It is evident in David Hume’s writing of “An Equity Concerning Human Understanding” that he does not believe that miracles take place. Hume is a man of logic, who believes in experience over knowledge. Of course it is hard for such a man to believe in extraordinary claims without being there to witness them. Especially when such events require a lot of faith. In order for an event to be deemed a miracle, it must disobey the laws of nature. However, it is these same laws that disprove almost any miracle that has ever been reported. He writes that some events that people report as miracles truly are not. For example, it is not a miracle, that fire burns wood, or that a healthy man dies, because both of these are within the laws of nature. If a person does seemingly commit a miracle, they must do something that obviously defies the laws of nature and be able to do it repeatedly, as to prove that it is not a fluke. Hume strongly depends on the laws of nature to disprove miracles because it is something that he knows will hold up through experience. Even if something happens that is extremely rare, for example, snow in June, we can disprove this as a miracle because it has been our experience in life that the weather is never constant and under extreme conditions we can get very cold weather during the summer.He is so skeptical against miracles, that he says he cannot even believe someone claiming to have witnessed a miracle, without first examining their reason for making such a claim. In order to believe their trust he must first learn the purity of their intentions. By this I mean he must first consider whether or not the person’s judgment was deceived by their senses and next why the person is telling him about the miracle and what they have to gain by trying to deceive him. In order for him to consider the possibility of a miracle actually occurring would be if a person publicly made a claim to hav...
