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Theodicy: an Overview
1 Theodicy: An Overview Introduction All of us struggle at one time or another in life with why evil happens to someone, either ourselves, our family, our friends, our nation, or perhaps some particularly disturbing instance in the news—a child raped, a school shooting, genocide in another country, a terrorist bombing. The following material is meant to give an overview of the discussion of this issue as it takes place in several circles, especially that of the Christian church. I. The Problem of Evil Defined Three terms, "the problem of evil," "theodicy," and "defense" are important to our discussion. The first two are often used as synonyms, but strictly speaking the problem of evil is the larger issue of which theodicy is a subset because one can have a secular problem of evil. Evil is understood as a problem when we seek to explain why it exists (Unde malum?) and what its relationship is to the world as a whole. Indeed, something might be considered evil when it calls into question our basic trust in the order and structure of our world. Peter Berger in particular has argued that explanations of evil are necessary for social structures to stay themselves against chaotic forces. It follows, then, that such an explanation has an impact on the whole person. As David Blumenthal observes, a good theodicy is one that has three characteristics: 1. "[I]t should leave one with one’s sense of reality intact." (It tells the truth about reality.) 2. "[I]t should leave one empowered within the intellectual-moral system in which one lives." (Namely, it should not deny God’s basic power or goodness.) 3. -
Creation As Theodicy: in Defense of a Kabbalistic Approach to Evil
Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 14 Issue 4 Article 6 10-1-1997 Creation as Theodicy: In Defense of a Kabbalistic Approach to Evil Robert Oakes Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Oakes, Robert (1997) "Creation as Theodicy: In Defense of a Kabbalistic Approach to Evil," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 14 : Iss. 4 , Article 6. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil199714441 Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol14/iss4/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. CREATION AS THEODICY: IN DEFENSE OF A KABBALISTIC APPROACH TO EVIL Robert Oakes The doctrine of Tzimzum (or divine "withdrawal") occupies pride of place in the Jewish mystical tradition as a response to what is arguably the chief theo logical or metaphysical concern of that tradition: namely, how God's Infinity or Absolute Unlimitedness does not preclude the existence of a distinct domain of finite being. Alternatively, how can it be that God, by virtue of His Maximal Plenteousness, does not exhaust the whole of Reality? I attempt to show that, while a plausible argument - one that does not involve the idea of Tzimzum - can be mounted against this "pantheism" problem, the doctrine of Tzimzum has considerable force as the nucleus of a theodicy. -
On the Logic of the Ontological Argument∗ X
Paul E. Oppenheimer and Edward N. Zalta 2 by `9y(y =x)' and the claim that x has the property of existence by `E!x'. That is, we represent the difference between the two claims by exploiting the distinction between quantifying over x and predicating existence of On the Logic of the Ontological Argument∗ x. We shall sometimes refer to this as the distinction between the being of x and the existence of x. Thus, instead of reading Anselm as having discovered a way of inferring God's actuality from His mere possibility, Paul E. Oppenheimer we read him as having discovered a way of inferring God's existence from Thinking Machines Corporation His mere being. Another important feature of our reading concerns the fact that we and take the phrase \that than which none greater can be conceived" seriously. Certain inferences in the ontological argument are intimately linked to the logical behavior of this phrase, which is best represented as a definite Edward N. Zalta description.3 If we are to do justice to Anselm's argument, we must not Philosophy Department syntactically eliminate descriptions the way Russell does. One of the Stanford University highlights of our interpretation is that a very simple inference involving descriptions stands at the heart of the argument.4 Saint Anselm of Canterbury offered several arguments for the existence The Language and Logic Required for the Argument of God. We examine the famous ontological argument in Proslogium ii. Many recent authors have interpreted this argument as a modal one.1 But We shall cast our new reading in a standard first-order language. -
|FREE| God, Freedom and Evil
