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1053The Puzzle of Humility and DisparityIn Mark Alfano, Michael Patrick Lynch & Alessandra Tanesini (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Humility, Routledge. pp. 72-83. 2021.Suppose that you are engaging with someone who is your oppressor, or someone who espouses a heinous view like Nazism or a ridiculous view like flat-earthism. In contexts like these, there is a disparity between you and your interlocutor, a dramatic normative difference across which you are in the right and they are in the wrong. As theorists of humility, we find these contexts puzzling. Humility seems like the *last* thing oppressed people need and the *last* thing we need in dealing with tho…Read more
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838Three Arguments to Think that Faith Does Not Entail BeliefPacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (1): 114-128. 2018.On doxastic theories of propositional faith,necessarily,S has faith that p only if S believes that p. On nondoxastic theories of propositional faith, it’s false that,necessarily,S has faith that p only if S believes that p. In this article, I defend three arguments for nondoxastic theories of faith and I respond to published criticisms of them.
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Inscrutable Evil and the Silence of GodDissertation, Syracuse University. 1992.For all we know, theism and evil are compatible. And God need not have created the best possible world He could have. So how does evil render atheistic belief justified? Perhaps, as Hume and Draper argue, the biological role of pain and pleasure make them much less likely on theism than on the hypothesis that they are not the result of the benevolent or malevolent actions of nonhuman persons. But this is very dubious. Perhaps Dostoevski's Ivan Karamozov is right: God would not permit the involun…Read more
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492Is Theism Compatible with Gratuitous Evil?American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (2). 1999.We argue that Michael Peterson's and William Hasker's attempts to show that God and gratuitous evil are compatible constitute miserable failures. We then sketch Peter van Inwagen's attempt to do the same and conclude that, to date, no one has shown his attempt a failure.
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765Are Beliefs about God Theoretical Beliefs? Reflections on Aquinas and KantReligious Studies 32 (2). 1996.The need to address our question arises from two sources, one in Kant and the other in a certain type of response to so-called Reformed epistemology. The first source consists in a tendency to distinguish theoretical beliefs from practical beliefs (commitments to the world's being a certain way versus commitments to certain pictures to live by), and to treat theistic belief as mere practical belief. We trace this tendency in Kant's corpus, and compare and contrast it with Aquinas's view and a mo…Read more
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7696God, evil, and sufferingIn Michael J. Murray (ed.), Reason for the Hope Within, Eerdmans. pp. 217--237. 1999.This essay is aimed at a theistic audience, mainly those who are new to thinking hard about the problem of evil.
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467The puzzle of prayers of Thanksgiving and praiseIn Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New waves in philosophy of religion, Palgrave-macmillan. 2008.in eds. Yujin Nagasawa and Erik Wielenberg, New Waves in Philosophy of Religion (Palgrave MacMillan 2008).
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613Does Faith Entail Belief?Faith and Philosophy 33 (2): 142-162. 2016.Does faith that p entail belief that p? If faith that p is identical with belief that p, it does. But it isn’t. Even so, faith that p might be necessarily partly constituted by belief that p, or at least entail it. Of course, even if faith that p entails belief that p, it does not follow that faith that p is necessarily partly constituted by belief that p. Still, showing that faith that p entails belief that p would be a significant step in that direction. Can we take that step? In this essay, I…Read more
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226Revisionary ontologists are making a comeback. Quasi-nihilists, like Peter van Inwagen and Trenton Merricks, insist that the only composite objects that exist are living things. Unrestriced universalists, like W.V.O. Quine, David Lewis, Mark Heller, and Hud Hudson, insist that any collection of objects composes something, no matter how scattered over time and space they may be. And there are more besides. The result, says Eli Hirsch, is that many commonsense judgments about the existence or iden…Read more
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2098The Evolutionary Argument for AtheismIn John-Christopher Keller (ed.), Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from van Inwagen, Oxford University Press. 2014.This essay assesses Paul Draper's argument from evolution to atheism.
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465On the a priori rejection of evidential arguments from evilSophia 33-47. 1994.Recent work on the evidential argument from evil offers us sundry considerations which are intended to weigh against this form of atheological arguments. By far the most provocative is that on a priori grounds alone, evil can be shown to be evidentially impotent. This astonishing thesis has been given a vigorous defense by Keith Yandell. In this paper, we shall measure the prospects for an a priori dismissal of evidential arguments from evil.
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1128Hiddenness of GodIn Donald M. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Reference. 2005.This is a 5,000 word article on divine hiddeness, with special attention to John Schellenberg's work on the topic
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374Lehrer's case against foundationalismErkenntnis 60 (1): 51-73. 2004.In this essay, I assess Keith Lehrer's case against Foundationalism, which consists of variations on three objections: The Independent Information or Belief Objection, The Risk of Error Objection, and the Hidden Argument Objection. I conclude that each objection fails for reasons that can be endorsed – indeed, I would say for reasons that should be endorsed – by antifoundationalists and foundationalists alike.
