DOCSLIB.ORG

This Paper Has Been Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of The

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
This Paper Has Been Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of The This paper has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy Peter J Morgan Read and Approved by: ____________________ [Name] (Chairperson) ____________________ [Name] ____________________ [Name] ____________________ Date Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary An Introduction to the Free System Corollary: A Theistic Response to the Abductive Problem of Evil A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Seminary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Peter J. Morgan Lynchburg, VA April 2017 Copyright 2017 by Peter J Morgan All rights reserved To my loving and patient family, thank you for all your support …we theists should view our theism, while grounded in the past, as also dynamic, and as needing better specifications as we learn more and more, individually and communally, about ourselves and the world we live in, so as to refine theism into its best and truest versions. — Stephen Wykstra “Skeptical Theism, Abductive Atheology, and Theory Reasoning,” 163 Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... x Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................... xi Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ xii Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Statement of the Problem ................................................................................................................ 1 Statement of Importance of the Problem ........................................................................................ 3 Statement of Purpose ...................................................................................................................... 6 Statement of Position on the Problem ............................................................................................. 6 Limitations .................................................................................................................................... 10 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter Divisions ......................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter Summaries ....................................................................................................................... 14 Results ........................................................................................................................................... 18 Chapter 2: Considerations of the Good .................................................................................... 19 The Call of Moral Obligation Towards the Good ......................................................................... 19 Significant Freedom Towards Choosing the Good ....................................................................... 27 Does God’s Good Nature Eliminate His Freedom? ...................................................................... 32 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 3: Natural Law ............................................................................................................. 42 The Rationalityof the Universe ..................................................................................................... 42 v Natural Law and Divine Humility ................................................................................................ 47 Spiritual Complacency .................................................................................................................. 52 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 57 Chapter 4: The Free Will Defense ............................................................................................. 60 J. L. Mackie................................................................................................................................... 60 Causation and Teleological Reality .............................................................................................. 60 Metaphysical Double Vision ......................................................................................................... 65 Alvin Plantinga ............................................................................................................................. 71 Properly Basic Beliefs & Rationality ............................................................................................ 71 The Free Will Defense .................................................................................................................. 76 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................... 81 Chapter 5: The Expanded Free Will Defense........................................................................... 83 Bruce Russell ................................................................................................................................ 83 Experience as the Foundation of Justification.............................................................................. 83 The Flexibility of Greater Amounts of Good ................................................................................ 88 Peter van Inwagen ......................................................................................................................... 94 Moral Lines in the Sand ................................................................................................................ 94 Regularity and the Expanded Free Will Defense .......................................................................... 97 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 103 Chapter 6: Inculpable Nonbelief ............................................................................................. 106 Paul Draper ................................................................................................................................. 106 The Hypothesis of Indifference ................................................................................................... 106 vi Biologically Gratuitous Pain ...................................................................................................... 111 Daniel Howard-Snyder ............................................................................................................... 117 Inscrutable Evil ........................................................................................................................... 117 Inculpable Non-Belief ................................................................................................................. 121 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 127 Chapter 7: Skeptical Theism.................................................................................................... 129 Stephen Wykstra ......................................................................................................................... 129 CORNEA ..................................................................................................................................... 129 William Rowe ............................................................................................................................. 134 A Trolley Ride to Obscurity ........................................................................................................ 134 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 138 Chapter 8: The Free System Corollary ................................................................................... 141 The Free System Corollary Defeined ......................................................................................... 143 William Alston and Theodical Suggestions................................................................................. 144 Theodical Suggestions as Applied to the FSC ............................................................................ 146 The Necessioty of a Free System for Free Will .......................................................................... 148 The Nature of Free Will .............................................................................................................. 148 Regularity/Consistency as Part of a Free System ....................................................................... 153 The Potential for Oppression ...................................................................................................... 156 Free Will in a Free System.........................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • “Grounding and Omniscience” (PDF)
    Grounding and Omniscience Abstract I’m going to argue that omniscience is impossible and therefore that there is no God.1 The argument turns on the notion of grounding. After illustrating and clarifying that notion, I’ll start the argument in earnest. The first step will be to lay out five claims, one of which is the claim that there is an omniscient being, and the other four of which are claims about grounding. I’ll prove that these five claims are inconsistent. Then I’ll argue for the truth of each of them except the claim that there is an omniscient being. From these arguments it follows that there are no omniscient beings and thus that there is no God. §1. Stage Setting The best way to get a grip on the notion of grounding – or more exactly, for our purposes, the notion of partial grounding - is by considering examples. (By “partial grounding” I mean “at-least-partial grounding”, just as mereologists mean “at-least-part of” by “part of”.) The first example hearkens back to Plato’s Euthyphro. Suppose that a theorist claims that as a matter of metaphysical necessity, a given act is morally right if and only if it is approved of by God. At first blush at least, it is plausible that this theorist owes us an answer to following question: when acts are right, are they right because God approves of them, or does he approve of them because they are right? We all understand this question right away, right when we first hear it.
