Essay On David Hume Against Miracles

Arguments for and against the existence of God have been around for thousands of years. Philosophers have been using arguments as an attempt to prove their beliefs. To do this, philosophers string together a series of statements to form different types of arguments, including deductive, inductive, a priori, and a posteriori arguments. Furthermore, some philosophers use evidential approaches to establish the existence of God. Often, these approaches include pragmatics or direct perception, such as appeals to religious experience. Generally, religious experience refers to mystical experiences or miracles. David Hume presents an argument as to why we are almost never justified in believing that a miracle has occurred. Following will be a critique of Hume’s argument against miracles. …show more content…
In that section, called “Of Miracles,” Hume explains that we almost never have a compelling reason to believe in miracles. Hume does this by explaining that what we know about miracles is derived from the testimony of others who claim to have experienced miracles. Since we did not experience a miracle ourselves, we should believe that the testimony of a miracle occurring is less reliable than our own experiences. According to Hume, one ought to proportion one’s belief to the evidence given. If there happens to be a case in which all of the evidence points to a certain conclusion, we can be almost certain that that conclusion is correct. When talking about miracles, our evidence for them comes from witness testimony while our evidence against them comes from the laws we hold true about nature. We should take both of these sides into account when deciding on what to believe. According to Hume’s definition, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. Because of this, a testimony that a miracle has occurred must be stronger than the laws of nature that we