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124How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable WorldFaith and Philosophy 11 (2): 260-268. 1994.Imagine that there exists a good, essentially omniscient and omnipotent being named Jove, and that there exists nothing else. No possible being is more powerful or knowledgable. Out of his goodness, Jove decides to create. Since he is all-powerful, there is nothing but the bounds of possibility to prevent him from getting what he wants. Unfortunately, as he holds before his mind the host of worlds, Jove sees that for each there is a better one. Although he can create any of them, he can't create…Read more
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692Theism, the Hypothesis of Indifference, and the Biological Role of Pain and PleasureFaith and Philosophy 11 (3): 452-466. 1994.Following Hume’s lead, Paul Draper argues that, given the biological role played by both pain and pleasure in goal-directed organic systems, the observed facts about pain and pleasure in the world are antecedently much more likely on the Hypothesis of Indifference than on theism. I examine one by one Draper’s arguments for this claim and show how they miss the mark.
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554Review of David O'Connor, God and Inscrutable Evil (review)Philosophical Review. 2001.This is a critical review of David O'Connor's book, God and Inscrutable Evil.
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836Trinity MonotheismPhilosophia Christi 5 (2). 2003.Reprinted in Philosophical and Theological Essays on the Trinity, Oxford, 2009, eds Michael Rea and Thomas McCall. In this essay, I assess a certain version of ’social Trinitarianism’ put forward by J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, ’trinity monotheism’. I first show how their response to a familiar anti-Trinitarian argument arguably implies polytheism. I then show how they invoke three tenets central to their trinity monotheism in order to avoid that implication. After displaying these ten…Read more
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753BonJour’s ‘Basic Antifoundationalist Argument’ and the Doctrine of the GivenSouthern Journal of Philosophy 36 (2): 163-177. 1998.Laurence BonJour observes that critics of foundationalism tend to argue against it by objecting to "relatively idiosyncratic" versions of it, a strategy which has "proven in the main to be superficial and ultimately ineffective" since answers immune to the objections emerge quickly (1985: 17). He aims to rectify this deficiency. Specifically, he argues that the very soul of foundationalism, "the concept of a basic empirical belief," is incoherent (1985: 30). This is a bold strategy from which we…Read more
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607Seeing through CORNEAInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 32 (1). 1992.This essays assesses Steve Wykstra's original CORNEA.
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900Schellenberg on Propositional FaithReligious Studies (2): 181-194. 2013.This paper assesses J. L. Schellenberg’s account of propositional faith and, in light of that assessment, sketches an alternative that avoids certain objections and coheres better with Schellenberg’s aims.
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674On an “Unintelligible” Idea: Donald Davidson's Case Against Experiential FoundationalismSouthern Journal of Philosophy 40 (4): 523-555. 2002.Donald Davidson’s epistemology is predicated on, among other things, the rejection of Experiential Foundationalism, which he calls ‘unintelligible’. In this essay, I assess Davidson’s arguments for this conclusion. I conclude that each of them fails on the basis of reasons that foundationalists and antifoundationalists alike can, and should, accept.
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926Divine Openness and Creaturely Non-Resistant Non-BeliefIn Adam Green & Eleonore Stump (eds.), Hidden Divinity and Religious Belief: New Perspectives, Cambridge University Press. 2015.We might be tempted to think that, necessarily, if God unsurpassably loves such created persons as there may be, then for any capable created person S and time t, God is at t open to being in a positively meaningful and reciprocal conscious relationship with S at t, where one is open to relationship with another only if one never does anything (by commission or omission) that would have the result that the other was prevented from being able, just by trying, to participate in that relationship. …Read more
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2Introduction: The Hiddenness of GodIn Daniel Howard-Snyder & Paul Moser (eds.), Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. 2001.
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781God, Knowledge, and Mystery (review)Faith and Philosophy 16 (1): 126-134. 1999.This is a review of Peter van Inwagen's collection of essays. It corrects a typesetter’s deletion of 75% of the review originally published in _Faith and Philosophy_15, 1998: 397-399.
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82The Real Problem of No Best WorldFaith and Philosophy 13 (3): 422-425. 1996.This is a reply to William Rowe, "The Problem of No Best World," Faith and Philosophy (1994).
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100Divine Hiddenness: New EssaysCambridge University Press. 2001.For many people the existence of God is by no means a sufficiently clear feature of reality. This problem, the fact of divine hiddenness, has been a source of existential concern and has sometimes been taken as a rationale for support of atheism or agnosticism. In this collection of essays, a distinguished group of philosophers of religion explore the question of divine hiddenness in considerable detail. The issue is approached from several perspectives including Jewish, Christian, atheist and a…Read more
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45The argument from inscrutable evilIn The Evidential Argument from Evil, Indiana University Press. pp. 286--310. 1996.
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3290The logical problem of evil: Mackie and PlantingaIn Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil, Wiley. pp. 19-33. 2014.J.L. Mackie’s version of the logical problem of evil is a failure, as even he came to recognize. Contrary to current mythology, however, its failure was not established by Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense. That’s because a defense is successful only if it is not reasonable to refrain from believing any of the claims that constitute it, but it is reasonable to refrain from believing the central claim of Plantinga’s Free Will Defense, namely the claim that, possibly, every essence suffers from …Read more
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