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Of Miracles
Book by Hume, David
60 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1740
About the author
David Hume
3,156 books1,730 followersDavid Hume was a Scottish historian, philosopher, economist, diplomat and essayist known today especially for his radical philosophical empiricism and scepticism.
In light of Hume's central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, and in the history of Western philosophy, Bryan Magee judged him as a philosopher "widely regarded as the greatest who has ever written in the English language." While Hume failed in his attempts to start a university career, he took part in various diplomatic and military missions of the time. He wrote The History of England which became a bestseller, and it became the standard history of England in its day.
His empirical approach places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others at the time as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably René Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour. He also argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. He argued that inductive reasoning and therefore causality cannot be justified rationally. Our assumptions in favour of these result from custom and constant conjunction rather than logic. He concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
Hume's compatibilist theory of free will proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles, and expounded the is–ought problem.
Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent western philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, theology and other movements and thinkers. In addition, according to philosopher Jerry Fodor, Hume's Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive science". Hume engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Boswell, and Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy). Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumbers".
In light of Hume's central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, and in the history of Western philosophy, Bryan Magee judged him as a philosopher "widely regarded as the greatest who has ever written in the English language." While Hume failed in his attempts to start a university career, he took part in various diplomatic and military missions of the time. He wrote The History of England which became a bestseller, and it became the standard history of England in its day.
His empirical approach places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others at the time as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably René Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour. He also argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. He argued that inductive reasoning and therefore causality cannot be justified rationally. Our assumptions in favour of these result from custom and constant conjunction rather than logic. He concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
Hume's compatibilist theory of free will proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles, and expounded the is–ought problem.
Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent western philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, theology and other movements and thinkers. In addition, according to philosopher Jerry Fodor, Hume's Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive science". Hume engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Boswell, and Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy). Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumbers".
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Did Not Finish
December 27, 2020This is another book, which I started to read and bailed on pre-Goodreads, that's ping-ponged between my "started-not finished" shelf, and "to read." I'd set it aside in the first place, not because it posed any threat to my faith (I read enough of it to understand the argument, and found it circular, tendentious, and unconvincing), but because the combination of boring, repetitious and tedious poor argumentation and mind-numbingly pompous and dry 18th-century Neoclassical prose --which, in general, I don't like anyway--proved to be too eye-glazing to suffer through any further. Since then, though, I've at times added it back to "to-read," with gritted teeth, in the belief that it was such an important foundation of the establishment world view of modern American culture that anyone who wants to credibly challenge the latter just has to read it.
Recently, though, I relegated it to "started -not finished" to stay. I've concluded that, in the 2020s, this book actually is not really the foundation of very many people's world view. Yes, today a general attitude of skepticism towards theism in general and miracles in particular is characteristic of the establishment and its followers. But while, in the 1700s, the book was a club that the then nascent "greed-is-good" capitalist establishment could use to beat people into submission with ("See, here's an intellectual who uses big words and doesn't believe in miracles; he's smart, and if you were smart, you wouldn't believe in the Bible with its stupid love commands either!"), hardly anybody who thinks that way today actually bases their thought on Hume's arguments; outside of a relative handful of intellectuals, most people haven't even heard of him. And nobody would change their thinking based on a Goodreads review which suggested that this particular Emperor is buck naked. So the "duty" to read it in order to engage in cultural dialogue in the modern world doesn't genuinely exist. (I've engaged in cultural dialogue this long without missing it!) And I've reached the stage in my life where I'm done wasting time reading Big Books out of bogus "duty." :-)
Recently, though, I relegated it to "started -not finished" to stay. I've concluded that, in the 2020s, this book actually is not really the foundation of very many people's world view. Yes, today a general attitude of skepticism towards theism in general and miracles in particular is characteristic of the establishment and its followers. But while, in the 1700s, the book was a club that the then nascent "greed-is-good" capitalist establishment could use to beat people into submission with ("See, here's an intellectual who uses big words and doesn't believe in miracles; he's smart, and if you were smart, you wouldn't believe in the Bible with its stupid love commands either!"), hardly anybody who thinks that way today actually bases their thought on Hume's arguments; outside of a relative handful of intellectuals, most people haven't even heard of him. And nobody would change their thinking based on a Goodreads review which suggested that this particular Emperor is buck naked. So the "duty" to read it in order to engage in cultural dialogue in the modern world doesn't genuinely exist. (I've engaged in cultural dialogue this long without missing it!) And I've reached the stage in my life where I'm done wasting time reading Big Books out of bogus "duty." :-)
April 30, 2025
For the first time, I find myself deeply frustrated with Hume’s reasoning. Or more accurately, the seeming inconsistency of his treatment of miracles with the rest of his system. I find this essay to be reasonably compelling in isolation, but seen in relation with the rest of Hume’s philosophy, I deem it incompatible and even disingenuous. To argue this point, I first need to articulate my background troubles with Hume.
