Despite its name, “naturalism” as a world-view turns out to be rather unnatural in its strict and more consistent form of materialism and determinism. This is why a number of naturalists opt for a broadened version that includes objective moral values, intrinsic human dignity, consciousness, beauty, personal agency, and the like. But in doing so, broad naturalism begins to look more like theism. As many strict naturalists recognize, broad naturalism must borrow from the metaphysical resour...

The core contention of The Legitimacy of Miracle is that a priori philosophical dismissals of the possibility or probability of justified belief in miracles fail. Whether or not it is rational to believe that events best understood as miracles actually occur is not to be decided on the basis of armchair theorizing, but rather on the basis of meticulous examination of the evidence. Such examination, however, needs to be set free from unwarranted assumptions that miracles are “impossible, im...

Hume’s essay "Of Miracles" has the reputation of providing, in Hume’s own words, an "everlasting check" to accepting reports of miracles. Author Robert Larmer demonstrates that this reputation is undeserved. Taking seriously the environment in which "Of Miracles" was composed reveals that its arguments are neither original to Hume nor compelling. Both before and after the publication of "Of Miracles" these arguments received devastating criticisms by Hume’s predecessors and contemporaries....

This book explores, in a manner that is readily accessible to those with little or no formal training in philosophy or theology, important questions concerning the rationality of belief in miracles. This book employs the time-honored literary device of dialogue, a practice that dates as far back as Plato. Done well, this form of philosophical investigation puts forward a thesis, yet genuinely engages with the views its author opposes. These dialogues are intended to provide a philosophical...