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38 Hume on Miracles Enquiry X The essay on miracles is a specific
application of Hume’s theory of causal inference to an issue familiar from
Locke’s Essay IV.xiv-xix:
the attempt to provide a rational foundation for faith by appeal to
eyewitness reports of miracles performed in conjunction with the delivery of
a revelation. As Locke saw these
matters, the eyewitness report could provide us with reasonable assurance of
the occurrence of the miracle, the miracle could in turn serve as a sign that
the revelation is being delivered by God, and that would warrant faith,
considered as belief in testimony delivered by God. In opposition to this attempt, Hume argued,
first, that no eyewitness report could ever be adequate to convince us that a
miracle has occurred, and, second, that none has ever even come close. This was an incendiary argument, but Hume did
his best not to present it as an attack on the foundations of religious
belief. He stressed that his
conclusion was not that there is no basis for revealed religion. It was rather just that revealed religion
has no basis in reason or in the natural belief forming mechanisms that, as
he had previously argued, account for how we reason about matters of
probability. If revelation is accepted
by particular individuals, it can only be because God has graciously
compelled them to believe in it despite its lack of any sound basis, and
irrespective of any miracles that were purportedly performed in connection
with it. QUESTIONS
ON THE 1. What was the purpose of the
miracles performed by the Saviour? 2. Why did Tillotson
say that our evidence for the truth of Christianity is less than our evidence
for the truth of our senses? 3. Why, according to Tillotson, would it be contrary to the rules of just
reasoning to believe in a scriptural doctrine that contradicts sensory
experience? 4. What is the one condition under
which a scriptural doctrine could be accepted even though it contradicts
sensory experience? 5. What is the difference between a
proof and a probability? 6. How is reasoning from human
testimony (i.e. supposing that something is the case because someone has told
us that it is the case) like reasoning from effect to cause? 7. How do we proceed when we find
from past experience that a certain kind of report is not entirely reliable? 8. List some circumstances that might
incline us to repose greater trust in human testimony and some that might
lead us to give it less trust. 9. Why is testimony
to an unusual event regarded as less credible the more unusual the
event is? 10. Why does the testimony of credible
witnesses to an unusual event produce a “mutual destruction of belief [in
what most likely happened in that case] and authority [i.e. trust in the
report of the witnesses]?” 11. Why is it that from the very
nature of the fact there is always a direct and full proof against the
occurrence of any miracle? 12. What would it take to
counterbalance this proof and establish that a miracle has occurred? 13. Why are we more readily tempted to
accept stories that are utterly absurd and miraculous, even though we readily
reject any fact that is unusual or incredible in an ordinary degree? 14. Why do miracles not happen these
days? 15. Why is it the case that, even if
we could demonstrate that an almighty God exists, this would not make it any
more likely that miracles occur? 16. Whose position on the foundation
of religious belief did Hume endorse at the close of Enquiry X, Locke’s or Bayle’s? NOTES ON
THE In order to strengthen his case against any
possible charge of atheism, Hume opened his essay on miracles by claiming to
be offering merely a version of an argument that had previously been
formulated by John Tillotson, Archbishop of
Canterbury. Hume’s rendition of Tillotson’s argument foreshadows his own, and merits
careful scrutiny. Tillotson’s argument only concerns miracles
indirectly. It is rather concerned
with the specific content of the Christian revelation, and with deciding a
controversial issue of Hume’s day: the issue of whether it should be accepted
on faith that the sacramental bread and wine of the Catholic mass is
mysteriously converted into the body and blood of Christ during the ceremony
of the Eucharist (so that Christ’s body and blood end up being “really
present” in the bread and wine). The
Protestants had rejected this mystery and denounced it as a mere
superstition, whereas the Catholics had argued that the revealed word of God,
as recorded in scripture, proves that it must be true. Tillotson took the Protestant side in the
debate, but rather than specifically engage the Catholics on questions of
whether they were interpreting the scriptures correctly, he took the high
road of saying that even were the scriptures to say what the Catholics
claimed, the scriptures could not be believed on this score. Tillotson’s justification for this bold claim
is reminiscent of a point Locke had made.
Locke had claimed that no revelation, and hence no doctrine contained
in scripture, could contradict reason.
Since the voice of reason must be listened to in order to determine
whether a revelation in fact came from God, any revelation that contradicts
reason says that we should not listen to what reason tells us. But if we should not listen to what reason
tells us, then we should not listen to it when it tells us that the
revelation is authentic and came from God. Thus, a revelation that
contradicts reason undermines its own foundation. Tillotson made a similar claim, though
concerning sense experience rather than reason. Like Locke, Tillotson
accepted that the way one authenticates a revelation is by looking for some
sign that shows that it could only have come from God. Such a sign would have to be something that
only God could reasonably be supposed to have performed: a miracle. But to know that a miracle has occurred we
need to rely on more than just reason, which examines the reports of
witnesses to the miracle to ascertain whether they are credible or not. We must also consider that those witnesses
themselves must have had sensory experience of the occurrence of the
miracle. (Otherwise, they would of
course be lying.) So Tillotson made
the following claims: Revelation, as
recorded in scripture, gains its authority from the eyewitness testimony to
miracles that were performed by Christ.