Preamble:
It’s always been a point of fascination for me, regarding a given PHILOSOPHY and the corresponding PHILOSOPHER. To understand better the depths of a philosophy, should I look to the philosopher’s life for more evidence on what he thought? Does the axiom of ‘revealed preferences’ hold in this case – that the philosopher’s life choices reveal his philosophy? (I might even playfully coin this term ‘revealed philosophies’.) To understand a given treatise, should I look to the philosopher’s other writings for more clues into his mind? Should the reader even assume any form of systematization of doctrine across the philosopher’s corpus?
Other than making for a highly interesting hobby, I think this question is important in its own right. This is, firstly, because philosophy is HARD – trying to understand it thru 1 angle (i.e. 1 book) is usually very difficult, so it helps to look at it thru different angles. But secondly, and more importantly, philosophy is CONTRIVED! I particularly like Levin’s (in the final part of Anna Karenina) articulation of this observation – (paraphrasing here) philosophy is often a set of tightly constructed technical arguments using terms defined by the philosopher himself, and if only seen thru this tight chain of arguments, any conclusion can follow given sufficient skill of argumentation, which is obviously a skill that philosophers have mastered. But once seen out of this tight chain, and once the reader elevates his mind to contemplate the weighty topics of life – like free will, the soul, the question of life itself – all these carefully constructed arguments fall apart. Levin incisively observes that the great philosophers like Kant and Spinoza often define what they mean by free will, then offer a chain of arguments that prove their point. But what happens in the real world, when you can’t first define what you mean? How do we grasp at the essence of free will?
Onto the problem of Hume, I note that the skepticism, which followed as a logical conclusion of his empiricism, that Hume offered me in his excellent ‘Treatise of Human Nature’ was deeply troubling. Of course, I was troubled like anyone would be once they realize how little there is that we can truly KNOW – but on the other hand there remained the lingering belief that this system of skepticism was contrived as well. Sure, it follows logically from Hume’s masterful premises that there is little in the world that we can be certain of, but … what do I do with this information? How do I even live my life with this? How can I even understand skepticism as a way of life, beyond just a theoretical construct of little significance for real-world, high-stakes decision-making? If I were a true skeptic, I wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning, would I?
Naturally I thought a good idea might be to see how Hume himself lived his life.
My reading of his economic essays initially taught me a lot regarding classical econ, but then threw me into discontent regarding the consistency of the Humean system.
It is obvious that Hume himself drew many certainties thru REASON! The price-specie-flow mechanism, the neutrality of money, the argument for free trade – Hume arrived at those conclusions thru REASON, didn’t he? Hume also does a lot of his economic reasoning thru careful consideration of cause and effect, and in his economic analysis, one could sense no skepticism at the notion of causation. And anyway, how did Hume even determine that we can only know things via experience? Did he not REASON that?
Even putting aside economic analysis, Hume does plenty of rationalisation in his other works. How did he know of the existence of a standard of taste, that can be refined thru practice, and only accessible thru a clearance of all prejudice? Did he not REASON that as well, using a thorough insight into the causes and effects of human judgments?
