All too skeptical theism

Skeptical theism contends that, due to our cognitive limitations, we cannot expect to be able to determine whether there are reasons which justify God’s permission of apparently unjustified evils. Because this is so, the existence of these evils does not constituted evidence against God’s existence. A common criticism is that the skeptical theist is implicitly committed to other, less palatable forms of skepticism, especially moral skepticism. I examine a recent defense against this charge mounted by Michael Bergmann. I point out that the Bergmannian skeptical theist is unable to determine concerning any event or feature of the world whether that feature or event is good or evil all-things-considered. Because of this the skeptical theist must abandon any attempt to act in such a way that the world becomes better rather than worse as a result. These, I claim, are seriously skeptical conclusions, and should cause us to be skeptical about skeptical theism itself.     

God is not a person (an argument via pantheism)

This paper transforms a development of an argument against pantheism into an objection to the usual account of God within contemporary analytic philosophy (’Swinburnian theism’). A standard criticism of pantheism has it that pantheists cannot offer a satisfactory account of God as personal. My paper will develop this criticism along two lines: first, that personhood requires contentful mental states, which in turn necessitate the membership of a linguistic community, and second that personhood requires limitation within a wider context constitutive of the ’setting’ of the agent’s life. Pantheism can, I argue, satisfy neither criterion of personhood. At this point the tables are turned on the Swinburnian theist. If the pantheist cannot defend herself against the personhood-based attacks, neither can the Swinburnian, and for instructively parallel reasons: for neither doctrine is God in the material world; in the pantheist case God is identical with the world, in the Swinburnian case God transcends it. Either way both the pantheist and the Swinburnian are left with a dilemma: abandon divine personhood or modify the doctrine of God so as to block the move to personhood.

     

The Philosophical Case for Open Theism

The goal of this paper is to defend open theism vis-à-vis its main competitors within the family of broadly classical theisms, namely, theological determinism and the various forms of non-open free-will theism, such as Molinism and Ockhamism. After isolating two core theses over which open theists and their opponents differ, I argue for the open theist position on both points. Specifically, I argue against theological determinists that there are future contingents. And I argue against non-open free-will theists that future contingency is incompatible with the future’s being epistemically settled for God. This paper is a follow-up to the author’s Rhoda (Religious Studies, 2008) which was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.     

The problem of evil and the attributes of God

In discussions of the probabilistic argument from evil, some defenders of theism have recently argued that evil has no evidential force against theism. They base their argument on the claim that there is no reason to think that we should be able to discern morally sufficient reasons which God presumably has for permitting the evil which occurs. In this paper I try to counter this argument by discussing factors which suggest that we should generally be able to discern why God permits evil events. I close by suggesting that the theist use the evidential force which evil does have as a reason to question her understanding of the divine attributes.     

Future freedom and the fixity of truth: closing the road to limited foreknowledge open theism

Unlike versions of open theism that appeal to the alethic openness of the future, defenders of limited foreknowledge open theism (hereafter LFOT) affirm that some propositions concerning future contingents are presently true. Thus, there exist truths that are unknown to God, so God is not omniscient simpliciter. LFOT requires modal definitions of divine omniscience such that God knows all truths that are logically knowable. Defenders of LFOT have yet to provide an adequate response to Richard Purtill’s argument that fatalism logically follows from the omnitemporality of truth. Hasker believes a distinction between hard and soft facts prevents fatalism, but I argue that his defense fails in light of arguments involving divine necessity. Additionally, I point out that Hasker’s philosophy of language concerning divine names faces problems that cannot be overcome, given the versions of the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge that motivate LFOT. Thus, contra Hasker, Swinburne, and van Inwagen, open theism necessitates the alethic openness of the future.     

Divine freedom and creaturely suffering in process theology: A critical appraisal

The suffering of creatures experienced throughout evolutionary history provides some conceptual difficulties for theists who maintain that God is an all-good loving creator who chose to employ the processes associated with evolution to bring about life on this planet. Some theists vexed by this and other problems posed by the interface between religion and science have turned to process theology which provides a picture of a God who is dependent upon creation and unable to unilaterally intervene in the affairs of the world and avert suffering. In the present paper I seek to critique process theism, focusing on divine action and the aforementioned problem posed by evolutionary suffering. I show that the promise of a more compelling account of a loving God who suffers with creation advanced by the process theist is illusory. Rather, the process God is less dynamic than promised. And on such an account the freedom of both God and the world are significantly more circumscribed than one may find in other forms of theism.     

