Download or read book The Greater good Defence written by Melville Y. Stewart and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several defences, viewed in this study as specifications or 'offspring' of the 'parent' greater-good defence, have been formulated in response to the charge that Christianity is untenable because God's existence is incompatible with evil's existence. In this first book-length study of the parent defence, Stewart begins with careful definitions of the omni-attributes central to the dispute: omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence. The parent defence is traced to tenets of theism and variant accounts of the defence considered. Plantinga's modal free-will defence and Hick's and Yandell's soul-growth specifications are carefully analyzed and several difficulties resolved. An original formulation of a redemption specification and an original account of the origin of moral evil are offered. Stewart argues that the defences are rightly viewed as a family of defences falling under the greater-good heading, and that they comprise a complementary apologetic complex that refutes the claim of inconsistency.

Download or read book The Greater Good Defence written by Melville Y. Stewart and published by Springer. This book was released on 1993-01-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Maximal God written by Yujin Nagasawa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yujin Nagasawa presents a new, stronger version of perfect being theism, the conception of God as the greatest possible being. Although perfect being theism is the most common form of monotheism in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition its truth has been disputed by philosophers and theologians for centuries. Nagasawa proposes a new, game-changing defence of perfect being theism by developing what he calls the 'maximal concept of God'. Perfect being theists typically maintain that God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent being; according to Nagasawa, God should be understood rather as a being that has the maximal consistent set of knowledge, power, and benevolence. Nagasawa argues that once we accept the maximal concept we can establish perfect being theism on two grounds. First, we can refute nearly all existing arguments against perfect being theism simultaneously. Second, we can construct a novel, strengthened version of the modal ontological argument for perfect being theism. Nagasawa concludes that the maximal concept grants us a unified defence of perfect being theism that is highly effective and economical.

Download or read book God s Own Ethics written by Mark C. Murphy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every version of the argument from evil requires a premise concerning God's motivation - about the actions that God is motivated to perform or the states of affairs that God is motivated to bring about. The typical source of this premise is a conviction that God is, obviously, morally perfect, where God's moral perfection consists in God's being motivated to act in accordance with the norms of morality by which both we and God are governed. The aim of God's Own Ethics is to challenge this understanding by giving arguments against this view of God as morally perfect and by offering an alternative account of what God's own ethics is like. According to this alternative account, God is in no way required to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, though God may rationally do so. Any norms of conduct that favor the promotion of creaturely well-being that govern God's conduct are norms that are contingently self-imposed by God. This revised understanding of divine ethics should lead us to revise sharply downward our assessment of the force of the argument from evil while leaving intact our conception of God as an absolutely perfect being, supremely worthy of worship.

Download or read book The Greater good Defense written by Melville Y. Stewart and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Good Book written by A. C. Grayling and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and-yes-the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done by creating a non-religious Bible, drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions. The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in its beauty of language and arrangement into short chapters and verses for ease of reading and quotability, offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity. Organized in 12 main sections----Genesis, Histories, Widsom, The Sages, Parables, Consolations, Lamentations, Proverbs, Songs, Epistles, Acts, and the Good----The Good Book opens with meditations on the origin and progress of the world and human life in it, then devotes attention to the question of how life should be lived, how we relate to one another, and how vicissitudes are to be faced and joys appreciated. Incorporating the writing of Herodotus and Lucretius, Confucius and Mencius, Seneca and Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, and so many others, The Good Book will fulfill its audacious purpose in every way.

Download or read book The Problem of Evil written by Peter van Inwagen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The vast amount of suffering in the world is often held as a particularly powerful reason to deny that God exists. Highly accessible and carefully argued, Peter van Inwagen's book maintains that such reasoning does not hold, and that suffering should not undermine belief in God.

