The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume [Hardcover]

Robert M. Burns (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Bucknell Univ Pr (September 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0838723780
• ISBN-13: 978-0838723784
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,053,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The only must-read on David Hume and miracles, August 21, 2007

By 

J. de Lijster "James" (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Debate on Miracles: From Joseph Glanvill to David Hume (Hardcover)

References to the essay on miracles by David Hume are frequent in the literature of sceptics about religion. Often one is lead to think that Hume's essay was a masterpiece, unprecedented in Hume's own time and deservedly a classic until our very times.
If you agree and dare to take in a little more historical information and some systematic thought about the issues concerned, this is your book. Burns places Hume's essay in the context of its time. Actually Hume's essay on miracles is a tail-end contribution to a debate about miracles and their evidential value for the christian religion, a debate that continued for decades in eighteenth century England. None of the arguments Hume employs were original and all of them where thoroughly critized before. Of course, old arguments can be reinvented and old criticisms ignored - and that's what Hume did, splendidly. This may sound quite negative, but Burns is not negative about Hume, he's presenting historical facts.
An important feature of this book is that Burns does not only present historical facts, but introduces the reader to the philosophical (epistemological, empiricistic) issues that were at stake in these debates. He shows the close connection between debates on miracles, underlying philosophical convictions and the rise and progress of empirical science.
Since these epistemological issues have proved to be just as alive as the populair praise for Hume's essay on miracles (in fact, this praise often springs from shared epistemological presumptions), this book has more than historical value. It helps you to see through many a modern debate on religion, evidence and science.
My only complaint is that, strangely, the author at times takes side with modern bible critics, while his book as a whole is a convincing attack on one of the main pillars of the modern critical view of the bible, which is, of course, the belief that miracles do not occur or at least that for epistemological reasons one is not allowed to take the biblical miracle stories for what they are: historical, reliable accounts of a miracle.