Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Were the Wright brothers a hoax?

It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. 
– Hume

There are several problems with this claim. For one thing, it begs the question. Hume knows full well that his audience will instantly think of Jesus. There's testimonial evidence that this very thing has indeed been observed.  If so, that would belie the "uniformity" of experience against every miraculous event. 

But I'd like to focus on another issue. There's a sense in which Hume's statement could certainly be true, even though Jesus rose from the dead. It depends on the timeframe. Suppose Jesus rose from the dead. Yet anyone who died before c. 30 AD could honestly say that a dead man returning to life has never been observed in any age or country. That never once occurred–right up to the moment it occurred!

Anyone living before the time of Christ could say what Hume said without begging the question. For anyone living before the time of Christ, it would uniform experience that no one came back to life.  

By the same token, anyone who died before the 20C could truly say that human fight has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against human flight. That was true right until December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

So, to paraphrase Hume, As a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of human flight; nor can such a proof be destroyed. When anyone tells me, that he saw the Wright brothers fly, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. 

That's a basic problem with Hume's argument. You could truly say it never happened…until it happened! Before it happened, it never happened. It never happened in the past. It never happened all the way up to the moment that changed. So Hume's objection turns out to be a tautology with no predictive value. It is, at best, a statement about the past, not the future. It's only true, if at all, for the observer's provincial sample of time. 

1 comment:

  1. It also impinges on a naturalistic testability after the fact. That is, what evidence do we have that it was different before it changed? In the case of water to wine, what evidence do we have of the water that was changed? In the case of resurrection, what evidence do we have that Jesus was killed and then came back to life that we can now test? If we limit ourselves to naturalistic means, we limit ourselves to other means of empirical evidence. We also presume that evidence itself is sufficient, or at least the only epistemologically valid source of objective truth.

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