The first half of this article offers two possibilities of how the argument Kojonen makes might be vulnerable to other new developments in evolutionary science and psychology—potential broadsides that might threaten to sink the salvaged ship of design once again. Work on the development of life suggests that life is a simplification of surrounding environmental information, and therefore life does not generate new information. Second, the psychology of pareidolia suggests we find design as a bias of our information processing, rather (...) than observing something that exists. The second half of the article offers a critique of how the metaphors we use to describe God and the world shape our approaches to solving theological and philosophical questions (particularly theodicy). I offer some organic metaphors in place of the usual mechanistic metaphors to think about how the design argument could be reformulated. (shrink)

This study reconceptualizes violence as the violation of value-laden boundaries through a close reading of the Death and the Displacement of Beauty trilogy by feminist philosopher of religion Grace M. Jantzen. Given the inherent normativity of the concept, it is difficult to imagine how violence could avoid simply becoming a tool in the hands of the powerful who would define it in polemical or coercive ways. But Jantzen’s work runs counter to a fatalistic treatment of the term by seeking the (...) redemption of the present and a therapeutic approach to the violent pathologies of philosophy. Through a radical reconfiguration of the relationship between mortality and natality, Jantzen both diagnoses and critiques the death-obsessed moral imaginary of modernity. In response, I argue that Jantzen’s sophisticated methodological resistance to an ontology of violent displacement provides an important counter-narrative to the violent metanarratives of modernity that order origins and ends in absolutizing, universalizing, and totalizing ways. (shrink)

Prima facie, rule-consequentialism as a moral theory would correlate with the concerns of an omnibenevolent being should one exist. Indeed, such a being would be divine, and under the lenses of the three Abrahamic religions, would inter alia, also be omnipotent and omniscient. In this paper, I consider the attitude of such a being to rule-consequentialism in human society. I argue, from a probabilistic perspective, that the evidence of Abrahamic scripture confirms, to a degree, that God would judge rule-consequentialism to (...) be a sound moral theory in different societies. I also consider a similar argument from a secular perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a piece of natural theology, whose pro tanto conclusion is the existence of god-the-artist, that is a lower case “g” god, a creator who creates for the sake of beauty, but who is not worthy of worship, a god who can be admired but should not be loved. I then consider some only partially successful responses to this dismal conclusion. Finally, I show to reconcile the idea of a god motivated by love of beauty with (...) the religious tradition of an upper case “G” God, who is not merely to be worshiped but loves us and invites a loving response. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg's hiddenness argument is one of the key contemporary justifications for atheism and has prompted numerous responses from those defending the plausibility of belief in God. I will outline a recent counterargument from Michael C. Rea, who claims that relationships with God are far more widely available than Schellenberg assumes. However, I will suggest that it invites a response from proponents of the hiddenness argument because it leaves some nonbelievers unaccounted for. I will rectify this by suggesting that (...) a model of panentheism in which God is embodied in the cosmos allows all, including all nonbelievers, to have a relationship with God. I will then claim that semantic externalism and externalism about beliefs can enable nonbelievers to get to know this God. I will then challenge the hiddenness argument by suggesting that these relationships can accommodate the key motivations behind Schellenberg's insistence on personal relationships without requiring subjects to recognize that they are in a relationship with God. (shrink)

Dombrowski and Murdoch offer versions of the ontological argument which aim to avoid two types of objection – those concerned with the nature of the divine, and those concerned with the move from an abstract concept to a mind-independent reality. For both, the nature of the concept of God/Good entails its instantiation, and both supply a supporting argument from experience. It is only Murdoch who successfully negotiates the transition from an abstract concept to the instantiation of that concept, however, and (...) this is achieved by means of an ontological argument from moral experience which, in a reversal of the Kantian doctrine, depends ultimately on a form of the cosmological argument. (shrink)

This article offers an argument for a form of panentheism in which the divine is conceived as both ‘God the World’ and ‘God the Good’. ‘God the World’ captures the notion that the totality of everything which exists is ‘in’ God, while acknowledging that, given evil and suffering, not everything is ‘of’ God. ‘God the Good’ encompasses the idea that God is also the universal concept of Goodness, akin to Plato’s Form of the Good as developed by Iris Murdoch, which (...) is inextricably conjoined with God the World because it is the nature of the world which determines the nature of perfect Goodness. This form of ‘conjoined’ panentheism yields a concept of divine personhood which includes both divine agency and human/divine engagement. God the Good is an agent of change by providing human persons with a standard of Goodness against which to measure the goodness of their own actions, while God the World provides the physical embodiment through which God acts. Human engagement with the divine may take a number of forms and may lead to moral action, the means by which the divine acts upon the world and changes it for the better. (shrink)

To claim that the divine is a person or personal is, according to Swinburne, ‘the most elementary claim of theism’. I argue that, whether the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal is construed as an analogy or a metaphor, or a combination of the two, analysis necessitates qualification of that concept such that any differences between the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal and revisionary interpretations of that concept are merely (...) superficial. Thus, either the classical theist has more in common with revisionary theism than he/she might care to admit, or classical theism is a multi-faceted position which encompasses interpretations which some might regard as revisionist. This article also explores and employs the use of a gender-neutral pronoun in talk about God. (shrink)

According to theistic consubstantialism, the universe and God are essentially made of the same stuff. If theistic consubstantialism is correct, then God possesses the essential power to have knowledge de se of the contents of the mind of every conscious being internal to God. If theistic consubstantialism is false, then God lacks this essential property. So either God is essentially corporeal and possesses greater essential epistemic powers than God would have otherwise or God is essentially incorporeal and has a diminished (...) range of essential epistemic powers. In light of this dilemma, I argue that theists should accept theistic consubstantialism. (shrink)