James Beebe (Prosblogion contributor) recently delivered the first set of lectures in the Young Philosophers Lecture Series at SUNY Fredonia.

His introductory level talk should be of interest to Prosblogion readers. It was on The Fine-Tuning Argument for God's Existence.

Also, we posted the Fall 2008 Call for Papers (deadline: August 15th)

Here are some rambling thoughts. Comments are welcome.

A traditional formulation of the problem of evil is to ask: "Why do bad things happen to good people and good things to bad people?" An interesting feature of our discourse--both academic and popular--about the problem of evil is that the second part is not much talked about these days.

There are, of course, good reasons for me not to be too deeply worried about the second part. Sinner that I am, I had better hope that good things happen to bad people. God's mercy is sovereign, and he has the right to refrain from, or at least delay, punishing the sinner. And, anyway, in the end, vengeance is his, and he will repay the unrepentant (may his grace give us the gift of final perseverance).

Still, the second part of the question does seem to embody a genuine concern for justice. Whether or not there is something bad about someone bad flourishing, there is something prima facie bad about someone bad flourishing because of her bad deeds, and yet we do observe apparent cases of this.

One interesting thing is that this bipartite formulation of the problem of evil makes it clear that this problem is one of divine justice. But considered as a problem of justice, we can see that some of what we say about the second part of the question can also be applied to the first. It is not contrary to justice to delay punishment. Likewise, it is not contrary to justice to delay reward--in fact, it might not be contrary to justice to omit reward completely (if there were a duty to reward good people, altruism would be harder).

Of course, one might hold that besides the question of divine justice, there is the question of divine benevolence. My feeling is that traditionally when religious people have worried about the problem of evil, they have worried not so much about divine infinite benevolence but about divine justice. I wonder if there is a good reason for this. Perhaps the idea is that divine infinite benevolence is sufficiently covered by God's giving us being ex nihilo, or maybe even by the infinite benevolence involved in the Father's generating the Son and the Father and Son producing the Holy Spirit. Maybe there is something right about seeing the problem of evil as a problem about justice.

I have very little idea what's going on here. The story begins like this

"A Polish priest and mathematician who was a friend of the late Pope John Paul II has won the world's richest academic prize for work that shows how maths can offer circumstantial evidence of God's existence. Professor Michael Heller, 72, a pioneering cosmologist and philosopher specialising in mathematics and metaphysics, received the £820,000 prize yesterday in New York."

but then starts to crack up with science-religion writing that is bad even for the Times.

So I went to the Templeton site and it didn't get much clearer. Here's a claim attributed to the winner.

"if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws"

At first I was worried that he was talking about the cause of necessary mathematical equations, but maybe he just means the cause of why certain mathematical laws apply to the world. I just don't know, the reporting is so bad.

Back to the Times:

"His theories do not so much offer proof of the existence of God as introduce doubt about the material existence of the world around us. He specialises in complex formulae that make it possible to explain everything, even chance, through mathematical calculation."

I searched for some time on the web trying to find out what in the world his work is. Never found out. There is a serious reporting gap here.

Michael Ruse (of the SEP "Creationism" ruse (no, I never get tired of saying that)) has a new book forthcoming next month on Charles Darwin.

I like to read about Darwin, I find him a very interesting character, but what will really put this book on the map for the lovers of Dawkins, Dennet, and Co. is the penultimate chapter "The Origins of Religion". A publishers squib states "Strongly supports Darwinism and fully explores modern naturalistic explanations of religion" and he somehow still has space in 352 pages to "Offer a comprehensive discussion of Darwinism and Christianity - including Creationism." Wow, it's a good thing he's "one of the leading authorities in the field." I didn't realize that Darwinism and Christianity constitute a field. Apparently being a leading authority does not distribute over conjunction. :-)~

LINK

There is an interview with Chris Hedges at Salon regarding his new book, I Don't Believe in Atheists, an attack on the political designs of the "New Atheists" such as Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. Just in case anyone feels that we've been remiss on our Dawkins-harping lately.

I look forward to picking up a copy of Hedges's book, although the impression I get from the interview is that it's more polemical than theoretical. Historically however, the case for toleration has always had an integral polemical component as well.

In a series of recent posts Dale Tuggy has been going after some issues for social trinitarians. (See here, here, here, and now here.) In his most recent post Tuggy offers an argument the conclusion of which I'm attracted to. To wit, that "no Anselmian social trinitarian argument is sound." Here is the argument:

1. Greatness either supervenes only on intrinsic, essential properties, or not.
2. If it does, then the property "loving another" isn't a great-making property (it isn't intrinsic).
3. If the property of "loving another" isn't a great-making property, then no Anselmian social trinitarian argument is sound.
4. If it does not, then properties other than intrinsic and essential ones may contribute to a thing's greatness.
5. If properties other than intrinsic and essential ones may contribute to a thing's greatness, then some of these other properties are infinitely increasable.
6. If some of these properties are infinitely increasable, then the concept of a Greatest Possible Being (GPB) is in fact the concept of an impossible being (in other words, there couldn't be a GPB).
7. If a GPB is an impossible being, then this reasoning is always unsound:
   1. God is a GPB.
   2. For any x, if x is a GPB, then x has feature F.
   3. God has feature F.
8. If the above reasoning is unsound, then no Anselmian social trinitarian argument is sound.
9. Either way, no Anselmian social trinitarian argument is sound.

I think Tuggy's on sold ground with regards to the GPB, and I suspect those sympathetic to the social trinity will object to #2. In any case, you should leave your comments over at Trinities.