The fact is quite the other way.
The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they
have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them
(rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.
The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman
when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old
apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain,
popular course is to trust the peasant's word about the ghost
exactly as far as you trust the peasant's word about the landlord.
Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy
agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with
evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost.
If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human
testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can
only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant's story about
the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story
is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle
of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism--
the abstract impossibility of miracle.
Pages:
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299