Blog Archive

  • A Gödelian ontological argument

    I’ve never really had a nice relationship with the ontological argument from Anselm. When I first heard of it, it seemed strange that existence would be greater than non-existence, so I pushed it aside. About 2 years later, I realised that existence could maybe be bootstrapped from other properties, like power. But by then I […]

  • World-types have explanations but not grounds?

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    On the one hand I personally like the idea of middle-knowledge for understanding the relationship between God’s providence and our libertarian-free choices[1]. On the other hand, I’m what William Lane Craig once called[2] a latter-day Leibnizian, who wants “everything to be brought into submission to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, including facts concerning human free […]

  • The possibility premise of the simple existential cosmological argument

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    In my previous post I showed that even without the plausible S5 or Brouwer axioms, we can move from the possible explanation of the maximal simple existential fact (we called it K there), to the existence of a necessary being. Now I see no reason for thinking such an explanation is impossible, and it seems […]

  • A cosmological argument from simple existential facts

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    There are loads of different cosmological arguments out there and hopefully someday I’ll be able to write blog posts about some of them. Right now, however, I want to share an interesting version I came up with, thanks to an argument from Alexander Pruss: define a “simple existential fact” to be a true proposition reporting […]

  • Epistemological issues in the moral argument

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    I am a proponent of a moral argument, taken from William Lane Craig, given in the following form: If God doesn’t exist, then objective moral values and duties don’t exist Objective moral values and duties do exist Therefore, God exists I’ve had a number of previous posts here dealing with specific details of this argument’s […]

  • Covenantal Modalism

    This probably isn’t a novel idea, but I thought it was worth sharing. I was talking to my friend, Marcus, about various theological topics and at some point the question of the nature of blessing in the Old and New Testaments came up. I was trying very hard to articulate generally how I saw the […]

  • Biblical passages dealing with God’s Providence

    Earlier in this blog I promised that I’d do a series on God’s providence. If you look at the “preliminaries” post, the schedule looks like this: Biblical passages that deal with God’s providence God’s control and our free will The question of suffering Why a proper understanding of providence is important Here we attempt the first […]

  • True mathematical propositions

    Platonists believe that abstract objects such as numbers, colours, sets, ideas and so on are actually existing things (often referred to as the “Platonic realm”). So, if you’re a Platonist and a mathematician, you can take the axioms of maths as descriptions of the kind of objects, found in the Platonic realm, that you want […]

  • Materialism is self-defeating

    Consider the following argument against materialism (the thesis that only physical things exist): If materialism is true, then the deliverances of our cognitive faculties are caused by a purely physical system (eg. our brain) Purely physical systems are not purposive Rationality is purposive Therefore, if materialism is true, then we are incapable of being rational […]

  • Derivative Divine Command Theory

    While I was having a discussion in the comments here it dawned on me that I might’ve stumbled upon a novel Divine Command Theory (DCT). Before I get there I should probably give a brief description of what a DCT is. DCT is a meta-ethical theory that seeks to ground our moral duties in the commands […]

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