A reader suggested David Hume as a subject for a piece, since he is said to have set the foundation for much of what passes as Skeptical thought these days. If that means, much of what Hume says is repeated practically verbatim by today's skeptical crowd, that is quite correct. Arguments against the miraculous have not progressed a great deal since Hume, although skill and rewording his verbiage into different forms abounds.

Since so much has been written addressing Hume's views that we could certainly not supersede (ranging from C. S. Lewis' Miracles to the more recent In Defense of Miracles collection of essays), our comments about Hume shall be brief. Hume was of course a child of the Enlightenment, that period when it was first thought that man might be able to perfect and improve himself and the world through applied reason and science. (The corresponding theological premise was deism, as evolutionary theory had yet to provide the excuse needed to make atheism intellectually respectable.) As Hume puts it: "Man is a reasonable being, and, as such, receives from science his proper food and nourishment." Not to doubt that knowledge is of its own a sort of multivitamin, but one senses rather that Hume spent far too long in an ivory tower and had little idea what the proper "nourishment" for the average person might be. Knowledge and its pursuit (may I say from experience) offers something of a semblance of fulfillment, if only because it has in view a goal (acquisition of knowledge) that will never be completed and has the semblance of the infinite. A poor substitute, we may say, for the true fulfillment found in the infinity of God...but I digress. Foundational to Hume's case is the argument that "every idea which we examine is copied from a similar impression." Thus:

The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.

In other words, our idea of God is not the result of revelation, but of us taking the normal attributes of ourselves and increasing them to infinity. Now one may note right away that Hume's argument implies a sort of genetic fallacy, if taken to the extreme (not clearly pursued by Hume, at least not here, but indeed elsewhere) assumes that explaining how an idea of God might have come up equates with disproving that God actually exists. Readers of Lewis' Narnia series, specifically The Silver Chair, will recall from that book a scenario in which captives in an underground world who were trying to describe the sun compared it to a globular light source that was present in the room; from this the villian in the series argued that the sun itself had not actually existed, or been seen by the heroes, but was a copy of what they saw before them, heightened by their imagination. The implication being that there is indeed imagination at work, but it can just as easily be ascribed to the skeptic -- they say we are inventing God; we may reply that they are inventing psychological theory! One argument in this context is as good as another.

The next major stage in Hume's overall thesis is the premise that "causes and effects are discoverable, not by reason, but by experience" -- and this leads to the main bugaboo Christians have had with Hume, for he says he cannot believe in the resurrection of Christ, having not seen it himself: "...it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or century." But, we may ask, what of apostolic testimony to the resurrected Jesus? No problem: "...(N)o testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." And here is how else Hume solves that problem:

...(T)here is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of Men of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning as to serve us against all delusion in themselves; of such undaunted integrity as to place themselves beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world as to render the detection unavoidable...

Christian "resurrectional" apologetics, of course, has thoroughly answered Hume on half of these points, and the other half are clearly little more than Hume's personal Enlightenment bigotry (Re: "good sense, education, and learning" -- yes, Hume has all the usual references to "barbarous and ignorant peoples"; yet how much "education" does it take to see that a dead man is alive, and at any rate, what of Matthew and Paul?; "celebrated part of the world" -- Palestine was a major crossroads, but it hardly makes a difference!). But all of that may have meant nothing to Hume anyway. It is quite revealing that even when he offers a hypothetical situation where these conditions are met (Hume hypothesizes a situation in which the Queen has supposedly died and come back to life), Hume admits he would be surprised, but "should not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous an event." He would "still reply that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena" that he would rather believe that it was a conspiracy than a miracle. O ye of little faith? Nay -- o ye of little sense, more likely. Hume was right about the knavery and folly of men -- but he forgot to include himself as a prime example. Hume laid the foundation for many moderns who take anything, no matter how crazy (Jesus was a space alien) or uninformed (McKinsey's Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy) and find it preferable to the Christian faith. Whether that faith is right or wrong in this context is beside the point: The point is that the preference for the unreasonable, the outrageous, and the theoretical against the evidence available is nothing new. Hume was just one major name that encouraged that line of thinking in modern Western society.

In recent days I have found this evaluation of Hume confirmed by a highly techincal book by John Earman, a professor of history and philsophy in science, titled (without any hint of embarrassment) Hume's Abject Failure. Skeptics, spare us, if you will, any idea that Earman is a raving fundy freak: Aside from being a case of genetic fallacy, Earman is himself no Christian, and says, "If I had need of Gods, they would be the Gods of the Greeks and the Romans." His motivation, rather, is to "set the record straight and frame the issues in a way that makes discussion of them more fruitful" -- as well as react to the "pretentious sneering" he perceived in Hume.

