Philo

I discuss the primary aims of my book God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason which critically assesses the most promising apologetic strategies defending the reasonable endorsement of religious creeds. These apologetic strategies may be schematized as the end nodes of a decision tree for religious believers, as I explain in section 2. In section 3, the structure of the book is elucidated, and in section 4 I illustrate its argumentative strategy by some examples.

Some contemporary theologically inclined epistemologists, the reformed epistemologists, have attempted to show that belief in God is rational by appealing directly to a special kind of experience. To strengthen the appeal to this particular, and admittedly peculiar, type of experience, they venture to draw a parallel between such experiences and normal perceptual experiences. If beliefs formed on the basis of the later are taken to be justified and rational to hold, then by parity of reasoning, beliefs formed on the basis of the former should also be regarded as justified and rational to hold. Such appeals to religious experience have been discussed and/or made by Robert Pargetter, Alvin Plantinga and William Alston and they claim that they provide sufficient warrant for religious beliefs, specifically for the belief that God exists. The main critical issue that will be raised here concerns the coherence of this notion of religious experience itself and whether such appeals to religious experience really provide justification for belief in the existence of God.

A key premise of the kalam cosmological argument is that the universe began to exist. However, while a number of philosophers have offered powerful criticisms of William Lane Craig's defense of the premise, J.P. Moreland has also offered a number of unique arguments in support of it, and to date, little attention has been paid to these in the literature. In this paper, I attempt to go some way toward redressing this matter. In particular, I shall argue that Moreland's philosophical arguments against the possibility of traversing a beginningless past are unsuccessful.

Michael Gill's book on The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics is an excellent piece of intellectual history, history of philosophy, and philosophical analysis. It tells the story of how moral philosophers of the early modern period gradually pried ethical theory free, first, of distinctively Christian commitments, and later, any theological ones. Early on, the relevant commitments had to do with the human nature question-if it is good or evil. By the end, it can no longer be assumed that morality exists in the form of an independent standard of goodness against which human nature can be measured. Rather, morality becomes (merely?) one item of study in a descriptive science of human nature. Gill shows how this idea developed through the work of Whichcote and Cudworth (Part I), Shaftesbury (Part II), Hutcheson (Part III), and Hume (Part IV), and how this "Copernican" shift in moral theorizing has left an indelible mark on contemporary metaethical debates.

Additions B and E to LXX Esther have been variously dated from the second century BCE to the first century CE. This study links the two Greek Additions, on the one hand, with Philo’s writings through the concept of the “evil-hating justice” and, on the other hand, with the historical persons and events related to the Jewish-Alexandrian conflict of 38-41 CE, and dates their composition or final redaction to the early forties of the first century CE.

In his 2012 book God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason Herman Philipse argues that all known deductive versions of the cosmological argument are untenable. His strategy is to propose a few objections to two classical deductive cosmological arguments. The first argument is from the impossibility of there being contingent entities that are the sufficient cause for the existence of a contingent entity. The second argument is from the impossibility of there being an infinite causal regress. In this article I argue that Philipse’s attempt to write off all deductive cosmological arguments fails.

In this chapter, I will be considering the argument from reason. The argument, as we shall see, takes a number of forms, but in all instances it attempts to show that the necessary conditions of logical and mathematical reasoning, which undergird the natural sciences as a human activity, require the rejection of all broadly materialist worldviews. I will begin by examining the nature of the argument, identifying the central characteristics of a materialist worldview. In so doing, I will examine the general problem of materialism, and how the argument from reason points to a single aspect of a broader problem. Second, I will examine the argument's history, including the famous Lewis-Anscombe controversy. In so doing, I will indicate how the argument from reason can surmount Anscombe's objections. I will also explain the transcendental structure of the argument. Third, I will examine three subarguments: the argument from intentionality, the argument from mental causation, and the argument from the psychological relevance of logical laws, showing how these demonstrate serious and unsolved diffi culties for materialism. Finally, I will examine some popular objections and show that these objections do not refute the argument.

