Most literature on religious disagreements focuses on the epistemic problems related to doctrinal disputes. While, the main argument of my paper does not address such a topic, my purpose is to point at a practical exit strategy from the blind spot to which most disagreements lead. However, in order to argue for my views, I need to provide a substantive account of how religious beliefs work and which epistemic obligations they involve. Such account challenges most mainstream assumptions, and needs to (...) be developed in some details. My method consists, then, in construing a theory for religious beliefs, and exploring its consequence concerning disagreements. I will focus particularly on the positive task. Indeed, if my account for religious beliefs works, consequences easily follow. (shrink)

In the article I reconstruct Karol Wojtyła’s argument against atheism. According to Wojtyła, an atheist is unjust because of not rendering absolute honour to God. In my opinion the argument is sound if one applies it to theists or negative atheists and if one presupposes that there are moral obligations to only supposed persons. The argument meets some objections. A discussion of them leads me to an interpretation of the theism-atheism controversy as being the conflict of two imperatives: the imperative (...) of justice and the imperative of evidence. (shrink)

Distinguishing between the old atheism, the new atheism, and modest atheism, and also between belief and acceptance, and belief and acceptance tokens and types, I defend the disjunctive view that either modest atheistic belief or modest atheistic acceptance, construed as type, is today epistemically justified in the context of philosophical inquiry. Central to my defence is a deductive version of the hiddenness argument and an emphasis on the early stage of philosophical inquiry that we presently occupy.

In this paper I consider an understudied form of the design argument which focuses on the beauty of the natural world and which argues, on that basis, that the world requires a divine Artist in order to explain its beauty. Against this view, one might raise a question concerning the beauty of, and in, this divine Artist. What explains the divine beauty? This kind of explanatory regress objection is exactly like that used by Philo in Hume’s Dialogues to undercut standard (...) versions of the design argument focused on the orderliness of the world. Here I argue that Philo’s explanatory regress objection likewise significantly undercuts versions of the design argument focusing on the beauty of the world. (shrink)

I develop a probabilistic account of coherence, and argue that at least in certain respects it is preferable to (at least some of) the main extant probabilistic accounts of coherence: (i) Igor Douven and Wouter Meijs’s account, (ii) Branden Fitelson’s account, (iii) Erik Olsson’s account, and (iv) Tomoji Shogenji’s account. Further, I relate the account to an important, but little discussed, problem for standard varieties of coherentism, viz., the “Problem of Justified Inconsistent Beliefs.”.

The ascendancy of Christian activism in bioethical policy debates has elicited a number of responses by critics of this activism. These critics typically argue that the public square ought to embrace Secular Liberalism, a perspective that its proponents maintain is the most just arrangement in a pluralist society, even though SL places restraints on Christian activists that are not placed on similarly situated citizens who hold more liberal views on bioethical questions. The author critiques three arguments that are offered to (...) defend SL: the golden rule contract argument, the secular reason argument, and the err-on-the-side-of-liberty argument. The author concludes that each of these arguments fail to support SL. (shrink)

Most religious traditions hold that what makes one a person is the possession of a soul and that this gives one moral status. This status in turn gives persons interests and rights that delimit the set of actions that are permitted to be done to them. In this paper, I identify the soul with the capacity for consciousness and mental life and examine the ethical aspects of medical decision-making at the beginning and end of life in cases of patients who (...) either never have had or have lost this capacity. I argue that, although these patients may lack moral status, they nonetheless have moral value as human organisms and forms of Godgiven biological life. In particular, I explore what this value entails about the permissibility of withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment and of harvesting viable organs from patients with no higher-brain function. (shrink)

Ideas for explaining the mechanism of gravity involving the expansion of matter have been proposed several times since the 1890’s. Due to their radical nature and other reasons, these ideas have not gotten much attention. Another essential feature needed to augment the viability of the model proposed here---even more important than matter expansion---is that of space generation. I.e., the production of space by matter, involving motion into or outfrom a fourth spatial dimension. An experiment is proposed whose result would unequivocally (...) either falsify the model or support it. Analyses of star cluster velocity dispersions suggest that some support already exists. The simplest, most definitive way to test the model is to build and operate an apparatus that may be called a Small Low-Energy Non-Collider. Essentially the same experiment was proposed by Galileo in 1632. We are way overdue to at last bring to fruition this idea put forth by the Father of Modern Science so long ago. (shrink)

