QuestionsDoes God exist?Against miracles
Does God exist?AgnosticismMiracles and testimony

Against miracles

David Hume 1711 · 1776Neither causation nor induction can be proved: custom guides us.
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What it claims

It is never reasonable to believe a miracle on testimony, and a miracle cannot ground a religion.

Why

A miracle violates laws established by constant experience; testimony counts only if its being false would be even more miraculous.

In short

"Against miracles" is an argument by David Hume (Enquiry, section 10) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: agnosticism). Its claim: It is never reasonable to believe a miracle on testimony, and a miracle cannot ground a religion. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 4 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Enquiry, section 10
Valid

Hume does not say miracles are impossible. He argues it is never reasonable to believe, on the strength of testimony, that a miracle happened.

P1A wise person proportions belief to the evidence: they believe what the strongest evidence supports.
P2A miracle violates the laws of nature, established by firm and constant experience: experience provides the strongest possible evidence against it.
P3So testimony can establish a miracle only if its falsehood would be even more miraculous than the miracle itself.
P4No testimony of a miracle meets this condition: history offers none solid enough to rule out error, credulity or deceit.
Therefore it is never reasonable to believe a miracle on testimony, and a miracle cannot ground a religion.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
The argument is valid and each premise is essential. Critics mostly target P2 (is experience really "constant" if miracles happened?) and P4 (is it a historical finding or a judgement made in advance?).
Analogy. A friend swears he saw a man walk through a wall. Which is more likely: that the laws of physics gave way, or that your friend is mistaken or exaggerating? Hume asks you to believe the less improbable.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

G
George Campbell 1762 · attacks premise 2

Hume argues in a circle: calling the experience against miracles "constant" assumes in advance that the witnesses of miracles are wrong, which is what was to be proved.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Hume did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.
Objection anticipated by Hume attacks premise 4

And what if all witnesses, in every language, reported the same extraordinary event, for instance eight days of darkness over the whole Earth in 1600?

Hume replies
Hume
In that case we ought to accept it and look for its causes. My claim is narrower: a miracle cannot be proved so as to ground a religion.
C. S. Lewis 1947 · attacks premise 2

We can only know that experience against miracles is uniform if we already know that all reports of miracles are false: the argument presupposes its conclusion.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1947, after the author's death (1776).
What today's voices say
Defend it
Neil deGrasse TysonHe recalls that, according to a philosopher he thinks is Hume, an unexplained event is more likely a new law of physics than a divine miracle.
Richard DawkinsHe says belief in miracles is 'flat contradictory' to the spirit of science. This is close to Hume's conclusion, though he does not present it as Hume's argument.
Steven PinkerHe presents Sagan's "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" as an echo of Hume's argument against miracles, and as Bayesian reasoning.
Alex O'ConnorSays weak alternative explanations of the resurrection should not raise his confidence that a man rose from the dead, which seems infinitely less plausible.
Lawrence KraussHe says miracles and the Bible as God's word are extraordinary claims with no evidence.
Peter SingerHe treats Paul's vision of the risen Christ like other reported apparitions that we normally doubt.
Bart EhrmanHe says claims about the resurrection are theological, not historical: history can only say what probably happened, and a miracle is the least probable explanation. In 2026 he said he does not decide categorically: one weighs whether it is more probable that the event happened or that the witnesses erred or made it up. In 2008 he said that even with thousands of claimed sightings of Mary, he could not prove it as a historian.
Matt DillahuntyHe applies "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" to the resurrection, and Hume's weighing of miracles against error or deception.
Criticize it
John LennoxHe answers Hume by saying laws of nature describe regularities, so a miracle does not break them. He uses C. S. Lewis's example of an unexpected banknote. In debate he adds: 'you have to know the laws in order to recognize a miracle'.
Wesley HuffHe says a historian may propose supernatural explanations. He rates the resurrection as highly probable (several independent witness lines) and Jonah or water into wine as less so.
William Lane CraigHe says that if the background includes a creator, a miracle cannot be assumed improbable.
Frank TurekHe says that if the universe began from nothing, miracles are possible, 'because the greatest miracle of all has already occurred'. Whether one happened is then a historical question.
Trent HornHe says a resurrection counts as a miracle only because dead people normally stay dead, so a miracle does not contradict the regularity it breaks. He also argues that Christian miracles are better attested than other religions' claims.
Philip GoffOn the resurrection, he says the evidence would be a 'no-brainer' for an ordinary event, so everything hangs on the prior; he thinks it is reasonable if a God of limited powers exists.
In the same family · Miracles and testimony
The only word of God is the Creation we beholdThomas Paine · 1794
Does God exist?Deism 3
Natural religion is perfect: revelation can add nothing to itMatthew Tindal · 1730
Does God exist?Deism 3