The morality of faith in Martin Buber and William James

Some philosophers have become atheists because of “intellectual probity.” Martin Buber relates two occasions during which he advocated his view of the term “God” and rejected alternative perspectives. He never justified the basis for either his advocacy or his rejection, yet both play an important role in all his writing, especially his specific type of Zionism. Using what has been called the mere theism of William James’ “The Will to Believe” and the criteria for faith that James advances in that essay illuminates both Buber’s general view of the divine and more particularly his Zionism. Once Buber, no less than James, is understood as a mere theist the basis of what he accepts and what he rejects as true religion becomes clearer. Buber’s theism meets James’ requirement of being a live, forced, momentous option and his Zionism also strives to meet those standards.     

Positive skeptical theism and the problem of divine deception

In a recent article, Erik Wielenberg has argued that positive skeptical theism fails to circumvent his new argument from apparent gratuitous evil. Wielenberg’s new argument focuses on apparently gratuitous suffering and abandonment, and he argues that negative skeptical theistic responses fail to respond to the challenge posed by these apparent gratuitous evils due to the parent–child analogy often invoked by theists. The greatest challenge to his view, he admits, is positive skeptical theism. To stave off this potential problem with his argument, he maintains that positive skeptical theism entails divine deception, which creates insuperable problems for traditional theism. This essay shows that Wielenberg is mistaken. Although positive skeptical theism claims that we should expect the appearance of gratuitous evil (when there is no actual gratuitous evil) given Christian theism, this does not entail divine deception. I maintain that God is not a deceiver on positive skeptical theism because God does not meet two requirements to be a deceiver: (1) God does not intend to cause people to believe any false propositions and (2) God does not provide evidence for someone to justifiably believe a false proposition. Consequently, Wielenberg’s new argument from evil fails and positive skeptical theism remains a viable response to the evidential argument from evil.     

An All Too Radical Solution to the Problem of Evil: a Reply to Harrison

Gerald Harrison has recently argued the evidential problem of evil can be resolved if we assume the moral facts are identical to God’s commands or favorings. On a theistic metaethics, the moral facts are identical to what God commands or favors. Our moral intuitions reflect what God commands or favors for us to do, but not what God favors for Herself to do. Thus, on Harrison’s view, while we can know the moral facts as they pertain to humans, we cannot know the moral facts as they pertain to God. Therefore, Harrison argues, the evidential problem of evil inappropriately assumes God to be intuitively moral, when we have no reason to suppose a perfectly good being would match the expectations provided by our moral intuitions. Harrison calls his view a new form of skeptical theism. In response, I show Harrison’s attempt to dissolve the problem of evil exacerbates well-known skeptical consequences of skeptical theism. Harrison’s new skeptical theism leaves us with problems motivating a substantive religious life, the inability to provide a variety of theological explanations, and, despite Harrison’s comments to the contrary, worsens problems having to do with the possibility of divine deception.     

Kant’s Moral Panentheism

Although Kant is often interpreted as an Enlightenment Deist, Kant scholars are increasingly recognizing aspects of his philosophy that are more amenable to theism. If Kant regarded himself as a theist, what kind of theist was he? The theological approach that best fits Kant’s model of God is panentheism, whereby God is viewed as a living being pervading the entire natural world, present ‘in’ every part of nature, yet going beyond the physical world. The purpose of Kant’s restrictions on our knowledge of God is not to cast doubt on God’s existence, but to preserve a mystery in God’s reality so that God is always more than the world as we experience it. The same God who is theoretically unknowable is also an aspect of the moral substratum of the physical world. Kant’s moral Trinity (God as righteous Lawgiver, benevolent Ruler, and just Judge) permeates everything, as the ultimate unifier of reason and nature. This Paper was delivered during the 2007 APA Pacific Mini-Conference on Models of God, together with papers published in Philosophia 35:3–4.     

