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Even If Hume Is Right, We Needn't Be Constrained By Testimony Alone When It Comes to Identifying The Occurence Of A Miracle

7/30/2012

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The following points may seem so obvious and straightforward that they are not even worth mentioning.  However, in my experience, this is generally not been the case.  Hume's in principle and in fact arguments against identifying the occurence of a miracle ONLY CONSIDER HUMAN TESTIMONY as a source of justification for believing in the occurence of some miracle, and it neglects the comparative probability of naturalistic explanations for the SPECIFIC EVIDENCE in a SPECIFIC case.  Although it is simple to demonstrate that Hume's in principle argument against the identification of a miracle based ONLY on human testimony is fallacious, I think I agree with Hume that at best or in fact, human testimony ALONE leaves us agnostic as to the occurence of some miracle unless we saw it ourselves.  However, we need not restrict ourselves to human testimony alone when considering the evidence on offer for the occurence of some miracle; to do so seems rather foolish actually.  Indeed, consider the case for the resurrection defended by somebody like William Lane Craig.  Does Craig take the approach that the NT is generally historically reliable, and therefore innocent until proven guilty, and that since the NT testifies to the occurence of the resurrection that we should believe it?!  Of course not.  Hume's in principle argument has already been shown by Earman to be demonstrably fallacious, and I want to submit that Hume's in fact argument is a straw man and/or red herring in that it UNECCESARILY and WRONGLY circumsribes what counts as evidence for the occurence of miracle to amount to the following:
'Some person or peoples claimed that a miracle occured; we should assume that their testimony is innocent until guilty; and since human testiomny counts prima facie as evidence in favor of some miracle, on the basis of such huamn testimony we are warranted in believing in the occurence of some miracle.'  This dainty little premise is so easy for a 'skeptic' to dig into that it is no wonder Hume's in fact argument has survived as long as it has.  Instead of getting off track and going to our graves talking only about human testimony why not assume that the testimony to the resurrection is guilty until proven innocent.  Then on that basis, shoulder the burden of proof of establishing what facts we can using the Critertia of Authenticity (which William Lane Craig does with respect to the empty tomb, the post mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples belief).  Then realize that the posterior probability of the resurrection hypothesis can still be well above .5 so long as we do not fallaciously and lazily ignore doing the hard work of testing competing naturalistic alternative hypotheses to the resurrection hypothesis (which Hume certainly did).  What you find is that you must multiply the probabilities of the naturalistic alternatives which produces a quick and dramatic reduction of the probability of (-R/B) x (-R/B&E) which in turn means that even if the probability of the resurrection hypothesis on our background evidence and the specific evidence is very low, the posterior probability of the resurrection hypothesis can still be very high.  Moreover, let us also point out the obvious but incredibly powerful point that William Lane Craig's case for the resurrection is an inference to the best explanation that involves facts which provide independent confirmation in addition to 'mere' human testimony to the occurence of the resurrection.  Let me repeat that, although William Lane Craig's case for the resurrection includes human testimony, it doesn't force us, or leave us hanging by asking us to TRUST that testimony in and of itself since it presupposes that that testimony is guilty until proven innocent, and since it includes facts that allows us to TEST  that human testimony (the empty tomb, the origin of the disciples belief, and post-mortem appearances) to determine whether the original claim under consideration is better than any naturalistic alternative which is very unique in human history!  So, rather than being in the awful situation of arguing: the NT says it and I believe it; these facts then provide a check on 'mere human testimony' for those of us who weren't there to witness this alleged miracle.  Thus, Hume's straw man in fact argument is also fallacious, and though interesting and important for those who defend the occurence of a miracle  by relying ONLY on the following premise (Hume's premise): 'Some person or peoples claimed that a miracle occured; we should assume that their testimony is innocent until guilty; on the basis of such testimony we are warranted in believing in the occurence of some miracle' we need to spend to much time considering it, we need not tarry to long on it since no part of that premise is assumed in arguing for the resurrection today.   Indeed, the reason we either do not believe, or withhold belief in other 'supernatural' claims is either because we can think of at least one plausible naturalisitic alternative (i.e. presence of a ghost in the room and modern neuropsychology), the evidence being offered is MERELY 'straight testimony' which presumes the above premise that Hume rightly attacks, the available evidence doesn't allow us to TEST the testimony to the 'supernatural' claim from a skeptical point of view to arrive at a conclusion for ourselves, or some combination of these.  However, none of these criticisms applies to the resurrection.
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A Response To The Devil's Lying Wonders

6/14/2012

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Can Testimony Ever Establish Or Identify The Occurence Of A Miracle For A Non-Eyewitness?

