Theism vs. Atheism: An Analysis by David Hume

The question of whether or not God exists has been the focus of philosophers, theologians, and religious scientists’ disputes. The competition between theism and atheism is thus formed. The famous philosopher David Hume has a very important position for having provided a strong rebuttal argument on this issue. He once wrote a book titled An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; in his argument “Against Miracle,” he presents his own view of miracle. Hume concludes that he cannot prove whether miracles exist or do not exist. He did not care about that. In his argument Hume constructed a rebuttal argument of miracles in which he says that the miracle offer weak evidence to support belief in God. He concludes that testimony of miracles has never amounted to a probability. In this article we will try to explain this in more detail.

Hume thinks that belief in miracles is like any other thing one could believe in, belief in a miracle needs to rely on the evidence. This evidence can rely on our sensory experience. He noted that when we determine whether the evidence of a miracle is reliable, the reason we trust eyewitnesses and historians is not because of our innate perception between the evidence, it is because we often find our past experience is similar to what we see now. The more evidence of which we are confident decides to, the greater extent what we will believe, we accept the one that has more of an advantage in evidence to decide. However, Hume says that if you want to verify the truth is rarely what we observed, the experiment will be competition and difficult. One of them would undermine the effectiveness of the other.

Hume gives an example in which someone tells you that he saw a guy revived. You have to consider whether this man lied to you or whether he talked about the actual things happened. We need to consider which one is more likely to happen. We need to weigh the one against the other, and finally abandoned the question when there is little effective evidence. When we consider each miracle in the ordinary life of things, we attempt to determine the probability that a miracle has occurred, but it is always lesser than the probability that it has not: it must be. Miracles are always rare, statistically improbable events. At the same time, Hume points out that the miracles appear opposite to our consistent experiences. Hume says that everyone will die, this is a law of nature. But the miracle is something we can argue will prevent these natural laws from existing. In other word, Hume claims that there is never have good reason to believe that a miracle has occurred, because miracle themselves violate the law of nature.

Hume’s article also shows his examination of the past history of miracle. He points out that when people evaluate a miracle, the influence of vanity and pleasure is brought to their sense of miracle. He suggests that in history, because a miracle is a very strange thing, miracles awoke surprise and amazed passion in people. Because miracles give people a pleasant mood, so it arouses in people a tendency to believe those events. Even though some people cannot directly enjoy this happiness and do not believe in miracles, but they are also willing to spread this happiness indirectly, because disseminate this message will make other envy them. Also, the religionist may also be the one who is spread the miracle rumor, because they want to gratify his own vanity. Overall, people have always believed and spread all kinds of strange rumors. Such a particularly high situation of the unexplainable rumors in history is defined as miracles. He also mentioned that the contents of the history of miracle rumors are mostly come from the savage ignorance of ethnic groups. Their ancestral knowledge of their miracle has no consistent evidence to confirm a miracle that they have mentioned empirical results to those of natural causes. In the past society people lacked the ability to identify such wired things. Hume stresses that he denies the history of those left behind as evidence of miracles he felt the miracle is a come from those curiosity, ignorance, and gullible people.

Meanwhile, Hume proposed four criteria for credible testimony of things likely to happen. Hume suggests that not experiencing of miracle are similar to the object that we have already experience, the most common thing always need to be the most likely to happen. He suggests that when the argument based on the most miraculous observations of experience, a miracle should have to convince the rational of the miracle’s possibility. Second, he mentioned the need for any miracle to be trusted when enough trusted people confirmed, and "trusted person" here refers to the wise observer rather than fanatical believers. Hume also mentions these wise observers must also have a lot of prestige, because if these people have a great reputation, they will be afraid and worried about their own fake give them great loss. Fourth, Hume believes a miracle must happen in public, because only in the presence of the public in front of everyone. This makes sure liars and con artists cannot tell lies or attempt hoaxes. Even if they tell lies, they would easily be found out.

Though Hume’s description of the testimonial evidence of miracle, I think Hume's point of view is something we need to learn. We should be screened for information, while another anomaly of unknown origin information should be denied. Miracle is very magical thing, but with Hume, I think we should not believe a miracle can prove the existence of God. These examples of miracle prove humans a strong tendency to believe incredible things, so I think we should reasonably suspect that all such legends may be possible false. As mentioned, many counterfeit miracles, prophecy, and supernatural events in each era have been debunked by contrary evidence or considered obviously absurd. With the era of progress and development of science and technology, we have a lot of experience and evidence to prove or disprove those miracle. The world progresses, humanity continues to grow, I prefer to believe that everything can be interpretation by our experience or our knowledge. And I think those miracle are just something that we have not yet discovered.