The ‘Divine Names’ and the ‘Attributes of Deity’: On the (Infinite) Analogical Interval in Forty-Six Aphorisms

For the modern tradition of analytic philosophy of religion (that this article rejects), goodness, beauty, wisdom, and so on are divine attributes, whereas, for the classical tradition of Christian theology, they are divine names. This crucial distinction between attributes and names helps to explain why feminist philosopher Grace Jantzen’s charge of an identification of the male self with the divine self in Anglo-American philosophy of religion leads on, directly, to a critique of the ‘doctrine’ of analogy. Jantzen’s critique of ‘classical theism’ is directed against the (largely modern) reduction of God to a (male) superbeing. Here, God’s ‘attributes’ are merely human ones, even if extended to a superlative degree. I distinguish the analogical reflections of Aquinas (following Dionysius) and his heirs from the anthropomorphic dissolutions of the divine in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Theology’s analogical speech, I argue, has the potential to answer – at least partially – the feminist critique of God as a ‘pure projection’ of ‘man’. For Aquinas, God’s perfections must be qualitatively different and not merely quantitative maximisations of our own. I contend that feminist philosophy of religion cannot afford to dismiss the potential of the way of analogy, especially in its negative or apophatic dimensions.     

Reasons for Randomness: A Solution to the Axiological Problem for Theists

Abstract

In this paper we bring to light several ways randomness—i.e., undetermined and unintended events—may contribute to our understanding of God's providence and personality. We begin by making clearer a certain problem that randomness has been thought to pose to theism. We then discuss recent criticisms of certain contemporary solutions to this problem that emphasize the value of an autonomous creation. From there, we propose a fresh way of understanding the value of a semi-autonomous creation that does not succumb to these recent critiques. Our end goal is to explore new reasons God might have to value randomness. In particular, we highlight two plausible, interrelated candidate values: (1) There are certain aesthetic properties that a partially random, self-forming creation enjoys; and (2) Such a creation grants God and creatures certain pleasures, such as wonder, anticipation, curiosity, surprise, and appreciation. In articulating our version of the autonomy defense, we position it within two opposing accounts of divine providence, specifically open theism and simple foreknowledge.     

Open Theism: An Answer to My Critics

Abstract :  Open theism is a version of historic free will theism which posits God as granting to human beings significant freedom to cooperate with or to resist the will of God for their lives. God's goal is to make possible relationships of mutual love between God and creatures and therefore set up a dynamic give and take situation in which God can even be said to risk failure to the degree permitted by the overall plan. A debate has broken out as to whether open theism goes too far in its revision. I myself see it as a mere adjustment to standard Arminian thinking on the point of understanding the divine foreknowledge. In this article, I argue that, despite a goodly number of objections, the position deserves to be viewed as a legitimate option for Christian theology, yea even for "evangelical" theology.     

The Non-Existent God: Transcendence, Humanity, and Ethics in the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

This paper considers three essential gestures in Levinas’s theology, highlighting in each case how Levinas’s thinking allows him to either incorporate or sidestep some of the fiercest modern criticisms of traditional theism. First, we present Levinas’s vision of divine transcendence, outlining his ontological atheism and explaining how this obviates proving the existence of God and avoids the tangles of traditional theodicy. Second, we describe Levinas’s idea of the trace, showing how a non-existent God still leaves its mark in the face of the other person and explaining how this vision of divine immanence accords with the agendas of thinkers such as Feuerbach and Nietzsche, who criticized theology that elevated God while debasing humanity. Third, we present Levinas’s insistence on the philosophical primacy of ethics, showing how he infuses his ethical philosophy with religious themes, elevating moral philosophy to the level of ultimate concern in a way that even atheist social theorists such as Marx or Freud could appreciate. We close by briefly considering limitations of Levinas’s model, discussing problems with its practical applicability and suggesting that its scope might be too narrow: both for its failure to acknowledge potential ethical demands manifest by non-human animals and the natural world and for its inability to recognize solitary or aesthetic experiences as religiously significant. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.     

