David Hume and the probability of miracles
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (3):167-182 (1998)
| Abstract | I examine Hume’s proposal about rationally considering testimonial evidence for miracles. He proposes that we compare the probability of the miracle (independently of the testimony) with the probability that the testimony is false, rejecting whichever has the lower probability. However, this superficially plausible proposal is massively ignored in our treatment of testimonial evidence in nonreligious contexts. I argue that it should be ignored, because in many cases, including the resurrection of Jesus, neither we nor Hume have any experience which is at all relevant to assigning a prior probability to the alleged event | |||||||||
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