It is disappointing to read and admire a magnificent treatise that persuasively expounds on skepticism, only to look at the author and find them deducing practical truths and concepts, with ample rationalising from cause and effect, like any other intelligent person. It proves Levin’s point again – philosophy crumbles under the pressure of real life, like how a bodybuilder can lift extraordinarily heavy weights in the gym, but struggles to move a sofa. To use a more exaggerated analogy to make the point, Hume is like a diehard solipsist who proves the tenets of solipsism robustly, on paper, but always looks both ways when he crosses the street.
Thoughts about ‘Of Miracles’:
In short, I find many problems with it, but Hume does manage to give himself some saving grace near the end.
To first clarify Hume’s position before I respond to it – Hume first voices his disbelief over testimonies and eye-witness accounts of miracles. It is clear that this is primarily meant to be a polemic against the Bible (testimonies of the resurrection of Jesus), but Hume never explicitly states this (given the era he was writing in, it was dangerous to do so, and his atheist beliefs had already given him lifelong professional headaches).
Hume urges us to ponder the question of why we hold eye-witness accounts to be among the highest-quality forms of evidence. I agree that this is a highly important question. At its core is the most fundamental question of why can we trust our senses.
Hume contends that the maxim that eye-witness accounts and other testimonies are good evidence is merely a matter of fact (terminology from the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding) – we can’t know that a priori! In reality, we arrived at that conclusion a posteriori – thru CUSTOM! (repeated observation of conjoined events) We repeatedly observe that eye-witnesses provide reasonably accurate accounts.
This challenges the common-sense view that we can judge, a priori, that our senses are the highest form of evidence. We clearly observe people refusing to believe evidence to the contrary, because they ‘saw it with their own eyes’. Etc.
Hume then posits that since all our evidence for the world is founded on past experience, to make any judgment, we can only follow the evidence that we have, based on past observation. Thus for every judgment or decision, we must construct probabilities according to the evidence. So – 1) there are no certainties, only probabilities! I obviously am in full agreement with this. It is key to good investing. 2) Always follow the evidence. Every time we’re confronted with a judgment call, we think – which is more PROBABLE? That it happened, or it did not?
Hume now makes a key point – that in every testimony of a miracle, there are 3 pieces of evidence:
i) The witness’s testimony
ii) Our belief that eyewitness accounts are credible
iii) Our incredulity of the miracle
The first 2 work in the direction of the miracle, the 3rd in the opposite direction.
Hume famously states that a miracle is a ‘violation of the laws of nature’. He judges that miracles cannot happen, because they violate these laws. The laws of nature are founded upon repeated observation and study of the world – all men must die, no brick can float in the air, etc. It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life because it has never been observed.
And so, Hume claims that one should never belief in a testimony of a miracle. When someone claims in their witness of a miracle, which is more PROBABLE? That the miracle happened, or that the witness was deceived or has the intention to deceive? Certainly the latter, and I of course agree.
My response:
Firstly (my main indignation with this essay), it is the whole point of Hume’s epistemology that there are NO ‘laws of nature’! All the laws that we can derive are just illusions, or perhaps more accurately, assumptions founded by custom. Hume himself stresses multiple times that we have no reason to believe that the future will resemble the past. According to this epistemology, all ‘laws of nature’ are merely founded on the doctrine of uniformity, a doctrine that doesn’t stand up to philosophical scrutiny!
Hume himself contends that ANYTHING can happen. (C’mon, it was he who convinced me it’s possible for the billiard ball to NOT move when another ball strikes it. If you can believe THAT, surely you can believe in anything, i.e. miracles.) Our knowledge of the law of conservation of energy, that potential energy converts into kinetic energy + heat energy, which causes the black ball to move, isn’t grounded on a priori principles - it’s conditioned via millions of repeated observation.
