David Hume - Companion in Faith
Published on Wednesday 03 March 2010 in St George's Chapel
I have been invited by my colleagues to deliver a devotional address. Here I must come clean: I have no idea what is meant by a devotional address. However, I understand from the brief that I should speak to you about a Companion that has accompanied me on my Christian journey. Here again, I must come clean: I have now three problems. First, public autobiographical statements are foreign to me, and they are so for several reasons but not least because I consider my own story no more and no less exciting - or indeed dull - than the next person's. This evening's reflection, then, is an unusually frank and personal offering. Second, I am not entirely sure I understand the Christian life as a journey. I know what is meant - and I use the word myself, at times - but the language speaks of progress, of getting some place. I'm not confident that I am making much progress, other than getting ever nearer to the inevitable shaking off of this mortal coil. Perhaps my Christian existence is less like a journey and more like a game of blind man's bluff, a kind of grappling around in the dark trying to work out God's will and purpose; one moment making accidental discoveries, the next striding out confidently only to crash headlong over some bulky obstacle. My third problem is that, while engaged in this 'game' I have not been much aware of having constant companions. I was, and continue to be, fortunate in having wise and observant family without whom things would have been otherwise; they have been my closest companions. Outside that circle, however, I am not aware of persistent encouraging voices. That said, there are a few voices that seem to call out the occasional 'hot' or 'cold' as I stumble about in the darkness; it is to one of these people that I turn this evening, David Hume.
Those of you who know Hume will think this a strange choice. He is not much known as an encourager of faith, indeed he is known specifically as the great infidel. Yet, he has been around prodding and poking for as long as I have made his acquaintance, a span now of more than twenty years. I suppose he is of particular interest - or he poses particularly good questions - to someone of my temperament. My faith, such as it is, finds its root in intellectual soil: I don't much enjoy Church, I am not drawn into faith because of rite or ritual; I find the Church as institution muddy and damaged and disappointing. I am a convinced theist because I find this the most satisfactory of the possible intellectual positions; the notion that God exists makes, for me, the best reasonable sense of the evidence.
So who is this man who keeps cropping up to prod, tease, and stimulate that conviction; who is this David Hume? His beginning was 1711; his end, 1776. The intervening sixty-five years were productive and frustrating in equal measure. Hume, perhaps the greatest philosopher ever to write in the English language, held the kind of unpopular opinions that denied him the academic position he most surely deserved. Without the security of a university professorship, Hume made a living through the writing of books and essays, and later in life enjoyed a couple of rather brief political appointments. His life was by no means an unqualified success. The first book Hume published fell, according to himself, dead-born from the press. At one point he took on a job as a personal tutor only to discover that his pupil was clinically insane. Even his attention span and commitment to writing was patchy; if truth be told, he could only manage a couple of hours study at a time before he gave in to the lure of the billiards table.
This Scottish philosopher, then, did not have things all his own way but he was gifted with an independent mind and the courage to hold to his convictions. These two facts would, in themselves, make him interesting but it is his sceptical treatment of religion that makes him more interesting still. At a time when it was unwise to speak critically about religion, Hume was writing devastating critiques, one after the other. He was not rash - some of his harshest arguments he withheld for posthumous publication - but he was brave and terribly good. Perhaps the best way to understand just how good, is to think through one of his arguments, to hear what he has to say about miracles.
As you are well aware, miracles are at the heart of all the great monotheistic religions, and with the doctrine of the resurrection, Christianity is no exception. For many Christians the resurrection event is exactly that which holds together all the other tenets of belief and practice. Without the resurrection event Christianity would be different; it would certainly be less attractive. To challenge the particular miracle that is the resurrection, by challenging miracles in general, is to pose a real and present danger to Christianity. Yet, this is exactly what Hume sets out to achieve. His argument is laid out in his book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, a work which Hume felt brought together and clarified some of his earlier writing. Section ten deals with miracles in two distinct parts. The second part examines a number of case studies, alleged miracles, with the aim of showing that they don't really living up to their trade description. The first part - a mere six pages in my edition - is, by all accounts, more interesting and still attracts book length responses. So, the argument goes like this:
- A weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger.
- A wise person proportions his belief to the evidence. She always chooses the stronger over the weaker.
- Some things happen invariably in our experience. For example, all people die. These invariable experiences are certainties and are called laws of nature.
- Other things happen less invariably in our experience. For example, somebody could survive a heart attack. These variable experiences constitute probabilities, they range from strong (almost always happens) to weak (almost never happens)
- The truth of human testimony is, from experience, normally a strong probability. But sometimes a human testimony is a weak probability. In all cases human testimony is never certainly true, it is, at best, only probably true.