A distinction which is often rehearsed in some strands of Christian writing on the ‘Eastern’ religions, especially Hinduism, is that while they are full of ‘mythological’ fancies, Biblical faith is based on the solid rock of ‘historical’ truth. I argue that the sharp contours of this antithesis are softened when we consider two issues regarding the relation between ‘myth’ and ‘history’. First, the decades–long attempts to separate the ‘historical’ facts about Jesus Christ from the interpretive elements in the Biblical narrative (...) highlight the presence of ‘mythical’ imagination in Christian thought. Second, a comparative study of the Christian understanding of Jesus Christ as the Incarnate God and the Hindu conception of avatāras reveals a highly significant set of differences and analogies, and shows how the supposed equivalences between ‘historical as real’ and ‘mythological as unreal’ need to be reformulated. (shrink)

The failure to secure replicable positive results in near-death experience (NDE) target-identification experiments does not establish the nonexistence of any spiritual realms, but it does serve to substantially challenge positive arguments in favor of the existence of spiritual realms from NDE reports. For if veridical paranormal perception occurs during out-of-body experiences (OBEs) or NDEs, why the failure to find it in all of the controlled experiments that have been undertaken to document it thus far? Various explanations can be put forward, (...) but in the absence of ad hoc maneuvering, the hallucination hypothesis predicts only one set of possible results: the results actually found. Until the time that properly controlled NDE target-identification experiments yield replicable positive results, they will take their place as historical curiosities akin to similarly unsuccessful direct tests of survival after death. While some eagerly await the results of the follow-up AWARE II study (which is recruiting subjects until 2020), at the moment the unsuccessful history of comparably easier-to-implement research into the paranormality of non-near-death OBEs does not bode well for those results. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, there are informative criteria of identity over time. Anti-criterialism rejects this orthodoxy and claims that there are no such criteria. This paper examines anti-criterialism in the light of recent attacks on the thesis by Matt Duncan, Sydney Shoemaker and Dean Zimmerman. It is argued that those attacks are not successful. Along the way, a novel strategy to defend anti-criterialism against the critics’ most challenging objection is developed. Under-appreciated difficulties for criterialism are also raised which, I claim, (...) there is no obvious way to solve. It is concluded that anti-criterialism may be a much stronger rival to criterialism than is often supposed. (shrink)

I examine three accounts of divine freedom. I argue that two recent accounts which attempt to explain God’s freedom without appealing to alternative possibilities fail. I then show how a view of divine freedom based on Robert Adams’s idea that God’s grace means he has no obligation to create the best world is able to explain how God can be free while also being perfectly good and perfectly rational.

A descriptive polytheist thinks there are at least two gods. John Hick and Richard Swinburne are descriptive polytheists. In this respect, they are like Thomas Aquinas and many other theists. What sets Swinburne and Hick apart from Aquinas, however, is that unlike him they are normative polytheists. That is, Swinburne and Hick think that it is right that we, or at least some of us, worship more than one god. However, the evidence available to me shows that only Swinburne, and (...) not Hick, is a cultic polytheist: he actually worships more than one god. I conclude that only Swinburne is a polytheist par excellence. (shrink)

Much philosophical effort has been exerted over problems having to do with the correct analysis and application of the concept of epistemic justification. While I do not wish to dispute the central place of this problem in contemporary epistemology, it seems to me that there is a general neglect of the belief condition for knowledge. In this paper I offer an analysis of 'degrees of belief' in terms of a quality I label 'conviction', go on to argue that one requires (...) more conviction in a proposition in order to know it than to merely believe it, and conclude by suggesting that some current epistemological issues admit of new insight when we begin taking conviction seriously. (shrink)

