I respond to Daniel Linford’s criticisms of the kalām cosmological argument and its use of big bang cosmology and thermodynamics. Linford argues that either the direction of time and causality is reducible and the universe can “begin” without a cause, or the direction of time and causality are non-reducible but the universe need have no beginning. He appeals to the “Mentaculus” account of the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics to support his view of reducible time and causality. I argue that not only does Linford mischaracterize proponents of cosmological arguments, but the Mentaculus fails to justify a reducible view of time and entropy increase. The past hypothesis together with time-symmetrical dynamical laws cannot explain the parallel direction of entropy increase experienced by isolated branch systems. Time must have a fundamental arrow and entropy increase must be fundamentally asymmetrical in time. The second law of thermodynamics has a “statistically absolute” character connected with irreversible collapse of the quantum wave function. This excludes Linford’s bounce cosmologies on the grounds that their extended entropy reducing phases violate the second law. I further critique the role that speculative models of physical cosmology have played in debates over theistic arguments and respond to two common objections against appeals to entropy by proponents of cosmological arguments.
Is it possible for God to act on human beings’ retroactive prayers—when someone prays for something earlier than the prayer itself? Kevin Timpe (2005) has argued that this is impossible if open theism is true, but possible if we assume the truth of one of the other three views of divine providence that ascribe libertarian free will to human beings. And, following Timpe, James Anderson (2018) has argued that the concept of retroactive prayer provides a prima facie argument against open theism, assuming that there are efficacious retroactive prayers of a certain kind. In this article, I provide two defenses of open theism in response to the problem of retroactive prayers. First, I criticize Timpe’s knowledge requirement for the efficacy of retroactive prayers. I identify and defend two alternative requirements and argue that they deprive the problem of retroactive prayers of its significance for open theism. Second, I argue against the efficacy of retroactive prayers.
Recently, Yujin Nagasawa has argued that the problem of evil can be “reversed” to create “the problem of evil for atheists” and that the problem of evil for atheists actually poses a greater challenge for atheists than it does theists. In this paper, I show why this is not so. This is because the traditional problem of evil poses an epistemic challenge to theism qua theism, while Nagasawa’s problem of evil for atheists is best viewed as an axiological or existential challenge to a belief (what Nagasawa calls “modest optimism”) that, while purportedly often held by atheists, is not a consequence of atheism. Thus, “the problem of evil for atheists” is not a problem of evil for atheism, rendering the claim that the problem of evil has been reversed for atheists inapt.
Faced with the puzzle of what nonbelievers are doing when they participate in liturgical rites, Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that in order for a participant to count as worshiping, she must lack the intention not to worship—this we call the Negative Intention (NI) principle. Wolterstorff prefers this principle over a competing one that holds that worshiping requires a positive intention to worship (PI). He does so on the grounds that many liturgical participants, such as infants or the mentally impaired, lack positive intentions to worship. Here we raise several objections to Wolterstorff’s view. We argue that it fails to cohere with intuitions regarding the religious affiliation of casual yoga enthusiasts on the one hand, and potential religious martyrs on the other. Wolterstorff’s view makes it difficult for the former to not count as participants in religions that they do not avow, while risking the trivialization of religious martyrdom in the process. We conclude by canvassing two potential alternatives: one on which conventions determine the success (or failure) of a given ritual act, and another on which ritual significance is inherited via imitation.
Call people with unusual de re modal properties, such that they essentially suffer the evils that they do, ‘prodigiosus people’. This paper argues that God can create prodigiosus people, and that this is the basis for a new response to the problem of evil.
