Religion and Ethics and Health BBS

Religion and Ethics and Health BBS
[ Religion and Ethics and Health BBS ]

Hume: No testimony can ever be sufficient to establish the occurrence of a miracle,

Posted by DFM on September 16, 2026, 2:44 pm

as the evidence for natural laws is always stronger than that for miraculous events. He posits that belief in miracles is fundamentally irrational due to the improbability of their occurrence compared to the reliability of natural explanations.

Overview of Hume's Argument [from Google AI]

Hume's insights on miracles have significantly influenced philosophical discourse.

Definition of Miracles — Hume defines miracles as violations of natural laws, which he argues are universally established and thus highly improbable.
Testimony and Evidence — He asserts that human testimony, even if credible, is insufficient to outweigh the established laws of nature, making belief in miracles unreasonable.
Psychological Factors — Hume discusses how psychological biases and cultural influences can lead people to accept miraculous claims without sufficient evidence.
Historical Context — His arguments were groundbreaking in the 18th century, challenging the prevailing views on the credibility of religious miracles.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/miracles/

Miracles
First published Mon Oct 11, 2010; substantive revision Tue May 7, 2024

A miracle (from the Latin mirari, to wonder), at a first and very rough approximation, is an event that is not explicable by natural causes alone. A reported miracle excites wonder because it appears to require, as its cause, something beyond the reach of human action and natural causes. Historically, the appeal to miracles has formed one of the primary lines of argument in favor of specific forms of theism, the argument typically being that the event in question can best (or can only) be explained as the act of a particular deity.

1. Concepts and Definitions
1.1 Miracles as events that exceed the productive power of nature
1.2 Miracles as violations of the laws of nature
1.3 The relevance of religious context
2. Arguments for Miracle Claims
2.1 Categorical and confirmatory arguments
2.2 Four types of arguments
3. Arguments against Miracle Claims
3.1 General arguments
3.2 Particular arguments
3.3 The impact of Hume’s “Of Miracles”
4. Arguments from Miracles
4.1 Would miracles be evidence for the existence of God?
4.2 How much would credible miracle reports establish?

For continuation, see previous link.

Hume may think belief in miracles is "unreasonable", but he fail to understand that ...

Posted by Mondo Fuego™ on September 17, 2026, 12:51 pm, in reply to "Hume: No testimony can ever be sufficient to establish the occurrence of a miracle,"

... not everything experienced by humans categorically requires reason, explanation or substantiation.

Some things go better unexplained. Humans are just not perceptive enough to grasp all that happens in the universe.

Some things are best accepted without scientific or otherwise rational explanation.

Hear hear!

Posted by GOG on September 17, 2026, 4:51 pm, in reply to "Hume may think belief in miracles is "unreasonable", but he fail to understand that ..."

He understood that perfectly.

Posted by 7:77 on September 17, 2026, 3:59 pm, in reply to "Hume may think belief in miracles is "unreasonable", but he fail to understand that ..."

Hume is actually famous in the realm of academic philosophy for his essays describing how everything in the universe is not amenable to explanation by pure reason. Aside, perhaps, from Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," Hume's division of human knowledge into two categories ("Hume's Fork") might be the single most important piece of philosophy in the post-Classical era, at least in terms of establishing the parameters of human epistemology.

Hume divided human knowledge/cognition into the relationships between ideas (what we would come to categorize as "analytic propositions," to use the linguistic term) and matters of material fact (statements about "stuff"). He pointed out that reason is not in-and-of-itself sufficient to fully employ, explain, or even comprehend either one. He showed that even something as intuitive as physical causation cannot be fully explained by reason (complicated...but worth investigating). He showed that inductive reasoning, particularly the assumption that what has happened in the past will happen the same way in the future (mostly) constitutes an unfalsifiable tautology. ANd quite a bit more...

Hume once famously stated (in reference to morality in specific, but applicable beyond that): "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." That is, we can't reason our way to a coherent moral framework; emotion and state-of-mind are intrinsic to that framework, and cannot be fully described via pure reason.