In this article, we consider three metaphysical theories of personal identity: the soul theory, the body theory, and the psychological theory. Clinical cases are discussed as they present conceptual problems for each of these theories. For the soul theory, the case of Phineas Gage, and cases of pedophilic behavior due to a brain tumor are discussed. For the body theory, hypothetical cases of cephalosomatic anastomosis and actual cases of dicephalic parapagus and craniopagus parasiticus are discussed. For the psychological theory, cases (...) of delusions and memory impairments are discussed. After a discussion of all these cases, we conclude that it is very difficult to unequivocally favor one of these theories, yet we argue that this discussion must be based not on abstract armchair speculation, but rather, consideration of real clinical cases. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta y discute diferentes intentos recientes para resolver el así llamado «problema de la Trinidad». Las declaraciones dogmáticas han asumido que (a) sólo hay un Dios; (b) que hay tres personas diferentes, el Padre, el Hijo y el Espíritu Santo; y (c) que esas tres personas son un solo Dios. Pero si hay tres personas diferentes y esas tres personas diferentes son Dios, entonces parece que, o bien no hay un único Dios, o no hay realmente tres personas (...) diferentes. Han aparecido cuatro posiciones principales en el debate reciente en Teología Filosófica para resolver este problema: (i) la teoría social de la Trinidad, (ii) la teoría «latina» de la Trinidad, (iii) la teoría de la Trinidad basada en identidades relativas, y (iv) la teoría de la Trinidad basada en relaciones de constitución. Se presentan y discuten críticamente las cuatro posiciones. This work presents and discusses different recent attempts to solve the so-called «problem of the Trinity». The dogmatic declarations have assumed that: (a) there is only one God; (b) that there are three different persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and (c) that those three persons are just one God. But if there are three different persons and those three different persons are God, then it seems that, either there is not just one God, or there are not really three different persons. There have appeared four main positions in the recent debate in Philosophical Theology to solve this problem: (i) the social theory of the Trinity, (ii) the «latin» theory of the Trinity, (iii) the theory of the Trinity based on relative identity, and (iv) the theory of the Trinity based on relations of constitution. All four positions are presented and critically discussed. (shrink)

Imre Lakatos holds a well-deserved primary place in current philosophy of science. In this essay, Leslie Allan critically examines Lakatos' theory of knowledge in two key areas. The first area of consideration is Lakatos' notion that knowledge is gained through a process of competition between rival scientific research programmes. Allan identifies and discusses four problems with Lakatos' characterization of a research programme. Next, Allan considers Lakatos' proposed test of adequacy for theories of rationality using his methodology of historiographical research programmes. (...) Allan discovers tensions within Lakatos' criteria and suggests ways of strengthening his test. (shrink)

What aspects and features of events impel people to label them as miraculous? Three studies examined people's miracle conceptions and the factors that lead them to designate an event as a miracle. Study 1 identified the basic elements of laypersons’ miracle beliefs by instructing participants to define a miracle, to list five events that they considered miraculous, and to state what they believed to be the purpose of miracles. Results showed that individuals tend to view miracles as highly improbable and (...) beneficial occurrences that instill hope and faith in people. Studies 2 and 3 investigated people's intuitive miracle theories. Findings demonstrated that people tend to label events as miracles when the events in question were of high magnitude, were obtained in an unusual manner, resulted in a beneficial health outcome, personally affected the participant, involved a person of worthy character, and depicted a low-probability event. (shrink)

Gerek felsefede gerekse teolojide Tanrı’nın ilim sahibi bir varlık olup olmadığı tartışma konusu olmuştur. Eğer Tanrı ilim sahibi bir varlık ise, bu durumda O’nun tikelleri bilmesi mümkün müdür? Tanrı’nın tikellerini bildiğini iddia etiğimizde bu durum O’nun zatında bir değişimi gerektirir mi? Tesitik düşüncede Tanrı kâmil bir varlıktır ve O, mutlak manada âlimdir, kâdirdir ve iyilik sahibidir. Dolayısıyla O’nun zatına bir değişim söz konusu olamaz. Tanrı’nın ilmi konusunda tartışılan mesellerden birisi de bu ilmin tikelleri kapsayıp kapsamadığıdır. Pek çok teist düşünür Tanrı’nın (...) mutlak manada kâmil olduğunu iddia etmekte ve bu kemali temele alarak O’nun kemal niteliklere sahip olması gerektiğini belirtmektedir. Bilmek ve iyilik gibi nitelikler kemal niteliklerdir. Cehalet ve kötülük ise nakıs hallerdir. Şayet Tanrı kâmil bir varlık ise bu tür kemal niteliklere de sahip olmalı, nakıs niteliklerden de hâli olmalıdır. Tanrı’nın ilmine dair Gazzālī ve İbn Meymûn’un görüşleri arasında birtakım paralellikler olduğu kanaatindeyiz. Bu çalışmada, Gazzālī ve İbn Meymun’un konuya yaklaşımını ele aldık ve Griffel ve Stroumsa’nın iddiasını temele alarak Tanrı’nın ilmi konusunda Gazzālī ve İbn Meymun’un görüşleri arasında benzerlikler olduğunu göstermeye çalıştık. (shrink)

