Hume and Jesus’ resurrection

Source: Infidels.org

Hume’s argument against miracles makes its case against miracles on the grounds 1) that one must consider the antecedent probability of the event reported as well as the credibility of the reporter, and 2) that miracles, as violations natural law, are less probable than any set of natural events required to explain the known facts.

The first of these principles is elucidated by Hume as follows:

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should have really happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of the testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

To understand this better, let us consider a case that was certainly in the back of Hume’s mind when he wrote “Of Miracles,” the case of the resurrection of Jesus. Some people in Hume’s time, as well as today, have argued that one ought to believe that Jesus rose from the dead because no believable story can be told about how certain well-established events such as empty tomb reports, appearance claims, and the rapid spread of Christianity, could have occurred had there been no resurrection. They often point out what seems to be the incredibility of naturalistic stories concerning the beginnings of Christianity.

For example, some opponents of Jesus’s resurrection have maintained that the disciples stole the body of Jesus and then pretended that the tomb was empty because its occupant had risen from the dead. But critics of this “theft theory” have pointed out that we have reason to suppose that many of the apostles, who would have had to have been the perpetrators of this hoax, were martyred for proclaiming Jesus’s resurrection. Since human beings typically do not die for things they know to be untrue, it is argued that the theft theory is less plausible than the claim that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

It is here that Hume’s argument goes to work. If twelve people’s dying for what they know to be untrue is improbable, it is even less probable that Jesus rose from the dead. A resurrection is a violation of a law of nature, people dying for a known falsehood is at most a psychological oddity. The experiential support for the claim “Dead people stay dead” is greater than our experiential support for “people never die for things they know to be false.” So if we must choose between the theft theory and accepting a resurrection (and of course these need not be our only choices), then the theft theory, with all its problems, must be accepted.

Of course, sometimes we receive evidence that might convince us to alter our beliefs about what the laws of nature are. Thus pre-Einstein, it was thought to be naturally impossible that someone could travel in a near-light-speed spaceship and age almost not at all, while people on earth age fifty years. But the very reason we have for doubting the expectation we formed based on what we thought the laws of nature were is exactly the reason we have for supposing the event could occur without supernatural intervention.

But one might ask Hume at this point, what about God? Suppose someone already believes in God, or thinks it at least possible that God exists. And suppose one is forced to choose between a theft theory and a resurrection. Now it seems unlikely that God would cause a group of people to engage in a conspiracy to propagate a religious hoax about some teacher’s rising from the dead and then give them the courage (or foolhardiness) to defend their hoax to the death. But it does seem to fit better the traditional picture of God that He might raise a great prophet, or his son, from the dead to certify that person’s special place in his scheme of things. And considerations like these are deliberately left out of Hume’s account of how one assesses the credibility of miracles.

Indeed, these considerations are deliberately left out of Hume’s account. Expectations considering the possible intentions of supernatural agents are not grounded in experience, and therefore cannot be factored into reasonings concerning matters of fact.

Though the being to whom the miracle is ascribed be almighty, it does not, upon this account become a whit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a being, otherwise than from the experience we have of his productions, in the usual course of nature. This still reduces us to past observation, and obliges us to compare the instance of the violations of truth in the testimony of men, with those of the violation of the laws of nature by miracles, in order to judge which of them is most likely and probable.

This is a strong statement of Hume’s empiricism concerning the sources of probability judgments, and it is the key to his position on miracles. Only those probability judgments that can be directly tied to experienced frequencies (in this case the frequency of false statements as opposed to the frequency of miraculous violations of the laws of nature) can be relevantly employed in assessing the probability that an event has occurred.