e witnessed the miracle and if them telling about it would jeopardize them more than if they had not said anything. Then and only then would he be able to be sure that a person was not motivated by any other force when claiming that what they saw was actually a miracle. In so many words, Hume wrote, “that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish…” (pg. 674, col.1). He then goes on to say that at no time has there been “any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves…” (pg. 674, col.2). His point being that no scholar would ever back such an obsurd story because of the risk of being ridiculed by his piers.He says that miracles are further disproved by the fact that most of them are reported by ignorant, barbarous people of past generations. Some of the things that these people have reported as marvelous are common among later generations, so their mysteriousness has been lost and they are no longer miracles. If you are wondering why stories like these do not originate today, Hume says they do, but we rule them out as lies. According to him, people have always had tendencies to stretch the truth and elaborate stories to gain fame and popularity. Even the fact that some of these stories have been past through generations means little to Hume. He believes that the stories have been drilled into the minds of people by their ignorant ancestors and people have just come to accept them over time, whether they believe in them or not. Hume uses this approach to give his views on the truth about religions. He says that religions were written by primitive people in order to give their views about the origin of civilization. In each religion an oppressed p...
