Skeptical theism is a family of responses to arguments from evil. One important member of that family is Stephen Wykstra’s CORNEA-based criticism of William Rowe’s arguments from evil. A cornerstone of Wykstra’s approach is his CORNEA principle. However, a number of authors have criticized CORNEA on various grounds, including that it has odd results, it cannot do the work it was meant to, and it problematically conflicts with the so-called common sense epistemology. In this paper, I explicate and defend (...) a CORNEA principle. After sketching a brief argument for it, I show how it can be acquitted of these recent charges. (shrink)

Most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God take the following form: (1) If God exists, the world would not be like this (where 'this' picks out some feature of the world like the existence of evil, etc.) (2) But the world is like this . (3) Therefore, God does not exist. Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise (1). According to skeptical theism, if there were (...) a God, it is likely that he would have reasons for acting that are beyond our ken, and thus we are not justified in making all-things-considered judgments about what the world would be like if there were a God. In particular, the fact that we don't see a good reason for X does not justify the conclusion that there is no good reason for X. 1 Thus, skeptical theism purports to undercut most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God. What follows is an account of the nature of skeptical theism, an application of skeptical theism to both the argument from evil and the argument from divine hiddenness, and a review of the cases for and against skeptical theism. (shrink)

While the last several decades have seen a renaissance of scholarship on J. G. Herder (1744?1804), his moral philosophy has not been carefully examined. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap, and to point the way for further research, by reconstructing his original and systematically articulated views on morality. Three interrelated elements of his position are explored in detail: (1) his perfectionism, or theory of the human good; (2) his sentimentalism, which includes moral epistemology and a theory (...) of moral education; and (3) his theism, which deepens and justifies these other elements. (shrink)

Para el realismo nomológico, la mejor explicación del mundo afirma la existencia de leyes naturales que lo fundamentan. Si el estatuto de estas es controvertido, sus partidarios coinciden en que implican una adición de ser con respecto a las regularidades de Hume. Se busca mostrar cómo el argumento nomológico, que todos ellos utilizan de alguna forma, se asemeja en su estructura a diversos argumentos teístas, como el de la quinta vía de Tomás de Aquino. Ante el carácter no conclusivo del (...) argumento, se sostiene que la adopción de un realismo nomológico proviene de una mera preferencia subjetiva. According to nomological realism, the best explanation of the world is one that appeals to the existence of natural laws which ground it. Althought there are controversies regarding the status of such laws, those who defend this position agree they involve a plus of being regarding Hume's regularities. In this paper we show how the nomological argument, which they all use somehow, has a structural similarity with various theistic arguments such as Thomas Aquina's fifth way. Finally, in the absence of conclusiveness of the argument, we hold that the adoption of a nomological realism comes from a mere subjective preference. (shrink)

Review essay on Tunstall, Doing Philosophy Personally.

Meister Eckhart might have liked it. Indeed, many-one thinking is the idea that there is the one ultimate origin, coherence, spirit of it all... but not without a multitude and diversity emerging within, which is the evolving universe with planets like Earth, with its biosphere and humankind, with you and me living in it. The Many-One is thought of as the whole of the cosmos complementing and entangled with all its parts, as beings inside Being and Being inside beings, as (...) the Creator and “his” co-creating creatures. The both-one-and-many idea takes a strong stance against any ultimate either-or-reduction, against isms of all sorts. Being unity and plurality and duality all at once, the Many-One is neither monistic nor pluralistic nor dualistic in any way. Inside this broad frame, it is open for many specific approaches, not least those represented in this volume, which are cosmic holism, cultural-spiritual-evolution thought, Higher-We, integral thinking, the Metaphysics of Adjacency, panentheism, process theology, and transpersonal-participatory thinking. However, the many-one idea also chimes in with approaches not sampled here, like Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism, Edgar Morin's Complex Thought, or metamodernism. (shrink)

A THEIST NEEDS A THEODICY, AN ACCOUNT FOR EACH KNOWN KIND OF EVIL OF HOW IT IS PROBABLE THAT IT SERVES A GREATER GOOD, IF HIS BELIEF IN GOD IS TO BE RATIONAL--UNLESS EITHER HE HAS OTHER EVIDENCE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WHICH OUTWEIGHS THE COUNTEREVIDENCE FROM EVIL, OR HE HAS FOUND THE RESEARCH PROGRAMME OF THEODICY PROGRESSIVE. IT IS NOT ENOUGH, CONTRARY TO WYKSTRA AND PLANTINGA, TO CLAIM THAT GOD MAY BE PURSUING GREATER GOODS BEYOND OUR UNDERSTANDING. HOW (...) EVIDENCE FUNCTIONS HERE IS WELL CAPTURED BY THE PROBABILITY CALCULUS. (shrink)

This collection of papers is from the Ninth European Conference on the Philosophy of Religion held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark in August 1992. The theme of the conference was theism and its modern alternatives. Why alternatives? There is no agreement on the answer to that question. Before outlining the nature of the disagreements, there is a need to distinguish theism, where it means some belief in God, and theism as a certain kind of philosophical response (...) to that belief. If theism is to be spoken of in both contexts, the following question arises -- is philosophical theism an adequate response to religious theism? (shrink)

Over the last twenty-five years skeptical theism has become one of the leading contemporary responses to the atheological argument from evil. However, more recently, some critics of skeptical theism have argued that the skeptical theists are in fact unwittingly committed to a malignant form of moral skepticism. Several skeptical theists have responded to this critique by appealing to divine commands as a bulwark against the alleged threat of moral skepticism. In this paper we argue that the skeptical theists’ (...) appeal to divine commands fails to rescue their position from the threat of a worrisome form of moral skepticism. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a popular response to arguments from evil. Many hold that it undermines a key inference often used by such arguments. However, the case for skeptical theism is often kept at an intuitive level: no one has offered an explicit argument for the truth of skeptical theism. In this article, I aim to remedy this situation: I construct an explicit, rigorous argument for the truth of skeptical theism.

