I am back for a bit

[Mono no aware]

Greetings, Xavier.  Thank you for your post, but I think you misrepresent Hume's argument slightly: he does not allege that the testimony of a miracle is always a deliberate or malicious lie.  He fully concedes that a person can testify to a miracle with the best of intentions; he offers merely that the person was in some manner mistaken or deceived in what they witnessed.  In fact, Catholics already accept this possibility far more than Hume ever could, since Catholics believe in demonic deception.  Every Catholic is a Hume in relation to non-Catholic miracles: whatever the non-Catholic claim, or however many people saw it, it could not have been wrought by God and it surely must've come from the wicked one.  Otherwise you would have to accept various miracles attested to by pagans, New Agers, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Hindus.  Now obviously you don't accept their miracles, nor would you ascribe to those people the best of intentions, since you consider them either heretics or practitioners of false religions, and therefore they are under the sway of the devil—"a liar, and the father of lies."  But to do all this, you must assume the truth of the Catholic faith, which only takes us back to square one, because we are trying to get miracles to establish the truth of the Catholic faith in the first place.  The problem is, there are more miracle claims than just the Catholic ones.  Simply switch out "demonic deception" and replace it with "the human capacity for self-delusion" and you will see that Hume's approach to all miracle claims is really not much different from your own approach to non-Catholic miracle claims.

As for the Eucharistic miracles, those run into the same problems I indicated earlier concerning the miracle of the sun at Fatima: it is a shaky epistemology, to be sure, when miracles cannot even be agreed upon by people of the same faith (as Hume points out in his essay, it all ends in partisanship: the Jansenists' miracles were disbelieved by the Jesuits, even when the wealth of testimony would've been more than sufficient for the Jesuits to accept the miracle, had it not favored their ecclesiastical enemies).  Whether atheists are pulling out their hair over these Eucharistic miracles, or being convinced by them into converting to Catholicism, I don't know, but we can even grant them for the sake of this discussion, because it still wouldn't be evident that they were of heavenly origin.  It's curious that most of these bleeding hosts seem to be occurring in Novus Ordo churches (and it has to be said, to be fair, that there is much more emotionalism, weird spirituality, and charismatic goo-goo in the Novus Ordo than there is in traditional Catholicism).  Some traditional Catholics are skeptical of the Novus Ordo miracles, and I have seen sedevacantists on the internet claiming that such miracles must surely be fakery or demonic trickery, because a true miracle could never occur in a false religion.  Recognize-and-resisters say that the miracles are perhaps bona fide, surmising that they take place in the Novus Ordo in order to give those people a greater reverence for the sacrament.  (If this is case, then the desired effect has not been achieved, as communion in the hand, Eucharistic lay ministers, and a paucity of altar rails widely persist in the Novus Ordo despite these miraculous hosts). 

To instill reverence for the sacrament, it would seem more obvious to have bleeding hosts at Latin Masses, to draw attention to the sublimity of the celebration and the righteousness of traditional Catholicism.  But I think we both know what we could expect: from the Novus Ordo quarter, there would emerge scoffers and skeptics, and without much trouble we can already imagine their internet comments, saying things like "I have found these prideful and holier-than-thou Francis-haters to have a Protestant spirit, and to be dishonest and deceptive, and I don't doubt for a second that these were faked."  And this all goes back to Hume again; every religious believer is a Hume with respect to miracles, but they bring in their own biases, conveniently accepting those which buttress their faith and rejecting those which do not.  As soon as you remove the prejudice, you arrive at Hume, unalloyed: "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.  I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle.  If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion."

[Quaremerepulisti]

But Hume's argument has been known to be fallacious for centuries. It conflates a priori with a posteriori probabilities. Hume's argument against the historical fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the crowning proof of the Truth of Christianity, would go something like this - men lie in giving testimony all the time. The Apostles gave testimony that they saw Christ risen from the dead. People don't rise from the dead (all the time). Therefore, the Apostles (allegedly) lied.

Sorry, but this is not true.  Hume's argument is sound (based as it is on Bayes' Theorem and based on posterior probabilities) and it is high time Christian apologetics comes to terms with it.  We can use the Resurrection if you like, but it is sound for any miracle claim (we'll call it M) and the data put forth for it (we'll call it D).  From Bayes' Theorem

P(M|D) = P(M)P(D|M)/P(D) = P(M)P(D|M)/(P(D|M)P(M)+P(D|~M)P(~M)).  We assume that P(D|M) ~= 1 giving

P(M|D) ~= P(M)/(P(M)+P(D|~M)P(~M)).  Now P(M|D) > 0.5 if

P(D|~M)P(~M) < P(M) and since the prior probability of a miracle is so unlikely (P(~M) ~=1) this simplifies to

P(D|~M) < P(M) which is exactly what Hume is saying (a miracle claim is more likely than not only if the probability of the data existing even without the miracle is less than the prior probability of the miracle).

