Hume - The Incoherence of Religious Skepticism

[Uber Genius]

Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding X, i, 86

"Upon the whole, then, it appears that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less to a proof; and that even if it did amount to a proof it would be opposed by another proof derived from the very nature of the fact it is trying to establish.

Hume concludes, "...so we may accept it as a maxim that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a legitimate foundation for any such system of religion."

We know miracles are impossible therefore anyone who is making a report of a miracle is unreliable.

Therefore all reports of miracles are unreliable.

Hume discounts witnesses that report data that don't comport with the existing data. Ignoring his own "Problem of induction," he states all swans ever seen in the last several centuries are white. Any sailor, coming from say Australia, with a report of a Black swan stands in opposition to those data and must be giving an unreliable report. This deleted data that would have allow the naturalist to truly state, "Swans can be black or white in coloring," as opposed to Hume's method which forces naturalists to misrepresent the data.

Empiricists recognized that Hume's ham-handed attempt at producing skeptics of miracles and other unaccounted phenomena, were not just circular but destroyed the very thing that made the scientific method so strong! Namely, the best explanation for the data must change over time to account for new data.

Because he preceded Bayes by a few years, Hume can be forgiven his ignorance of same. What Bayes Theorem states is that we can compare the probability of M given the evidence and background information [Pr(M|E&B)] with the probability of not-M given the evidence and background information [Pr(not-M|E&B)]:

Pr(R|E&B)
------------------------
Pr(not-R|E&B)



So the question Hume should have been asking (given Bayes), is, "What are the chances of witnesses, and experts (doctors), reporting miracles knowing that they would be openly mocked as liars, charlatans and fools?" This applies even more significantly with testimonies of Jesus' resurrection. Since testimonies often resulted in death, not just being outcast.

So what is the probability that sailors told the truth about seeing black swans in Australia/ the probability of other explications of their reports of seeing black swans (e.g. Mass hallucinations, or a black swan conspiracy)

Within a few years George Campbell, A dissertation on miracles, p. 31-32, London: T. Tegg, 1824

"He [Hume] rests his case against belief in miracles upon the claim that laws of nature are supported by exceptionless testimony, but testimony can only be accounted exceptionless if we discount the occurrence of miracles."

Every major step forward in science was met with both legitimate skepticism and Humean skepticism. Max Planck's Quantum Mechanics, Einstein's special, and general theories of relativity, were rejected by most top scientist of their day due to Humean reasoning rather than a close examination of the data.

Someone tell me the irony in Hume's circular reasoning.

Please comment on similar problems with Hume's concepts of space, time, external objects, personal identity over time, lack of free will, and his view that causation in not found in the external world.

Non-theists, by all means join the conversation and let us know if you share my skepticism of Hume's method. If not, not why not?