DAVID HUME’S ARGUMENT AGAINST MIRACLES

David Hume (1711-1776) was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.

Atheist Michael Shermer agreed with the classic argument against miracles of 18^th century philosopher David Hume, which Shermer summarized as: “Hume declared, ‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.’ Better words could not be found for a skeptical motto. … Which is more likely, that the laws of nature be suspended or that the person telling you the story is mistaken or has been deceived? Misperceptions are common. People make things up. We have a lot of experience with this. It could be an illusion, a hallucination, a mistake-whatever. All of that is more likely than a miracle.” Strobel, The Case for Miracles, 52-54. Hume’s argument in a more formal syllogistic form is as follows:

Natural law is description of a regular occurrence.
A miracle is a rare occurrence.
The evidence for a regular occurrence is always greater than the evidence for a rare occurrence.
A wise man always bases his belief on the greater evidence.
Therefore, a wise man should never believe in miracles.

The main problem with this argument is that premise 3 is false – the evidence for the regular is not always greater than the evidence for the rare. For example, the origin of the universe happened only once. Also, the origin of life only happened once. Yet virtuality every atheistic naturalist believes that the Big Bang evidence proves that the universe exploded into existence, and that life arose spontaneously from non-life somewhere on the earth or elsewhere in the universe. Finally, the entire history of the world is made up of rare, unrepeatable events. For example, Hume was only born once, but he certainly believed that his birth occurred! Instead on focusing on what is rare or regular, Hume should have focused on what is possible and the weight of the evidence for each rare event. In essence, Hume argues in a circle because he rules out miracles in advance because he believes there is a uniform experience against miracles. Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), chapter 8, 205-209.

But even Shermer admitted that he experienced a mysterious unusual event that shook his skepticism. His wife had a transistor radio from the 1970s that had deep sentimental value to her because she and her grandfather often listened to music on the radio when they spent time together. Her grandfather died. Years later, shortly after she married Shermer, her radio was not functional. But she and Shermer heard the radio playing the same type of music she used to listen to with her grandfather. The radio played all night and into the next morning-and then it went dead again and never worked again thereafter. She felt the presence of her grandfather with her while the radio played the music. That incident cracked open the door and made Shermer think that it might be possible that there was another spiritual plane and that he should be humble before the universe. But this mysterious event still did not convince Shermer to believe in God. Strobel, The Case for Miracles, 66-68.