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 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 and developed.
Education helped the world grow and develop and if it was not for religion and
miracle based religion then we may not have any education system. We have to
believe in miracles to help the world grow. Believing in miracles today may not
lead to such an important development, but look at what happened in the past who
know what might happen. Society just has to believe in miracles even though
there may not be any rationality behind the miracles its just something mankind
must do. I do not know what Hume's reaction would be to this kind of an argument
but I am sure he would find something wrong about it and lead us to believe that
miracles are still something that people ought not believe in. Miracles do
happen. They have happened in the past and will remain occurring in the future.
The question is not whether or not miracles exist, but whether we should believe
in them or not. Hume discusses, in "Of Miracles," many reasons why we
should not believe in such miracles for various reasons. However I have made a
counter argument of Hume's in saying that we must believe in miracles and if we
do not have any faith that they are true then society would fail and not
develop. Miracles are something that exist and are something that we have to
believe in.