It therefore ultimately gets its authority from the sensory experience
of the Apostles, who first witnessed the miracles and reported them to others
who transmitted them to the first authors of the Christian scriptures. Now Tillotson
proceeded to his argument: Our own
sensory experiences, he observed, must always be more evident and certain for
us than any sensory experiences had by other people, particularly when those
other sensory experiences are not reported at first hand, but have been
handed down through a tradition. The
doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the
Eucharist, however, contradicts our own sensory experience, since what we
continue to see, both before the ceremony and after, is just bread and wine,
not flesh and blood. But a claim that is backed up by stronger evidence can
never reasonably be rejected in favour of a claim that is backed up by lesser
evidence. Thus, the claim that the sacramental bread and wine remain what
they are throughout the ceremony, which is backed up by the evidence of our
own immediate sensory experience, cannot reasonably be rejected in favour of
the claim that they are converted into flesh and blood, which is based only
on scripture. However unambiguous
scripture may be on the point, the doctrines reported in scripture are only
as good as the evidence that they really came from God, and since that
evidence is ultimately grounded in the testimony of witnesses to miracles,
and that testimony rests on the sensory experiences of other people, reported
via a tradition, it can never be more evident than our own sensory
experience. Hume advised that his argument against
miracles would be like Tillotson’s argument against
the real presence. It, too, would turn
on the claim that stronger evidence cannot be destroyed by weaker. However, in discussing Tillotson’s
argument, Hume also offered an aside that should not be ignored. He wrote, both the Scripture and
tradition, on which it is supposed to be built, do not carry such evidence
with them as sense, when they are considered merely as external evidences and
are not brought home to everyone’s breast by the immediate operation of the
Holy Spirit. There is
another basis for belief in revelation, Hume suggested. That basis is “the immediate operation of
the Holy Spirit,” that is, God’s supposed act of graciously compelling
certain people to believe against all reasonable evidence. In the absence of that grace, Scripture can
only be considered as an “external evidence,” that
is, as a report of what God has said, supported by the reported testimony of
witnesses to miraculous events performed to authenticate that
revelation. While that external
evidence of the authenticity of the revelation may be inadequate to overcome
the evidence of our own senses, Hume hinted that in those special cases where
the evidence is lacking (like the case of the Eucharist), a direct
illumination from God that the words of scripture are true, received while
reading those words, might still compel belief. Of course, direct illumination would only
supply the lack in those elected to receive this grace. The rest of us are left having to go by the
“external evidence.” (And perhaps,
even those who do receive the grace might be left wondering whether their
inspiration is really divine or due to some other cause. Though this suggests that even the elect
ought to be asking to see miracles performed before their own eyes to
authenticate the divine provenance of their inspiration, as Locke had
suggested in his condemnation of enthusiasm, Hume was happy to let this further matter lie dormant. Miracles witnessed with one’s own eyes are
in any case outside of the ambit of what Hume was concerned with in this
section of the Enquiry.) Hume’s Part i
Argument. Hume’s argument against miracles is
delivered in two parts. In the first
part he argued that testimony to the occurrence of a miracle must be
exceptionally strong if it is to earn the belief of a wise person (understood
as someone who “proportions their belief to the evidence”). In the second part he argued that no
testimony that has ever historically been given has been that strong. The Part i argument turns on the claim that
the more extraordinary and unusual a witness’s testimony is, the more
difficult it becomes for us to accept it. This is a fact of our nature that Locke had
acknowledged in Essay IV.xvi. But Locke had gone on to claim that, if we
can demonstrate that God exists, then miracles are to be expected. We can therefore be assured of
extraordinary and unusual events if they can be supposed to be part of God’s
plan to prove his presence or his endorsement of a particular prophet, and if
they are reported by good witnesses. However, Hume was not impressed with this excuse. Though
the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed is in this case Almighty, it does
not, upon that account, become a whit more probable, since it is impossible
for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being otherwise than from
the experience [that] we have of his productions in the usual course of
nature. This still reduces us to past
observation ... [Enquiry 10.38] In other
words, even if we could demonstrate that God exists in the way that Locke
supposed, by means of an argument back from our own existence as effect to
God as cause, all we could infer from that proof is that God exists and is
intelligent, not that God is disposed to offer up revelations to us or to
attest to those revelations by performing miracles. The only way we can ascertain whether such
things happen is by experience, and that throws us back on either our own
senses and memory or an inference from the testimony of others. Hume based the claim that testimony becomes
more dubious as it reports more extraordinary and unusual events on his
theory of probability. According to that theory, laid out in Enquiry VI, when causes are not always
observed to be followed by the same effects, we consider the commonly
observed effect to be the most probable, and the rarer effects to be merely
possible. The greater the proportion
of occurrences of the probable effect, the more likely we consider it to be
that the probable effect will occur on any subsequent occasion. The lesser the proportion of the merely
possible effects the less likely we consider it to be that they will occur on
any future occasion. The closer that
the number of occurrences of the probable effect approaches to the number of
occurrences of any of the alternative effects, the closer we come to
suspending both belief and disbelief altogether and considering the one
outcome to be as possible as (or no more probable than) the other. As Hume liked to put it, a wise person (one
inclined to proportion their belief to the evidence rather than base it on
whim or passion or some other such cause) subtracts the number of contrary
instances from the number of confirming instances and believes in whichever
side preponderates with a degree of conviction proportioned to the number
that remains after the subtraction over the total number of trials. Probability (or better, strength of belief)
= m–n/m+n, where m is
the number of confirming experiments and n
the number of disconfirming experiments. Applying these points to the case at hand, we
can infer that where an event is extraordinary or unusual we should have an
inclination to suppose that it did not occur, and the more extraordinary and
unusual it is, the more remote we should consider the possibility of its
occurrence to be. For, an
extraordinary or unusual event is by definition something that happens in
circumstances where we expect something else to happen instead. Of course, if we actually observe the
extraordinary or unusual event for ourselves, then there is no question. We consider it to be certain, as verified
by our own experience. But when we
have not observed it for ourselves, but are merely judging the likelihood of
its having occurred in our absence, then the more extraordinary or unusual
the event is, the less we are inclined to suppose that it actually occurred
on any given occasion. This is not to say that we could never be
convinced of the occurrence of extraordinary or unusual events unless we
actually saw them happen for ourselves.
