Hume on Reason
20 February 2009 by Bob
Pretty interesting article in The Guardian:
So what Hume’s argument boils down to, then, is that we have never had any good reason to believe that a miracle has occurred, and nor are we likely to. But this is not the same as saying dogmatically that no miracle ever has occurred. This explains the final paragraph of the essay, in which Hume seems to simultaneously clobber Christianity over head and give it a reprieve. [...] Believers may agree that reason is indeed insufficient, which is why you need faith. Hume agrees, but in spelling out what this faith means, he may make life a little uncomfortable [...] You can believe in miracles as a matter of faith, not reason. But you have to realise that faith does not simply plug a gap where reason fears to tread; it actively goes against all that reason tells us.
I just like that last line.
It’s not that you’re “stopping short” of something in some way.
It’s that you’re actively going against something — which, I think, is called “being irrational”…
(And I’m sure we can find something like this in American newspapers — right?)
20 February 2009, on 11:16 am
Just as some like to make their faith more palatable to reason by falsely believing that miracles need not defy the laws of nature
I’m not sure I agree with Julian Baggini here. People of faith often call it miraculous when a disease disappears for no apparent reason, or someone avoids dying in an accident when they miss their scheduled airline flight, or money is found in the street when most needed. All these types of “miracles” do not defy the laws of nature. It depends on what one calls a “miracle”.
20 February 2009, on 3:15 pm
When it comes to matters of fact, the only thing we can rely on is evidence, of our own senses and that of others.
I have had Christians tell me that evidence isn’t always something tangible, and if they “sense” something as matter of fact, then it is…for them and would be for us non-believers too, if we come to “sense” the same “evidence”.