Paying the cost of skeptical theism

In this paper I show that two arguments for the inconsistency of skeptical theism fail. After setting up the debate in “Introduction” section, I show in “The initial debate” section why Mylan Engel’s argument (Engel 2004) against skeptical theism does not succeed. In “COST” section I strengthen the argument so that it both avoids my reply to Engel and parallels Jon Laraudogoitia’s argument against skeptical theism (Laraudogoitia 2000). In “COST*” section, I provide three replies—one by an evidentialist theist, one by a closure-denying theist, and one by a necessitarian theist, and argue that the necessitarian’s reply successfully rebuts the inconsistency charge. I conclude that skeptical theism which accepts God’s necessary existence is immune to both kinds of arguments for its inconsistency.     

Undermining the axiological solution to divine hiddenness

Lougheed (Ratio 31:331–341, 2018) argues that a possible solution to the problem of divine hiddenness is that God hides in order to increase the axiological value of the world. In a world where God exists, the goods associated with theism necessarily obtain. But Lougheed also claims that in such a world it’s possible to experience the goods of atheism, even if they don’t actually obtain. This is what makes a world with a hidden God more valuable than a world where God is unhidden (where it’s impossible to experience atheistic goods), and also more valuable than an atheistic world with no God (and hence no theistic goods). We show that Lougheed never considers the comparison between a world where God hides and an atheistic world. We argue that it’s possible for a person to experience theistic goods in a world where God does not exist, a possibility Lougheed never considers. If this is right it undermines his axiological solution to divine hiddenness. We conclude by showing how our discussion of the axiology of theism connects to the existential question of whether God exists; that is, we show that the axiological question is (partly) dependent on the existential question.

     

Rowe’s new evidential argument from evil: Problems and prospects

This paper examines an evidential argument from evil recently defended by William Rowe, one that differs significantly from the kind of evidential argument Rowe has become renowned for defending. After providing a brief outline of Rowe’s new argument, I contest its seemingly uncontestable premise that our world is not the best world God could have created. I then engage in a lengthier discussion of the other key premise in Rowe’s argument, viz., the Leibnizian premise that any world created by God must be the best world God can create. In particular, I discuss the criticisms raised against this premise by William Wainwright as well as Rowe’s attempt to meet these criticisms. The Wainwright-Rowe exchange, I argue, highlights some insuperable difficulties in Rowe’s challenge to theism.     

Ordinary morality does not imply atheism

Many theist as well as many atheist philosophers have maintained that if God exists, then every instance of undeserved, unwanted suffering ultimately benefits the sufferer. Recently, several authors have argued that this implication of theism conflicts with ordinary morality. I show that these arguments all rest on a common mistake. Defenders of these arguments overlook the role of merely potential instances of suffering in determining our moral obligations toward suffering.     

The axiological solution to divine hiddenness

Philosophers have recently wondered whether the value impact of the existence of God on the world would be positive, negative, or neutral. Thus far discussions have distinguished between the value God's impact would have overall, in certain respects, and/or for particular individuals. A commonality amongst the various positions that have been taken up is to focus on the goods and drawbacks associated with both theism and atheism. Goods associated with atheism include things like privacy, independence, and autonomy. I argue that it is better overall and for everyone to prefer a hidden God to no God. This is because it is possible to experience many of the goods attributed to atheism if God is hidden even if they do not really obtain, while also gaining many of the additional goods connected to theism. This amounts to a new solution to the problem of divine hiddenness: God might hide in order to increase or maximize the axiological value of the world.     

Should We Want God to Exist?

Whether God exists is a metaphysical question. But there is also a neglected evaluative question about God’s existence: Should we want God to exist? Very many, including many atheists and agnostics, appear to think we should. Theists claim that if God didn’t exist things would be far worse, and many atheists agree; they regret God’s inexistence. Some remarks by Thomas Nagel suggest an opposing view: that we should want God not to exist. I call this view anti‐theism. I explain how such view can be coherent, and why it might be correct. Anti‐theism must be distinguished from the argument from evil or the denial of God’s goodness; it is a claim about the goodness of God’s existence. Anti‐theists must claim that it’s a logical consequence of God’s existence that things are worse in certain respects. The problem is that God’s existence would also make things better in many ways. Given that God’s existence is likely to be impersonally better overall, anti‐theists face a challenge similar to that facing nonconsequentialists. I explore two ways of meeting this challenge.