Open theists deny that God knows future contingents. Most open theists justify this denial by adopting the position that there are no future contingent truths to be known. In this paper we examine some of the arguments put forward for this position in two recent articles in this journal, one by Dale Tuggy and one by Alan Rhoda, Gregory Boyd, and Thomas Belt. The arguments concern time, modality, and the semantics of ‘will’ statements. We explain why we find none of (...) these arguments persuasive. This wide road leads only to destruction. (shrink)
Graham Oppy has emerged as one of the kalam cosmological argument’s most formidable opponents. He rejects all four of the arguments drawn from metaphysics and physics for the second premiss that the universe began to exist. He also thinks that we have no good reason to accept the first premiss that everything that begins to exist has a cause. In this response, I hope to show that the kalam cosmological argument is, in fact, considerably stronger than Oppy claims, surviving even (...) his trenchant critique. (shrink)
While declaring philosophy to be dead, Hawking and Mlodinow are deeply engaged in philosophical speculation. Their treatment of the origin and fine tuning of the universe, though unsympathetic to theism, turns out upon examination to be quite supportive of natural theology.
Graham Oppy’s interesting analysis of the “causal shape” of reality conflates causal ordering with temporal ordering of causes and assigns the wrong causal shape to reality as conceived by many classical theists. His argument for the possibility of uncaused beginnings is also hobbled by his tendency to ignore the crucial issue of the objective reality of tense and temporal becoming. Oppy’s claims that only certain types of things can come into being uncaused at a first moment of time and that (...) things cannot now come into being uncaused are examined and found implausible and explanatorily vacuous. (shrink)
Wes Morriston argues that even if we take an endless series of events to be merely potentially, rather than actually, infinite, still no distinction between a beginningless and an endless series of events has been established which is relevant to arguments against the metaphysical possibility of an actually infinite number of things: if a beginningless series is impossible, so is an endless series. The success of Morriston’s argument, however, comes to depend on rejecting the characterization of an endless series of (...) events as a potential infinite. It turns out that according to his own analysis it is vitally relevant whether the series of events is potentially, as opposed to actually, infinite. If it is reasonable to maintain that an endless series of events is potentially infinite while a beginningless series is actually infinite, then a relevant distinction has been established for any person who thinks that an actual infinite cannot exist. (shrink)
Alexander Vilenkin’s recent book is a wonderful popular introduction to contemporary cosmology. It contains provocative discussions of both the beginning of the universe and the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life. Vilenkin is a prominent exponent of the multiverse hypothesis, which features in the book’s title. His defense of this hypothesis depends in a crucial and interesting way on conflating time and space. His claim that his theory of the quantum creation of the universe explains the origin of the (...) universe from nothing trades on a misunderstanding of "nothing.". (shrink)
Each of the in-depth essays explores at length a particular theistic argument - from Contingency and Consciousness to Reason and Religious Experience - with the ...
A common aim of elimination problems for languages of logic is to express the entire content of a set of formulas of the language, or a certain part of it, in a way that is more elementary or more informative. We want to bring out that as the languages for logic grew in expressive power and, at the same time, our knowledge of their expressive limitations also grew, elimination problems in logic underwent some change. For languages other than that for (...) monadic second-order logic, there remain important open problems. (shrink)
Work on how to axiomatize the subtheories of a first-order theory in which only a proper subset of their extra-logical vocabulary is being used led to a theorem on recursive axiomatizability and to an interpolation theorem for first-order logic. There were some fortuitous events and several logicians played a helpful role.
J. Howard Sobel devotes seventy pages of his wide-ranging analysis of theistic arguments to a critique of the cosmological argument. Although the focus of that critique falls on the Leibnizian argument, he also offers in passing some criticisms of the kalam cosmological argument. Sobel does not challenge the causal premiss insofar as "begins to exist" means "has a first time of its existence." Rather he disputes the arguments and evidence for the fact of the universe's beginning. I show that Sobel's (...) rebuttals of the philosophical arguments against the infinitude of the past are in various ways misconceived or fallacious and that his response to the empirical evidence for the beginning of the universe involves a gratuitous and radical revision of contemporary astrophysical cosmogony. (shrink)
An examination of time as featured in the General Theory of Relativity, which supercedes Einstein’s Special Theory, serves to rekindle the issue of the existenceof absolute time. In application to cosmology, Einstein’s General Theory yields models of the universe featuring a worldwide time which is the same for all observers in the universe regardless of their relative motion. Such a cosmic time is a rough physical measure of Newton’s absolute time, which is based ontologically in the duration of God’s being (...) and is more or less accurately recorded by physical clocks. (shrink)
Michael Rea and Jeffery Brower have offered a provocative new model of the Trinity on the analogy of the Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. Just as a fist and a hand can be distinct entities composed of a common matter and yet numerically the same object, so the persons of the Trinity can be distinct entities (persons) composed of a common "matter" (the divine essence) and yet numerically the same object (God). I express doubts about the degree (...) to which this analogy sheds light on the doctrine of the Trinity due to the disanalogy that neither God nor the Trinitarian persons are to be thought of as composed of any sort of stuff and to the model’s lack of explanatory power as to how a common matter can be simultaneously imbued with seemingly incompatible forms to constitute one object. (shrink)