In the current debate on theodicy, the problem of animal suffering is becoming increasingly relevant, as demonstrated by some recent books devoted to this topic. Such a problem is particularly challenging for a theistic theodicy, as its traditional arguments do not seem able to deal with it. In the first instance, the article aims to provide a brief overview of the main arguments sustained by theists regarding animal suffering, and secondly to provide an evaluation of such arguments which might be (...) useful for further research on this topic. (shrink)

در دوران معاصر، می‌توان سه کلان‌الگوی خداباوری را دنبال کرد. این سه کلان‌الگو عبارت‌اند از ایمان‌گرایی، قرینه‌گرایی، عمل‌گرایی. هر‌یک از این سه کلان‌الگو متضمن الگوهایی است. ایمان‌گروی سه نظریۀ عمده را شامل می‌شود که بر‌اساس آن‌ها، ایمان در تعارض با استدلال عقلانی، بی‌ارتباط با استدلال عقلانی یا بی‌نیاز از استدلال عقلانی است. قرینه‌گرایی دو نظریۀ عمدۀ قرینه‌گرایی برهانی و قرینه‌گرایی استقرایی را در‌بر ‌می‌گیرد. عمل‌گرایی نیز مشتمل بر دو نظریۀ عمل‌گرایی آخرت‌محور و عمل‌گرایی دنیا‌محور است. مراجعه به آرای فیلسوفان مسلمان (...) و باز‌سازی آن‌ها به زبان جدید هم‌سخنی با نظریات معاصر را برای ما ممکن می‌کند؛ مثلاً با تأمل در اندیشه‌های ابن سینا می‌توان به باز‌سازی دیدگاه او در قالب قرینه‌گرایی برهانی و با تأمل در اندیشه‌های ملا‌صدرا می‌توان به بازسازی دیدگاه او در قالب ایمان‌گرایی از نوع سوم اقدام کرد. همچنین توجه به آرای غزالی امکان بازسازی آن‌ها را در قالب عمل‌گرایی به ما می‌دهد. فهم دقیق الگوهای خداباوری در دوران معاصر و تلاش برای بازسازی نظریات فیلسوفان مسلمان این امکان را به ما می‌دهد که در مواجهه با الحاد و الگوهای مختلف آن نیز به‌خوبی عمل کنیم. (shrink)

ارائه تصویری منسجم از شخص مجرد برای سوئینبرن اهمیت فراوانی دارد، زیرا مبنای پذیرش حقایقی همچون خداوند، فرشتگان و نفس در فلسفه اوست. سوئینبرن با بهره‌گیری از آزمایش فکری‌ای مشابه «انسان معلق» ابن‌سینا، وجود شخص مجرد را امری ممکن و پذیرش چنین موجودی را امری معقول می‌داند. او در مقابل مخالفان نظریه شخص مجرد معتقد است که می‌توان صفاتی همچون امید و طلب را به شخص مجرد نسبت داد، هرچند ممکن است به صورت اوصاف پنهان در شخص مجرد باقی بمانند (...) یا از طریق مداخله در عالم مادی بروز یابند. او نظریاتی که وجود شخص مجرد را با تمسک به عدم امکان تمایز آنها از یکدیگر زیر سؤال می‌برند عجولانه می‌داند و استفاده از حافظه و مغز به عنوان ملاک این‌همانی شخصیت را نادرست می‌شمارد. به نظر او، هرچند می‌توان از حافظه و مغز به عنوان ملاکی معرفت‌شناختی برای این‌همانی شخصیت استفاده کرد، اما به دلیل مواجهه با مشکلات فراوان، نمی‌توان آنها را ملاک‌هایی متافیزیکی در نظر گرفت. دیدگاه سوئینبرن در معرض انتقاداتی است که از جمله آنها می‌توان به مواردی همچون استفاده از مبانی متعارض، تصورناپذیری فرض انسان بدون بدن، و ضرورت وجود مغز برای هر گونه آزمایش فکری درباره حقیقت شخص اشاره کرد. این مقاله، با رویکردی تحلیلی-انتقادی مباحث فوق را مورد بررسی قرار داده است. (shrink)

