{"id":9,"date":"2008-04-01T18:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T22:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/?p=9"},"modified":"2008-04-01T18:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T22:06:00","slug":"theism-and-incompatible-properties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/2008\/04\/theism-and-incompatible-properties\/","title":{"rendered":"Theism and Incompatible Properties"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of this week’s reading is Theodore Drange’s article “Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey”<\/a>, in which he presents several arguments aimed at showing that various attributes of God that many theists affirm result in contradictions. In my view, most of these alleged contradictions are fairly easy for a careful theist to avoid. Others are more challenging. Here’s one that I find particularly interesting:<\/p>\n

The Justice versus Mercy Argument<\/u><\/span>
1. If God exists, then he is an all-just judge.
2. If God exists, then he is an all-merciful judge.
3. An all-just judge treats every offender with exactly <\/span>the severity than he\/she deserves.
4. An all-merciful judge treats every offender with less <\/span>severity than he\/she deserves.
5. It is impossible to treat an offender both with exactly <\/span>the severity that he\/she deserves and also with less <\/span>severity than he\/she deserves.
6. Hence, it is impossible for an all-just judge to be an all-merciful judge. (from 3-5)
7. Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist. (from 1,2,6)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Drange notes, many theists seem to want to affirm all of the premises, but this lands them in a contradiction. Is this a convincing refutation of theism? Or can a theist plausibly deny one or more of the premises (esp. 1-4)? If so, which premise should the theist reject and why?<\/p>\n

Feel free to address this or any of Drange’s other arguments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of this week’s reading is Theodore Drange’s article “Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey”, in which he presents several arguments aimed at showing that various attributes of God that many theists affirm result in contradictions. In my view, most of these alleged contradictions are fairly easy for a careful theist to avoid. Others are more challenging.\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/alanrhoda.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}