Earman's principle objection is much the same as my own: "An epistemology that does not allow for the possibility that evidence, whether from eyewitness testimony or from other source, can establish the credibility of a UFO landing, a walking on water, or a resurrection is inadequate." [4] I have said much the same to certain local annoyances, such as one that seems to think apologetics for Christianity are immediately ended by asking us whether we'd believe it if 500 witnesses said they saw a mouse pick up a battleship. The annoyance could never answer my question, "If indeed a mouse did pick up a battleship, how could we, by your strict criteria, ever believe it?"

Contemporary critics of Hume sensed the immediate weakness in his arguments and retorted with an example (alluded to in our quiz for Skeptics) of a prince from a tropical climate who had never seen ice. By Hume's reasoning, the prince is just as validated in not believing in ice as the modern Skeptic might be "validated" in rejecting miracle testimony. This retort has such strength that Earman calls it an "embarrassment" and he notes Hume's efforts at sophistry in trying to evade the force of the argument [34]. Hume tried to avoid the problem by noting that ice was not outside the experience of northern peoples; Earman retorts that if this is so, then if homo sapiens arose in Africa, "there was a stage in human history where the total collective experience of the species coincided in relevant respects" with that of the prince who lived in a tropical climate. In addition, we would add that Hume as much as undermines his own argument from experience, for it is just as well to say that a resurrection was "within the experience" of the Apostles -- leaving Hume with nothing but "those stupid, gullible ancient people" left to argue about.` Likewise a failure was Hume's attempt to argue that for the prince, the existence if ice might be deduced by analogy: "If one sees a positive analogy for a solid form of water in other phase changes, why not see a positive analogy for resurrection in near death experiences, catatonic states, and the like?" [38] It is well to highlight Earman's summary statements in closing [70-1], even as he praises Hume for at least identifying an important problem and dealing with it in an interesting manner:

In 'Of Miracles,'Hume pretends to stand on philosophical high ground, hurling down thunderbolts against miracles stories. The thunderbolts are supposed to issue from general principles about inductive inference and the credibility of eyewitness testimony. But when these principles are made explicit and examined under the lens of Bayesianism, thet are found to be either vapid, specious, or at variance with actual scientific practice...[Hume] was able to create the illusion of a powerful argument by maintaining ambiguities in his claims against miracles, by the use of forceful prose and confident pronouncements, and by liberal doses of sarcasm and irony....

I find it ironic that so many readers of Hume's essay have been subdued by its eloquence...No doubt this generous treatment stems in part from the natural assumption that someone of Hume's genius must have produced a powerful set of considerations. But I suspect that in more than a few cases it also involves the all too familiar phenomenon of endorsing an argument because the conclusion is liked. There is also the understandable, if deplorable, desire to sneer at the foibles of the less enlightened -- and how much more pleasurable the sneering if it is sanctioned by a set of philosophical principles!

I couldn't (didn't) say it any better myself.

More recently (9/07) I have had access to back issues of a journal of professional historians titled History and Theory, which is of interest because it is clear that at least one professional historian does not buy into the arguments of Hume and modern materialists who insist that miracles must be ruled out a priori as possible causes.

In the October 2005 issue (373-390). Aviezer Tucker offers and article titled, "Miracles, Historical Testimonies, and Probabilities." Of interest is the point made to begin that Hume, who first wrote a history of England as a historian, in later analysis was found to be someone who seemed "sloppy and uncritical of his limited sources; he had not found all the relevant evidence and had not compared sources critically. He appeared to be an amateur." [374] This is relevant because as Tucker notes, Hume's treatise on miracles uses methods that have "more to do with his historiographical than his philsophical works, and consequently share some of the same problems as his historical writings," including a "pre-scientific, indeed ahistorical approach" to the topic. (Tucker also notes that certain parts of Hume's essay are "ambigious," a fault I have noted to a critic of this article below.)

Tucker then goes on to argue -- in the same vein I often have -- that Hume's definition of miracles is inadequate. "Ancient Hebrews and Greeks had no concept of a universal immutable law of naturem let alone a concept of events that violate such laws." [375] Tucker proposes instead that miracles be defined with a "method of cases" using descriptions of miracles to decide what they are. He lists several, such as prophecy, resurrections, transmutations, and the parting of the Red Sea, and then points out that "none of these 'miracles' is in violation of the laws of nature, as Hume claimed" [376] -- for indeed, science has reproduced the effects of miracles, and may conceivably come up with ways to reproduce others, such as transmutations. There is not even a law of nature that "explicity contradicts" resurrections. (This, again, has been my own argument for quite some time.) In contrast, Tucker notes, science fiction stories often contain the same sort of "violations" of laws of nature (such as faster than light travel) but no one things that sci-fi authors are writes of "miracle tales."

