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Contributors
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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
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5 - Religious experience and cumulative case arguments
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Summary
In 1654, eight years before his death, the brilliant French mathematician, scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal had a powerful religious experience that lasted two hours and has come to be known as “the night of fire”. From roughly 10.30pm to 12.30am, Pascal claims to have encountered God. Ever the scientist, Pascal attempted to write down what was happening to him during the experience. What he managed to write down is as follows:
Fire
“God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,” not of the philosophers and of the learned.
Certitude, certitude, feeling, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
Thy God and my God
“Thy God shall be my God.”
Oblivious of the world and of everything, except God.
He is encountered only by the way taught in the Gospel.
Greatness of the human soul.
Just Father, the world has not known Thee, but I have known Thee.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I am separated from Him.
“They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.”
My God will you leave me?
Let me not be separated from Him eternally
This is the life eternal, that they know thee, the one true God, and the one Thou has sent, Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ.
I am separated from Him, I have fled Him, renounced Him, crucified Him.
Let me never be separated from Him.
He is only preserved by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation, total and sweet. […]
6 - Religious belief without evidence
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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- 30 December 2010, pp 133-154
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Summary
We began this book by considering the evidentialist objection to religious belief. The objection, as you will recall, insists that all beliefs – with religious beliefs as no exception – must enjoy the support of adequate evidence if we are to believe them rationally. Most evidentialists insist that one not only have evidence, but also that one see how and to what degree one's evidence supports the target belief. In the light of this requirement, it is quite plain how the evidentialist's demand is congruent with the natural theologian's practice of forming arguments for God's existence, whose premises and strength of conclusion are evident. In this chapter, we consider two positions that, for differing reasons, do not attempt to meet the evidentialist demand, but reject it. Pascal is famous for thinking that, even if theism cannot be underwritten by so-called proofs for God's existence, belief in God is nevertheless rational on prudential grounds, because of the good ends religious belief brings about. Second, we shall explore a position most famously forwarded by Alvin Plantinga, referred to frequently as “Reformed epistemology”, stemming from the fact that he, and fellow Reformed epistemologists follow John Calvin and Martin Luther's rejection of natural theology. Belief in God, they argue, should be accepted as “properly basic”, without the need for argumentative support.
Pragmatic arguments
Pascal, to whom the reader has already been introduced, was no stranger to the tradition of natural theology.
Frontmatter
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Index
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Conclusion
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Summary
The debate concerning God's existence, like many debates in philosophy – the success of sceptical arguments, the nature of time, the moral permissibility of war and scores of examples like them – is a matter on which the best philosophical minds disagree. Partisans of both sides can be found who present and defend their arguments with rigour and sophistication, find these arguments compelling and at the same time seem to have a clear understanding of their opponents' views. From this we can, I think, derive several lessons. One obvious lesson is that this debate, like most debates in philosophy (indeed, like many debates in academia) is one for which we should not soon expect some final philosophical resolution. Nor can we insist that all parties who find themselves in such protracted debates simply suspend judgement, for this would require that most academics jettison many of their intellectual commitments. Besides, the very principle that mandates suspension of belief in the face of disagreement is itself a matter of disagreement, thus hoist on its own petard, as they say.
Second, a small dose of intellectual humility and generosity should help us to appreciate that persons of good mind and sincere will can be found on either side of the debate. This, in turn, should preclude quick dismissals of those with whom we disagree as silly, stupid or in open defiance of the most basic standards of rationality. Respect rather than ridicule for one's interlocutors is the only way forward.
2 - Cosmological arguments
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Summary
The kalam cosmological argument
We have looked at a sampling of arguments, all of which claim that the world's organization, or the functioning of its parts, can best be explained as the handiwork of God. Opponents of such arguments deny that supernatural agency must be invoked; they believe we have perfectly rational and, perhaps, superior explanations that rely solely on natural laws and processes. The cosmological argument for God's existence does not focus on the world's organization, but on its very existence. The question can be put succinctly: why is there something rather than nothing? At first glance, three options present themselves for explaining the world's existence: (i) in one form or another, the material world has always existed; (ii) the material world simply popped into being out of nothing; (iii) the material world had a beginning in time and was brought into being by something immaterial. Theists, of course, opt for the last explanation. We shall explore two versions of the cosmological argument: the kalam cosmological argument, which has its origins in medieval Muslim philosophy, and the argument from contingency. Each claims that theism best accounts for the existence of the cosmos.
Common sense tells us that effects have causes. If there is a fire in the garage, there must be a cause responsible, be it faulty wiring, arson, flammable chemicals or some combination of causes. The principle that all effects have causes applies to the universe as a whole. If the universe began to exist, then it too must have had a cause of its existence.
