Philosophy of Religion

 

  • Would God’s existence make things better or worse?

    What are the value implications for God’s existence? If God—a perfect and all powerful being were to exist—would that be a good thing? This is an interesting question in that you have both atheists and theists who argue for pro-theism which is the view that if God were to exist, that would be an immensely good thing (even though atheists and theists disagree about whether, in fact, God does exist). I became interested in this area of philosophy largely as a result of Klaas Kraay’s multi-year research initiative for which I was a research fellow. I argue in a series of papers that the best versions of arguments to the conclusion that God’s existence would make things worse are not successful.

    • “Personal Anti-Theism and the Meaningful Life Argument,” Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 32 (2015):325-337.

    • “Pro-theism and the Added Value of Morally Good Agents,” (with Kirk Lougheed) Philosophia Christi 17 (2015):53-70.

    • “On the Objective Meaningful Life Argument: A Reply to Kirk Lougheed,” Dialogue, Vol. 57 (March 2018):173-182.

    Ben Arbour and I also argued that any proponent of an argument from evil—that is, arguments to the conclusion that God’s existence is unlikely given the quantity and quality of evil in the world—should also be a pro-theist.

    • “Arguments from Evil and Evidence for Pro-Theism,” (with Ben Arbour) in Does God Matter: Essays on the Axiological Consequences of Theism, Klaas J. Kraay ed. Routledge (2017):192-202.

  • Would God only bring about the best possible world? 

    Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) argued that as creator, God, a perfect being, would have created the best world possible. However, suppose contra Leibniz, that for every possible world—that is, for every complete story about how things could possibly turn out—there exists a better possible way things could have been. If that’s the metaphysical truth of things, then, contra Leibniz, there is no best world. And also, contra Leibniz, if God brought our actual world into being, then God brought a world even though there are an infinite number of better worlds that could have been brought about instead. I argue in two papers that even if there is no best world, that scenario is consistent with theism and able to withstand criticisms from rational choice theory.

    • “Divine Creation and Perfect Goodness in a ‘No-Best-World’ Scenario,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 59 (2006):25-47.

    • “Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Rational World-Choice,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 75: (2014):13-25.

  • This is an invited response to Klaas Kraay’s 2013 Newman Lecture. Here’s the abstract:

    Klaas J. Kraay’s 2013 Newman Lecture, ‘‘Method and Madness in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy of Religion’’ is a valuable survey of and interaction with four recent works by philosophers of religion, each of which advances arguments concerning how philosophy of religion ought to be pursued, given the relatively high percentage of theists in the field. My response to Kraay’s stimulating lecture will focus on the phenomenon of ‘‘insider’’ vs ‘‘outsider’’ perspectives in the study of religion, as well as some comments on and supplements to Kraay’s survey.

    • “Analytic Philosophy, Theism, and Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,” Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 29 (2013):265-270.


    ”Religious Skepticism” is a general essay surveying some of the philosophical territory around determining whether belief in God can be rational. Here’s the abstract:

    Is belief in God intellectually viable? That is, is belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good supernatural being the kind of belief that has credible support that strongly suggests that it is true? There is a long tradition of religious skepticism according to which the answer to these questions is no. This is an interesting and important query for those who do believe in God, for there are (and should be) moments when reflective believers wonder how or why they should think some specific religious claim is true. In this article, I will present skepticism about religious claims as a species of a broader kind of epistemological skepticism. Then I’ll explore some reasons that are often cited in support of religious skepticism. In the final section, I’ll present some responses to skepticism about the intellectual viability of belief in God.

    • “Religious Skepticism,” Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 30 (2014):111-130.


    This is a review of John Stackhouse’s (2014) book  Need to Know (Oxford University Press).

    • “John Stackhouse’s Vocation-Centered Epistemology,” Journal of Analytic Theology, Vol. 4 (2016):211-214.