Ryan Roof Essays - Miracles, Of Miracles, David Hume, The Miracles

Ryan Roof In David Humes 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 Humes strongest argument is that he claims there is no credibility to the testimony behind the miracles. In Humes 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 r eligion 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 and their miracles. Even though Hume has a good argument, one could make an argument that Hume is wrongly saying that we ought not to believe in religions based on miracles. Religion is a major part of society. The majority of the world has faith in a religion and it thought to believe in miracles. Also religion has helped the world grow to where it is today and if Hume says that we should not have even believed in religion, then society would not have grown and developed into various civilizations. Religion brings mass amount of people together, and most of the time they believe in the same miracle. In history the church was the main government and also in charge of the education. Now if the miracle that brought all these people together never were believed in we would never have had any basis for government or any basis for education. Due to the church educating the people, eventhough it was few at first, there would not have been many sciences developed or maybe philosophy would not have come about. Since the church united the people and educated them, then indirectly the miracles on which they all believed in helped the education process. David Hume says that we ought not believe in miracles, but if people did not believe in them, like Hume says to do, then the world would not have grown