    [Show full text]
  • A Fundamental Problem for Skeptical Theism
    A fundamental problem for skeptical theism Atle O. Søvik Det teologiske menighetsfakultet Postboks 5144 Majorstuen 0302 Oslo [email protected] Abstract: The argument from divine hiddenness says that since probably there is pointless divine hiding, then probably God does not exist. Francis Jonbäck argues that a good response to this argument is to deny that one can assign a probability value to the claim that there is pointless divine hiding. I argue in this article the opposite, and that we should instead choose a theodicy response. Keywords: Skeptical theism; divine hiddenness; value agnosticism; Francis Jonbäck; theodicy Introduction Skeptical theism is acknowledged by many as a good response to the problem of evil and the argument from divine hiddenness.1 Simply put, the problem of evil is that we would expect the world to be better given that there is a good and omnipotent God, while the argument from divine hiddenness is that we would expect to have more evidence of the existence of God given that there is a good and omnipotent God. Skeptical theism responds to these arguments by challenging the idea of what we have reason to expect. God may have good reasons for allowing evil or hiding which we have no reason to think that we should know, and thus these arguments are not good arguments against the existence of God, according to skeptical theism. In a recent clearly written and well structured book, Francis Jonbäck presents a defense of what he calls value agnosticism as a response to the argument from divine hiddenness.2 Value agnosticism says that we are not is a position to estimate how probable or not it is that God has good reasons for hiding.
    [Show full text]
  • 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
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Evil As a Moral Objection to Theism
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AS A MORAL OBJECTION TO THEISM by TOBY GEORGE BETENSON A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY. Department of Philosophy School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2014 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract: I argue that the problem of evil can be a moral objection to theistic belief. The thesis has three broad sections, each establishing an element in this argument. Section one establishes the logically binding nature of the problem of evil: The problem of evil must be solved, if you are to believe in God. And yet, I borrow from J. L. Mackie’s criticisms of the moral argument for the existence of God, and argue that the fundamentally evaluative nature of the premises within the problem of evil entails that it cannot be used to argue for the non- existence of God.
    [Show full text]
  • Literature Review
    New Insights and Directions for Religious Epistemology http://www.newinsights.ox.ac.uk Literature Review Analytic epistemology experienced a monumental resurgence in the latter part of the twentieth century. A short paper by Edmund Gettier launched a frenzied era of original research into the nature of some of our central epistemic concepts, e.g., knowledge, justification, rationality, belief, defeat, and evidence. The excitement of Gettier’s challenge to the view that knowledge is justified true belief drew interest from a wide range of very talented philosophers. Formidable figures such as Fred Dretske, John Pollack, Robert Nozick, Roderick Chisholm, Alvin Goldman, Marshall Swain, David Armstrong, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Richard Swinburne, and Gilbert Harman, to name just a few, published widely on the foregoing epistemic concepts. This outpouring of original research meant that new theoretical tools and insights became available for application in philosophy of religion. Religious epistemology, taking advantage of this resurgence in mainstream epistemology, experienced a new era of original research. William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Alvin Plantinga, and Richard Swinburne all played a particularly central role in this resurgence. Alston, in his popular book Perceiving God, argued that religious beliefs held by way of religious experience are just as justified as our regular or quotidian perceptual beliefs. In his masterpiece Warranted Christian Belief, Plantinga, inspired by (i) the notion of a basic belief in the epistemic theory of foundationalism, (ii) his proper functioning account of warrant, and (iii) John Calvin’s theology, defended the position that Christian beliefs are warranted if true. The broad outlines of his position came to be labeled “Reformed Epistemology.” Wolterstorff, in his Reason within the Bounds of Religion, provided an elegant and sophisticated account of the role religious belief play in an agent’s overall epistemic “web” of beliefs.