Thus it is that Hume's definition of a mircale is "clearly anachronistic, ahistorical." [377] Tucker opts instead for a definition that matches my own: Miracles are "divine feats of strength" [378] and proofs of God's power. If Hume's apologists do not use this definition, then they are talking about something that has "nothing to do with what Jews and Christians have been talking about for almost all of the past 3,000 years" and "his discussion has no relevance for the philsophy of religion, or as a critique of traditional Judeo-Christianity, or for the way historians and philsophers of history should proceed with claims that a miracle has occurred." [379]

All of this changes the rules, so to speak, for the prior probability of a miracle happening in the way that Humean apologists argue. Whether a miracle can be historically decided to have occurred goes back to other criteria, such as the existence of independent witnesses, number of testimonies, and so on.

Tucker, we might note for those suspecting that he is a closet fundy, decides that critical Biblical miracles are lacking on these criteria [383] and is sympathetic to theories about the composite origins of the Pentateuch [386] and the New Testament [388]. In the end he argues that "the best explanation for many other miracles stories may be that for political, religious, and institutional reasons they were written hundreds of years after their alleged occurrence." [388] He even makes the incredible claims that "stories of divine death and resurrection were ride in ancient Near East mythology" and says that the "resurrection has no Jewish precedents" (!) and "may have been introduced later to convince a pagan audience of the divnity of Jesus". This is how he thinks the miracle events may be better explained -- not by Hume's methods of dismissal.

Of course we would dispute Tucker's conclusions in these topics and have ample material on board here to dispute it. Nevertheless his criticism of Hume is one with which we agree, and which Skeptics would do well to heed: "...there are no a priori shortcuts. To reach any reasoned conclusion about miracles or any other past event, it is necessary to examine hypotheses about the past in competition with one another over the nest explanation that increases most the likelihood of the broadest scope of evidence. For all that we know, some divinity may decide to impress us once in a while with its feats of strength, and we may react rationally then by airing our grievances to it. In each case, it is necessary to examine the best explanation for the evidence, using fruitful theories about language, human motivation, and politics in traditional soceities to explain the broadest range of evidence." [390] (An added irony is that Tucker has apparently had encounters, as I have had, with what he calls "religious atheists" who view Hume as a sort of prophet and depend significantly on him for their worldview.)

All Hume quotations are from An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

And now an update. We have some comments on this article from one of those sorts of rather childish Skeptical readers whose reaction is fairly well that of one whose hero has been trampled; their comments are in caps below, and our reply in bold thereafter.

A reader suggested David Hume as a subject for a piece, since he is said to have set the foundation for much of what passes as Skeptical thought these days. If that means, much of what Hume says is repeated practically verbatim by today's skeptical crowd, that is quite correct. Arguments against the miraculous have not progressed a great deal since Hume, although skill and rewording his verbiage into different forms abounds. [IT IS DELICIOUSLY IRONIC THAT THIS STATEMENT IS COMING FROM A CHRISTIAN APOLOGIST! FROM AUGUSTINE TO AQUINAS TO GEISLER, IT'S ALL THE SAME -- BUT ALWAYS LAUGHABLY ENTERTAINING.] Nothing like a little vague well-poisoning to set the stage. Of course the truth itself never changes, and since there are only so many answers that would make even the least sense, nor does nonsense like the sort Hume produces. As for laughs, they remain coming in plenty from those who think this is a meaningful reply -- and moreover shows a rather dismal familiarity with the range of Christian apologetics. It's not all the same -- the multifacted case derived from fields as diverse as history to social science finds no parallel in the realm of those still using Hume as a pacifier.

Since so much has been written addressing Hume's views that we could certainly not supersede (ranging from C. S. Lewis' Miracles to the more recent In Defense of Miracles collection of essays), our comments about Hume shall be brief. [A MERCIFUL GESTURE ON YOUR PART, IF NOT A PREMATURE RETREAT.] Merciful is closer; one can stand only so much of Hume's pretentious sneering disguised as "argument" to begin with. There's really little more to say since Hume's case is of such simplicity.

Hume was of course a child of the Enlightenment, that period when it was first thought that man might be able to perfect and improve himself and the world through applied reason and science. [THIS IS A BIT OF A SIMPLIFICATION OF ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT; CERTAINLY, THIS OPINION WAS QUITE PREVALENT, BUT YOU WOULD BE HARD PRESSED TO FIND IN MANY THINKERS OF THE TIME (INCLUDING HUME) THE OPINION THAT HUMANITY CAN SOMEHOW PERFECT ITSELF. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT, LARGELY A REACTION AGAINST ENLIGHTENMENT, HAD ITS SHARE OF THOSE WHO BELIEVED IN THE PERFECTIBILITY OF HUMANITY. OH, AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WAS NOT THE FIRST TO GIVE BIRTH TO THIS IDEA.] I'm not hard pressed at all to find such a thing, and the critic even finds it for me: The Romantic movement WAS of this period. In terms of the 18th century, where do I say this was the "first" century to think of the idea? A critic who is forced to import points into my text to refute them is desperately striving indeed. That said, any reader with any sense would see that I use "perfect" in a relative sense (for otherwise it would make no sense to pair it with the word improve!).