Can visual experience represent deific properties? I argue that it can. Some perceptual experiences, I argue, could represent properties like being a creation of God or being a manifestation of divine beauty. To defend this thesis, I use Susanna Siegel’s method of phenomenal contrast. I compare an ordinary perception of an object with a perception of the same object during a similar experience in which it appears imbued with transcendent significance. These experiences differ phenomenologically. The best explanation of this difference, I argue, is that in the second experience a deific property partly constitutes the visual phenomenology. I consider several rival explanations—shifts in attention, post-attentive gestalt properties, inference from lower-level features, cognitive phenomenology, emotional accompaniment, background mood—and argue that none adequately accounts for the contrast. I also argue that genuine cognitive penetration is compatible with, rather than opposed to, deific perception. If deific perception is real, it has significant epistemic consequences: perceptual experience may furnish defeasible, prima facie justification for some theistic beliefs, connecting the high-level-content debate in philosophy of perception with long-standing questions about the evidential force of religious experience.
The argument for atheism from the problem of evil can be strengthened by taking advantage of the traditional view that God’s existence, if possible, is necessary. Given that, if there is just one possible world in which there are evils that cannot be reconciled with God’s existence, God does not exist in any world. This argument has been tried before, but the major obstacle it faces is that in appealing to situations much worse than any in the actual world, the genuine possibility of the imagined situations might reasonably be called into question. We argue that this obstacle can be overcome by considering a couple of “near misses”: situations that seem obviously possible because they nearly happened. We identify two such situations and defend two critical claims. The first is that, absent any independent warrant for theism, there is excellent reason to believe these situations are genuinely possible. The second is that in the worlds thus delineated, there are evils that cannot be excused by any plausible theodicy. Call this the argument from possible inexcusable evil. Our main thesis is the modest one that absent independent warrant for theism, the argument from possible inexcusable evil is a cogent argument for atheism. Further, however, we suggest that a stronger thesis may be warranted, since the way the argument works may well block independent evidence for theism—at least, independent evidence of the sort that is especially relevant in the context of disputes over the significance of evil.
We present a modal argument for a necessary being that distinguishes hierarchical grounding relations to address traditional objections to cosmological proofs. By separating intra-temporal grounding (dependencies within temporal order) from ultimate grounding (atemporal existential foundation), we demonstrate that contingent reality requires necessary grounding even if temporal causal chains extend infinitely. Employing S5 modal logic under an actualist interpretation, we prove that well-founded grounding hierarchies terminate in a unique necessary being, whose necessity is established through an exhaustive modal dichotomy applied to the actual terminus of the hierarchy. This being possesses traditional divine attributes including simplicity, immateriality, timelessness, and causal maximality, derived deductively from necessary existence together with the explanatory requirements of ultimate grounding. Our hierarchical framework resolves objections from quantum indeterminacy, eternal cosmologies, and self-sustaining systems while addressing Kantian concerns about applying causation beyond temporal domains. The argument establishes that metaphysical analysis of contingency structures necessarily entails a timeless foundation transcending the natural order.
In a recent article Mullins (2026) offers a reply to Page’s (2025a) contention that a defender of timelessness can deny the existence of a ‘Precreation moment’ in order to avoid various arguments against timelessness and can do so without doing anything theologically suspect. Mullins suggests this cannot be done, and that a defender of timelessness is going to be left embracing a theologically unorthodox account of God’s relationship to creation. Here I’ll argue that Mullins’s response misses the mark in various ways and leaves everything Page claimed unscathed.
Time has long perplexed philosophers and theologians. This article argues that time bears an irreducible alterity structurally akin to what Rudolf Otto called the numinous: it grounds intelligibility and rational order while exceeding every attempt at conceptual mastery. Through a phenomenological and metaphysical inquiry engaging Augustine, Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas, together with Boethius, Aquinas, and Scotus, we develop this claim by means of a disciplined proportional analogy and defend it through the Thomistic real distinction between essence and existence, applied to time itself. On this account, time’s essence corresponds to the tenseless B-series of abstract succession, while time’s existence corresponds to the tensed A-series of irreversible becoming; their real distinction, neither identity nor separation, preserves the arrow of time, reframes McTaggart’s paradox, and discloses time as a meta-rational horizon that conditions logic, science, and narrative without being exhausted by any one. The result bridges the phenomenology of temporality with philosophical theology while remaining strictly within metaphysical bounds.