Download or read book What about Evil written by Scott Christensen and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Christensen's theological response to the problem of evil examines how sin, evil, corruption, and death not only fit into redemptive history but also magnify the glory of a good God"--

Download or read book The Evidential Argument from Evil written by William L. Rowe and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-17 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is evil evidence against the existence of God? A collection of essays by philosophers, theologians, and other scholars. Even if God and evil are compatible, it remains hotly contested whether evil renders belief in God unreasonable. The Evidential Argument from Evil presents five classic statements on this issue by eminent philosophers and theologians, and places them in dialogue with eleven original essays reflecting new thinking by these and other scholars. The volume focuses on two versions of the argument. The first affirms that there is no reason for God to permit either certain specific horrors or the variety and profusion of undeserved suffering. The second asserts that pleasure and pain, given their biological role, are better explained by hypotheses other than theism. Contributors include William P. Alston, Paul Draper, Richard M. Gale, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Alvin Plantinga, William L. Rowe, Bruce Russell, Eleonore Stump, Richard G. Swinburne, Peter van Inwagen, and Stephen John Wykstra.

Download or read book Is a Good God Logically Possible written by James P. Sterba and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using yet untapped resources from moral and political philosophy, this book seeks to answer the question of whether an all good God who is presumed to be all powerful is logically compatible with the degree and amount of moral and natural evil that exists in our world. It is widely held by theists and atheists alike that it may be logically impossible for an all good, all powerful God to create a world with moral agents like ourselves that does not also have at least some moral evil in it. James P. Sterba focuses on the further question of whether God is logically compatible with the degree and amount of moral and natural evil that exists in our world. The negative answer he provides marks a new stage in the age-old debate about God's existence.

Download or read book Defining Sport written by Shawn E. Klein and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defining Sport: Conceptions and Borderlines is not about the variations of usage of the term “sport.” It is about the concept, the range of activities in the world that we unite into one idea—sport. It is through the project of defining sport that we can come to understand these activities better, how they are similar or different, and how they relate to other human endeavors. This definitional inquiry, and the deeper appreciation and apprehension of sport that follows, is the core of this volume. Part I examines several of the standard and influential approaches to defining sport. Part II uses these approaches to examine various challenging borderline cases. These chapters examine the interplay of the borderline cases with the definition and provide a more thorough and clearer understanding of both the definition and the given cases. This work is not meant to be the definitive or exhaustive account of sport. It is meant to inspire further thought and debate on just what sport is; how it relates to other activities and human endeavors; and what we can learn about ourselves through the study of sport. This book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy of sport, history, communications, sociology, psychology, sports management, cultural studies, and physical education.

Download or read book The Redeemed Good Defense written by Anthony MacPherson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Why God?" Everyday this question is uttered in sorrow, bewilderment, or anger. This cry is the problem of suffering. It is also known as the problem of evil. It asks why a good, all-powerful God allows evil and pain. Theodicy is the name of the theological responses that seek to defend God against charges of unfairness. Traditional theodicies have been accused of intensifying the problem by claiming that God is justified in allowing evil because he uses it to bring about a greater good. This greater-good approach has been criticized in more recent times. It seems to uncomfortably align God and evil too closely together. Does God need evil in order to bring good? This study explores an alternative stream of theodicy found in the idea of cosmic warfare. In this theodicy God fights evil in its moral, physical, spiritual, and supernatural forms. This book explores the world of theodicy and its cosmic warfare forms. It navigates the theological and ethical minefields involved. Building on the idea that God is in the midst of a great cosmic controversy, it seeks to further the conversation and articulates a new alternative "redeemed good defense."

Download or read book In Defense of Philosophy written by Josef Pieper and published by Ignatius Press. This book was released on 2011-08-08 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an engagement between a great modern philosopher defending classical philosophy against an army of challengers to the very notion of philosophy as classically conceived. It is written very much in the spirit of the scholastic disputations in the medieval universities, which produced the great Summas: a mutual search for truth, a philosophical laboratory, a careful winnowing of each objection. Such objectivity is lamentably rare in contemporary philosophy. In order to combat modern misunderstandings of challenges to the classical concept of philosophy, Pieper shows us the unique and uniquely valuable thing philosophy is as conceived by his masters: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and above all, Aquinas. Along this path he scatters gems of insight, such as: art and religion as Philosophy's defenders; the relationship between philosophy and science; philosophy as "seeing and saying"; and philosophy as rooted in meditation and loving contemplation. Pieper emphasizes that philosophy is something all human beings do, and should be the better for doing.

