Alvin Plantinga is unarguably the most important Christian philosopher around today. He is responsible for the project of Reformed Epistemology and the popular Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Plantinga currently holds the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. (Edit from Tim: Plantinga has recently retired from this post)
Several years ago Dr. Plantinga published a paper which has circulated around the world and back again. The paper is a set of lecture notes which briefly give incomplete thumbnail arguments for the existence of God. Plantinga’s goal in the paper was clearly to name all the arguments he could think of and let others work them out and critique them. Although it seems every philosopher there is has read the paper, very few of the arguments have taken off root and been looked at in the literature.
This post will be the first in a long line of commentary on the paper. I will be taking one argument at a time and trying to give it my best evaluation and formulation. Now this is no small task because in addition to the 26 arguments Plantinga names, he also mentions arguments that could be developed and my goal is to take every possible line of thought from the paper and see where it leads us. In addition to the side-arguments, Plantinga only gives the name of several arguments as well as their authors. No detail. So one must track down Plantinga’s sources which will probably be harder than it sounds as well. So please be patient with the time posts take to come out, I’m actually expecting this to take at least two years (but yes, I am over estimating).
So until I am able to publish the post on the first argument, read the paper and know the subject matter here. I’ve also made a table of content type page on my blog where I’ll collect the links to each post in the series here.
This sounds great!
popcultureppoka
Looks good! Also, Plantinga has recently announced his retirement from his post at Notre Dame. Tim H
When did plantangia retire? Is he do e with philosophy for good?!?!!?!? Tito mcfly
His retirement celebration can be found here — http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/events/PlantingaRetirement.shtml
I doubt he’s done with philosophy for good. Tim H
lol a handful of of the remarks many people submit are such stoner remarks, normally i contemplate if they seriously read the pieces and content before writing or if perhaps they just read over the subject of the blog post and post the initial thought that one thinks of. anyways, it is actually useful to read through sensible commentary occasionally as opposed to the same, classic blog vomit that i generally see on the web i’m going to enjoy a few rounds of zynga poker good bye facebook chips