A philosophy quote agaisnt miracles?

Question

i cant think of who wrote it to the exact quote... its agaisnt the resurrection or miracles and it says something like... is it more likely the whole universe changed or that one man lied? anyone know?

Answer 1

You are thinking of David Hume, who gets paraphrased a lot because his original quote was a bit dry:

"When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immedately consider with myself whether it be more probable, the this person should either deceive or be deceived, or the fact, which he relates, should really have happened."

Or, in other words, 'Which is more likely: that someone lied or that someone rose from the dead?'

Hume argues at various points in his works that miracles are a pretty shaky ground upon which to build a religion because to believe in a miracle requires the complete suspension of not only natural laws of the universe, but also of reason and all your experience about the way things work.

Answer 2

"You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them." 17:36 from Quran.

I do not recall others from other scriptures. Even this I searched and was new to me. But I had read something else in Quran.

Answer 3

Testimony is the establishment of miracles. - David Hume

Answer 4

Well it's certainly not this one, but L. Ron Hubbard:

"What some people call 'Destiny' is really just bad management."

Answer 5

Or the whole idea is being misinterpreted?

Love and blessings Don

Answer 6

The world's greatest expert on legal evidence, an atheist of Jewish tradition, Dr. Simon Greenleaf, at Harvard Law, was challenged by a student to examine, from the point of legally valid evidence, the evidence given for the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ. He did, and converted to Christianity, on the basis of the quality of the evidence.

As to falsification of fundamental physics, an Angel predicted to a peasant girl in Garabandal, Spain, in the early 1960s, that a visible Wafer of Light would appear in thin air, on such and such a date; she was, in her child mind, disappointed, for it was a "small" miracle. Many sceptics filmed the appearance of the perfectly-formed Wafer of Light.

Only one miracle, "Gesture of God," need occur. Of the thousands of recorded cures at Lourdes, independent medical science has found about 70 to be "impossible to explain" in terms of science.

To dispute at a superficial level such rare events is to indulge one's personalist psychologisms via argumentum ad ignorantiam, innuendo that "either the whole universe has had a law superceded, or one man lied."

Try looking into "Psychoenergetic Science," Dr. William Tiller, http://www.tiller.org "Extraordinary Knowing," Dr. Elizabeth Mayer, and "The Field," Lynne McTaggart, for examples relating to the continuum of God, soul, psi, and physis.

Without attaining to even the level of practitioners indicated in Dr. Tiller et al. work, one is thinking in a different (beta wave) state than those demonstrated by those practitioners, Tibetan Buddhist insight meditators' high gamma wave states otherwise found in high mentation and creativity, etc. One simply doesn't know of what one is referring, if one is not able to under-stand various states of human awareness. A similar example occurred in Husserl's work, with many not understanding the process, yet superficially "critiquing" it.

Try http://www.yogananda-srf.org and http://www.easwaran.org for two simple, effective methods; "Watch Your Dreams," Ann Ree Colton, is also good, and gives examples of what other states besides that of the typical "sceptic" evidence. (Again, it is genuine and authentic to attain to those states of which one purports to speak and critique, otherwise, one is simply ignorant and limited in realization and understanding--in effect, a type of "lie" masked as a single state-specific "objectivity.")

best regards,

j.