AYER: HUME A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION

AMAZON SAYS

Hume is one of the greatest of all British philosophers, and even in his own lifetime was celebrated as one of the pivotal figures of the Enlightenment. A central theme of his philosophy is the conviction that questions traditionally thought of as completely independent of the scientific realm–questions about the mind, about morality, and about God, for example–are actually best explained using the experimental methods characteristic of the natural sciences. Hume's 'naturalist' approach to a wide variety of philosophical topics resulted in highly original theories about perception, self-identity, causation, morality, politics, and religion, all of which are discussed in this stimulating introduction by A J Ayer, himself one of the twentieth century's most important philosophers. Ayer also gives an account of Hume's fascinating life and character, and includes generous quotations from Hume's lucid and often witty writ

THE BOOK INSPIRES THE FOLLOWING ANALYSIS

David Hume famously defined a miracle as a violation of the natural order which he says is uniform. Nature makes the dead stay dead but if Jesus rose from the dead that is a violation. Hume is accused of saying a violation cannot happen so he was just guessing that miracle reports are necessarily false.  That accusation is a matter of debate.

GOD AND NATURAL LAW

Natural order or natural law means that things can be expected to do certain things not that anybody made it that way. Order can just happen. If there is no God or similar then there is no power bigger than nature to change natural law. If there is a God he might not alter it. If there is a God he might.  He might suspend it.

Religion says there would be literally nothing without God so existence is a miracle. A miracle is an act of making something where there is nothing.  This automatically says that natural law is made by God and his his hand and his instrument.

#AYER SAYS,

'Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others? If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others – the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it – if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary.’

COMMENT: Ayer is right. The laws are not really laws if they are just random. And who made the law that controls God and makes him need to make the laws he wants. No one so that is just another random again. Atheists affirm that nature is just random law. No matter what you do, you end up with regularities not laws. God is only a cosmetic for the problem.
 
The theologians assume that law has to be orderly. Not necessarily for a law can be as messy as it wants to be.
 
A God can make a mess that is lawless if he wants to.
 
We want there to be a good reason for any law and for the law being solid rather than fluid and misty. But we are thinking of ourselves. A reason doesn't have to be a good one. It can be a reason without thinking of whether it is good or not. Who cares if a law is fixed for a bad reason as long as it does not keep changing and we know how to engage with it?

#AYER SAYS,

You can argue that God can be lawless. This means he can give a law that only looks orderly but is not, for you don't know the forces making it up or see the whole job. Or God can only make good natural laws but you have no way to guess if he is making good laws or the laws just seem good.

"On this argument, Hume’s assertion that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature calls into doubt the usefulness of identifying a miracle as a violation of law."

COMMENT: That would mean that a miracle is natural after all and is just a mess in nature.
 
Violation of nature can be a euphemism for absurd. If a miracle is absurd, people including believers will say it is a violation of nature and for that reason cannot be a real miracle.  They will not care how much evidence there is for it and how good it is. They say Hume took that attitude with all miracles. It is their own attitude when they are faced with a miracle they assume is absurd. For a Catholic, a miracle where Shiva appears and says destruction is holy is absurd. But that is their prejudice for the Hindu who follows Shiva might see Catholic miracles as absurd.
 
If a miracle is absurd if it is a violation of nature you should assume that still is one even if it is not obvious.
 
It is certainly absurd to invest it with any importance apart from being a weird unusual thing. There is nothing life changing or spiritual or religious about a black swan or a pink one. People changing their lives over a miracle does not make the miracle life-changing.

#AYER SAYS,

Finally, it is useful to make a distinction between the miraculous and the supernatural. Professor Lennox has made the point that, while the miraculous will always be supernatural, the supernatural will not always be miraculous. If you believe in a creator God, then the entire creation of the universe is a supernatural event; but it is not miraculous, because the whole process is held together by natural law.

COMMENT: He lists the supernatural examples as ghosts, poltergeists, spirits and spirit possession. He says they are supernatural but not miraculous. Some use the word paranormal. You can use miraculous then for acts of a God - eg that would be limited to things being made out of literally nothing. You can use supernatural as referring simply to something that is able to control and override nature. Or you can use the word paranormal for that. If you say supernatural and miraculous are different then you have no way of telling if Jesus appearing is a miracle or a supernatural event. Religion loses all credibility for depending on miracles.

What makes us think of miracle? Nature? Reason? The supernatural? Any combination? Notice then they are telling us what to think a miracle is. A miracle then becomes a matter of hearsay. Maybe the supernatural is implanting belief in miracle in us and it is unreliable or actually lying.
 
All you need is something untestable such as the paranormal to fake a miracle so seeing something and saying it is a miracle is always going too far. It is enough to see it as paranormal. You shouldn't want to be an accessory for a paranormal lie!

FINALLY

Hume did validate evidence for miracles.  A miracle has to be a violation of what we are used to and nobody denies that.  He did not argue that violations don't happen therefore miracles are not true.  He argued that the evidence, the probability, favours that nature works as usual.  The dead man supposedly may indeed be alive but as people lie and err and nature is misunderstood a lot we have to suspend judgement.