an event to show you the nature of God, because God does not exist. By definition, miracles cannot happen. (e.g. Hume)

b) You could respond to miracles as a theist, as a believer. If you believe that there is a spiritual being of supreme goodness, you will believe it is possible for that being to bring about miracles. For Ward, belief in God is based upon having a miraculous experience yourself, or if you know someone who has had a miraculous experience and you trust their testimony.

Ward uses the concept of revelation to help his argument.

Religious people accept that there are some people who have a closer relationship to God and they trust and accept the teachings of these people (e.g. Moses, Muhammad, Jesus, Guru Nanak, etc.) Religious teachers either perform miracles, or live lives that are surrounded by miraculous happenings where people's lives are transformed for the better, for example, Jesus was healing people because of his closeness to God.

The reality of God can be known through a human life, through religious teachers and miracles happening around these teachers to show their extraordinary closeness to God.

Ward argues that we have to accept that things happen for which we do not have a total explanation for.

95% of the universe is thought comprise dark matter or anti-matter and we don't know how this works. Thus, the universe is largely inexplicable.

We know that the universe is law-like for most the time, however modern physics accepts that those laws are not entirely predictable.

This is similar to an argument made by Anthony Flew, who says that miracles are events that cannot be explained, and that we must invest in science to try to discover an explanation.

If you are a theist, you would expect that there are some events in the that are caused by God, and belief in miracles is in keeping with this personal explanation of them. For the believer, it is reasonable to believe in miracles as probabilistic laws allow improbable events to happen.

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Richard Dawkins

More modern arguments stress the key points that miracles are improbable and that there are specific scientific ways to explain them that do not require the existence of God.

In conversation with scientist Russell Stannard, Dawkins puts forward a range of points against miracles which are similar to Hume's.

1) People have strange experiences and disturbing experiences such as 'dreaming of someone for the first time and waking up to discover they are dead.' Such experiences could be coincidences.

2) Occasionally you would expect people to have coincidental experiences in life to which they attach special significance.

3) Examples of places like Lourdes could be explained by the placebo effect. People go to Lourdes believing they are going to be cured, and then they are cured.

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Peter Atkins

The chemist Peter Atkins suggests that miracles are merely people who are seeking publicity or are deluded or hallucinate and so that is the reason they believe in miracles.