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.     

Reply to Oppy on God,the Best and Evil

My reply corrects one misstatement in Oppy’s summary of my book, abandons a footnote in the light of one of Oppy’s criticisms, and argues that Oppy’s other criticisms do not succeed in showing either that my claims are mistaken or that the arguments by which I supported them are defective.     

Brueckner and Fischer on the Evil of Death

A primary argument against the badness of death (known as the Symmetry Argument) appeals to an alleged symmetry between prenatal and posthumous nonexistence. The Symmetry Argument has posed a serious threat to those who hold that death is bad because it deprives us of life’s goods that would have been available had we died later. Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer develop an influential strategy to cope with the Symmetry Argument. In their attempt to break the symmetry, they claim that due to our preference of future experiential goods over past ones, posthumous nonexistence is bad for us, whereas prenatal nonexistence is not. Granting their presumption about our preference, however, it is questionable that prenatal nonexistence is not bad. This consideration does not necessarily indicate their defeat against the Symmetry Argument. I present a better response to the Symmetry Argument: the symmetry is broken, not because posthumous nonexistence is bad while prenatal nonexistence is not, but because (regardless as to whether prenatal nonexistence is bad) posthumous nonexistence is even worse.     

The Evil Eye: A Cautious Look

This article analyzes the superstition of the evil eye from a psychosocial perspective. The commonly employed antidotes to the evil eye are discussed. These include knock on wood, kenehora, and various other culturally prescribed protective measures. The sin of envy, the role of God, Scripture, and Satan are examined. The author concludes with a statement of his own way of dealing with the evil eye and its underlying essence.     

The Problem of Evil: A Solution From Science

In this essay, I attempt to solve the problem of the existence of evil in a world created by an omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent God. I conclude that evil exists because God wanted to create moral creatures. Because choice is necessary for morality, God created creatures with enormous capacities for choice—and therefore enormous capacities for evil. Material creatures are subject to pain and death because, for such creatures, moral choices are deeply serious. The laws that underlie the material world and from which material life arises are such that, from their workings out on a planet that can support life, natural evils happen.     

The Limits of Self-Effacement: A Reply to Wittwer

Philosophical Studies - This article is concerned with the interconnection between three arguments: the Moral Explanatory Dispensability Argument (Moral EDA), the Epistemic Explanatory...     

The Rationality of Dissensus: A Reply to Goodin

Robert Goodin claims that he has undermined my ``proof of theinevitability of rational consensus among all patient people of goodwill.' I did not intend my position as a proof of the inevitabilityof rational consensus, however, and, in fact, I insist on thereasonableness of dissensus in some cases. I welcome the opportunity,provoked by Goodin's interesting reflections, to clarify my position. Iproved with Carl Wagner that iterated weighted averaging converges towardconsensus under conditions of connectedness and constancy resulting fromthe positive weight that individuals give to each other. I allow, nevertheless,that individuals may rationally assign zero weight to each other in a waythat blocks convergence and yields dissensus. The assignment of zeroweight to others will be rational, for example, when the interests ormoral concerns of the individual would be co-opted as a result of givingpositive weight to others. The assignment of positive weight to othersrequires modification of one's position, however, for the refusal to modifyone's position is mathematically equivalent to assigning zero weight toothers. Dissent is rational to avoid being co-opted, but the cost ofdisensus may be the assignment of zero weight to others and theirrational reciprocation.     

The IQ: A Reply

Approach vs. be approached behavioral measures of personal space were taken on 102 fifth and sixth grade children, each of whom was assigned to one of three groups: (a) Model-Close condition, (b) Model Far condition, and (c) No-Model Control group. A male peer served as model (M), and a 41-year-old female served as the object person. Results revealed a strong modeling tendency with both girls and boys tending to stay close or far from the object person as a function of M behavior. Boys and girls tended to behave similarly in the Close and Far modeling groups, but girls used more space in the No-Model Control condition. These findings suggest that modeling had an attenuating effect on sex differences in use of space. It was concluded that modeling theory is a viable conceptual tool for use in personal space research.     

God and Evil: A Dialogue

There is a lot of badness around. And many have concluded that there is, therefore, no God. Why? Because God is commonly said to be omnipotent (all‐powerful), omniscient (all‐knowing), and good, and because it seems hard to see how such a God could ever permit the existence of the horrors we find in the world. But does evil show that God does not exist? Many people believe that it does. But what might they say to someone who takes the opposite view? Perhaps they might start by arguing as John does with Ron in the following discussion.     

The Normalization of Non-religion: A Reply to James Lewis

James Lewis challenged the assertion that religious ‘nones’ are becoming more like the general population. The evidence he offers is insufficient to make his case, however: the generational dynamics of religious change are invisible if one takes a cross-sectional snapshot of the entire population, undifferentiated by age. In addition, write-in responses on census and survey forms do not provide a good basis for studying the characteristics of the very large and growing number of people who are non-religious.     

The Intrinsic Value of Sport: A Reply to Culbertson

Leon Culbertson's recent contribution, ‘Does Sport Have Intrinsic Value?’ objects to the account of the value of sport as intrinsic value I had developed in my Sport, Rules and Values; in particular, as this occurs in my argument that the value of some sports resided in the possibility of their functioning as a moral laboratory. He identifies two accounts of intrinsic value; and shows that neither would fit my purposes seamlessly. He urges that my account of the place of normative reasons cannot generate intrinsic value: rather, the person whose reasons they are somehow imports that value. Yet he has misunderstood my particularist conception of values; and the place occupied by my contextualism – these, rather than a residual commitment to essentialism, are what generates an apparent inconsistency he identifies. But they also explain it away. As a result, much of his concern to find some exact account of the term ‘intrinsic’ is misplaced: we need to look contextually. Further, the project of my discussion was limited to showing, first, how the moral laboratory idea might explain the value of some sport (on the assumption that sport had intrinsic value); and, second, how failures of realisation of that intrinsic value might be traced to the distinction between motivating reasons and normative ones.