Essay on David Hume: On Miracles

He says that miracles are further disproved by the fact that most of them are reported by ignorant, barbarous people of past generations. Some of the things that these people have reported as marvelous are common among later generations, so their mysteriousness has been lost and they are no longer miracles. If you are wondering why stories like these do not originate today, Hume says they do, but we rule them out as lies. According to him, people have always had tendencies to stretch the truth and

Hume rejected lockes theory of experiencing cause. He argued that you do not feel the connection between your mind and arm, and thus don't sense the cause of the muscles contracting to raise your arm. Cause, in Hume's mind, is a synthetic experience used to explain the unobservable things in reality. To help explain he used the billiard ball experiement. Ball A is hit and put into motion towards ball B.When ball A collides with ball B the cause of ball B's movement is not experienced, there is no observable connection between the two. This would mean that there is no way to be certain that everytime Ball A collides with ball B that ball B will move, ball A could just as likely bounce off and begin rolling in a random direction. He believd that there is no way of knowing for certain the outcome of an event without being able to perceive the cause.

Hume argues that we cannot prove that there is a real world outside our experience, much less that our experience is an accurate representation of that world. He says we need to get outside our experience to see whether it does fairly represent the world, however, its near impossible to do that.

Have you ever wondered about the world beyond its original state? How we know that electricity produces a light bulb to light up or causes the sort of energy necessary to produce heat? But in the first place, what is electricity? Nor have we seen it and not we encountered it; however, we know what it can do, hence its effects. To help us better understand the notion of cause and effect, David Hume, an empiricist and skepticist philosopher, proposed the that there is no such thing as causation. In his theory, he explained the deliberate relationship between the cause and effect, and how the two factors are not interrelated. Think of it this way: sometimes we end up failing to light a match even though it was struck. The previous day, it lit up, but today it did not. Why? Hume’s theory regarding causation helps us comprehend matters of cause and effect, and how we encounter the effects in our daily lives, without the cause being necessary. According to Hume, since we never experience the cause of something, we cannot use inductive reasoning to conclude that one event causes another. In other words, causal necessity (the cause and effect being related in some way or another) seems to be subjective, as if it solely exists in our minds and not in the object itself.

This has to do with faith. Faith means believing in the existence of something without having any physical proof. Therefore, it could very well be a test of faith put into place by an all powerful and all knowing being to have people toy with the notion of its’ existence. As a result, Hume’s idea that we would be able to understand God’s plan is flawed. While we all can suggest that God would like for us to behave in a way conducive to showing we have love for all other human beings simply because this would allow for a peaceful universe, one can’t assume that this is God’s plan. Moreover, one definitely can’t assume that this enables us to understand God’s purpose for the world. Additionally, one can’t automatically assume that because our world is filled with various evils, an all powerful God does not exist. In fact, one could argue the exact opposite. Simply because our world is filled with evil acts and people committing these acts, there must be an all powerful God that exists in order to reward all those that manage to resist engaging in evil acts. Hume argues that we can’t infer that an all powerful being exists because of the tremendous amounts of evil that go on in our world. However, this could be an all powerful God’s way to get rid of all those he feels is not worthy of achieving eternal life in his heavenly kingdom. Therefore, this world could merely be a testing stage for humans to prove they

One of the most known philosophers who challenged religion, and the occurrence of miracles. Hume argues in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, that miracles do not exist. To explain this, he states that in order to judge a claim one must weigh the evidence for both sides of the argument, and the side with more evidence can then be seen as fact. Therefore because the evidence against miracles is always going to be outweighed by the evidence against it (Hume 1909). Miracles are single events, occurring to specific people, at specific items and specific places, by nature there is limited evidence to prove their existence, in accordance with Hume’s reasoning. Hume continues to state even if the evidence of a miracle happening were greater than the evidence against it, it can not be true due to people being too accepting of wondrous events (Hume 1909). However his argument has received a lot of criticism, from the time it originally was published to now. For example one of the earliest criticisms it received was his argument in its entirety asserts that miracles are highly unusual, even though those who believe in miracles already accept this claim (Fieser n.d.). Another criticism against Hume was that the experience of natural laws is not as concrete as Hume assumed due to the ability to overturn these laws with the

