Monday, October 12, 2015

Hume's Fine Line

When I first began reading this passage, I was fairly well convinced that Hume was trying to point out that miracles are simply impossible (which, by definition, they are) the way that a scientist like Richard Dawkins or Bill Nye would go about such a project. But Hume is taking on a much more difficult argument by working from the presupposition that the miracles that Jesus and Moses and other people in the Bible performed actually happened, but the more, shall we say, contemporary miracles did not. Hume walks a very fine line, as demonstrated by paragraph 6's "The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and the marvellous, and ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind" (italics are mine). The exclusion of that one italicized word would completely change the meaning of his writing.

I commented on Caleb's.

1 comment:

  1. That is true, Hume does walk a fine line between believing or not believing whether or not miracles are real.

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