The math is correct.

Anyone can see this argument of his is riddled with fallacies.

It is not.  It deals with a posteriori probabilities (as I have shown) and does not conflate a priori with a posteriori.  it is actually (most) Christian apologetics which in fact conflates a priori with a posteriori, as is exactly the case with your argumentation below.  THAT's why often interior motives of credibility are more important than exterior ones, especially for the educated, since they can see this.

Now, you CAN attempt to make the case that the Bayes/Hume criterion is met.  Even then you only wind up with a probability of the Resurrection and not the certainty of such.

First, of all its an ancient legal principle in effect still today that the eyewitness testimony of many credible persons is not to be easily dismissed.

So, I assume that you believe the testimony of people who have witnessed space aliens visiting earth?  No, you arbitrarily deem their testimony not "credible" post-hoc merely based on what they are saying.  In other words, you believe it to be much more likely that they are lying, or deceived, based on the prior improbability of what they are testifying to - EXACTLY as per Hume and Bayes.

If the Apostles knowingly invented a lie, their life, writings and behavior would have betrayed it; on the contrary they taught a doctrine of love, truth and righteousness and confirmed their eyewitness testimony by being faithful unto death, Sts. Peter and Paul in Rome under Nero, St. James of Zebedee in Spain, St. Thomas in India etc. What could have convinced these men to die for what they knew was a lie? People don't do that all the time.

And what about suicide cults, suicide bombers, etc.?  Moreover, people can and have died because they have been deceived.  And it is a question of weighing the prior probability of a Resurrection against the probability that the Apostles were lying and/or deceived.

Moreover the opponents of the Apostles could easily have stopped them by producing the dead body of Jesus Christ...

Unless it had been stolen away.

More on the rest of this later.

[St. Columba]

Xavier and QMR claim to have absolute, 100% certain knowledge of the truth of Catholicism.  As I have said this before to QMR, twice, without reply (which is, sorry to say, becoming a trend), Bayes' thm is trivially true, or undefined, at the extremes of 0 or 1 probability.

IOW, for a Catholic who claims prior absolute assurance of the truth of their faith (and by consequence, things like the resurrection), Bayes and Hume are moot.  Nor will Bayes thm ever help folks obtain certainty of faith.  Only in the realm of uncertainty does Bayes' have any material utility.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Continuing...

Christian apologetics continually confuses "evidence consistent with" with "evidence which proves".

Recently, a study showed the Turin Shroud and Sudarium of Oviedo covered the same Person. The image on the Shroud is a negative image of a real Person stained with His Blood...

And that proves that a burial cloth was arranged around someone who was scourged, crowned with thorns, and crucified in the year (with a 95% confidence interval based on the carbon dating results given in the linked article) of -500 BC to +500 AD.  It doesn't even prove that person was Christ, let alone someone who was Resurrected.

Also, the Blood type of the Man in the Shroud is AB+, exactly the same as that independently seen in Eucharistic miracles.

AB is the most common blood type.  Matching blood types hardly confirms the identical person.

However, I would say the Eucharistic miracles are the strongest evidence for the truth of Christianity and Catholicism in particular, because they do not rely on historical claims, but on what is happening in the here and now (with the caveat that we are relying on the testimony of others unless we have witnessed them with our own eyes).  Unfortunately for the traditionalist crowd, there are many documented Eucharistic miracles in the Novus Ordo, with at least as strong a claim to authenticity as traditional ones (e.g. Lanciano).  Traditionalists are reduced helplessly to the circular argument that Novus Ordo miracles must be false, because if they were true, that would be evidence for the truth of the Novus Ordo, and the Novus Ordo is false.  That makes them no better than than atheists, who essentially argue the same way regarding miracles such as Lanciano.

New Advent summarizes the Resurrection evidence better than I can.

Fine.  Let's have a good look at it.  It's incredibly weak.

Briefly, therefore, the fact of Christ's Resurrection is attested by more than 500 eyewitnesses, whose experience, simplicity, and uprightness of life rendered them incapable of inventing such a fable, who lived at a time when any attempt to deceive could have been easily discovered, who had nothing in this life to gain, but everything to lose by their testimony, whose moral courage exhibited in their apostolic life can be explained only by their intimate conviction of the objective truth of their message.

