Antony Flew’s impenetrable sentence

In a paper titled “Parapsychology, Miracles, and Repeatability” Antony Flew writes as follows about David Hume’s view of miracles.

Since a miracle must essentially involve an overriding of the ordinary order of Nature, presumably by some supernatural power, there is bound to be an irresolvable conflict of evidence. Since all evidence for insisting that some conceivable occurrence (were it, in fact, to have occurred) constituted such an overriding of the natural order must at the same time and by the same token be evidence against the contention that the particular princple precluding occurrences of this particular kind is in fact an element in that order and, of course, also the other way about.

The sentence I have italicised must have a fair claim to be the most opaque I have ever encountered in a professional piece of writing.

[Source: The Hundredth Monkey, edited by Kendrick Frazie (Prometheus Books, 1991]

 

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