Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

On the Argument from Divine Arbitrariness

Peter Forrest

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

William Rowe in his 'Can God be Free?' (2004) argues that God, if there is a God, necessarily chooses the best. Combined with the premise that there is no best act of creation, this provides an a priori argument for atheism. Rowe assumes that necessarily God is a 'morally unsurpassable' being, and it is for that reason that God chooses the best. In this article I drop that assumption and I consider a successor to Rowe's argument, the Argument from Arbitrariness, based on the premise that God does not act arbitrarily. My chief conclusion will be that this argument fails because, for all we know, there can be non-arbitrary divine choices even if there is no best act of creation.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)341-349
JournalSophia
Volume51
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 31 Dec 2012

Keywords

  • Philosophy of Religion

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'On the Argument from Divine Arbitrariness'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this