14 April 2005
a strange lack of online photographic evidence for miracles
Hume on miracles today with the religious studies kids. Perversely enough they all turned out to be even more skeptical than Hume himself: 'but why should we trust Hume when he says that other people aren't trustworthy?'. They're smart these kids, even if they do subsist on a diet of deep-fried sawdust and state-subsidised McFlurries.
When Hume attacks 'ignorant and barbarous nations' for their willingness to believe in miraculous happenings ('a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity'), we all laugh these days - ha! America! Richest country in the world (er, mais, drop the debt). At least half of them believe they've been abducted by aliens, surely! There's no correlation between economic 'success' and public rationality - and we should know, we're British!
But, as the philosophy seminar speaker posed tonight, when an electrical appliance resting on ice falls through as the weather gets warmer, there is a shock of the inhuman thing's relation to the other inhuman thing. Yes! There so is. There is a weird metaphysics at work, here as everywhere.