(The corresponding theological premise was deism, as evolutionary theory had yet to provide the excuse needed to make atheism intellectually respectable.) [As Hume puts it: "Man is a reasonable being, and, as such, receives from science his proper food and nourishment." [SINCE YOU’RE QUOTING HUME, TRY THIS ONE: “ANY PERSON SEASONED WITH A JUST SENSE OF THE IMPERFECTIONS OF NATURAL REASON, WILL FLY TO REVEALED TRUTH WITH THE GREATEST AVIDITY”.] That's nice. It carries as much authority as a quote from Bob Denver as Gilligan. It's nothing but Hume's bigotry in a nutshell.

Not to doubt that knowledge is of its own a sort of multivitamin, but one senses rather that Hume spent far too long in an ivory tower and had little idea what the proper "nourishment" for the average person might be. [I THINK HE WAS MORE THAN AWARE; CLEARLY YOU AREN’T ACQUAINTED WITH HIS WRITINGS.] I'm very acquainted with them. It's just too bad that the critic sees a need to have a temper tantrum over his delusions of Hume's competence being dissolved.

Knowledge and its pursuit (may I say from experience) offers something of a semblance of fulfillment, if only because it has in view a goal (acquisition of knowledge) that will never be completed and has the semblance of the infinite. A poor substitute, we may say, for the true fulfillment found in the infinity of God...but I digress. [OR, A REALISTIC ALTERNATIVE TO SEEKING FULFILLMENT IN AN IMAGINARY BEING; OR, IN THE BEST CASE SCENARIO (FOR YOU), ONE WHO DOES IN FACT EXIST, BUT WHOSE NATURE DIFFERS GREATLY FROM THE CHRISTIAN MODEL.] I very much doubt this critic has any idea what the "Christian model" actually offers; more likely it is (mis)informed by variations from the Left Behind series to the "personal relationship with Jesus" paradigm. Needless to say as well this is a poor substitute for a refutation of the critical arguments (cosmological, ontological, etc.) which I doubt the critic has more than sound bites and "go read this" admonitions to offer to.

Foundational to Hume's case is the argument that "every idea which we examine is copied from a similar impression." Thus:

The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.

In other words, our idea of God is not the result of revelation, but of us taking the normal attributes of ourselves and increasing them to infinity. Now one may note right away that Hume's argument implies a sort of genetic fallacy, if taken to the extreme (not clearly pursued by Hume, at least not here, but indeed elsewhere) assumes that explaining how an idea of God might have come up equates with disproving that God actually exists. [HUME NEVER CLAIMS TO HAVE “DISPROVED” THE EXISTENCE OF GOD; HE IS PROVIDING AN ALTERNATE THEORY TO REVELATION THAT IS QUITE CONSISTENT WITH HIS ARGUMENTS FROM OBSERVATION AND EXPERIENCE] Six of one, half dozen of the other. Hume offered this "alternate theory" with the purpose of replacing another, hence proving the first wrong. None of this shimmying around with sly qualification will change that.

Readers of Lewis' Narnia series, specifically The Silver Chair, will recall from that book a scenario in which captives in an underground world who were trying to describe the sun compared it to a globular light source that was present in the room; from this the villian in the series argued that the sun itself had not actually existed, or been seen by the heroes, but was a copy of what they saw before them, heightened by their imagination. [A NOBLE ATTEMPT BY LEWIS, BUT ONE THAT ONLY REINFORCES OUR EPISTEMOLOGICAL SITUATION CONCERNING GOD; REGARDING HIS STORY, WE – THE READERS – KNOW THAT THE SUN EXISTS, SO THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL MYSTERY IMPACTS ONLY THOSE NOT ‘IN THE KNOW’; ESSENTIALLY, WE ARE LIKE THE CHARACTERS IN HIS FABLE: IF WE KNEW THAT GOD EXISTED, YOU WOULD NOT BE WRITING ARTICLES PRO-THEISM AND I WOULD NOT BE REBUTTING THEM] Well, we, the reader, also know that God exists; but as for that alleged "rebuttal" that's simply remarkably stupid. It implies that if there are diverse points of view -- no matter how ridiculous -- then somehow the objective truth is in doubt; yet take this absurdity to the logical conclusion with respect to ie, persons who deny the Holocaust, or claim Jesus never existed, or thank Atlantis did. The mere existence of pro and con articles and positions means exactly nothing, and tells us with surety that this critic has not advanced beyond third grade in the epistemology department.

