David Hume's Evidence For Miracles

David Hume is an enlightenment philosopher of the 18th century. In general, Hume says that miracles are something that defy the laws of nature and have never, or should never, occur. He does not claim that miracles never occurred, but concludes that it is not rational to belief them. Most miracles are religion based because God would be the only one with the power to perform them. Hume says that everyone should be skeptical of miracles, and has two main arguments for why he says that; a priori and a posterior. Hume is a philosopher who is skeptical of miracles in any form. The first argument behind Hume’s skepticism is surrounded by the idea of a priori. A priori is having knowledge or a belief based on one’s thought alone, independent from experience. This is simply believing what you have heard from a separate source, or one’s own hypothesis, without proof. Reason alone establishes evidence. Hume say’s that miracles violate the laws of nature; laws of nature are globally accepted to be truths. The evidence for miracles comes from witness testimony, and the …show more content…
The evidence for miracles is outdated and might not be trustworthy. Given that this is the only evidence for miracles, it is important to examine. Most accounts for miracles were seen by a very small amount of people (Lady of Guadeloupe), and it is easy for a small number of people to be deceived or come to the wrong conclusion regarding an event that occurred. These groups of people were also often untrustworthy (sighting by peasant kids and uneducated peasant shepherds), furthering the skepticism behind whether the evidence for miracles is accurate. This is a large part of why I do not believe that the laws of nature can, or have, be broken. The supporting evidence for the existence of miracles is far less convincing than that of proven