It has been more than 15 years since John Hick officially retired, but I am please to tell you that he still publishes articles and books and also gives talks occasionally here at Birmingham, UK.
On Wednesday this week, we are organising, as part of our Postgraduate Open Day, a book launch of his Who or What is God? and his public lecture entitled 'Christianity and Other Religions'.
Join us if you live nearby. Click here for more information.
Pretend that the following argument is sound. Let ‘God’ abbreviate the indefinite description ‘a being than which none greater can be conceived’.
Argument EP
As everyone knows, it is necessary a posteriori that water = H2O. And as everybody knows the proposition that ~(water = H2O) does not express a contradiction. It is perfecty consistent with everything said so far that there is a world in which God does exist. That is, (6) is consistent with (1)-(5), (I use ‘epistemic possiblity’ in (6) in the atypical way that Chalmer’s does).
(6) It is epistemically possible that God exists.
And if God exists in any world, then God exists in every world. Now the crucial observation: The proposition expressed by ‘God exists’ is the same from the point of view of every world. That is, in any world in which it is uttered, the sentence expresses the same proposition. But the proposition expressed by ‘water = H2O’ is not the same from the point of view of every world. From the point of view of some worlds, that water = H2O is necessarily true, and from the point of view of other worlds it is just false. That’s how it can be true here that water = H2O (the proposition expressed when the sentence is uttered here) and false here that water = H2O (the proposition expressed when the sentence is uttered in world w1000) without contradiction. But the following two propositions are inconsistent: they cannot both be true here.
(7) God does not exist (i.e., the proposition it expresses when uttered here).
(8) God exists (i.e., the proposition it expresses when uttered in w1000).
Here's an old chestnut I haven't thought about in awhile but had reason to re-visit tonight.
It's an argument for the incompatibility of omnipotence and omniscience by Richard LaCroix (Analysis 33:5, April 1973).
Consider a being B which has the following properties:
(1) B is finite
(2) B does act A.
(3) B is the only being in existence who knows that (2) is true.
He says that if "x is omnipotent" entails the following
(4) x can create any finite being y, provided that (i) y has properties such that the statement that y has those properties is neither self-contradictory nor entails a contradiction and (ii) there is no being z such that the statement that z and y exist is either self-contradictory or entails a contradiction.
then an omnipotent being can create a being with (1)-(3).
Since "x is omniscient" entails
(5) For any finite being B and act A, if B does A then x knows that B does A.
it follows that omnipotence so conceived is inconsistent with omniscience.
I'll put my response below the fold to see if we come to the same conclusion.
There is a dislike of God-of-the-gaps arguments in the theological and philosophical community. A God-of-the-gaps argument is an argument for a theistic explanation of a feature that does not have a scientific explanation but where, as far as we can tell, a scientific explanation would in principle be possible.
But suppose that there is currently no good scientific explanation of a puzzling natural feature F of the universe, although we can give a good theistic explanation of F. This is likely to be evidence for theism. After all, if F is puzzling, then our best theories presumably do not predict it. Thus, given what we know, F is very unlikely on the naturalistic hypothesis. But if we can give a good theistic explanation, F is not going to be very unlikely on the theistic hypothesis. A good theistic explanation of F in this context will have to give reasons that God would have for actualizing F, and will have to give an argument for why God is not unlikely to act on these reasons, given the relevant background assumptions. This is not an impossible task--e.g., God would have strong reasons for creating persons, because the existence of persons has great worth, and a perfectly good being would be not very unlikely to act on such strong reasons.
Now, if F is evidence for theism, then surely a rational person cannot fail to consider F just because the evidence falls is of the "God-of-the-gaps" type. What matters evidentially is not whether the evidence is of the "God-of-the-gaps" type, but how much confirmation that evidence gives to the existence of God.
It may, of course, be that some evidence needs to be excluded for certain purposes on non-evidential grounds. Thus, a priest needs to ensure that his public interaction with a penitent is not affected by what he learned about the penitent in the confessional, lest inferences about what the penitent confessed be made from the priest's behavior, and it may be that the best means to that end is for the priest to exclude information about particular persons gained in the confessional from his general stock of information for making inferences. But it seems unlikely that the class of "God-of-the-gaps" evidence is at all analogous to cases like these.