The implication being that there is indeed imagination at work, but it can just as easily be ascribed to the skeptic -- they say we are inventing God; we may reply that they are inventing psychological theory! One argument in this context is as good as another. [EXACTLY: THERE ARE MULTIPLE ARGUMENTS WHERE THERE IS A LACK OF KNOWLEDGE; MAYBE YOU ARE INVENTING GOD, MAYBE I AM THEORIZING ABOUT THE INNERWORKINGS OF THE MIND (REGARDING THE GOD QUESTION) – WE ARE BOTH SKEPTICS OF EACH OTHER’S APPROACH; WHO IS CORRECT? I DON’T KNOW, AND NEITHER DO YOU; WE’RE SIMPLY TAKING SIDES THAT SEEM MOST REASONABLE TO US, GIVEN THE EVIDENCE, WHICH IS INCONCLUSIVE] Maybe "you" don't know; but I do. Once again this sort of hapless wandering may impress the modern mind soaked in political correctness, but to those who actually do some thinking, it is openly self-contradictory at best: The critic claims to know that we don't know, and thus inherently contradicts himself.

The next major stage in Hume's overall thesis is the premise that "causes and effects are discoverable, not by reason, but by experience" -- and this leads to the main bugaboo Christians have had with Hume, for he says he cannot believe in the resurrection of Christ, having not seen it himself: "...it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or century." But, we may ask, what of apostolic testimony to the resurrected Jesus? [HUME’S POINT: THAT HE, THAT YOU, THAT I HAVE NEVER SEEN A MAN RAISED FROM THE DEAD (I’M ASSUMING YOU HAVEN’T, MAYBE YOU HAVE); THAT, IN FACT, TO RETURN TO LIFE ONCE DEAD IS CONTARY TO NATURE; THEREFORE, A CLAIM CONTRARY MUST, BY NECESSITY, BE SUBMITTED TO THE MOST RIGOROUS SCRUTINY; AND, EVEN IF THE EVIDENCE SEEMS AIRTIGHT, IT WOULD NOT BE UNREASONABLE TO REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF THE CLAIM; NOTE HERE AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION BETWEEN *KNOWLEDGE* THAT THE CLAIM IS UNFOUNDED, AND *SKEPTICISM* REGARDING THE CLAIM; THIS IS THE SUBTLETY IN HUME THAT MOST CRITICS FAIL TO SEE, AND THIS IS CRUCIAL TO UNDERSTANDING THE POWER, AND ULTIMATE CORRECTNESS, OF HUME’S POSITION], That's a very nice attempt to make Hume's point more subtle than it is, which is a common resort of those who hate seeing their hero Hume defamed, but the fact is that Hume made no such distinction; he said he'd never believe it of the queen even if the best and the brightest told him otherwise. It also remains (as the ice analogy showed) that Hume's point is utterly irrational, and based on nothing more than what he wants to believe possible. I agree that skepticism to such claims, initially, is not unreasonable; but skepticism to the degree Hume had it is exceptionally unreasonable. No such subtlety is found in what follows whatsoever:

No problem: "...(N)o testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish." And here is how else Hume solves that problem:

...(T)here is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of Men of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning as to serve us against all delusion in themselves; of such undaunted integrity as to place themselves beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world as to render the detection unavoidable...

[IT ALWAYS SURPRISES ME HOW CRITICAL CHRISTIANS ARE OF THIS SEQUENCE OF HUME’S THOUGHT REGARDING THE RESURRECTION, WHEN IN OTHER SITUATIONS THEY TAKE UP THE HUMEAN BATTLE FLAG QUITE NATURALLY (i.e. NON-CHRISTIAN MIRACLE CLAIMS, VIRGIN MARY APPEARANCES, MORMON TESTIMONY, ETC.); Well, too bad for this critic, he forgot to ask whether *I* was one such person. I am not. I dismiss Mormon testimony (a good example, since I have studied in such depth in this area) not on the basis of it being a miracle (let's say, Smith's First Vision) but rather because the fruit Smith bore is so rotten (eg, no matches with New World archaeology and the BoM; poor exegesis of the NT). And that means it doesn't matter to me if there was a real miracle or not. So sorry, that flag isn't mine. It's too bad the critic forgot to check the sound system before turning on his stererotype.