As a matter of fact, we will often take other people’s word for it
that a certain event occurred and believe it on their authority. But when we trust the testimony of others it
is only to the extent that we have ourselves discovered that people tend to
tell the truth. That is, it is only because we have experienced that other people’s
testimony has generally been reliable in the past that we allow that
testimony to countermand our own assessments of what is most likely to have
occurred. What happens here is something like what
happens in other cases where we weigh probabilities, except that this is not
a case of one cause sometimes producing one effect and sometimes producing a
different effect. It is instead a case
of two different causes, one leading to one conclusion, the other leading to
an opposite conclusion. Though the cases
are rather different, Hume envisioned that each cause would produce a degree
of conviction proportioned to the constancy with which it has been followed
by its effect. The rival degrees of
conviction then work against one another to counterbalance one another’s
influence. We consider the proportion
of cases where that witness told us the truth in the past. That produces a degree of conviction in the
truth of the witness’s testimony. We
consider the proportion of cases where events were observed to turn out
differently from the way the witness describes them. That produces a degree of doubt about the
truth of the witness’s testimony. We
weigh the one degree of conviction against the other and incline to that side
that is the heaviest. But we incline
only by the amount by which the heavier side exceeds the lighter. If the witness has proven very reliable in
the past and the event has only failed to occur slightly more than 50% of the
time, then we repose great trust in the witness. If the witness has lied to us more often
than not in the past, and the event has only been observed to happen on one
occasion in a thousand, then we almost entirely disbelieve the witness. But if we find the witness only slightly more
credible than the event is incredible, or the event only slightly more
incredible than the witness is credible, then we only give a slight and
hesitating assent to that side that is more credible. In general, the more extraordinary the
event, the more credible the witness must be to command our assent, and the
more credible the witness, the more extraordinary the event must be to induce
us to doubt that testimony. There are a couple of complicating factors
influencing these calculations. One has
to do with the credibility of witnesses. Experience shows that there are
certain circumstances in which eyewitness reports are most likely true. When numerous, independent witnesses all
tell the same story, when these witness are people with nothing to gain by
giving the testimony they give, when they are expert in the field and known
to be suspicious and not easily deceived, when they were properly positioned
to make accurate observations, when they are noted for their honesty and
would have a great deal to lose were they caught in a lie, when they deliver
their testimony coherently and without any signs of nervousness or
uncertainty, then in these and other such circumstances our trust in the
testimony is increased. When, on the
contrary the witnesses are few in number, when they contradict one another or
were in communication with one another in advance and influenced one
another’s testimony, when they are ignorant and credulous by nature and so
easily tricked by more sophisticated people, when they have something to gain
by delivering that particular testimony, when they were not in a position to
make accurate observations or got their information at second or third hand,
when they are known for malevolence or dishonesty or inaccuracy or tricksterism and have nothing to lose by being caught in
a lie, when they betray signs of uncertainty or nervousness — in these and
other such circumstances our confidence is diminished. The other complicating factor influencing our
calculations is the analogy of cases we have ourselves observed to those we
have not. We tend to think that events
that we have found to be probable or improbable in certain circumstances will
be similarly probable or improbable in other circumstances as well, as long
as those circumstances are analogous.
We do this even though we may never have had any actual experience of
what happens in those analogous circumstances. Hume, echoing Locke’s story of the King of
Siam in Essay IV.xv.5, illustrated
this point by telling the story of an Indian prince who would not believe
that a man had walked on water in In light of these details of how Hume’s
theory of probable inference applies to the case of testimony to unusual or
extraordinary events, let us turn to the case of miracles. The kind of miracle Hume was concerned with
is not merely an unusual or extraordinary event. That is, it is not something that has only
rarely and infrequently been observed to happen in those circumstances in the
past. Neither is it something that
happens under special circumstances that we have never actually had an
opportunity to experience before, though they are analogous to circumstances
we have experienced. As Hume defined
it, a miracle is something that is contrary to uniform experience of the
course of nature. We have always observed that wood is consumed
in fire, that when pure water is poured into an empty cask and then drawn out
a few minutes later it is still water, that when a man falls off the side of
a ship during a tropical storm he sinks into the water, and that when a man
has to all appearances died and been left to lie in his bed until his corpse
became offensive by the rotting smell that he will not sit up and start
talking. We can readily imagine that
in special circumstances some magician’s trick might make it look like a bush
is burning when it is not really on fire, that someone might have managed to
conceal the fact that wine was substituted for the water in the cask, that a
man could appear to walk on water if he were standing on a barely submerged
submarine, or that some work with concealed electrical currents and voice
recorders might make it look like a rotting corpse has been reanimated. But
if we are assured that none of these things are the case and that the
circumstances of the burning bush, the water poured into the cask, the man
walking on the sea, and the rising from the dead are exactly the same as the
ordinary circumstances in which we have always observed wood to be consumed,
a man to sink, water to be drawn off, and death to be permanent, then a
miracle has truly occurred. But can we believe testimony to the
occurrence of a miracle? To answer
this question we need to perform a calculation in accord with Hume’s theory
of probability. Let us first calculate the strength of our
conviction that a burning bush would be consumed in the fire, that water
would be drawn out of a previously empty vessel a few minutes after nothing
but pure water had been poured into it, that a sailor would sink upon falling
out of the ship into the sea, and that a rotting and stinking corpse would
lie still and silent in its place.
