‘Everyone agrees that the moral features of things supervene on their natural features’ (Smith (1994),22). Everyone is wrong, or so I will argue. In the first section, I explain the version of moral supervenience that Smith and others argue everyone should accept. In the second section, I argue that the mere conceptual possibility of a divine command theory of morality (DCT) is sufficient to refute the version of moral supervenience under consideration. Lastly, I consider and respond to two objections, showing, among other things, that while DCT is sufficient to refute this version of moral supervenience it is not necessary.

The most famous objection to the ontological argument is given in Kant's dictum that existence is not a real predicate. But it is not obvious how this slogan is supposed to relate to the ontological argument. Some, most notably Alvin Plantinga, have even judged Kant's dictum to be totally irrelevant to Anselm's version of the ontological argument. In this paper I argue, against Plantinga and others, that Kant's claim is indeed relevant to Anselm's argument, in the straightforward sense that if the claim is true, then Anselm's argument is unsound.

In this paper I explore the relationship between the idea of possible worlds and the notion of the beauty of God. I argue that there is a clear contradiction between the idea that God is utterly and completely beautiful on the one hand and the notion that He contains within himself all possible worlds on the other. Since some of the possible worlds residing in the mind of the deity are ugly, their presence seems to compromise God's complete and utter beauty.

The view that consignment to hell is a matter of having a fixed vicious character of a certain sort – rather than a matter of paying a retributive penalty for sin – is quite popular among philosophical theologians today. However, if proponents of this view wish to maintain that some individuals wind up consigned to hell, and if they embrace a number of independently plausible assumptions, they will be forced toward unreasonable claims about character development and its relationship to consignment to hell. In this paper, I describe the difficulties for these philosophical theologians.

Graham Oppy has argued that possible explanation entails explanation in order to object to Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss's new cosmological argument that it does not improve upon familiar cosmological arguments. Gale and Pruss, as well as Pruss individually, have granted Oppy's inference from possible explanation to explanation and argue that this inference provides a reason to believe that the strong principle of sufficient reason is true. In this article, I shall undermine Oppy's objection to the new cosmological argument by arguing that it is logically possible that some truths are merely possibly explained.

Sceptical theism has been employed by its adherents in an argument aimed at undermining the so called ‘noseeum inference’. Erik Wielenberg (2010) has recently argued that there is an equally plausible argument for the conclusion that sceptical theism implies that we do not know any proposition that has word-of-God justification only. Thus, sceptical theists need to give up their argument against the noseeum inference or accept the conclusion that we do not know any proposition that has word-of-God justification only. I claim that sceptical theists need not face such a difficult choice because the argument that Wielenberg offers is not as plausible as their argument against the noseeum inference.

In Warrant and Proper Function, Alvin Plantinga develops an argument designed to show that naturalism is self-defeating. One component of this larger argument is what I call Plantinga's belief-cum-desire argument, which is intended to establish something more specific: that if the content of our beliefs does causally effect behaviour (that is to say, semantic content is not epiphenomenal), and if naturalism and current evolutionary doctrine are correct, then the probability that we possess reliable cognitive mechanisms must be either inscrutable or low. This paper aims to refute Plantinga's belief-cum-desire argument.

A paradox adapted from the well-known ‘paradox of increase’ has been formulated against composite Christology in recent literature. I argue that concrete-composite Christologists can reply by denying the premise that the pre-incarnate divine nature=the Second Person of the Trinity. This denial can be made by modifying a hylomorphic theory of individuals. Using an analogy from material coinciding objects, this modified theory provides an illuminating account of how a person can gain (or lose) parts over time but remain numerically identical, and it demonstrates that concrete nature and person are not the same thing.

It is sometimes claimed by open theists that, on Molinism, God controls who is saved and who is damned and that, as a consequence, God's judgement of us is unjust. While this charge is usually lumped under the problem of evil, it could easily be classified under the problem of soteriological luck. I argue that the open theist is impugned by this latter problem. I then show that the Molinist has a solution to both problems and consider objections to that solution.

Social Trinitarians attempt to solve the logical problem of the Trinity by claiming that there are three numerically distinct divine persons. A common objection to this view is that it is seemingly committed to the existence of multiple Gods and is therefore polytheistic. I consider Edward Wierenga's response to this objection, as well as two other possible responses, and show that each faces serious philosophical problems. I conclude that, in the absence of a better method of distinguishing the property of being divine from that of being a God, Social Trinitarians are committed to the existence of more than one God.

Some, notably Peter van Inwagen, in order to avoid problems with free will and omniscience, replace the condition that an omniscient being knows all true propositions with a version of the apparently weaker condition that an omniscient being knows all knowable true propositions. I shall show that the apparently weaker condition, when conjoined with uncontroversial claims and the logical closure of an omniscient being's knowledge, still yields the claim that an omniscient being knows all true propositions.

Ted Warfield has argued that if Ockhamism and Molinism offer different responses to the problems of foreknowledge and prophecy, it is the Molinist who is in trouble. I show here that this is not so – indeed, things may be quite the reverse.

This paper presents a simple argument against life being the product of design. The argument rests on three points. (1) We can conceive of the debate in terms of likelihoods, in the technical sense – how probable the design hypothesis renders our evidence, versus how probable the competing Darwinian hypothesis renders that evidence. (2) God, as traditionally conceived, had many more options by which to bring about life as we observe it than were available to natural selection. That is, the relevant parameters were, in many cases, far more constrained under natural selection. (3) Utterly mundane features of the world, like that the earth is very old, are actually powerful evidence that the world was not designed, since that outcome was optional on the design hypothesis but nearly inevitable on natural selection.

The article discusses moral critique of theodicies, and suggests the need for several distinctions in order to avoid misunderstanding. It distinguishes between moral critique of concrete theodicies and theodicies in general, and between moral critique of the content of theodicies and the consequences of theodicies. But there are also different kinds of moral critique of the content and the consequences. After presenting these distinctions, the article responds to Robert Simpson's ‘Some moral critique of theodicies is misplaced, but not all’.

In two recent pieces William Hasker argues that my arguments against Social Trinitarianism fail. I argue here that he hasn't successfully refuted or rebutted them, and that his response to the quaternity problem sacrifices monotheism.

In this reply to Tim Bayne and Yujin Nagasawa, I defend the possibility of a maximal-excellence account of the grounding of the obligation to worship God. I do not offer my own account of the obligation to worship God; rather I argue that the major criticism (that is raised against maximal-excellence accounts) fails. Thus maximal-excellence can ground an obligation to worship God.

Dale Tuggy argues that his divine-deception argument against Social Trinitarianism remains unscathed, in spite of my recent objections. I maintain that his argument is question-begging and exegetically weak, and does not succeed in refuting Social Trinitarianism.