Bayne and Nagasawa have argued that the properties traditionally attributed to God provide an insufficient grounding for the obligation to worship God. They do so partly because the same properties, when possessed in lesser quantities by human beings, do not give rise to similar obligations. In a recent paper, Jeremy Gwiazda challenges this line of argument. He does so because it neglects the possible existence of a threshold obligation to worship, i.e. an obligation that only kicks in when the value (...) of a parameter has crossed a certain threshold. This article argues that there is a serious flaw in Gwiazda’s proposal. Although thresholds may play an important part in how we think about our obligations, their function is distinct from that envisaged by Gwiazda. To be precise, this article argues that thresholds are only relevant to obligations to the extent that they transform a pre-existing imperfect obligation or act of supererogation into a perfect obligation. Since it is not clear that there is an imperfect obligation to worship any being, and indeed since on a certain conception of moral agency it is highly unlikely that there could be, the search for a rational basis for the obligation to worship must continue. (shrink)

I argue that the reference for “God” is determined by the definite description “the being that is worthy of our worship.” I describe two desiderata for rival theories of the reference of “God” to meet: accessibility and scope. I explain the deficiencies of a view where God is dubbed “God” and the name passed down by causal chains and a view where “God” picks out the unique satisfier of a traditional definite description. After articulating the “Worship-Worthiness” view, I show how (...) it best satisfies the desiderata. I then respond to some putative counterexamples to the view. (shrink)

The Evil-god challenge attempts to undermine classical monotheism by contending that because belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-malevolent God (the Evil-god hypothesis) is similarly reasonable to belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God (the Good-god hypothesis), the onus is on the classical monotheist to justify their belief in the latter hypothesis over the former hypothesis. This thesis explores the Evil-god challenge by detailing the history and recent developments of the challenge; distinguishing between different types of Evil-god challenge; responding to several (...) prominent objections to the challenge; and applying the challenge to philosophical arguments for the existence of God. I also evaluate the efficacy of parallel arguments as a whole, with a view to determining the parameters of the Evil-god challenge by laying out exactly which theistic positions are irrevocably undermined by it. I conclude that the Evil-god challenge effectively damages several arguments for the existence of God and, in cases where it does not straightforwardly do so, it nevertheless reduces the Good-god theist’s belief to one or more intuitions. (shrink)