Hume advanced a theory of knowledge known as radical empiricism. Empiricism asserts that the observation of the natural world through the five senses offers the only sure path to knowledge. As such, it provides the only reliable source of ideas in our minds.4 Hume’s rejection of the possibility of miracles reflected this view, because it asserted that uniform human experience derived through the senses had established the laws of nature—and human beings had never observed any exceptions to them. As he noted: “Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happened in the common course of nature.”5
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