8 - The nature of God
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Why philosophize about God?
If God exists, one is naturally led to ask what sort of being is God. Theists and non-theists alike have a stake in posing the question. Theists, of course, have in interest in knowing the central object of their devotion. Christians, for instance, claim that the highest state of heavenly beatitude consists in “seeing God face to face”, of “knowing as we have been known”. In his Proslogion, Anselm of Canterbury prays to God: “Lord, You give understanding to faith, grant me that I may understand, as much as You see fit, that You exist as we believe You to exist, and that You are what we believe You to be” (1998: 87). Anselm takes metaphysical investigations into God's nature to follow naturally upon one's desire to know better the being one worships. As a lover wishes to know all he can of the beloved, so Anselm wishes to know God, as God is the object of his heart's highest desire. At the very least, authentic devotion to God requires that one endeavour to think truthfully about God.
Some critics of theism urge careful study of the metaphysics of theism as a way of showing that the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being is incoherent and, if incoherent, irrational. We would not bother to investigate the intellectual credentials of the claim that in the remotest parts of Australia there reside animals that are simultaneously insect and mammal since, given what we know about the properties of each, we know this to be a physical impossibility.
Notes
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Introduction
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Suppose there is a personal being perfect in wisdom, power and goodness, who created the world and sustains it in existence from moment to moment, and that your highest flourishing in this life and the next depends on your being rightly related to this being. In short, suppose that God exists. This, in a nutshell, is what theists profess the world over: a belief that unites the great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. If theism is true, it is a matter of incalculable weightiness, which partially explains why theism has been of perennial interest to philosophers. Two questions dominate philosophical writings about God. First, do we have good reasons to think that theism is true? In other words, do we have good reasons to think that anything answers to the description “omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator and sustainer of the universe”? Second, if such a being exists, what is he like and how shall we understand his relation to the world? Few questions have so engaged philosophical attention, with new books appearing each year to defend opposing answers to these questions. The first question claims some priority, for if we conclude that no good reasons can be found to think that God exists, it scarcely seems that the second question merits much attention. But the two questions are not so easily separated. For one of the chief reasons cited by some philosophers for thinking that God does not exist is that he cannot exist! Some philosophers argue that the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God is incoherent, so nothing could answer to this description.
3 - The ontological argument
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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The teleological and cosmological arguments arise out of commonplace experiences of a contingent world that displays order. The ontological argument, by contrast, is purely a priori, which is to say, it is not grounded in everyday experience but arises from reflection alone. In a nutshell, it claims that if one truly understands the concept of God and what it is for God to be perfect, one must acknowledge that he exists, for a truly perfect being could not lack existence and still be perfect. As we will see, it is one of the more abstruse arguments in the philosophical repertoire, as it turns on complex reflections about the nature of necessity and the possibility of a necessarily existing being. Ever since it was first penned by Anselm of Canterbury nearly a thousand years ago, it has commanded considerable attention from some of philosophy's leading lights: Berkeley, Locke, Hume, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer, among others, wrestled with it, some to defend and others to reject it. Even Bertrand Russell, one of the twentieth century's most famous atheists was, for a time, convinced by it.
I remember the precise moment, one day in 1894, as I was walking along Trinity Lane, when I saw in a flash (or thought I saw) that the ontological argument is valid. I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco; on my way back, I suddenly threw it up in the air, and exclaimed as I caught it: “Great Scott, the ontological argument is sound.”
(Quoted in Oppy 1995: 6)
God
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Are there adequate reasons to think that God exists? And, if God exists, what is God like? Jay Wood examines these two foundational questions about God, which have exercised philosophers since antiquity. The first part of the book addresses epistemological concerns, focusing on arguments for and against the claim that theism is rationally justifiable. Metaphysical questions about Gods nature, in particular Gods knowledge and power, constitute the second part of the book. Both questions are shown to be related since, if the concept of a God perfect in wisdom, power and goodness is incoherent, it cannot be reasonable to believe that God exists. Wood offers readers a clear and incisive assessment of the core philosophical arguments for the existence of God that will equip the reader with the necessary understanding to tackle more specialized and complex questions in the philosophy of religion.
