David Hume's Argument On Miracles
Hume on Miracles
In 1737, Hume produced a manuscript of somehow lengthy and daring work entitled “ A treaties of Human Nature “ which was published in three volumes between (1739-1740).His writings were largely ostracized by a small number of people who read it . Recognizing that his philosophical work would never receive a fair hearing, Hume shifted to writing letters and so he devoted himself to enhancing his literary style and writing clear and literal essays .Having established his literary reputation, Hume returns to writing philosophical writing in a more elegant essay form. As I try to examine his empirical approach to the natural world which bases one understands on the use of our senses.
In order to explain Hume’s critique regarding …show more content…
the belief in miracles, we must first comprehend the conceptual meaning of a miracle. According to the Webster Dictionary, miracle is defined as a paranormal, mystic event observed as to define an action. As a model, Christ worked many supernatural acts that exposed his spirituality by notable accomplishment or event, an unpredicted piece of luck. Hence, people’s perception of a miracle differs, according to each one’s explanation of past experiences. These different explanations vary relatively between each person according to the dissimilar faith in which people believes in. This faith is founded on inner events such as what we are taught or how we are raised, and outer events, such as what we encounter, hear or see in our daily life. As a rationalist, Hume felt that sense data alone can allow us to have a deeper understanding of reality if we start to examine the nature of the mind and the fundamental process of human thought.
Taking in Hume’s perception of a miracle, he classifies a miracle as an event that violates the laws of nature, an event which is untypical and abnormal to most of man folk. Contrariwise, nature laws reveal discontinuity through years; they may change anytime according to the past uniform regularities they have been. Many different religion claims to show miracles in support of their one true religion. What traditional Christians believe is that miracles are a reflection of the virtuousness of their beleifs
Being a skeptic of miracles, Hume states that it might be a possible way for a miracle to occur. Nevertheless he claims that there can never be a proof or appropriate evidence to understand reasonably the occurrence of miracles. Therefore he justified the irrationality of miracles by stating that miracles can occur but they could never be proven. Hume proclaims, "We may observe in human nature a principle which, if strictly examined, will be found to diminish extremely the assurance, which we might, from human testimony, have, in any kind of prodigy (Hume, 393). Then also noticeably attacks the testimony of those who report miracles.
Due to the astonishing appearance that a miracle may look like, a testimony may not be completely precise; it might involve certain emotions that lead the witness to have faith in the occurred miracle deprived of analyzing the event. Consequently, Hume does admit the possibility of miracles but definitely studies them closely, and with examination.
Hume enlarges this idea by affirming the following: "a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible".
Because a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, the proof against it is as complete as any can be from experience. Why must all men die; why must lead fall; why must fire consume wood and be extinguished by water? .The answer to that is because this is the law of nature.
For example, if someone told me that he saw a dead cat restored to life or a dead man talking, whether this person is deceiving or whether he is deceived. Both are miracles. If his falsehood would be more miraculous than the event he relates, only then could he pretend to persuade me in belief.
He also uses the resurrection of a dead person’s case to affirm his statement.
We never experienced in our life spam or heard from history that a person could raise from the dead, if abnormally this happens, we would call it a miracle. Here comes Hume’s statement "the hidden variable thesis," which means miracles defined as violations of natural laws, are just less probable than normal natural events requested to justify the known fact.
Hume’s arguments on miracles de pend on the narrow ways by which he would define natural laws and credible testimonies. In Hume’s view, why is it less suitable to arrive at a belief through rationality and experience instead of basing our credible testimonies on historical facts that are highly questionable and not more credible?
It is in this part of his essay that Hume attempts to validate his conflicting views of religion and argue for his early philosophical views on experience and logic.Principally, other effective variable must exist within the dominion of nature laws that would explain the happening of extraordinary events that contradicts these laws. In the above mentioned example, the resurrection of a dead person might occur since the person wasn’t really dead in the first …show more content…
place.
Hume argues that miracles contradict the laws of nature. Since laws of nature are never to be contradicted, there are no such things as miracles. Thus, experience teaches us that miracles cannot occur. Hume’s observations gave explanation to the laws of nature and the improbability of miracles. Like ancient Stoicism, Hume attempts to recognize the idea of impression as a virtual and identical in form or probably rough identical with original perceptions of events. Hume recognizes however that there is an effective component of the original impression.
