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Dan Linford [9]Daniel Linford [9]Daniel J. Linford [1]
  1. Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs.Joseph C. Schmid & Daniel J. Linford - 2022 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
    This book critically assesses arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism, develops an innovative account of objects’ persistence, and defends new arguments against classical theism. The authors engage the following classical theistic proofs: Aquinas’s First Way, Aquinas’s De Ente argument, and Feser’s Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and Rationalist proofs. The authors also provide the first systematic treatment of the ‘existential inertia thesis’. By connecting the thesis to relativity theory and recent developments in the philosophy of physics, and (...)
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  2.  81
    The Kalām Cosmological Argument Meets the Mentaculus.Dan Linford - 2023 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 74 (1):91-115.
    According to the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, the universe was born from an entropy-reducing phase in a previous universe. To defend the thesis that the whole of physical reality was caused to exist a finite time ago, Craig and Sinclair have argued the low-entropy interface between universes should instead be understood as the beginning of two universes. Here, I present Craig and Sinclair with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the direction of time is reducible, as friends of (...)
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  3. Neo-Lorentzian Relativity and the Beginning of the Universe.Daniel Linford - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-38.
    Many physicists have thought that absolute time became otiose with the introduction of Special Relativity. William Lane Craig disagrees. Craig argues that although relativity is empirically adequate within a domain of application, relativity is literally false and should be supplanted by a Neo-Lorentzian alternative that allows for absolute time. Meanwhile, Craig and co-author James Sinclair have argued that physical cosmology supports the conclusion that physical reality began to exist at a finite time in the past. However, on their view, the (...)
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  4. Big Bounce or Double Bang? A Reply to Craig and Sinclair on the Interpretation of Bounce Cosmologies.Daniel Linford - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (4):1849-1871.
    On the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, a preceding universe was compressed to a small size before “bouncing” to form the present expanding universe. William Lane Craig and James Sinclair have argued that the orthodox interpretation is incorrect if the entropy reaches a minimum at the bounce. In their view, the interface between universes represents the birth of two expanding universes, i.e., a “double bang” instead of a “big bounce”. Here, I reply to Craig and Sinclair in defense of the (...)
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  5. The Kalām Cosmological Argument Meets the Mentaculus.Dan Linford - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science:axaa005.
    According to the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, the universe was born from an entropy-reducing phase in a previous universe. To defend the thesis that the whole of physical reality was caused to exist a finite time ago, Craig and Sinclair have argued the low-entropy interface between universes should instead be understood as the beginning of two universes. Here, I present Craig and Sinclair with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the direction of time is reducible, as friends of (...)
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  6. God, Geography, and Justice.Daniel Linford & William Patterson - 2015 - Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 23 (2):189-216.
    The existence of various sufferings has long been thought to pose a problem for the existence of a personal God: the Problem of Evil. In this paper, we propose an original version of POE, in which the geographic distribution of sufferings and of opportunities for flourishing or suffering is better explained if the universe, at bottom, is indifferent to the human condition than if, as theists propose, there is a personal God from whom the universe originates: the Problem of Geography. (...)
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  7. God, the meaning of life, and a new argument for atheism.Jason Megill & Daniel Linford - 2016 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 79 (1):31-47.
    We raise various puzzles about the relationship between God and the meaning of life. These difficulties suggest that, even if we assume that God exists, and even if God’s existence would entail that our lives have meaning, God is not and could not be the source of the meaning of life. We conclude by discussing implications of our arguments: these claims can be used in a novel argument for atheism; these claims undermine an extant argument for God’s existence; and they (...)
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  8. On the Unimportance of Theistic Belief.Jason Megill & Daniel Linford - 2017 - Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 25 (2):187-207.
    We first argue that there are cases of “blameless non-belief.” That is, some people—through no fault of their own—fail to enter into a conscious relationship with God. But if so, then it would be unjust of God to make certain particular goods (e.g., one’s salvation, the possibility of an ethical or a meaningful life, or entrance into heaven) depend upon one having a conscious relationship with God. So, given that God is just, then despite what some theists believe, a relationship (...)
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  9. An All Too Radical Solution to the Problem of Evil: a Reply to Harrison.Dan Linford - 2018 - Sophia 57 (1):157-171.
    Gerald Harrison has recently argued the evidential problem of evil can be resolved if we assume the moral facts are identical to God’s commands or favorings. On a theistic metaethics, the moral facts are identical to what God commands or favors. Our moral intuitions reflect what God commands or favors for us to do, but not what God favors for Herself to do. Thus, on Harrison’s view, while we can know the moral facts as they pertain to humans, we cannot (...)
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  10.  80
    On the Boundary of the Cosmos.Daniel Linford - 2023 - Foundations of Physics 53 (4):1-32.
