Category: God
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Evil as Privation and the Problem of Pain, Part One (2021 Version)
For Vito Caiati. This 2021 version of a November 2010 post corrects unclarities, infelicities of expression, and outright errors in the initial entry . And the font is more legible for ancient eyes. ……………………. When theists are confronted by atheists with the various arguments from evil, the former should not reject the premise that objective…
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Is Theism Empirically Refutable?
Consider the following passage from J. J. C. Smart: It looks as though the theistic hypothesis is an empirically refutable one, so that theism becomes a refuted scientific theory. The argument goes: (1) If God exists then there is no evil, (2) There is evil, therefore (3) It is not the case that God exists.…
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C. S. Lewis on the (Non) Additivity of Pain in Relation to the Problem of Evil
In The Problem of Pain (Fontana 1957, pp. 203-204, first publ. in 1940), C. S. Lewis writes, We must never make the problem of pain worse than it is by vague talk about the 'unimaginable sum of human misery'. Suppose that I have a toothache of intensity x: and suppose that you, who are seated…
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Generic and Specific Problems of Evil
Substack latest. The nature and tractability of the problem depends on the type of theism espoused. ………………………. Vito Caiati comments: I very much profited from the short essay “Generic and Specific Problems of Evil” that you posted on Substack yesterday. I have read it several times, and, if viewed from the perspective of the ultimate destiny of…
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Presentism and Evil: If Presentism is False, then God does not Exist
Bradley Schneider sent me the following argument and would like my opinion. I am happy to accommodate him. (I have edited his argument for the sake of brevity, the soul of blog. I have also given it a title.) PRESENTISM FALSE? THEN GOD DOES NOT EXIST! 1) An all-good, omniscient, omnipotent God should not allow…
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Shestov on the Fool
Lev Shestov (1866-1938), Job's Balances: "The fool said in his heart: There is no God." Sometimes this is a sign of the end and of death. Sometimes of the beginning and of life. As soon as man feels that God is not, he suddenly comprehends the frightful horror and the wild folly of human temporal existence,…
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God and Existence: How Related?
A reader asks: You seem to hold that, if God is identical to his existence, then God is Existence itself. Why think that? Why not think instead that, if God is identical to his existence, then he is identical to his 'parcel' of existence, as it were? This is an entirely reasonable question. I will…
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Platonism and Christianity
Brother Dave writes, I'm re-reading Boethius' Consolation. Boethius does have a foot in Athens and one in Jerusalem, it seems to me. Now you sir are a Christian, and argue your positions in a blog subtitled Footnotes to Plato . . . . Would it be fair to refer to you, as I would to Boethius, as a Christian…
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Whether ‘Image and Likeness’ Supports God’s Having a Body
Latest Substack entry.
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How are God and Truth Related? (2021 Expanded Version)
By my count, there are five different ways to think about the relation of God and truth: 1) There is truth, but there is no God. 2) There is truth, and there is God, but God is not the ontological ground of truth. 3) There is truth, there is God, and God is the ontological…
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Deism, Classical Theism, and Existential Inertia
On deism, God starts the universe existing, but then he takes it easy, allowing it to exist on its own in virtue of its 'existential inertia.' The latter is an analog of inertia in physics. Newton's First Law states that a body at rest or in uniform rectilinear motion continues in its state of rest…
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Can Kant Refer to God?
This is a re-working of an entry from 19 September 2016. It relates to present concerns about limit concepts and whether and to what extent God can be subsumed under our concepts. ………………………. Ed Buckner raises the title question, and he wants my help with it. How can I refuse? I'll say a little now,…
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What is a Limit Concept? The Example of Prime Matter
In an earlier entry I suggested that the concept God is a limit concept or Grenzbegriff. I now need to back up a few steps and clarify the concept limit concept and give some non-divine examples. If I cannot supply any non-divine examples, then I might justifiably be accused of ad-hoc-ery. Terminological note: The term…
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On God’s Not Falling Under Concepts
Fr. Deinhammer tells us, ". . . Gott fällt nicht unter Begriffe, er ist absolut unbegreiflich. . . ." "God does not fall under concepts; he is absolutely inconceivable or unconceptualizable. . . ." Edward the Logician sent me an e-mail in which he forwards a stock objection: Who is it who is absolutely inconceivable…
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God as Uniquely Unique
I hit upon 'uniquely unique' a while back as an apt predicate of God. But it is only the formulation that is original; the thought is ancient. To be unique is to be one of a kind. It will be allowed that nothing counts as God unless it is unique. So at a bare minimum,…