This book offers a comprehensive and unitary study of the philosophy of Francis Bacon, with special emphasis on the medical, ethical and political aspects of his thought. It presents an original interpretation focused on the material conditions of nature and human life. In particular, coverage in the book is organized around the unifying theme of Bacon’s notion of appetite, which is considered in its natural, ethical, medical and political meanings. The book redefines the notions of experience and experiment in Bacon’s (...) philosophy of nature, shows the important presence of Stoic themes in his work as well as provides an original discussion of the relationships between natural magic, prudence and political realism in his philosophy. Bringing together scholarly expertise from the history of philosophy, the history of science and the history of literature, this book presents readers with a rich and diverse contextualization of Bacon’s philosophy. (shrink)

Francis Bacon’s main contribution to the emergence of experimental philosophy was a new way of thinking about the serial character of experimental practices. His natural and experimental histories document his constant attempts to order experimental inquiries. They consist of large collections of lists and series of items, most of which are called “experiments.” For Bacon, “experiment” is a generic term; it is used for tests and trials, recipes, ideas of experimental investigations, theoretical observations and methodological suggestions. Experiments never stand alone (...) in a natural history; they come in series of numbered items, sometimes grouped under “heads” and “topics of inquiry.” In the Latin natural histories.. (shrink)

In _Regimens of the Mind_, Sorana Corneanu proposes a new approach to the epistemological and methodological doctrines of the leading experimental philosophers of seventeenth-century England, an approach that considers their often overlooked moral, psychological, and theological elements. Corneanu focuses on the views about the pursuit of knowledge in the writings of Robert Boyle and John Locke, as well as in those of several of their influences, including Francis Bacon and the early Royal Society virtuosi. She argues that their (...) experimental programs of inquiry fulfill the role of regimens for curing, ordering, and educating the mind toward an ethical purpose, an idea she tracks back to the ancient tradition of _cultura animi_. Corneanu traces this idea through its early modern revival and illustrates how it organizes the experimental philosophers’ reflections on the discipline of judgment, the study of nature, and the study of Scripture. _ _ _ _ It is through this lens, the author suggests, that the core features of the early modern English experimental philosophy—including its defense of experience, its epistemic modesty, its communal nature, and its pursuit of “objectivity”—are best understood. (shrink)

Francis Bacon and the art of direction -- An art of tempering the mind -- The distempered mind and the tree of knowledge -- A comprehensive culture of the mind -- The end of knowledge -- The study of nature as regimen -- Cultura and medicina animi: an early modern tradition -- The physician of the soul -- Sources -- Genres -- Utility: practical versus speculative knowledge -- Self-love and the fallen/uncultured mind -- The office of reason -- Passions, errors, (...) and assent -- The discipline, the virtues, and habituation -- Virtuoso discipline -- The cure of the mind and Solomon's house -- Passions, errors, and method -- Idols and diseases of the mind -- Epistemic modesty -- The way of inquiry -- A 'union of eyes and hands': the community and objectivity revisited -- Robert Boyle: experience as paideia -- The limits and the 'perfection' of reason -- The weak mind and the virtues of a free inquiry -- Reason and experience -- The Christian philosopher -- John Locke and the education of the mind -- Limits of reason, useful knowledge, and the duty to search for truth -- A natural history of the distempered mind -- The regulation of assent: a perfecting exercise -- The discourse with a friend -- Studying nature -- Lived physics -- The appropriateness of disproportion -- Experience, history, and speculation -- Affective cognition -- Studying 'God's contrivances' -- The study of theology and the growth of the mind -- Worlds and angels -- Reading scripture -- Conclusion. (shrink)

This volume explores the themes of vanishing matter, matter and the laws of nature, the qualities of matter, and the diversity of the debates about matter in the early modern period. Chapters are unified by a number of interlocking themes which together enable some of the broader contours of the philosophy of matter to be charted in new ways. Part I concerns Cartesian Matter; Part II covers Matter, Mechanism and Medicine; Part III covers Matter and the Laws of Motion; and (...) Part IV covers Leibniz and Hume. Bringing together some of the world’s leading scholars of early modern philosophy, as well as some exciting new researchers, _Vanishing Matter and the Laws of Motion _stakes out new territory that all serious scholars of early modern philosophy and science will want to traverse. (shrink)

