A Digital Areopagus // Reason. Faith. Dialogue.
How do we really know that basic metaphysical principles, such as, that contradictions in being are impossible, are both certain and transcendentally true? That is, how do we have perfect certitude that they apply validly to every possible thing, including the God of classical theism? Some have argued that the principle of non-contradiction (PNC), which […]
Ever wonder what it is like to be in the next life, that is, to be dead? (I thought it best to leave the word “dead” out of the title of this essay.) Since this is something we all must face sooner or later, I thought it might be of interest to engage in some […]
As a secular Muslim, I see the Incarnation (the embodiment of God the Son in human flesh) as one of Christianity’s most philosophically rich doctrines that has likely had a substantial impact on the evolution of the European mind. As I understand this doctrine, by inhabiting a human body and being present on earth, Christ […]
For those who reject the notion of free will, our experience of making our own decisions is nothing more than a deep-seated illusion. “The reality is,” insists biologist Anthony Cashmore, “not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of […]
Skeptics have long objected to Catholicism on grounds that it is obvious that the Blessed Virgin Mary, if real, could not possibly hear and answer all those hundreds of millions of prayers addressed to her personally every day by faithful Catholics and many other Christians. Given that we can barely concentrate on but a single […]
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” While the world definitely had a beginning, there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone (i.e., by philosophical arguments). Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often use an argument like this one, which is found in William Lane Craig’s book Reasonable Faith: 1) An […]
In recent years, one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God has been the Kalaam cosmological argument. Ultimately, I think this argument is successful, but many of the ways it has been employed are unsuccessful. It is an argument that needs to be used carefully—with the proper qualifiers. Stating the Argument We can […]
God created the universe a finite time ago, but there’s a question of whether we can prove this by reason alone. Defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument often claim that the universe cannot have an infinite history because “traversing an infinite” is impossible. In his book Reasonable Faith (pp. 120-124), William Lane Craig puts the argument this way 1. […]
Sometimes defenders of the Kalaam cosmological argument defend its second premise (i.e., that the world couldn’t have an infinite past) by proposing a paradox involving counting. The line of reasoning goes something like this: A. Suppose that the universe has an infinite history (the kind of history you’d need to do an infinite countdown). B. Suppose that a person […]
The heart and foundation of Christianity is belief in a God who is worthy of worship: in the words of Anselm, that being than which none greater can be conceived. And so, when the Bible depicts God as acting in a manner that appears to be less-than-perfect, this creates a challenge for the Christian reader. There […]