Hume dishonors the possibility of miracles because of these uniform experiences. Hence Hume’s pragmatism shows his ideology regarding miracles.
With respect to religion, Hume’s treatment to this agency can be divided to two parts .The first part argues whether divine action is part of our history, and provides a skeptic point of view to this validation of religion. The second part of his argument revolves around the question of God’s existence basically. If it is questionable to question God’s divine action in history, then so are the institutional beliefs around religion and faith questionable, and specifically that of traditional Christian belief.
Having raised skeptical arguments against god , where Hume had refuted traditional Christian Beliefs and denied Deism , He comes to argue against the skeptical notion of God ordering the world in accordance with a higher purpose .What provoked the Christian believers is that this meant that they cannot claim that religion agrees with what would be evident to most people and then point out that it is reasonable. What they should believe in according to Hume is a revealed religion that all rational and logical people agree upon.
Christians argue against Hume’s argument on miracles since he denies the phenomenon of human testimony.
Hume believes that these testimonies are not reliable since there are never a sufficient amount of intelligent witnesses, and people love bizarre and extraordinary tales and tend to lie. Also, miracles from different religions contradict each other making their arguments flawed. There is never enough proof for miracles. He also argues that stories of miracles are told by “barbarous people”. Christians believe that if Hume is right, this poses a huge problem for Christianity since this religion is full of miracles since Jesus walked on waters, turned water into wine, healed sick people, resurrected people from the dead, and even got resurrected himself. The arguments Christian use to critique Hume’s argument on miracles are that there is such a thing as human testimonies. However, there should be enough intelligent witnesses in order to prove the validity and the reliability of the miracles. Christians argue against Hume by saying that it is sufficient and reasonable to accept an improbable event based on a human testimony since Christians do it all the time. According to Bill Craig, Hume has not considered all probabilities in his probability theory. According to Christians, Hume’s mistake is that he considered the likelihood of the occurrence of miracles in light of his general understanding and knowledge of the world. He should have assessed what would have happened if
the miracle did not occur. They claim that the evidence would not be available if the miracle did not occur. Even if the miracle is improbable based on empirical data, it would be considered probable when it comes to the testimony and evidence. Another argument is that Hume never proved that the miracle is improbable based on our general knowledge of the world. He just simply assumed that.
For Christians, their general knowledge of the world is the fact that God exists therefore the existence of God assumes the occurrence of miracles according to them. This is so since God is all-powerful and capable of intervening with the natural world. Hume ignored this fact and relied only on sensory and rational evidence. So, the argument of God’s existence is relevant to the argument of the occurrence of miracles. Hence , beliefs that are not based on one’s past or present experience with miracles are highly skeptical .Hence one can never be certain about the future since the future is not a part of our past or present sense-experience. Therefore, it is legitimate for him to believe that future events will resemble past events.
When it comes to knowledge, David Hume always looked at the world around him both logically and rationally. Described as a realist, through his early philosophy, he always had to differentiate between the impressions of human experience and the ideas as alternating models of life experiences. Hume believed that all knowledge came from experience and experience in itself existed in the mind only. Hume also believed that there was another world out their beyond the scope of our mind 's consciousness’s but he could not prove it. He categorizes his definitions of perceptions and experiences into two types: impressions and ideas. While ideas are memories of a certain sensation, impressions according to Hume are the cause of these sensations. In other words, impressions are temporary while ideas are permanent in relation to feelings and sensations.
Hume also attacks our common perception of causality or causation .While a cause always comes before the effect, according to Hume, it is not necessarily the reason behind the occurrence of this effect. With regards to the notion of morality, Hume proposes a morality structure based solely on personal sentiments and belief and irrespective of any religious belief. One of Hume’s basic arguments on the survival of consciousness is this: “"The weakness of the body and that of the mind in infancy are exactly proportioned; their vigor in manhood, their sympathetic disorder in sickness, their common gradual decay in old age. The step further seems unavoidable; their common dissolution in death" His basic argument revolves around the idea that the brain causes the mind.