Christian "resurrectional" apologetics, of course, has thoroughly answered Hume on half of these points, [OH, REALLY?] Yes, really. Isn't that too bad?

and the other half are clearly little more than Hume's personal Enlightenment bigotry (Re: "good sense, education, and learning" -- yes, Hume has all the usual references to "barbarous and ignorant peoples"; [COME ON, YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE “PC” CROWD NOW, ARE YOU? BESIDES, I FIND NOTHING OFFENSIVE ABOUT THIS REFERENCE; WE SAY THE SAME THINGS NOWADAYS, WE JUST WORD THEM DIFFERENTLY] Well, sorry, I don't, not about entire groups. I'm not part of the PC crowd, but I am part of the crowd that does not appreciate pretentious sneering and gratuitous insults. Hume never even met any of these people, and he calls them ignorant based on nothing more than that they believed in something he didn't want to.

yet how much "education" does it take to see that a dead man is alive, and at any rate, what of Matthew and Paul?; [“EDUCATION” CAN BE UNDERSTOOD TO MEAN: A GENERAL DEGREE OF LEARNING (i.e. COLLEGE EDUCATION), OR A FAMILIARITY WITH THE FACTS AROUND A PARTICULAR SITUATION (FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE OF THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS SURROUNDING THE DEATH OF JESUS)] The point being what? Matt and Paul had the equal to this, and it takes no more "education" than descrobed to know that a dead man is alive, and that the dead normally do not come alive.

"celebrated part of the world" -- Palestine was a major crossroads, but it hardly makes a difference!). But all of that may have meant nothing to Hume anyway. It is quite revealing that even when he offers a hypothetical situation where these conditions are met (Hume hypothesizes a situation in which the Queen has supposedly died and come back to life), Hume admits he would be surprised, but "should not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous an event." [AND WHY IS THE UNREASONABLE??] Posturing astonishment is not an answer, but I say nothing about the inclination itself being unreasonable. It is not until later that I deem Hume unreasonable:

He would "still reply that the knavery and folly of men are such common phenomena" [EXACTLY – LESS “MIRACULOUS” – i.e. MORE PROBABLE – THAN ONE COMING BACK TO LIFE!] that he would rather believe that it was a conspiracy than a miracle. [AGAIN, WHY IS THE UNREASONABLE?] We're still not to where I said Hume was unreasonable, though I would declare that it does show more that Hume has a predisposition than that he looks at matters objectively.

O ye of little faith? Nay -- o ye of little sense, more likely. Hume was right about the knavery and folly of men -- but he forgot to include himself as a prime example. Hume laid the foundation for many moderns who take anything, no matter how crazy (Jesus was a space alien) or uninformed (McKinsey's Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy) and find it preferable to the Christian faith. [THIS DIGRESSION INTO ALTERNATE THEORIES OF JESUS THAT FOLKS HAVE PUT FORTH HARDLY ADDRESSES THE SKEPTICISM OF HUME; WHAT PEOPLE HAVE DONE WITH HIS PHILOSOPHY IS NOT HIS FAULT; JUST LIKE THE MANY MURDERS DONE IN THE NAME OF CHRISTIANITY ARE NOT CHRIST’S FAULT (OR ARE THEY? WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?)] I never said it was "his fault" that others took it up, but it is his fault for propounding it at all. In any case all who use the means are devoid of sense.

Whether that faith is right or wrong in this context is beside the point: The point is that the preference for the unreasonable, the outrageous, and the theoretical against the evidence available is nothing new. [I FIND IT IRONIC AND HILARIOUS THAT YOU, A PROPONENT OF A MAN BEING RAISED FROM THE DEAD SUPERNATURALLY, WOULD HAVE THE GUMPTION TO LABEL *ANYTHING* ‘UNREASONABLE’ AND ‘OUTRAGEOUS.’] Hume was just one major name that encouraged that line of thinking in modern Western society. Nothing here but the same circular reasoning that Hume himself propounded -- not an answer, just a re-assertion.

In recent days I have found this evaluation of Hume confirmed by a highly techincal book by John Earman, [SEE FOGELIN’S DEFENSE OF HUME ON MIRACLES FOR A SOLID RESPONSE] a professor of history and philsophy in science, titled (without any hint of embarrassment) Hume's Abject Failure. Skeptics, spare us, if you will, any idea that Earman is a raving fundy freak: Aside from being a case of genetic fallacy, Earman is himself no Christian, and says, "If I had need of Gods, they would be the Gods of the Greeks and the Romans." His motivation, rather, is to "set the record straight and frame the issues in a way that makes discussion of them more fruitful" -- as well as react to the "pretentious sneering" he perceived in Hume. Solid perhaps in the sense of a brick wall. Fogelin spends all of 14 loosely-packed pages on Earman, and part of it is spent on summary of Earman and whining that Earman describes Hume in unflattering terms (though apparently Fogelin has no problem with Hume calling people ignorant and barbarous), another part on being glad that Earman didn't commit certain mistakes found in other critics of Hume. Then more space is spent agreeing that if Earman is right about what Hume argued, then Hume is dead meat. Finally Fogelin gets down to tacks and his response runs down to claiming the Hume didn't really mean what he said. He admits Hume made "strongly stated conclusions" [45] and then makes all manner of excuses for why Hume didn't really mean what he said. In the end it is clear that what he finds are places where Hume qualified his strong statements precisely because he was at a loss to defend them as stated. In short, it demonstates the every "abject failure" Earman found in Hume, and which Hume himself had to admit to. All Fogelin shows us in the end is that Hume was wishy-washy and had committed himself to an indefensible position which he found himself forced to qualify after criticism. Yet Skeptics today continue to use Hume "straight". And Fogelin ends up childishly trying to blame Earman for taking Hume at his word when he made his conclusions; not once does it occur to him that Hume was being inconsistent because he had been backed into a corner after making foolish statements.

