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If God is morally perfect then He must perform the morally best actions, but creating humans is not the morally best action. If this line of reasoning can be maintained then the mere fact that humans exist contradicts the claim that God exists. This is the ‘anthropic argument’. The anthropic argument, is related to, but distinct from, the traditional argument from evil. The anthropic argument forces...
In this paper, I develop and discuss an argument intended to demonstrate that the Molinist notion of middle knowledge, and in particular the concept of counterfactuals of freedom, is incompatible with the notion of personal responsibility (for created creatures). In Sect. 1, I discuss the Molinist concepts of middle knowledge and counterfactuals of freedom. In Sect. 2, I develop an argument (henceforth,...
I seek to clarify the notion of the fixity of the past appropriate to Pike’s regimentation of the argument for the incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and human freedom. Also, I discuss Alvin Plantinga’s famous example of Paul and the Ant Colony in light of Pike’s argument.
Karen Bennett has recently argued that the views articulated by Linsky and Zalta (Philos Perspect 8:431–458, 1994) and (Philos Stud 84:283–294, 1996) and Plantinga (The nature of necessity, 1974) are not consistent with the thesis of actualism, according to which everything is actual. We present and critique her arguments. We first investigate the conceptual framework she develops to interpret the...
Intending to have a constructive dialogue with the combination of evolutionary theory (E) and metaphysical naturalism (N), Alvin Plantinga’s “evolutionary argument against naturalism” (EAAN) takes the reliability of human cognition (in normal environments) as a purported explanandum and E&N as a purported explanans. Then, he considers whether E&N can offer a good explanans for this explanandum,...
Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that metaphysical naturalism is self-defeating, and cannot be rationally accepted. I distinguish between two different ways of understanding this argument, which I call the "probabilistic inference conception", and the "process characteristic conception". I argue that the former is what critics of the argument usually presuppose, whereas most...
This article deals with two types of Christian faith in the light of the challenges posed by the ethics of belief. It is proposed that the difficulties with Clifford’s formulation of that ethic can best be handled if the ethic is interpreted in terms of role-specific intellectual integrity. But the ethic still poses issues for the traditional interpretation of Christian faith when it is conceived...
The standard Kripkean semantic theories for quantified modal logic allow the individuals that exist at other worlds to vary from those that exist at the actual world. This causes a problem for those who deny the existence of non-actual individuals. I focus on two prominent strategies for solving this problem, due respectively to Bernard Linsky and Edward Zalta (who identify the possible individuals...
Warrant is what fills the gap between mere true belief and knowledge. But a problem arises. Is there just one condition that satisfies this description? Suppose there isn’t: can anything interesting be said about warrant after all? Call this the uniqueness problem. In this paper, I solve the problem. I examine one plausible argument that there is no one condition filling the gap between mere true...
A proof is offered that aims to show that there can be no knowledge of God, excluding knowledge based on natural theology, without divine self-testimony. Both special and general revelation, if they occur, would be forms of divine self-testimony. It is argued that this indicates that the best way to model such knowledge of God is on the basis of an analogy with knowledge gained through testimony,...
Alvin Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism aims to show that the conjunction of contemporary evolutionary theory (E) with the claim that there is no God (N) cannot be rationally accepted. Where R is the claim that our cognitive faculties are reliable, the argument is: P1. The probability of R given N and E is low or inscrutable. P2. Anyone who sees (1) and accepts (N&E)...
Alvin Plantinga has argued that evolutionary naturalism (the idea that God does not tinker with evolution) undermines its own rationality. Natural selection is concerned with survival and reproduction, and false beliefs conjoined with complementary motivational drives could serve the same aims as true beliefs. Thus, argues Plantinga, if we believe we evolved naturally, we should not think our beliefs...
There are three major theses in Plantinga’s latest version of his evolutionary argument against naturalism. (1) Given materialism, the conditional probability of the reliability of human cognitive mechanisms produced by evolution is low; (2) the same conditional probability given reductive or non-reductive materialism is still low; (3) the most popular naturalistic theories of content and truth are...
The author argues that Plantinga's Proper Function and Evolutionary arguments fail against liberal naturalism defined in a broad sense as the view that 'here aren't any supernatural beings'. The former argument can be interpreted in at least three ways: deductively, inductively and theistically. None of these, however, is successful. The latter argument suffers from several deficiencies of which two...
There are three chief aims of the paper. First, it presents in short the beginning of the analytic philosophy of religion, its development, issues, and methods. Second, it puts forward a hypothesis that in the last five decades analytic philosophy of religion has been dominated by the epistemological paradigm, i.e. in most cases, any problem in question has been studied as part of the general problem...
The aim of Oppy’s paper is to provide a general ground for rejecting all kinds of modal theistic arguments. The author claims that all such arguments are question begging – before proving the existence of God (defined as a being which exists in every possible world) theistic modalist must assume it when choosing his account of logical space (no matter which modal theory it relies on: Lewis’ modal...
The aim of Oppy’s paper is to provide a general ground for rejecting all kinds of modal theistic arguments. The author claims that all such arguments are question begging – before proving the existence of God (defined as a being which exists in every possible world) theistic modalist must assume it when choosing his account of logical space (no matter which modal theory it relies on: Lewis’ modal...
The article presents some prominent figures of modern ontology from Hegel to nowadays. It takes into account the diverse forms of ontology in three distinct trends of philosophy: Hegelianism, phenomenology and analytical philosophy. Each of these trends has its own subject, aim and method of ontology. The subject of Hegel’s ontology is understood as something originally undefined, being on the border...