This collection highlights such issues as how the nature of time is relevant to the question of whether God is temporal and how God's other attributes are ...

God’s regular causal activity is traditionally held to include his creation of the world, his conserving all created things in being and his concurrence with the causal activities of finite causes. Divine causation requires that God is an agent. In this paper, I apply E. J. Lowe’s view of human agency to God. This application requires certain adjustments. Lowe takes it that when a person acts for reasons, these reasons are lacks of some kind. I argue that his account can (...) apply to God if we think of the reasons for God’s action as connected to purposes rather than to needs. (shrink)

Richard Dawkins’s best argument against the existence of God aims to show that the universe fits better with atheism than with theism. The fact that complex life developed gradually over a long period of time is required by an atheistic view but is not required by a theistic view. This fact, then, supports the atheistic view. This argument does raise the probability of atheism. I discuss four analogous arguments that point towards theism. I conclude that Dawkins’s argument lends some support (...) for atheism, but his strategy suggests sufficient arguments to see that the total case points in the opposite direction. (shrink)

In this project, I explore and defend William Alston's claim that God does not have beliefs. Rather, He knows what He knows by direct intuition of facts. This direct intuition is absolute immediate awareness. It is immediate in that God knows what He knows without the mediation of other objects of knowledge. It is absolute in that His knowledge is not mediated by any other factors such as causal links between the object of knowledge and God's consciousness of it. ;My (...) central argument is that if God knows all facts by direct intuitive awareness, He must be atemporal. If God is temporal, He could not have direct intuitive awareness of past or future facts. This is because absolute immediate awareness cannot span time. A knowing subject who is temporal can have direct intuitive awareness only of those facts which are temporally present. ;My argument that direct intuitive awareness cannot span time focusses on God's experience of a temporal now. A temporal God will experience what is happening now in a manner which is different than His experience of the past or the future. I argue that God's cognitive experience of past or future facts must be mediated in some way. If this is the case, it is not absolute immediate awareness. Therefore, a temporal God can have direct intuitive awareness only of present facts. In order to have direct intuitive awareness of all facts, regardless of their temporal locations, God must be atemporal. (shrink)

Evan Fales has argued that divine causation is not possible. His central argument involves an analysis of causation that requires that there has to be a mapping feature to guarantee that the particular effect follows the particular cause. He suggests that being related in space and time will provide the means to map the right effects onto their causes. In this paper, I argue that the spatial relation between cause and effect is not necessary to the causal relation. In cases (...) of volition, it appears that the mapping of particular effects onto volitions is achieved by the intentional content of the volition. Therefore, spatial relations are not necessary to causation and the impossibility of divine causation has not been shown. (shrink)

In a recent issue of this journal, Kevin Corcoran has argued that the metaphysical theory one holds to about the nature of human persons is irrelevant to the sort of ethical questions that occupy bioethicists as well as the general public. Specifically, he argues that whether one holds a constitution view of human persons, an animalist view, or a substance dualist view, the real work in one’s ethical reasoning is done by certain moral principles rather than by metaphysical ones. I (...) raise objections to his analysis and propose that it is a combination of ethical principles and metaphysical principles that does the work in our judgements about the morality of abortion and other actions. (shrink)

In a recent issue of this journal, Kevin Corcoran has argued that the metaphysical theory one holds to about the nature of human persons is irrelevant to the sort of ethical questions that occupy bioethicists as well as the general public. Specifically, he argues that whether one holds a constitution view of human persons, an animalist view, or a substance dualist view, the real work in one’s ethical reasoning is done by certain moral principles rather than by metaphysical ones. I (...) raise objections to his analysis and propose that it is a combination of ethical principles and metaphysical principles that does the work in our judgements about the morality of abortion and other actions. (shrink)