Marek A. Pepliński

Marek Pepliński Editorial. On God’s Knowledge, Omnipotence, and Human FreedomAncient and mediaeval encounters between religious monotheistic faith and philosophical reason brings philosophers and theologians to task how to add up facts perceived from philosophical, natural and religious perspectives. There are several important points in which reason and faith seems to be in disagreement. One of them is the group of problems connected to the topics of coherence of divine attributes, particularly omniscience, foreknowledge and omnipotence, on the one hand, and the human freedom, on the another. This editorial shows how are different angles of problems of human freedom, foreknowledge, middle knowledge, eternity, fatalism and open theism connected in papers of this volume of Filo-sofija journal. Keywords: omniscience; foreknowledge; omnipotence; coherence of faith and reason; open theism, immutability of God’s knowledge, libertarian account of freedom; eternal life; fourteenth-century theology.

I argue that Ireneusz Ziemiński doesn't justify his skepticism about knowledge of existence of God. First, he reduces a question to metaphysical one - do we have sound, valid proofs of God's existence and imposes too heavy conditions on arguments for God. Second, he doesn't show that disagreement between philosophers in that question justify his negative assessment of arguments. Third, Ziemiński omits epistemological question what is knowledge of God's existence, especially in its direct form as well as externalistic account's of knowledge of God, for example Plantinga's and Alston's.

Dawkins’ Ballet In the Garden of Theology. A Critical Assessment of Richard Dawkins’ Epistemological Theses On Theistic Beliefs From The God Delusion. Part I My paper presents a detailed analysis and assessment of Richard Dawkins’ epistemological theses from The God Delusion concerning the nature of religious belief, the existence of God and treating belief in God as a scientific hypothesis. In the first part of the article, I am interpreting Dawkins’ statement that atheism deserves respect as an epistemic achievement. I suggest that rationality of that assessment depends on Dawkins’ success in arguing that science shows that God does not exist. My second aim is to show that the real object of Dawkins’ attack is not some abstract theistic hypothesis, as he suggests, but the Western ethical monotheism, mainly the Christian faith in God. If I am right, then his rejection of thus interpreted theism is not enough to justify his more general thesis that God hypothesis is false or improbable. The first part of the paper prepares the ground for the second, with criticism of Dawkins’ reasoning to the conclusion that almost certainly there is no God.

Dawkins’ Ballet in the Garden of Theology. A Critical Assessment of Richard Dawkins’ Epistemological Theses on Theistic Beliefs from the God Delusion. Part II My paper presents an analysis and assessment of Richard Dawkins’ assumption from his book The God Delusion that there are no reason against treating belief in God as a scientific hypothesis, because even if the God existence is not disprovable, we could and maybe should ask if His existence is probable or highly improbable. My first aim is to examine Dawkins' argumentation against if he is aware multiple possible ways interpretation of the claim that religious belief in God, construed as the hypothesis that existence of Creator may be treated as a scientific kind of hypothesis. My second aim is to show a nature of relation between his scientific God-hypothesis and his criticism of Thomas Henry Huxley agnosticism. I maintain that the he can't treat his probabilistic account of theism/atheism controversy as a ground for possible evidence for his controversial claim, that scientific knowledge could solve the problem of God's existence. As the matter of facts , things are just the opposite. I argue for claim that his construal of belief in God in terms of probabilistic scientific hypothesis is normatively weak and he can't use it in argumentation against rationality of belief in God even if he would be succesfully show that God-hypothesis is very weak and improbable explanation of origins and complexity of life.