Theism and Dialetheism

The divine attributes of omniscience and omnipotence have faced objections to their very consistency. Such objections rely on reasoning parallel to semantic paradoxes such as the Liar or to set-theoretic paradoxes like Russell's paradox. With the advent of paraconsistent logics, dialetheism—the view that some contradictions are true—became a major player in the search for a solution to such paradoxes. This paper explores whether dialetheism, armed with the tools of paraconsistent logics, has the resources to respond to the objections levelled against the divine attributes.     

Theism and Mathematics

The author investigates the connection between God and mathematics, and argues (1) that the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” makes much better sense from the perspective of theism than from that of naturalism, (2) that the accessibility (to us human beings) of advanced mathematics is much more likely given theism than given naturalism, (3) that the existence of sets, numbers, functions and the like fits in much better with theism than with naturalism, and (4) that the alleged epistemological obstacles to knowledge of mathematics offered by the abstract character of numbers, sets, etc., disappear from the point of view of theism.     

Theism and Counterpossibles

Philosophical Studies -     

Panentheism and Classical Theism

Panentheism seems to be an attractive alternative to classical theism. It is not clear, though, what exactly panentheism asserts and how it relates to classical theism. By way of clarifying the thesis of panentheism, I argue that panentheism and classical theism differ only as regards the modal status of the world. According to panentheism, the world is an intrinsic property of God – necessarily there is a world – and according to classical theism the world is an extrinsic property of God – it is only contingently true that there is a world. Therefore, as long as we do not have an argument showing that necessarily there is a world, panentheism is not an attractive alternative to classical theism.     

Existential-Hayatological Theism

One of the oldest conceptions of theology is discourse of the poets about the gods and its philosophical interpretation. Judaism and Christianity borrowed this Greek understanding of theology and revised it only slightly to reflect its own monotheistic vision of God and God’s relations to and with the world of nature and human existence. The question as to which philosophy best explicates and justifies the oral and written mythopoetic discourse of the imaginative bards of Israel and the early Christian community became a fundamental issue and has remained so through the centuries. The aim of this essay is to explore this question once again in the context of post-liberal theology in general, the works of Abraham Heschel, Claude Tresmontant, and the Japanese theologian Tetsaturo Ariga on an implicit biblical philosophy and the explicit metaphysical theism of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. The outcome of this exploration will be a rational reconstruction or ideal type of neo-classical theism or what I have chosen to call existential-hayatological theism.     

Theism and proper basicality

Earlier versions of this paper were read at the Regional Meetings of the AAR (Midwest Region) in Terre Haute, IN. (April 1986) and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (October 1986). I am grateful to many people for helpful comments on the paper, including William P. Alston, Robert Audi, Kenneth Konyndyk, Thomas V. Morris, Philip Quinn, Victor Reppert and Frederick Schmitt.     

无神论与有神论的对话

在20世纪八九十年代,基本上是“有神论有人讲,无神论无人讲”。这样,基督教发展到我们眼皮底下(党校宿舍院)而无人敢过问,唯恐违反宗教信仰自由政策。我们认为,人家有在教内宣传有神论的自由,我们有在教外(社会上、人群中)宣传无神论的自由——不过这个宣传要有点“由头”;不然,凭空“开讲”是没人听的。有一家信点佛教的老人,她家是什么神也信,屋内既供着观音菩萨,也供着财神灶君。这一天,她也想“赶时兴”加入基督教,教方牧师说,欢迎你“信了主”。     

Skeptical Theism Unscathed: Why Skeptical Objections to Skeptical Theism Fail

Arguments from evil purport to show that some fact about evil makes it (at least) probable that God does not exist. Skeptical theism is held to undermine many versions of the argument from evil: it is thought to undermine a crucial inference that such arguments often rely on. Skeptical objections to skeptical theism claim that it (skeptical theism) entails an excessive amount of skepticism and therefore should be rejected. In this article, I show that skeptical objections to skeptical theism have a very limited scope: only those who reject certain (apparently) popular epistemological theories will be threatened by them.     

"风水论"是世俗形态的有神论

在如今这个民主而多元的时代,人们的主张和观念也跟着丰富多彩,甚至陆离光怪起来。比如说吧,在如何选房、购房上,有人明摆着现成专家的论说不信,却偏偏信奉“风水”瞽说。笔者一位有博士头衔的友人,看上了一套无论就房型、区位、环境还是价格而言,都是不错的房子,在最终拍板前他鬼使神差地重金请来风水先生“相地”。勘察一番后,这位风水先生掐算了友人夫妇生辰八字,