1 - Design arguments
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Summary
The analogical design argument
We begin our study of natural theology with design arguments, not because they are logically prior to the other arguments for God's existence, but because they are grounded in so common and widespread an experience – that of beholding the complexity, grandeur and apparent design of the world around us. How many of us have cast a heavenward glance at the star-studded sky on a spectacularly clear night and been moved to the thought “surely this could not have come about by sheer accident, but must be the work of some supernatural being”? Or, for those whose wonder is moved by the microcosmic, how many of us lazily stretched out on a lawn have fixed upon a single blade of grass, contemplated the cellular machinery necessary to produce chlorophyll, and been moved to the same thought? Surely, our initial sentiments suggest that the world and all it contains could not have arisen by accident, that it must be the work of an intelligent agent; and who better than God to produce a world of such scale and intricacy?
Whittaker Chambers, who gave important evidence against convicted Communist spy Alger Hiss during the Cold War, wrote in his book Witness:
But I date my break [with the Communist Party] from a very casual happening. I was sitting in our apartment in St. Paul Street in Baltimore. It was shortly before we moved to Alger Hiss's apartment in Washington. My daughter was in her highchair. I was watching her eat. […]
Contents
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4 - The moral argument for God's existence
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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Summary
We have surveyed a trio of famous arguments for God's existence, the teleological, cosmological and ontological arguments, which their most ardent proponents offer as “proofs” of God's existence. Many theists see these arguments in less exalted terms, perhaps as offering good reasons for thinking that God exists but not as decisive proofs that settle the issue of God's existence once and for all. Even if the arguments thus far surveyed are sound, they suffer other limitations. The teleological and cosmological arguments suffer potentially from the “gap problem”, while the ontological argument suffers from a lack of cogency: no one is likely to accept its most crucial premise who is not already committed to its conclusion. In the next two chapters, we shall explore two other oft-cited bases for rational religious belief: the arguments from morality and religious experience. Each presents us with a pervasive feature of human experience and proceeds to argue that these experiences cannot be adequately explained or understood without acknowledging God's existence. Not unexpectedly, critics will contend that these phenomena can be adequately explained without appealing to supernatural causes or beings.
Moral phenomena
Let us begin our reflections about the rich and complex world of moral experience with a few simple stories. A few years ago, City of Chicago police officers witnessed a drug transaction in an alleyway. One of the men involved in the transaction pulled a gun, whereupon the officers drew their weapons, ordering the man to drop his gun.
7 - The problem of suffering
- Jay W. Wood, Wheaton College, Illinois
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John Rawls, author of A Theory of Justice, arguably the most influential treatment of the subject in the twentieth century, grew up a faithful Christian. His Christian convictions were fully on display in his undergraduate thesis at Princeton University, titled “A Brief Inquiry Into the Meaning of Sin and Faith”. His ardent faith foundered, however, by what he experienced as a soldier during the Second World War. Rawls (as so many others) was particularly troubled by the Holocaust. “How could I pray,” wrote Rawls, “and ask God to help me, or my family, or my country, or any other cherished thing I cared about, when God would not save millions of Jews from Hitler?” (Rawls 2009: 263). Rawls is but one of untold numbers of people whose commitment to classical theism has been severely challenged and even abandoned by the obvious incongruity between an all-loving, all-powerful, providential God and the world's pervasive pain and suffering. If an infinitely loving God has all power and knowledge at his disposal, could he not have thwarted the genocidal campaign of the Nazis? Surely it would pose no problem for the almighty to turn back a tidal wave or two, to prevent the AIDS virus from jumping to the human gene pool or, at the very least, to ensure that suffering does not befall innocent children and animals. The chief question we must wrestle with is whether or not the extent and severity of the world's suffering undermines the rational credibility of theism.
