William E. Mann

The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of religion

Notes on Contributors. Preface. Part I: The Concept of God. 1. Omniscience, Time, and Freedom (Linda Zagzebski). 2. Divine Power and Action (Hugh McCan). 3. Eternity and Immutability (Brian Leftow). Part II: The Existence of God. 4. The Ontological Argument (Gareth B. Matthews). 5. Cosmological Arguments (William L. Rowe). 6. The Design Argument (Elliott Sober). 7. The Problem of Evil (Derk Pereboom). Part III: Religious Belief. 8. Christian Faith as a Way of Life (Alfred J. Freddoso). 9. Mysticism and Perceptual Awareness of God (William P. Alston). 10. Competing Religious Claims (William J. Wainwright). Part IV: Religion and Life. 11. Human Destiny (Peter van Inwagen). 12. The Many-Sided Conflict Between Religion and Science (Philip Kitcher). 13. Theism and the Foundations of Ethics (William E. Mann). 14. Religion and Politics (Philip L. Quinn). Index.

Modality, Morality, and God

Does God love what is right because it is right, or is what is right right because God loves it? Socratess question, first asked in the Euthyphro, has received no completely satisfactory answer. It is, in fact, the beginning of an unpleasant dilemma for theists. For if a theist says that God loves right actions because they are right, then it seems to follow that they are right independently of Gods loving them. Were he not to exist, right actions would still be right (and wrong actions would still be wrong). In that case the foundations of ethics do not lie in God but elsewhere. But if they lie elsewhere, why not eliminate the middleman and go directly to the source? On the other hand, if a theist says that right actions are right because God loves them, then it seems as though he believes that just anything that God loves is right, in virtue solely of Gods loving it. Theists who grasp the first horn of the dilemma are fond of heaping abuse on those who choose the second. On the second alternative it is alleged to follow that if God were to love injustice, then his loving it would make the practice of injustice morally obligatory. That consequence is scarcely credible, but no more incredible than the further assertion, also an integral part of the second alternative, that Gods loving something is supposed to provide sufficient moral reason for our loving it. Defenders of the second horn are quick to repay the compliment. They accuse their opposite numbers of reducing God to the role of dispensable moral mouthpiece, at best a vade mecum in our quest for moral truth. There is a position from which a theist can slip between the horns of the dilemma, preserving what should be preserved on both sides and discarding what should be discarded. It is useful to consider the dilemma in tandem with another theistic conundrum-

Simplicity and Properties: A Reply to Morris

The doctrine of divine simplicity, the doctrine that God has no physical or metaphysical complexity whatsoever, is not a doctrine designed to induce immediate philosophical acquiescence. There are severe questions about its coherence. And even if those questions can be answered satisfactorily in favour of the doctrine, there remains the question why anyone should accept it. Thomas V. Morris raises both sorts of questions about a version of the doctrine which I have put forward. In the following pages I shall respond to what I take to be the most serious of Morriss objections. I shall argue that the doctrine survives Morriss onslaught, but that one observation of his points it in a direction I had hitherto not taken seriously. The bulk of Morriss paper raises questions of the first sort; perforce the bulk of my paper will also. I shall offer, at the end, a reason for thinking that neither of us is yet in a position to pronounce categorically on the second question. My remarks in this paper constitute an interim report on how I think things presently stand with divine simplicity.

Piety: Lending a Hand to Euthyphro

Many philosophers take the point of Platos Euthyphro to be an indictment of attempts to ground morality in religion, specifically in the attitudes of a deity or deities. It has been argued cogently in recent essays that Platos case is far from conclusive. This essay suggests instead that the Euthyphro can be read more narrowly as raising critical questions about a specific religious virtue, Piety. Then it presents the ingredients of a reply to those questions. The reply proceeds by suggesting that one need not accept the standards of definition used by Plato, and that one can provide an explanation of what Piety is by embedding Piety in a more comprehensive picture of the human, the divine, and the relations between the two. The picture makes use of a doctrine of divine sovereignty and a doctrine concerning love between God and humans.

Dreams of Immorality

Are we responsible for our misdeeds in dreams? The obvious answer would seem to be ‘No’. Dreams catch us with our defences down: just those critical and discriminative abilities which are distinctive of our waking lives as responsible moral agents seem out of play when we dream; el sueno de la razon produce monstruos . Moreover, if we are responsible for our dreamt misdeeds, then parity of reasoning demands that we be praised for dreaming noble dreams. But that is absurd. Moral credit should not come that easily, and so neither should moral blame.

God, modality, and morality

Acknowledgements Permissions Introduction Section I: God 1. The Divine Attributes 2. Divine Simplicity 3. Simplicity and Immutability in God 4. Immutability and Predication: What Aristotle Taught Philo and Augustine 5. Epistemology Supernaturalized 6. Divine Sovereignty and Aseity 7. Omnipresence, Hiddenness, and Mysticism Section II: Modality 8. Necessity . 9. Modality, Morality, and God 10. Gods Freedom, Human Freedom, and Gods Responsibility for Sin 11. The Best of All Possible Worlds Section III: Morality 12. Theism and the Foundations of Ethics 13. The Metaphysics of Divine Love 14. Jephthahs Plight: Moral Dilemmas and Theism 15. The Guilty Mind 16. Piety: Lending a Hand to Euthyphro 17. Hope Index

Perplexity and mystery

In this paper I comment on Gareth B. Matthewss The Socratic Augustine and Peter Kings Augustine on the Impossibility of Teaching. Matthewss paper adduces several instances of Augustines apparent willingness to accept Socratic perplexity in some philosophical matters. Matthews suggests that these cases are compatible with Augustines dogmatism because Augustine presupposes that the phenomena in question, although perplexing, are actual. I suggest instead that Augustine can be viewed as taking a neutral stance toward many of his examples, because they arise in areas of philosophical inquiry where it is not important to the tenets of his faith that he hold the right opinion. King defends the Augustinian thesis that teaching, construed as the causal transmission of knowledge from teacher to learner, is, if not impossible, at least mysterious. I suggest that much of the alleged mystery may rest on a confusion between epistemological dependency and metaphysical dependency.