Raymond Van Arragon considers my my suggestion that most of those who never have the opportunity to accept Christ during their earthly lives suffer from transworld damnation, and he offers four different interpretations of that notion. He argues that at least three of these interpretations are such that on them the suggestion becomes implausible. I maintain that once my suggestion is properly understood, then, despite Van Arragon’s misgivings, it ought not to be thought implausible even on the first two, boldest (...) interpretations he offers. (shrink)
The question of whether or not God exists is endlessly fascinating and profoundly important. Now two articulate spokesmen--one a Christian, the other an atheist--duel over God's existence in a lively and illuminating battle of ideas. In God?, William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong bring to the printed page two debates they held before live audiences, preserving all the wit, clarity, and immediacy of their public exchanges. With none of the opaque discourse of academic logicians and divinity-school theologians, the authors make (...) claims and comebacks that cut with precision. Their arguments are sharp and humorous, as each philosopher strikes quickly to the heart of his opponent's case. For example, Craig claims that we must believe in God to explain objective moral values, such as why rape is wrong. Sinnott-Armstrong responds that what makes rape wrong is the harm to victims of rape, so rape is immoral even if there is no God. From arguments about the nature of infinity and the Big Bang, to religious experience and divine action, to the resurrection of Jesus and the problem of evil, the authors treat us to a remarkable display of intelligence and insight--a truly thought-provoking exploration of a classic issue that remains relevant to contemporary life. (shrink)
Studies in astrophysical cosmology have served to reveal the incomprehensible fine-tuning of the fundamental constants and cosmological quantities which must obtain if a universe like ours is to be life-permitting. Traditionally, such fine-tuning of the universe for life would have been taken as evidence of divine design. William Dembski’s ’generic chance elimination argument’ provides a framework for evaluating the hypothesis of design with respect to the fine-tuning of the universe. On Dembski’s model the key to a design inference is the (...) elimination of the competing alternatives of physical necessity and chance. In debates over fine-tuning, the former is represented by a ’theory of everything’, which would eliminate or significantly reduce the improbabilities of fine-tuning. The latter takes the shape of the ’many worlds hypothesis’, according to which a ’world ensemble’ of universes exist, thus providing purchase for the ’anthropic principle’. This paper assesses the relative merit. (shrink)
David Myers's critique of my proposed Molinist solution to the so-called soteriological problem of evil miscontrues that solution in several key respects. Once those misinterpretations are rectified, it emerges that his proffered critique of my Molinist solution is really quite unrelated to that solution, but constitutes instead an independent argument against the tenability of a religious epistemology of evidentialism in the context of Christian orthodoxy.
The authors of this lively and thorough introduction to philosophy from a Christian perspective introduce you to the principal subdisciplines of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics and philosophy ...
Evan’s Fales’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the origin of the empty tomb narrative in the gospels of the New Testament is shown to be flawed in taking pagan mythology rather than Palestinian Judaism as the proper interpretive context for the life of Jesus.
One of the most serious obstacles to accepting a tenseless view of time is the challenge posed by our experience of tense. A particularly striking example of such experience, pointed out by Schlesinger but largely overlooked in the literature, is the wish felt by probably all of us at some time or other that it were now some other time. Such a wish seems evidently rational to hold, and yet on a tenseless theory of time such a wish must be (...) regarded as irrational, since it is logically impossible for the now to be located at some other time, there being no such thing as an objective now or present. In order to accommodate rationally such a belief, most protagonists of tenseless time twist the evident meaning of the wish. Oaklander, for example, misconstrues the wish in terms of my wanting to have different perceptions. Others, like Coburn, admit frankly that such a wish is rational only on a tensed theory of time but mistakenly reject that theory on grounds that at best constitute a defeater of an argument for a tensed view of time, rather than a defeater of the tensed view itself. The argument for a tensed view of time from the experience of tense remains undefeated. (shrink)
One of the principal objections to a tensed or dynamic theory of time is the ancient puzzle about the extent of the present. Three alternative conceptions of the extent of the present are considered: an instantaneous present, an atomic present, and a non-metrical present. The first conception is difficult to reconcile with the objectivity of temporal becoming posited by a dynamic theory of time. The second conception solves that problem, but only at the expense of making change discontinuous. The third (...) conception is the most plausible: that "the present" is a non-metrical notion which must be completed by the mention of some event or interval in order to have a measure, in which case what is present varies with one's context. (shrink)
A difficulty for a view of divine eternity as timelessness is that if time is tensed, then God, in virtue of His omniscience, must know tensed facts. But tensed facts, such as It is now t, can only be known by a temporally located being.Defenders of divine atemporality may attempt to escape the force of this argument by contending either that a timeless being can know tensed facts or else that ignorance of tensed facts is compatible with divine omniscience. Kvanvig, (...) Wierenga, and Leftow adopt both of these strategies in their various defenses of divine timelessness. Their respective solutions are analyzed in detail and shown to be untenable.Thus, if the theist holds to a tensed view of time, he should construe divine eternity in terms of omnitemporality. (shrink)
In this book and the companion volume The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, Craig undertakes the first thorough appraisal of the arguments for and against the tensed and tenseless theories of time.
