I forgot to mention that the 8th Philosopher's Carnival is now up.

In the wake of the recent Asian tsunami there have been a number of articles on the problem of evil in the press and blogosphere. Many were quick to point out that here again was an example of gratuitous natural evil that certainly no moral being would permit if they could prevent it. Certainly an all powerful and all knowing being could prevent such events. Yet there were many theists that were quick to toss out various theodicies in defense of theistic belief. I am rather skeptical about the task of presenting a theodicy, being more comfortable with a defense. While I have felt the tragedy of natural and moral evil in the world, I have never found the problem of evil a pressing problem. Since others have taken the task of presenting various theodicies I wanted to point out a couple of bits of metatheodicy that I have found comforting when contemplating the problem of evil.

The first point comes from Richard Swinburne who points out that many people think offering a theodicy is an impossible task because they have an extremely narrow conception of good and evil. This narrowness arises because people tend to focus on only the sensory pleasures and pains of life, a focus which is farcically narrow. To my great amusement and agreement Swinburne calls such persons moral pygmies. When one has a broader conception of good and evil the possibility of theodicy seems more promising. The difficulty lies in the fact that quantifying, qualifying, and mapping the relations between goods and evils is an enormous task.

The second point comes from Peter van Inwagen who points out that our universe provides the only model we have for designing a world. For all we know, in any world that is significantly complex the laws of nature have the same structure as our laws of nature. This means that if somebody really thinks things could have been different than they are, then they should provide some model describing in detail the laws of nature that govern that world. This model should include a story of how the universe and all its life develops, what are the boundary conditions for the operation of the natural laws, how does spacetime function, etc. Short of such a model we have little reason to think that other options in creating a world are metaphysically possible.

(Further reading: Swinburne's "Some Major Strands of Theodicy" and PvI's "The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence" in William Rowe's God and the Problem of Evil; "Ontological Arguments," Nous 11 (1977); Review of The Coherence of Theism, The Philosophical Review LXXXVII (1979))

The eighth Philosopher's Carnival is on Monday. Sorry I'm so late for posting this, but it got buried in a bunch of emails I wasn't looking back at. Submissions can be entered here. Please do so ASAP for the sake of the host, who will be enwe's meta-blog.

Tom Morris, in his book The Logic of God Incarnate, defends the following claim: Jesus coexemplifies all the kind-essential properties of humanity and all the kind-essential properties of divinity. His strategy is to deny that the kind-essential properties of humanity are logical complements of the kind-essential properties of divinity. This will show the coherence of the traditional claim that Jesus is God the Son. A crucial component to his strategy is to distinguish between kind-essential properties of humanity and merely common or universal properties of humanity.
Here’s a problem with Morris’s defense that I posed to several folks in our reading group and I thought I’d pass it along for further input: Take the property omnicompetence (call this property “C”). Let us say that a kind-essential property of divinity is essential omnicompetence (or C). Apply Morris’s strategy. Full-humanity cannot include any property that contradicts essential omnicompetence. So full humanity cannot include the property ~C. But full-humanity cannot include the property C because—alas—you and I do not exemplify omnicompetence but we do exemplify full-humanity. But for any kind K the set of K’s kind-essential properties either includes property p or property ~p. So the set of the kind-essential properties of full-humanity includes either C or ~C. But either way this won’t work for Morris’s defense.

Over at my blog, my co-blogger Wink has initiated a fascinating discussion that may prove of interest to some readers of Prosblogion. It's not entirely philosophy and relies much on biblical exegesis, but some philosophical issues come up (and I think the main move he is making is primarily resulting from a philosophical distinction I've never seen anyone make before), and since these are issues I've seen discussed in philosophy of religion journals I figured I'd link to it from here for those who read this blog who don't also read mine.

The topic is the nature of the Christian atonement. He's agreeing with those who criticize the penal substitution model of the atonement, but what's interesting is that he doesn't reject the penal elements, which in my opinion is the main thrust of most criticisms of penal substitution. He insists that the atonement is essentially (though not exclusively) about forensic or legal matters, with God's wrath needing satisfaction. Yet he goes on to say that it's not Christ's substitution as a payment for sin that satisfies God's wrath but rather identification with Christ on the cross. Some penal substitution advocates insist that both are involved, but he argues that they're mutually inconsistent and thus can't be.

Here are the various posts: Defining Penal Substitution, Critiquing Penal Substitution, and Penal Union. Then there's my Thoughts on the Atonement Discussion So Far, which gives some of my thoughts that didn't seem to fit as a comment in any of the other posts. If any further posts arise, I'll update this list.

I forgot to mention that the eighth Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Mixing Memory. I haven't had a chance to look at it much yet. As with past ones, I'll probably write up a post about ones I find interesting at my own blog when I get around to looking at all the entries.