Miracles are impossible, so no amount of testimony could support them.
David Hume's Of Miracles (1748) gave the argument its sharpest form: a miracle is a violation of a law of nature; laws of nature are established by uniform, universal experience; the testimony of a few witnesses, however sincere, is always less probable than the uniform experience of humankind. Therefore a wise person proportions belief to evidence and rejects miracle reports - not because they are definitely false, but because the prior probability is always lower than the probability that the witnesses erred or lied. Modern versions (Ehrman, Dawkins) update this: brains confabulate, crowds delude themselves, and the base rate of genuine miracles is so low that the evidence is never enough.
Hume's argument is famously circular. (1) It defines "uniform experience against miracles" as the evidence - but whether experience is uniform is exactly what is in dispute. If any miracle has happened, experience is not uniform; ruling them out a priori is assuming the conclusion. (2) The argument proves too much: by the same logic, we should reject reports of extremely rare but real events (a new particle, a one-in-a-billion medical recovery, an unprecedented discovery) whenever they conflict with prior experience. Science would grind to a halt. (3) Bayes' theorem, the modern formalization of probabilistic reasoning, shows Hume's framing is incomplete: we need both the prior probability and the likelihood ratio (how much better the miracle hypothesis explains the evidence than the alternatives). Timothy and Lydia McGrew (Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, 2009) and Richard Swinburne (The Resurrection of God Incarnate, 2003) show that for the resurrection specifically, even with a very low prior, the cumulative likelihood ratio is so strong that the posterior is high. (4) Philosophically: if God exists and created nature, miracles are not "violations" but higher-order acts within a broader system, the way an author can enter her own novel. The real question is not whether miracles are possible but whether there is good historical evidence for specific ones.
Do not argue miracles in the abstract. Argue the specific case - the resurrection - with attention to independent attestation, enemy admissions (empty tomb), transformed witnesses, and the failure of naturalistic alternatives (hallucination, theft, swoon) to account for all the data simultaneously.
Sources & citations
- Reasonable Faith — William Lane Craig (2008 (3rd ed.))scholarlyFind on Amazon
- The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach — Michael Licona (2010)scholarlyFind on Amazon
- "The Argument from Miracles: A Cumulative Case for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth" — Timothy & Lydia McGrew (2009)scholarlyFind on Amazon
- The Resurrection of God Incarnate — Richard Swinburne (2003)scholarlyFind on Amazon