GOD, FREEDOM AND EVIL EBOOK Author: Alvin Plantinga Number of Pages: 121 pages Published Date: 21 Mar 1989 Publisher: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co Publication Country: Grand Rapids, United States Language: English ISBN: 9780802817310 Download Link: CLICK HERE God, Freedom And Evil Online Read Hick claims that it would be impossible Freedom and Evil the deity to have created human with free will and yet not with the ability to choose evil. Now that we have these definitions, Plantinga returns to the original question: could God have created any world He wanted to? Therefore, every world that God creates must have not only the possibility of evil in it but actual evil as well. Freedom and Evil contingent being is dependent on external states of affairs for its existence; it could either God or not exist. For those who hold that Freedom and Evil attempt at proving that there is a deity of any kind have failed because they are not psychologically convincing or logically compelling there is no Problem of Evil. God for the Existence of God. Feb 12, Wyatt Houtz rated it did not like it Shelves: abandoned. Coming Soon. God is not a contingent being. Related Papers. July 8, at pm. Why create a universe with even the possibility of corruption? Reviews God, Freedom And Evil Plantinga argues convincingly, I think the contrary: there is no contradiction. Now, add to this the observation that there is evil in the world. I worry a bit that modal logic is too weak of a tool to prove the existence of God in the sense that he is a being of maximal greatness. -
Is, Ought, and the Regress Argument
This is a draft of an article published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Citations should be to published version: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2018.1501400 Is, Ought, and the Regress Argument Abstract: Many take the claim that you can’t ‘get’ an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ to imply that non-moral beliefs are by themselves incapable of justifying moral beliefs. I argue that this is a mistake and that the position that moral beliefs are justified exclusively by non-moral beliefs– a view I call moral inferentialism – presents an attractive non-skeptical moral epistemology. “Why should I believe this set of propositions?” is quite different from the logical question: “What is the smallest and logically simplest group of propositions from which this set of propositions can be deduced?” –Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism p. 129 §1 Is to Ought Of the many theses that have been held about the relationship between thoughts about what is and thoughts about what is good or what ought to be, one of the most straightforward often gets overlooked. The following is, I imagine, a common experience: a thought crosses your mind about how things are, were, or might be. Next, you have an evaluative or a deontic thought – a thought about goodness, badness or about what ought to be done. Not only does the one thought follow the other, but it seems the first thought – the thought about what ‘is’ – justifies the second thought about value or obligation. For instance, you think: ‘The old man collapsed and is in pain,’ and that seems to support the thought that something bad has happened and you ought to help. -
THE MORAL CLOSURE ARGUMENT Matt Lutz
Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v19i1.243 Vol. 19, No. 1 · January 2021 © 2021 Author THE MORAL CLOSURE ARGUMENT Matt Lutz skeptical hypothesis argument introduces a scenario—a skeptical hypothesis—where our beliefs about some subject matter are systemat- A ically false, but our experiences do not discriminate between the case where our beliefs are true and the skeptical scenario where they are not. Because we are unable to rule out this scenario, we do not know that any of our beliefs about the subject matter are true. As one famous skeptical hypothesis argument goes: I cannot rule out the hypothesis that I am being deceived by a demon. Therefore, I cannot know anything about the external world. By similar token, a moral skeptical hypothesis argument is an argument that moral knowledge is impossible for agents like us in situations like ours, because we are unable to rule out some skeptical hypothesis. In this paper, I will defend a moral skeptical hypothesis argument—the Mor- al Closure Argument—against a number of objections. This argument is not novel, but it has rarely been taken seriously because it is widely held that the argument has serious flaws. My task in this paper is to argue that these supposed flaws are merely apparent; the Moral Closure Argument is much more potent than it might seem. 1. The Moral Closure Argument Let us introduce a few of the concepts that will feature prominently in the dis- cussion to come. Closure: If S knows that P, and P entails Q, and S believes that Q on the basis of competently deducing Q from P, while retaining knowledge of P throughout his reasoning, then S knows that Q.1 A closure argument is a kind of skeptical hypothesis argument that relies on Clo- 1 There are other ways to formulate Closure, but this is the most widely accepted version of the principle. -
