In the well-known essay, ‘ Evil and Omnipotence‘, John Mackie reformulated a familiar challenge to theistic belief that has come to be known as the logical problem of evil. The debate concerns a single issue, but the standards of reasoning invoked in addressing the issue are worthy of emulation.
His work will not serve to defend theistic belief in the face of the sheer critical power and breadth of, say, John Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) or Jordan Sobel’s Logic and Theism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).įor illustration, it will be useful to consider the interplay between John Mackie’s most forceful-and often underestimated-challenge to theistic belief, and Alvin Plantinga’s ingenious-and often misunderstood-response to that challenge. In the philosophy room, the otherwise impressive work of C.S. So, how well does theistic belief do when the standards and expectations on good reasoning are at their highest? How well does religious belief do when, as David Lewis described it, we are in the philosophy room?
The work of atheistic thinkers such as John Mackie, Jordan Howard Sobel and William Rowe, for example, is much more powerful, if much less popular. The standards for atheological argumentation also go much higher than anything imagined in Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and a host of other popular writers. Of course, serious atheists may be unimpressed. Popular atheological arguments wither under such scrutiny. But philosophers and laymen sometimes-perhaps often, these days-find the standards on cogent argumentation raised, and indeed want them raised.Ĭonsider, for instance, the powerful critical assessment, by academic philosophers, of the currently popular arguments against theistic belief. It is persuasive and pleasurable reading, and perfectly effective when we are in what we might call the popular room. There is much to be said for Lewis’s popular style, rhetoric, and incisiveness. Many theists find resources to defend their beliefs in the important literary and apologetic work of C.S.
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