Since we have always observed these events to occur in those
circumstances in the past, our conviction should be the greatest possible. All of the vivacity that can possibly be transmitted
from the impression or memory of the cause should be transmitted to that one
effect, so that no other alternative would even be entertained as a
possibility. Let us now calculate the strength of our
trust in the testimony of a witness who testifies that a bush was burned
without being consumed, that the water was converted into wine, that Christ
walked on water, or that Lazarus was raised from the dead. Right away we realize that people have on
occasion lied to us in the past. When
we remember the past occasions on which testimony has proven false, then
however rare those occasions might have been in proportion to the number of
cases where testimony has proven to be true, the degree of our conviction
must be diminished. Not all of the
vivacity that can be transmitted from the impression or memory of the witness
giving testimony to the associated idea of the events described by the
witness will be transmitted. Some
(say, 40%, just to pick a figure) will be diverted to the idea that the
testimony will be false. Of the
remaining 60%, 40% will have to be diverted to cancel out the influence of
the doubt, leaving us with a belief that is only 20% of full conviction. When this 20% conviction in the truth of the
witness’s testimony is then weighed in the balance against our 100%
conviction that such events cannot occur, 20% of the 100% conviction will be
diverted to cancel the influence of the witnesses’s
testimony, and we will still be left believing that chances are 80% or four
to one that the witness is either lying or deceived. Of course, we can increase our confidence in
testimony of a witness if the testimony or the witness has characteristics
that indicate their reliability. We
might imagine that we have not just one or a few witnesses but a multitude,
that all these witnesses agree even though they did not collude and were not
coached in advance, that they have no particular interest in promoting the
holy cause by testifying to a miracle they did not actually see, that they
are people of sound education and sophisticated experience who would not
easily be deceived, and so on. But this is just Hume’s point. No ordinary testimony could be adequate to
convince us of the occurrence of a miracle.
It should take exceptionally strong testimony to do so. The case is very different here than it is
with, say, reports of lottery winnings.
Suppose that a newspaper that gets things right ninety-five times out
of one hundred (misprints can occur!) reports that a certain number between
1,000,000 and 6,000,000, say 4,387,993, has come up in a lottery. The chances are immense against this event
actually having occurred (they are 1:5,000,000). Yet, in light of the newspaper report, we
entirely discount this improbability and consider the chances to be 95:5 or 19:1
that this number was in fact drawn — simply because that is the likelihood of
the newspaper getting facts like this wrong.
In this case, we do not take the vast improbability of the event
reported to in the least discount the likelihood of the testimony being
correct. But that is because the
testimony is testimony to the occurrence of a generic cause (making a draw in
a lottery) that has a generic effect (exactly one of the numbers between
1,000,000 and 6,000,000 being drawn).
This generic effect has a number of specific, alternative forms
(5,000,000 of them). Since there is
nothing to choose between them, the vivacity attending our impression of the
report that a lottery was drawn is evenly dispersed over the 5,000,000
possible outcomes. We end up being
absolutely certain that the generic
effect occurred (that a number was drawn).
Yet at the same time we are entirely indifferent which of the specific effects occurred. Under this circumstance, anything that
favours the occurrence of one of the effects suffices to boost the
credibility of that effect above its rivals to an extent proportioned to its
own credibility. Since we know that
one of the alternatives must have occurred, and the newspaper is 95% accurate,
we form a pretty strong belief that this number was in fact drawn,
proportioned just to our experience of the reliability of the newspaper,
because there is nothing else to differentiate the cases from one another. But miracles are not like this. Whereas any testimony whatsoever could lead
us to accept the result of a lottery in proportion to our past experience of
the reliability of that witness, the same does not hold of miracles. This is because in the case of miracles the
witness does not testify to a generic cause that can indifferently taken on
any one of a precise number of specific, alternative effects. Instead, the witness testifies to the
occurrence of an antecedent event (a bush burning, a man walking out on
water, a human body dying and slowly putrefying over the course of a number
of days) that, in all our past experience, has been observed to have a generic sort of effect (crumbling into
ash, sinking, continuing to decay) that is incompatible with the result actually reported by the witnesses
to occur in this case. Here all the
vivacity attending our impression of the report of the occurrence of the
antecedent event gets transferred to ideas of a subsequent event that is not
of the same generic sort as the event actually reported, but that is flatly
incompatible with it (not being consumed, not sinking, rising up to walk and
talk). In this case the testimony
itself produces vivacious ideas that are incompatible with the vivacious
ideas that the testimony itself goes on to produce. And in this situation there is nothing we
can do other than balance the two quantities of vivacity against one another
and incline to the heavier side with a degree of conviction proportioned to
the amount by which it outweighs its antagonist. The testimony itself is internally
conflicting, and in dealing with it in this way we adopt the same approach
that we would if the different parts of the testimony (to the antecedent
circumstances and to the subsequent event) had been delivered by different
witnesses. Suppose, for the sake of argument that there
is some miracle that has absolutely reliable testimony backing it up:
testimony of a sort that has never been known to be false in the past. In this sort of case, even though we are
dealing with a single set of witnesses we are dealing with a rather different
sort of case than the case where a single cause has different effects. In the latter sort of case, Hume envisioned
the vivacity associated with an impression or memory of the cause being
divided among all the past experiences and then recombined, depending on how
many of the past experiences were all of the same
sort of event. But in this case there
is not one cause but two: an impression or memory of the reports of the
witnesses, and an impression and memory of what has always been observed in
the past in the same sort of circumstances that the witnesses testify
to. Hearing or remembering what the
witnesses say about the antecedent circumstances of the
miracle leads us, in virtue of past experience of those sorts of
circumstances, to form lively ideas of what always happens in those
circumstances. Hearing or remembering
what the witnesses say about what happened next leads us, in virtue of past
experience of the reliability of those sorts of witnesses, to form lively
ideas of something inconsistent with our first set of lively ideas. Both ideas cannot be sustained
together. But in this case we are not
dealing with a unit amount of vivacity communicated by a single cause and
proportioned out among ideas of various contrary effects. Instead we are dealing with two different
quantities of vivacity transmitted by the impression or memory of different
causes. If both are equally strong,
then supposing that the connection with their effects is equally strong, they
will enliven ideas to the same amount and the contrary ideas will cancel one
