We can’t use the anthropic principle – that the question is illegitimate because if the World didn’t exist we wouldn’t be here to ask such questions – because questions about the origin of the solar system, or of the human race are legitimate despite the fact that we wouldn’t be here if they weren’t. But I can’t see why anyone would try that line of argument. Van Inwagen gave the 2003 Gifford Lectures; they are published in his The Problem of Evil. [19] There Van Inwagen argues that the problem of evil is a philosophical argument and, like most philosophical arguments, fails. There is a respected body of opinion that doubts there is any such thing as “revealed theology”, especially as there is little agreement across religions, while the same is not true of physical cosmology 6 . However, PvI notes that “respected opinion” doesn’t speak with one voice, either, so must sometimes be in error. Yet – even though he himself believes that there has been a (Christian) divine revelation, and that it has profound metaphysical implications – he will only appeal to physical cosmology and never to revealed theology as he doesn’t want to alienate his readership and speak only to Christians 7 .

A1: The World consists of matter – all that exists – in motion according to invariable laws of physics. So, those who take experimentation to be central to the scientific method might sniff at cosmology, while being happy with the methodology of particle physics. A1: The World consists of an eternal and immaterial God – unlimited in knowledge, power and goodness – and what he has made – both spirits and material things, which are limited, and were made by God sometime in the past, though there will always be things made by God. In a paper submitted to The Journal of Ethics, "How to Think about the Problem of Free Will", Van Inwagen worries that the concept "free will" may be incoherent. He writes, "There are seemingly unanswerable arguments that (if they are indeed unanswerable) demonstrate that free will is incompatible with determinism. And there are seemingly unanswerable arguments that ... demonstrate that free will is incompatible with indeterminism. But if free will is incompatible both with determinism and indeterminism, the concept 'free will' is incoherent, and the thing free will does not exist." [17]The Wilde Lectures on Natural Religion, eight lectures delivered at Oxford University in Trinity Term, 2000 So, given that the argument’s invalid 3 , what’s wrong with it? Van Inwagen points out an ambiguity in “a negmount has all negmontanic properties” between:-

PvI also says we’re not to imagine non-existent things interacting to produces existent things (by some sort of weak analogy with the pre-biotic soup producing life). There are no non-existent things. PvI states that ‘unicorn’ is not the name of a non-existent thing. I probably agree (see my Note 1 on Fiction 2). A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person", Persons: Human and Divine (van Inwagen, Zimmerman, eds.): 199-215. Can Variables Be Explained Away?", Philosophica: Internationale Zeitschrift fuer Gegenwartsphilosophie 4: 3-9. If Van Inwagen had a positive example, he’d have no need of the argument; and yet he knows of no way of deducing a contradiction.PvI argues that it is incoherent to claim there is no ultimate reality because then “ultimate reality” would just be the fact that there is an endless sequence of appearances, and the belief is self-defeating 2 . Lccn 92028613 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9838 Ocr_module_version 0.0.10 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-0000123 Openlibrary_edition

There is a corresponding equivocation between two ability claims: (A1) I had the ability to do something (raise my hand) such that if I There ought not to be – though there might be (for political reasons) – more than one physical cosmology – but there is more than one (so-called) revealed theology. Carnap, Rudolf. 1959. The elimination of metaphysics through logical analysis of language. In Logical positivism, ed. Alfred J. Ayer, 60–81. New York: The Free Press. (Translation of: Carnap, Rudolf. 1931. Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache. Erkenntnis 2: 219–241). Note, however, that PvI does NOT say that “ultimate reality” is that there is no ultimate reality, though this is a possible line to take, and makes better use of the “self-defeating” claim.

Ontology, Identity, and Modality: Essays in Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0-521-79164-9. PvI has a footnote to the effect that this is just what Kant and the logical positivists were complaining about – or at least he says that it would be a “very attractive position” to take it that a theory is “valueless” (if not “meaningless”) if it makes no predictions that can be put to experimental test. But, he thinks that all efforts to make such a position precise 18 are “just more philosophy”. Materialism and the Psychological-Continuity Account of Personal Identity", Philosophical Perspectives 11: 305-319.

So, we have two tasks: to determine whether the argument is valid, and whether the two premises should be granted.The Incompatibility of Responsibility and Determinism", Action and Responsibility (Brand, Bradie, eds.): 30-37. meaninglessness is what we risk in doing metaphysics; what one risks in metaphysics isn't being wrong -- except in a sense in which someone who believes that a cube root can be extracted with a forceps is "wrong." What we risk is not even being wrong. (p. 351) In summary, all versions of the Ontological Argument are either invalid or have a premise of a truth-value we cannot evaluate. But if we could show that there was a necessarily-existent individual thing, then we’d know that it was impossible for there to be nothing, which would explain why there is something. Cameron, Ross P. 2008. Truthmakers and ontological commitment: Or how to deal with complex objects and mathematical ontology without getting into trouble. Philosophical Studies 140: 1–18. Properties", Knowledge and Reality (Crisp, Davidson, Vander Laan, eds.): 15-34. (this is a shorter version of "A Theory of Properties")