David Basinger

The concept of middle knowledge---God’s knowledge of what would in fact happen in every conceivable situation---is just beginning to receive the attention it deserves, For example, it is just now becoming clear to many that classical theism requires the affirmation of middle knowledge. But this concept is also coming under increasing criticism. The most significant of these, I believe, has been developed in a recent discussion by William Hasker, in which he argues that the concept of a true counterfactual of freedom is incoherent. I also believe, however, that his critique ultimately fails and specify why in the essay which follows.

What is the status of belief in God? Must a rational case be made or can such belief be properly basic? Is it possible to reconcile the concept of a good God with evil and suffering? In light of great differences among religions, can only one religion be true? The most comprehensive work of its kind, Reason and Religious Belief, now in its fourth edition, explores these and other perennial questions in the philosophy of religion. Drawing from the best in both classical and contemporary discussions, the authors examine religious experience, faith and reason, the divine attributes, arguments for and against the existence of God, divine action (in various forms of theism), Reformed epistemology, religious language, religious diversity, religion and science, and much more. Retaining the engaging style and thorough coverage of previous editions, the fifth edition features revised treatments of omnipotence, miracles, and providence and updated suggestions for further reading. A sophisticated yet accessible introduction, Reason and Religious Belief, Third Edition, is ideally suited for use with the authors' companion anthology, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, Fifth Edition (OUP, 2015).

With respect to many, if not most issues, there exist significant differences of opinion among individuals who seem to be equally knowledgeable and sincere. Individuals who apparently have access to the same information and are equally interested in the truth affirm incompatible perspectives on, for instance, significant social, political, and economic issues. Such diversity of opinion, though, is nowhere more evident than in the area of religious thought. On almost every religious issue, honest, knowledgeable people hold significantly diverse, often incompatible beliefs. Religious diversity of this sort can fruitfully be explored in many ways — for instance, from psychological, anthropological, or historical perspectives. The current discussion, however, will concern itself primarily with those key issues surrounding religious diversity with which philosophers, especially analytic philosophers of religion, are most concerned at present. Specifically, our discussion will focus primarily on the following questions: How pervasive is religious diversity? Does the reality of this diversity require a response? Can a person who acknowledges religious diversity remain justified in claiming just one perspective to be correct? If so, is it morally justifiable to attempt to convert others to a different perspective? Can it justifiably be claimed that only one religion offers a path into the eternal presence of God? The answers to such questions are not simply academic. They increasingly have great impact on how we treat others, both personally and corporately.

What then have we discovered? The general issue under discussion, remember, is whether it is advantageous or disadvantageous for the theist to affirm MK, especially as this form of knowledge relates to God's control over earthly affairs. As we have seen, both proponents and opponents of MK have claimed that this form of knowledge gives God significant power over earthly affairs, including control over the (indeterministically) free choices of humans.We have seen, though, that such a contention is dubious. There are similarities between a God with MK and the God of Theological Determinism. But, generally speaking, the providential capacities of a God with MK have been greatly overstated. A God with MK is simply not as powerful as has been thought. And thus those recent attempts to encourage or discourage the affirmation of MK that are based on this exaggerated conception of power are on the whole not very helpful. What is needed are new discussions, discussions based on the actual providential capacities inherent in MK

The purpose of this discussion is to analyze comparatively the influential argument for religious pluralism offered by John Hick and the argument for religious exclusivism (sectarianism) which can be generated by proponents of what has come to be labeled ‘Reformed Epistemology.’ I argue that while Hick and the Reformed exclusivist appear to be giving us incompatible responses to the same question about the true nature of ‘religious’ reality, they are actually responding to related, but distinct questions, each of which must be considered by those desiring to give a religious explanation for the phenomenon of religious diversity. Moreover, I conclude that the insights of neither ought to be emphasized at the expense of the other.

I have argued previously (in this journal) that the reality of pervasive religious pluralism obligates a believer to attempt to establish her perspective as the correct one. In a recent response, Jerome Gellman maintains that the believer who affirms a ‘religious epistemology’ is under no such obligation in that she need not subject her religious beliefs to any ‘rule of rationality’. In this paper I contend that there do exist some rules of rationality (some epistemic obligations) that must be acknowledged-and satisfied-within all epistemic systems (including all religious epistemic systems) and that for this reason Gellman’s critique of my position fails.

In an ongoing dialogue, Robert Larmer and I have been discussing whether the undisputed occurrence of certain conceivable events would require all honest, thoughtful individuals to acknowledge that God has intervened in earthly affairs. I argue that there is no reason to believe that a nontheist who acknowledged certain healings to be strong evidence for theism but did not see such evidence as outweighing what she viewed as the stronger counterevidence, and thus remained a nontheist, could justifiably be accused of adopting a dogmatic, uncritical question-begging stance

Orthodox Christian theists frequently petition God in the sense that they ask him to bring about some state of affairs which they believe may not occur without divine intervention. Such petitions basically fall into three categories: requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly the natural environment – e.g. calm a hurricane, requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly the lives ofother individuals – e.g. reconcile the broken marriage of friends, and requests in which the petitioner is asking God to influence significantly his or her own life – e.g. soothe his or her troubled mind

In a recent article in this journal, Michael Murray and Kurt Meyers offer us two innovative and thought-provoking responses to the important question of why God would, even occasionally, refrain from giving us that which he can and would like to give us until we request that he do so: to help the believer learn more about God and thus become more like him and to help the believer realize she is dependent on God. I argue that neither explanation is adequate and thus that more work on this significant topic remains to be done

P.J. McGrath has recently challenged the standard claim that to escape the problem of evil one need only alter one’s conception of God by limiting his power or his goodness. If we assume that God is infinitely good but not omnipotent, then God can scarcely be a proper object of worship. And if we assume that if God is omnipotent but limited in goodness, he becomes a moral monster. Either way evil remains a problem for theistic belief. I argue that McGrath fails to distinguish between the deductive and inductive problem of evil and between a limitation in God’s “strength” and a limitation in God’s “ability to act”, and that once these distinctions are made, his argument fails.

