Saturday, November 24, 2018

If only you believed in miracles....


"In a real sense, of course, unbelief or scepticism is in the same boat as faith. For unbelief 'really goes upon presumptions and prejudices as much as Faith does, only presumptions of an opposite nature.... It considers a religious system so improbable, that it will not listen to the evidence of it; or, if it listens, it employs itself in doing what a believer could do, if he chose, quite as well...; viz., in showing that the evidence might be more complete and unexceptionable than it is.' Sceptics do not really decide according to the evidence; for they make up their minds first and then admit or reject evidence according to their initial assumption. Hume proves a signal example of this when he suggests that the impossibility of miracles is sufficient refutation of the testimony of witnesses. 'That is, the antecedent improbability is a sufficient refutation of the evidence.'"

A History of Philosophy Volume VII Bentham to Russell
Fr. Frederick Copleston 
page 514

[The quotations within this bit are from the Oxford University Sermons by John Henry Newman, which are available online at http://www.newmanreader.org/works/oxford/index.html .]

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