Some Basic Thoughts on Hume's Argument Against Miracles

Hume’s view that it is irrational to believe in miracles is awfully famous and it is explained in section 10 of his Enquiry. Hume’s argument against the rationality of belief in miracles begins with the intuitive assertion that “a wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence” (ECHU, Section X). Early on, Hume also speaks of how miracles are primarily supported by testimonial evidence and gives examples, such as “testimony of the apostles, who were eye-witnesses to those miracles of our Saviour, by which he proved his divine mission” (ECHU, Section X). A central aspect of testimony is its fallibility since it is based on “past experience” (ECHU, Section X). He then goes on to define a miracle as “a violation of the laws of nature” (ECHU, Section X). This is an important definition for Hume as laws of nature are merely what human beings say are the regularities which characterize nature. Furthermore, Hume thinks that laws of nature are deduced from experience: “a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws” (ECHU, Section X). With this in mind, it is clear why Hume says “that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish” (ECHU, Section X). For Hume, the amount of testimony needed to prove a miracle is almost insurmountably high because it contradicts our clear experience of nature which is much more likely to be true than any testimony, especially one that directly contradicts our experience. As Hume goes on to say: “when anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle” (ECHU, Section X). 


While Hume offers an interesting and it has been incredibly popular and influential, I have my doubts that it is successful. One of the major objections to the Humean account of laws of nature is that they fail to give laws any explanatory power. The reason is that, on the Humean view, laws of nature are mere regularities of human experience; so if one wants to ask why the planets move in the ways they do, one cannot appeal to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion since, on the Humean view, these laws are mere descriptions of how the planets usually move, which is precisely what one is trying to explain. A view that is not subject to such explanatory poverty is the Aristotelian view of laws. On this view, laws of nature are reports of the causal powers of concrete substances. So, if one wants to explain planetary motion by appealing to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion they can since, now, these laws will have explanatory power since they are descriptions of the cause of planetary motion.


Relating this to Hume’s argument, on this view of laws it’s unclear why all miracles should be defined as violations of the laws of nature. For example, if we take the feeding of the five thousand, it’s unclear what law of nature is being broken; the bread is still bread, the fish is still fish, it is merely that the way in which these things are produced which is uncommon, but that the bread or fish is directly produced by God who is all-powerful doesn’t seem to violate the laws of nature given this Aristotelian definition as God is still acting in accord with His causal powers. So, it seems that there may be cases where testimony could be great enough to rationally believe a miracle since the miracles are not, necessarily, contrary to the laws of nature.


Resources Used:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9662/9662-h/9662-h.htm#section10

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