By analyzing Descartes’ reasoning behind his proof of God, I conclude that Hume would disagree with it as he believes humans can manufacture the idea of God using external sources. In his Third Meditation, Descartes attempts to verify that God exists through an ontological argument. Descartes believes his ideas are like “images which can easily fall short of the perfection of the things from which they are taken, but which cannot contain anything greater or more perfect” (Descartes 29). He then asserts that if the “reality” of any of his ideas is

Because it is so prominent, everyone notices that a central concern of Hume's Dialogues is empirical natural theology—how one can discern from Nature, using empirical facts and "experimental" forms of inference available to anyone, the existence and nature of an Author of Nature. But few connect this concern to the simple fact that the Dialogues is itself authored. It is a text with an author, David Hume. At the very least, then, on Cleanthes's approach, (3) there should be some resemblances between the world and this text, insofar as they both imply an intelligent "author;" at the most, this analogy of authorship might prove even more fruitful for theological understanding than the mechanical and biological analogies mentioned by the characters in Hume's text. By this, I do not mean that we can prove God's

David Hume wrote Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding in 1748, right in the middle of the Enlightenment and on the eve of the Industrial and Scientific Revolution. So it only makes sense that some of the ideas and comparisons used are slightly outdated, but science, if anything, helps his argument regarding causality. Hume is ultimately concerned with the origins of causality, how we are able to gain knowledge from causality, and if we can even call the knowledge derived from causality real knowledge. This is essentially the problem of induction, and is a central pillar of Hume's overall philosophy. There are some significant objections to Hume's ideas concerning causality, but they do not hold much clout and are no match for his

In his discussion 'Of Miracles' in Section X of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume defines a miracle as “a violation of the laws of nature and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws”1. Basically a miracle is something that happens which is contrary to what would happen given the structure of the universe. He also states

Although like Descartes, Hume practiced the art of radical skepticism, he felt that if he could not utilize his senses to prove something it was meaningless. Hume continued development of Leibniz’s analytical-synthetic distinction, or in Hume’s words “…a distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact” (Palmer 197). Analytical propositions are true by definition and are a priori, and therefore necessarily true. Synthetic propositions are not true by

Hume also wanted to explain things through a non-theological base. I believe that this is a good way of thinking because how can one higher being, God, really be able to control everything that we as human beings do? I don't think that God can control every single person's actions or thoughts. If you believe in God and religion then that can be a foundation for your life but not necessarily be why we do or don't do things.

Hume's skepticism is limiting but not as limiting as Cartesian doubt. Hume calls this mitigated skepticism. "Another species of mitigated skepticism which may be of advantage to man-kind… is the limitation of our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding" (Section XII part. 3). We should direct our focus and studies to experiences of everyday life and to common occurrences. Extraordinary or remote ideas and thoughts should be left to the imaginations of people of the arts. By looking at the natural powers of the mind one can find what should be the objects of enquiry and study.

Shifting from Descartes’ rationalist approach to things lies Hume and his empiricist approach to understanding our world. As expected of an empirical ideology, Hume believes that all ideas are generated from impressions. According to Hume’s philosophy, impressions are defined as lively and forceful sensations. Hume relied heavily on the idea of cause and effect throughout his work. According to Hume, cause and effect can be easily understood as one thing not being possible without the other. With that in mind, when it comes to ideas about God, Hume suggests that it is the

The ultimate question that Hume seems to be seeking an answer to is that of why is that we believe what we believe. For most of us the answer is grounded in our own personal experiences and can in no way be justified by a common or worldly assumption. Our pasts, according to Hume, are reliant on some truths which we have justified according to reason, but in being a skeptic reason is hardly a solution for anything concerning our past, present or future. Our reasoning according to causality is slightly inhibited in that Hume suggests that it is not that we are not able to know anything about future events based on past experiences, but rather that we are just not rationally justified in believing those things that