Hume on miracles and the Lourdes phenomenon Alexandru Anghel

or spiritualistic expectation: the doctors (that compose the ad hoc annual committees) who visit
Lourdes may well get caught up in the awe and excitement of the pilgrimage. It is a known fact
that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable 14 . Moreover, the medical report published by the
Bureau has been criticized by other medical specialists as being unreliable and defective. Given
these factors and mostly the last observation, if we apply the second crucial principle from
above, we can conclude that the falsehood or unreliability of the testimony is “not more
miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish”. In other words, extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence, in this case the evidence being incomplete and dubious 15 .
In conclusion, we can admit, using <strong>Hume</strong>’s a priori argument, that the testimony given in
the Micheli case does not constitute a proof, but has only a low probability, due to the fact that
the occurrence of the same event took place at least once before, and so it does not violate the
laws of nature; and also that the report in itself suffers from a defective procedure and is
probably highly biased by personal expectations and perceptual limits 16 . So there is a high
probability that the event reported is not a miracle.
This work was possible with the financial support of the Sectoral Operational Programme
for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under
the project number POSDRU/107/1.5/S/77946 with the title „Doctorate: an Attractive Research
Career ”.
14 See E. F. Loftus, “Eyewitnesses: Essential but Unreliable,” Psychology Today (Feb 1984), apud Kurtz, 1991.
15 This doesn’t mean that we have to reject on a priori grounds a report of an event considered miraculous.
Anomalous events do occur in nature all the time and is not practical to reject them out of hand.
16 The fact that the Church called it a “miracle” is immaterial to our question. The Church only gave its own
explanation, on the basis of a doctrine, which doesn’t mean that this is the explanation. The fact that we don’t
understand a phenomenon now is not only an indication of the possibility that it is a miracle, but it is at least an
indication of the fact that our present scientific knowledge has no way to or didn’t establish the causes.