Philosophy essay 1


The Ontological argument put forth by St. Anselm states that since God is the greatest conceivable being, and it is greater to exist in reality than just thought, then God must ist in reality. Gaunilo gives the reply that that same argument seems to work for anything, in his case, a perfect island. He says to imagine there is a greatest conceivable island. It is better for an island to exist in reality than in thought alone, so therefore, the island really exists. Plantinga responds to Gaunilo by saying that islands and beings are very different things. To imagine the greatest possible island is impossible, since the greatest conceivable island goes on forever. There can always be another stream or tree or grain of sand added. Therefore there cannot be a greatest conceivable island. A being however is totally different. The greatest conceivable being’s qualities hit a maximum amount, so there can be a greatest possible being. My issue with Plantinga’s response isn’t his conclusion but his premises. The qualities that make a being the greatest conceivable being (GCB) the greatest can go on forever just the same as the number of trees on the island. It is greater for a being to be able to lift one-thousand pounds than nine-hundred ninety-nine, and greater than that to lift one-thousand and one. Weight can go on forever, even once the being can lift everything in the universe, it is still conceivable to add another pound, and then another. The same goes for speed. These are both attributes that, just like the number of palm trees on an island, can go on forever. I do however agree with plantinga’s conclusion. I would change his argument slightly to say that the number of qualities is what separates the island from the being. When asked, people will give different ideas about what the greatest possible island is. On top of that, the greatest possible island can only be great for a particular purpose. It can’t act of its own will, only be acted on. The GCB however, can be great because a being, or as plantinga says, a person, can be great in of his/her self. Also, when asked, people will give a more or less similar answer on what makes the a being the greatest. It may be different wording, but everyone will agree. Some person might say the greatest being can move faster than anything, and some say he is maximally strong, but those two attributes can fall under the larger category of physical ability. Any time people give answers to what makes a GCB, they can all be put under a particular category until we get to a certain number of base, GCB making qualities. These won’t ever be all encompassing though. No one thinks the GCB should be weak, or unimpressive, or really good at not knowing things. In this way, islands are different than beings, not because of an inherent maximum in the qualities themselves, but in the number of qualities.


Philosophy essay 2


When talking about The Problem of Evil, Van Inwagon proposes the solution of the rescue operation theodicy. This claims that God allows evil in our world because at one point we chose to fall away from him, and the evils in this world prompt us to turn back to him. If God just did a miracle to fix every evil done, we would be content in our evildoing, and never choose to turn to him and be rescued. One objection that can be raised is that the evil God allows seems to be a little overkill. Imagine a dad whose five year old daughter drowns. That seems like an unnecessary amount of pain to put someone through in order to prompt his return to God. In addition, what if this evil pushes him away from God and into a spiral of depression, drug use, violence, and suicide? To put it another way, why can’t got tailler the evil for the person? I makes sense that it would take a number of reminders to keep people reminded of how much life sucks without him, but why can’t the all-knowing, all powerful God create the perfect evils to prompt each person to turn towards him? My answer to this objection is to attack the assumption that it is God’s fault whether someone turns toward him or not. Van Inwagon claims that the evils we see are an effort to prompt us to turn towards God. We still have free will. Inwagon still mentions people able to turn away from God. The harsh reality is that It’s not God’s fault that that father went down the spiral he did, it’s his own. He could have used to use that as a prompt to turn to God. God’s evils aren’t overkill, because we don’t get to call anything overkill. Any evil can prompt someone to turn to God, even if that person doesn’t want to do so.


Philosophy essay 3



The Evidential Problem of Evil says that God doesn’t exist because it’s likely that there are unjustified sad events. We believe there are unjustified sad events because we see sad events where it appears that the bad of the situation well outweighs the good that come of it. One obvious objection is to say that humans aren’t omniscient and can’t know all the good that will come from an event. There are lot of things we can’t wrap our heads around, and lots of things we simply don’t know. My objection to this objection is to say that going off what we see, and doing our best to make conclusions is really the most rational thing to do. We have moral barometers that give us our only understanding of right and wrong. When we see an old lady being mugged, something inside of us recognized the immorality of the actions. To start saying things that appear bad are really good throws a huge wrench into the system. If for all we know that lady getting mugged actually stops human trafficking in africa somehow, then our moral barometer would have said that a really good action was bad. This opens up not just the paradox of having something be both morally good and bad at the same time, since it’s moral to do what will do the most good, but also an excuse for immorality. If we throw our hands up and plead ignorance to all the evil of the world, then it’s fair to do the same for the good. Accepting that evil is ok because we can’t see the big picture means it can also be said that goodness can be bad since we don’t see the whole picture. For all I know, holding the door for someone could create the next Hitler. This prompts the question that maybe we should just throw out morality altogether. I do not take this stance, and instead suggest that it saying there is no God because it’s unlikely that all evil is justified is a fair thing to say.