I went looking through some old Prosblogion posts on Sunday, and it occurred to me that something I said in the comments on one post needs to be more fully clarified. In the comments on this post, I said something about the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom reducing to the problem of logical fatalism. Jon Kvanvig responded that there's one difference when God is involved that means it's a further problem. When I said that problem doesn't occur if God is atemporal, he responded that atemporality doesn't solve the problem. I think he's right if you look at two different issues atomistically, but once you put them together I think what I'd originally said was right.

In trying to explain his religious views Marc Moffett outs himself as an Indifferentist. If you haven't heard of indifferentism don't be surprised I think Marc made it up. His claim is that agnosticism is too broad a label, but it seems to me his proposal looks more like agnosticism+. Agnosticism+ being I don't know if God exists or not, and even if he does it does not matter for anything I do. Or as Marc says his view is that resolving the question of whether or not there is a being is not of great philosophical or scientific importance. Indifferentism arises from the conjunction of the following four claims:

Greetings all,

I wonder if anyone knows about the upcoming conference on the problem of evil at Purdue University, or if anyone plans on attending? See:

http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/idis/phil-lit/problem_of_evil.htm

I will be attending, and it will be nice to see some of the contributors to Prosblogion there if they go.

Regards,

Imran.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a brief review of Keith Ward's newish book The Case for Religion. Ward is the Regius Professor of Divinity and head of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, and former Professor of History and Philosophy of Religion at the University of London. This quote, which put me in mind of James, will probably prod me into purchasing the book.

Ward's "case for religion" rests on denying that truth can only be arrived at by means of "publicly accessible, repeatable and testable evidence." Religious belief, he says, "is not fundamentally a matter of evidence. Religion may be based on experience, but that is very different from saying that it is based on evidence."

Freud aside I have always thought that the argument from religious experience is rather compelling. I set Freud aside because he is the common objection, but following William Alston I'm always curious as to why people should be troubled by the unsubstantiated claims of speculative psychology. I should add that contra James I think the argument is strong justification for others to believe in the existence of God. One might consider something like CD Broad's argument:

1. There is an enormous unanimity among mystics in regards to the spiritual nature of reality.

2. When there is such unanimity among observers as to their experience it is reasonable to think their experiences are verdical unless we have reason to believe they are deluded.

3. There is no good reason to think these experiences are delusive

4. ∴ It is reasonable to believe the mystical experiences are verdical.

Obviously 3 is going to take a drubbing, but I think that if one emphasizes the good reasons aspect the case can be made. One can certainly grant that we might consider some cases delusive, but I cannot see good reason to think all or most are.

Alvin Plantinga makes the Associated Press wire in this fluff piece. Not much of substance in the article but perhaps it will inspire somebody to go pick up God and Other Minds or God, Freedom, and Evil.

"I read the Bible this time of year, about the Passion story and Christ willing to come down and suffer and die, and I find it overwhelmingly attractive and powerfully affecting and it just seems to be right."

He admits that occasionally he'll awake in the middle of the night asking, "Can this whole wonderful story really be true, or is it just a story? At other times it seems as obvious as that I live in Indiana."

The eleventh Philosophers' Carnival is at the only official blog of Clayton Littlejohn. Prosblogion is represented by Imran Aijaz's post Religious Ambiguity & The 'Exclusivist' Picture.

The 11th Philosophers' Carnival is coming up next Monday. Submissions should be in by this weekend, so send them in. The host will be The Only Official Blog of Clayton Littlejohn.

Ken Taylor posts at the Philosophy Talk blog about what we should say about religion in the public sphere if religion is irrational. He's not assuming that religion is irrational, as many have done. He's simply considering what follows from that assumption. Many of the things he says in the post seem right to me. I won't try to summarize all of them. His main point seems to be that it doesn't immediately follow from the idea that religion is irrational that we should exclude religious people from having a voice in the public square. His main reason seems to be that many religious people have good values behind their religion and therefore advocate doing good things. It's where they do things he doesn't like that he worries.

Last month's issue of Prospect Magazine has an interesting exchange between theologian Keith Ward and philosopher AC Grayling on the problem of evil. I am no doubt biased, but I thought Ward gave a tidy response to the problem, even invoking some modal skepticism:

"The traditional philosophers' criticism is that, if God were omnipotent, surely God could create better laws or a better universe with us in it. I am inclined simply to deny this, and to deny that anyone could know it was true."

Grayling's reply takes a less than generous reading, misconstruing what Ward has to say on the problem, and throws in a scattering of rhetorical barbs along the way. I think there are good ways to make the atheistic argument, unfortunately I don't think Grayling provides such a model here. For example Grayling says:

To say both that God makes us suffer natural disasters for our ultimate good, and that the natural disasters that cause such suffering lie outside God's control, is to assert a contradiction: you are saying that God does what he cannot do.

But of course Ward said nothing of the sort. It is not the case that God makes us suffer the disasters for our ultimate good, or that God could not prevent natural disasters. Simply it is possible that the only world God could create with us in it is one in which in which suffering will result. If this is God causing us to suffer it is only in the most indirect sense.

Studi Galileiani has been developing a resource for introducting philosophy. It looks pretty good so far, for a fairly introductory level. I haven't had a chance to read it in detail, but I looked at the metaphysics and philosophy of religion entries, and they look pretty comprehensive. [Hat tip: Mormon Metaphysics]