Questions

1. Is the most probable thing always the most true? Can you think of any examples that could be used against Hume?

2. Is regularity necessarily a criterion for truth? Again, think of some examples that might contradict Hume.

3. Only a small number of people have ever landed on the moon - does this mean it didn't happen? How might Hume deal with this argument?

4. If a miracle is by definition something that rarely happens, is Hume right to use these arguments against it?

Hume's Objections

In section 10 of Hume's Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, the author sets out his view of miracles. Anyone familiar with Hume's view of cause and effect will recognise the same reasoning at work here. Hume's view, called his Regularity Thesis, is basically this:

1. Our view of events is based on experience

2. How reliable or predictable an event is depends on how often it has been experienced

3. Miracles are, by definition, things which are very rarely said to occur

4. Therefore it is very unlikely that miracles do occur

Next, Hume's first approach to a possible miracle would be to question the credentials of the people who saw it. Were they drunk? Are they the sort of people who might lie? Also, Hume suggests that we try to find out other factors such as the quality of the light, the mental state of the people involved, etc. This part of the argument is called the Probability Thesis.

The upshot of all this is that, from Hume's point of view, a miracle is just about the least likely thing that can happen. Rather, he thinks that it is more likely to be the result of gullibility, lack of reliable witnesses or lack of sophistication on the part of the believer.

Introduction

As mentioned earlier - in the Argument from Religious Experience section of Proofs - the concept of "miraculous", for religious purposes, is usually applied to those events which can only be explained by divine intervention. Turning water into wine, raising the dead, parting the sea - these are all things which the religious believer wants to say prove the existence of God.

In the earlier section we looked at some of the problems which the religious believer faces in using miracles as proof, but now we will look at the concept of the miracle itself in more detail.