Term
Hume and Religious experiences
What is Humes definition of a miracle? |
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Definition
David Hume saw miracles as violations of the laws of nature (how the universe works). Incidences of miracles like the Virgin Birth is an example of an event which suggests that something happened which broke the laws of nature. |
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Term
Hume and Religious experiences
Are Hume's arguments against miracles valid? |
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Definition
Hume's argument of the Lack of Probability states that the occurence of miracles is so rare that it's irrational and illogical to believe they occur at all because evidence collected shows the laws of nature cannot be broken.
Hume's Practical argument Against Miracles states that miracles happen (if they do at all) to uneducated, ignorant, and barbarous people, and are false because they fail to prove the religions they come from are in fact true. |
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Term
Hume and Religious experiences
Are Hume's arguments against miracles valid? |
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Definition
| The arguments have been influential in philosophical history, but they aren't the final word. Many philosophers such as Richard Swinburne have supported the idea of God performing and acting miracles. |
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Term
Richard Swinburne and Religious Experiences
What is Swinburne's argument on miracles? |
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Definition
Swinburne, like Hume argues that natural laws are based on people's experiences of observing the world. However he gives two points separate from Hume's thinking:
- Laws of nature communicate a general picture of how things work as simply as possible.
- However they are corrigible - the best descriptions of how the world works that we currently have which can change or be modified if a new discovery is made.
Swinburne then suggests that a miracle is an occurence of a non-repeatable counter instance to a law of nature. |
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Term
Richard Swinburne and Religious Experiences
What is Swinburne's evidence for miracles occurring? |
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Definition
Swinburne considers what evidence would be needed to support beliefs of miracles occurring and challenges arguments put forward by people like Hume in the process. Hume's argumet on educated people for example doesn't consider what constitutes an ignorant and barbarous person or what level of education is required for an educated person - and people who have familiarities with science still claim to experience miracles.
His evidence to support miracles is as follows: having memories of our experiences, people providing testimony about their experiences, physical traces of the event (e.g. an examining a person who has been healed) and understanding modern science and what is thought physically impossible or most improbable.
Swinburne then goes on to say that after the evidence is identified, you have to assess it and deduce a conclusion and use factors in discussions about interpreting events in the past. He divides the arguments into main and subsidiary. Main, where you accept as many sources of evidence as possible, and subsidiary where different sources of evidence should be consistent, should have empirical reliability and should not be rejected if relevant without good reason. |
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