According to Hume, something exists in the mind and not in the object. So, causality is not a necessary connection between two objects. There is no such thing as a necessary causation. Hume’s conception of causation refers to the ideas of the human mind forms after the perception of events, but the causation does not occur in the events themselves (how the mind perceives them). People have criticized Hume’s argument by saying that if Hume is right then there wouldn’t be any causal connection between the brain and the consciousness in reality but only in our mind. They criticize Hume’s idea that the mind (consciousness) dissolves after death based on the previous statement. They argue that consciousness will die after death only if consciousness is produced by the brain which contradicts Hume’s previous statements that ideas are produced by the mind. They believe that Hume’s argument that the consciousness dissolves after death contradicts his own empiricist ideas and philosophy. Hume’s argument does not have any metaphysical connection. He simply says that ideas exist in the mind. Therefore, Hume denies the existence of God since this idea exists only in the mind and prevents the person to think rationally.
Conclusion
Hume’s position on miracles is depending on one’s definition of miracles. I personally agree with his perception. Hume’s argument is strongly reinforced in a way were as previously noted he defines miracles as violation of the laws of nature, and admitted their possibility to occur. If he stated the improbability of the miracles occurrence with no violation of any laws of nature, then Hume’s argument would be diminished. He uses the example of "better weather in any week of June than in one week of December," (Hume, 388) to explain how unusual events might not always be called miracles. Life experience tells us that in June the weather is better than in any week of December, but it is also probable that the weather in December might be better than that of June. This unusual phenomenon is not called miracle. If we calculate the probability of such event happening through our life experience, we find that it is probable that such event might occur; in conclusion it’s not classified as a miracle.
Miracles are events that violate a person’s previous experiences. Being empiricist, you must calculate miracles using your life experiences, so your beliefs of the world are founded on your experiences. Thus if your empiricist, you must view miracles as improbable (Hume’s perspective), while other people, discount previous experience to believe miracles.
References:
Levine, Michael, “Miracles,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . [This was the previous entry on miracles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — sees the version history.]
Millican, Peter, 2003, “Hume, Miracles, and Probabilities: Meeting Earman 's Challenge,” manuscript available online
Miracles, by David Corner, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Bibliography on Miracles (in PDF), by James Arlandson http://vault.hanover.edu/~ahrens/texts/Hume%20Of%20Miracles.pdf http://www.humesociety.org/hs/issues/v16n1/fogelin/fogelin-v16n1.pdf http://faculty.wwu.edu/howardd/miracles.pdf http://subversivethinking.blogspot.com/2009/12/david-hume-causality-or-causation-mind.html
http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.5924027/k.8661/Humes_Critique_of_Miracles.htm
In 1737, Hume produced a manuscript of somehow lengthy and daring work entitled “ A treaties of Human Nature “ which was published in three volumes between (1739-1740).His writings were largely ostracized by a small number of people who read it . Recognizing that his philosophical work would never receive a fair hearing, Hume shifted to writing letters and so he devoted himself to enhancing his literary style and writing clear and literal essays .Having established his literary reputation, Hume returns to writing philosophical writing in a more elegant essay form. As I try to examine his empirical approach to the natural world which bases one understands on the use of our senses.
In order to explain Hume’s critique regarding …show more content…
the belief in miracles, we must first comprehend the conceptual meaning of a miracle. According to the Webster Dictionary, miracle is defined as a paranormal, mystic event observed as to define an action. As a model, Christ worked many supernatural acts that exposed his spirituality by notable accomplishment or event, an unpredicted piece of luck. Hence, people’s perception of a miracle differs, according to each one’s explanation of past experiences. These different explanations vary relatively between each person according to the dissimilar faith in which people believes in. This faith is founded on inner events such as what we are taught or how we are raised, and outer events, such as what we encounter, hear or see in our daily life. As a rationalist, Hume felt that sense data alone can allow us to have a deeper understanding of reality if we start to examine the nature of the mind and the fundamental process of human thought.
Taking in Hume’s perception of a miracle, he classifies a miracle as an event that violates the laws of nature, an event which is untypical and abnormal to most of man folk. Contrariwise, nature laws reveal discontinuity through years; they may change anytime according to the past uniform regularities they have been. Many different religion claims to show miracles in support of their one true religion. What traditional Christians believe is that miracles are a reflection of the virtuousness of their beleifs
Being a skeptic of miracles, Hume states that it might be a possible way for a miracle to occur. Nevertheless he claims that there can never be a proof or appropriate evidence to understand reasonably the occurrence of miracles. Therefore he justified the irrationality of miracles by stating that miracles can occur but they could never be proven. Hume proclaims, "We may observe in human nature a principle which, if strictly examined, will be found to diminish extremely the assurance, which we might, from human testimony, have, in any kind of prodigy (Hume, 393). Then also noticeably attacks the testimony of those who report miracles.