6/12/2012

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bayesian_analysis_of_the_cumulative_effects_of_independent_eyewitness_testimony_for_the_resurrection_of_jesus_christ.pdf
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Are Miracles 'Violations of the Laws of Nature?'

2/15/2012

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Taken from Reasonable Faith 3rd Ed.
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20 Questions about Hume's 'Of Miracles' by Peter Millican

2/15/2012

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Does Peter Millican's Response to Earman's Book Show that Hume's In Principle Argument is Correct After All? The answer is no.

2/15/2012

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I put this question to Millican in an e-mail and here is my question and his response:
ME: Hello Dr. Millican,
I am a philosophy student from America, and I had a question that I would really appreciate your help with.  I am having difficulty understanding how your reply to Earman’s book, Hume’s Abject Failure would apply to the following critique of Hume that William Lane Craig has made in another context:

”When we talk about the probability of some event or hypothesis A, that probability is always relative to a body of background information B. So we speak of the probability of A on B, or of A with respect to B.

So in order to figure out the probability of the resurrection, let B stand for our background knowledge of the world apart from any evidence for the resurrection. Let E stand for the specific evidence for Jesus’ resurrection: the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances, and so on.  Finally, let R stand for Jesus’ resurrection. Now what we want to figure out is the probability of Jesus’ resurrection given our background knowledge of the world and the specific evidence in
this case.


B = Background knowledge
E = Specific evidence (empty tomb, postmortem
appearances, etc.)
R = Resurrection of Jesus
Pr (R/B & E) = ?

Pr (R/B&E)=                                  Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/B&R)
                                    _________________________________
                            Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/B&R) + Pr (not-R/B) × Pr (E/B& not-R)



Pr (R/B) is called the intrinsic probability of the resurrection. It tells how probable the resurrection is given our general knowledge of the world. Pr (E/B&R) is called the explanatory power of the resurrection hypothesis. It tells how probable the resurrection makes the evidence of the empty tomb and so forth. These two factors form the numerator of this ratio. Basically, Pr (not-R/B) × Pr (E/B& not-R) represent the intrinsic probability and explanatory power of all the naturalistic alternatives to Jesus’ resurrection. The probability of the resurrection could still be very high even though the Pr(R/B) alone is terribly low. Hume just ignores the crucial factors of the probability of the naturalistic alternatives to the resurrection [Pr(not-R/B) × Pr(E/B& not-R)]. If these are sufficiently low, they outbalance any intrinsic improbability of the resurrection hypothesis. Bayes has the form of x/x-y which means that as the explanatory power of the resurrection tends toward 1, and as the explanatory power of the naturalistic explanations tend toward zero, then any initial intrinsic improbability can be overcome.”

Would you agree with Craig on this?

Thank you,

Kevin

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Hume's 4 'In Fact' Objections to Identifying a Miracle

1/13/2012

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Hume supplies four reasons, which are a catalogue of typical Deist objections to miracles, why in fact the evidence for miracles is so negligible: (1) No miracle in history is attested by a sufficient number of men of good sense and education, of unimpeachable integrity so as to preclude deceit, of such standing and reputation so that they would have a good deal to lose by lying, and in sufficiently public a manner. (2) People crave the miraculous and will believe absurd stories, as the multitude of false miracles shows. (3) Miracles only occur among barbarous peoples. (4) All religions have their own miracles and therefore cancel each other out in that they support irreconcilable doctrines.

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Review of Richard Fogelin's Book, A Defense of Hume on Miracles by Tim McGrew

12/17/2011

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Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

11/25/2011

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Would Miracles Actually Count Against the Existence of God & Responding to Leibniz' 4 Objections?

11/22/2011

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Christine Overall has argued: Overall (1985) argues for the more radical contention that a miracle would count as evidence against the existence of God, on three grounds: (1) if order and harmony are evidence for the existence of God, then a miracle, which entails a breach in the order and harmony of the universe, must count against the existence of God; (2) the inevitable controversies over the identification and authentication of a miracle are an impediment to the growth of scientific knowledge and philosophical comprehension; and (3) an omnipotent God who does intervene in His creation would be obliged, on pain of moral defect, to intervene more often and more evenhandedly than He is supposed to have done in the Christian tradition (See Keller immediately below).

James Keller has argued: Miracles in the sense of divine intervention are immoral because in such acts God would unfairly choose to help the beneficiary of the miracle over others who may be equally in need and just as deserving.  Another kind of unfairness relating to miracles that Keller identifies has to do with epistemic privileging, or revealing something to one person rather than another.  Why did the first century disciples get to walk and talk with Jesus, but we do not get to do that today?  Additionally, miracles that occur out of the blue would be arbitrary and without any detectable pattern
. 
RESPONSE TO OVERALL:

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