While Kant is often seen as agreeing with Lessing’s ditch, this paper argues that Kant provides his own version of the ditch between the historical and the rational. Lessing’s ditch concerns rational truths revealed in history; Kant’s version is more focused on the realization of rationality within history. Kant agrees with Lessing that rational truths are necessary and historical truths are contingent and dispensable. However, Kant views human nature as containing a weakness such that the historical might always be needed for the recognition of the rational. Kant divides his treatment of Christianity into natural/revealed and natural/learned. Considering a religion as natural/revealed concerns its origin and essence. Kant deals with Christianity as natural/revealed in Parts One–Three of Religion, finding harmony between historical Christianity and rational religion, going so far as to say that the universal church originated with historical Christianity. Considering a religion as natural/learned concerns how the religion is spread. Kant deals with Christianity as natural/learned in Part Four, saying that Jesus taught simply natural religion; later forms of Christianity are learned religion, in which the historical should be seen as a means, serving the rational end. Due to the (current) need for the historical, Kant allows for a drawbridge connecting the historical and rational, even though the rational does not rely on the historical for validity. Kant is uncertain of the future development of human reason, so he is unsure if the drawbridge can ever be raised, leaving us with only the rational.
Reports of psychedelic experience often include encounters with gods, spirits, or ineffable presences that appear authoritative yet resist stable theological identification. This article argues that such figures are best understood neither as authentic revelations nor as mere hallucinations, but as placeholders: formal positions within recursive processes of experience that organize coherence, surrender, and awe without requiring a determinate referent. Drawing on a prior account of recursive identity and ego dissolution together with phenomenological approaches to religion, the paper traces the problem of reference across ethnographic, theological, and clinical contexts, reconceives psychedelic figures as products of saturated self-referential loops, and develops the placeholder concept through Otto, Marion, Nancy, and Caputo. It argues that psychedelic religion does not primarily disclose metaphysical truths about divine beings but clarifies the structural condition under which the Divine appears. The placeholder god thus names divinity as a formal position: authority without referent, coherence without ground.
We argue that Schellenberg’s non-doxastic account of faith poses a challenge for his famous divine hiddenness argument. In his argument, Schellenberg presupposes that the belief that God exists is required for beginning and having a personal relationship with God. Yet this presupposition is challenged by the suggestion that belief-less faith is sufficient to provide a basis for a personal relationship with God. Schellenberg has recently presented two brief responses to this challenge. We argue that neither of these responses is convincing, basing our own argument on the account of belief-less faith Schellenberg himself advocates. The upshot, of course, may not be a knockdown approach against Schellenberg’s divine hiddenness argument. However, the burden of proof is on Schellenberg to meet the challenge by showing that there is no conflict between the respective parts of his thought.
The existence of simultaneous causation has long been a subject of controversy. In the literature, the most direct strategy for defending simultaneous causation has been to appeal to everyday examples in which simultaneous causation are alleged to occur. While earlier discussions offered case-specific defenses, they lacked a systematic account of the full range of possible cases. This article reconstructs and evaluates a largely neglected set of defense strategies developed in Indian Buddhist philosophy, especially within the Sarvāstivāda tradition. First, I distinguish two patterns of simultaneous causation discussed in Buddhist sources: the simultaneous dynamic following pattern and the static equilibrium pattern. I then reconstruct the Buddhist arguments advanced by Vasubandhu and Saṃghabhadra. Vasubandhu provides the earliest defenses, appealing to counterfactual analysis for the former pattern and to a powers-based account for the latter. Saṃghabhadra develops a genuinely systematic strategy. He first establishes distinctness through a sufficiently fine-grained individuation of the relata, then determines causality by appeal to an interventionalist account, and finally establishes simultaneity on the basis of the causal relation so determined. I argue that Saṃghabhadra’s strategy applies to both patterns and that his account of simultaneity is more successful than those currently popular in the contemporary literature. More generally, the Buddhist discussion reveals an important methodological point: once these two patterns are successfully defended, commitment to simultaneous causation need not depend on the availability of an uncontroversial concrete case.