This paper addresses the plausibility of practical apatheism: an attitude of apathy or indifference about philosophical questions pertaining to God’s existence grounded in the belief that they lack practical significance. Since apatheism is rarely discussed, we begin by clarifying the position and explaining how it differs from some of the other positions one may take with regard to the existence of God. Afterward, we examine six distinct objections to practical apatheism. Each of these objections posits a different reason for thinking (...) that belief in God is practically significant. Five of these objections prove unsuccessful. The sixth, which appeals to the practical significance of belief in God with respect to our fates in the afterlife, is more promising but nonetheless encounters significant obstacles. Since the success of this objection is controversial, whether we have good grounds to reject practical apatheism should be similarly controversial, and the view should be given further examination. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article criticises Alvin Plantinga’s claim that ‘basic’ design beliefs, which arise without a conscious inference, have more positive epistemic status than non-basic ones and that we cannot evaluate the probabilities involved in inferential, inductive design arguments.

Over the last three decades, a vast literature has amassed debating the merits of skeptical theism, and it is easy to get the sense that the rationality of theism itself depends crucially on the viability of the skeptical theist response. I will argue that this is mistaken, as there is no need for theists to maintain that non-theists are wrong to treat inscrutable evils as compelling evidence for atheism. I will show that theists instead need only take themselves to have (...) grounds for rejecting the existence of gratuitous evils and that they may look for these grounds among their more personal reasons for sustaining their trust in the theistic God rather than the more generally available skeptical considerations appealed to by skeptical theists. Accordingly, I call this alternative approach “trusting theism.” I will also show that the viability of trusting theism seems crucial to the rationality of theism whether or not skeptical theism is successful. Finally, I will show that trusting theism does not render theism impervious to possible counterevidence in the way skeptical theism has been accused of doing. (shrink)

Popular discussions of faith often assume that having faith is a form of believing on insufficient evidence and that having faith is therefore in some way rationally defective. Here I offer a characterization of action-centered faith and show that action-centered faith can be both epistemically and practically rational even under a wide variety of subpar evidential circumstances.

My aim in this paper is to critically assess two opposing theses about the epistemology of religious belief. The first one, developed by John Mackie, claims that belief in God can be justified or warranted only if there is a good argument for the existence of God. The second thesis, elaborated by Alvin Plantinga, holds that even if there is no such argument, belief in God can be justified or warranted. I contend that the first thesis is plausibly false, because (...) belief in God is not just like a scientific hypothesis, and the second thesis is likely true if epistemic externalism is the correct view. However, even if the second thesis is true, I argue that to work on good arguments for God’s existence is unavoidable in order to cope with a new version of the Great Pumpkin objection, as well as to achieve other relevant purposes such as to convince rational observers outside the theistic community that belief in God is likely justified or warranted. (shrink)

Landscape Agency New York was founded by Gavin Keeney, c.1997, and encompassed a wide array of activities and effects – e.g., research, writing, design, consulting, and teaching. /S/OMA (Syntactical Operations Metaphorical Affects) was the mobile, and sometimes global design and teaching module within LANY, focusing primarily on entirely hypothetical and/or irreal projects, many becoming the foundation for lectures and courses delivered at institutions in the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, from 2003 to 2007. Lastly, the LANY Archive-Grotto was established following (...) publication of On the Nature of Things: Contemporary American Landscape Architecture (Birkhauser, 2001), primarily as a means of escaping the then-formulaic production of texts common to Landscape Architecture and Architecture. (shrink)

