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A Premature Farewell to Theism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Keith E. Yandell
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, The University of Wisconsin

Extract

In an incisive critique of Professor Hick's Evil and the God of Love, Professor Puccetti claims to ‘carry the campaign as well as the battle’—i.e. to show that, with respect to evil, theists

‘are either “explaining it away” or saying it cannot be explained at all. And in both cases they are in effect admitting they have no rational defence to offer. Which means that despite appearances they really are abandoning the battlefield.’

Type
Section II: Christian Philosophy and Ethics
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

page 251 note 1 The Loving God—Some Observations on John Hick's Evil and the God of Love’, Religious Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1967), p. 255Google Scholar. Professor Hick, has also replied to Puccetti. See his ‘God, Evil and Mystery’, Religious Studies, Vol. 3, pp. 539–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Perhaps his remarks succeed in defending his own book. But Hick says that Puccetti's ‘critique of Pike's argument…seems to me definitive’. I shall agree with Puccetti that the critic need not show that proposition 3—see Puccetti, p.276—is a necessary truth; I agree with Pike that the critic must (but cannot) show that 3 is true. Perhaps Pike's point is that only if 3 were a necessary truth could the critic establish 3.Google Scholar

page 251 note 2 Ibid., p. 268.

page 251 note 3 Ibid., p. 267 ff.

page 251 note 4 See Ibid., p. 266 ff.

page 252 note 1 Loc. cit.

page 252 note 2 Loc. cit.

page 252 note 3 I take this to bring out what he means by ‘innocent suffering’.

page 252 note 4 ‘R’ may be a conjunctive or a disjunctive set of reasons.Google Scholar

page 253 note 1 See Puccetti's four cases, Ibid., 256ff.

page 253 note 2 When a sound version of the ontological argument is offered, I will gladly retract this claim.