With the challenges from science, there has been a shift away from traditional or classical versions of substance dualism (most notably Thomism and Cartesianism come to mind) toward emergentist accounts of the mind. Of particular importance for those still inclined to make some distinction between the mind and brain, emergent substance dualism provides an attractive option. However, it promises more than it can deliver. In the present article, I show that a version of emergent substance dualism, where the brain produces a soul (what I call mere emergent substance dualism), lacks the resources to account for the particularity of the soul. I show that, if, in fact, souls (in this case human souls) have primitive thisness, then physical laws could not produce these souls. That being the case, I show how creationism and emergent substance dualism, rather than being disjunctive options, are compatible. In the end, what I call emergent-creationism or creationist-emergentism provides an attractive theory of the origin of souls.

Joshua Farris offers “emergent creationism” as an alternative to emergent dualism. It is argued that emergent creationism cannot deliver some of the advantages claimed for it, and that Farris’s objections to emergent dualism are not compelling.

There has been much discussion of the relationship between God and abstract objects. Three positions taken by theists are Absolute Creationism, Theistic Conceptualism, and Antirealism. I argue that Theistic Conceptualism combined with Perfect Being theology can avoid common criticisms, and that it renders the created abstract objects of Absolute Creationism unnecessary. I also hold that Antirealism is quite close to Theistic Conceptualism, and that Antirealism when combined with God as an omniscient being ends up being almost indistinguishable from it.

Many contemporary philosophical accounts of petitionary prayer assume that petitionary prayer attempts to persuade God to act by giving God reasons to do that which God would otherwise not have done had the prayer not been offered. Alternatively, this essay suggests there is an account of what petitionary prayer accomplishes that has largely been left underexplored in contemporary philosophical literature: the Secondary-Causal Account. I suggest that the work of the Italian Reformer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, is a helpful resource for developing this alternative which is faithful to Scripture, meets confessional requirements, and can meet common intuitions about prayer.

In this essay I consider how God is related to possible worlds from a classically evangelical and Reformed perspective, contending that God’s essential perfections determine what is genuinely possible. I then consider briefly three views that take God to be a significant delimiter of possible worlds and offer some defense of one of those views, the view that there are many genuinely possible worlds that are equally and unsurpassably good and that God might have chosen to actualize. I conclude by noting two significant implications of my position, one epistemological and the other concerning the problem of evil.

In Acts 17, Paul offers general framework for demonstrating the existence of God—a supernatural being, a creator, designer, and ultimate purpose of the universe, who cannot be identified with anything natural but instead underlies and explains the natural world as a whole. What Paul says, combined with unstated theses about causation and explanation that his Stoic and Epicurean audience would have shared, adds up to a powerful argument for God’s existence. Cosmological and design arguments emerge as special cases.

Here we interact critically with the volume The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified (Columbia University, 2016) by University of Wisconsin philosopher Lawrence Shapiro, who contends that even if miracles occur, proper epistemological justification is unattainable. In addition, he argues that the historical evidence for Jesus’s resurrection is deeply problematic. We engage Shapiro’s philosophical and historical arguments by raising several significant issues within his own arguments, while also briefly providing some positive reasons to think that if a miracle did occur, one may be epistemologically justified in believing it.

The word “autonomy” has many uses in contemporary philosophy and culture, some of them helpful. But Joel Feinberg says, “I am autonomous if I rule me, and no one else rules I.” Certain philosophers (among them, James Rachels) turn this sort of sentiment into an argument against religion. A principle of obedience to God—so they say—violates one’s personal autonomy. In the present paper, I reply to such arguments and try to sort out what is acceptable and what is unacceptable about autonomy.

