This article provides an overview of the history of what is termed the secular moral project by providing a synopsis of the history of the moral argument for God’s existence and the various historical processes that have contributed to the seculariza...
John Hare argues that Kant, in his Third Critique, offers an aesthetic argument for God’s existence that shares premises with his famous moral argument. Karl Ameriks demurs, expressing skepticism that this is so. In this paper, I stake out an i...
This paper contributes to the discussion on the Moral Argument for the existence of God—an important argument of natural theology which is relevant to science and religion dialogues—by showing that the argument can be formulated in a such...
James Sterba recently presented arguments against theories which ground morality in God and attempted “to provide an account of the norms on which an ethics without God can be appropriately grounded ….” In particular, Sterba noted...
This essay develops a distinct moral argument for the reasonableness of believing in God (conceived as a perfectly good creator) inspired by the pragmatic argument for “the religious hypothesis” advanced by William James in “The Wil...
In this article, we explain how Kant upends the terms of the debate concerning the relationship between God’s existence and an objective morality by looking at his moral-teleological argument for God’s existence in the third Critique. We...
In his recent version of the logical problem of evil, James Sterba articulates several moral principles that, on the assumption that God is morally perfect, seem to entail God’s non-existence. Such moral principles, however, only apply to God o...
The aim of this paper is to defend James Sterba’s version (2019) of the logical argument from evil against the existence of God from two objections that have been raised against it: that God cannot “logically” prevent all evils and...
This paper will respond to James Sterba’s paper “An Ethics without God That is Compatible with Darwinian Evolution”. In his paper, Sterba argues that God cannot be the source of morality. Sterba maintains this position because he be...
The logical argument from evil, generally thought to have been defused by Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense, has been reinvigorated by James Sterba’s exposition and defense of a new version of the argument that draws on recent work in m...
This paper presents a theological critique of divine command theory, a metaethical theory stating that moral wrongness is constituted by God’s command. First, I argue that this theory does not qualify as a Christian moral theory because it lack...
This paper engages with James Sterba’s arguments from an Islamic theological perspective, particularly drawing on the Mu‘tazilite tradition. It focuses on three central themes: (1) the position of God in the face of horrendous evils, (2)...
William Lane Craig insists that I am wrong in reducing God’s moral goodness to his beneficent aim of drawing all people to himself. For Craig, God’s moral goodness, best conceived in terms of righteousness, must also include God’s r...
In this essay, I first offer several scenarios where Sterba’s argument based on the Pauline Principle fails: specifically, one in which we all consent to living an earthly life in some prior existence (prior-consent scenario), one in which the...
Logical and evidential arguments from evil are generally thought to have been rebutted by various refutations, defenses, and theodicies. While disparate, these responses employ similar strategies to show that God has morally sufficient reasons to per...
This is a response to Zain Ali’s critique in this journal of our presentation of a ‘right relationship’ normatively relativised ‘logical’ Argument from Evil. Our argument aims to show that the existence of horrendous evi...
In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussi...
Georg Gasser has recently attempted a new explanation to the problem of animal suffering, i.e., how can a morally perfect, omniscient, and omnipotent God allow the gratuitous suffering of animals? His argument can be interpreted in two ways: (i) crea...
James Sterba has constructed a powerful argument for there being a conflict between the presence of evil in the world and the existence of God. I contend that Sterba’s argument depends on a crucial assumption, namely, that God has an obligation...
In Is a Good God Logically Possible?, James Sterba uses the analogy of a just political state to develop evil-prevention principles he thinks a good God would follow. With the assumption that God is omnipotent, these principles entail that God would...
In this paper, I reformulate Sterba’s argument from evil and consider the various ways theists might respond to it. There are two basic families of responses. On the one hand, theists can deny that God, as a perfect being, needs to act in accor...
In this essay I argue that there are necessarily true synthetic a priori moral propositions whose truth does not depend on the existence of God. To make my case, I appeal to an analogy with arithmetic truths such as 2 + 2 = 4 whose truth does not dep...
Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? (2019) draws attention to the importance of ethical assumptions in ‘logical’ arguments from evil (LAfEs) to the effect that the existence of (certain types) of evil is incompatible with the existence of a Go...
The article gives a new explanation for why the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma and argues that it is a middle position that both the theist and the atheist could accept. The argument is that both the will of God and the preferences of individua...
Nature shows itself to us in ambivalent ways. Breathtaking beauty and cruelty lie close together. A Darwinian image of nature seems to imply that nature is a mere place of violence, cruelty and mercilessness. In this article, I first explore the ques...
