Resurrecting Miracles

by Benny Mattis

 In Section X of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, philosopher David Hume presents a famous argument against the rationality of belief in miracles in general, in addition to four additional arguments against the legitimacy of "particular miracle reports" (Garcia). In his "General Argument Against Miracles" (Garcia), Hume begins on the reasonable assumption that "A wise [person] proportions [his/her] belief to the evidence" (X.87); since the evidence for the falsity of miracle accounts will always outweigh that for their verity, says Hume, a wise person will always disbelieve accounts of miraculous events. This argument seems compelling at first, but further inspection of its premises reveals it to be subject to defeat with the help of contemporary Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. Among Hume's four objections to the verity of particular miracle reports, three of them are little, if at all, compelling; Hume's last objection, however, succeeds in discrediting a specific type of miracle report.

The General Argument Against Miracles

Hume's General Argument centers on a conflict between the propositions

M: A miracle has occurred.

and

L: The laws of nature always hold.

Hume begins with an acknowledgement that "In our reasoning concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise [person], therefore, proportions [his/her] belief to the evidence...the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability" (87). This is the foundation of his argument, and might be put more formally as such:

1) For any proposition p, any wise person w will believe p if and only if the evidence for the verity of p outweighs the evidence for its falsity.

Hume continues by asserting that "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature" (X.90); if a miracle report is true, it means that the laws of nature are not fully accurate representations of reality. Since wise people presumably do not believe contradictions, it follows that

2) Any wise person will either not believe M or not believe L.

However, as Hume notes, the evidence for the verity of the laws of nature, by definition, is "uniform experience," which itself "amounts to proof" (X.90). Thus,

3) The evidence for the verity of L outweighs the evidence for its falsity.

According to the bi-conditional in (1), it follows that

4) Any wise person will believe L.

A disjunctive syllogism formed with (2) and (4) leads to Hume's conclusion that

5) No wise person will believe M.

According to Hume, no wise people believe in miracles, because by virtue of their own definition they have already been disproven; the evidence for the verity of reports of them is always outweighed by the evidence for that of their falsity. I, however, do believe that there are wise people who happen to believe in miracles, and that Hume's argument, while valid (as the truth of the conclusion would follow from that of the premises), is unsound (as the premises are not entirely true).

The flaw in Hume's argument lies in premise (2); Hume may have thought that M and L are analytically contradictory, but they are not actually irreconcilably opposed. Alvin Plantinga offers possible reconciliation in his book Where the Conflict Really Lies, wherein he argues that "classical science is perfectly consistent with special divine action, including miracles" (90). He shows this by suggesting that the laws of nature are better defined in such a way that they are not, in fact, violated by any occurrence of miraculous events; the laws of nature are more like conditional statements of the form

LN: When the universe is causally closed (when God is not acting specially in the world), P." (88, emphasis added.)

where P is one of the propositions Hume would mistake for an actual law in itself, such as "all men die" (X.90) or "every action has an equal and opposite reaction," allegedly contradicted by a given miracle report. The laws of nature, Plantinga explains,

Apply to closed or isolated systems. If so, however, there is nothing in them to prevent God from changing the velocity or direction of a particle. If he did so, obviously, energy would not be conserved in the system in question; but equally obviously, that system would not be closed, in which case the principle of conservation of energy would not apply to it. (78)

If L only implies of the truth of LN-like conditionals, compatible with miracles, as the body of beliefs supported by uniform experience, then premise (2) of Hume's General Argument, on which its conclusion rests, is undercut.

A reply from Hume to Plantinga, then, would need to show why L should be construed as a collection of simple propositions like P, rather than conditionals in the form of LN. It would be a titanic task to prove that we have uniformity of experience in favor of any P, whereas we do not have uniform experience in favor of the corresponding conditional LN; after all, it is questionable whether empirical inquiry would even be capable of determining whether God were acting specially in the world at any time, since God would be, after all, a supernatural being. Plantinga's interpretation of the results of the scientific tradition, then, is likely un-falsifiable, but this does not change the fact that Hume's interpretation is un-verifiable, and thus un-verified, and thus that his General Argument against Miracles ultimately fails.

Against Miracle Reports

In the second part of his attack on miracles, Hume presents four attempts to show that it is never the case that the evidence for the verity of a miracle claim outweighs the evidence for that claim's falsity; "there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence" (X.92). First is his assertion that "there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good-sense...as to secure us against all delusions in themselves" (X.92). Because we do not have "full assurance in the testimony of men" (X.92) that report the occurrence of miracles, then, we do not have a reason to believe in the truth of such marvelous claims.

Hume continues in bringing attention to the fact that "if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; and human testimony, in these circumstances, loses all pretensions to authority" (X.93). As Ernesto Garcia paraphrases Hume, "it's a universal weakness of human nature that we sensationalize/want to believe in extraordinary things," and this fact serves as a "psychological undercutting defeater for miracle beliefs." The popularity of miracle beliefs, says Hume, is not strong evidence for their verity, because it can be explained just as well by psychological mechanisms that are not truth-oriented.