Earman's principle objection is much the same as my own: "An epistemology that does not allow for the possibility that evidence, whether from eyewitness testimony or from other source, can establish the credibility of a UFO landing, a walking on water, or a resurrection is inadequate." [4] I have said much the same to certain local annoyances, such as one that seems to think apologetics for Christianity are immediately ended by asking us whether we'd believe it if 500 witnesses said they saw a mouse pick up a battleship. The annoyance could never answer my question, "If indeed a mouse did pick up a battleship, how could we, by your strict criteria, ever believe it?" [EARMAN IS NOT THE FIRST TO MISS THE SUBTLETY OF HUME’S ARGUMENT; WE ARE DEALING WITH ISSUES OF PROBABILITY, NOT PROOF. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE…EARMAN, HOLDING, AND OTHER WOULD-BE CRITICS…READ HUME CLOSER!!! LET’S SAY THE EXACT SCENARIO OCCURRED. YOU SUDDENLY HAD 500 PEOPLE TELLING YOU THEY WITNESSED A MOUSE PICK UP A BATTLESHIP. WOULD YOU BELIEVE THE TALE BASED ON THEIR TESTIMONY? PROBABLY NOT. WOULD YOU INQUIRE FURTHER? I IMAGINE SO. WOULD QUESTION WHETHER OR NOT THEY WERE DECEIVED, OR DRUGGED, OR JUST PLAIN LYING? I IMAGINE YOU WOULD. ASSUMING YOU CLEARED THE 500 OF ALL THOSE CHARGES, WOULD YOU SUDDENLY “BELIEVE” THE STORY?] As noted, the creation of this "subtlety" in Hume is mere spin-doctoring of a bloodied hero. Hume was inconsistent; he was backpedalling furiously from what he found was an embarrassing position. We have read Hume closely -- that is why we see the manifest inconsistency. In terms of the battleship scene, would I believe? I would perhaps, if I asked some questions and got good answers. But Hume didn't make any leeway for doing as much as that.

Contemporary critics of Hume sensed the immediate weakness in his arguments and retorted with an example (alluded to in our quiz for Skeptics) of a prince from a tropical climate who had never seen ice. By Hume's reasoning, the prince is just as validated in not believing in ice as the modern Skeptic might be "validated" in rejecting miracle testimony. [NO, NO, NO! THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND THE EXISTENCE OF ICE ARE IN DIFFERENT ONTOLOGICAL CATEGORIES! CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS?] Utterly beside the point, childish foot stamping aside. Hume gave no leeway for different categories of ontology. Moreover, to the prince, the existence of ice would indeed be in the same ontological category, so the point remains the same.

This retort has such strength that Earman calls it an "embarrassment" and he notes Hume's efforts at sophistry in trying to evade the force of the argument [34]. Hume tried to avoid the problem by noting that ice was not outside the experience of northern peoples; Earman retorts that if this is so, then if homo sapiens arose in Africa, "there was a stage in human history where the total collective experience of the species coincided in relevant respects" with that of the prince who lived in a tropical climate. In addition, we would add that Hume as much as undermines his own argument from experience, for it is just as well to say that a resurrection was "within the experience" of the Apostles -- leaving Hume with nothing but "those stupid, gullible ancient people" left to argue about.` [IN A SENSE, YOU ARE CORRECT; BUT NO DOUBT ‘EXPERIENCE’ MUST BE JUDGED ON A SUBJECTIVE BASIS; AND IN TURN, THAT LEADS TO CERTAIN *OBJECTIVE* STATEMENTS OF PROBABILITY, SUCH AS CLAIMS REGARDING THE MIRACULOUS; I MUST SAY, I’M STILL HAVING A DIFFICULT TIME UNDERSTANDING WHY YOU THINK HUME IS THE UNREASONABLE ONE HERE; ASIDE FROM THE POINTS WHERE HIS APPROACH OFFENDS YOUR RELIGIOUS BIASES, SURELY YOU HAVE TO AGREE WITH HIS APPROACH IN A GENERAL SENSE; HOW ELSE WOULD WE EXERCISE REASON IN A WORLD FULL OF A VARIETY OF CLAIMS?] Once again, Hume was unreasonable until he found that he was embarrassed and then ended up "qualified til he died."