In his book Is a Good God Logically Possible?, James Sterba argues that the Plantingian free-will defense, which reconciles the existence of a good and omnipotent God with the existence of evil, is a failed argument when it comes to the terrible evil...
In this paper, I respond to James Sterba’s recent book ‘Is a Good God Logically Possible?’ I show that Sterba concludes that God is not logically possible by ignoring three important issues: (a) the different functions of leeway ind...
Recently, William Hasker and Cheryl Chen have argued that James Sterba’s argument for the non-existence of God based on the existence of horrendous evil consequences fails. Hasker, among other things, contends that eliminating horrendous evil c...
Jim Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? looks to resurrect J. L. Mackie’s logical argument from evil. Sterba accepts the general framework that theists seeking to give a theodicy have favored since Leibniz invented the term: the se...
This article addresses James Sterba’s recent argument for the conclusion that God’s existence is incompatible with the degree and amount of evil in the world. I raise a number of questions concerning the moral principles that Sterba suggests God woul...
James Sterba argues that a good God is not logically possible. He argues that what he calls the Pauline Principle, which says that we should never do evil that good may come of it, implies that a good God would prevent horrendous evil consequences of...
James Sterba has presented a powerful and existentially sincere form of the problem of evil, arguing that it is logically impossible for God to exist, given that there are powerful moral requirements to prevent evil, where one can, and that these req...
In this article, I offer a response to James P. Sterba’s moral argument for the non-existence of God. Sterba applies to God the so-called Pauline Principle that it is not permissible to do evil in order that good may come. He suggests that this is th...
Erik Wielenberg has argued that robust realism can account for the “common-sense moral belief” that “some things distinct from God are intrinsically good”. By contrast, theological stateism cannot account for this belief. Henc...
Most people rely on their conscience as a source of moral intuitions needed to test ethical proposals. Assume that the conscience can deliver knowledge of moral obligations under the right conditions. What ontological resources are needed to explain...
In 2019 the noted ethicist and political philosopher James Sterba published a new deductive version of the argument from the problem of evil to the conclusion that an Anselmian God does not exist. In this article I will argue that Sterba’s argu...
This paper compares three twentieth-century examples of antitheodicist thought in the philosophy of religion (and, more generally, ethics): William James’s pragmatism, D.Z. Phillips’s Wittgensteinianism, and Emmanuel Levinas’s post-Holocaust ethical...
Mainstream Christianity has always rejected reincarnation teaching in all its varieties, e.g., Greco-Roman, Albigensian, Hindu, Buddhist, New Age, etc. as being incompatible with the biblical understanding of the uniqueness, dignity, and value of the...
James Sterba uses the Pauline Principle to argue that the occurrence of significant, horrendous evils is logically incompatible with the existence of a good God. The Pauline Principle states that (as a rule) one must never do evil so that good may co...
After criticizing the three traditional proofs of divine existence in the first Critique, Kant fills this void with an apologetic argument based on his practical philosophy. However, this moral–religious project has long been charged with vario...
This paper argues that, although Margaret Cavendish’s main philosophical contributions are not in philosophy of religion, she makes a case for a defense of God, in spite of the worst sorts of harms being present in the world. Her arguments abou...
Is suicide the unforgivable sin? Most Western arguments against suicide stem from Christian arguments. Christianity has a long-standing position that suicide is morally wrong. However, on the issue of suicide and salvation, Christianity is divided. D...
The article seeks to address and answer two questions: “What is Religion?” and “What is the Philosophy of Religion”? It gives a definition of the first and defends it. It places its arguments on the second in relation to a num...
This paper traces the development of the idea that we must cultivate moral virtue in order to attain some degree of illumination regarding the nature of reality. I use the term “illumination” to cover a range of meanings intended by the philosophers...
This study examines Eusebius of Emesa’s De arbitrio, voluntate Pauli et Domini passione (Homily I), a fourth-century homily rediscovered in the twentieth century, to elucidate its contribution to the theological debate on free will within early...
“The Theology of Dog Training” demonstrates the rich and surprising ways in which religion plays a primary role in how people make sense of their relationships with their companion animals. In the first sustained analysis of Adam’s ...
This paper argues that Christian nationalism is a significant religious and political ideology in Ghana, a west African country whose population is 70 per cent Christian. In Ghana, Christian nationalism is not simply Christians seeking to make their...
This paper examines the ethical failure of theodicies by integrating the perspectives of philosophical argumentation and literary reading and analysis. The paper consists of two main parts. In the first part, we propose an ethical critique of metaphy...