Full Description
This volume provides a comparative philosophical investigation into a particular concept from a variety of angles—in this case, the concept of "miracle." The text covers deeply philosophical questions around the miracle, with a multiplicity of answers. Each chapter brings its own focus to this multifaceted effort. The volume rejects the primarily western focus that typically dominates philosophy of religion and is filled with particular examples of miracle narratives, community responses, and polemical scenarios across widely varying religious contexts and historical periods. Some of these examples defy religious categorization, and some papers challenge the applicability of the concept "miracle," which is of western and monotheistic origin. By examining miracles thru a wide comparative context, this text presents a range of descriptive content and analysis, with attention to the audience, to the subjective experiences being communicated, and to the flavor of the narratives that come to surround miracles. This book appeals to students and researchers working in philosophy of religion and science, as well those in comparative religion.
It represents, in written form, some of the perspectives and dialogue achieved in The Comparison Project's 2017-2019 lecture series on miracles. The Comparison Project is an enterprise in comparing a variety of religious voices, allowing them to stand in dialogue.
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: Miracles in Religious Traditions.- Chapter 2: How to Tell a Miracle Story: The Amazing Deeds of Young Krishna.- Chapter 3: Inconvenient Wonders: Ambivalence in Hasidism about the Miraculous Powers of the Tsaddik.- Chapter 4: Qur'anic Miracle Stories: Surprising Implications for Theodicy, Transience, and Freedom.- Chapter 5: Expecting the Unexpected: Pentecostal Miracles as Performance, Production, and Placeholder.- Part II: Miracles in Polemics.- Chapter 6: On Miracles in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra during Early Medieval Period of China.- Chapter 7: "By Whose Authority?" Polemical and Political Uses of Miracle Stories.- Part III: Miracles of Healing.- Chapter 8: Miracle as Natural: A Contemporary Chinese American Religious Healer.- Chapter 9: What Miracles in the Global South Contribute to Understanding the Human Condition.- Part IV: Miracles and Morality.- Chapter 10: The Ethics of Wonder: Miracles, Magic, and Morality in Devotional Hinduism.- Chapter 11: Miracles: Two Lakota Case Studies.- Part V: Miracles, Logic, and Science.- Chapter 12: Miracles in Philosophical Analysis.- Chapter 13: Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action and Quantum Mechanics.- Chapter 14 Miracles and the Uniformity of Nature.- Chapter 15: Investigating Miracles.- Part VI: Miracles and Mysticism.- Chapter 16: Changed in a Flash: How One Woman Was Struck by Lightning, Talked to God, and Came Back to Dream the Future.- Part VII: Comparative Conclusions.- Chapter 17: On the Epistemic Function of Miracles.- Chapter 18: Miracles: So What?.
