The Engaged Thomist

This is a day late, but I think that philosophical reflection is in order for the Christmas season. I should say that most of my ideas in this reflection come from one video (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qneVp82UhHA&t=3812s ). I should also say that I cannot possibly scratch the surface of the meaning of the Incarnation, but these are some of my thoughts, nevertheless. In the Incarnation, God assumes a human nature so that He can experience what it is to be human and through this, what it is to be created. An essential part of this is that God experiences a particular human life and through this particularity he experiences a human life with which every other human being can find solidarity in. Specifically, in Christ, God experiences all the kinds of sufferings that humans experience and in this every other human being, across time and place, can look at Him and see themselves, their suffering, in Him. This means that the Incarnation is, in part, an act of Divine soli...

The problem of evil is the main and most powerful argument for atheism. While I think that this argument, ultimately, fails, I do not doubt the force that the argument has on many people. I do think, though, that once the proper principles are in place, the philosophical force of the argument significantly diminishes, perhaps even vanishes. In this post, I would like to elucidate my general response to various forms of the problem of evil. To give an overview, I am broadly sympathetic to Brian Davies' approach to the problem of evil with some extra metaphysical principles to clarify that position. Davies argues that the problem of evil fails because it assumes that God is a moral agent and, as such, has moral obligations and this is false as God is not a moral agent for He is the ground of morality and so cannot be subject to moral laws (see here: https://www.amazon.com/Reality-God-Problem-Evil/dp/082649241X ). While I think that Davies is right, I think he does not go into the met...

I wrote up a modal argument for God’s existence a few months ago that I wanted to share in case anyone found it helpful or interesting. Here it is: 1. It is possible that every bounded fact or aggregate of bounded facts has an explanation (weak version of Pruss-Koons PSR). 2. The universe is the total mereological aggregate of bounded facts. 3. Since the universe is the total mereological aggregate of bounded facts, the only metaphysical entity that could explain it would be an unbounded fact or an aggregate of unbounded facts. 4. Since the universe is the total mereological aggregate of bounded facts, it possibly has an explanation in an unbounded fact or an aggregate of unbounded facts.  5. Therefore, it is possible that there is at least one unbounded fact (from premise 4). 6. If it is possible that there is at least one unbounded fact, then there is, in fact, at least one unbounded fact. 7. Therefore, there is at least one unbounded fact (from premise 6 and S5 or B depending on...

One of the biggest objections to the PSR is that in order for it to work, necessitarianism must be true. Indeed, this is at the heart of Peter van Inwagen’s influential 1984 objection to the PSR ( http://alexanderpruss.com/papers/LCA.html - this contains Van Inwagen’s argument and Pruss’ brilliant response to it). After all, how can an explanation be complete if the explanation does not entail the explanandum - what the explanation explains? I think this view of complete explanation is mistaken, and I hope to explain why in this post. Let’s say that there is a double-slit experiment where there is a right and left slit. Let’s suppose that there is an electron that ends up going through the right slit. The explanation for this will consist in a conjunction of things like: the nature of the experiment, the external factors in the experimental environment, the fact that there was at least a 50% chance that the electron went through the right slit before it actually did, etc. The objector...

This post is simply a reposting of a response to a response to the moral argument that I thought was very good and ought to be shared. I’ll first show the response to the moral argument, which I thought was rather thorough, and the response that Matthew Flanagan, professional ethicist who runs a great blog, made to the response (see here: http://www.mandm.org.nz/ ). I may write a post on the moral argument in the future, but I will just say that I think that God grounds moral facts, but I am not sure which formulation of the argument I would accept. Without further ado, here is the post: “The Moral Argument Against God is More Successful Than The Moral Argument for God! What Are the Moral Moral Arguments? All moral arguments for God take a format similar to: There are objective moral facts. God provides the best explanation of the existence of objective moral facts. Therefore, (probably) God exists. We can find an early example of this argument in Aquinas' Five Ways . More modern v...