Hume's first two objections to miracle reports may all succeed in undercutting those reports, but it is a different question entirely as to whether they show that the reports in question are not more likely true than false; if these problems for belief in miracle reports are also problems for disbelief in those same reports, then they do not serve well in achieving Hume's goal of proportioning belief to evidence. Indeed, we may not have "full assurance in the testimony of men" (X.92) who report miracles, but we have "full assurance" in the testimony of very few people, if any. For his first objection to work actively against miracle reports, Hume must show that, for any given miracle report, we do have full assurance in the testimony of men who assent to its negation. Hume's psychological explanation of miracle beliefs faces the same problem: while miracle beliefs may be formed by mechanisms other than truth-oriented rational investigation, so might the belief that miracles do not occur; people can, after all, ascribe religious wonder to scientific theories and the order of the universe in the same way that they might to miracle reports and the possibility of the suspension of physical laws, and so it seems the negations of particular miracle claims also could have arisen from similar non-truth-oriented belief-formation mechanisms. Hume's first two objections to particular miracle reports also diminish the evidence of negations of those reports, so they do not support his claim that the former will always have less evidence than the latter. Hume might respond by showing that his objections apply more to miracle reports than their negations, but it is not clear that this is the case.

Thirdly, Hume believes that "it forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations; or if a civilized people has ever given any admission of them, that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors" (X.94). Hume thinks that all miracle reports originally come from ignorant people, and, since ignorant people are not trustworthy, miracle reports are not to be taken seriously. This is an ad hominem attack on those who report miracles, and the weakest of Hume's arguments against miracle reports. To weigh the evidential scales against miracle reports, Hume would have to show that most or all such reporters are ignorant in a relevant respect, such that they would tend to provide false reports, and ignorant in such a way that the deniers of those reports are not.

The Humean Argument From Inconsistent Revelations

Hume's final argument against miracle claims is also his strongest, and focuses on "the support that a miracle report offers for any one specific religion as opposed to another" (Garcia). Hume begins with the initial (reasonable) assumption that "in matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary; and that it is impossible the religions of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of ancient Siam, and of China should, all of them, be established on any solid foundation" (X.95). He then notes that the miracle reports on which various religions are founded (or "foundational religious miracle reports," as I will refer to them) "are to be regarded as contrary facts, and the evidences of these prodigies, whether weak or strong, as opposite to each other" (X.95). Foundational miracle accounts counting as evidence against each other's respective religions, then, Hume concludes that "in destroying a rival system," any given religion or group of religions "likewise destroys the credit of those miracles, on which that system was established," and so consistency in our epistemic standards for belief would lead foundational religious miracle reports to amount to irrationality (X.95). Hume's argument can be formalized as follows, for any two distinct religions x and y with respective foundational miracle claims m₁ and m₂ (for the purposes of this argument, we can stipulate that "compatible" religious world views are not "distinct" in this sense, as indicated in the opening premise):

1) It is not the case that both belief in x is rational and belief in y is rational.

3) If belief in miracle report m₁ is rational, then belief in x is rational.

4) If belief in miracle report m₂ is rational, then belief in y is rational.

5) If consistent belief in foundational religious miracle reports is justified, then belief in miracle report m₁ is rational and belief in miracle report m₂ is rational.

6) If belief in miracle report m₁ is rational and belief in miracle report m₂ is rational, then belief in x is rational and belief in y is rational. (3, 4)

7) Therefore, it is not the case that consistent belief in foundational religious miracle reports is justified. (Multiple Modus Tollens 1, 5, 6)

The super-naturalist will likely respond that there is ambiguity in (7), and, thus, in its negation, which can be construed as either

~7A) Consistent belief in all foundational religious miracle reports is justified.

or

~7E) Consistent belief in some foundational religious miracle report is justified.

They may claim to accept (~7E), but deny (~7A). Hume would likely reply that such epistemic preference to particular reports is not really consistent; after all, he is aiming to be like an objective arbiter (X.95), treating witnesses with impartiality.

A final objection that may be brought against Hume is that the mere fact that a miracle is ascribed to a religion, and the religion is falsified by the same maxim that led to belief in that miracle, does not imply that the miracle report itself is falsified, as the miraculous event in question could have occurred due to other causes. There could be an explanation for all of the miracles in question, which is itself not self-defeating; one might posit, for example, a dystheistic trickster god misleading humans to false religions with dissonant miracle messages.

Such an explanation would simply show the miracle in question not to be properly foundational. Read charitably, Hume is not talking about all beliefs that have been ascribed religious significance, but specifically those "on which [a religious] system was established" (X.95); thus, their respective religions must have been the best explanation for such occurrences in the first place, all things (including dystheism) considered. Hume is talking about competing foundational miracle reports for distinct religions; miracles unified under a single theory of the supernatural are not his target here.

Conclusion

The majority of Hume's attacks on miracles may have been weak, but his last argument is quite strong. Unless the super-naturalist is willing to grant subjective preference to certain miracle reports over others, they are left with the epistemic possibility of miracles only on the condition that such miracles do not constitute evidence for a specific, exclusive religious sect. Miracle reports as such survived Hume's onslaught intact, but foundational religious miracle reports appear to be refuted for good.

Sources

Garcia, Ernesto. "Class Lecture 11/15." University of Massachusetts Amherst. Bartlett

Hall, Amherst, MA. 15 November 2012. Lecture.

Plantinga, Alvin. Where the Conflict Really Lies. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2011. Print.

Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Public Domain. Kindle

file.