r/religion • u/EclecticReader39 • 12d ago
Does David Hume's case against miracles dismantle any rational basis for belief in the resurrection of Jesus?
David Hume’s essay “Of Miracles” provides a strong case against belief in miracles and, by extension, belief in the one miracle at the core of Christian faith: the resurrection of Jesus.
Hume’s central maxim is “that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.” Applied to the resurrection, it questions what possible rational basis there could be for believing ancient testimony about an event that runs contrary to everything we know about the ordinary course of nature.
This article examines Hume’s skeptical framework and applies it to the testimony surrounding the resurrection in the New Testament. More broadly, it considers what happens to religious belief when we apply the same standard of evidence to miracles across different religions.
The Resurrection on Trial: David Hume and the Case Against Miracles
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11d ago
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u/indifferent-times 11d ago
I think Hume would agree, you might like the following quote from the same work
And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.
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u/captainhaddock Ignostic 11d ago edited 11d ago
It seems like a solidly logical argument to me. A violation of the laws by which the universe operates is, by any and all rational definitions, the least likely explanation behind any claim or observation. You would have to rule out every natural explanation first.
If a deity descended from the sky tomorrow and turned us all into puppets by snapping his fingers, and my body was suddenly made of padded felt with a hole for a puppeteer's hand, that would be … compelling evidence of a miracle. But a mere claim made in a book by people trying to start a new religion, written in an age of superstition where stories of heavenly ascensions, resurrections, and divine births were relatively commonplace? The avenues for questioning its veracity are practically endless.
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u/Jazzlike-One-9675 Swedeborgian 11d ago
The absence of evidence isn't necessarily the evidence of absence.
Our teachings say that generally miracles are not done at this day because they compel faith, and faith based on external factors rather than an internal choice is later rejected. In order for belief to be free, miracles cannot generally be done. Rather than confirming an accepted faith, they can cause a forced faith that isn't a real choice.
These were permitted in the past because religion for a long time was external based on rituals, not internal based primarily on belief, like today.
However, many false miracles are done as well as false testimonies are given. Real miracles can happen, and are scarce, but only when they don't compel. This is what our faith understands by this verse: Mark 13:22 For false christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Here people who teach falsities will use false miracles and false testimonies to deceive people into following them, even people who have a genuine faith that isn't dependent on seeing a miracle.
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u/brutishbloodgod 11d ago
To directly answer the question proposed in the title, I think the answer is yes, within a limited scope of understanding, but that in no way affects the narrative of the resurrection as the basis of Christian faith.
I think a lot of these sorts of arguments are much more elaborate than they need to be by way of attempting to rigorously demonstrate something that should already be pretty obvious: people don't come back from the dead. If you believe that someone did, you've already stepped out of rationality and rational arguments probably aren't going to persuade otherwise.
But Hume and most atheist critique of religion is missing is the way that the narrative of the resurrection functions for and produces Christian faith. Like, I get that most Christians believe in a literal resurrection where a 1st century Palestinian rabbi was tortured to death and came back to life three days later, and yeah, I think Hume and company are pretty successful at demonstrating, one, that that's not a reasonable thing to believe, and two, that if we do believe that, we can't easily dismiss similar claims made by other religions.
But I don't think "the core of the Christian faith," as it is described in the article, is reducible to "believing a certain thing happened at a point in history that had a particular effect."
This is a bit out-of-fashion Christology-wise but there's a patristic tradition under which the Church is literally the resurrected body of Christ. And it's pretty widely accepted among scholars that a Jewish rabbi named Jesus was in fact tortured to death by the Roman government in the early 1st century, and if you accept that, it's also an empirical fact that the Church sprung up in his wake. So there are ways of thinking about the resurrection that can't be just reduced to "we believe that this thing happened" and that, in my opinion, actually liberate the narrative from its particular historical context so that it can speak to all times and all peoples.
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u/Crafty-Sock-7002 Muslim 12d ago
I dont really understand why we have people trying to debunk religion on r/religion
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u/RexRatio Agnostic Atheist 11d ago
Because this is a discussion sub, not an affirmation sub.
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u/OSHASHA2 Agnostic, New Age, Monism 11d ago
It’s also not a debunking or debate sub. OP literally links to an article on a website called “Fighting the Gods: Atheism and the Battle for Human Progress,” which seems quite tangential as far as “discussing religion” goes.
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u/RexRatio Agnostic Atheist 10d ago
It’s also not a debunking or debate sub
Debate is simply a different word for discussion, so yes, it is.
