Hume's Epistemic Thimblerigging

The feeling I have about Hume on Miracles (Section X Treatise is very like that I get looking at a skilled thimble rigger (shell game). Where does the miracle lie? Under the logical impossibility shell i.e. there is only nature and any event not natural i.e. supernatural, has never occurred. Looking for evidence for an impossibility is pointless. But when you point at that shell, miracle is discovered to be under the pious fraud shell so evidence is a possibility but it will never be enough to establish a miracle. And it’s a virtual logical impossibility too. By virtual here I mean that the impossibility of establishing that a miracle has taken place has the force of the logical while being empirical. There is something not quite right about that but the steady stream of diverting patter moves one on quickly.

Who are Hume’s confederates in the crowd. There is a physicist who nods at the ‘there is only nature’ and there is the philosopher, a lover of mazy modality. They win: the punters hardly ever. I say to people who question miracles - you shouldn’t believe in them. They don’t cohere with your world, they don’t matter for you. If they come to matter it will be because your world has altered.