hume
In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume emphasizes his belief that all knowledge is based upon our own experience. The foundation of Christianity is based on the testimony of the Apostles, who supposedly witnessed the miracles of the Savior, Jesus. Through these miracles the Savior proved his divine mission and thus, the backbone for Christianity was formed. The testimony of the Apostles is not knowledge based upon our own experience, but rather on the experiences others claimed they had. Hume admits that using experience as the only guide in reasoning concerning factual matters is not infallible. He offers an example. "One who in our climate should expect better weather in any week of June than in one of December would reason justly and conformably to experience, but it is certain that he may happen, in the event, to find himself mistaken. However, we may observe that in such a case he would have no cause to complain of experience, because it commonly informs us beforehand of the uncertainty by that contrariety of events which we may learn from a diligent observation" (Hume 74). In concerning matters of fact, there are certain degrees of assurance, in all essence, probability. It is more probable that one would find be
tter weather in June than in December. Based on the probability, the wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. Hume offers the example of an experiment where there are two possible outcomes, let's call them outcome A and outcome B. Furthermore, outcome A and outcome B are opposite experiences whereby one destroys the other if proven to be true. If the experiment were run two hundred times and outcome A was observed one-hundred and ninety-nine times and outcome B was observed only once, one could believe with much assurance that outcome A is the true. However, if outcome A was observed one hundred and twenty-five times and outcome B was observed seventy-five times, one cannot believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that outcome A is true. Hume states that, "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience that can possibly be imagined" (Hume 78). All of our lives we have experienced nature and a very insignificant part of the population can ever say that they observed a miracle, so little in fact, just as outcome B was observed in the first instance of the example stated above, there is no reason to doubt nature and accept miracles. Since a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, both nature and miracles can not exist without disproving the other. It is not a miracle if a seemingly healthy man were to die all of the sudden because that kind of death has been observed throughout the ages enough times to warrant it as true. But it would be a miracle if that dead man we
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Approximate Word count = 1116
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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