David Hume on Miracles

 David Hume back in the 18th century said:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.

Hmm . .why is reality beholden to follow exceptionless laws of nature? There's a problem saying "firm and unalterable experience has established these laws" since our "firm and unalterable experience" cannot distinguish between 100% exceptionless laws, and extremely close to 100% laws e.g. laws that pertain 99.99999999% of the time. And, indeed, since there have been many reports of miracles and indeed many reports of anomalous and surprising phenomena-- and I guess they aren't all lying, even if mistaken -- then the "firm and unalterable experience" is questionable, if not in fact outright question-begging.

Of course, one might retort that it is surely more reasonable that physical laws are exceptionless rather than operate 99.99999999% of the time. The latter seems just an arbitrary number. Whatever makes reality exhibit the patterns it does -- the interactions of the four forces or whatever -- surely this operates all the time? A rose that starts to sing we would feel is simply flatout impossible. It would certainly discombobulate us and, indeed, freak us out! So can this conviction that reality exhibits exceptionless patterns be justified?

Certainly not by physical laws since they are simply a description of the patterns that reality exhibits. If reality only exhibits patterns 99.99999999% of the time, then the other 0.00000001% of the time when miracles or bizarre phenomena occur, cannot be said to contravene such laws. On the contrary, such physical laws would then demand such "miracles".

But what about the argument that science has certain assumptions, and one of those assumptions is that nature is uniform? But science would work equally well, at least on an everyday basis, if nature only deviated from such patterns rarely and briefly.

I think, at the end of the day, people are only appealing to their feelings that nature follow exceptionless laws of nature. Their belief here is, in a sense, a kind of faith.