My point is that as a true skeptic, HUME should believe in miracles! Why is he suddenly backtracking now? And why does he suddenly appeal to the ‘laws of nature’ when he thoroughly refuted such laws in his Treatise?
OK - what would Hume say if I told him that I WITNESSED a black ball not moving when a white ball hit it? According to this essay, he would dismiss me as a deceiver.
Secondly, I’m not sure I agree with the claim that we can never reason a priori that eyewitnesses and historians have credibility. Personally, I reason that historians have spent a great deal of time and energy in studying history, so I trust them to have more credible knowledge about historical events that I do. If I had never met a single historian in my entire life, that’s what I would reason about them.
Regarding eyewitnesses - that seems more nuanced. THEY have seen the event, I haven’t! So I should reason a priori that their word has more assurance than my knowledge of said event. But then, a priori, I have no reason to believe that they were not deceived, or do not have the intention to deceive. So I agree with Hume here that the human faith in witness accounts are only founded a posteriori.
Thirdly, I find Hume’s strong conclusions against miraculous accounts to be a very close-minded and restrictive view. Quoting Hume (he first observes that the cause of widespread belief in miracles is the human desire for the passion of surprise and wonder. I agree with this assessment): ‘With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relation of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense …’
If you always dismiss the miraculous, or any custom that runs counter to yours, and ONLY rely on your past experience, how do you grow? How do you learn? How do you develop as a person?
I can’t help but quote John Stuart Mill here in response to Hume’s stodginess, ‘It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar … it is indispensable to be perpetually comparing one’s own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances …’
Nevertheless, Hume does end by clarifying his system which serves to restore some consistency. Quote, ‘It is experience only, which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience, which assures us of the laws of nature.’ So this is fine then! Hume posits that since the laws of nature, and our belief in human testimony are both grounded in experience, we can compare them directly, then! When the evidence they offer run in counter-acting directions, we have nothing to do but to follow the side which is more PROBABLE.
Overall, I find this essay to be one of the more sophisticated treatments of miracles I’ve seen, although it could have benefited from more intellectual honesty. I also acknowledge my Christian priors, which runs counter to Hume’s atheist priors, which prompted a knee-jerk intellectual reaction on my part, much like the Chicago school’s knee-jerk reaction to Keynesian economics.
I also appreciate the age which Hume was writing in. In an era dominated by dogma, Hume’s assertion was a good step forward.
Preamble:
It’s always been a point of fascination for me, regarding a given PHILOSOPHY and the corresponding PHILOSOPHER. To understand better the depths of a philosophy, should I look to the philosopher’s life for more evidence on what he thought? Does the axiom of ‘revealed preferences’ hold in this case – that the philosopher’s life choices reveal his philosophy? (I might even playfully coin this term ‘revealed philosophies’.) To understand a given treatise, should I look to the philosopher’s other writings for more clues into his mind? Should the reader even assume any form of systematization of doctrine across the philosopher’s corpus?
Other than making for a highly interesting hobby, I think this question is important in its own right. This is, firstly, because philosophy is HARD – trying to understand it thru 1 angle (i.e. 1 book) is usually very difficult, so it helps to look at it thru different angles. But secondly, and more importantly, philosophy is CONTRIVED! I particularly like Levin’s (in the final part of Anna Karenina) articulation of this observation – (paraphrasing here) philosophy is often a set of tightly constructed technical arguments using terms defined by the philosopher himself, and if only seen thru this tight chain of arguments, any conclusion can follow given sufficient skill of argumentation, which is obviously a skill that philosophers have mastered. But once seen out of this tight chain, and once the reader elevates his mind to contemplate the weighty topics of life – like free will, the soul, the question of life itself – all these carefully constructed arguments fall apart. Levin incisively observes that the great philosophers like Kant and Spinoza often define what they mean by free will, then offer a chain of arguments that prove their point. But what happens in the real world, when you can’t first define what you mean? How do we grasp at the essence of free will?