We only have the claim that Christ's Resurrection was witnessed by 500.  We do not actually have independent testimony of 500 individuals.  (And this is similar to the claim that 70,000 "witnessed the miracle at Fatima."  70,000 were indeed present at the Cova, but we do not know what each one of them saw or witnessed.)  Granted that it is unlikely they would be willing to die for what they knew to be a lie, it is not impossible, and thus the criteria of Bayes' Theorem applies.  Moreover, their zeal and courage are completely compatible with them being deluded and/or mistaken.

Again the fact of Christ's Resurrection is attested by the eloquent silence of the Synagogue which had done everything to prevent deception, which could have easily discovered deception, if there had been any, which opposed only sleeping witnesses to the testimony of the Apostles, which did not punish the alleged carelessness of the official guard, and which could not answer the testimony of the Apostles except by threatening them "that they speak no more in this name to any man" (Acts 4:17).

Perhaps the Synagogue tried but failed to prevent deception.  And look, if you exhume someone's grave and find an empty tomb are you going to think the person is resurrected from the dead, or are you going to think that there must be some other explanation, even if you don't know it yet?

Finally the thousands and millions, both Jews and Gentiles, who believed the testimony of the Apostles in spite of all the disadvantages following from such a belief, in short the origin of the Church, requires for its explanation the reality of Christ's Resurrection, for the rise of the Church without the Resurrection would have been a greater miracle than the Resurrection itself.

Incredibly weak argument.  People have believed in the testimony of Mohammed to the point of extreme disadvantages following from such a belief, including suicide bombing.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Xavier and QMR claim to have absolute, 100% certain knowledge of the truth of Catholicism.  As I have said this before to QMR, twice, without reply (which is, sorry to say, becoming a trend), Bayes' thm is trivially true, or undefined, at the extremes of 0 or 1 probability.

IOW, for a Catholic who claims prior absolute assurance of the truth of their faith (and by consequence, things like the resurrection), Bayes and Hume are moot.  Nor will Bayes thm ever help folks obtain certainty of faith.  Only in the realm of uncertainty does Bayes' have any material utility.

I agree with you; this is entirely the point.  If P(D|~M) is not absolutely zero (e.g. it is not absolutely impossible for the dataset to exist coincident with the miracle claim being false) then you cannot get to P(M|D) = 1 exactly unless P(M) = 1 already, in which case the dataset is irrelevant.

Now P(D|~R) is not zero.  Therefore apologetic claims that one can absolutely "prove" the Resurrection from the data are false.  The goal must therefore be to make the claim of the Resurrection credible, that is to say that P(R|D) is not infinitesimally small.  For this more modest goal it suffices to show that P(R) ~= P(D|~R) (e.g. the criterion of Hume).

[St. Columba]

Xavier and QMR claim to have absolute, 100% certain knowledge of the truth of Catholicism.  As I have said this before to QMR, twice, without reply (which is, sorry to say, becoming a trend), Bayes' thm is trivially true, or undefined, at the extremes of 0 or 1 probability.

IOW, for a Catholic who claims prior absolute assurance of the truth of their faith (and by consequence, things like the resurrection), Bayes and Hume are moot.  Nor will Bayes thm ever help folks obtain certainty of faith.  Only in the realm of uncertainty does Bayes' have any material utility.

I agree with you; this is entirely the point.  If P(D|~M) is not absolutely zero (e.g. it is not absolutely impossible for the dataset to exist coincident with the miracle claim being false) then you cannot get to P(M|D) = 1 exactly unless P(M) = 1 already, in which case the dataset is irrelevant.

Now P(D|~R) is not zero.  Therefore apologetic claims that one can absolutely "prove" the Resurrection from the data are false.  The goal must therefore be to make the claim of the Resurrection credible, that is to say that P(R|D) is not infinitesimally small.  For this more modest goal it suffices to show that P(R) ~= P(D|~R) (e.g. the criterion of Hume).

Ok, but why bother with trying to attain this more modest goal?  Make Christianity more appealing to the non-believer by making it, a posteriori, 90% likely instead of 40%?  If you don't have certainty, you have nothing, by your reckoning.  You don't have faith.  Getting folks to be in the right orbit to see that Catholicism might be true hardly seems worthwhile, if the inner illumination of grace is necessary for the certainty of faith....and salvation.

Thank you QMR.

[St. Columba]

David Hume: "No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish"

Given QMR's stated and myriad evidences/difficulties against Catholicism over the years, I find it truly remarkable that his mystical experience(s) furnishes him with 100% certainty.  Its falsehood, that is, of the claimed mystical experience, in the face of all of the difficulties he has enunciated about the faith, actually seems more miraculous than the fact it endeavors to prove, namely, the truth of Catholicism.

Put more simply:  It is so far-fetched that QMR would be lying about his mystical experience at this stage, knowing what he knows, that it would be more miraculous that he be lying so thoroughly and systematically than the notion that Catholicism is true.

