ex-apologist: March 2016

Review of Kerr's Aquinas's Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia

Caleb Cohoe reviews the book for NDPR.

Interesting New Empirical Version of the Problem of Evil

Linford, Daniel and William Patterson. "God, Geography, and Justice", Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 23:2 (2015), 189-216.

Here's the abstract:

The existence of various sufferings has long been thought to pose a problem for the existence of a personal God: the Problem of Evil (POE). 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 (POG). POG moves beyond previous versions of POE because traditional responses to POE (skeptical theism and various theodicies) are less effective as responses to POG than they are to other versions of POE.

It should be recalled that the importance of attending to the geographic distribution of certain theistically problematic states has also been appealed to in Maitzen's paper on the problem of divine hiddenness.

Interesting New Moral Epistemological Argument for Atheism

Park, John Jung. "The Moral Epistemological Argument for Atheism", European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (2015).

Here's the abstract:

Numerous supposed immoral mandates and commands by God found in religious texts are introduced and discussed. Such passages are used to construct a logical contradiction contention that is called the moral epistemological argument. It is shown how there is a contradiction in that God is omnibenevolent, God can instruct human beings, and God at times provides us with unethical orders and laws. Given the existence of the contradiction, it is argued that an omnibenevolent God does not exist. Finally, this contention is defended from several objections.