another out, leaving us with a perfect suspension of belief. It is not entirely impossible, however, that
for one reason or another one of the causes might transmit indeterminately
more vivacity than the other. Perhaps,
even though we have a uniform past experience of those sorts of circumstances
always leading to a contrary event, and a uniform past experience of that
sort of testimony never turning out to be false, we have fewer experiences of
the cause-effect relation than of the testimony. Or perhaps the testimony reports something
that is not entirely disanalogous to certain other
things we have experienced on occasion in the past. Or perhaps the testimony is further
underwritten by general rules and principles concerning human behaviour. The possibility cannot be discounted that
testimony might be so good as to entirely outweigh contrary experience, and
Hume was careful not to say that it could not possibly do so. His point was just that the testimony must
be extraordinarily good, even to produce a slight degree of belief. This raises the further question: has any
testimony to a miracle ever been that good? Two Objections. There are many objections that have been
raised to Hume’s Part i argument against the possibility of basing a belief
in miracles on testimony. Two of them
merit particular attention. One is
that the argument is far too strong, and would not only deny belief in miracles,
but also belief in any new piece of evidence that contradicts our previously
established, but perhaps mistaken views of the laws of nature. Were Hume right, this objection goes,
scientific progress would be impossible, because no one would accept the
reports of researchers who had made discoveries that contradict established
beliefs about natural laws. The answer to this objection is that Hume’s
argument is not an argument against belief in miracles per se, but an
argument against belief in testimony to the occurrence of miracles. Advances in science, on the other hand, are
not based on testimony, but on results replicable in the laboratory. If some new piece of evidence has been
discovered, other scientists are not expected to simply accept its existence
on faith. We demand that they be able
to replicate those same results in their own laboratories and see it for
themselves. Thus, Hume need have no
difficulty in allowing for the possibility of scientific progress through the
discovery of new evidence that contradicts previous views of the laws of
nature. This new evidence can be
accepted because we do not merely hear tell of it, but because we can see it
for ourselves, and can do so repeatedly.
Were that the case with miracles, we could believe them, too. But as long as we do not witness them for
ourselves, but are left having to accept that they occurred merely on the
basis of testimony, Hume’s claim holds: only exceptionally strong testimony
could be good enough to convince us that a miracle has occurred. We would be similarly justified in doubting
extraordinary evidence for any new scientific theory that was based on the
results of experiments that had only been performed once, under secret
operational procedures, and that rest of the scientific community was
expected to accept merely on the word of the scientists in that laboratory. The emphasis that scientists place on replicability of results brings up a second point. Insofar as scientific results are
replicable they are not one-time occurrences in history. They are rather taken to be something that
will always or at least often happen in certain special circumstances —
circumstances that scientists seek to replicate in the laboratory when
they test one another’s claims. As a result, extraordinary and unusual
scientific results are nothing like miracles.
They are not even really extraordinary or unusual. Rather than be
something that has never before been observed to happen in those exact
circumstances, they are something that can be expected to occur under the
circumstances specified in the test procedure. The events only at first appear unusual or
extraordinary because the special circumstances are analogous to other, more
familiar circumstances in which the events are never observed to occur. We originally reasoned by analogy from the
more familiar circumstances to conclude that the events would be impossible
in the special circumstances as well, after the manner of the Indian prince
mentioned above. But, as Hume pointed
out, such analogous reasoning is not strictly legitimate. If excellent witnesses make a claim about
some extraordinary event, but that event occurs in circumstances we have
ourselves never encountered before, so that the event only appears
extraordinary because of an inference from analogy with more familiar
circumstances, then even though we might not be able to suspend our
disbelief, we ought to attempt to replicate the novel circumstances for
ourselves, and ascertain by the experience of our own senses, which cannot be
doubted (since nothing is more vivacious than an impression), whether the
report deserves our credence. But it is of the very essence of miracle
stories that they do not report on events that always or regularly happen in
special circumstances. The scientist
who makes a novel discovery claims that other scientists will be able to
replicate that same result whenever they reproduce the appropriate conditions
in the laboratory. But the person who
is testifying to a miracle wants to claim that it was a one-time event in
history brought about by a special act of God and that it would not recur, even were those same
circumstances repeated. It would be no
miracle if the reason the bush burned without being consumed was that it had
been coated with a fire retardant material to which an alcohol-based paste
had been applied. It would just be a
magician’s trick. Those who take the
burning bush to be a miracle hold that there was every reason why the bush
should have burned. Had those same
circumstances been exactly replicated at any other place and time (a place
and time when God was not giving a sign to Moses), then the bush would have
been consumed. They hold that only
Christ could have walked on water and had anyone else made that attempt at
any other place or time, even though all the other circumstances were exactly
the same, they would have sunk. Thus,
where miracles are concerned, it is of the very essence of the case that
there is no way we can replicate the circumstances to see for ourselves
whether the event follows. Unless we were there at the time, we are left with
no recourse but to believe in the event on the basis of testimony — which is
tantamount, Hume argued, to not believing in the event at all. It is sometimes thought to be a defect of
Hume’s argument that it is not directed against the belief in miracles, but
only against a belief in miracles that is based on testimony. The short answer to this objection is that
the essay still proves that even if you have yourself been chosen to witness
a miracle you should not expect anyone who was not there to see it with you
to believe you unless there are special features to your case that make it
especially compelling (such as that it was witnessed by numerous other
independent, disinterested witnesses, that there is no contrary testimony,
that there was no possibility of a cheat, that no one has anything to gain
from their report, etc.). It was also
a feature of the Protestant thought of Hume’s day to claim that the age of
miracles had passed. Since Christ has
already descended and given his word to us, and authenticated that word by
performing miracles, nothing more is now necessary to guide us to salvation
but to accept that word. To take any
other position would be to insult Christ’s sacrifice and atonement on the
cross, by suggesting that it was not sufficient of itself to save “all”
humanity, but that further divine action is still necessary. The only miracles that happen today should
be the internally observable miracle of a gift of grace compelling one to
believe against all the evidence rather than the externally observable
miracle of an incredible occurrence.
