Does it make sense for non-theists to feel gratitude for their existence? The question arises because gratitude is typically thought to be directed towards a person to whom one is grateful. Hence the theist may be grateful to God for their existence, experienced as a gift. But can the non-believer feel something similar without being irrational? Can there be gratitude for existence but not to anyone? After analysing gratitude and how we can best understand the idea of non-directed gratitude, I discuss the conditions that need to apply for non-directed gratitude to be appropriate. I end by discussing whether theism provides a psychologically richer and more satisfying framework for understanding existential gratitude.

I argue that Social Trinitarians can and should conceive of God as a group person. They can by drawing on recent theories of group agency realism that show how groups can be not just agents but persons distinct from their members – albeit, I argue, persons of a different kind. They should because the resultant novel view of the Trinity – that God is three ‘intrinsicist’ persons in one ‘functional’ person – is theologically sound, effectively counters the most trenchant criticisms of Social Trinitarianism, and enjoys independent theological support from the biblical notion of ‘corporate personality’.

Eleonore Stump's solution to the problem of suffering fails to show how God could be justified in permitting persons to suffer the dark night of the soul. In this article, I explain why and offer an amendment. I contend that a person who responds to the dark night in the right way experiences positive feedback between suffering and charity. This feedback not only enables the sufferer ultimately to attain his heart's desire but also explains why God is justified in permitting persons to suffer the dark night.

Positive Evidential Atheism is the two-part view that our available evidence sufficiently supports the belief that God does not exist and that God's non-existence is a morally good thing. Paul Moser's recent work (2012, 2013, 2014, and forthcoming) provides a case that Positive Evidential Atheism is undermined by ‘intentional divine elusiveness’. This essay defends Positive Evidential Atheism from Moser's objection along two lines: (1) Moser's undercutting argument does not respect the fact that the positivity and evidentiality claims of Positive Evidential Atheism are logically connected, and (2) positive atheists needn't be those from whom God has hidden.

Hume claims that his argument against miracles applies ‘without any variation’ to prophecies. While Hume's argument against miracles has been thoroughly examined in the philosophical literature, his claim that this argument works against prophecies has been left relatively unexplored. In this article I examine Hume's conception of ‘prophecy’ and I argue that it is flawed. I also argue, however, that Hume's argument against miracles does indeed apply to prophecies, but only if we amend Hume's conception of ‘prophecy’. I articulate and defend such an amendment.

The fall of the devil poses two distinct philosophical problems. Only one of those problems has received sufficient scholarly attention. The hard problem asks how the devil's choice to disobey God can be both suitably free and morally significant. The harder problem asks how it can be subjectively rational. Explaining the former does not suffice for explaining the latter. Drawing on the thought of Anselm of Canterbury, I develop a model of the first sin that uses the framework of consumer preference theory to show how Satan's act of disobedience can be free, morally significant, and subjectively rational.

I set out an argument for religious fictionalism which, unusually, proceeds from realist assumptions to the conclusion that even though some people might know that God exists, others ought to accept only non-doxastically that God exists. The argument relies upon the idea that religious experiences can confer immediate warrant on religious beliefs, whereas the warrant conferred by testimony is defeated by some reasonable beliefs which many people have.

In her article, ‘Two erotic ideals’, Fiona Ellis offers a sustained critique of my interpretation of Nietzschean eroticism. In the following piece, I respond to her criticism by proposing a shift in emphasis away from ‘erotic ideals’ and towards a greater attentiveness to the physiological states that condition our desire. I argue that such a move allows us to see how questions about eroticism and questions about nihilism are in fact integrally connected.