Hume on miracles
- Created by: daisybalsh
- Created on: 22-05-18 18:56
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- Hume
- Hume's views on miracles
- Empiricist - bases understanding of world on experiences
- Probability & not certainty
- Effects can be verified - causes cannot
- Hume's definition
- It is willed by God
- It violates the laws of nature
- It may be performed by some other spiritual agent
- Realist - assumes that religious believers claims are factual and literally true
- Based on consistency of human experience
- Although unusual, it is not a miracle if an apparently healthy man dies suddenly
- If a dead man actually came back to life, that would be a miracle as it runs counter to universal sense experience
- Empiricist - bases understanding of world on experiences
- Hume's arguments against miracles
- Witness testimony has to become more reliable in direct proportion to the improbability of what the witness claims to have observed. The more improbable the claim
- The most improbable event would be a violation of the laws of nature, because the evidence on which the law is based must, by definition, contradict the claim that a miracle has happened
- So, by definition, the reported is improbable
- So the probability that the witnesses are lying or mistaken is always greater than the probability
- The significant of Hume's views in relation to religious belief
- It is an inductive argument, so can neither definitely prove nor disprove the existence of miracles
- It is possible to construct a theistic argument along the lines of Hume's and conclude logically that miracles probably do happen
- Hume's four arguments supporting his main argument are not particularly strong and can all be challenged with supporting evidence
- Hume's concluding statement that Christianity is founded on faith and not reason makes an important point: the pre-scientific nature of biblical as well as of early and medieval writing needs to be taken into account
- Critique of Hume's views on miracles
- Hume's account of miracles is inductive - cannot be a knockdown argument - Hume suggested his argument is as close to a proof as possible - but inductive arguments deal in probabilities not proofs
- Science cannot say that something can never happen - only that it is highly improbable - e.g. light goes in straight lines (not absolute rule) near planets light bends
- Hume - there can never be enough evidence to prove a miracle, not that they can never occur
- Hume's main inductive argument is perhaps not as strong as it looks
- TABLE
- Hume's account of miracles is inductive - cannot be a knockdown argument - Hume suggested his argument is as close to a proof as possible - but inductive arguments deal in probabilities not proofs
- Hume's views on miracles
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