Those who believe that miracles (temporary suspensions of some law of nature accomplished by divine power) have occurred typically hold that they are rare and that only a small percentage of all people have been eyewitnesses to them or been direct beneficiaries of them. Although a claim that they occur far more frequently would be empirically highly implausible, I argue that the claim that God performs miracles in such a pattern unavoidably implies that God is guilty of unfairness. I articulate (...) a criterion of fairness, discuss various types of miracles, and defend my conclusion against a variety of possible rejoinders. (shrink)

In discussions of the probabilistic argument from evil, some defenders of theism have recently argued that evil has no evidential force against theism. They base their argument on the claim that there is no reason to think that we should be able to discern morally sufficient reasons which God presumably has for permitting the evil which occurs. In this paper I try to counter this argument by discussing factors which suggest that we should generally be able to discern why God (...) permits evil events. I close by suggesting that the theist use the evidential force which evil does have as a reason to question her understanding of the divine attributes. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Gilbert Meilaender argues that Christian ethics must not be consequentialist. Though Meilaender does indicate some problems which may exist with certain consequentialist theories, those problems do not exclude all types of consequentialist theories from consideration as Christian ethical theories. A consequentialism like R. M. Hare’s offers virtually all the advantages Meilaender claims for his Christian deontological view. Moreover. Meilaender has overlooked certain advantages of consequentialism and certain disadvantages of the sort of deontological theory he espouses.

This paper provides an answer to this question: is the Christian of today rationally justified in using the views expressed in the Bible as a (or the) standard for what she should accept for her own beliefs and practices. I argue against trying to answer this question on thebasis of some alleged character of the biblical writings (e.g., their inerrancy or inspiredness). Such a thesis would itself have to be rationally justified, as would the interpretations and applications of biblical writings (...) made by a Christian of today who held the thesis. Instead she should seek to understand how the writers’ faith was expressed in their views and use that understanding to guide her as she constructs (or adopts) a set of beliefs by which to express her faith today. I argue that using the Bible in this way and the conclusions reached in doing so are rationally justified. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Faith and Philosophy, Stephen Davis argues that it is rational for supernaturalists, though not for naturalists, to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in (roughly) the sense of an event which happened to Jesus in which Jesus, though he had truly died, was restored to life and consciousness and after which his living body left the tomb. After making some clarifications regarding supernaturalism and the concept of a miracle, I argue that Davis has not (...) shown this. My case against Davis rests essentially on two claims: (1) we cannot today reconstruct what the resurrection involved because there is no clear, historically reliable account of what the resurrection was thought to be by those who directly experienced the Easter event; and (2) we do not have sufficient evidence to make it rational to believe that the resurrection is part of a pattern of nonnatural events in which God has acted for similar ends, yet belief that there is such a pattern is needed if belief in the resurrection in Davis’ sense is to be rational. (shrink)

In Foundationalism, Coherentism, and the Levels Gambit, David Shatz argued that foundationalists must countenance a circular mediate justification of perceptual beliefs which the foundationalist holds are already immediately justified. Because the circularity of coherentist accounts of the justification of beliefs is a major basis of foundationalist criticism of coherentism, Shatz's claim is a serious challenge to foundationalism. In this paper, using a moderate foundationalism with a reliabilist conception of justification, I give an account of immediately and mediately justified beliefs which (...) shows that such a foundationalism need not accept such a circular justification (and in crucial cases cannot do so) and that Shatz's claim is therefore incorrect. (shrink)

Recent progress in the field of cognitive science, specifically with respect to mathematical cognition, along with the turn in the philosophy of mathematics to a focus on mathematical practice, make for a great opportunity for interdisciplinary work that brings together the cognitive science of mathematics and philosophy of mathematics. This dissertation seeks to add to recent examples of such interdisciplinary work. I discuss three somewhat self-contained topics. In chapter two, I discuss some recent work in cognitive science on the topic (...) of mental representation and show how we can shed light on a puzzle in the philosophy of mathematics by applying it to the issue of the mental representation of mathematics. In chapter three, I discuss a couple theories of the cognitive psychology of deduction and why some recent work in the philosophy of mathematics on diagrammatic reasoning in Euclidian proofs shows those theories have some shortcomings. Finally, in chapter four, I discuss how we can get at the question of what makes a system of representation, e.g. numeral systems or formal languages, good for doing mathematics, by considering how the cognitive system uses such things in the course of doing mathematics. (shrink)

