Introduction In the last post, we considered an argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason, formulated by Alexander Pruss in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology as: (PSR) Every contingent fact has an explanation. We saw that this principle has intuitive appeal, and various arguments have been offered in favour of it, e.g. the above … Continue reading Restricted PSRs and Lakatos’ Proofs and Refutations →

EDIT: Dear people from 2022. Due to the unexpected recent interest in this post, I have edited it somewhat to improve the fairly awful layout it originally had (too many postscripts!!). What is the PSR? To quote the SEP, "The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a powerful and controversial philosophical principle stipulating that everything must … Continue reading A Short Argument Against the PSR →

There is an argument that one sometimes encounters, typically from those who deploy presuppositional apologetics, that goes by the name of the "unity of knowledge" argument. I will not be fully addressing this argument here, so I shall commit the grave academic sin of not properly stating this argument in its best form--and as such, … Continue reading A note on atheism and global scepticism →

1. Introduction The fine-tuning argument is regarded as one of the strongest arguments for the existence of God in contemporary philosophy of religion, the cutting-edge in the long tradition of design arguments for God. In his article in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Robin Collins states the core fine-tuning argument thus (edited here only to expand … Continue reading A note on the fine-tuning argument →

I have often been asked, by Christians, how I—as an atheist—answer to the nihilist. Well, not so much “asked”. Nihilism—the view that life has no meaning, that nothing has value—is posed as a challenge to the atheist. I have been called dishonest for being a non-nihilist atheist! This is, to a certain degree, bemusing to me. Nihilism … Continue reading Atheism and Nihilism →

1. Introduction Much of the debate about free will is driven by competing notions of what free will is, and I will spend most of this post discussing various such notions. So it is important to establish a theory-neutral definition of what the words ‘free will’ denote. Following the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy we shall define: … Continue reading Free Will, Libertarianism and Compatibilism →