- When the human testimony is about miracles, you have an account that proposes that the laws of nature have been broken, for that is what a miracle is. But the laws of nature are a certainty. And we have just seen that the chance of human testimony being true is not a certainty but a only probability. Therefore, since a weaker evidence can never destroy a stronger, a probability destroy a certainty, the wise person would be foolish to accept any account of a miracle.
Miracles, according to Hume, could happen but we would never have sufficient evidence to believe that they had happened. It is a genuinely decent argument. So decent is it, that philosophers, of all shades and dispositions, still argue the case backwards and forwards without any conclusive decision. Even a certain breed of liberal theologian has been known to swallow the argument - or reflections of it - hook line and sinker. Well, so much for philosophers and theologians, what do you make of the argument? For this is where Hume comes into his own. He wrote not so much for those sitting in the ivory towers of a university but for people going about the tough grind of daily life. He wants to know, then, what you think. Is there a way around Hume's argument? Are his assumptions correct? If the assumptions are strong, are the conclusions correctly drawn? Given that his argument would hold a belief in the resurrection irrational, it seems quite important that we all think the matter through. I am not, however going to express my own view on the matter; instead, I am going to allow Hume to throw out some other questions. And as such, these questions might well cast light on how to tackle the problem of miracles.
You see, Hume was not just sceptical about miracles. Certainly he thought it impossible to know whether or not a miracle had ever taken place. But his scepticism did not stop there: he wants to know how it is that you can know anything. Perhaps, he wonders, you know can know something through reason. That might be well and good in the mathematics but how good is reason in everyday life. Let's try a thought experiment - one of Hume's own thought experiments: Adam, has just been created, and God hands him a billiard ball. By reason alone, what should Adam make of this object? What would happen if he let it go? Would it drop or would it go sailing off into the wind? You and I know what would happen, but how would Adam know. Hume tells us that, using reason alone, Adam can know very little indeed about the billiard ball. Yet, if you gave Adam a little time with the ball, he would begin, through the senses, to build up a body of experience. Say he lets it go four or five times. Soon he will begin to develop an expectation that once he lets the ball go it will drop to the ground. According to Hume, it is through the senses, or what he calls experimental reasoning, that we build up a kind of knowledge about things. And yet even that is not quite satisfactory; and for two reasons. First, knowledge gained via the senses is a matter of moving inductively, moving from the particular to the general. In four particular instances, when I let the ball go, it drops; therefore, I conclude, in every instance, when I let the ball go, it will drop. Arguments made in this way are full of problems. Here's one of them: when I was a child every swan I saw was white; I made the reasonable assumption that all swans are white. But they are not. Hume asks us to think carefully about knowledge gained through the senses: is it certain knowledge, or does it lead to probable knowledge? Certain and probable are not the same, and most definitely are not of the same quality. It is probable that if I let go of the ball it will drop to the ground but is it just possible in some future event that it just explodes, or disappears, or flies off apparently of its own accord.
Second, and here he really gets into our heads, there is an even odder consideration. Hume gives us this enigmatic little phrase: 'A single perception can never produce the idea of a double existence'. So whatever everyday knowledge we have is probable knowledge and it appears to be coming through the senses, through experience. But says Hume - borrowing heavily from Bishop George Berkeley before him - how sure are you about information you receive from the senses. You can be confident that if you hold this ball, you will have the sensation of hardness. You can be sure of the perception of hardness. You cannot, however, be sure in the least that there is any thing that causes that perception. Might it be all going on in the mind.
How, now, brown cow? This is all very strange stuff and if we were to live by it we would never get out of bed in the morning, that is if there is a bed to get out of. You can see why Hume is known as a sceptic. (He did offer a way of coping but that would be a story for another day.) For now, and so far as he has been one of those voices I have heard calling from the darkness, he challenges me to think carefully about my claims to knowledge. Far too often we are all beguiled by wanting certainties. We want to know things for sure. We want the false assurance of control.
At such moments, as I bump around in the darkness, Hume has been a restraining force. When I start to claim that I know something, I can hear Hume whispering: How can you be sure? Every now and again he reminds me that the only single thing I know, is that I know that I know nothing. I know nothing - but I believe many things. I believe that there is indeed a world outside my mind. I believe - a little more tentatively at this point - that tomorrow will resemble today. I believe that there exists God, one in whom all probabilities reside. I believe that there exists God the Father who created and sustains all that is, who raised his Son from the dead so that he might redeem all that is, and who breathes his Holy Ghost so that he might sanctify all that is. Firmly, I believe and truly.
The opposite of belief is not doubt, it is certainty. Hume removes any aspiration for certainty; he leaves plenty of room for belief but my goodness he certainly ensures that we first try to engage brain before operating mouth.
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