In this paper I argue that Richard Swinburne fails to adequately support his Principle of Credulity in favor of the validity of alleged experiences of God. I then formulate an alternative, analogical argument for the validity of alleged experiences of God from the validity of senseperceptual experiences, and defend it against objections of Gale and Fales. But then I argue against trying to establish the validity of alleged experiences of God by analogy.

One of the principle aims of the B version of Kant's transcendental deduction is to show how it is possible that the same 'I think' can accompany all of my representations, which is a transcendental condition of the possibility of judgment. Contra interpreters such as A. Brook, I show that this 'I think' is an a priori (reflective) self-consciousness; contra P. Keller, I show that this a priori self-consciousness is first and foremost a consciousness of one's personal identity from a first person point of view.

and Oppy (2003), we set out to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil. In particular, we argued that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine noseeum inferences in evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine noseeum inferences that play a crucial role in the justification of ordinary moral reasoning. Bergmann and Rea (2005) defend sceptical theism against our argument. They claim, first, that our argument fails to show that 'sceptical theism as such undermines ordinary moral practice', and, second, that our argument fails even to show that 'in the absence of various background beliefs that theists are very likely to possess, [sceptical theism] undermines ordinary moral practice'. Following Bergmann (2001), we shall suppose that the sceptical theist critique of evidential arguments relies upon the following three claims: ST1: We have no good reason for thinking that the possible goods we know of are representative of the possible goods there are. ST2: We have no good reason for thinking that the possible evils we know of are representative of the possible evils there are.

Bruce Russell has classified evidential arguments from evil into four types, one of which is the type-4 argument. Rather than begin with observations of evils that appear to be gratuitous, type-4 arguments simply begin with observations of evils. The next step, and the heart of a type-4 argument, is an abductive inference (inference to the best explanation) from those observations, to the conclusion that there is gratuitous evil. Reflection upon the consequential complexity of history, however, reveals that we have no objective grounds for making the key, abductive inference, thus, all type-4 arguments from evil fail. Tires were exploding all over the place. That poor girl was screaming, God, it must have been for ten minutes. We just couldn't help her. eyewitness, multi-vehicle inferno, Hwy 401 In the instance of suffering described in the above prelude, the girl's heartrending screams for help as she was slowly incinerated would have, and did, move anyone with even a shred of compassion to do everything in their power to save her. If there is an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being, surely such a being should have been moved to intervene when all human efforts failed. Such an intervention never occurred. The best explanation for the lack of a theistic rescue, some would argue, is that such a being does not exist. Bruce Russell has classified evidential arguments from evil into four major types. 1 I have dealt elsewhere with the effect of the consequential complexity of history upon type-1 and type-2 arguments. 2 Russell indicates that there is no known example of a type-3 argument. Thus, this paper shall focus only on type-4 arguments. By Russell's taxonomy, the sort of argument from evil given in the previous paragraph would classify as a type-4 evidential argument from evil. In this paper I shall argue that the complexity of history, with it's innumerable, interacting causal chains, puts us in a position of such ignorance, that type-4 arguments are neutralized. I will begin with a review of Russell's explanation of the type-4 argument. Following this, I will examine the consequential complexity of history and its effect on type-4 arguments. Finally, I will look at some possible objections to the counter-argument I lay out in this paper.

Arthur Falk has proposed a new construal of faith according to which it is not a mere species of belief, but has essential components in action. This twist on faith promises to resurrect Pascal's Wager, making faith compatible with reason by believing as the scientist but acting as the theist. I argue that Falk's proposal leaves religious faith in no better shape; in particular, it merely reframes the question in terms of rational desires rather than rational beliefs. * Thanks, of course, go to Arthur Falk for a stimulating paper and subsequent helpful conversations on this topic; thanks also to Ashley McDowell. 1 Falk (2005). Throughout, I will use the proper name 'God' for the god of the Abrahamic tradition.