In a recent issue of Faith and Philosophy, Stephen Davis argues that it is rational for supernaturalists, though not for naturalists, to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in (roughly) the sense of an event which happened to Jesus in which Jesus, though he had truly died, was restored to life and consciousness and after which his living body left the tomb. After making some clarifications regarding supernaturalism and the concept of a miracle, I argue that Davis has not (...) shown this. My case against Davis rests essentially on two claims: (1) we cannot today reconstruct what the resurrection involved because there is no clear, historically reliable account of what the resurrection was thought to be by those who directly experienced the Easter event; and (2) we do not have sufficient evidence to make it rational to believe that the resurrection is part of a pattern of nonnatural events in which God has acted for similar ends, yet belief that there is such a pattern is needed if belief in the resurrection in Davis’ sense is to be rational. (shrink)

At its core, this study understands its central term, poiesis as the process of forming new styles of sense-making and multiple modes of thought. Such plural styles deserve notice so far as they give readers alternate ways of organizing experience and interpersonal relations: they provide new worlds, in fact. The epithet "New-world" poiesis, then, is in one respect redundant, since new worlds are revealed through the "poetic" process itself. But the title also refers to current and past historical encounters between (...) an "old-world" Anglo-American mindset and its "others"---encounters between worlds that over time have qualified, tested, strengthened, and fractured each other. ;Poets who generate and interweave new worlds provide a context for maintaining a central debate within discussions of complexity in contemporary U.S. poetics. Assuming that lyric poetry can reasonably be expected to represent and to some extent transform experiences and perceptions of reality, the question arises as to what kind of experiences and worlds should be represented and/or transformed. On one hand, critics find that the role of the contemporary lyric is expressive, that is, most suited to approaching the internal conscious states or the social conditions of a person or group. On the other hand, as a fragmentary, associative use of language, lyric poetry shows the workings of language itself, a system of meaning concerned mainly with its own, ongoing re-organization. ;This debate between poetic language as providing either coherence or change---a debate that currently enjoys critical esteem and claims an increasing amount of attention from critics, poets, and anthologists---assumes that as complexity increases in poetic experimentation, the capacity for the poem to represent social relations diminishes. Poems that examine the surface texture of language, its critics claim, dissolve most often into a "play of words." Gathered into rival camps that it seems could hardly disagree more radically, the terms of the argument appear in the form of a debate between social identity and complex meaning systems. ;Detailing more specific versions of this debate, my project investigates four intellectual environments into which plural-world poetries have introduced complex lyric treatments of experience in order to distort dominant, established views: subjecting historical; cultural; linguistic; and urban discussions to a "deep pluralism." What I've found is that in the richest instances, long lyric poems that provide plural worlds allow for both resonance and wonder, both coherent sources of personal expression or social affiliation and an ability to appreciate multiple styles and to move across identities and ways of naming the real. Each aspect to the other is usually said to be incommensurate, and yet, at the right level of abstraction, or plurality, meaningful social distinctions can be made with minimal exclusionary consequences. (shrink)

Why do bad things happen, even to good people? If there is a God, why aren't God's existence and God's will for humans more apparent? And if God really does miracles for some people, why not for others? This book examines these three problems of evil - suffering, divine hiddenness, and unfairness if miracles happen as believers claim - to explore how different ideas of God's power relate to the problem of evil.

I delineate four problems of evil encountered by Christian traditional theists (those who believe that God is all good, all knowing, and all powerful), and I present reasons for thinking that they have no good responses to these problems. Then I delineate important features of process metaphysics and discuss how this metaphysics solves the problems of evil. As conceived by process theists, God is all‐good and all‐knowing and has the greatest power any one being could have, but is not all‐powerful. (...) This God is related to the universe in such a way that the features of the world that generate the problems of evil are features to be expected rather than anomalies that require explanation, as they are for traditional theists. I also point out other features of the world that are anomalies for Christian traditional theists, but entirely to be expected by process theists. (shrink)

In a recent article in FAITH AND PHILOSOPHY, Alvin Plantinga advised Christian philosophers to philosophize in light of their fundamental beliefs as Christians. Believing that his discussion does not give proper weight to the necessary role of secular beliefs in modifying our Christian beliefs, in this article I propose that Christian beliefs and secular beliefs should be related more dialectically than Plantinga suggests--i.e., that neither should always be given precedence. I defend this proposal with several examples on a variety of (...) topics from the history of Christian thought and suggest how much weight to give to beliefs of each type. (shrink)

This paper continues a debate about the relation between Christian philosophers and theologians begun by Gordon Kaufman, who argued that Christian theologians need not be interested in “evidentialism.” In particular it replies to a paper by William Hasker charging that an earlier defense of Kaufman’s position introduced tensions because it required judgments about the merits of “evidentialism” which could be defended only by using the evidentialist arguments whose importance Kaufman denied. This reply denies that there are the tensions Hasker claims (...) and argues that the judgments need not rest on a detailed assessment of evidentialist arguments. (shrink)