Category: Natural Theology

  • Divine simplicity and constituent ontologies

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    I’ve recently begun reading about Aristotelean-Thomistic philosophy. In A-T metaphysics, the doctrine of divine simplicity has a central place. This is the doctrine that God has no parts, be they physical or metaphysical. From this it follows that he is identical to his nature, to his existence, and to each of the divine attributes. Now →

  • What’s a negative property?

    In discussing the Gödelian ontological argument recently articulated by Alexander Pruss[1] (here and here) there was a need to define what we mean by “positive property”. In the first post, we defined a positive property (in a very Anselmian way) as a property that is better or greater to have than not. In his second paper, →

  • The gap problem

    In the previous two posts (here and here) we looked at a Gödelian ontological argument from Alexander Pruss, which we’ll use a bit in this post. The gap problem Right, so what is the gap problem? Simply put, solving the gap problem involves bridging the gap between (i) the first cause or necessary being that →

  • Fitch, Humberstone, and an omniscient being

    I just read the paper “Omnificence” by John Bigelow[1]. In the preamble he recounts the following argument for an omniscient being Any fact (true proposition) is knowable by someone. (Premise) Therefore, every fact is known. Therefore, someone knows every fact. Fitch[2] was responsible for showing that (2) follows from (1). One way to see this is →

  • Atheism is self-defeating

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    I was thinking about the short argument I gave here and was wondering if it could be turned into a positive argument for theism. I came up with this: If God doesn’t exist, then our cognitive faculties arose from non-purposive processes. No purposive system can arise from non-purposive processes. Therefore, if God doesn’t exist, then our →

  • Modality and the ontological argument

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    Previously, I outlined what I find to be a compelling ontological argument from Alexander Pruss. In the post, we dispelled the idea that there is a single ontological argument and distinguished between a number of families on such arguments. The one we focussed on is a so-called Gödelian ontological argument, named after the famous mathematician →

  • 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 →

  • 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 →