Hume’s Reasons for Rejecting Miracles

Hume’s Reasons for Rejecting Miracles

One of the main philosophers in the debate about miracles is David

Hume. I will start this essay with a basic summary of Hume’s argument.

Hume’s argument is not that miracles cannot happen, but that, given

the amount of evidence that has established and confirmed a law of

nature, there can never be sufficient evidence to prove that a law of

nature has been violated. He believes that miracles have no rational

background.

Hume was an empiricist, in other words, he believed that all knowledge

is based on evidence that we gain through our senses. He argues that

if a miracle goes against a law of nature, then it represents a single

piece of evidence that goes against all the rest. So, for example, if

we let go of a heavy object, it falls to the ground. That observation,

repeated many times, confirms our understanding of the law of gravity.

If then, an account is heard of the heavy object floating upwards of

its own accord, you can ask yourself, which is the more likely: that

the report is mistaken or that it actually happened.

However, Hume talks of laws of nature as if set in stone implying that

Natural Law can never be shown to be false. The possibility for laws

of nature to be false must be left open.

Hume claims that, if we balance on one hand the improbability of

miracles occurring and on the other hand the evidence that they have

occurred, we will always come to the conclusion that it is more likely

that natural laws occurred rather than miracles.

On the other hand, Hume was working with Newton’s understanding of

Natural Laws being fixed whereas the modern understanding is that of

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God. There is still much that we don’t know about the human mind and

it may be possible, that under the right conditions, out minds can

bring about changes in our bodies.

It seems difficult to fault Hume’s argument if one is going to look at

the evidence of miracles logically. If a miracle is a “violation of a

law of nature” then Hume has good reason for not believing an account

of any such event. However, as we have seen, what makes something

‘religious’ is often a matter of interpretation, rather than fact.

In conclusion, I will repeat the point I made in the opening of this

essay. Hume’s argument is not that miracles cannot happen, but that,

given the amount of evidence that has established and confirmed a law

of nature, there can never be sufficient evidence to prove that a law

of nature has been violated.