Divine Utilitarianism
Liberty University DIVINE UTILITARIANISM A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Masters of Arts in Philosophical Studies By Jimmy R. Lewis January 16, 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction ……………………………...……………..……....3 Statement of the Problem…………………………….………………………….3 Statement of the Purpose…………………………….………………………….5 Statement of the Importance of the Problem…………………….……………...6 Statement of Position on the Problem………………………...…………….......7 Limitations…………………………………………….………………………...8 Development of Thesis……………………………………………….…………9 Chapter Two: What is meant by “Divine Utilitarianism”..................................11 Introduction……………………………….…………………………………….11 A Definition of God.……………………………………………………………13 Anselm’s God …………………………………………………………..14 Thomas’ God …………………………………………………………...19 A Definition of Utility .…………………………………………………………22 Augustine and the Good .……………………………………………......23 Bentham and Mill on Utility ……………………………………………25 Divine Utilitarianism in the Past .……………………………………………….28 New Divine Utilitarianism .……………………………………………………..35 Chapter Three: The Ethics of God ……………………………………………45 Divine Command Theory: A Juxtaposition .……………………………………45 What Divine Command Theory Explains ………………….…………...47 What Divine Command Theory Fails to Explain ………………………47 What Divine Utilitarianism Explains …………………………………………...50 Assessing the Juxtaposition .…………………………………………………....58 Chapter Four: Summary and Conclusion……………………………………...60 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..64 2 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Statement of the -
These Disks Contain My Version of Paul Spade's Expository Text and His Translated Texts
These disks contain my version of Paul Spade's expository text and his translated texts. They were converted from WordStar disk format to WordPerfect 5.1 disk format, and then I used a bunch of macros and some hands-on work to change most of the FancyFont formatting codes into WordPerfect codes. Many transferred nicely. Some of them are still in the text (anything beginning with a backslash is a FancyFont code). Some I just erased without knowing what they were for. All of the files were cleaned up with one macro, and some of them have been further doctored with additional macros I wrote later and additional hand editing. This explains why some are quite neat, and others somewhat cluttered. In some cases I changed Spade's formatting to make the printout look better (to me); often this is because I lost some of his original formatting. I have occasionally corrected obvious typos, and in at least one case I changed an `although' to a `but' so that the line would fit on the same page. With these exceptions, I haven't intentionally changed any of the text. All of the charts made by graphics are missing entirely (though in a few cases I perserved fragments so you can sort of tell what it was like). Some of the translations had numbers down the side of the page to indicate location in the original text; these are all lost. Translation 1.5 (Aristotle) was not on the disk I got, so it is listed in the table of contents, but you won't find it. -
The Problem of Evil S2
Theodicy Episode 190 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL S2 I. KEY THOUGHTS S3 1. The existence of evil is the greatest challenge for theism. S4 1. “There is little doubt that the problem of evil is the most serious intellectual difficulty for theism.” Stephen Davis, Encountering Evil (Knox Press, 1981), 2 THE PROBLEM S5 IF God is all-knowing, THEN he must know about evil IF God is all-loving, THEN he must want to abolish evil IF God is all-powerful, THEN he must be able to abolish evil BUT evil exists THEREFORE God is not all-loving & not all-powerful OR God does not exist THE SOLUTION S6 Theodicy èåïò (theos) God äéêç (dikç) justice DEF: arguments justifying the existence of evil in a world created by an all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing God 2. ALL theodicies include the notion of “Greater Good” S7 God allows evil because it serves an ultimate purpose in bringing overall good into the world º EG selling of Joseph by his brothers he ends up in Egypt & his family is saved from famine S8 2. “You [his brothers] intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Gen 50:20 3. Christian Theodicies have been intimately connected to Gen 3 & the Fall S9 K especially the COSMIC FALL Protestant Reformer John Calvin S10 3. “The earth was cursed on account of Adam [Gen 3:18] ... the whole order of nature was subverted by the sin of man ... Moses does not enumerate all the disadvantages in which man, by sin, has involved himself; for it appears that all the evils of the present life, which experience proves to be innumerable, have proceeded from the same fountain. -
