The rationality of theism
In: Poznań studies in the philosophy of the sciences and the humanities 73
In: Poznań studies in the philosophy of the sciences and the humanities 73
In: Routledge library editions. Philosophy of religion, 17
Annotation
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 3, Heft 1, S. 123-138
I will discuss some familiar problems in the philosophy of religion which arise for theistic belief. I will argue that it may be most worthwhile to focus on a particular sort of theistic belief, capital-T Theism, central to which is a particular conception both of God and of the believer's relation to God. At the heart of Theism in this sense is the continuing experience of God, both individual and collective. Compared with the evidence for theistic belief that is provided by this experiential contact with God, most of the usually-considered arguments for and against God's existence are secondary.
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 3, Heft 2, S. 409-426
This paper argues that (1) richard Swinburne's general account of the simplicity of empirical hypotheses fails because it involves a deeply problematic notion of postulating a property, while there is a wide range of hypotheses where the assessment of simplicity rests entirely on the number and kinds of postulated properties (2) Swinburne's main argument in The Christian God for the simplicity of theism, the one based on considerations about pure limitless intentional power, is significantly weaker than he seems to believe. The paper does not draw a conclusion about whether theism is simple.
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 3, Heft 1, S. 105-122
I reply to seven objections to anthropomorphic theism: (1) That anthropomorphic theism is idolatrous. In reply I rely on the concept/conception distinction. (2) That faith requires certainty. In reply I argue that full belief may be based on probable inference. (3) That the truly infinite is incomprehensible. In reply I distinguish two senses of knowing what you mean. (4) 'You Kant say that!' In reply I distinguish shallow from deep Kantianism. (5) 'Shall Old Aquinas be forgot?' In reply I discuss the simplicity of God. (6) What those garrulous mystics say about the ineffable. In reply I argue that mystics should be anthropomorphites. (7) Anti-theodicy. In reply I distinguish the community of all agents from the community of finite frail agents.
SSRN
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 10, Heft 4, S. 97-118
Analytic philosophers of religion typically take God to be 'the personal omniGod' – a (supernatural, immaterial) person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and who creates and sustains all else that exists. Analytic philosophers also tend to assume that the personal omniGod is the God of 'classical' theism. Arguably, this is a mistake. To be consistent, a classical theist or her supporter must deny that God is literally a person. They need not, however, deny the aptness of using personal language, or of thinking of God as a person or personal at the level of religious psychology.
In: Palgrave frontiers in philosophy of religion
Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things. Intellectual inquiry seems to presuppose their existence, for we cannot justifiably conclude that we exist; that there is an external world; and that there are better and worse ways of investigating it and behaving in it, unless there are reasons to do and believe such things. But just what in the world are normative reasons? In this book a case will be made for believing normative reasons are favouring relations that have a single, external source, filling this significant gap in the literature in an area within contemporary philosophy that has quickly grown in prominence. Providing a divine command metanormative analysis of normative reasons on entirely non-religious grounds, its arguments will be relevant to both secular and non-secular audiences alike and will address key issues in meta-ethics, evolutionary theory - especially evolutionary debunking threats to moral reasons and the normative more generally - and epistemology.
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 10, Heft 1, S. 163-187
The free will theodicy (a standard theistic response to the problem of evil) places significant value on free will: free will is of such substantial value, that God's gift of free will to humans was justified, even though this gift foreseeably (and regularly) results in the most monstrous of evils. I will argue that when a state criminalizes sin (by punishing producers of sinful materials such as illicit drugs, or punishing consumers), it can restrict or eliminate citizens' exercise of metaphysical free will with respect to choosing to partake in or refrain from these activities. Given the value placed on free will in the free will theodicy, theists who endorse this theodicy should thus oppose the criminalization of what I will call Millian sins—that is, actions which are immoral, but which do not directly harm another person. In other words, such theists should oppose legal moralism.
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 9, Heft 1, S. 19-26
I argue that there could not be grounds on which to introduce God into our ontology. My argument presupposes two doctrines. First, we should allow into our ontology only what figures in the best explanation of an event or fact. Second, explanation is contrastive by nature, in that the explanandum always consists in a contrast between a fact and a foil. I argue that God could not figure in true contrastive explanatory statements, because the omnipotence of God guarantees that for any true proposition p, God could have made it the case that ~p just as much as He could have made it the case that p.
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 8, Heft 2, S. 47-58
In: Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies
Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Rebutting the argument from evil -- 3. Christian theism and the origin of evil and sin -- 4. Evolutionary evils -- 5. Adamic Fall Theodicy -- 6. Original Sin -- 7. The problem of divine hiddenness -- 8. The problem of horrendous evil and apparently pointless evil -- 9. Why fight evil -- References -- Index.
In: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Band 10, Heft 1, S. 129-140
The aim of my paper is to clarify the conceptions of epistemic deism and probabilistic theism and to demonstrate that the two doctrines do not finally collapse into one. I would like also to point some reasons for the acceptance of a certain version of probabilistic theism which I will call in the last part of the article "open probabilistic theism". Open probabilistic theism is not a version of the view called "open theism". The reasons for the openness of open probabilistic theism are quite different from the reasons supporting open theism.