Lesson Aim

1. Lesson Aim To learn about David Hume’s famous critique of Miracles.

2. David Hume (1711-1776) • Of Miracles, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. • ‘A transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity’. • Focuses on experience, observation, evidence and probability. • Hume an empiricist argued that any claim of a miraculous event should be measured against available evidence. • These laws of nature are based on past human experience. • It would therefore be reasonable to reject the claim of a miracle because it would be contrary to human experience. • However, people do claim experience of miraculous events.

3. These testimonies would have to be weighed against the reasonable doubt raised by the sum total of human (scientific) experience. If they were to be taken seriously, accounts of miracles would have to be of such a quality that they were difficult to dismiss. • “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless it is such that the falsehood would be more miraculous”.

4. Hume was therefore 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’, because the testimonies of people who claim experience of the miraculous are rarely of any quality. The evidence to support miraculous events is often contradictory, and (in Hume’s estimation) always tainted with human superstition. • Hume described the accounts as being sourced from ‘ignorant and barbarous’ people.

5. Hume would only accept evidence from educated and intellectual sources – people who would have something to loose. • So: violation of laws of nature + poor quality testimony = grounds to reject the claim. • “The wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”. • Hume also stated that all religions claim that their founding figures performed miracles – the religions base their claims for authority on these miracles. Yet they cannot all be right. The stories cancel out the claims of the religions.

6. Hume provided 4 arguments against miracles: • There are insufficient witnesses of ‘good sense, education and learning’. Witnesses tend to be uneducated, ignorant peasantry. • The witnesses tend to be sympathetic to the idea of miracles, and therefore more likely to describe an event as miraculous. • Miracles tend to be observed by ‘ignorant and barbarous nations’. • Religions base their truth claims on the miraculous – they all experience miracles but they can’t all be right.

7. Islamic Scholar: Illiyaas Ali a) Miracles Occur If (a) is accepted, then (b) or (c) can be true, but not both. (c) Religions claim exclusivity. (b) Miracles are claimed in all religions.

8. B) Consider the arguments which may be used to discredit belief in miracles.