Hi everyone. This is my first post on the Prosblogion. Thank you Matthew for letting me join this exciting group.
I just received from Palgrave Macmillan a copy of New Waves in Philosophy of Religion, an anthology that I edited with Erik Wielenberg.
Here is what we say in the introduction: "As part of the New Waves in Philosophy series, this volume aims to gather together papers written by some of the best philosophers of religion of the new generation. The quantifier 'some' is important here because we do not claim to have collected papers by all the best philosophers of religion of the new generation. The impossibility of such a task is a consequence of the healthy state of contemporary philosophy of religion."
Suppose it is true that, each time we decide to act, every moment of our lives, the expected value to each is the highest possible. No matter what you decide to do, let's suppose, you should expect an infinite positive payoff. It's tempting to think that such a world is the best possible. Al Hajek remarks (offhandedly) that, if ours was such a world, Leibniz would have been right: we live in the best of all possible worlds.
But I think this is false and it's interesting that it is false, since a world whose expected value is infinitely great is no less valuable than one whose actual value is infinitely great. Suppose my entire life is a gamble in which I always have some small chance of coming to believe that God exists. No matter what I decide to do, there is always a small chance that I wind up a theist. And suppose that Pascal was right that belief in God has infinite expected value. So, no matter what I decide to do--I decide to sing or yell or fight or . . etc., there is always some chance that I wind up believing that God exists. It follows that no matter what I decide to do and everytime I decide (and everytime everyone else does) it has infinite expected value. Would that make this the best possible world?
William Lane Craig tells his story of the process by which he earned his PH.D.s. I found it quite interesting, fun, and encouraging to read, and I thought it would be interesting to readers of this blog. Unfortunately, I couldn't link directly to the story, but it was his answer to the question of the week. You just have to scroll down and go to the place where you see someone asking about his PH.D.s, and click on the "Read Answer" tab. There's a lot of other interesting material in the Q&A archive (and, indeed, in the site generally).
Bradley Monton has completed a book MS on Intelligent Design. I'll paste some of his introductory remarks here with a link to the originating page and to his blog, which I highly recommend Prosblogion readers take a look at.
I've known Brad for years now and have discussed confirmation theory and philosophy of religion with him a lot, including at various conferences. Along with Erik Wielenberg, Bradley is one of the great young guns of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion on the non-theist side. These guys are great philosophers who take the arguments seriously and advance the state of the art. Dawkins and Dennett just distract (and detract) from the real work, but these guys are the real thing. Please check out Bradley's blog here: http://bradleymonton.wordpress.com/
Here's his description of the book. For an annotated bibliography go to his page here: http://spot.colorado.edu/~monton/BradleyMonton/ID.html
"The doctrine of intelligent design has been maligned by atheists, but even though I'm an atheist, I'm of the opinion that the arguments for intelligent design are stronger than most people realize. The goal of this book is to try to get people to take intelligent design seriously. I maintain that it is legitimate to view intelligent design as science, that there are somewhat plausible arguments for the existence of a cosmic designer, and that intelligent design should be taught in public school science classes."
I'm afraid that the answer to my question might be obvious; if so, then it'll be answered quickly!
I come from a Christian background which told me that God has forgiven all of my sins, past, present, and future. I also come from a background which tells me that I should ask God for forgiveness. I also have the background belief that it's not the case that you should ask for what you already have. These beliefs seem to me to conflict. Let's be more precise.
Moving to Front:
The JFP ad in hardcopy is mistaken in two ways (the JFP online ad should be corrected soon). The teaching load is 2/2 first year and standardly 3/2 thereafter, subject to negotiation. Second the rank is associate or near-associate professor.
Some readers of The Prosblogion might be interested in a tenured/tenure-track position in the Department of Philosophy and Classics at UT-San Antonio. The AOS is Analytic Epistemology and the rank is Associate or near-Associate professor. The advertisement is posted here. Please let me know if you have any questions about it.