Thus, in focusing his attack just on testimony to miracle stories Hume
was only conforming to the accepted doctrine concerning miracles of his day. There is a second standard objection to
Hume’s essay on miracles that deserves to be mentioned. This is the objection that the essay only
succeeds in making its point by adopting an excessively strict definition of
miracles as events that happen contrary to what all our past experiences in
those same circumstances would indicate.
On some versions of this objection, Hume defines miracles out of
existence by treating them as events that are such that we are antecedently
absolutely certain that they could not occur.
Of course, if that is how miracles are defined, then it will
necessarily follow that the best that any testimony in favour of a miracle
could do is leave us with a suspension of belief (if it is not a miracle
unless you are absolutely certain it could not occur, the best that testimony
can do in its favour is leave you absolutely certain that the testimony could
not be false and the two absolute certainties should cancel one another
out). But Hume’s argument is more
subtle than that. For Hume there is no
clear upper bound to the degree of conviction or the amount of vivacity that
can be communicated to an idea. In
cases of “probability,” a single cause communicates a unit quantity of
vivacity to ideas of alternative effects and we can conceive of probabilities
arising as portions of this unit quantity.
But in the case of miracles there is not one cause but two and there
is nothing that says that the two causes must communicate the same amount of
vivacity to their rival ideas even though each of them has never before been
observed to fail to be followed by its effect. Hume’s argument against belief in miracles
on the basis of testimony is not an a
priori one. It does not rule
the possibility of belief in miracles out by definition. On the contrary, it concludes by claiming
that belief in miracles on the basis of testimony is in principle possible
(indeed, conviction of the
occurrence of a miracle is in principle possible according to what Hume said
later in the essay when discussing testimony to a fanciful case of a
miraculous death and resurrection of the heavenly bodies). The point is just that the testimony needs
to be very strong. Those who raise this second objection have
tended to be oblivious to the historical circumstances and purposes of Hume’s
essay. Hume’s purpose in writing the
essay on miracles was to attack the attempts of philosophers such as Locke
and Clarke to provide a rational foundation for religious belief. It was Locke, not Hume, who claimed that
miracles function as signs to convince our reason that God is the one who is
speaking to us, either directly or through a prophet. But if reason is to be satisfied that it is
God who is speaking, then the sign that signifies his presence must be
something that only he could do. It
could not be something that would have happened anyway in those
circumstances, regardless of who was there and who
was speaking. Nor could it be
something that may have just occurred by a lucky chance, because that sort of
event has been known to happen, albeit infrequently, on those sorts of
occasions in the past. In either of
these cases, reason would consider the authenticity of the revelation
delivered in conjunction with the miracle to be open to doubt. The miracle would therefore have to be
something that no other known cause could produce and that means that it
would have to be either a violation of all our past experience of what
naturally occurs, or, if it had been known to happen from time to time in the
past, its now occurring would have to be in significant violation of the laws
of probability, as gleaned from our past experience. (Hume gave an example of the latter kind of
case in a footnote when referring to tales of a prophet who is repeatedly
able to command the course of the weather.)
Thus, it is the use that Locke put miracles to that led him (not Hume)
to define them as events that are “beyond, or contrary to ordinary
Observation” (Essay IV.xvi.13), and
in seeking to undermine Locke’s attempt to base religion on reasoning, Hume
naturally addressed that definition. In giving his account of miracles, Locke had
assumed that despite being maximally incredible, miracles are like reports of
lottery winnings: they are the sorts of things that can be accepted simply on
the strength of the testimony, apart from all reference to the incredibility
of the event. This is because, in
Locke’s estimation, we are antecedently convinced (by reasoning concerning
the cause of our own existence) of the existence of a benevolent and
intelligent creator who would have wanted to intervene early in the course of
history to inform humanity of important truths that we could not learn in any
other way, and who would have needed to perform miracles to prove that he
really was God. Because we can be
certain, for this reason, that miracles must have occurred, we merely need to
survey history for those that have the best testimony in their favour, and we
ought to consider it likely that they did in fact occur. However, this is a line of argument that
Hume scuttled with the observation that we are in no position to be confident
that a being as different from us as God would have been disposed to perform
any miracles for any reason. Since we
cannot be antecedently convinced that miracles must have occurred, we can
only gain a conviction that they did occur from the extant testimony. And because of the nature of the case, that
testimony had better be very strong.
The option Locke had countenanced, of being able to accept the
testimony simply on the strength of the witnesses and without attending to
the intrinsic incredibility of the event, is one that Hume showed to be
ineligible. Let us turn to the question of how good the
testimony to miracles has in fact been. Hume’s Part ii
Argument. Hume opened Part ii of the essay on
miracles by observing that he had probably made too liberal a concession in
allowing that testimony to a miracle could be strong enough to produce
conviction. What makes his concession
too liberal is not that it is in principle impossible that there could ever
be such testimony. It is rather that
testimony to miracles is, of its nature, bound up with the project of
justifying religious belief. And when
religious belief enters the picture, it brings a host of factors with it that
detract from the quality of testimony.