    Intuitively, the totality of physical reality—the Cosmos—has a beginning only if (i) all parts of the Cosmos agree on the direction of time (the Direction Condition) and (ii) there is a boundary to the past of all non-initial spacetime points such that there are no spacetime points to the past of the boundary (the Boundary Condition). Following a distinction previously introduced by J. Brian Pitts, the Boundary Condition can be conceived of in two distinct ways: either topologically, i.e., in terms (...)
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  11. A Modal Condition for the Beginning of the Universe.Daniel Linford - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89 (6):2343-2375.
    This paper considers two problems—one in philosophy of religion and another in philosophy of physics—and shows that the two problems have one solution. Some Christian philosophers have endorsed the views that (i) there was a first finitely long period of time, (ii) God is in time, and yet (iii) God did not have a beginning. If there was a first finitely long period of time and God is in time then there was a first finitely long period of time in (...)
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  12. Idolatry, Indifference, and the Scientific Study of Religion: Two New Humean Arguments.Daniel Linford - 2018 - Religious Studies:1-21.
    We utilize contemporary cognitive and social science of religion to defend a controversial thesis: the human cognitive apparatus gratuitously inclines humans to religious activity oriented around entities other than the God of classical theism. Using this thesis, we update and defend two arguments drawn from David Hume: (i) the argument from idolatry, which argues that the God of classical theism does not exist, and (ii) the argument from indifference, which argues that if the God of classical theism exists, God is (...)
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  13. Cognitive Bias, the Axiological Question and the Epistemic Probability of Theistic Belief.Dan Linford & Jason Megill - 2018 - In Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Theistic Beliefs: Meta-Ontological Perspectives. De Gruyter. pp. 77-92.
    Some recent work in philosophy of religion addresses what can be called the “axiological question,” i.e., regardless of whether God exists, would it be good or bad if God exists? Would the existence of God make the world a better or a worse place? Call the view that the existence of God would make the world a better place “Pro-Theism.” We argue that Pro-Theism is not implausible, and moreover, many Theists, at least, (often implicitly) think that it is true. That (...)
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  14. The Problems of Divine Hiddenness and Divine Inscrutability.Dan Linford - 2019 - In Graham Oppy & Joseph W. Koterski (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy. Farmington Hills: MacMillan Reference.
    This is a forthcoming section for the book "Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy", edited by Graham Oppy, Gregory Dawes, Evan Fales, Joseph Koterski, Mashhad Al-Allaf, Robert Fastiggi, and David Shatz. I was asked to write a brief essay on divine hiddenness and divine inscrutability. I argue that theism is trapped between two opposite poles. On one end, we encounter an argument developed by John Schellenberg. God is understood as a being who, in virtue of God's perfect love, would (...)
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  15. Early-Modern Irreligion and Theological Analogy: A Response to Gavin Hyman’s A Short History of Atheism.Dan Linford - 2016 - Secularism and Nonreligion 5 (1):1-8.
    Historically, many Christians have understood God’s transcendence to imply God’s properties categorically differ from any created properties. For multiple historical figures, a problem arose for religious language: how can one talk of God at all if none of our predicates apply to God? What are we to make of creeds and Biblical passages that seem to predicate creaturely properties, such as goodness and wisdom, of God? Thomas Aquinas offered a solution: God is to be spoken of only through analogy (the (...)
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  16. Naturalistic and Theistic Explanations of the Distribution of Suffering.Dan Linford - 2019 - In Graham Oppy & Joseph W. Koterski (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy. Farmington Hills: MacMillan Reference.
    This is a forthcoming section for the book "Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy", edited by Graham Oppy, Gregory Dawes, Evan Fales, Joseph Koterski, Mashhad Al-Allaf, Robert Fastiggi, and David Shatz. I was asked to write a brief essay on whether naturalism or theism can successfully explain the distribution of suffering in our world. Wheras another section covers the possibility that suffering is evidence against theism, my essay is concerned only with the ability for either naturalism or theism to (...)
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  17. On Computable Metaphysics: On the Uses and Limitations of Computational Metaphysics.Jason Megill & Dan Linford - 2018 - In Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Theistic Beliefs: Meta-Ontological Perspectives. De Gruyter. pp. 93-112.
    Humans constantly produce strings of characters in symbolic languages, e.g., sentences in natural languages. We show that for any given moment in human history, the set of character strings that have been produced up to that moment, i.e., the sum total of human symbolic output up to that moment, is finite and so Turing computable. We then prove a much stronger result: a Turing machine can produce any particular set of symbolic output that we could possibly have produced. We then (...)
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  18.  46
    Eating up Davies’s universe: Paul Davies: What’s eating the universe? And other cosmic questions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022, 183 pp, $16 PB. [REVIEW]Daniel Linford - 2023 - Metascience 32 (3):375-379.
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  19.  43
    Review: A Short History of Atheism. [REVIEW]Dan Linford - 2015 - Secularism and Nonreligion 4 (1):1-2.