Category: God
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Given Anselm’s Insight, How is Empirical Evidence Relevant to the Existence/Nonexistence of God?
ANSELM'S INSIGHT I take what I call Anselm's Insight to be non-negotiable. St. Anselm appreciated, presumably for the first time in the history of thought, that a divine being, one worthy of worship, must be non-contingent. If your god is contingent, then your god is not God. For if your god is contingent, and he…
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The Scariest Passage in the Critique of Pure Reason
With Halloween upon us, it is appropriate that I should present to my esteemed readers for their delectation if not horror the scariest passage in Kant's magnum opus: Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably require as the last bearer of all things, is for human reason the veritable abyss . . . . We cannot put…
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Natural Evil and Fallen Angels
This is an old post from my first blog, dated 3 January 2005, slightly redacted. ……………………………….. Keith Burgess-Jackson writes: I have a question for my theistic readers. How do you reconcile the devastation wrought by the tsunami with your belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being? If God could have prevented the tsunami but didn’t, then…
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Seder Scene in “Crimes and Misdemeanors”
"Crimes and Misdemeanors" is Woody Allen's masterpiece. Here is the Seder scene. Addendum 8/26 The scene ends with Saul saying "If necessary, I will always choose God over the truth." It works cinematically, but it is a philosophically lame response to the atheist Aunt May. It is lame because Saul portrays the theist as one…
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How are God and Truth Related?
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 truth ultimately depends on…
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A Mormon De-Conversion
I have a category called Conversions. De-conversions are equally interesting. Here Spencer Case tells his story. If memory and the engines of search serve, I have written only two extended entries on Mormonism, both of which mention our old friend Spencer. Religion and Anthropomorphism with an Oblique Reference to Mormonism On the Mormon Conception of…
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Indexicality and Omniscience
Patrick Grim gives something like the following argument for the impossibility of divine omniscience. What I know when I know that 1. I am making a mess is an indexical fact that no one else can know. At most, what someone else can know is that 2. BV is making a mess or perhaps, pointing…
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Does Omniscience Require Incarnation? Pursuing Some Consequences
Dr. Vito Caiati occasioned in me a new thought the other day: that divine omniscience might require divine incarnation. The gist of the thought is as follows. If God is all-knowing, then he possesses not only all knowledge by description, but also all knowledge by acquaintance. But it is not easy to see how God…
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Robert Spaemann Dies at 91
Professor Robert Spaemann, Philosopher and Advocate of the Traditional Mass, Dies at 91. (HT: Kai Frederik Lorentzen) See also, Philosophie und Glaube: Vom Tod von Robert Spaemann. Excerpt: Gott als Grundlage aller Wahrheitsansprüche Gottesglaube ist weder Bedingung für wahre Urteile noch für Gewissensüberzeugungen. Aber da die Existenz Gottes der ontologische Grund beider und in ihnen…
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The Divine Job Description
What jobs would a being have to perform to qualify as God? I proffer an answer at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.
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How Can Anyone Live for This Life Alone?
This just over the transom: There's a question I've been pondering for some time that I'd like your opinion on if you're willing. I've always been fascinated by people who have been occupied and consumed by the things of the world- power, money, fame, sex, etc. For example, I just finished watching a documentary about…
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If God Cannot Cause Himself, How Can He Know Himself?
This from a reader: If we say God cannot create himself since this implies a contradiction (God existing prior to himself to act on himself), how can we say God does anything with regard to himself? For instance, we say God knows himself. But how is this possible, seeing as God would need to first…
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Nietzsche, Truth, Power, and the Left
According to Victor Davis Hanson, the following is one of the tenets of contemporary leftism as represented by the Democrat Party: Truth is not universal, but individualized. [Christine Blasey] Ford’s “truth” is as valid as the “Truth,” given that competing narratives are adjudicated only by access to power. Ford is a victim, therefore her truth…
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Their Cocks Make Them Sure
There are those who are cocksure that there is no God, no soul, no post-mortem judgment, no ultimate meaning to human existence, and that we are all just material bits of a material world. Now it may be so for all we know. This is not an area in which proofs or disproofs are possible. …
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God, Simplicity, Freedom, and Two Senses of ‘Contingency’
Fr. Aidan Kimel wants me to comment on his recent series of posts about divine simplicity, freedom, and the contingency of creation. In the third of his entries, he provides the following quotation: As Matthew Levering puts it: “God could be God without creatures, and so his willing of creatures cannot have the absolute necessity that his…