The role of theism in Thomas Reid’s epistemology remains an unresolved question. Opinions range from outright denials that theism has any relevance to Reid’s epistemology to claims that Reid’s epistemology depends upon theism in a dogmatic or a viciously circular manner. This dissertation attempts to bring some order to this interpretive fray by answering the following question: What role or roles does theism play in Reid’s epistemology, particularly in relation to the epistemic justification of first principles? (...) Chapters 2-4 lay the foundation for answering this question and clarify some terminology. Chapter 2 distinguishes key senses in which Reid uses the terms “principle” and “first principle.” Chapter 3 argues for a novel interpretation of common sense and the principles of common sense. This interpretation avoids a number of objections to Reid’s principles of common sense. Chapter 4 considers the initial externalist justification of Reid’s first principles. It shows Reid has a surprisingly well-developed proper-functionalism and brings to light several overlooked elements of his epistemology. Chapters 5-8 argue theism can and does play various important and philosophically respectable roles in Reid’s epistemology, particularly in relation to the justification of first principles. Chapter 5 argues that even on the standard foundationalist interpretation of Reid’s epistemology, theism can and does boost the justification of first principles. Chapter 6 shows Reid’s epistemology is not a form of simple foundationalism but contains coherentist elements. This enables theism further to boost the justification of first principles. Chapter 7 reveals that Reid’s epistemology contains different kinds or levels of knowledge, and shows that theism enables the highest form of knowledge, which I call scientia. Chapter 8 argues that within Reid’s epistemology theism helps protect and preserve the justification of first principles. (shrink)

Sceptical theism is supposed, by a number of philosophers, to undercut the evidential basis for the evidential problem of evil. In this paper, I argue that even ifsceptical theism succeeds, its success comes with a hefty epistemic price: it threatens to undermine a good deal of what we supposedly know. Call this the problem of epistemic evil. Thus, sceptical theism has a costly philosophical price of admission. In light of this, it seems that the evidential problem of (...) evil is harder to dislodge than it might have initially seemed; i.e. with sceptical theism, we trade the evidential problem of evil for the problem of epistemic evil. (shrink)

Open theism denies that God has definite exhaustive foreknowledge, and affirms that God takes certain risks when creating the universe. Critics of open theism often complain that the risks are too high. Perhaps there is something morally wrong with God taking a risk in creating a universe with an open future. Open theists have tried to respond by clarifying how much risk is involved in God creating an open universe, though we argue that it remains unclear how much (...) risk is actually involved. We claim that open theists need to start developing theories about how God manages risks in order to bring about His purposes for the universe. In this article, we will take a philosophical and biological perspective on risk management that adds plausibility to open theism. We will consider how God can use different risk‐management, surveillance, and redundancy systems in the natural world in order to accomplish His goals. (shrink)

This chapter centers around the question of whether theism is rational. We begin by discussing different theories of rationality, and introducing some importantly related epistemic concepts and controversies. We then consider the possible sources of rational belief in God and argue that even if these provide some positive support, the fact of religious disagreement defeats the rationality of theism.

The structure of this paper is as follows. First, I start off by briefly explaining the concepts of pro-theism and anti-theism, and by distinguishing both between personal and impersonal versions of those views, and also between a more modest and a less modest claim connected with the impersonal version of pro-theism. -/- I then introduce a distinction that is itself quite trivial, namely, that between pro-theism (and anti-theism), on the one hand, and pro-monotheism (and anti-monotheism), (...) on the other, where the latter are defined in terms of the deity of some particular religion. The triviality notwithstanding, I shall argue at various points in the subsequent discussion that even the best discussions of the pro-theism versus anti-theism issue are vitiated to some extent by a failure to keep that distinction clearly in mind. -/- Next, I consider how the pro-theism versus anti-theism question is related to the theism versus atheism question. These questions are often thought to be quite independent of each other, but I shall argue that that is not so. In particular, I shall argue that these two issues are neither logically nor evidentially independent of one another. -/- The rest of the essay is then devoted to discussing the strength of the case for pro-theism, and there my basic claims are as follows. First, the case for the impersonal pro-theistic thesis––the thesis that, all things considered, the existence of God is better than the non-existence of God––is very strong relative to facts about which there is no dispute. Second, and contrary to the views of many philosophers, there is no respect in which the world is better if God does not exist than if God exists. Third, the case for the personal pro-theistic view that it is better for every person if God exists than it is if God does not exist is also very strong. Fourth, however, it is not clear that these pro-theistic conclusions remain justified if one thinks that one can take one’s evidence as including not just facts about which there is no dispute, but also the proposition that God exists, and I shall argue that if one does assume that theism is true, the support that can otherwise be offered for some pro-theistic claims is seriously weakened, perhaps even to the point where those claims can no longer be sustained. -/- My general conclusion, accordingly, might be put as follows: While there is no significant anti-theistic thesis that can be sustained if one is an atheist, some pro-theistic theses may become problematic if one is a theist. (shrink)