Our introduction to the special topics forum provides a brief explanation of terms central to the general epistemology of disagreement literature that has developed over the past fifteen years. We then provide an overview of each contributor’s paper with an eye toward how each one relates to and extends the discussion about the epistemology of disagreement. Papers are arranged in an effort to draw readers into the discussion as follows: applying different general theories about disagreement to religious disagreement in particular, analyzing core principles related to disagreement, and then on to specific everyday issues related to navigating religious disagreements such as conversion and tolerance. Of special interest is the possibility of prospects for reasonable religious disagreement or lack thereof.

One of the perennial defenses of God’s existence is the ontological argument, associated particularly with St. Anselm. Ontological arguments are generally discounted in today’s philosophical circles, but a remarkably sophisticated version was developed by the preeminent mathematical logician Kurt Gödel. This short paper evaluates the major objection to ontological proofs and finds Gödel’s formulation convincing.

In this paper, I engage William Rowe’s “Friendly Atheism” to illuminate the discussion of religious disagreement. I argue that his view gives way to an epistemic principle about how two “intellectual peers” might remain steadfast in what they believe their total available evidence supports and thereby reasonably disagree about their religious beliefs (or lack thereof ). I consider a key objection from Uniqueness thesis proponents and show how there are additional epistemic considerations to help fix the proposed problem.

In this paper, I develop and respond to a novel objection to conciliatory views of disagreement. Having first explained conciliationism and the problem of divine hiddenness, I develop an objection that conciliationism exacerbates the problem of divine hiddenness. According to this objection, conciliationism increases God’s hiddenness in both its scope and severity, and is thus incompatible with God’s existence (or at least make God’s existence quite improbable). I respond to this objection by showing that the problem of divine hiddenness is not made any worse by conciliationism.

The problem of peer disagreement represents a growing challenge to justified religious belief. After surveying the state of the dialectic of the problem, I explore three ways for religious believers to remain steadfast in light of religious disagreement. The first two ways focus on the believer’s basing his religious beliefs on a direct awareness of the truth or evidence of his beliefs. The third way considers the virtue of faith as a means for resisting peer disagreement.

In this paper, I offer a defense of what I dub “religious rationality pluralism”—that is, that people of various religions can be rational in holding a variety of religious perspectives. I distinguish two arguments against this position: the Uniqueness argument and the Disagreement argument. The aims of this essay are to argue (i) that the Uniqueness thesis is ambiguous between two readings, (ii) that while one version of the thesis is quite plausible, it cannot be successfully used to argue against rationality pluralism, and (iii) the version of the thesis that would support the argument is false.

Religious conversion gives rise to disagreement with one’s former self and with family and friends. Because religious conversion is personally and epistemically transformative, it is difficult to judge whether a former epistemic peer is still one’s epistemic peer post-conversion, just like it is hard for the convert to assess whether she is now in a better epistemic position than prior to her conversion. Through Augustine’s De Utilitate Credendi (The Usefulness of Belief) I show that reasoned argument should play a crucial role in assessing the evidential value of religious conversions, both for the person who converts and for her (former) peers.

Religious disagreement is pervasive in contemporary life, both internationally and inside pluralistic societies. Understanding it requires understanding both what constitutes a religion and what constitutes genuine disagreement. To resolve religious disagreements, we need principles for rationally approaching them and standards for law-making that are fair to all citizens. This paper considers what sorts of evidences parties to a religious disagreement should present if they hope for resolution or at least mutual tolerance. The paper suggests some common ground as a basis for communication and partial agreement on issues likely to divide the religious. It concludes with some ethical principles intended to help those who seek peaceful resolution of religious disagreements in the framework of pluralistic democracy.

When you learn that a large body of highly intelligent, fair-minded, reasonable, and relatively unbiased thinkers disagree with you, does that give you good reason to think you’re wrong? Should you think, “Wait a minute. Maybe I’ve missed something here”? Should you at least drastically reduce your confidence? There is a general epistemological problem here regarding controversial beliefs, one that has nothing especially to do with religious belief. I argue that applying this discussion to religion transforms the problem in unexpected and interesting ways, and that the religious believer is often epistemically reasonable in sticking with her controversial belief.