    [Show full text]
  • Curriculum Vitae of Alvin Plantinga
    CURRICULUM VITAE OF ALVIN PLANTINGA A. Education Calvin College A.B. 1954 University of Michigan M.A. 1955 Yale University Ph.D. 1958 B. Academic Honors and Awards Fellowships Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1968-69 Guggenheim Fellow, June 1 - December 31, 1971, April 4 - August 31, 1972 Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 1975 - Fellow, Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, 1979-1980 Visiting Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford 1975-76 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, 1975-76, 1987, 1995-6 Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 1980-81 Fellow, Frisian Academy, 1999 Gifford Lecturer, 1987, 2005 Honorary Degrees Glasgow University, l982 Calvin College (Distinguished Alumni Award), 1986 North Park College, 1994 Free University of Amsterdam, 1995 Brigham Young University, 1996 University of the West in Timisoara (Timisoara, Romania), 1998 Valparaiso University, 1999 2 Offices Vice-President, American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 1980-81 President, American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 1981-82 President, Society of Christian Philosophers, l983-86 Summer Institutes and Seminars Staff Member, Council for Philosophical Studies Summer Institute in Metaphysics, 1968 Staff member and director, Council for Philosophical Studies Summer Institute in Philosophy of Religion, 1973 Director, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, 1974, 1975, 1978 Staff member and co-director (with William P. Alston) NEH Summer Institute in Philosophy of Religion (Bellingham, Washington) 1986 Instructor, Pew Younger Scholars Seminar, 1995, 1999 Co-director summer seminar on nature in belief, Calvin College, July, 2004 Other E. Harris Harbison Award for Distinguished Teaching (Danforth Foundation), 1968 Member, Council for Philosophical Studies, 1968-74 William Evans Visiting Fellow University of Otago (New Zealand) 1991 Mentor, Collegium, Fairfield University 1993 The James A.
    [Show full text]
  • A Pragmatic Ethics of Belief (Draft – Presented at the Nordic Pragmatism Network Workshop “Pragmatism and the Ethics of Belief, Jyväskylä, Finland, December 2008)
    Ulf Zackariasson Jyväskylä 15-17/12 2008 Ethics and a Pragmatic Ethics of Belief (Draft – presented at the Nordic Pragmatism Network workshop “Pragmatism and the Ethics of Belief, Jyväskylä, Finland, December 2008) Ulf Zackariasson University of Adger Introduction Outside the world of philosophy journals and conferences, there can be little doubt that moral considerations comprise the most potent source of critique of religious practices. Nevertheless, within philosophy of religion, moral critique has played a remarkably modest role, and the Anglo-American mainstream of philosophy of religion has a rather awkward attitude towards moral critique, since its focus is almost exclusively on epistemic justification. I think this awkwardness stems from a conception of religious practices which construes them as logically prior to moral reflection on these practices. Pragmatism, as I understand it, offers a more adequate articulation of the relation between ethics and religion, where religious practices are understood as responses to problematic situations that, to a significant extent, have moral implications. Hence, moral critique – I use moral and ethical as synonyms here – does not come into play only after these practices are formed; they are – or may be – important elements of the process through which they are constituted. In order to bring out the difference this makes for philosophical reflection on religion, and why a reconstruction is called for, I will compare a currently prominent attempt to justify belief, William Alston’s, to a
    [Show full text]
  • ALSTON and HUSSERL William Alston, Who Translated Hu
    1 A ANALYTICAL AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATIONS OF RELIGIOUS k EXPERIENCE: ALSTON AND HUSSERL William Alston, who translated Husserl’s The Idea of Phenomenology along with George Nakhnikian in 1973,1 published Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience in 1991, a seminal work in the burgeoning literature in analytic philosophy of religion. In this paper, I will briefly present his understanding of religious experience and his view on how it justifies religious belief—at the same time he provides a kind of justification of the legitimacy of religious experience. Although Husserl never developed a full-fledged account of how religious experience justifies religious belief, he did devote himself in repeated works to discussions of justification particularly through his analysis of Evidenz. In relationship to Alston’s work, I will demonstrate how Husserl’s discussion of Evidenz can enhance and criticize the role that religious experience plays in justifying religious belief according to Alston and also in justifying religious experience itself. Though Alston’s concept of religious experience explicitly depends on and articulates a Christian mystical perception of a personal God,2 there are a great variety of religious experiences with rich traditions embedded in diverse cultures throughout the world, Alston himself recognizes the limits of his own approach while welcoming dialogue with alternative religious traditions. I believe that Husserl’s discussions of Evidenz in his later writings warrants a similar awareness of how one’s understanding of religious experience and its justifications are limited by cultural and traditional factors and, consequently, how extensive dialogue between alternative perspectives is called for.
    [Show full text]
  • A Critique of the Free Will Defense, a Comprehensive Look at Alvin Plantinga’S Solution to the Problem of Evil
    University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Honors Theses and Capstones Student Scholarship Spring 2013 A Critique of the Free Will Defense, A Comprehensive Look at Alvin Plantinga’s Solution To the Problem of Evil. Justin Ykema University of New Hampshire - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/honors Part of the Medieval Studies Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Ykema, Justin, "A Critique of the Free Will Defense, A Comprehensive Look at Alvin Plantinga’s Solution To the Problem of Evil." (2013). Honors Theses and Capstones. 119. https://scholars.unh.edu/honors/119 This Senior Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses and Capstones by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. University of New Hampshire Department of Philosophy 2012-2013 A Critique of the Free Will Defense A Comprehensive Look at Alvin Plantinga’s Solution To the Problem of Evil. by Justin Ykema Primary Reader: Jennifer Armstrong Additional Readers: Willem deVries, Paul McNamara & Ruth Sample Graties tibi ago, domine. Haec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem. Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui; officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem. 1 Section I: Introduction Historically, the problem of evil exemplifies an apparent paradox. The paradox is, if God exists, and he is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, how does evil exist in the world when God created everything the world contains? Many theologians have put forth answers to solve this problem, and one of the proposed solutions put forth is the celebrated Free Will Defense, which claims to definitively solve the problem of evil.
