Array
(
    [fullTitle] => Could God Fail to Exist?
    [abstract] => I apply developments in modal reasoning to the question of whether God has necessary existence. My larger task is to assess the main reasons to think that God is not a metaphysically necessary being. I consider Hume’s conceivability-based argument, and then I pay attention to more recent arguments, including Swinburne’s neo-Humean argument and the subtraction argument. I show that such arguments face a ‘parity’ problem, since the very reasoning that gets them off the ground also launches parallel arguments for an opposite conclusion. In my closing section, I sketch an argument schema designed to illustrate a new, general strategy for deducing the necessary existence of God by building upon recent modal cosmological arguments.
    [authors] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [givenName] => Joshua
                    [affiliation] => Azusa Pacific University
                )

        )

    [keywords] => Array
        (
        )

    [doi] => 10.24204/ejpr.v8i3.1692
    [datePublished] => 2016-09-23
    [pdf] => https://www.philosophy-of-religion.eu/menuscript/index.php/ejpr/article/view/1692/version/366/1359
)
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Could God Fail to Exist?

Joshua
Azusa Pacific University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v8i3.1692

Abstract

I apply developments in modal reasoning to the question of whether God has necessary existence. My larger task is to assess the main reasons to think that God is not a metaphysically necessary being. I consider Hume’s conceivability-based argument, and then I pay attention to more recent arguments, including Swinburne’s neo-Humean argument and the subtraction argument. I show that such arguments face a ‘parity’ problem, since the very reasoning that gets them off the ground also launches parallel arguments for an opposite conclusion. In my closing section, I sketch an argument schema designed to illustrate a new, general strategy for deducing the necessary existence of God by building upon recent modal cosmological arguments.

Keywords:

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