In The Existence of God Richard Swinburne argues that certain religious experiences support the hypothesis that God exists. Indeed, the argument from religious experience is of crucial importance in Swinburne's philosophical theology. For, according to Swinburne, without the argument from religious experience the combined weight of the other arguments he considers, e.g. the teleological, the cosmological, or the argument from miracles, does not render the theistic hypothesis very probable. However, the argument from religious experience combined with these other arguments makes theism more probable than its rivals.

H. D. Lewis once remarked he did not think ‘any case for immortality can get off the ground if we fail to make a case for dualism’. Lewis vigorously defended both mind body dualism, the theory that minds (or persons) are nonphysical, spatially unextended things in causal interaction with physical, spatially extended things, as well as the conceivability of an after life. Lewis defended the intelligibility of supposing distinct, individual persons continue existing after bodily death, possibly even after all physical objects pass out of existence. Prominent philosophers such as Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Liebniz, and Reid have subscribed to both the truth of dualism and belief in continued personal existence after bodily death. Descartes' work might even be construed as reversing the order of Lewis' dictum. For Descartes, the case for dualism ‘gets off the ground’ because of the conceivability of an afterlife. Briefly put, Descartes sought to establish that a person (or mind) is distinct from physical objects on the basis of it being metaphysically possible for a person to exist without his or her body, indeed without there being any physical objects whatever. If A can exist without B, then A is not identical with B. Thus, if it is possible for God to bring it about that I exist and there be no physical objects, I am not a physical object. The purpose of this article is not to develop a case for dualism, nor to query whether the case for immortality can get off the ground assuming nondualist theories of the self. I hope instead to assess a popular objection to dualism, and consequently to a dualist conception of the afterlife, which could be termed the problem of individuation.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of what is sometimes called ‘the literary and dramatic character’ of Hume's Dialogues. This importance is such that not taking this specific character of the Dialogues into account leads to conclusions opposite to the ones Hume, in the special form he gave to his work, was trying to impart to his readers. I will offer my analysis in opposition to the one, voiced by, for instance D. W. Harward, in which ‘the apparent philosophical inconsistencies in the Dialogues are resolved without appeal to Hume's commitment to “literary or dramatic balance,” an appeal few of us find convincing or philosophically interesting’ (Harward, 1976, p. 138). The last part of Harward's statement is of course only of biographical interest; however, the attempt to offer an interpretation of Hume's Dialogues in which the literary character of the work is wilfully set aside, comes to missing a basic understanding for the man and the work. In what follows I will make this explicit by a number of points, each of which shows the importance of this literary and dramatic character of the Dialogues. In each case the result could not be reached without taking this special character into account.

It has long been recognized that Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is a cryptogram. Encoded within a series of reflections and commentaries on Genesis 22 is a deeper message directed at a reader or readers presumably capable of deciphering the hidden meaning. That this is true is suggested by the book's epigraph: ‘What Tarquinius Superbus said in the garden by means of the poppies, the son understood but the messenger did not.’

Peter Geach supports his case (Religious Studies, December, 1981) that the religion of Thomas Hobbes was both genuine and a version of Socinianism principally by comparing the theological and scriptural sections of Leviathan with the main doctrines of Socinianism and its latter-day developments in Unitarianism and Christadelphianism. He pays particular attention to comparisons with the Racovian Catechism, the theological writings of Joseph Priestley and the Christadelphian document Christendom Astray by Robert Roberts.

Many people believe it absurd to seek evidence for - or against - personal survival of death. Some do so because they think, for a variety of reasons, that the idea of personal post-mortem survival makes no sense. Whether or not they are right they are at any rate consistent: nothing can be evidence for or against a nonsense. However, there are others who also believe that looking for evidence is absurd and yet do not similarly dismiss the idea as unintelligible. They allow that survival is possible and commonly hope it will ensue; but at the same time they insist that absolutely nothing helpful can be said on the subject.

In chapter 6 of God and Timelessness, Nelson Pike cites Schleiermacher as saying that ‘eternity (timelessness) is an “inactive attribute”’.1 An inactive attribute is an attribute that God has by virtue of being what he is, as opposed to an attribute which he has by virtue of what he does. Omnipotence is an active attribute, as Pike says, because, ‘To think of God as omnipotent is to think of Him as vital and effective’ (p. 97). Roughly, then, an inactive attribute is one which God has by virtue of what he is in himself, while an active attribute is one which God has by virtue of his relation to something else, e.g. his creation.

An analysis of the process of the emergence, development, and transformation of Alfred North Whitehead's conceptions of God in his philosophical writings.

To say that God is omniscient, most philosophers and theologians agree, is to say that he knows all true propositions and none that are false. But there is a great deal of disagreement about what is knowable. Some believe that God's knowledge is limited to everything that is (or has been) actual and that which will follow deterministically from it. He knows, for example, exactly what Caesar was thinking when he crossed the Rubicon and how many horses he had in his army that day. And he knows exactly how Gorbachev feels about the use of nuclear weapons. And since he knows how the ‘laws of nature’ (which he has purportedly created) function, he knows, for example, how certain weather systems will develop and what their effects will be on certain natural environments. But with respect to any future state of affairs which includes free human decision-making as a causal component, God is said not to know what will occur. God, as the ultimate psychoanalyst or behaviourist, can with great accuracy predict what we will freely decide to do in the future in many cases. He might well, for example, be able to predict quite accurately who will win the 1988 Presidential election. But a God who possesses only ‘present knowledge’ (PK) cannot know who will win. Given that the election in question is dependent on free choices which have yet to be made, there is presently nothing for God to know.

I have found that religious philosophers sometimes commit what might be called the fallacy of misplaced argumentation. Permit me to explain.

Any fully developed system of thought contains many assertions about the world. Yet this proliferation of assertions can be traced back to several underlying propositions which are their logical forebears. This is because large-scale theories generally grow out of fundamental intuitions or conceptual stances. These fundamental intuitions become formulated into theory-embedded, second-order propositions. Understanding the centrality of second-order propositions is essential to understanding the theory which they generate, with its numerous first-order assertions about the world.

The scientific creationist movement has been roundly criticized by a wide spectrum of religious leaders, theologians, and philosophers of religion for its attempts to have its idiosyncratic ideas about the physical world taught in the public schools as scientific alternatives to evolutionary ideas. These religious critics have typically agreed with their secular counterparts that the scientific creationists are guilty of a serious distortion of science.

When one addresses the issue of myth, truth, and justification in religion, what one says to a great extent depends upon one's understanding of religion and theology. For that reason I want to sketch out my views on such matters as a way of locating or identifying the theme of this paper in what I judge to be its proper setting. Having done that, I will then present my thoughts on myth, truth, and justification in religion in hope that some light will be cast on this rather complex issue and that what I say will provoke fruitful discussion.