Onto the problem of Hume, I note that the skepticism, which followed as a logical conclusion of his empiricism, that Hume offered me in his excellent ‘Treatise of Human Nature’ was deeply troubling. Of course, I was troubled like anyone would be once they realize how little there is that we can truly KNOW – but on the other hand there remained the lingering belief that this system of skepticism was contrived as well. Sure, it follows logically from Hume’s masterful premises that there is little in the world that we can be certain of, but … what do I do with this information? How do I even live my life with this? How can I even understand skepticism as a way of life, beyond just a theoretical construct of little significance for real-world, high-stakes decision-making? If I were a true skeptic, I wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning, would I?
Naturally I thought a good idea might be to see how Hume himself lived his life.
My reading of his economic essays initially taught me a lot regarding classical econ, but then threw me into discontent regarding the consistency of the Humean system.
It is obvious that Hume himself drew many certainties thru REASON! The price-specie-flow mechanism, the neutrality of money, the argument for free trade – Hume arrived at those conclusions thru REASON, didn’t he? Hume also does a lot of his economic reasoning thru careful consideration of cause and effect, and in his economic analysis, one could sense no skepticism at the notion of causation. And anyway, how did Hume even determine that we can only know things via experience? Did he not REASON that?
Even putting aside economic analysis, Hume does plenty of rationalisation in his other works. How did he know of the existence of a standard of taste, that can be refined thru practice, and only accessible thru a clearance of all prejudice? Did he not REASON that as well, using a thorough insight into the causes and effects of human judgments?
It is disappointing to read and admire a magnificent treatise that persuasively expounds on skepticism, only to look at the author and find them deducing practical truths and concepts, with ample rationalising from cause and effect, like any other intelligent person. It proves Levin’s point again – philosophy crumbles under the pressure of real life, like how a bodybuilder can lift extraordinarily heavy weights in the gym, but struggles to move a sofa. To use a more exaggerated analogy to make the point, Hume is like a diehard solipsist who proves the tenets of solipsism robustly, on paper, but always looks both ways when he crosses the street.
Thoughts about ‘Of Miracles’:
In short, I find many problems with it, but Hume does manage to give himself some saving grace near the end.
To first clarify Hume’s position before I respond to it – Hume first voices his disbelief over testimonies and eye-witness accounts of miracles. It is clear that this is primarily meant to be a polemic against the Bible (testimonies of the resurrection of Jesus), but Hume never explicitly states this (given the era he was writing in, it was dangerous to do so, and his atheist beliefs had already given him lifelong professional headaches).
Hume urges us to ponder the question of why we hold eye-witness accounts to be among the highest-quality forms of evidence. I agree that this is a highly important question. At its core is the most fundamental question of why can we trust our senses.
Hume contends that the maxim that eye-witness accounts and other testimonies are good evidence is merely a matter of fact (terminology from the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding) – we can’t know that a priori! In reality, we arrived at that conclusion a posteriori – thru CUSTOM! (repeated observation of conjoined events) We repeatedly observe that eye-witnesses provide reasonably accurate accounts.
This challenges the common-sense view that we can judge, a priori, that our senses are the highest form of evidence. We clearly observe people refusing to believe evidence to the contrary, because they ‘saw it with their own eyes’. Etc.
Hume then posits that since all our evidence for the world is founded on past experience, to make any judgment, we can only follow the evidence that we have, based on past observation. Thus for every judgment or decision, we must construct probabilities according to the evidence. So – 1) there are no certainties, only probabilities! I obviously am in full agreement with this. It is key to good investing. 2) Always follow the evidence. Every time we’re confronted with a judgment call, we think – which is more PROBABLE? That it happened, or it did not?
Hume now makes a key point – that in every testimony of a miracle, there are 3 pieces of evidence:
i) The witness’s testimony
ii) Our belief that eyewitness accounts are credible
iii) Our incredulity of the miracle
The first 2 work in the direction of the miracle, the 3rd in the opposite direction.