As a consequence, Hume claimed, it is certainly the case that no
testimony that has historically ever been given for the occurrence of
miracles, and probably ever will be given for specifically religious
miracles, has even come close to leading us to suspend our disbelief. There are four main reasons why this is so,
which Hume proceeded to examine over the course of Part ii. 1. The witnesses to miracle stories have not,
as a matter of historical fact, been credible. Historically, witnesses to miracles have
tended to be few in number (many pass on the report at second and third hand,
but few turn out to have actually been there at the time), poorly educated,
and either gullible or unscrupulous.
They have also tended to come from impoverished and rural regions. Their poverty means they have little formal
education, and their rural lives give them few
opportunities to encounter charlatans, confidence artists, tricksters and
magicians. Consequently, they are more
credulous and more easily tricked. 2. There is something intrinsic to the nature
of miracle stories that gives people a vested interest in repeating them, and
no witness can be fully trusted who has an interest in what they report. Stories of highly unusual and extraordinary
events excite agreeable passions of surprise and wonder. We delight in hearing and repeating such
stories for that reason, and Hume noted that our own pleasure is increased
if, upon repeating them, we can actually get others to believe them. Even if we cannot believe them ourselves,
our natural sympathy with the sentiments of others leads us to feel their
belief, and that enhances the agreeable sentiments of surprise and wonder
that we experience. Moreover, it is of
the nature of strong sentiments to excite belief. Just as vivacity is transmitted from
impressions and ideas to the objects with which they have been associated, so
vivacity is transmitted from passions to the ideas of objects that excite
them, and can give us a tendency to believe those objects exist. (In another work, Hume remarked that this
is why fearful people believe in danger more readily than others. Their propensity to feel fear transmits a
vivacity that leads them to believe in the existence of the danger when
others consider it to be merely a remote possibility.) This observation also helps to resolve a
puzzle that is posed by Hume’s Part i argument: If Hume is right in what he said in Part i,
then how is it that belief in miracle stories is so widespread? It would seem
that our natural propensities ought to always lead us to be very skeptical of such stories, and only entertain their
possibility in the rarest of circumstances. The answer is given here. Certain people, the originators of miracle
stories, are either mad and believe they see what does not exist, or
unscrupulous, and willing to perpetrate a hoax in the service of their holy
cause. They tell miracle stories. Their audience greedily accepts them, not
because they find the evidence especially compelling, which they rarely
could, but because they feel an influx of vivacity from the associated
passions of surprise and wonder. Wise
people, who have learned from experience that beliefs formed on such a basis
are more likely to be false than true, will be able to correct this
propensity by a due reflection on their past experience. But average people are not likely to follow
them in this practice. They will
believe because it feels good to do so rather than because experience shows
it is likely to be true. 3. Miracle stories have typically not been
subjected to serious scrutiny by people capable of detecting a fraud. Usually, the story is reported by credulous,
ignorant people in some backward, rural region. The story gets spread abroad, typically
being inflated in the process. By the
time it reaches the ears of scientifically minded people, it has been so
widely dispersed that its popularity is taken as a sign of its truth, and too
much time has passed for anyone to be able to go back to the original
location and find any clues that would allow them to ascertain whether the
story is true or false. In the few
circumstances where there has been an opportunity for scrutiny by experts, a
fraud has always been detected. This
leads the experts and other sophisticated, educated people who are made aware
of the circumstances of theses cases, to form a general rule that whenever
such legends grow up, they are sure to be exploded upon scrutiny. As a consequence, more educated people
reject such stories out of hand without bothering to examine them. However, uneducated people continue to be
duped and take the disinterest of the educated in their stories to be
evidence that the stories are true and the educated are either afraid or
unable to disprove them. 4. The testimony in favour of miracle stories
is conflicting. Hume ingeniously based this claim, not on the
assertion that different witnesses to the same event give different
testimony, but on the claim that different witnesses testifying to the
occurrence of different miracles contradict one another. It has long been characteristic of Christianity
to make claims of exclusivity. This is
because, as noted in connection with Bayle’s remarks on Pyrrho,
were there any other way to be saved than through belief in the crucified
Christ, then Christ’s sacrifice would have been in vain and the whole of
orthodox, Chalcedonian theology would be called
into question. Seen in this context,
the miracles Christ is taken to have performed in the Gospels must be
understood, not just as proofs of his status as God, but also as refutations
of all other religions. Accordingly,
anyone who testifies to a miracle performed in the service of another
religion is, in a sense, giving conflicting testimony, that
challenges the authenticity of the Gospel testimony to Christ’s miracles as
the foundation for the one, true religion.
If this testimony is just as good as the testimony to the Christian
miracles, then we ought to be just as inclined to believe it. But then, according to Hume’s theory of
probability, the two opposite inclinations ought to cancel one another out,
and we ought to be left with no inclination to believe the one testimony to
be any more likely than the other — and this is before any consideration of
any further doubt we may be induced to have by the extraordinary character of
the miraculous events. Having made this point, Hume twisted the
knife in the wound by proceeding to observe that some miracles performed in
connection with Roman paganism (a religion no one any longer believes in) and
Jansenism (the Jansenists were a persecuted,
minority Catholic sect of the generation before Hume who had effectively died
out by the time Hume wrote, so that as of the time of his writing there were
effectively no Jansenists — Jansenism was a version
of Catholicism that Catholics themselves all rejected) have been far better
attested to than any of the miracles attributed to Christ in the
Gospels. The Jansenist
miracles performed upon the tomb of the Abbé de
Paris, for example, were testified to by numerous, sophisticated, educated,
people in the pre-eminent cultural and intellectual centre of Europe; the
claims these people made were scrutinized by experts; and despite the fact
that these experts were Jesuits who were deeply antagonistic to the Jansenists, they themselves had to admit that they were
unable to uncover any evidence of fraud.