Hume's take on miracles reflects this: he (correctly) pointed out that testimony can't establish the occurrence of a miracle, and that usage ("testimony") can and should be expanded to include reason, broadly. This does not deny the existence of miracles, only the difficulty (impossibility, really) of proving that they occur.

I call this the principle of SANITY. If you do NOT believe this, then you are insane.

Posted by DFM on September 20, 2026, 9:47 am, in reply to "He understood that perfectly."

"the assumption that what has happened in the past will happen the same way in the future" = principle of sanity.

If you see that everybody who jumps or falls off a high cliff is killed or seriously injured, you reasonably conclude that jumping or falling off a high cliff is dangerous. Of course, that leaves room for such res novae as parachutes, etc, which alter fundamental circumstances.

He's not stating that because it can't be proven true that it ISN'T true.

Posted by 7:77 on September 20, 2026, 11:31 am, in reply to "I call this the principle of SANITY. If you do NOT believe this, then you are insane."

That's not the point at all. He's pointing out that barring an actual direct causal chain, a past phenomenon in no way determines the outcome of a later one. If they are sufficiently materially similar, the antecedent phenomenon obviously provides reason to believe the subsequent one will proceed in the same way, but they aren't causally conjoined.

"they aren't causally conjoined" WRONG. Causality is DEFINED by

Posted by DFM on September 20, 2026, 2:54 pm, in reply to "He's not stating that because it can't be proven true that it ISN'T true."

persistent recurrence of antecedents & results.

Many confuse causal connection with logical implication.

Example:
Rain and clouds:
If it is raining, then it is necessary for there to be clouds in the vicinity, but the rain does not cause the clouds; rather vice-versa.

The matter was settled by Laplace, Jeffreys, and Jaynes.

Read https://freecomputerbooks.com/Probability-Theory-The-Logic-of-Science.html

also at: https://jhanley.biostat.mcgill.ca/bios601/GaussianModel/JaynesProbabilityTheory.pdf

Read with greater care,

Posted by 7:77 on September 21, 2026, 7:17 am, in reply to ""they aren't causally conjoined" WRONG. Causality is DEFINED by"

Did you, in your hurry to post disagreement, somehow miss this explicit exception: "...barring an actual direct causal chain..."?

Obviously a phenomenon's direct antecedent causes are not included in Hume's assertion about causal non-conjunctivity. A similar-but-unconnected event in the past has no influence over the event being considered. That similarity provides good, common sense reasons to assume the event under consideration will proceeded largely like those similar events in the past...but that's nowhere near the same thing as stating that it must.

You're right ...

Posted by Mondo Fuego™ on September 18, 2026, 2:12 am, in reply to "He understood that perfectly."

... I partially "mis-spoke".

I may need to dust off my Melvin Rader and review the results of the pursuit of "The Enduring Questions". 😉

Hume was an idiot.

Posted by GOG on September 16, 2026, 8:34 pm, in reply to "Hume: No testimony can ever be sufficient to establish the occurrence of a miracle,"

One cannot recognize a miracle unless one sees and acknowledges a miracle. He put on blinders. Are you wearing a pair? You cannot see chemtrails, the antithesis of miraculous. WE, and all life are a miracle. A miracle IS natural law. We humans don’t own nor invented natural law. A full view, understanding, and acceptance of the whole of the ‘sphere’ is not given over to us. We gets the parts appropriate for our brain. Life is a miracle. God placed two angels with flaming swords to guard that miracle’s secret ( a powerful metaphor). My best guess is the recipe’s secret (miracle) is what Hume could never see, nor touch, nor understand no matter his heartbeat and lungs operating inside of his personal miracle. Jus saying…

"A miracle IS natural law." OPPOSITE of definition of "miracle".

Posted by DFM on September 16, 2026, 11:08 pm, in reply to "Hume was an idiot."

That’s the point.

Posted by GOG on September 17, 2026, 3:56 am, in reply to ""A miracle IS natural law." OPPOSITE of definition of "miracle"."

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