In contemporary debates in religious epistemology, theistic philosophers provide differing responses to the evidentialist argument against religious beliefs. Plantinga’s strategy is to argue that evidence is not needed to justify religious beliefs while Swinburne’s strategy is to argue that religious beliefs can be justified by evidence. However, in Aquinas’ account of religious epistemology, he seems to employ both strategies. In his account of religious knowledge by faith, he argues that evidence is unnecessary for religious beliefs. But in his account of (...) religious knowledge by science, he argues that there is evidence for religious beliefs. In this paper, I argue that there is no real dichotomy between Plantinga’s and Swinburne’s responses to the evidentialist argument. From a Thomistic perspective, Reformed Epistemology and Natural Theology are different but compatible responses to Evidentialism. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers John Martin Fischer argues that the Molinist solution to the problem of reconciling divine omniscience with human freedom does not offer such a solution at all. Instead, he maintains, Molina simply presupposes theological compatibilism. However, Fischer construes the problem in terms of sempiternalist omniscience, whereas classical Molinism adopts atemporalism. I argue that, moreover, an atemporalist reformulation of Fischer’s argument designed to show that Molinism is not even consistent is unsuccessful as well, since it employs (...) a transfer principle about causal inaccessibility that Molina rightfully rejects. (shrink)

Summary This paper deals with the structure of the so-called c-inductive arguments in Richard Swinburne’s book The Existence of God and attempts to criticize their central concepts and assumptions. One of these concepts is simplicity: it is argued that Swinburne’s concept of simplicity is not unambiguous and that there is no reason to assume a positive correspondence between simplicity and probability. Furthermore, the theistic hypothesis cannot be said to be simple in any sense relevant to Swinburne. The second important concept (...) is explanatory power. It is argued that the method of determining a theory’s probability by means of its explanatory power cannot be applied to the case of theism. Finally, polytheism is considered and it is argued that according to his own principles Swinburne has actually no sufficient reason to prefer monotheism. (shrink)

I review recent work on Phenomenal Conservatism, the position introduced by Michael Huemer according to which if it seems that P to a subject S, in the absence of defeaters S has thereby some degree of justification for believing P.

For any essential property God has, there is an ability He does not have. He is unable to bring about any state of affairs in which He does not have that property. Such inabilities seem to preclude omnipotence. After making trouble for the standard responses to this problem, I offer my own solution: God is not omnipotent. This may seem like a significant loss for the theist. But I show that it is not. The theist may abandon the doctrine that (...) God is omnipotent without scaling back the extent of His power and without denying that He has all perfections. (shrink)

We show that as a chain of confirmation becomes longer, confirmation dwindles under screening-off. For example, if E confirms H1, H1 confirms H2, and H1 screens off E from H2, then the degree to which E confirms H2 is less than the degree to which E confirms H1. Although there are many measures of confirmation, our result holds on any measure that satisfies the Weak Law of Likelihood. We apply our result to testimony cases, relate it to the Data-Processing Inequality (...) in information theory, and extend it in two respects so that it covers a broader range of cases. (shrink)

Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to the project of meta-theodicy, understood here as the elucidation of the concept of theodicy through the analysis of its adequacy. In our case, the analysis shall be made inside a framework including a taxonomical view of the theodical adequacy conditions which allows for a rigorously acceptable description of them as well as for a natural appraisal of the role, importance and intra-logical relations holding between them. The result of the analysis shall (...) be used to introduce definitions minimally precise of the notions of theodicy, satisfactory theodicy, plausible theodicy, ideal theodicy, and the like. (shrink)

Modern philosophers normally either reject the „divine command theory” of ethics and argue that moral duties are independent of any commands, or make it dependent on God's commands but like Robert Adams modify their theory and identify moral duties in terms of the commands of a loving God. Adams regards this theory as metaphysically necessary. That is, if it is true, it is true in all possible worlds. But Swinburne's position is unprecedented insofar as he regards moral truths as analytically (...) necessary. In this paper Swinburne's argument will be discussed and I will reveal some of the difficulties involved in categorising general moral principles as logical truths. (shrink)

Hume’s chapter “Of Miracles” has been widely discussed, and one issue is that Hume seems to simply beg the question. Hume has a strong but implicit naturalist bias when he argues against the existence of reliable testimony for miracles. In this article, I explain that Hume begs the question, despite what he says about the possibility of miracles occurring. e main point is that he never describes a violation of the laws of nature that could not be explained by scientific (...) theories. (shrink)

