Online research in philosophy

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

Given Hume’s theory of belief and belief production it is no small task to explain how it is possible for a belief in a miracle to be produced. I argue that belief in a miracle cannot be produced through Hume’sstandard causal mechanisms and that although education, passion, and testimony initially seem to be promising mechanisms for producing belief in a miracle, none of these is able to produce the belief in amiracle. I conclude by explaining how this poses a problem for Hume’s theory of belief and I briefly investigate the alternatives available for solving this problem.

In this paper I discuss the conditions under which a person is entitled to believe the gospels. And in particular, I have my eye on the Enlightenment thesis that one is not entitled to do so unless one has collected adequate evidence concerning the reliability of the writers and the content of what they said, and has adequately appraised this evidence. There is no way of answering our question, however, without asking it with respect to some interpretation of the gospels. Accordingly I explain and use Hans Frei’s contention, that the gospels are identity narratives concerning Jesus of Nazareth.