W artykule prezentuję pogląd, że ocena moralna osób modlących się w sytuacjach skrajnych powinna być formułowana w oparciu o znajomość pewnych nierzeczywistych okresów warunkowych. Chodzi tu o okresy warunkowe opisujące sytuacje, w których osoby modlące się mogłyby wybrać, gdyby zechciały, inne niż modlitwa sposoby ocalenia siebie lub najbliższych. Jednakże ponieważ nie znamy wartości logicznej takich zdań, nie mamy wystarczających podstaw do oceny moralnej takich osób. W dalszej części artykułu rozważam ogólne założenia racjonalności modlitw wstawienniczych w kontekście różnych odmian teizmu i (...) sugeruję, że pojęcie Bożej odpowiedzi na takie modlitwy może mieć sens literalny w teizmie otwartym i probabilistycznym, a metaforyczny tylko w teizmie klasycznym. (shrink)

There is a concern about the effectiveness of petitionary prayer. If I pray for something good, wouldn’t God give it to me anyway? And if I pray for something bad, won’t God refrain from giving it to me even though I’ve asked? This problem has received significant attention. The typical solutions suggest that the prayer itself can alter whether something is good or bad. I will argue that this is insufficient to fully address the problem, but also that the problem (...) requires another assumption which can be doubted, thereby opening up a new way to solve the problem. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of whether petitionary prayer, aimed at influencing God, is consistent with the traditional Christian affirmations of divine omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. In this article, I first briefly articulate the problem of petitionary prayer, then briefly introduce and discuss some common approaches to resolving the problem. Finally, I introduce and discuss some implications of retrieving a cosmic conflict approach with rules of engagement as a possible avenue that warrants further consideration relative to the problem of petitionary (...) prayer. (shrink)

The fact that our asking God to do something can make a difference to what he does underwrites the point of petitionary prayer. Here, however, a puzzle arises: Either doing what we ask is the best God can do or it is not. If it is, then our asking won’t make any difference to whether he does it. If it is not, then our asking won’t make any difference to whether he does it. So, our asking won’t make any difference (...) to whether God does it. Our asking is therefore pointless. In this paper, we try to solve this puzzle without denying either that God must do the best he can or that petitioning God can make a difference to what he does. (shrink)

W artykule O wątpliwej moralności pewnych rozpowszechnionych form modlitwy Saul Smi- lansky rekonstruuje założenia moralnie niedopuszczalnej modlitwy. Założenia te dotyczą sposobu, w jaki Bóg wysłuchuje próśb modlących się ludzi, moralnego poziomu bóstwa i tych, którzy się modlą, a także natury relacji między modlitwą a wysłuchaniem jej przez Boga. W niniejszym artykule, podaję powody, dla których uważam, iż dokonana przez niego rekonstrukcja nie jest poprawna. Argumentuję, że niedopuszczalna moralnie modlitwa, o jakiej pisze Smilansky, w ogóle nie jest możliwa. Wskazanych przez niego (...) założeń nie da się odnaleźć wśród założeń faktycznie modlących się ludzi. Nawet gdyby dało się je odnaleźć, niemożliwe jest ich łączne występowanie. Każdy, kto się modli, robi tym samym coś dobrego. Krytyka Smilansky’ego skierowana jest przeciwko czemuś, co faktycznie nie istnieje i nie może istnieć, dlatego nie dostarcza powodów, dla których należałoby uznać za niedopuszczalną jakąkolwiek modlitwę. (shrink)

I defend a solution to the puzzle of petitionary prayer based on some ideas of Aquinas, Gregory the Great, and contemporary desert theorists. I then address a series of objections. Along the way broader issues about the nature of desert, what is required for an action to have a point, and what is required for a puzzle to have a solution are discussed.

Scott Davison has raised an epistemic challenge to the doctrine of petitionary prayer. Roughly, the challenge is that we cannot know or have reason to believe that a prayer has been answered. Davison argues that the epistemic challenge undermines all the extant defenses of petitionary prayer. I argue that it does not.

I respond to Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder’s criticisms of my arguments in another place for the conclusion that human supplicants would have little responsibility (if any) for the result of answered petitionary prayer, and criticize their defense of the claim that God would have good reasons for creating an institution of petitionary prayer.

Several of Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God rely on the claim that causal series cannot proceed in infinitum. I argue that Aquinas has good reason to hold this claim given his conception of causation. Because he holds that effects are ontologically dependent on their causes, he holds that the relevant causal series are wholly derivative: the later members of such series serve as causes only insofar as they have been caused by and are effects of the earlier (...) members. Because the intermediate causes in such series possess causal powers only by deriving them from all the preceding causes, they need a first and non-derivative cause to serve as the source of their causal powers. (shrink)

Many maintain that petitionary prayer is pointless. I argue that the theist can defend petitionary prayer by giving a general account of how divine and creaturely causation can be compatible and complementary, based on the claim that the goodness of something depends on its cause. I use Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysical framework to give an account that explains why a world with creaturely causation better reflects God’s goodness than a world in which God brought all things about immediately. In such a (...) world, prayer could allow us to cause good things in a distinctive way: by asking God for them. (shrink)

The essential idea of Leibniz’s Theodicy was little understood in his time but has become one of the organizing themes of modern mathematics. There are many phenomena that are possible locally but for purely mathematical reasons impossible globally. For example, it is possible to build a spiral staircase that is rising at any given point, but it is impossible to build one that is rising at all points and comes back to where it started. The necessity is mathematically provable, so (...) not subject to exception by divine power. Leibniz’s Theodicy argues that God could improve the universe locally in many ways, but not globally. This paper defends Leibniz, giving positive reasons for believing that there are so many necessary interconnections between goods and evils that God is faced with a choice like the classic Trolley case, where all of the scenarios that could be chosen upfront contain evils, but some more than others. Local changes for the better seem easy to imagine, but a proper understanding of global constraints undermines the initial impression that they can be done without global cost. The paper concludes by explaining how the context of the Leibnizian argument makes it reasonable to pursue the issue of whether there are no worlds better than this one. (shrink)