One of the most commonly-raised objections to the design argument is the so-called “who designed the designer?” objection, which charges that any designer invoked to explain complexity in the universe will feature complexity of its own, and thus require explanation in terms of design. There are two distinct versions of this objection in the contemporary literature, with it being couched in terms of: (1) Complexity of designer: a designer exhibits complexity, which calls for explanation in terms of design; (2) Complexity (...) of ideas: a designer’s ideas exhibit complexity, which calls for explanation in terms of design. To each of these versions of the objection there corresponds various responses from proponents of design. These proponents adopt a very particular strategy when crafting their responses: they argue that the objection can be neutralised simply by appealing to one or more of God’s attributes. In this paper I argue that this strategy is inapt, and unable to yield a successful response to either version of the objection. I also argue that a more promising way of tackling the objections is to identify their own peculiar weaknesses, for once these are exposed the objections cease to be a credible threat to the design hypothesis. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there is a kind of evil, namely, the unequal distribution of natural endowments, or natural inequality, which presents theists with a new evidential problem of evil. The problem of natural inequality is a new evidential problem of evil not only because, to the best of my knowledge, it has not yet been discussed in the literature, but also because available theodicies, such the free will defense and the soul-making defense, are not adequate responses in (...) the face of this particular evil, or so I argue. (shrink)

This article intends to show that Plantinga’s criticism against Bayesianism as an account of what is involved in rationality does not apply to all forms of Bayesianism. Swinburne’s version, based on a logical theory of probability, is an example of Bayesianism not hit by Plantinga’s criticism. In addition, the article argues that the problem of dwindling probabilities – pointed out by Plantinga in Warranted Christian Belief (2000) – vanishes in a Bayesian approach. So, even if it is not a sufficient (...) account of rationality, Bayesianism helps to understand important elements of inductive reasoning, especially those relative to cumulative cases. (shrink)

I argue that Traditional Christian Theism is inconsistent with Truthmaker Maximalism, the thesis that all truths have truthmakers. Though this original formulation requires extensive revision, the gist of the argument is as follows. Suppose for reductio Traditional Christian Theism and the sort of Truthmaker Theory that embraces Truthmaker Maximalism are both true. By Traditional Christian Theism, there is a world in which God, and only God, exists. There are no animals in such a world. Thus, it is true in such (...) a world that there are no zebras. That there are no zebras must have a truthmaker, given Truthmaker Maximalism. God is the only existing object in such a world, and so God must be the truthmaker for this truth, given that it has a truthmaker. But truthmakers necessitate the truths they make true. So, for any world, at any time at which God exists, God makes that there are no zebras true. According to Traditional Christian Theism, God exists in our world. In our world, then, it is true: there are no zebras. But there are zebras. Contradiction! Thus, the conjunction of Traditional Christian Theism with Truthmaker Necessitation and Truthmaker Maximalism is inconsistent. (shrink)

The paper aims to elucidate in better detail than before the dispute about whether or not dispositional monism—the view that all basic properties are pure powers—entails a vicious infinite regress. Particular focus is on Alexander Bird's and George Molnar's attempts to show that the arguments professing to demonstrate a vicious regress are inconclusive because they presuppose what they aim to prove, notably that powers are for their nature dependent on something else. I argue that Bird and Molnar are mistaken. It (...) is true that dispositional monism is popularly assumed to characterize powers as dependent entities, but this is not what the arguments aim to prove. They merely aim to demonstrate that it would be absurd to assume that all properties are dependent in this way. Finally, it is argued that there is an unresolved tension in Bird's and Molnar's accounts of powers. They characterize them as being for their nature dependent on the manifestations that they are for, and yet ontologically independent of those same manifestations. Until that tension is resolved, their accounts are not equipped to remove the threat of vicious regress. (shrink)

If God brings about an event in the universe, does it have a preceding cause? For example, if the universe began with the Big Bang and if God brought it about, did the Big Bang then have a preceding cause? The standard answer is: yes, it was caused by a divine willing. I propose an alternative view: God’s actions, unlike human actions, are not initiated by willings, undertakings, or volitions, but God brings about the intended event directly. Presenting a solution (...) to the dilemma of free will I explain what ‘bringing about directly’ means and show that the question of what an action begins with is distinct from the question whether it is a basic action. (shrink)