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Richard Whately's Argument Against Miracles

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Whately, Richard. Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte. (2012-05-12) Kindle Edition. This intriguing brief piece of satire, that Richard Whately has put together brings to light some of the oddities in David Hume’s argument against miracles. Not only does it provide a good sense of humor, but also a worthy criticism on certain points of view. It takes the arguments that Hume uses to disprove miracles and applies them to Napoleon’s life events. Whately presents himself in this satire as a strong follower of Hume’s view presented in his essay on miracles, tackling the impossibility that is Napoleon Buonaparte’s life accomplishments. Along with praising Hume, with statements like “The celebrated Hume”(15) and “Hume and other inquirers …show more content…

He would have come to the proper conclusion if he actually followed previously stated logical reasoning. Here is one of the biggest deviants away from David Hume’s actual argument and weakens Whately’s case. Hume, notes that the witness material is weak for the miracle accounts since their are no direct witnesses, and at that point in history, there was still not enough manuscriptual evidence supports to say whether the New Testament writers were actually writing with in the lifetime of eye witnesses. So, in Hume’s actual argument there was a possibility for there to be that disconnect and decay in the transfer from eye witness testimony to indirect accounts. Also, he puts no effort in ascertaining whether or not there actually was any informational gatherers or not. He just doubts it for no reason, again going back to his frowzy skepticism he is not only doubting the improbably and odd events, but facts and evidence that leads to an oddity. However, though that is a bad argument it is a good analogy for the satire. Since, Hume to my understanding does a similar thing at times. As with the textual evidence for the New Testament miracles he assumes the most skeptical approach because if he does not it has the possibility to lead to miraculous

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