The motto of the Royal Society—Nullius in verba—was intended to highlight the members’ rejection of received knowledge and the new place they afforded direct empirical evidence in their quest for genuine, useful knowledge about the world. But while many studies have raised questions about the construction, reception and authentication of knowledge, Evidence in the Age of the New Sciences is the first to examine the problem of evidence at this pivotal moment in European intellectual history. What constituted evidence—and for whom? (...) Where might it be found? How should it be collected and organized? What is the relationship between evidence and proof? These are crucial questions, for what constitutes evidence determines how people interrogate the world and the kind of arguments they make about it. In this important new collection, Lancaster and Raiswell have assembled twelve studies that capture aspects of the debate over evidence in a variety of intellectual contexts. From law and theology to geography, medicine and experimental philosophy, the chapters highlight the great diversity of approaches to evidence-gathering that existed side by side in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this way, the volume makes an important addition to the literature on early science and knowledge formation, and will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students in these fields. (shrink)

This Encyclopedia offers a fresh, integrated and creative perspective on the formation and foundations of philosophy and science in European modernity. Combining careful contextual reconstruction with arguments from traditional philosophy, the book examines methodological dimensions, breaks down traditional oppositions such as rationalism vs. empiricism, calls attention to gender issues, to ‘insiders and outsiders’, minor figures in philosophy, and underground movements, among many other topics. In addition, and in line with important recent transformations in the fields of history of science and (...) early modern philosophy, the volume recognizes the specificity and significance of early modern science and discusses important developments including issues of historiography (such as historical epistemology), the interplay between the material culture and modes of knowledge, expert knowledge and craft knowledge. This book stands at the crossroads of different disciplines and combines their approaches – particularly the history of science, the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy of science, and intellectual and cultural history. It brings together over 100 philosophers, historians of science, historians of mathematics, and medicine offering a comprehensive view of early modern philosophy and the sciences. It combines and discusses recent results from two very active fields: early modern philosophy and the history of (early modern) science. (shrink)

This article advances the theoretical and practical value of workplace spirituality by drawing on person–organization (PO) fit theory and transpersonal psychology to investigate three questions: (a) What antecedents lead individuals and organizations to seek and foster workplace spirituality? (b) What are the perceived spiritual needs of individuals, and how are those needs fulfilled in the workplace? and (c) What are the consequences of meeting spiritual needs as individuals perceive them? Using constructivist grounded theory, analysis of interview data from thirty-four participants (...) located in organizations across the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Portugal led to development of a workplace spirituality, PO fit model in which we propose reconciling self as a core factor of workplace spirituality. We note how through the process of reconciling self, workplace spirituality is related to meaning making and how an individual perceives their work environment as conducive to self-expression and inner purpose. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed, as are limitations of the study and ideas for future research. (shrink)

This essay explores the idea of experience and its epistemological and practical role in maintaining the health of a household among early modern English Royalists. A number of prominent royalists during the mid-seventeenth century British Civil Wars expended quite some effort in the collection of medical recipes, including Queen Henrietta Maria herself, as well as William and Margaret Cavendish, and the Talbot sisters—Elizabeth Grey and Alethea Howard. This essay looks at these Royalists and four of their collections: three published (Henrietta (...) Maria, Grey, Howard), and one manuscript (the Caven­dishes), in order to determine how they conceptualized experience and its role in medical practice. The claim that such recipe collections represent a new, anti-Aristotelian idea of experience as a specific, particular event is disputed through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of these collections. Instead, it is argued that there a number of related conceptions of experience found in these Royalist recipe collections, but the basic idea is one where experience indicates long experience or expertise, an idea that can traced back at least to humanist medicine of the Renaissance, and likely back to Galen. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to assess the central role the imagination acquires in Pierre Gassendi’s logic. I trace the structuring scheme of the three acts of the mind—common to a good number of late scholastic and early modern logics—to the Thomistic notion of the movement of reasoning in knowledge and argue that Gassendi revisits this notion in his logic. The three acts scheme is from the beginning a bridge between logic and the natural philosophical treatment of the soul. (...) I show how Gassendi’s take on the three acts is similarly poised between his Logic and his Physics and I discuss the rationale, sources and consequences of his attribution of the three acts to the imagination. I argue for the following points: Gassendi’s conception of the logical role of the imagination answers to his empiricist epistemology, his naturalized view of the mind and his notion of a natural logic; it is also operative in his pairing of the formal mechanism of logical operations with a progressive mechanism of the operations of the mind; and it serves as a counterpart to his experimental understanding of the progress of knowledge.1. (shrink)

