FREE ESSAY ON RYAN ROOF

RYAN ROOF

In David Hume's paper "Of Miracles," Hume presents a various number of arguments
concerning why people ought not to believe in any miracles. Hume does not think that
miracles do not exist it is just that we should not believe in them because they have no
rational background. One of his arguments is just by definition miracles are
unbelievable. And have no rational means in believing miracles. Another argument is that
most miracles tend to come from uncivilized countries and the witnesses typically have
conflicts of interest and counterdict each others experiences. Both of these arguments
are valid however they tend to be weak. I think that Hume's strongest argument is that he
claims there is no credibility to the testimony behind the miracles. 
In Hume's argument he says "that there is no testimony for any, even those which have not
been expressly detected, that is not opposed by an infinite number of witnesses; so that
not only the miracle destroys the credit of the testimony, but the testimony destroys
itself." To make this clear Hume uses religious matters. Many religions use miracles as a
foundation. "Every miracle, therefor, pretended to have been wrought in any of these
religions as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is
attributed; so has it the same force, though bore indirectly, to overthrow every other
system." If the miracles try to destroy a system, a religion, it destroys the credit of
the miracles themselves, and the system in which they were established. Since most
religions are based on miracles and try to destroy each other with contrary miracles and
then we as humans have no reasoning on which miracle to believe in. Therefore what I
think that Hume is trying to say is that for a religion to be credible it must not be
based on miracles. This argument is seen by society to be far fetched, because most
people have a certain belief in a certain religion and have somewhat a belief in
miracles, but Hume has a good argument. He says that people should not believe in
religions that are based on miracles because they have no credibility. Miracles
themselves are thought to have weak credibility because the majority of the people in the
society think that they are false. However there are many people that believe in miracles
in one way or another. Either directly or indirectly. If you affiliate yourself with a
religion that is based on miracles then you are indirectly a believer in miracles. This
is what Hume would think and also he would say that you should not believe in the
miracles because they are the basis of your religion and have no credibility due to the
fact that the religion is trying to destroy another religion and their miracles. 
Even though Hume has a good argument, one could make an argument that Hume is wrongly
saying that we ought not to believe in religions based on miracles. Religion is a major
part of society. The majority of the world has faith in a religion and it thought to
believe in miracles. Also religion has helped the world grow to where it is today and if
Hume says that we should not have even believed in religion, then society would not have
grown and developed into various civilizations. Religion brings mass amount of people
together, and most of the time they believe in the same miracle. In history the church
was the main government and also in charge of the education. Now if the miracle that
brought all these people together never were believed in we would never have had any
basis for government or any basis for education. 
Due to the church educating the people, eventhough it was few at first, there would not
have been many sciences developed or maybe philosophy would not have come about. Since
the church united the people and educated them, then indirectly the miracles on which
they all believed in helped the education process. David Hume says that we ought not
believe in miracles, but if people did not believe in them, like Hume says to do, then
the world would not have grown and developed. Education helped the world grow and develop
and if it was not for religion and miracle based religion then we may not have any
education system. We have to believe in miracles to help the world grow. Believing in
miracles today may not lead to such an important development, but look at what happened
in the past who know what might happen. Society just has to believe in miracles even
though there may not be any rationality behind the miracles its just something mankind
must do. 
I do not know what Hume's reaction would be to this kind of an argument but I am sure he
would find something wrong about it and lead us to believe that miracles are still
something that people ought not believe in. 
Miracles do happen. They have happened in the past and will remain occurring in the
future. The question is not whether or not miracles exist, but whether we should believe
in them or not. Hume discusses, in "Of Miracles," many reasons why we should not believe
in such miracles for various reasons. However I have made a counter argument of Hume's in
saying that we must believe in miracles and if we do not have any faith that they are
true then society would fail and not develop. Miracles are something that exist and are
something that we have to believe in.