Early Criticisms

• Hume’s use of the word “experience” is ambiguous, sometimes meaning an individual’s private experience, other times meaning human collective experience.
• Our limited experience of natural laws does not make it unreasonable to believe that God altered natural laws. (3) Miraculous intervention is reasonable to believe when we recognize God’s existence, God’s nature, and God’s interest in redeeming humanity.
• Contrary to Hume, it is perfectly reasonable for the Indian prince to believe that water freezes, even though his limited experience suggests otherwise.
• Experience of natural laws is not as weighty as Hume maintains since some commonly believed laws are overturned by a single experiment.
• Strong testimony of miracles can in fact outweigh our experience of consistent natural laws.
• Hume misconstrues the notion of probability when stating that we “subtract” contrary evidences from each other.
• Hume’s argument tells us only that miracles are highly unusual, which believers in miracles already acknowledge.
• The New Testament miracles were not in fact reported by ignorant people in a barbarous nation.
• Miracle testimonies from rival religions do not nullify each other; upon examination, the New Testament miracles are the only ones that are credible.
• Contrary to Hume, Muhammad never claimed to have performed miracles.
• The alleged miracle done by Vespasian is not credible since it was done in front of gullible people with a clear political aim.
• The alleged miracle at Saragossa was not thoroughly investigated by Cardinal de Retz, and it is likely that the man in question had a wooden leg.
• Hume exaggerates the number and nature of the alleged miracles at the tomb of the Abbé De Pâris; the most notable ones were either frauds or the result of natural healings.

1. Assume that no miracle ever occurred in the past and thus the concept of a miracle was indeed contrary to both individual and general experience.
2. Assume further that God chose to perform a miracle at some point in the future.
3. The unlikelihood of such a miracle does not constitute “a proof that the future would in this respect correspond to the past.”
4. Upon that event, “the evidence of testimony may be so circumstanced as to render a miracle wrought for a certain purpose, the object of rational belief.”
5. Therefore, it may be reasonable to believe second hand reports of miracles.

• Hume's Argument begs the questions: by assuming that our past experience is relevant in deciding what has happened in an unknown case, we are also assuming that nature was following its usual course (i.e., that there has been no break in the uniformity of nature).
• The evidence for natural laws, gathered when supernatural causes are absent, does not weigh against the possibility of miracles, since miracles are the result of supernatural interventions into the natural order.
• "Reasonable belief" depends on one's world-life view (e.g., a scientific one or a religious one).
• Miracles are not necessarily violations of natural law: they could be coincidences with a special significance.