Craig and Moreland present a rigorous analysis and critique of the major varieties of contemporary philosophical naturalism and advocate that it should be abandoned in light of the serious difficulties raised against it. The contributors draw on a wide range of topics including: epistemology, philosophy of science, value theory to basic analytic ontology, philosophy of mind and agency, and natural theology.
John Taylor complains that the "Kalam" cosmological argument gives the appearance of being a swift and simple demonstration of the existence of a Creator of the universe, whereas in fact a convincing argument involving the premiss that the universe began to exist is very difficult to achieve. But Taylor's proffered defeaters of the premisses of the philosophical arguments for the beginning of the universe are themselves typically undercut due to Taylor's inadvertence to alternatives open to the defender of the "Kalam" (...) arguments. With respect to empirical confirmation of the universe's beginning Taylor is forced into an anti-realist position on the Big Bang theory, but without sufficient warrant for singling out the theory as non-realistic. Therefore, despite the virtue of simplicity of form, the "Kalam" cosmological argument has not been defeated by Taylor's all too swift refutation. (shrink)
The impression is frequently given that the static description of the 4-dimensional world given by a tenseless theory of time adequately accounts for the world and that a tensed theory of time has nothing to offer. In fact, the tenseless theory of time leaves us incapable of specifying the direction of time, whereas a tensed theory of time enables us to do so. Thus, the tensed theory enjoys a considerable advantage over the tenseless view.
God is conceived in the Western theistic tradition to be both the Creator and Conservor of the universe. These two roles were typically classed as different aspects of creation, originating creation and continuing creation. On pain of incoherence, however, conservation needs to be distinguished from creation. Contrary to current analyses (such as Philip Quinn's), creation should be explicated in terms of God's bringing something into being, while conservation should be understood in terms of God's preservation of something over an interval (...) of time. The crucial difference is that while conservation presupposes an object of the divine action, creation does not. Such a construal has significant implications for a tensed theory of time. (shrink)
Creation and conservation are defined and distinguished; providence based on divine middle knowledge is defended; and miracles as naturally impossible events are defended.
In a pair of recent articles, William Hasker has attempted to defend Robert Adams’s new anti-Molinist argument. But I argue that the sense of explanatory priority operative in the argument is either equivocal or, if a univocal sense can be given to it, it is either so generic that we should have to deny its transitivity or so weak that it would not be incompatible with human freedom.
In a pair of recent articles, William Hasker has attempted to defend Robert Adams’s new anti-Molinist argument. But I argue that the sense of explanatory priority operative in the argument is either equivocal or, if a univocal sense can be given to it, it is either so generic that we should have to deny its transitivity or so weak that it would not be incompatible with human freedom.
Graham Oppy’s attempt to show that the critiques of the kalam cosmological argument offered by Griinbaum, Davies, and Hawking are successful is predicated upon a misunderstanding of the nature of defeaters in rational belief. Neither Grunbaum nor Oppy succeed in showing an incoherence in the Christian doctrine of creation. Oppy’s attempts to rehabilitate Davies’s critique founders on spurious counter-examples and unsubstantiated claims. Oppy’s defense of Hawking’s critique fails to allay suspicions about the reality of imaginary time and finally results in (...) the denial of tense and temporal becoming. (shrink)
Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began to exist about fifteen billion years ago with a cataclysmic explosion called "the Big Bang." The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received scant attention from philosophers. This book sets out to fill this gap by means of a sustained debate between two philosophers, William Lane Craig (...) and Quentin Smith, who defend opposing positions. Craig argues that the Big Bang that began the universe was created by God, while Smith argues that the Big Bang has no cause. Alternating chapters by the two philosophers criticize and attempt to refute preceding arguments. Their arguments are based on Einstein's theory of relativity and include a discussion of the new quantum cosmology recently developed by Stephen Hawking and popularized in A Brief History of Time. (shrink)
The conviction ofthe New Testament writers was that there is no salvation apart from Jesus. This orthodox doctrine is widely rejected today because God’s condemnation of persons in other world religions seems incompatible with various attributes of God.Analysis reveals the real problem to involve certain counterfactuals of freedom, e.g., why did not God create a world in which all people would freely believe in Christ and be saved? Such questions presuppose that God possesses middle knowledge. But it can be shown (...) that no inconsistency exists between God's having middle knowledge and certain persons' being damned; on the contrary it can be positively shown that these two notions are compatible. (shrink)
Barrow and Tipler’s contention that the Anthropic Principle is obviously true and removes the need for an explanation of fine-tuning fails because the Principle is trivially true, and only within the context of a World Ensemble, whose existence is not obvious, does a selection effect become significant. Their objections to divine design as an explanation of fine-tuning are seen to be misconceived.