Likewise a failure was Hume's attempt to argue that for the prince, the existence if ice might be deduced by analogy: "If one sees a positive analogy for a solid form of water in other phase changes, why not see a positive analogy for resurrection in near death experiences, catatonic states, and the like?" [38] It is well to highlight Earman's summary statements in closing [70-1], even as he praises Hume for at least identifying an important problem and dealing with it in an interesting manner:

In 'Of Miracles,'Hume pretends to stand on philosophical high ground, hurling down thunderbolts against miracles stories. The thunderbolts are supposed to issue from general principles about inductive inference and the credibility of eyewitness testimony. But when these principles are made explicit and examined under the lens of Bayesianism, thet are found to be either vapid, specious, or at variance with actual scientific practice...[Hume] was able to create the illusion of a powerful argument by maintaining ambiguities in his claims against miracles, by the use of forceful prose and confident pronouncements, and by liberal doses of sarcasm and irony....

I find it ironic that so many readers of Hume's essay have been subdued by its eloquence...No doubt this generous treatment stems in part from the natural assumption that someone of Hume's genius must have produced a powerful set of considerations. But I suspect that in more than a few cases it also involves the all too familiar phenomenon of endorsing an argument because the conclusion is liked. There is also the understandable, if deplorable, desire to sneer at the foibles of the less enlightened -- and how much more pleasurable the sneering if it is sanctioned by a set of philosophical principles!

I couldn't (didn't) say it any better myself.

[I QUOTE FROM AN ARTICLE IN THE JOURNAL “HUME STUDIES”, ENTITLED ‘BACONIAN PROBABILITY AND HUME’S THEORY OF TESTIMONY’, FOUND AT THE FOLLOWING LINK: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Coleman/BaconianProbability.pdf ; AUTHOR DOROTHY COLEMAN WRITES: “…criticisms based on the calculus of chances are irrelevant for assessing (Hume’s) account of testimony because the model of probability on which he bases it is Baconian rather than Pascalian. The foremost advocate of Baconian probability, L.J. Cohen, has credited Hume for being the first to recognize explicitly ‘that there is an important kind of probability which does not fit into the framework afforded by the calculus of chance,’ a recognition he finds evident in Hume’s distinction between ‘probabilities arising from analogy and probabilities arising from chance or cause.’ THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION, AND EXPLAINS WHY EARMAN BELIEVES HUME’S PROCEDURES TO BE ‘at variance with actual scientific practice.’ I THINK IN LIGHT OF THE EVIDENCE, MR. HOLDING, THE CHRISTIAN THING FOR YOU TO DO WOULD BE TO POST AN APOLOGY TO HUME ON YOUR WEBSITE. I’LL EVEN WRITE IT FOR YOU: “DEAR MR. HUME, I AM PROFOUNDLY SORRY FOR MISREPRESENTING YOUR IDEAS TO THE PUBLIC (ESPECIALLY TO THOSE CHRISTIANS WHO VISIT MY SITE FREQUENTLY AND ARE LIKELY TO BELIEVE WHAT I SAY ABOUT YOU SIMPLY BECAUSE I’M A CHRISTIAN AND YOU’RE NOT). I REALIZE NOW THAT I WAS WRONG ABOUT YOUR ARGUMENTS, THAT THERE IS GOOD REASON TO BE SKEPTICAL OF EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS, AND THAT AGNOSTICISM IS NOT A CHOICE, BUT THE DEFAULT POSITION OF HUMAN BEINGS (ESPECIALLY REGARDING METAPHYSICAL MATTERS). I ALSO PROMISE TO VISIT YOUR GRAVE ONCE A YEAR AND PLAY THE BAGPIPES WHILE WEARING A KILT.]

Whatever that was about. None of this played at all in Hume when he did his bit with the queen, and it matters not to me in the least what model of probability is used. Hume is the one who ought to have apologized, but instead he dishonestly qualified his arguments until they were nothing like what they were. And now we pay for the results. He also ought to have apologized for his racist sentiments, but that would never have happened either. Hume has not been misunderstood; he has been understood perfectly as inconsistent, as one who let his biases and hatred of the religious rule his reason when he first brought out his arguments, and then found himself on the defensive when he was getting his clock cleaned. I retract nothing at all here.

This Skeptic responded further, but we see no need to reply further as he indicated that he is an adherent to the Christ-myth and is therefore proven intellectually deficient.