Hume and Wiles against miracles

• Humes thoughts have their basis in empiricism: human knowledge is derived from sense experience
• Hume: we cannot know if an event was due to a deity because ay deity is 'hidden' and 'unobservable'
• Hume accepted the possibility of new and extraordinary events, but they are not miraculous.
• Hume followed the inductive approach

  • whereas effects can be verified, causes cannot
  • everything therefore is about probability, not certainty
• humes argument is based on the consistency of human sense experience:

  • although unnatural, it is not a miracle is an apparently healthy man dies suddenly
  • if a dead man actually came back to life, that would be a miracle as it runs counter to universal sense experience.
• in thinking about the term 'miracle', Hume adopts a realist standpoint. he assumes that religious 'believers' claims are regarded as factual and literally true.
• there are three aspects to Humes definition of the term 'miracle'

  • it violates the laws of nature
  • it is willed by god
  • it may be performed by some other spiritual agent
• humes main argument against miracles arises out of his definition of miracle and is rooted in empiricism

  • validity of witness claims about anything is dependent on evidence
  • the more unlikely the claim, the more reliable the evidence needs to be
  • an event that violates the laws of nature is maximally improbable
  • therefore, the likelihood that the witnesses are lying or mistaken is always greater than the likelihood that a miracle has happened.
• humes supporting arguments against miracles:

  • there has never been one single miracle supported by witnesses possessing the attributes required for their claims to be taken seriously.
  • people (even normally sensible ones) are taken in by claims of miracles because humans are credulous by nature.
  • miracle stories are the products of primitive superstitions. they come from 'ignorant and barbarous peoples'
  • the different religions all lay claims to miracles.
• the significance of Hume's views in relation to religious belief

  • inductive argument, so can neither definitively prove or disprove existence of miracles.
  • is possible to construct a theistic argument along the lines of his and conclude logically that miracles likely do happen
  • humes 4 arguments supporting his main argument arent particularly strong & can all be challenged by supporting evidence
  • humes concluding statement that Christianity is founded on faith, not reason makes an important point: the prescientific nature of biblical as well as early and medieval writing needs to be considered
• wiles takes an anti-realist approach to miracles: they are to be interpreted as symbols.
• wiles says the only miracle was that of creation

  • gods creation was good so there was no need for further intervention
  • god put the laws of nature into place, which meant that miraculous events would have to be rare as otherwise humans could not rely on those laws
• wiles thought the interventionist understanding of god was unacceptable

  • it implies a selective god who chooses to help some and not others
  • this issue is intensified by the fact that so many reported miracles seem trivial (e.g. the one recorded at the wedding in Cana) yet there was no miraculous deliverance from the gas chambers at auchwitz
  • that would not be a god worthy of worship
  • it makes the problem of evil unsolvable
• wiles argued it is impossible to know what actually happened in relation to the miracles recorded of jesus

  • the strength of the tradition suggests that he was a powerful exorcist and healer
  • his refusal to perform signs to prove his messianic status suggests that whatever he did was in the nature of a sign of the coming of gods kingdom and the victory over satan
  • the biblical accounts are to be taken as myths to point to the nature of god and the importance of obedience.
• significance of wiles' views in relation to religious belief:

  • wiles' views make the challenges of Hume irrelevant
  • in his writings, wiles gives a more holistic view of god's activity as opposed to a view that limits him to occasional intervention. this is closer to the view of aquinas, who saw miracles as part of god's continual work in nature, sustaining the world
  • wiles claim that the act of creation was the sole miracle has led to claims that he was a deist rather than a theist
  • against this, wiles claimed that god was at work in the world, actively sustaining it, not through miracles.
• comparison of Hume and wiles


  hume:

  atheist

  realist: interventionist understanding of miracles

  christian belief in miracles is irrational since in his view they are maximally impossible

  wiles:

  theist

  anti-realist: miracles are symbols

  his starting point is within christian theism and avoids the interventionist approach