I thought some of our readers might be interested to know that the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture is now open for membership. The interdisciplinary society seeks to promote critical inquiry into the relationships among human beings and their diverse cultures, environments, and religious beliefs and practices. Familiar names on the Board of Advisors include Robert Hatch (UFL) and Michael Ruse (FSU). There is also a call for papers for the inaugural conference to be held in April 2006 at the University of Florida. The deadline for all paper and panel proposals is January 15th. The flyer can be found here.

In several well-known essays in God, Knowledge & Mystery Peter van Inwagen argues that if there is no minimum amount of evil necessary for divine purposes, then God can permit more than the minimum necessary. He concludes that therefore the standard position on evil is mistaken. William Rowe describes the standard version this way.

"An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense evil it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse"

I just found out this week that we'll be reading Rowe's Can God Be Free? in Ed Wierenga's seminar next semester at Rochester. I haven't read the book, but I've seen some references to the argument, and I'm puzzled none of those references mentioned what seemed an obvious solution: satisficing.

The essence of the problem is that in some sense "God must do the best thing" is true, but there's no best world.  [Technically, there's another horn of the dilemma: if there is a best world then God is not free not to create it. A. I don't think there's a best world ("couldn't there be just one more dancing girl"); B. If there is, then I think Clarke's moral necessity response is a good one.]

I suppose the structure of the argument must be something like this:

1. If God exists, then he creates the best.
2. If the best world is created, then there is a best world.
3. There is not a best world.
4. Therefore the best world is not created. 2,3 MT
5. Therefore God does not exist. 1,4, MT

But it's common in rationality theory to allow satisficing. There's an old story about the gods having a bottle of wine that's very good but only gets better with age. Question: When do they open it? Answer: It's stupid not to ever drink it, so open it whenever. It seems to me that all that is required of God is that he satisfice. More below the fold.

Brian Leiter has a new guest post up by John Martin Fischer on the state of the state of free will and moral responsibility. This is the first in what Brian promises will be a series of commissioned posts by leading philosophers.

First off Fischer deserves some thanks for singling us out towards the end of his insightful remarks on work relating to the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human freedom. I find myself in agreement with Fischer's remarks that

Molinism provides a picture of how God could know about future actions of humans, and how he could use this knowledge in his providential activity. But it does not provide an answer to the problem about the relationship between God's foreknowledge and human free action; rather, it simply presupposes some answer to this problem.

To paraphrase David Hunt, I don't want my defense of human freedom to be hostage to a particular speculative account about how in fact God knows the future.

Fischer also thinks it would be interesting to see some work done in the direction of the nature of belief as a route towards progress on the traditional problem between God's foreknowledge and human freedom. I confess that I don't know what Fischer has in mind here, but hopefully someone can fill in the details in the comments section.

I don't recall reading anything on this, though I suppose I must have read something in Aquinas on it.  While I'm looking for that, I'd like to see what you think.  The key issue is that the sentence "Jesus was tempted" needs to come out true.  I'm going to assume that this is straightforwardly true, that is, that Jesus was tempted.  It's hard for me right now to understand temptation sans desire to do the thing tempted.  I think this is neutral w.r.t whether Jesus could have acted on such a desire, and if so, in what sense of "could."  So consider the following argument.

1. Jesus was tempted to sin.
2.  ∀x(x is tempted to φ → x desires to φ)
3. Jesus desired to sin.

I'll put the rest below the fold.