I'm not saying he was foolish. If you are not convinced by what someone says, you are not foolish to reject it. But you can set your standards too high and miss reality. Hume said that it was not reasonable to believe any report of a miracle. True, the Duckphup Effect is not a miracle in the classic sense, but it is something, if true, for which there is absolutely no current explanation. That puts it in the miracle class. But we do not know if it is really all that strange or rare. It may be that, with a slight adjustment in our way of thinking and acting, such events would happen on a regular basis, and then we would have to adjust our view of the universe.nonverbal wrote:Bruce, would you say that Hume was foolish not to trust in the kinds of possibilities you're mentioning? You're certainly welcome to trust in whatever you choose to go with, but keep in mind that Jesus was only one of many miracle workers that plied their trade during his time. Tricking illiterate, superstitious and ignorant people at the time when Jesus lived (assuming for the moment that Jesus is more than a composite literary character) had ancient roots even back then. Magical trickery was no less ubiquitous than it is today. The Duckphup effect, as its author acknowledges in his post above, is uncommonly difficult to expose and utilize. He also seems to acknowledge that it may be illusion-based. To expand on that possibility, consider the enormous number of people who get odd hunches every minute of every day. It must be in the millions, every minute. If one hunch comes out valid every so often, how many billions of invalid ones preceded it? A broken clock is accurate twice a day, and the Duckphup effect starts to look pretty silly when examined with Humian skepticism.
I've given you my reasons for believing that he is telling the truth. Do you believe him? If not, is he lying? Hume has made us feel irrational for believing an otherwise credible report just because he assumes that something that seems very out of the ordinary is so in fact. We don't know that is the case. So, in Duckphup's case, I don't think I am unreasonable for accepting his story, but likewise would not think Hume or you to be unreasonable for rejecting it. I apparently have a greater tolerance for the currently unexplained.