Download or read book Providence and the Problem of Evil written by Richard Swinburne and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1998-08-27 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does a loving God allow humans to suffer so much? This is one of the most difficult problems of religious belief. Richard Swinburne gives a careful, clear examination of this problem, and offers an answer: it is because God wants more for us than just pleasure or freedom from suffering. Swinburne argues that God wants humans to learn and to love, to make the choices which make great differences for good and evil to each other, to form our characters in the way we choose; above all to be of great use to each other. If we are to have all this, there will inevitably be suffering for the short period of our lives on Earth. But because of the good that God gives to humans in this life, and because he makes it possible for us, through our choice, to share the life of Heaven, he does not wrong us if he allows suffering. Providence and the Problem of Evil is the final volume of Richard Swinburne's acclaimed tetralogy on Christian doctrine. It may be read on its own as a self-standing treatment of this eternal philosophical issue. Readers who are interested in a unified study of the philosophical foundations of Christian belief will find it now in the tetralogy and in his trilogy on the philosophy of theism.

Download or read book Sense and Goodness Without God written by Richard Carrier and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2005-02-23 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If God does not exist, then what does? Is there good and evil, and should we care? How do we know what’s true anyway? And can we make any sense of this universe, or our own lives? Sense and Goodness answers all these questions in lavish detail, without complex jargon. A complete worldview is presented and defended, covering every subject from knowledge to art, from metaphysics to morality, from theology to politics. Topics include free will, the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, and much more, arguing from scientific evidence that there is only a physical, natural world without gods or spirits, but that we can still live a life of love, meaning, and joy.

Download or read book God Suffering and the Value of Free Will written by Laura W. Ekstrom and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many of us, the question of whether or not God exists is one of the most perplexing and profound questions of our lives, and numerous philosophers and theologians have debated it for centuries. Laura Ekstrom here takes a new look at the issue of God's existence by examining it against the reality of human suffering, bringing to the fore contentious presuppositions concerning agency and value at the core of the matter. When we survey the world, we observe an enormous amount of pain, including virtually unspeakable kinds of maltreatment and agony, many instances of which seem patently unfair, unearned, and pointless. This book argues that, in light of these observations, it is reasonable to conclude that God does not exist. The book unravels the extent and power of arguments from evil. Ekstrom provides a close investigation of a largely overlooked claim at the heart of major free-will-based responses to such arguments, namely that free will is worth it: sufficiently valuable to serve as the good that provides a God-justifying reason for permitting evil in the world. Through fresh examinations of traditional theodicies, Ekstrom develops an alternative line called divine intimacy theodicy, and makes an extended case for rejecting skeptical theism. The book takes up an argument from evil concerning a traditional doctrine of hell, which reveals a number of compelling issues concerning fault, agency, and blameworthiness. In response to recent work contending that the problem of evil is toothless because God is indifferent to human beings, Ekstrom defends the essential perfect moral goodness of God. She further tackles the question of whether or not it is possible to live a religious life as an agnostic or as an atheist. Through rigorous reflection, with deep respect for religious thought and experience, and with sensitivity to the range and kinds of suffering so many endure, Ekstrom firmly advances discussion of the problem of evil and paves the way for further scholarship in the philosophy of religion.

Download or read book Double Effect Reasoning written by T. A. Cavanaugh and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006-08-24 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "T. A. Cavanaugh articulates and defends double-effect reasoning (DER), also known as the principle of double effect. Cavanaugh here offers the first book-length account of the history and issues surrounding this controversial, yet indispensable approach to hard cases."--BOOK JACKET.