Month: January 2011

Say What???

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For connoisseurs of theological gibberish, check this out (by Paul Wallace, in Religion Dispatches, from last Dec. 14): http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/3820/way_beyond_atheism:_god_does_not_(not)_exist/ I was particularly impressed by these two paragraphs: The third level is the most difficult but the most important. This is second-order negation, or the inversion of the inversion. Here we would say, “God is not … Say What???

What God Cannot Do – Part 3

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In Chapter 6 of Our Idea of God (1991), Thomas Morris provides a brief but helpful explanation of different types of necessity in relation to divine attributes.Morris explains three different types or levels of necessity. Let’s use claims about the divine attribute of omnipotence as examples of the three types of necessity. I think this … What God Cannot Do – Part 3

Miracles and Antecedent Probabilities

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Victor Reppert responded succinctly but thoughtfully to my posting on ECREE (the principle that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”): There is a sense in which I agree with the ECREE thesis, it is just that I don’t believe that there is any objective way of proving that one set of antecedent probabilities is rational and … Miracles and Antecedent Probabilities

What God Cannot Do – Part 2

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There are two types of actions that God cannot do (see The Coherence of Theism, p.164): T1. Actions that are logically impossible for any being to perform.T2. Actions that are logically possible for some beings to perform, but logically impossible for God to perform.No being, including God, could produce or discover a four-sided triangle. No … What God Cannot Do – Part 2