Bibliography
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Contributors
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- By Isabella Aboderin, W. Andrew Achenbaum, Katherine R. Allen, Toni C. Antonucci, Sara Arber, Claudine Attias‐Donfut, Paul B. Baltes, Sandhi Maria Barreto, Vern L. Bengtson, Simon Biggs, Joanna Bornat, Julie B. Boron, Mike Boulton, Clive E. Bowman, Marjolein Broese van Groenou, Edna Brown, Robert N. Butler, Bill Bytheway, Neena L. Chappell, Neil Charness, Kaare Christensen, Peter G. Coleman, Ingrid Arnet Connidis, Neal E. Cutler, Sara J. Czaja, Svein Olav Daatland, Lia Susana Daichman, Adam Davey, Bleddyn Davies, Freya Dittmann‐Kohli, Glen H. Elder, Carroll L. Estes, Mike Featherstone, Amy Fiske, Alexandra Freund, Daphna Gans, Linda K. George, Roseann Giarrusso, Chris Gilleard, Jay Ginn, Edlira Gjonça, Elena L. Grigorenko, Jaber F. Gubrium, Sarah Harper, Jutta Heckhausen, Akiko Hashimoto, Jon Hendricks, Mike Hepworth, Charlotte Ikels, James S. Jackson, Yuri Jang, Bernard Jeune, Malcolm L. Johnson, Randi S. Jones, Alexandre Kalache, Robert L. Kane, Rosalie A. Kane, Ingrid Keller, Rose Anne Kenny, Thomas B. L. Kirkwood, Kees Knipscheer, Martin Kohli, Gisela Labouvie‐Vief, Kristina Larsson, Shu‐Chen Li, Charles F. Longino, Ariela Lowenstein, Erick McCarthy, Gerald E. McClearn, Brendan McCormack, Elizabeth MacKinlay, Alfons Marcoen, Michael Marmot, Tom Margrain, Victor W. Marshall, Elizabeth A. Maylor, Ruud ter Meulen, Harry R. Moody, Robert A. Neimeyer, Demi Patsios, Margaret J. Penning, Stephen A. Petrill, Chris Phillipson, Leonard W. Poon, Norella M. Putney, Jill Quadagno, Pat Rabbitt, Jennifer Reid Keene, Sandra G. Reynolds, Steven R. Sabat, Clive Seale, Merril Silverstein, Hannes B. Staehelin, Ursula M. Staudinger, Robert J. Sternberg, Debra Street, Philip Taylor, Fleur Thomése, Mats Thorslund, Jinzhou Tian, Theo van Tilburg, Fernando M. Torres‐Gil, Josy Ubachs‐Moust, Christina Victor, K. Warner Shaie, Anthony M. Warnes, James L. Werth, Sherry L. Willis, François‐Charles Wolff, Bob Woods
- Edited by Malcolm L. Johnson, University of Bristol
- Edited in association with Vern L. Bengtson, University of Southern California, Peter G. Coleman, University of Southampton, Thomas B. L. Kirkwood, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing
- Published online:
- 05 June 2016
- Print publication:
- 01 December 2005, pp xii-xvi
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Poly(ethynyl-p-xylylene), An Advanced Molecular Caulk CVD Polymer
- Brad P. Carrow, Rex E. Murray, Benjamin W. Woods, Jay J. Senkevich
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- Journal:
- MRS Online Proceedings Library Archive / Volume 863 / 2005
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 February 2011, B2.10
- Print publication:
- 2005
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- Article
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Poly(p-xylylene) (also known as parylene N) has previously been used to pore seal ultralow k (≤ 2.2) (ULK) dielectrics. The parylene polymers may facilitate the integration of ULK dielectrics by: substantially improving their fracture toughness, hermetically sealing the pores, being able to use standard wet chemical cleans, and minimally impacting the observed dielectric constant, while minimally disrupting current process flow integrations. This paper introduces a new cross-linkable polymer that is deposited using thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on the same tool that is used for parylene N deposition. The polymer, poly(ethynyl-p-xylylene) (parylene X), was deposited at room temperature. A series of 30 min post-deposition anneals in helium shows that the deposited material cross-linked between 200°C and 300°C with full conversion at 380°C for a ~300 A film. After the low molecular weight species out-gassed during anneals at 200°C, there was less than a percent weight loss to 450°C with no change in the optical constants and no optical loss. Previous work with poly(ethyl-p-xylylene) suggests that the dielectric constant of parylene X will be significantly lower than parylene N.
The microstructure of Sn in near-eutectic Sn–Ag–Cu alloy solder joints and its role in thermomechanical fatigue
- Donald W. Henderson, James J. Woods, Timothy A. Gosselin, Jay Bartelo, David E. King, T.M. Korhonen, M.A. Korhonen, L.P. Lehman, E.J. Cotts, Sung K. Kang, Paul Lauro, Da-Yuan Shih, Charles Goldsmith, Karl J. Puttlitz
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- Journal:
- Journal of Materials Research / Volume 19 / Issue 6 / June 2004
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 03 March 2011, pp. 1608-1612
- Print publication:
- June 2004
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During the solidification of solder joints composed of near-eutectic Sn–Ag–Cu alloys, the Sn phase grows rapidly with a dendritic growth morphology, characterized by copious branching. Notwithstanding the complicated Sn growth topology, the Sn phase demonstrates single crystallographic orientations over large regions. Typical solder ball grid array joints, 900 μm in diameter, are composed of 1 to perhaps 12 different Sn crystallographic domains (Sn grains). When such solder joints are submitted to cyclic thermomechanical strains, the solder joint fatigue process is characterized by the recrystallization of the Sn phase in the higher deformation regions with the production of a much smaller grain size. Grain boundary sliding and diffusion in these recrystallized regions then leads to extensive grain boundary damage and results in fatigue crack initiation and growth along the recrystallized Sn grain boundaries.