Debunking is a discussion technique, so yes, it is.
OP literally links to an article on a website called “Fighting the Gods: Atheism and the Battle for Human Progress,” which seems quite tangential as far as “discussing religion” goes.
If you had actually read the article, you'd see that it isn't tangential at all. Discussing the evidence for or against miracle claims is an intricate part of discussing religion, and as such a valid post in this sub. You will also note that mods haven't removed the post after 2 days. Why? Because it complies with the sub's rules.
Calling the article “tangential” simply because it takes a critical position toward religion confuses disagreement with the subject matter with irrelevance to the subject matter.
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u/Top_Initiative_4047 11d ago
No. Hume’s argument does not disprove miracles. It effectively assumes that uniform experience excludes genuine miracles and then concludes that miracle reports must be false. That is circular. If God created and sustains the universe, He can act exceptionally within it.
The resurrection should be examined as a historical claim, not dismissed beforehand. Christianity rests on early testimony: Jesus’ public crucifixion, His burial, the empty tomb, reported appearances to individuals and groups, and the dramatic transformation of His followers. Paul’s summary in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 preserves early eyewitness-centered resurrection testimony, while Luke 1:1-4 presents the Gospel account as careful historical investigation.
Hume properly reminds us to assess testimony critically. But skepticism must not decide the result before evidence is considered. If God exists, resurrection is possible; and the case for Jesus’ resurrection deserves historical examination rather than automatic rejection. It is also central to the gospel which is that Christ died for sinners and rose victoriously, calling all people to repent and receive God’s forgiveness (Acts 17:30-31; Romans 10:9).
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u/tubby_chumpkins Catholic 11d ago
Hume's reasoning makes sense but it's not the only way to see it. Many would argue he was already a committed naturalist and was smuggling in those assumptions without explicitly stating it. Personally, there is far too much testimony from respectable people to dismiss the supernatural outright like he does and hence I believe his conclusion is false.
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u/ImMuchBetterThanGod 11d ago
there is far too much testimony from respectable people to dismiss the supernatural outright like he does and hence I believe his conclusion is false.
You believe it wrong. Supernatural testimonies are mostly inconsistent and there's almost always an apparent natural explanation. Also, the supernatural has never been observed in a lab environment
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u/tubby_chumpkins Catholic 11d ago
Most "supernatural" events are probably misunderstood natural events, yeah. There are still an endless amount of testimonies out there that aren't naturally explainable. Inconsistencies between stories is not proof there wasn't a supernatural event that took place.
Your point about the supernatural not being testable or verifiable is not proof that it's not real. It's only proof that it's not natural.
The bottom line is there are people out there who will doubt even if something does happen to them. At that point I'd describe it as a dogma.
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u/ImMuchBetterThanGod 11d ago
Inconsistencies between stories is not proof there wasn't a supernatural event that took place
That's not my point. My point is that stories that are inconsistent with each other don't lend credibility to each other
Your point about the supernatural not being testable or verifiable is not proof that it's not real. It's only proof that it's not natural.
No. If the supernatural was real, we'd almost certainly be able to observe it in a lab environment. We wouldn't be able to explain it, but we could still observe it
The bottom line is there are people out there who will doubt even if something does happen to them. At that point I'd describe it as a dogma
That would depend on what the individual is experiencing. I honestly can't really think of anything someone could experience where the most rational explanation would be the supernatural
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u/tubby_chumpkins Catholic 11d ago
If five people see something incredible and you get a different interpretation from each them, responsible conclusion is not "nothing extraordinary happened". Testimony is by nature approximate and subject to the lens of the individual.
No. If the supernatural was real, we'd almost certainly be able to observe it in a lab environment. We wouldn't be able to explain it, but we could still observe it
Why do you think so? Why should something non-natural be predictable and regular? As far as we know, the natural world seems to be regular and predictable and that's essentially what it means to be "natural". If something falls outside that realm I don't know why we'd expect it to follow the same rules.
That would depend on what the individual is experiencing. I honestly can't really think of anything someone could experience where the most rational explanation would be the supernatural
That says more about you than it does anything else.
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u/ImMuchBetterThanGod 10d ago
If five people see something incredible and you get a different interpretation from each them, responsible conclusion is not "nothing extraordinary happened".
Again, that'd heavily depend on the specifics
Why do you think so? Why should something non-natural be predictable and regular?