MANY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN THEISTS CLAIM THAT THEY HAVE IDENTIFIED (OR AT LEAST HAVE THE CAPACITY TO IDENTIFY) OBSERVABLE PHENOMENA AS MIRACULOUS. I ARGUE THAT, ALTHOUGH THE CHRISTIAN THEIST CAN SUCCESSFULLY CIRCUMVENT THE STANDARD HUMEAN EPISTEMOLOGICAL BARRIER, HE CAN STIPULATE NO OBJECTIVE CRITERIA FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF A MIRACULOUS OCCURRENCE, EVEN IF IT IS GRANTED THAT THE CHRISTIAN GOD EXISTS AND THAT THE CHRISTIAN CANON ACCURATELY DESCRIBES HOW THIS BEING RELATES TO OUR PHYSICAL UNIVERSE. I CONCLUDE, ACCORDINGLY, THAT ’MIRACLE’ MUST NECESSARILY REMAIN A SUBJECTIVE CONCEPT FOR THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN THEIST

To say that God is omniscient, most philosophers and theologians agree, is to say that he knows all true propositions and none that are false. But there is a great deal of disagreement about what is knowable. Some believe that God's knowledge is limited to everything that is actual and that which will follow deterministically from it. He knows, for example, exactly what Caesar was thinking when he crossed the Rubicon and how many horses he had in his army that day. And he knows exactly how Gorbachev feels about the use of nuclear weapons. And since he knows how the ‘laws of nature’ function, he knows, for example, how certain weather systems will develop and what their effects will be on certain natural environments. But with respect to any future state of affairs which includes free human decision-making as a causal component, God is said not to know what will occur. God, as the ultimate psychoanalyst or behaviourist, can with great accuracy predict what we will freely decide to do in the future in many cases. He might well, for example, be able to predict quite accurately who will win the 1988 Presidential election. But a God who possesses only ‘present knowledge’ cannot know who will win. Given that the election in question is dependent on free choices which have yet to be made, there is presently nothing for God to know

In a recent discussion, Susan Anderson argues that Alvin Plantinga’s version of the Free Will Defense has not shown that the existence of God is neither precluded nor rendered improbable by the existence of evil. She grants Plantinga that God cannot control free actions and that only free actions have moral worth but denies that this entails that God cannot insure a world containing only moral good. God could do so, she argues, simply by taking away the freedom of persons when he foresees they would sin if allowed to act freely. Anderson also believes that Plantinga must assume that God is a benevolent being who attempts to bring about the greatest net good if he is to justify the evil we experience, both she argues that such an assumption is dubious. I argue that both of these arguments contain fundamental misinterpretations of Plantinga’s Free Will Defense and, accordingly, that neither presents a serious objection to it.

Proponents of The Free Will Defense frequently argue that it is necessary for God to create self-directing beings who possess the capacity for producing evil because, in the words of F.R. Tennant, “moral goodness must be the result of a self-directing developmental process.” But if this is true, David Paulsen has recently argued, then the proponent of the Free Will Defense cannot claim that God has an eternally determinate nature. For if God has an eternally determinatenature and moral goodness must be the result of a developmental process, then God cannot be considered morally good. In response, I argue that (1) many contemporary Free Will theists do not affirm a developmental concept of morality and thus avoid Paulsen’s criticism and that (2) even those who affirm a developmental concept of morality on the human level need not grant that divine morality is also developmental in nature.

There have been many calls recently for philosophers to rethink what philosophy is and how it should be practiced. Among the most vocal critics is an influential group of feminist philosophers who argue that since current philosophical activity is based primarily on a conception of reason that is both inherently inadequate and oppressive to women, it is imperative that our understanding of the nature and practice of philosophy be significantly modified. I argue that this criticism is fundamentally misguided. Specifically, it seems to me that while philosophers may at times need to rethink the role of the traditional philosophical method of inquiry in the context of general societal debate and rethink the techniques used to help others understand and apply this methodology, this method of inquiry, itself, is not in need of abandonment or major modification.

David Griffin and Nelson Pike recently had a spirited discussion on divine power. The essence of the discussion centered around what was labelled Premise X: “It is possible for one actual being's condition to be completely determined by a being or beings other than itself.” Pike maintains that ‘traditional’ theists have affirmed Premise X but denies that this entails that God has all the power there is and thus denies that Premise X can be considered incoherent for this reason. Griffin maintains that traditional theists have as a matter of fact affirmed that God has all the power there is and then argues that, given standard Process metaphysical assumptions, to say that God has all the power there is is incoherent. Griffin succeeds in demonstrating that, given Process assumptions, God cannot determine all of the activities of any human--i.e., all of an individual’s desires, choices and actions. But Pike is primarily interested in whether God could determine all of the bodily behaviors of any given human. And to this question, Griffin gives no response.

It has become quite popular recently to maintain that a God who possessed simple foreknowledge - knowledge of what has happened, is happening and will actually happen - would have absolutely no greater providential control over earthly affairs than a God who possessed no foreknowledge at all. In an article in this journal, David P. Hunt disputes this claim, arguing that it is at least true that it is possible for complete foreknowledge to contribute to more providential control than would be available with no foreknowledge. I argue that while Hunt's strategy - which is to place divine decision-making before creation and make it hypothetical - is ingenious, it ultimately fails.