This special issue brings to the attention of the scholarly community some of the common features and some of the subtle, but important, differences between Francis Bacon's and Giovan Battista Della Porta's ways of dealing with the reading, selecting, enacting, and recording of recipes. Focusing on questions of genre, intellectual and material context, strategies of research, and strategies of performing recipes, the four papers of this special issue address two major issues. First, they shed new light on the relationship between (...) Della Porta's Magia naturalis and Francis Bacon's Sylva sylvarum. Second, they show that in the recording of their experimental practices, Bacon and Della Porta depart from the traditional “recipe format” and discover new avenues of experimental research. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emergence, in the second part of the 17th century, of a new body of experimental knowledge dealing with the chemical transformations of water taking place in plants. We call this body of experimental knowledge a “chemical history of vegetation.” We show that this chemical natural history originated, in terms of recipes and methods of investigation, in the works of Francis Bacon and that it was constructed in accordance with Bacon's precepts for putting together natural and experimental (...) histories. Our paper covers a wide array of experimental investigations, carried out by people with different backgrounds, theoretical assumptions, and metaphysical allegiances (Thomas Browne, Robert Sharrock, Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, John Beale, and John Evelyn). We claim that, despite their differences, these naturalists had a lot in common. First, they treated plants as laboratories of chemical investigation. Second, they used the experiments with plants to develop tools, hypotheses, and operational concepts, which travelled from one naturalist to the other, even when their respective explanatory vocabularies were widely different. Third, we show that some of them also manifested an interest in defining and clarifying the limits and structure of this new body of experimental knowledge, displaying, thus, a certain disciplinary unity. (shrink)

The definition of sonification has been reframed in recent years but remains somewhat in flux; the basic concepts and procedural flows have remained relatively unchanged. Recent definitions have focused on the objective the important uses of sonification in terms of scientific method. The full realization of the potential of the field must also include the craft and art of music composition. The author proposes examining techniques of sonification in a two-order framework: direct and procedural. The impact of new technologies and (...) historical roots of that work argues that framing this broad topic should be in terms inclusive of scientific method and craftsmanship and art. The expressive use of sonic time-based data flows needs to be refined and expanded. The unexamined territory of how a broad-based population of listeners on a subjective, as well as objective level needs, have to be included in this new field. (shrink)

The relationship between Francis Bacon's Sylva sylvarum and Giovan Battista Della Porta's Magia naturalis has previously been discussed in terms of sources and borrowings in the literature. More recently, it has been suggested that one can read these two works as belonging to a common genre: as collections of recipes or books of secrets. Taking this as a framework, in this paper I address another type of similarity between these two works, one that can be detected by looking at the (...) methods of reading, research, and enacting and recording recipes one can find in Bacon and Della Porta. I show that essential to the two approaches was the complex interplay of practices associated with enacting recipes, and that these influenced the ways in which Della Porta and Bacon recorded their experiments. Creative manipulation of the recipes transformed them into something new. In the case of Della Porta's second edition of the Magia naturalis, this new format is something I call “technologies,” that is, ways of recording the enacting of recipes with the intention to ensure repeatability and predictability of results. In the case of Bacon, the enactment aims at something different: to display and “bring to light” the hidden motions and processes of nature. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the primary issue in Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, Part II, articles 1-40, is the problem of individuating bodies. We demonstrate that Descartes departs from the traditional quest for a principle of individuation, moving to a different strategy with the more modest aim of constructing bodies adequate to the needs of his cosmology. In doing this he meets with a series of difficulties, and this is precisely the challenge that Newton took up. We show that (...) Descartes’ questions and his strategy influenced not only Newton’s account of physical bodies, but also the structure of his mechanics. (shrink)

