David Hume once wrote, “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” (Hume, Of Miracles.) But what about religious claims or paranormal beliefs, i.e. claims where physical evidence is disputed or lacking? Are people who believe in ghosts, telepathy, UFO sightings, alien abductions, etc. (see here, for example) foolish? To this end, I have converted my recent blog posts on Jorge Luis Borges’ Library of Babel into a formal paper — “Belief and Evidence: David Hume in the Library of Babel” — and have just posted my new paper to SSRN. This work is dedicated to my colleague and friend, Todd French (Rollins College), who brought to my attention two books that have ended up having a profound impact on my thinking on these questions: Jeffrey Kripal, Authors of the Impossible (2010), and Tanya Luhrman, When God Talks Back (2012). More generally, French, Kripal, and Luhrman have caused me to rethink my Humean priors regarding the relationship between evidence and belief.