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259Creationism on trialSophia 42 (2): 113-127. 2003.This paper discusses the judgment of Judge William Overton in McLean vs. Arkansas Board of Education (1982), and the subsequent philosophical literature that discusses this judgment.
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199Reply to LangtrySophia 40 (1): 73-80. 2001.This paper is a response to Bruce Langtry's criticisms of views advanced in my book *Ontological Arguments and Belief in God*. In particular, the paper discusses his criticisms of "the general objection" to ontological arguments that is developed in that work.
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1190Logic and TheismPhilo 9 (1): 73-91. 2006.This paper is a critical review of Howard Sobel’s ’Logic and Theism’. I discuss his analyses of ontological arguments, cosmological arguments, teleological arguments, and arguments from evil, and comment upon his accounts of Pascal’s wager and Hume on miracles. My overall judgment is that this is the very best book on arguments about the existence of God that has yet appeared.
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360On Davies' institutional definition of artSouthern Journal of Philosophy 29 (3): 371-382. 1991.This paper is a critique of Stephen Davies' institutional definition of art. I argue that Davies' definition suffers from a range of problems.
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423Abstract objects? Who cares!Bloomsbury Academic. 2014.This is my main contribution to P. Gould (ed.) Beyond the Control of God?: Six Views on the Problem of God and Abstract Objects Bloomsbury. (The other contibutors to this work are: Keith Yandell; Paul Gould and Rich Davis; Greg Welty; William Lane Craig; and Scott Shalkowski.) I argue that, when it comes to a comparative assessment of the merits of theism and atheism, it makes no difference whether one opts for realism or fictionalism concerning abstract objects.
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325Review of Timothy O'Connor, Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (6). 2008.This paper is a review of the cosmological argument that Tim O'Connor defends in "Theism and Ultimate Explanation".
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452Is God Good by Definition?Religious Studies 28 (4). 1992.As a matter of historical fact, most philosophers and theologians who have defended traditional theistic views have been moral realists. Some "divine command" theorists have held that the good is constituted by the content of divine approval -i.e. that things are good because, and insofar as, they have divine approval. However, even amongst those theists who hold that the good is independently constituted -i.e. those who hold that God's pattern of approval is explained by the fact that he approv…Read more
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80Williamson and the Contingent A PrioriAnalysis 47 (4). 1987.This paper is a response to Tim Williamson's "The Contingent A Priori: Has It Anything To Do With Indexicals?" In that paper, Williamson claims to have produced an instance of a deeply contingent a priori truth that in no way turns on indexicals. In this paper, I suggest that Williamson has failed to substantiate this claim. In particular, I claim that one cannot know a priori that there is at least one believer without relying on some kind of indexicality.
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67We present a probabilistic extension to active path analyses of token causation. The extension uses the generalized notion of intervention presented in : we allow an intervention to set any probability distribution over the intervention variables, not just a single value. The resulting account can handle a wide range of examples. We do not claim the account is complete --- only that it fills an obvious gap in previous active-path approaches. It still succumbs to recent counterexamples by Hiddles…Read more
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34A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (edited book)Monash University Publishing. 2010.Companion to philosophy in Australia and New Zealand. (Revised edition.) Covers: department, people, institutions, and topics that have been prominent in philosophical work in Australia and New Zealand.
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212To judge from the dust-jacket, this book has received a considerable amount of praise--and not just from the usual suspects. In particular, the publishers seem keen to promulgate the view that there is widespread support for the claim that Overman makes a clear, compelling, and well-argued case for the conclusions which he wishes to defend. However, it seems to me that those cited on the dust-jacket--Pannenberg ("lucid and sobering arguments"), Polkinghorne ("scrupulously argued"), Nicholi ("com…Read more
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680GodIn Neil Manson & Robert Barnard (eds.), Continuum Companion to Metaphysics, . pp. 246-68. 2012.This paper argues that considerations about causal origins of the universe do not favour theism over naturalism. Indeed, if the only data that is relevant to the choice between theism and naturalism is data about causal origins, then it turns out that considerations about causal origins favour naturalism over theism.
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1050Time, Successive Addition, and Kalam Cosmological ArgumentsPhilosophia Christi 3 (1): 181-192. 2001.Craig (1981) presents and defends several different kalam cosmological arguments. The core of each of these arguments is the following ur argument.
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602OmnipotencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (1). 2005.Recently, many philosophers have supposed that the divine attribute of omnipotence is properly understood as some kind of maximal power. I argue that all of the best known attempts to analyse omnipotence in terms of maximal power are multiply flawed. Moreover, I argue that there are compelling reasons for supposing that, on orthodox theistic conceptions, maximal power is not one of the divine attributes.
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952Minimalism and truth aptnessMind 103 (411). 1994.This paper, while neutral on questions about the minimality of truth, argues for the non-minimality of truth-aptness.
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374Pascal's Wager is a possible bet (but not a very good one): Reply to Harmon Holcomb IIIInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 40 (2). 1996.In "To Bet The Impossible Bet", Harmon Holcomb III argues: (i) that Pascal's wager is structurally incoherent; (ii) that if it were not thus incoherent, then it would be successful; and (iii) that my earlier critique of Pascal's wager in "On Rescher On Pascal's Wager" is vitiated by its reliance on "logicist" presuppositions. I deny all three claims. If Pascal's wager is "incoherent", this is only because of its invocation of infinite utilities. However, even if infinite utilities are admissible…Read more
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289Evil Beyond the Burden of Belief (review)Philo 3 (2): 104-107. 2000.Review of *Suffering Belief: Evil and the Anglo-American Defence of Theism* (by Andrea Weisberger). This paper was originally published at the Secular Web; it was later published in *Philo*. Details here are to the publication in *Philo*.
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223Truth and GodProceedings of the Aristotelian Society: The Virtual Issue 1 (1). 2013.This paper was part of a special online issue on Truth. I critically discuss Peter Geach's paper "Truth and God".
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697Modal theistic argumentsSophia 32 (2): 17-24. 1993.This paper discusses a range of modal ontological arguments. It is claimed that these modal ontological arguments fail because they depend upon controversial assumptions about the nature of modal space.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |