Dear Friends,
It seems to me, Hume’s argument against the existence of God is weak, in that if a single miracle can be proved to have happened, by his argument’s parameters, God must exist. Now, it is possible that God wants us to be able to prove his existence logically and empirically, but I think not. Despite our hubris, we are profoundly ignorant, and believe ourselves enlightened, patting our own backs in egotistic self deceit. Pride and conceit are the attributes of spoiled children. Once our civilization reaches it’s initial maturity, our self importance will max out, (as it does in a teenager)… further maturity will result in less conceit and pride with true awe and deep humility. Eventually, once humanity has actually become enlightened in the deepest sense, will we understand the role of God… or the myth of God, if such exists. That is both the way people mature and the way civilizations mature. That our civilization is so egotistic it believes it can empirically disprove God, or Prove him, is sure confirmation that we are moving into early adolescence.
Hume claimed if there were free will then it would be folly to punish a criminal. Because under free will he would be untrainable, due to his free will, ie. No external control of his actions. Thus, we must not have free will. It is our ability to control ourselves that proves there is no free will. Therefore, punishing criminals proves there is no free will… But, to my way of thinking, if we are but machines, subject to programming and outside control, then why, even in ancient Athens under the laws of Draco… have there always been criminals?
His epistemology was based on the insight that logic does not necessarily comport with reality. This was truly an insight. He made the point that just because he let go of a pencil, that pencil could logically go up, instead of down. It is our experience, or custom, that makes us believe it will fall. This was an important discovery in the evolution of philosophy, because it showed that metaphysical logic can go very wide of the mark, unless it is based on empirical proof… in other words, the weakness of logic disconnected from observation. But, just as he claimed that logic allows for a pencil to fly, instead of fall…
He also claimed, by their very definition, miracles are things that are not custom. We never see those actions in our daily lives. In fact, he argued, in the more civilized places we never see miracles at all. Since miracles have only been seen in barbarian places, then they are most probably figments of imagination, superstitions and the like. Since the existence of God is based on miracles, like creation, Jesus’ resurrection, turning water into wine and so forth, and they are mere superstition… there is no God. This is simply arguing that observed reality should be discarded for theory.
It is like the Cartesian arguing against Newton’s Laws of Motion, because his laws required action at a distance, and thus were absurd. To the Cartesian, skepticist theory trumped observable reality, as it is for those who seek to make the purely mechanistic argument for the existence of the universe. They must discount evidence that disproves their theory, as superstition or imagination, by dwelling on the non repeatable part of the miraculous instead of the empirically proven examples. Isn’t that the true nature of a miracle though? Something that is not custom, did happen and is not repeatable? In discrediting miracles as superstition, they seize the empirical high ground, with spurious logic. In the end they could be right, but as history shows us, the theories of today are always supplanted by the theories of tomorrow. With a commensurate advancement of our understanding of our Universe and our role in it.
We, as humanity, have a long way to go before we can begin to understand such subtle questions, as the existence and nature of God, or even if there is one. It is the hight of presumption to argue there is no God, because, since we have miracles testified to and in some cases, as in miraculous cancer remission, empirically proven yet not repeatable, there is at least the strong implication of God… and that there exists far more to reality than we, in our profound ignorance, can possibly understand, let alone quantify. As our understanding grows, so do our questions, therefore we can know only this… that we know little. It is conceited and prideful of us to believe otherwise.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