The early modern era produced the Scientific Revolution, which originated our present understanding of the natural world. Concurrently, philosophers established the conceptual foundations of modernity. This rich and comprehensive volume surveys and illuminates the numerous and complicated interconnections between philosophical and scientific thought as both were radically transformed from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The chapters explore reciprocal influences between philosophy and physics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines, and show how thinkers responded to an immense range of (...) intellectual, material, and institutional influences. The volume offers a unique perspicuity, viewing the entire landscape of early modern philosophy and science, and also marks an epoch in contemporary scholarship, surveying recent contributions and suggesting future investigations for the next generation of scholars and students. (shrink)

Students are using file sharing sites to breach academic integrity in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper analyses the use of one such site, Chegg, which offers “homework help” and other academic services to students. Chegg is often presented as a file sharing site in the academic literature, but that is just one of many ways in which it can be used. As this paper demonstrates, Chegg can and is used for contract cheating This is despite the apparent existence (...) of an Honour Code on Chegg which asks students not to breach academic integrity. With pandemic led safety considerations leading to increased online teaching and assessment, the paper analyses data relating to how Chegg is used by students in five STEM subjects, namely Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics and Chemistry. The results show that students are using Chegg to request exam style questions. They demonstrate that contract cheating requests can be put live and answered within the short duration of an examination. The number of student requests posted for these five subjects increased by 196.25% comparing the time period April 2019 to August 2019 with the period April 2020 to August 2020. This increase corresponds with the time when many courses moved to be delivered and assessed online. The growing number of requests indicates that students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities. The paper concludes by recommending that academic institutions put interventions in place to minimise the risk to educational standards posed by sites such as Chegg, particularly since increased online teaching and assessment may continue after the pandemic. (shrink)

The instrumental character of Francis Bacon’s natural and experimental histories was often noted, but never fully investigated. In this paper I aim to reconstruct the theoretical and methodological background which supports this feature. I claim that we can read large parts of the second book of Bacon’s Novum organum as a guide to laboratory practices; and that it was read in this manner by some of Bacon’s seventeenth century followers. Key to this guide is Bacon’s theory of prerogative instances which, (...) in turn, provides the grounding for a whole theory of instruments of detection and instruments of measurement. I show, in particular, how Bacon suggested that such instruments can be used for ‘charting’ virtues and powers; a process in which instruments of detection can be transformed into instruments of measurement. I also show that Bacon’s views on instruments entail an elaborated conception of measurement which departs from the ethos of artisanal perfection. Instead of pursuing the ‘best results’, Bacon’s instrumental natural and experimental histories aim to offer a large enough corpus of correlations, estimates and calculations which, taken together, can represent more or less accurately changes and variations of natural virtues and powers. (shrink)

This chapter examines how the problem of the nature of body had become the central debate in the field of natural philosophy in England by the middle of the seventeenth century. It explains that the nature of the physical body is one of the major problems of seventeenth-century natural philosophy and that it began, at least in part, as a byproduct of a change in the philosophical vocabulary. The chapter also evaluates solutions proposed to address the problem concerning the nature (...) of body, including those derived from theory of matter and mixed mathematics. (shrink)

