Of Miracles By Hume Essay

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In David Hume's paper "Of Miracles," Hume presents a various number of

arguments concerning why people ought not to believe in any miracles. Hume does

not think that miracles do not exist it is just that we should not believe in

them because they have no rational background. One of his arguments is just by

definition miracles are unbelievable. And have no rational means in believing

miracles. Another argument is that most miracles tend to come from uncivilized

countries and the witnesses typically have conflicts of interest and counterdict

each others experiences. Both of these arguments are valid however they tend to

be weak. I think that Hume's strongest argument is that he claims there is no

credibility to the testimony behind the miracles. In Hume's argument he says

"that there is no testimony for any, even those which have not been

expressly detected, that is not opposed by an infinite number of witnesses; so

that not only the miracle destroys the credit of the testimony, but the

testimony destroys itself." To make this clear Hume uses religious matters.

Many religions use miracles as a foundation. "Every miracle, therefor,

pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions as its direct scope is

to establish the particular system to which it is attributed; so has it the same

force, though bore indirectly, to overthrow every other system." If the

miracles try to destroy a system, a religion, it destroys the credit of the

miracles themselves, and the system in which they were established. Since most

religions are based on miracles and try to destroy each other with contrary

miracles and then we as humans have no reasoning on which miracle to believe in.

Therefore what I think that Hume is trying to say is that for a religion to be

credible it must not be based on miracles. This argument is seen by society to

be far fetched, because most people have a certain belief in a certain religion

and have somewhat a belief in miracles, but Hume has a good argument. He says

that people should not believe in religions that are based on miracles because

they have no credibility. Miracles themselves are thought to have weak

credibility because the majority of the people in the society think that they

are false. However there are many people that believe in miracles in one way or

another. Either directly or indirectly. If you affiliate yourself with a

religion that is based on miracles then you are indirectly a believer in

miracles. This is what Hume would think and also he would say that you should

not believe in the miracles because they are the basis of your religion and have

no credibility due to the fact that the religion is trying to destroy another

religion...

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