The Case Against Miracles
Channel: Religion, Atheism, Science
Date: 2012-10-16

A brief video explaining why rational people should never believe miracle claims.  This is a modern retelling of David Hume's argument. Essentially what it boils down to is that you should always believe the explanation with the highest probability.  Since miracles by definition violate the laws of nature, they must have a lower probability than any conceivable natural explanation (however unlikely it may seem).  

Given that we have no examples of the laws of physics being violated today (such as people walking on water or coming back to life after being dead several days), the probability of such an event happening based on our background knowledge is virtually zero. This means that it is always more likely someone is being intentionally dishonest (lying, joking, exaggerating, etc), or honestly mistaken (were tricked, suffered a hallucination, or simply misperceived or misremembered an actual event), than that a real miracle occurred.  On the other hand, with over 7 billion people on the planet, there are BILLIONS of people who misperceive, misremember, or misunderstand actual events every day, and billions of people who convey false information to others, either intentionally or unintentionally.  

So when you hear a report of a miraculous event, remember that it is at least several billion times more likely that you are dealing with one of the things mentioned above, rather than an actual miracle. 

This video is reuploaded from cdk007's 'Logic of Religion' series:  http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3BC61F289289B949

Check out his channel for more great videos. http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007

Problems with other common theistic arguments: http://whynogod.wordpress.com/