From Anthropology to Metaphysics: David Hartman on Divine Intervention

2017 ◽  
pp. 104-117
Author(s):  
David Shatz
Keyword(s):  
Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Bruce R. Reichenbach

In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussion by invoking three moral requirements and by creating an analogy with how the just state would address such evils, while protecting significant freedoms and rights to which all are entitled. I respond that his argument has important ambiguities and that consistent application of his moral principles will require that God remove all moral and natural evils. This would deleteriously restrict not only human moral decision making, but also the knowledge necessary to make moral judgments. He replies to this critique by appealing to the possibility of limited divine intervention, to which I rejoin with reasons why his middle ground is not viable.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Cheryl K. Chen

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.


2018 ◽  
Vol 118 ◽  
pp. 132-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuntal Kanti Das ◽  
Gagandeep Singh ◽  
Satyadeo Pandey ◽  
Kamlesh Singh Bhaisora ◽  
Awadhesh Jaiswal ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 187-197
Author(s):  
Andrei Flavius Petruț

"Stories about ghosts/undeads The present text brings into discussion the supernatural beings that still haunt the collective mentality of the inhabitants of the land of Zarand. Ghosts, because it’s them we are talking about, are still part of the stories of the elderly who remember their encounters with them. Unwanted in the village world and blaming them for the various misfortunes facing the community, people have developed practices to help them identify these beings, but also to remove them. Thus, since the birth of certain children who have a malformation of the spine, it is believed that they are undead. Sometimes, during life, because of curses or pacts with the devil, people lose their souls, so that, after death, they do not find their peace and continue to come to haunt those who are alive. People told us about these meetings, presenting the practices by which undeads are removed: through witchcraft, with the help of priests or through divine intervention. People do not want these returns of dead people, even if they are their beloved ones. Once dead, man loses his human status, these returns disturbing the peace of the village, and can cause strong imbalances: disease, famine, death of people and animals. Only after these beings are defeated, the life of the villagers’ returns to normal, keeping only the memory of the events that disturbed the peace. Keywords: Undeads, supernatural beings, dead alive, witchcraft, pact with the devil "


Author(s):  
Mathijs Pelkmans

This chapter focuses on the academically neglected area of miracles and their sustainability, not just because they characterize the effervescent qualities of Pentecostal conviction, but also because they illustrate its fragility. Using the research done on Kyrgyzstan's largest Pentecostal church, the Church of Jesus Christ, this chapter identifies the attractiveness of the Pentecostal message to those struggling with the vagaries of life in a former Soviet state. Miracles are central to this process, circulating through sermons and informal settings and allowing congregants to actively engage with questions of divine intervention and life transformation. However, they need to gain social and semiotic recognition as miracles first. Furthermore, the truth of miracles runs the risk of failure in those contexts where the miraculous is needed the most.


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