Miracles.

Exposition: Hume addresses that its not reasonable to believe in a miracle on the testimony of another person because 1. Because people lie. If there is something at stake to make one seem greater than the other. 2. Most testimonies of miracles occur in undeveloped countries by ignorant and barbarous people. (example the Indian prince, very peculiar instance) 3. Contradiction of religions. Whatever is true in one religion (example of the Muslim prophet, Muhammad) may not apply to another religion. Walking contradictions of one another 4. The element of surprise, positive feeling of being the second hand auditor. (gossip?) Examples: Alexander, Queen Elizabeth, Wise man seems to proportion his beliefs in accordance with evidence; weighs out the more probable outcome. What is a miracle? Miracle is a violation of the laws in nature. Justification and proof must be also miraculous or even better in nature. Uniform experience of natural law outweighs the testimony of any alleged miracle. Objection : There are exceptions in the ways to believe testimonies of the miracles. Since not every person can experience miracles the only proof of a miracle is through the testimony. Since we have the definition of a miracle, the mentioning of the miracles go way back in time, we cannot disprove of their happening. Miracles cant be proven by science because they purely go against the laws of nature therefore the only evidence of the occurrence can happen from passing of words. Miracles cant only be expressed by observation or experience because you would have to be in the right place at the right time. The probability of such happening is very slim due to the spatial arrangements of the world. (Miracles can only sound absurd if you take God out of the equation?) People have to be predisposed to believing in the testimony. Why would a person lie when it come to miracles? it is usually a once in the lifetime event therefore it cannot be proven scientifically and therefore the testimonies is the only available source of happenings, like -history (we cannot for the fact know what actually happened but we still believe it by the old storytelling event).

-anthropology -storytelling (passing of the wisdom) you cant help but believe. Religion: miraculous events tend to happen in different locations. Different location, different consequences and a way of living may result in different faiths. Since we dont know all the laws of nature miraculous events happen every day but we are not aware of them. Testimonies give us the direction of life ever since we are brought into this world so why should we disregard the miracles? Intelligent man sure weighs the experiences and the probability (scale) however, since we are speaking of the miracle we cant really reason about miracles because they already go against reason and laws of nature. Intelligent man however can see what they have observed and can weed out the happening of miracles from the normal state of mind. It would not apply to resurrection or healing of the limb. Potential response: Blackburn: with Pascal wager, metaphysical point of view. Reason and premises, using the deductive possibility.