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Philo

Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring-Summer 1999

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Displaying: 1-9 of 9 documents


editorial
1. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Keith M. Parsons Uncovering the Other Side of the Debate
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papers
2. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Wes Morriston Must the Past Have a Beginning?
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In defense of his claim that the universe must have been created, William Lane Craig gives two distinct philosophical arguments against the possibility of an infinite past. The first appeals to various paradoxes allegedly generated by the idea of an actual infinite. The second appeals to a dynamic theory of the nature of time, and tries to show on that basis that an infinite series of events could not have been “formed by successive addition.” The present paper is concerned with the second of these two arguments. I try to show that it cannot stand on its own independently of the first argument, that Craig does not succeed in defending it against standard objections, and that even those who are inclined to accept a dynamic theory of time should not be convinced by what Craig says in its defense.
3. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
E. M. Fales Are the Gods Apolitical?
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The increasingly strident debate in the United States over the role of religion in public policy raises the general questions whether the United States is a liberal democracy and whether it should be; but also the theoretical question---addressed here---whether it is legitimate for citizens in a liberal democracy to offer religious convictions as grounds for policy. The historically most prominent reason given for the exclusion of religious grounds is that the injection of religion into policy is divisive and potentially destructive of certain rights. I argue another reason, which has been overlooked, is that religious traditions and movements are fundamentally political enterprises that, in effect, introduce foreign agents when permitted institutional participation in domestic politics.
4. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Victor Reppert The Argument from Reason
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In this paper I argue that the existence of human reason gives us good reason to suppose that God exists. If the world were as the materialist supposes it is, then we would not be able to reason to the conclusion that this is so. This contention is often challenged by the claim that mental and physical explanations can be given for the same event. But a close examination of the question of explanatory compatibility reveals that the sort of explanation that would have to be given for the event of, say, inferring that atheism is true, is incompatible with the event being explicable as a purely physical product of a purely physical universe.
discussion
5. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Jim Lippard Historical but Indistinguishable Differences
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Victor Reppert’s paper (pp. 33-45) supposes that there are objectively indistinguishable properties between possible worlds that resultin the property of intentionality existing in one world but not in another objectively indistinguishable world, differing only in their histories. It is also a supposition of Reppert’s paper that proposed ensembles of purely natural properties that lead to the emergence of intentionality fail to do so, but instead only have referential power on the basis of imputed or projected intentionality from human beings. This brief essay examines this supposition and consequence and attempts to provoke more detailed examination of the underlying issues.
6. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Stephen T. Davis Is Belief in the Resurrection Rational?: A Response to Michael Martin
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This essay is a response to Michael Martin’s “Why the Resurrection Is Initially Improbable,” Philo, Vol. 1, No.1. I argue that Martin has not succeeded in achieving his aim of showing that the Resurrection is initially improbable and thus, by Bayes’s Theorem, implausible. I respond to five of Martin’s arguments: (1) the “particular time and place argument”; (2) the claim that there is no plausible Christian theory of why Jesus should have been incarnated and resurrected; (3) the claim that the Resurrection accounts in the New Testament are unreliable; (4) Martin’s assumptions about how one establishes the initial probability of Resurrection; and (5) the use Martin makes of Bayes’s Theorem to discredit belief in the Resurrection.
7. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Michael Martin Reply to Davis
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book reviews
8. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Keith M. Parsons Defending Objectivity
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9. Philo: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Jeffery Jay Lowder The Rest of the Story
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