This page contains discussion notes for David Hume and a few links that will provide you with some background information about Hume.

http://www.epistemelinks.com/Pers/HumePers.htm

  http://books.mirror.org/gb.hume.html

http://www.utm.edu/research/hume/hume.html: This one contains contemporary commentaries about Hume's views on religion.

There are obvious ways to refer back to the reading from John Locke since Hume is a strict empiricist:

• Immediate evidence of our senses is the most certain source of knowledge [F-6]
• "firm and unalterable experience" has established the laws of nature [F-7]

Notice how careful Hume is regarding our reasoning about events and relations between events:

• consistent past experience produces the most certainty regarding a future event
• where there are opposing observations or experiments, one calculates probability
• You might work out his general maxim on F-6:
  "no objects have any discoverable connection together…all the inferences, which we can draw from one to another, are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction" [Is this true? Remember that Hume only accepts immediate evidence from the senses. What's the difference between coincidence, correlation, and causation?]

Hume is concerned with the problem of belief in miracles and he presents a two-pronged argument:

1. [Part I] Even if you grant that the testimony of witnesses amounts to proof, no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle:

1. by definition, a miracle violates the laws of nature
2. laws of nature rest on uniform experience, and uniform experience amounts to a proof
3. therefore, you have mutually contradictory proofs that cancel each other.

2. [Part II] No testimony of witnesses ever amounts to proof of a miracle:

1. One can always doubt the good sense, education, and integrity of witnesses
   1. If we're trusting memory, honesty, fear of shame&emdash;how much credit should we grant to eyewitness reports?
   2. What other factors affect the credibility of human testimony?

1. When it comes to miracles, we become strangely irrational [F-8 ]
   • Why are we so attracted to mysterious events and stories of miracles?
   • What happens when you combine "the spirit of religion" with our ordinary love of wonder?
   • This is one of the first indications that Enlightenment reason might run into trouble with the human passions, "heated imagination," or an eloquence that appeals to emotion and overrides ordinary common sense.

    

2. Most of the stories of supernatural and miraculous events come from ignorant and barbarous nations or our own equally ignorant and barbarous ancestors
   • If miracles are the events that mark the founding of popular religions, can we account for the fact that there are no more oracles, omens, and miracles in our more "enlightened" day?

Further discussion:

Are you convinced by Hume's arguments? Should an enlightened person refuse to believe in the extraordinary, the marvelous, the miraculous?

Are there any flaws in strict empiricism? Does it provide a sufficient basis for knowledge?

What would you do if you personally witnessed a miracle? [What would Hume recommend?]

Are popular religions based on stories of miracles as Hume claims?

Is faith a miracle? Is faith reasonable?