Hume famously states that a miracle is a ‘violation of the laws of nature’. He judges that miracles cannot happen, because they violate these laws. The laws of nature are founded upon repeated observation and study of the world – all men must die, no brick can float in the air, etc. It is a miracle that a dead man should come to life because it has never been observed.
And so, Hume claims that one should never belief in a testimony of a miracle. When someone claims in their witness of a miracle, which is more PROBABLE? That the miracle happened, or that the witness was deceived or has the intention to deceive? Certainly the latter, and I of course agree.
My response:
Firstly (my main indignation with this essay), it is the whole point of Hume’s epistemology that there are NO ‘laws of nature’! All the laws that we can derive are just illusions, or perhaps more accurately, assumptions founded by custom. Hume himself stresses multiple times that we have no reason to believe that the future will resemble the past. According to this epistemology, all ‘laws of nature’ are merely founded on the doctrine of uniformity, a doctrine that doesn’t stand up to philosophical scrutiny!
Hume himself contends that ANYTHING can happen. (C’mon, it was he who convinced me it’s possible for the billiard ball to NOT move when another ball strikes it. If you can believe THAT, surely you can believe in anything, i.e. miracles.) Our knowledge of the law of conservation of energy, that potential energy converts into kinetic energy + heat energy, which causes the black ball to move, isn’t grounded on a priori principles - it’s conditioned via millions of repeated observation.
My point is that as a true skeptic, HUME should believe in miracles! Why is he suddenly backtracking now? And why does he suddenly appeal to the ‘laws of nature’ when he thoroughly refuted such laws in his Treatise?
OK - what would Hume say if I told him that I WITNESSED a black ball not moving when a white ball hit it? According to this essay, he would dismiss me as a deceiver.
Secondly, I’m not sure I agree with the claim that we can never reason a priori that eyewitnesses and historians have credibility. Personally, I reason that historians have spent a great deal of time and energy in studying history, so I trust them to have more credible knowledge about historical events that I do. If I had never met a single historian in my entire life, that’s what I would reason about them.
Regarding eyewitnesses - that seems more nuanced. THEY have seen the event, I haven’t! So I should reason a priori that their word has more assurance than my knowledge of said event. But then, a priori, I have no reason to believe that they were not deceived, or do not have the intention to deceive. So I agree with Hume here that the human faith in witness accounts are only founded a posteriori.
Thirdly, I find Hume’s strong conclusions against miraculous accounts to be a very close-minded and restrictive view. Quoting Hume (he first observes that the cause of widespread belief in miracles is the human desire for the passion of surprise and wonder. I agree with this assessment): ‘With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relation of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense …’
If you always dismiss the miraculous, or any custom that runs counter to yours, and ONLY rely on your past experience, how do you grow? How do you learn? How do you develop as a person?
I can’t help but quote John Stuart Mill here in response to Hume’s stodginess, ‘It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar … it is indispensable to be perpetually comparing one’s own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances …’
Nevertheless, Hume does end by clarifying his system which serves to restore some consistency. Quote, ‘It is experience only, which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience, which assures us of the laws of nature.’ So this is fine then! Hume posits that since the laws of nature, and our belief in human testimony are both grounded in experience, we can compare them directly, then! When the evidence they offer run in counter-acting directions, we have nothing to do but to follow the side which is more PROBABLE.
Overall, I find this essay to be one of the more sophisticated treatments of miracles I’ve seen, although it could have benefited from more intellectual honesty. I also acknowledge my Christian priors, which runs counter to Hume’s atheist priors, which prompted a knee-jerk intellectual reaction on my part, much like the Chicago school’s knee-jerk reaction to Keynesian economics.
I also appreciate the age which Hume was writing in. In an era dominated by dogma, Hume’s assertion was a good step forward.
July 7, 2022
Also read this alongside an introduction on philosophy. Also quite boring.