Ergo, by the principles put forward by David Hume, Catholicism is probably true.

{I hope you get a chuckle out of that QMR!!!} 

[St. Columba]

...oh, and no true scotsman would advance the philosophical theses that David Hume espouses...

(...just a joke, as Hume was Scottish) 

[Mono no aware]

...oh, and no true scotsman would advance the philosophical theses that David Hume espouses...

(...just a joke, as Hume was Scottish) 

Yes.  He was also rather pudgy.  I read Hume for the first time only this past year; I had always carried a bias against the Enlightenment because it was essentially the antithesis of the Romanticism I'm innately disposed to (Romanticism, of course, is actually a revolt against the Enlightenment—an attempt to ditch the stodgy and rationalistic and return to the language and poetry of myth and mysticism).  It's easy to mock the Enlightenment with its powdered wigs and frilly clothes and gilded backdrops.  Hume and Leibniz are almost caricatures in their portraits.  They just look like haughty buffoons who sat around all day in flowing robes, with their big noses and gouty legs, sneering at the Church and the saints.  But Hume is a terrific writer.  I have been trying to find a good audio reading of Hume to listen to (to let his thought sink in via repetition and osmosis), but they're all recorded by people with boring "Oxford Don / Queen's English" voices.  I think they would benefit from someone with a lusty Scottish brogue.  Recurring Humean phrases like "knavery and foolishness" would sound like they're being delivered with the appropriate dismissiveness by someone with a Scottish accent.  Maybe this is a project that Sean Connery could devote himself to now that he is in his golden years.

[St. Columba]

THAT's why often interior motives of credibility are more important than exterior ones, especially for the educated, since they can see this.

LOL

[Mono no aware]

P.S. St. Columba, you appear to be on a mission to have as many different people as possible sipping yerba mate as your avatar.  Sadly, I don't think there are any photos of the greatest Argentinian, Jorge Luis Borges, enjoying a mate, although he does mention owning an antique silver Peruvian mate gourd with snake engravings in one his stories.  I thought the supermodel Adriana Lima was Argentinian, but a Google search just now reveals her to be Brazilian.  I remember there was a user on Fish Eaters who was quite enamored with her.  He said something to the effect of her being "the ultimate Catholic bride" or some such, which I thought was funny on a traditional Catholic forum seeing as how she makes a living by going about in states of undress.  Well, that was a bizarre forum anyway.  No photos of her drinking a mate either, though.

[St. Columba]

My apologies to you, Pon, or anyone else, who might find the frequent changing of avatars distracting.  I am really just having a little bit of fun with it all.  I really love the yerba, and it has bettered my life in so many ways.

I suppose I am being a bit of a yerba mate schill!

...oh, and my beautiful wife is already on my case again for being on that "Suscipe Domine Blog" too much! 

[Mono no aware]

Not distracting in the least, St. Columba.  I find it admirable.  I've always thought avatars should lean more towards self-expression anyway.  Not that I have anything against pious avatars, but sometimes it's unfortunate when a user has a saint as their avatar and then they make a post which is uncharitable and foul-mouthed, or talking about something secular and crass.  When that happens one cringes at the impiousness of the incongruity.  But on the other hand, people may use holy avatars to help them elevate the quality and civility of their posts.  Sojourn has St. Francis de Sales and I don't think he's ever made a single post unworthy of that excellent saint.  So I'm not against it.  I do think "comical pictures of the conciliar popes" are always good, though.  The googley-eyed JPII, JPII kissing the Qur'an, or Francis up to any one of his countless antics—those are reliably amusing.  That's why I liked your JPII drinking mate.  I don't think I've ever tried yerba mate.  I am an inveterate and truly addicted drinker of tea, but perhaps I'll try yerba mate sometime.

[Matto]

Not that I have anything against pious avatars, but sometimes it's unfortunate when a user has a saint as their avatar and then they make a post which is uncharitable and foul-mouthed, or talking about something secular and crass.  When that happens one cringes at the impiousness of the incongruity.

Interesting thought. I never really thought about it like that. I know that many people have avatars of their favorite saints or religious pictures they are fond of. My avatar is a painting of Christ that I think is beautiful. So I guess those of us with pious avatars should be careful not to make unchariatable posts or else we will end up like those mythical Mexicans named Jesus who get thrown in jail for smuggling illegal drugs.

[St. Columba]

Pon, can you tell me anything more about yourself besides your age?  Are you tall?  (I guess around 6 ft) Do you live in California? (I would guess you live in a Blue state)  What are your favorite genres of music? (I suspect dance music was never your thing)... No pressure, of course, just find you interesting.

(This is the coffee and donuts section after all!)

Peace.