Tag Archives: alvin plantinga

Charles Darwin: Origin of Species (Review)

Posted on October 30, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

At best Darwin can explain the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of a new species. Survival, not arrival. If this book were written today, it wouldn’t have caused such an uproar. Some of that is we are familiar … Continue reading →

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Blogging through Darwin (4): Addendum on minor difficulties

Posted on October 24, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

Chapters 7-9 Darwin follows up with objections raised.  Most of these are quite uninteresting and are literally  arguments against certain bird specialists. He does make one interesting comment in passing (chapter 7). “Lastly, more than one writer has asked, why … Continue reading →

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Review: The Analytic Theist (Alvin Plantinga Reader)

Posted on May 16, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

Ed. James Sennett.  Eerdmans. Unlike some anthologies, this isn’t simply a Plantinga chapter here and a long snippet there.  True, there are some reproduced chapters (see his legendary “Reason and Belief in God”) but other chapters in the book, while … Continue reading →

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Review: Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function

Posted on May 12, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

Plantinga begins by examining the Gettier-type problems that internalist accounts of knowledge face. Having shown these difficulties, Plantinga is now able to set the stage for his externalist approach to warrant. This he does by explaining our design function: Any well formed … Continue reading →

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Plantinga: God and Other Minds

Posted on May 12, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

And so begins Plantinga’s project. Plantinga evaluates the issue of whether we are rationally *justified* in believing in God. In doing so, he considers the natural theologian’s arsenal, the atheologian’s response, and whether belief in God can be salvaged from … Continue reading →

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Review: Reason, Metaphysics, Mind

Posted on May 12, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

This might be a series of essays in honor of Alvin Plantinga, but few of the essays have anything to do with Plantinga.  Some are extremely technical and it’s not always clear what is going on. Nevertheless, there are a … Continue reading →

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Do Properties Think?

Posted on May 7, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

In Plantinga’s fine chapter “Materialism and Christian Belief” (ed. Peter Van Inwagen, Persons: Human and Divine) he notes a difficulty in Thomism where it tries to defend dualism.  Dualism is the standard Christian belief that man cannot be reduced to a … Continue reading →

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Plantinga’s Theses (Does God Have a Nature?)

Posted on April 29, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

Theses the analytical theses in his monograph.  It should make following along easier. It should be obvious that these 71 theses are not “71 propositions about God.”  Some are trivial and others are clearly false.  But throughout Plantinga’s narrative he … Continue reading →

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Review: McCall, Invitation to Analytic Theology

Posted on April 24, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

This is an old review, but I thought I had already posted it.  I hadn’t. Despite it’s relatively simple-sounding and generic title, this book is unique in offering both a model for analytic theology as well as a brief crash … Continue reading →

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Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil

Posted on April 14, 2018 by J. B. Aitken

Plantinga, summarizing his earlier work in The Nature of Necessity and God and Other Minds, demonstrates that the theist does not face a contradiction in a) asserting God exists and b) evil exists. In this work Plantinga also deals with … Continue reading →

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