This paper has four main sections. In section one, I argue that Kant faces a trilemma being committed to the following three seemingly incompatible claims: (a) that we ought to be morally perfect (‘holy’), (b) that ought implies can, and (c) that we cannot be morally perfect. In section two, I explain how Kant’s account of the relationship between virtue and holiness is designed to address this trilemma. For Kant, someone with a virtuous disposition is striving to be perfect. Given human nature, however, we can cannot succeed in this endeavor in any finite period of time, so the most we can hope for is to asymptotically approach perfection. One key feature of this interpretation is that the ultimate moral status of one’s character has to do with the shape of the development of one’s character over time, rather than with one’s maxims at any particular moment. In section three I show how this account of the relationship between virtue and holiness lies behind Kant’s adoption of the position that morality requires that we believe in our own immortality as a postulate of practical reason. In the final section of the paper, I show how this interpretation commits Kant to a strong version of moral opacity—to the thesis that we cannot know our own moral character or the moral character of others and I argue that this impossibility of knowing one’s own moral character is a source of deep moral anxiety that is likely to deepen the more moral one becomes.
Gaunilo’s ‘Lost Island’ objection to Anselm’s argument in Proslogion II famously replaces Anselm’s key phrase (“something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”) with a phrase which describes an island. The general idea is that Anselm’s argument cannot in fact demonstrate the existence of the greatest conceivable thing. For if it did, we would surely also have to accept parallel arguments which claim to prove the apparently unlikely existence of various other greatest conceivable entities. This paper introduces a new type of Gaunilian objection. Its ‘monotheist/polytheist argument’ applies the substitution method of previous ‘parody objections’ twice, proposing that Anselm’s line of reasoning can be employed to ‘prove’ the illogical existence in reality of both one-and-only-one-thing-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought and two-things-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. Since the two key phrases of the monotheist/polytheist argument retain Anselm’s category of ‘something’ or ‘thing’, the argument has the advantage of being invulnerable to classic objections to Gaunilian arguments which claim that Anselm’s key phrase (“something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”) cannot legitimately be replaced by a phrase describing the greatest conceivable thing in a sub-category of things (e.g. islands) in Anselm’s argument. The core defining feature of the new objection in this paper, however, is that it makes a stronger claim than previous Gaunilian arguments. If successful, it would show that Anselm’s line of reasoning can be taken to an illogical (and not merely unlikely) conclusion. This would demonstrate indirectly that Anselm’s argument must fail.
This article defends the nonlapsarian position against recent objections raised by T. Parker Haratine. It begins by recapping Haratine’s proposed dilemma for nonlapsarianism (what he calls Allegorical Accounts), and then offers several lines of response. I argue that Haratine overlooks some aspects of nonlapsarianism that, when clarified, largely immunise it against his critique. In particular, employing the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic sinfulness and/or admitting other types of sin besides the “full-blown” variety allows the nonlapsarian to affirm jointly all the propositions Haratine takes to be inconsistent with a rejection of Original Sin. I thus conclude that nonlapsarianism is a more resilient theological option than Haratine supposes.
What grounds the existence of beings? This paper argues that if the existence of beings (rather than nothing) admits of an account and grounding is irreflexive, the ground of beings cannot itself be a being. The argument proceeds by elimination. If we ask what accounts for there being anything at all, four options present themselves: the ground is among the beings it grounds (self-grounding), there is no ground (brute fact), there is an infinite regress of grounds, or the ground is trans-categorial. Self-grounding generates incoherence: it violates grounding’s irreflexivity, collapses into explanatory vacuity, and produces priority inversion. Brute fact, while coherent, denies that the existence of beings as such admits of any account. Infinite regress defers explanation without terminus. What remains, for those who hold that reality is ultimately intelligible, is a ground outside the domain it grounds: not an entity among entities. This conclusion aligns with classical theism’s doctrine that God is ipsum esse subsistens: not a being that exists, but subsistent existence itself. The argument establishes a structural place that classical theism recognizes as “God.”