Our objective is to test an optimality model of human fertility that specifies the behavioral requirements for fitness maximization in order (a) to determine whether current behavior does maximize fitness and, if not, (b) to use the specific nature of the behavioral deviations from fitness maximization towards the development of models of evolved proximate mechanisms that may have maximized fitness in the past but lead to deviations under present conditions. To test the model we use data from a representative sample (...) of 7,107 men living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, between 1990 and 1993. The model we test proposes that low fertility in modern settings maximizes number of grandchildren as a result of a trade-off between parental fertility and next generation fertility. Results do not show the optimization, although the data do reveal a trade-off between parental fertility and offspring education and income.We propose that two characteristics of modern economies have led to a period of sustained fertility reduction and to a corresponding lack of association between income and fertility. The first is the direct link between costs of investment and wage rates due to the forces of supply and demand for labor in competitive economies. The second is the increasing emphasis on cumulative knowledge, skills, and technologies in the production of resources. Together they produce historically novel conditions. These two features of modern economies may interact with evolved psychological and physiological mechanisms governing fertility and parental investment to produce behavior that maximizes the economic productivity of lineages at the expense of fitness. If cognitive processes evolved to track diminishing returns to parental investment and if physiological processes evolved to regulate fertility in response to nutritional state and patterns of breast feeding, we might expect non-adaptive responses when returns from parental investment do not diminish until extremely high levels are reached. With high economic payoffs from parental investment, people have begun to exercise cognitive regulation of fertility through contraception and family planning practices. Those cognitive processes maynot have evolved to handle fitness trade-offs between fertility and parental investment. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to offer a preliminary survey of one of the most widely discussed problems in Bacon’s studies: the problem of the interplay between the speculative (i.e., metaphysical) and operative (i.e., methodological) layers of Bacon’s works. I propose to classify the various answers in three categories. In the first category I place attempts claiming that Bacon’s inquiries display his appetitive metaphysics. In the second category are those seeing Bacon’s more “scientific” works as disclosing some of the (...) inner metaphysical layers and presuppositions. The third category see Bacon’s experimental inquiries as attempts to “fix” metaphysics, by redefining concepts of metaphysical origins. In discussing these three categories of interpretative stances I show that we can gain further insights if we take into account recent and less recent trends in philosophy of science, and especially if we think in terms of background theory and bottom-up strategies of concept formation. I offer examples of such procedures in Bacon’s natural and experimental histories and show what we can gain if we apply the same interpretative strategy of focusing on concept-formation to the reading of the Novum organum. (shrink)

Contract cheating services are marketing to students at discipline level, using increasingly sophisticated techniques. The discipline level reach of these services has not been widely considered in the academic integrity literature. Much of the academic understanding of contract cheating is not discipline specific, but the necessary solutions to this problem may need to vary by discipline. This paper reviews current knowledge about contract cheating services at the discipline level, including summarising four studies that rank the relative volume of contract cheating (...) within different academic disciplines. The reviewed studies show high volumes of contract cheating transactions in the disciplines of Business and Computing. Examples of discipline level contract cheating research and service advertising are provided. The main contribution of the paper is an analysis of the discipline level reach by contract cheating services as seen through an analysis of Google search results from the United Kingdom. This analysis of 19 discipline groups uses measures of organic search engine results, paid results and competition. Three discipline groups are shown as currently being heavily exploited by essay mills; these are: Architecture, Building and Planning, Computer Science and Law. In addition, the discipline group of Creative Arts and Design is shown to be at risk of future exploitation. The paper recommends that academics are made aware about continual change in the contract cheating industry including the involved marketing taking place at discipline level. The paper concludes with a call to action for academia to develop discipline specific solutions to contract cheating. (shrink)

The Evil‐god challenge attempts to undermine classical monotheism by arguing that because the existence of an evil god is similar in reasonableness to the existence of a good god, the onus is on the theist to justify their belief in the latter over the former. In the Part I paper, I defined the Evil‐god challenge, distinguished between several types of Evil‐god challenge, and presented its history and recent developments. In this paper, I describe the merits of the challenge, outline and (...) address the main objections that have been posed to it, and discuss some of the implications for classical monotheism if the Evil‐god challenge remains untarnished by objections. (shrink)

As the contract cheating market has become more sophisticated and competition has intensified, the contract cheating industry has had to redevelop its approach to gain custom. The industry has developed new models of internal operation and providers are using more sophisticated techniques to reach potential customers. This paper discusses contract cheating industry workflows and introduces terminology to allow complexities of the industry to be more consistently discussed. Examples are provided throughout to indicate the scale and challenge of the contract cheating (...) industry operations.An analysis of contract cheating operations on the micro-outsourcing website Fiverr.com is presented, using comparative data collected in June 2016 and October 2018. The analysis of the data demonstrates how the contract cheating industry is seeing continual change. Specifically, on Fiverr.com, this includes an increase in the number of providers offering essay writing services, particularly those from Kenya and Pakistan. The increase in service availability is accompanied by an associated reduction in essay pricing. The advertised pricing per 1000 words has dropped substantially, from $31.73 USD to $5.73 USD. The accounts used by contract cheating providers are also being replaced at an increased rate.Based on the data, contract cheating providers on Fiverr.com are currently estimated to be taking a minimum of $92,001 USD per year in revenue. This is an example calculated from only one search term on which contract cheating providers advertise on only one micro-outsourcing site used for contract cheating. The actual industry income from micro-outsourcing web sites is likely to be substantially higher. (shrink)

