Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: God

  • God, Evil, Matter, and Mind

    How both theists and atheists stand pat in the face of objections. Top o' the Stack.

  • A Clarkian-Barthian Argument for your Evaluation

    Gordon Clark in Religion, Reason, and Revelation ( The Trinity Foundation, 1986, pp. 37-38) discusses and agrees with Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics II, 1, pp. 79 ff.).  The following is my distillation of the Barthian argument to which Clark assents.  Barth is attacking the Roman Catholic viewpoint as expressed at the Vatican Council of 24…

  • God, Doubt, Denial, and Truth: A Note on Van Til

    Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., P&R Publishing, 2008, p. 294: "To doubt God is to deny him." I take that to mean that to doubt that God exists is to deny that God exists. The obvious objection to this is that doubt and denial are very different propositional attitudes. In…

  • Euthyphro Dilemma, Divine Simplicity, and Modal Collapse

    Top o' the Stack. Another deep dive into one of the gnarliest conundra in natural theology. The problem may be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad: 1) Classical theism is untenable if the ED cannot be defeated. 2) The ED can be defeated only if DDS is true. 3) DDS entails the collapse…

  • The Euthyphro Problem, Islam, and Thomism.

    Top o' the Stack. The problem is genuine but insoluble. Or so I conclude. What say you?

  • The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God: A First Response to Flood

    I thank Anthony G. Flood for his The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella.  Herewith, a first installment by way of rejoinder. Convergence upon agreement is not to be expected, but clarification of differences is an attainable goal. In any case, philosophy is a joy to its…

  • Belief in God

    Wish-fulfillment or inducement to strenuous living? Freud versus James. Top o' the Stack.

  • Argumentative Circles and their Diameters: More on Presuppositionalism

    The day before yesterday, re: presuppositionalism, I wrote: We need to bear in mind  that arguments have premises and that no argument can prove its own premises. An argument of the form p therefore p is an argument valid in point of logical form in which premise and conclusion are identical, but no one will take an argument…

  • The Presuppositionalist Challenge to My Position

    The presuppositionalism of Cornelius van Til, Greg L. Bahnsen, John M. Frame and others sets me a challenge given some long-held views of mine. I will here explain one of these views and then explain why it is incompatible with presuppositionalism. After that, I will begin to explain my reasons for rejecting presuppositionalism. This third…

  • The Holocaust Argument for God’s Existence

    Top o' the Stack. Is there an adequate naturalistic explanation for the unspeakable depth and depravity of moral evil? If not, what might we reasonably conclude? Can one plausibly argue from the depth and depravity of moral evil to the existence of God?   ………………… Yesterday I ordered a book on Amazon and it arrived today.…

  • William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality

    Vallicella, William F. (2016) "William E. Mann, GOD, MODALITY, AND MORALITY," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 33 : Iss. 3 , Article 8. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil201633368 Available here. A long and meaty review article including a discussion of divine simplicity and Mann's approach thereto.

  • Can a Necessary Being Depend for its Existence on a Necessary Being?

    Brian Bosse raised this question over the phone the other day. This re-post from February 2010 answers it. ………………………….. According to the Athanasian Creed, the Persons of the Trinity, though each of them uncreated and eternal and necessary, are related as follows. The Father is unbegotten.  The Son is begotten by the Father, but not made…

  • A Response to My Is Sin a Fact?

    Brian Bosse is not convinced by my Substack article, Is Sin a Fact? A Passage from Chesterton Examined.   Brian writes, Your Argument Against Chesterton (1) If the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street, then the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street.  (2)…

  • God as Human Projection?

    Substack latest Del Noce deciphered; Feuerbach refused. …………………… Update (3/3): Substack informs me: "After 24 hours, your public post has had 2,234 views." (Note that if a reader accesses my post n times (n > 1), that counts as one view.) Curious, in that I have at present only 1,200 subscribers. And why should this…

  • An Online Catalog of Theistic Arguments

    Chad McIntosh writes, I'd like to let you know about a project I've been working on for the past two years that I have just completed (for now): a fairly comprehensive, organized list and summary of theistic arguments. I hope it will be a useful resource. https://www.camcintosh.com/theistic/index.html I've also included at the very end (under META…