If we reject the latter miracles (as Hume trusted that not only his
Protestant readers but that all contemporary Catholic readers would as well) — indeed, if we go so far as to approve of
the policy of men like the Cardinal de Retz, who peremptorily dismissed such
stories without even a due examination
— then how can we consistently
accept the testimony of the former? In general, the more miracle stories there are
in the more different, conflicting and even obviously false religions, the
more the credibility of all miracle stories must be cast into doubt. All the stories cannot be true, and since
the greater proportion of them must in fact be false (if only one religion is
the true one) despite their apparent plausibility, that can only diminish our
tendency to want to believe any of them.
A survey of the cases cannot but lead us to think such stories are in
general false more often than true, however well attested to they may at
first appear to be. Hume’s
Conclusion. In Hume’s day one could not attack
the foundations of Christianity without risking reprisal,
and Hume was careful at the close of his essay on miracles to deflect such
attacks as much as possible. To this
end he declared that his purpose in the essay had not been to attack
religion, but merely to attack those, such as Locke, who attempted to base
religion on reason. By treating the
Gospels as historical documents written by human witnesses, reporting the
hearsay evidence of other witnesses to miracles that supposedly proved the
revelation, Locke had actually exposed religion “to such a trial as it is by
no means fitted to endure” (namely, an inquiry into the reliability of the
testimony to the Biblical miracles).
This made him a mere “pretended Christian,” a “dangerous friend or
disguised enemy.” A true Christian,
Hume claimed, would not suppose that the revealed word of God can be
justified by reason but would maintain that the grace released by Christ’s
sacrifice will compel the elect to believe against all reason and quite
independently of any evidence. Those
not elected for this graciously compelled belief are predestined to eternal
damnation and it would be an insult to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross to
suppose that they could, by the mere aid of their unassisted reason, discover
the truth of the Bible message. Of
course, this is exactly what believers in the more extreme Calvinist
Christian sects maintained, and, as they formed a strong voice in the
Churches of Hume’s day, Hume found himself in a position to invoke the
dominant views on Grace and predestination to justify his attack on miracles,
and present his essay as if it were merely an attack on the attempt to base
religion on reason, rather than an attack on religion in general. Consistently with views in the more radical
Protestant churches, Hume concluded that the only miracle that does occur is
the miracle of grace. This is a miracle that is not accepted on testimony,
but is rather experienced by the elect.
They, like the rest of us, are determined to believe what they do by
the mental associative mechanisms responsible for transmitting vivacity from
impressions and memories to ideas. And
if, in violation of the laws of natural belief, they acquire a faith in the
truth of the Christian revelation without any adequate infusion of vivacity
from an associated impression or idea, but simply by grace, then that is a
true miracle that is contrary to all of our other experience of the workings
of the mind. It is most likely, however, that in making
these claims Hume was merely exploiting fideist
theology as a cover for what is purely and simply an attack on one of the
foundations of Christianity. It is
unlikely that he actually believed that God would deliver any revelation to
us, much less compel only certain among us to believe in it while
predestining the rest to eternal damnation.
Those of us who do not sense the grace in ourselves are sensible of
the occurrence of no such miracles, and before we accept them on the
testimony of others we would need to have reason to reject alternative, more
plausible explanations for religious enthusiasm: the force of education,
unreflective credulity, the influence of a sense that one’s own interests can
be advanced by feigning a degree of sanctity one does not actually feel, or a
degree of mental instability and delusion. ESSAY
QUESTIONS AND RESEARCH PROJECTS 1. In Enquiry V Hume claimed that belief has natural causes that are
outside of anyone’s control. As he put
it, “belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in [certain]
circumstances. It is an operation of
the soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable as to feel the passion of
love, when we receive benefits; or hatred, when we meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of
natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and
understanding is able, either to produce, or to prevent” (Enquiry 5.8) But if belief cannot be
produced by reasoning, how can Hume claim that certain beliefs are
unreasonable, as he appears to do in the essay on miracles, when he condemns
those who believe in miracles? And how
can he justly condemn these people for their beliefs if no one has any control
over what they believe, and all of us are irresistibly compelled by our
circumstances to believe what we do? 2. In Enquiry 10.36-37, Hume described two cases, one of a supposed
darkness over the earth for eight days, the other of the resurrection of
Queen Elizabeth. He claimed that the
former could be believed, but the latter could not. What is the difference between these cases
that would justify treating them differently?
What, exactly, was Hume’s point in even discussing them? 3. It has frequently been objected
that Hume’s argument against miracles unfairly “double counts” the evidence against testimony.
According to this objection, the likelihood of the occurrence of the
event being reported is just one factor involved in the assessment of the
reliability of testimony. We also
consider the number of witnesses, their interest in the case, the likelihood
they could have been deceived, and so on.
But rather than weigh the intrinsic likelihood of the event being
reported along with all of these other factors, Hume made it a distinct
factor, of equal weight on its own with all the other considerations
combined. In effect, he considered 50%
of the credibility of testimony to come from the intrinsic likelihood of the
event, and the remaining 50% to be due to the credibility of the
witnesses. (This is what is implied by
his claim that the most credible witness could not do any more than
counterbalance our intrinsic disbelief in the occurrence of an event that
violates a law of nature, and so lead us to a suspension of belief on either
side.) But it just does not follow
that the intrinsic likelihood of the event ought to be ascribed so much
weight. Review and assess the recent
literature discussing this objection. |