The Evil‐god challenge has enjoyed a flurry of attention after its resurrection in Stephen Law's, 2010 paper of the same name. Intended to undermine classical monotheism, the Evil‐god challenge rests on the claim that the existence of all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐evil god (Evil‐god) is roughly as likely as the existence of an all‐powerful, all‐knowing, all‐good god (Good‐god). The onus is then placed on those who believe in Good‐god to explain why their belief should be considered significantly more reasonable than belief in (...) Evil‐god. In this paper, I provide a comprehensive exposition of the Evil‐god challenge by exploring its history and recent developments. The forthcoming part II paper will present and address the main objections that have been posed to the Evil‐god challenge and consider its implications for classical monotheism. (shrink)

The sharp increase in the human population of Vancouver Island; the urban development policy favoring forest fragmentation and smaller, scattered settlements; and the relatively sizable population of large predatory mammals have contributed to one of the highest human-large predator contact zones in North America. Although some studies have evaluated public attitudes toward larger carnivores from urban/rural, gender, and generational perspectives, few have focused on black bears and cougars on the British Columbia coast. In this study, four hundred people in the (...) densely populated southeast corner of Vancouver Island were interviewed about their attitudes toward black bear and cougar presence and behavior. The majority of interviewees had positive attitudes toward both bears and cougars, and were opposed to the shooting of carnivores, preferring trapping and removal. Contrary to expectation, few respondents saw carnivores as threats to livestock, companion animals, or children. Both black bears and cougars were perceived as serving useful functions as part of the island’s heritage and cultural development. (shrink)

This paper examines the coherence of naturalistic personal pantheism in an attempt to reconcile pantheism, naturalism, and a personal concept of God. NPP proposes that i) God is identical with the universe, ii) the universe is entirely natural, and iii) God is personal. Several critics of accounts of a God such as this have voiced concerns about a natural — as opposed to a supernatural — God, since a natural God cannot be worship-worthy. In response, I propose a controversial premise (...) — physical primacy — to justify the worship-worthiness of a natural God. Physical primacy maintains that physical existence is a great-making property, therefore a God that exists naturally is greater than a God that exists supernaturally. I maintain that NPP is an attractive alternative to other theisms because it bypasses the pairing problem, presents a worship-worthy concept of God, and boasts ontological simplicity. (shrink)

Purpose Students have direct access to academic ghost writers who are able to provide for their assessment needs without the student needing to do any of the work. These ghost writers are helping to fuel the international industry of contract cheating, raising ethical dilemmas, but not much is known about the writers, their business or how they operate. This paper aims to explore how the ghost writers market their services and operate, based on observable information. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews data (...) from providers actively offering contract cheating services available to the public on Fiverr.com, a low-cost micro outsourcing site. The search term write essay is used to identify providers, finding 103 Gigs from 96 unique providers. Visible information, such as provider marketing, advertised services, pricing information and customer reviews, is analysed. Findings The results demonstrate that bespoke essays are readily available to students at a low cost. The majority of providers operate from Kenya. Revenue calculations indicate a price point of US$31.73 per 1,000 words, below the cost of traditional essay mills, but show that these 96 providers have generated around US$270,000 of essay writing business between them. Originality/value This study affords a look into a complex and established industry whose inner workings are normally kept private and for which little published information currently exists. The research adds to what is known about the extent, location and operation of the contract cheating industry. (shrink)

Alcohol and other drug-related stigma is a growing concern. Many organizations have called for a reduction in such stigma through law reform, but there is little sense of how, precisely, this might be achieved. This paper reports on a new method to examine the relationship between stigma and the law and establish a framework that can guide and inform future law reform efforts.

It is often thought that religious experiences provide support for the cumulative case for the existence of the God of classical monotheism. In this paper, I formulate an Evil-god challenge that invites classical monotheists to explain why, based on evidence from religious experience, the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god is significantly more reasonable than the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient, evil god. I demonstrate that religious experiences substantiate the existence of Evil-god more so than they do the existence (...) of Good-god, and, consequently, that the traditional argument from religious experience fails: it should not be included in the cumulative case for the existence of Good-god. (shrink)