ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the response to David Hume's celebrated argument against miracles that Thomas Bayes would have made and did in part make, albeit from beyond the grave, through his colleague Richard Price. It is irresistible to think that Bayes had read Hume and that Bayes' "Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances" was in part a reaction to Hume's skeptical attack on induction. Hume's maxim is the correct but unhelpful principle that no testimony is sufficient to establish the credibility of a miracle unless the testimony makes the miracle more likely than not. A number of other renderings of Hume's maxim have been offered, but either they fail to do justice to the text of Hume's essay or else they turn Hume's maxim into a false principle. Hume's essay by showing that a Bayesian examination reveals Hume's seemingly powerful argument to be a shambles from which little emerges intact, save for posturing and pompous solemnities.