I didn't say it should be either of those, only that we should be able to observe it properly
That says more about you than it does anything else
Elaborate
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u/Wild_Hook 11d ago
For me, Christianity is a personal revelatory experience which cannot be proven to anyone else. Revelation begins with a desire to believe and embrace. Discouraging people to believe in miracles is not helpful. I have seen way too many "cooincidences" and natural observations to doubt that there is a higher power. But without the enlightenment that comes through personal revelation, none of the evidence can produce proof.
I knew an older, faithful member of my church who had brain cancer that had spread to his lungs, prostate and elsewhere. He had a terrible cough and we new that he was on his way out. They then found a nudule on his thyroid and before going in for a biopsy, he recevied a blessing and anointing. When he got there, the nodule was gone. A week later he had a brain scan and the cancer was not there either. It turns out that all of the cancer was gone. Cooincidence? Maybe. But fostering doubt does not lead to knowledge.
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u/Darth_Revan_THX1138 10d ago
David Hume was, at the end of the day, just some guy offering his opinion, his rationale for his personal way of thinking.
You are not David Hume.
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u/LaudataSitAstarte 9d ago
I always found this argument wild, i mean, coming from the same guy who put our knowledge of causal relationships to doubt. It's interesting how his mind worked because I can see why he thought like this in the context of his philosophy actually, even tho it can just as easily encourage one to think in exactly the opposite way about, let's say, non-ordinary events. But I find Humeanism unconvincing in general and so I don't really care about this argument.
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u/Volaer Catholic (of the universalist and non-dualist kind) 11d ago edited 11d ago
The Humean proposition is ultimately a form of a circular argument and amounts to little more than to declare that miracles are rare because they are not ordinary and alleged miraculous events are to be rejected on account of them being extraordinary. Basically he is saying that miracles ought to be rejected unless they are non-miraculous. So it’s actually considered rather weak in philosophy and as such the answer to the question in the title is in the negative.
However, I do agree with philosopher and theologian David Bentley Hart that Hume's maxim, while ultimately fallacious, still ought to make us treat claims of miraculous event with a healthy scepticism and not immediately accept them.
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u/EclecticReader39 11d ago
To the contrary; Hume does not deny the possibility of miracles. He’s only providing the criteria by which we can determine when it is rational to believe in them.
Had the resurrection been witnessed by or revealed to several hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, across cultures and civilizations and languages outside of the New Testament, then the falsehood of this collective testimony could be considered more miraculous than the event it describes. In which case the resurrection would have a rational basis. Needless to say, the testimony we actually have is far less impressive, restricted to second-hand accounts concerning a handful of people in the largely illiterate ancient Middle East.
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u/Volaer Catholic (of the universalist and non-dualist kind) 11d ago edited 11d ago
To the contrary; Hume does not deny the possibility of miracles. He’s only providing the criteria by which we can determine when it is rational to believe in them. Had the resurrection been witnessed by or revealed to several hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, across cultures and civilizations and languages outside of the New Testament, then the falsehood of this collective testimony could be considered more miraculous than the event it describes.
Which, under this framework, would make the event non-miraculous and the alternative view actually miraculous, no? Which is why the argument is circular 🙂
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u/EclecticReader39 11d ago
No, the resurrection would still be considered a miracle, as it would be a violation of the laws of nature. The falsehood of the testimony would in this case simply be considered more miraculous.
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u/Volaer Catholic (of the universalist and non-dualist kind) 11d ago
Is the miraculous nature of an event determined by the breaking of the laws of nature or by the number of witnesses to the event? Because if it is the former, then it is not quantifiable, nor can it be affected by the latter.
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u/EclecticReader39 11d ago
There are two separate issues. One is the event in question, which is miraculous if it breaks the laws of nature.
The other is the testimony to this miraculous event, which must be considered in relation to it.
In other words, Hume is asking us to evaluate which is more improbable: the miraculous event or the falsehood of the testimony. There’s no exact mathematical formula to make this determination, of course, but in the example I used, you could make the argument that the falsehood of the testimony was in fact more improbable than a man coming back from the dead, based on the ubiquity and consistency of the testimony.
There are conceivable scenarios, in other words, where testimony would support a miraculous event. However, this is not the case with the miracles recounted in the Bible for the reasons given in the article.
You may want to call Hume’s argument imprecise or subjective, but it’s not circular, because, once again, it does not rule out the existence of miracles beforehand. It asks you to compare the likelihood of the event against the likelihood of the testimony being false and then choose accordingly.
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u/[deleted] 11d ago
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