David Hume's Philosophical Argument for Miracles

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Hello all,

I currently am struggling on a study guide question for my Philosophy exam, and typically if I don't know something I look through the internet, my texts, and any sort of forum or yahoo answer type thing to help get a general idea. David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion was a hard novel for me to understand but I managed to do well on my essay on it. Anyway for this question I need to understand his argument for miracles and any sort of post or help will help me in understanding and being able to make up a response for the question.

Any information on David Hume's Miracle argument will be useful for my understanding, more specifically the question is this:

4) Suppose I claim to have witnessed a miracle while stuck in traffic on I-95, where the sun was setting in the east (instead of the west). I also claim that this miracle was due to God and that it is proof of his existence. What would David Hume say about my “proof” of God’s existence? Explain your answer


I am currently struggling, doing what I can to answer the question, going through various articles on the internet as well as reading the book itself. I figured if I asked a question on Yahoo answers it would take too long to answer the question but I decided maybe narutobase could maybe help me out. I'd appreciate it if anybody knew that they were talking about or could just give me help in general on the topic or the whole question. Thank you.
 

Snape Uchiha

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Hume would say that nothing besides pure math can be proven with absolute certainty. If the sun set in the east, that would be based on our perception of reality and not a real proof.
 
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Scooby Doo

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It's either you are lying or your mind was playing tricks on you. The chances of a miracle happening are close to zero,it's more probable that you lie or you are wrong,as history proves it: noone else ever saw the Sun setting in the east.

Personally I'd add that if a miracle really did happen, then -if we define miracle as the breach of natural laws- then the law we assumed was incorrectly established but then the miracle is not a miracle anymore,simply we have to revise our definitions/paradigms.
 
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