An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Hume addresses the possibility of miracles along with evidence for Christianity, which he calls “less than the evidence for the truth of our senses” (79). Experience is not the only trustworthy guide in these matters and “is not altogether infallible” (79). When it comes to the truth of things, the probability of what is more likely to occur must always be the arbiter between one’s experience and another’s testimony.

A miracle subverts the common course of natural events—otherwise it would not be called a miracle. Logically, the repeated, experiential knowledge of a miracle argues against its existence, since miracles are rare. Hume discusses how some so-called miracles directly contradict others. One would have to deny the existence of miracles for some groups and affirm them for others, pushing the likelihood of miraculous events even further down.

Human beings always want to confirm what is dramatic and novel—“the gazing populace, receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition, and promotes wonder” (91).

In the past, philosophy had sprung from an era and “country of freedom and toleration” (96). Persecutions of philosophies and philosophers arise from passion and emotion, not rational objection and consideration. In an imagined dialogue between a friend and Hume, the conversation involves a discussion on the creation of the world and the apparent design of the universe, leading the religious philosophers to ask “if such a glorious display of intelligence could proceed from the fortuitous concourse of atoms” (98) rather than the happenstance of chance.