Due to the astonishing appearance that a miracle may look like, a testimony may not be completely precise; it might involve certain emotions that lead the witness to have faith in the occurred miracle deprived of analyzing the event. Consequently, Hume does admit the possibility of miracles but definitely studies them closely, and with examination.
Hume enlarges this idea by affirming the following: "a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible".
Because a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, the proof against it is as complete as any can be from experience. Why must all men die; why must lead fall; why must fire consume wood and be extinguished by water? .The answer to that is because this is the law of nature.
For example, if someone told me that he saw a dead cat restored to life or a dead man talking, whether this person is deceiving or whether he is deceived. Both are miracles. If his falsehood would be more miraculous than the event he relates, only then could he pretend to persuade me in belief.
He also uses the resurrection of a dead person’s case to affirm his statement.
We never experienced in our life spam or heard from history that a person could raise from the dead, if abnormally this happens, we would call it a miracle. Here comes Hume’s statement "the hidden variable thesis," which means miracles defined as violations of natural laws, are just less probable than normal natural events requested to justify the known fact.
Hume’s arguments on miracles de pend on the narrow ways by which he would define natural laws and credible testimonies. In Hume’s view, why is it less suitable to arrive at a belief through rationality and experience instead of basing our credible testimonies on historical facts that are highly questionable and not more credible?
It is in this part of his essay that Hume attempts to validate his conflicting views of religion and argue for his early philosophical views on experience and logic.Principally, other effective variable must exist within the dominion of nature laws that would explain the happening of extraordinary events that contradicts these laws. In the above mentioned example, the resurrection of a dead person might occur since the person wasn’t really dead in the first …show more content…
place.
Hume argues that miracles contradict the laws of nature. Since laws of nature are never to be contradicted, there are no such things as miracles. Thus, experience teaches us that miracles cannot occur. Hume’s observations gave explanation to the laws of nature and the improbability of miracles. Like ancient Stoicism, Hume attempts to recognize the idea of impression as a virtual and identical in form or probably rough identical with original perceptions of events. Hume recognizes however that there is an effective component of the original impression.
Hume dishonors the possibility of miracles because of these uniform experiences. Hence Hume’s pragmatism shows his ideology regarding miracles.
With respect to religion, Hume’s treatment to this agency can be divided to two parts .The first part argues whether divine action is part of our history, and provides a skeptic point of view to this validation of religion. The second part of his argument revolves around the question of God’s existence basically. If it is questionable to question God’s divine action in history, then so are the institutional beliefs around religion and faith questionable, and specifically that of traditional Christian belief.
Having raised skeptical arguments against god , where Hume had refuted traditional Christian Beliefs and denied Deism , He comes to argue against the skeptical notion of God ordering the world in accordance with a higher purpose .What provoked the Christian believers is that this meant that they cannot claim that religion agrees with what would be evident to most people and then point out that it is reasonable. What they should believe in according to Hume is a revealed religion that all rational and logical people agree upon.
Christians argue against Hume’s argument on miracles since he denies the phenomenon of human testimony.
Hume believes that these testimonies are not reliable since there are never a sufficient amount of intelligent witnesses, and people love bizarre and extraordinary tales and tend to lie. Also, miracles from different religions contradict each other making their arguments flawed. There is never enough proof for miracles. He also argues that stories of miracles are told by “barbarous people”. Christians believe that if Hume is right, this poses a huge problem for Christianity since this religion is full of miracles since Jesus walked on waters, turned water into wine, healed sick people, resurrected people from the dead, and even got resurrected himself. The arguments Christian use to critique Hume’s argument on miracles are that there is such a thing as human testimonies. However, there should be enough intelligent witnesses in order to prove the validity and the reliability of the miracles. Christians argue against Hume by saying that it is sufficient and reasonable to accept an improbable event based on a human testimony since Christians do it all the time. According to Bill Craig, Hume has not considered all probabilities in his probability theory. According to Christians, Hume’s mistake is that he considered the likelihood of the occurrence of miracles in light of his general understanding and knowledge of the world. He should have assessed what would have happened if
the miracle did not occur. They claim that the evidence would not be available if the miracle did not occur. Even if the miracle is improbable based on empirical data, it would be considered probable when it comes to the testimony and evidence. Another argument is that Hume never proved that the miracle is improbable based on our general knowledge of the world. He just simply assumed that.
