Should you ever believe a miracle claim?
Channel: Religion, Atheism, Science
Date: 2012-08-25

The problem of miracles is that you should never believe a claim of one. This is a modern retelling of David Hume's Argument. Essentially it boils down to 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 (if the laws of nature were violated on a routine basis, they wouldn't be the laws of nature).

Therefore, it is always more likely someone is being either intentionally dishonest (lying, joking, exaggerating, etc), or honestly mistaken (were tricked, suffered a hallucination, or simply witnessed a natural phenomena that they didn't understand), than a miracle occurred.

Essay on Hume's argument: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/victor_reppert/miracles.html

This 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