A Response to Adams in the Augustinian Tradition
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Asbury Theological Seminary Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 19 Issue 1 Article 6 1-1-2002 The Abolition of Sin: A Response to Adams in the Augustinian Tradition Katherin A. Rogers Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Rogers, Katherin A. (2002) "The Abolition of Sin: A Response to Adams in the Augustinian Tradition," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 19 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol19/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. THE ABOLITION OF SIN: A RESPONSE TO ADAMS IN THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION Ka therin A. Rogers Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas located the source of human misery in sin, freely choosing against God. Sin is permitted by God because the dig nity of the human creature requires that it be able to make free choices and live with their consequences. In Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Marilyn Adams critiques this view and offers an alternative explanation. I argue that Adams's criticisms do not connect with the traditional view and her proposed alternative entails conclusions which Christians should find insupportable, including the abolition of sin and the view that God is not good in any meaningful sense. -
Gce a Level Marking Scheme
GCE A LEVEL MARKING SCHEME SUMMER 2018 A LEVEL RELIGIOUS STUDIES - COMPONENT 2 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION A120U20-1 © WJEC CBAC Ltd. INTRODUCTION This marking scheme was used by WJEC for the 2018 examination. It was finalised after detailed discussion at examiners' conferences by all the examiners involved in the assessment. The conference was held shortly after the paper was taken so that reference could be made to the full range of candidates' responses, with photocopied scripts forming the basis of discussion. The aim of the conference was to ensure that the marking scheme was interpreted and applied in the same way by all examiners. It is hoped that this information will be of assistance to centres but it is recognised at the same time that, without the benefit of participation in the examiners' conference, teachers may have different views on certain matters of detail or interpretation. WJEC regrets that it cannot enter into any discussion or correspondence about this marking scheme. © WJEC CBAC Ltd. Marking guidance for examiners, please apply carefully and consistently: Positive marking It should be remembered that candidates are writing under examination conditions and credit should be given for what the candidate writes, rather than adopting the approach of penalising him/her for any omissions. It should be possible for a very good response to achieve full marks and a very poor one to achieve zero marks. Marks should not be deducted for a less than perfect answer if it satisfies the criteria of the mark scheme. Exemplars in the mark scheme are only meant as helpful guides. -
The Likeness Regress: Plato's Parmenides 132Cl2-133A7
THE LIKENESS REGRESS THE LIKENESS REGRESS PLATO'S PARMENIDES 132C12-133A 7 By KARL DARCY OTTO, B.A., M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Karl Darcy Otto, July 2003 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2003) Mc Master University (Philosophy) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: The Likeness Regress: Plato's Parmenides 132cl2-133a7 AUTHOR: Karl Darcy Otto, B.A. (Toronto), M.A. (McMaster) SUPERVISOR: Professor David L. Hitchcock NUMBER OF PAGES: x, 147 11 Abstract Since Forms and particulars are separate, Plato is left with the task of describing the way in which they are related. One possible way of con struing this relation is to suppose that particulars resemble Forms. Socrates proposes this and is refuted by Parmenides in the so-called Likeness Regress (Parmenzdes 132c12-133a7). This work comprises both an exposition and an analysis of the Likeness Regress. In the exposition, I work out the argument-form of the Like ness Regress in second-order logic (and later, show that first-order logic is sufficient). This symbolisation provides a baseline for the balance of the exposition, which has two focusses: first, I define what it means for par ticulars to resemble Forms, with the help of D. M. Armstrong's account of resemblance in A Theory of Unwersals; second, I demonstrate that the infinite regress argument of the Likeness Regress is indeed vicious, with the help of T. Roy's theory of regress arguments. In the analysis, I proceed with the premiss that an asymmetrical account of the resemblance relation would allow Socrates to escape Parmenides' refu tation.