For Christians, their general knowledge of the world is the fact that God exists therefore the existence of God assumes the occurrence of miracles according to them. This is so since God is all-powerful and capable of intervening with the natural world. Hume ignored this fact and relied only on sensory and rational evidence. So, the argument of God’s existence is relevant to the argument of the occurrence of miracles. Hence , beliefs that are not based on one’s past or present experience with miracles are highly skeptical .Hence one can never be certain about the future since the future is not a part of our past or present sense-experience. Therefore, it is legitimate for him to believe that future events will resemble past events.
When it comes to knowledge, David Hume always looked at the world around him both logically and rationally. Described as a realist, through his early philosophy, he always had to differentiate between the impressions of human experience and the ideas as alternating models of life experiences. Hume believed that all knowledge came from experience and experience in itself existed in the mind only. Hume also believed that there was another world out their beyond the scope of our mind 's consciousness’s but he could not prove it. He categorizes his definitions of perceptions and experiences into two types: impressions and ideas. While ideas are memories of a certain sensation, impressions according to Hume are the cause of these sensations. In other words, impressions are temporary while ideas are permanent in relation to feelings and sensations.
Hume also attacks our common perception of causality or causation .While a cause always comes before the effect, according to Hume, it is not necessarily the reason behind the occurrence of this effect. With regards to the notion of morality, Hume proposes a morality structure based solely on personal sentiments and belief and irrespective of any religious belief. One of Hume’s basic arguments on the survival of consciousness is this: “"The weakness of the body and that of the mind in infancy are exactly proportioned; their vigor in manhood, their sympathetic disorder in sickness, their common gradual decay in old age. The step further seems unavoidable; their common dissolution in death" His basic argument revolves around the idea that the brain causes the mind.
According to Hume, something exists in the mind and not in the object. So, causality is not a necessary connection between two objects. There is no such thing as a necessary causation. Hume’s conception of causation refers to the ideas of the human mind forms after the perception of events, but the causation does not occur in the events themselves (how the mind perceives them). People have criticized Hume’s argument by saying that if Hume is right then there wouldn’t be any causal connection between the brain and the consciousness in reality but only in our mind. They criticize Hume’s idea that the mind (consciousness) dissolves after death based on the previous statement. They argue that consciousness will die after death only if consciousness is produced by the brain which contradicts Hume’s previous statements that ideas are produced by the mind. They believe that Hume’s argument that the consciousness dissolves after death contradicts his own empiricist ideas and philosophy. Hume’s argument does not have any metaphysical connection. He simply says that ideas exist in the mind. Therefore, Hume denies the existence of God since this idea exists only in the mind and prevents the person to think rationally.
Conclusion
Hume’s position on miracles is depending on one’s definition of miracles. I personally agree with his perception. Hume’s argument is strongly reinforced in a way were as previously noted he defines miracles as violation of the laws of nature, and admitted their possibility to occur. If he stated the improbability of the miracles occurrence with no violation of any laws of nature, then Hume’s argument would be diminished. He uses the example of "better weather in any week of June than in one week of December," (Hume, 388) to explain how unusual events might not always be called miracles. Life experience tells us that in June the weather is better than in any week of December, but it is also probable that the weather in December might be better than that of June. This unusual phenomenon is not called miracle. If we calculate the probability of such event happening through our life experience, we find that it is probable that such event might occur; in conclusion it’s not classified as a miracle.
Miracles are events that violate a person’s previous experiences. Being empiricist, you must calculate miracles using your life experiences, so your beliefs of the world are founded on your experiences. Thus if your empiricist, you must view miracles as improbable (Hume’s perspective), while other people, discount previous experience to believe miracles.
References:
Levine, Michael, “Miracles,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . [This was the previous entry on miracles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — sees the version history.]
Millican, Peter, 2003, “Hume, Miracles, and Probabilities: Meeting Earman 's Challenge,” manuscript available online
Miracles, by David Corner, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Bibliography on Miracles (in PDF), by James Arlandson http://vault.hanover.edu/~ahrens/texts/Hume%20Of%20Miracles.pdf http://www.humesociety.org/hs/issues/v16n1/fogelin/fogelin-v16n1.pdf http://faculty.wwu.edu/howardd/miracles.pdf http://subversivethinking.blogspot.com/2009/12/david-hume-causality-or-causation-mind.html
http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.5924027/k.8661/Humes_Critique_of_Miracles.htm