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Animal suffering constitutes perhaps the greatest challenge to rational belief in the existence of God. Considerations that render human suffering theologically intelligible seem inapplicable to animal suffering. In this book, Dougherty defends radical possibilities for animal afterlife that allow a soul-making theodicy to apply to their case.
In this ground-breaking book, leading epistemologists challenge and refine evidentialism, the view that epistemic justification for belief is determined solely by considerations pertaining to one's evidence. Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, the leading advocates of evidentialism, respond to each essay in this engaging and illuminating debate.
Given that we meet evils in every quarter of the world, could it be governed by an all-good and all-powerful deity? Whilst some philosophers argue that the problem of evil is strong evidence for atheism, others claim that all of the evils in our world can be explained as requirements for deeper goods. On the other hand, skeptical theists believe in God, but struggle with the task of explaining the role of evils in our world. Skeptical theism tackles the problem of evil by proposing a limited skepticism about the purposes of God, and our abilities to determine whether any given instance is truly an example of gratuitous evil. This collection of 22 original essays presents cutting-edge work on skeptical theistic responses to the problem of evil and the persistent objections that such responses invite. Divided into four sections, the volume discusses the epistemology of sceptical theism, conditions of reasonable epistemic access, the implications for theism, and the implications for morality.
Why does evil exist? How do we explain the existence of evil? The issue of addressing the presence of evil has puzzled the human mind for centuries; it has been a dominant issue in philosophical and theological literature and discussions. Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987), perhaps the most formative apologist for historic Christian orthodoxy in the twentieth century, wrote a compelling award-winning essay in 1923 as a student at Princeton Theological Seminary on the subject entitled "Evil and Theodicy." Van Til's intriguing discussion traces the history of Western thought's inadequacy to deal with the issue and concludes that "God is his own theodicy" in view of his own sovereign authority. Based on the historical revelation of God in the Holy Scriptures, Van Til's position challenges Christians as well as those outside Christianity as to why evil exists. William D. Dennison's introductory essay places Van Til's thesis in the context of more recent discussions.
Religious Experience and Religious Lives: An Epistemology defends a moderate approach to religious experiences in which they can contribute to the justification of central religious beliefs, most importantly belief in God. Epistemologists of religion disagree about what evidential value religious experiences have. Some argue that religious experiences have no evidential value while others argue that religious experiences constitute proof of God’s existence. However, Walter Scott Stepanenko argues that religious experiences can contribute to these justificatory cases in several distinct ways and that several justificatory cases are philosophically viable. This book contends that this joint ...
Symbolic logic may be superior to classical Aristotelian logic for the sciences, but not for the humanities. This text is designed for do-it-yourselfers as well as classrooms.
Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In this volume 14 original essays, written by a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers, offer new approaches to the central issues and controversies surrounding the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith.
Idealism is a family of metaphysical views each of which gives priority to the mental. The best-known forms of idealism in Western philosophy are Berkeleyan idealism, which gives ontological priority to the mental (minds and ideas) over the physical (bodies), and Kantian idealism, which gives a kind of explanatory priority to the mental (the structure of the understanding) over the physical (the structure of the empirical world). Although idealism was once a dominant view in Western philosophy, it has suffered almost total neglect over the last several decades. This book rectifies this situation by bringing together seventeen essays by leading philosophers on the topic of metaphysical idealism. The various essays explain, attack, or defend a variety of idealistic theories, including not only Berkeleyan and Kantian idealisms but also those developed in traditions less familiar to analytic philosophers, including Buddhism and Hassidic Judaism. Although a number of the articles draw on historical sources, all will be of interest to philosophers working in contemporary metaphysics. This volume aims to spark a revival of serious philosophical interest in metaphysical idealism.
Frequently, alleged irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion are instead misdescribed battles concerning negotiable philosophical assumptions--conflicts between metaphysics and metaphysics. Hud Hudson provides a two-stage illustration of this claim with respect to the putative inconsistency between the doctrines of The Fall and Original Sin and the deliverances of contemporary science. The tension in question emerges through a study of the many forms the religious doctrines have assumed over the centuries and through a review of some well-established scientific lessons on the origin and history of the universe and of human persons. The first stage After surveying various paths o...
The problem of animal suffering is the atheistic argument that an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God would not use millions of years of animal suffering, disease, and death to form a planet for human beings. This argument has not received as much attention in the philosophical literature as other forms of the problem of evil, yet it has been increasingly touted by atheists since Charles Darwin. While several theists have attempted to provide answers to the problem, they disagree with each other as to which answer is correct. Also, some of these theists have given in to the problem and believe it entails that God is limited in certain ways. B. Kyle Keltz seeks to provide a classical answer to the problem of animal suffering inspired by the medieval philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas. In doing so, Keltz not only utilizes the wisdom of Aquinas, but also contemporary insights into non-human animal minds from contemporary philosophy and science. Keltz provides a compelling neo-Thomistic answer to the problem of animal suffering and explains why the classical God of theism would create a world that includes animal death.