ABSTRACT
Believers in the orthodox traditions of Christianity and Judaism maintain that God has performed miracles in history. Some non-theistic philosophers, however, have challenged in several ways the rationality of belief in the miraculous. This chapter will cover the arguments of Michael Martin and Antony Flew, two philosophers who have presented perhaps the most trenchant criticisms of belief in the miraculous, although the style and type of argument they present has its roots in the thought of eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume.1 In this chapter, I will assess two of their arguments: (1) the argument from the impossibility of eliminating naturalism, and (2) the argument from a miracle’s improbability.