February 16, 2025
Ultimately, we can never be certain. We are all rolling the celestial dice on what we think is true, based on the data before us. Do I doubt miraculous events? Yes, and in many ways, I actually agree with Hume’s premises throughout this book but in the final analysis, life, existence, consciousness and the universe are a miracle in itself.
Much can be said about Hume’s claims concerning Christianity, his arguments against the "barbarians" who spread its message and the ignorant and delusional unlearned men who followed. In one sense, he is right, miracles can appear delusional at face value. Yet, in the same vein, a man must be careful not to overlook the miracle in which he lives, breathes, and thinks, lest he become equally delusional and ignorant by relying solely on his five senses.
When I look at the stars at night, when I think of our galaxy, when I learn about the science behind how our earth and bodies operate, I cannot bring myself to believe that God did not work. If there is a God who created time, space and matter, then that God must Himself be outside of time, space, and matter. Which is to say, if He was interacting with His creation (which is a subject in itself), then breaking the laws of nature to perform a miracle would be plausible, actually quite minute to Him.
Are many of the miracles that take place on earth born from delusion, false perceptions, ulterior motives, or simply as an explanation for unexplainable circumstances, like the "God of the Gaps" arguments? Absolutely. But does the existence of God point to the possibility of miracles? Yes. In many ways, I agree with Hume’s premises, but I believe he leaves out a lot.
In many ways, I resonate with Hume frequently questioning the supernatural experiences purported in religious testimonies but I believe he goes to far with his conclusions.
Much can be said about Hume’s claims concerning Christianity, his arguments against the "barbarians" who spread its message and the ignorant and delusional unlearned men who followed. In one sense, he is right, miracles can appear delusional at face value. Yet, in the same vein, a man must be careful not to overlook the miracle in which he lives, breathes, and thinks, lest he become equally delusional and ignorant by relying solely on his five senses.
When I look at the stars at night, when I think of our galaxy, when I learn about the science behind how our earth and bodies operate, I cannot bring myself to believe that God did not work. If there is a God who created time, space and matter, then that God must Himself be outside of time, space, and matter. Which is to say, if He was interacting with His creation (which is a subject in itself), then breaking the laws of nature to perform a miracle would be plausible, actually quite minute to Him.
Are many of the miracles that take place on earth born from delusion, false perceptions, ulterior motives, or simply as an explanation for unexplainable circumstances, like the "God of the Gaps" arguments? Absolutely. But does the existence of God point to the possibility of miracles? Yes. In many ways, I agree with Hume’s premises, but I believe he leaves out a lot.
In many ways, I resonate with Hume frequently questioning the supernatural experiences purported in religious testimonies but I believe he goes to far with his conclusions.
March 9, 2026
“The knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena, that I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence, than admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature.”
March 14, 2024
rip hume you would’ve hated narnia
June 7, 2025
If miracle is defined as an event in which laws of nature were defied, and if wisdom proportions one’s beliefs to evidence, then a person with wisdom shall not believe in a miracle since, by definition, an event in which laws of nature were defied has never been verified. (If verified, then that event would have ceased to be a miracle and would instead have modified laws of nature.)
David Hume meditates on the reason religions persist even when a person with wisdom should disbelieve in them due to lack of evidence.
The discourse leads to a poetic conclusion that, whereas every religion claims miracles in their texts and every believer holds no doubt in their mind that those claimed miracles have literally occurred, the act of having faith in a belief is in and of itself a miracle; it is as if the believer’s mind suspends laws of nature by believing that a miracle claimed by an unverifiable source has actually taken place.
David Hume meditates on the reason religions persist even when a person with wisdom should disbelieve in them due to lack of evidence.
The discourse leads to a poetic conclusion that, whereas every religion claims miracles in their texts and every believer holds no doubt in their mind that those claimed miracles have literally occurred, the act of having faith in a belief is in and of itself a miracle; it is as if the believer’s mind suspends laws of nature by believing that a miracle claimed by an unverifiable source has actually taken place.
September 6, 2016
This work will be in any philosophy of religion textbook, a good and thought provoking essay.
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