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David Hume (1711-1776)
offered good philosophical arguments against miracles that still resonate
today. His arguments focused on the unreliability of
human testimony on behalf of miracles. He did not live in a technological age
like ours with cell phone cameras, which are also GPS location devices,
security cameras, dash cams, x-ray technology, DNA evidence, CAT scans, and so
on. So he didn’t have the capability we do to establish miracles, or debunk
them.
In
our day the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) offered a
one-million-dollar prize “to anyone who can show, under proper observing
conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or
event.” From 1964, when it first offered such a challenge, until 2015 when they
stopped doing it, no challenger had even gotten past the preliminary test.[1]
That should settle the question of miracles, shouldn’t it?
One
might ask why we even need philosophical arguments. Why not just teach
how science works and why the methods of science are the best we have to get at
the truth? In a real sense then, we don’t need philosophical arguments, per se,
including those of Hume.[2] However, since we should do everything
possible to help more people live in a reality based life, given so many possible
existential threats to life on our planet,[3] we should do what we can to
reach them. In other words, practically speaking, some believers might be
philosophically attentive to listen to Hume, rather than to Darwin, Sagan,
Shermer, Nickel, or Dawkins.[4]
One
of the best philosophical arguments that help believers acknowledge the value
of sufficient evidence, objective evidence, scientific evidence, is found in my
book the Outsider Test for Faith. It challenges believers to do unto their
own religious faith what they already do to the religious faith’s they reject.
It helps believers to accept the requirement for sufficient evidence. But it
goes on to teach believers what it means to accept that requirement by forcing
them to consider how they reasonably examine the other religious faiths they
reject. It teaches them to apply the same single standard across the board to
their own religious faith.[5]
Debunking Christianity
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