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Evil
    The Problem of Evil Leslie Allan Published online: 28 July 2015 Copyright © 2015 Leslie Allan The existence of evil, pain and suffering is considered by many philosophers to be the most vexed question concerning the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect deity. Why would a loving God permit wanton acts of cruelty and misery on the scale witnessed throughout human history? In this essay, Leslie Allan evaluates four common theistic responses to this problem, highlighting the benefits and challenges faced by each approach. He concludes with a critical examination of a theistic defence designed to show that the problem of evil is not a problem at all. To cite this essay: Allan, Leslie 2015. The Problem of Evil, URL = <http://www.RationalRealm.com/philosophy/metaphysics/problem-of-evil.html> To link to this essay: http://www.RationalRealm.com/philosophy/metaphysics/problem-of-evil.html Follow this and additional essays at: http://www.RationalRealm.com This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sublicensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms and conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.RationalRealm.com/policies/tos.html Leslie Allan The Problem of Evil 1. Introduction The problem of evil, pain and suffering is considered by some philosophers to be the most telling philosophical objection to theistic belief. At its heart is the notion that if God existed, he would be powerful enough to be able to prevent evil, wise enough to know how to prevent it and benevolent enough to want to prevent it.
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Evil and the Probity of Theodicy from William Rowe's
    Liberty University Department of Philosophy The Problem of Evil and the Probity of Doing Theodicy from William Rowe’s Evidential Argument from Evil ------------------------------------------- A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Philosophy Department of Liberty University In Partial Fulfilment Of the Requirement for the Degree Master of Arts in Philosophical Studies -------------------------------------------- By Olaoluwa Apata -------------------------------------------- Lynchburg, VA May 2016 Abstract In this research, we discussed the types of evil: moral and natural, which are cited by atheistic philosophers as evidence against the existence of God. The so-called evidence from evil has been used by the atheistic and other non-theistic scholars to raise hypothesis on evaluating the possibility or likelihood that an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God exists in a world that is littered with evil. Moral evil is evil that arise from the misuse of free will by moral agents, while natural evils are natural disasters such as: earthquakes, famine, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes etc. We discussed moral evil and Plantinga’s free will defense. We also discussed the natural evil and how it poses threat to theism. The logical and the evidential arguments from evil are the forms of arguments developed from moral and natural evils. While many scholars have agreed that Plantinga’s free will defense adequately responds to the problem of logical evil, the same consensus does not necessarily apply to the evidential argument from evil. We also examined William Rowe’s evidential argument which he developed from cases of intense animal and human sufferings considered by him to be pointless or gratuitous with no known reasons or goods for which God should have allowed the visceral experience of such sufferings.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Perhaps the Best-Known Evolutionary Challenge to Theism
    DARWIN AND THE PROBLEM OF NATURAL NONBELIEF DARWIN AND THE PROBLEM OF NATURAL NONBELIEF ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Problem one: why, if God designed the human mind, did it take so Problem one: why, if God designed the human mind, did it take so long for humans to develop theistic concepts and beliefs? Problem two: long for humans to develop theistic concepts and beliefs? Problem two: why would God use evolution to design the living world when the dis- why would God use evolution to design the living world when the dis- covery of evolution would predictably contribute to so much nonbelief covery of evolution would predictably contribute to so much nonbelief in God? Darwin was aware of such questions but failed to see their evi- in God? Darwin was aware of such questions but failed to see their evi- dential significance for theism. This paper explores this significance. dential significance for theism. This paper explores this significance. Problem one introduces something I call natural nonbelief, which is sig- Problem one introduces something I call natural nonbelief, which is sig- nificant because it parallels and corroborates well-known worries about nificant because it parallels and corroborates well-known worries about natural evil. Problems one and two, especially when combined, support natural evil. Problems one and two, especially when combined, support naturalism over theism, intensify the problem of divine hiddenness, naturalism over theism, intensify the problem of divine hiddenness, challenge Alvin Plantinga’s views about the naturalness of theism, and challenge Alvin Plantinga’s views about the naturalness of theism, and advance the discussion about whether the conflict between science and advance the discussion about whether the conflict between science and religion is genuine or superficial.
    [Show full text]