Epistemic Deism Revisited

Leland Harper

Epistemic Deism Revisited

Article

20/1 - Spring 2015, pages 51-63

Date of online publication: 12 janvier 2016

Date of publication: 12 janvier 2016

Editor’s Note

Leland Harper is completing his PhD at the John Hick Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham.

Abstract

In 2013 I wrote a paper entitled “A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World,” in which I criticized the views of Nancey Murphy and Thomas Tracy, labeling their views as something that I called “epistemic deism.” Since the publication of that paper another, similar, view by Bradley Monton was brought to my attention, one called “noninterventionist special divine action theory.” I take this paper as an opportunity to accomplish several goals. First, I take it as an opportunity to clarify and correct some of my previous claims. Secondly, I present and analyze Monton’s view. And, finally, I discuss the similarities that Monton’s view holds with those of Murphy’s and Tracy’s and discuss how they all can be reduced to being part of the same family of ontological views which are, ultimately, implausible.

Keywords

Cite this article

Harper, Leland. “Epistemic Deism Revisited.” Forum Philosophicum 20, no. 1 (2015): 51–63. doi:10.35765/forphil.2015.2001.04.

Bibliography

Harper, Leland R. “A Deistic Discussion of Murphy and Tracy’s Accounts of God’s Limited Activity in the Natural World.” Forum Philosophicum 18, no. 1 (2013): 93–107. doi:10.5840/forphil20131816.

Monton, Bradley. “God Acts in the Quantum World.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 5, edited by Jonathan L. Kvanvig, 167–84. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198704768.003.0007.

Murphy, Nancey. “Divine Action in the Natural Order: Buridan’s Ass and Schrödinger’s Cat.” In Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds., Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. 325–57. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Russell, Robert John, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds. Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Tracy, Thomas F. “Particular Providence and the God of the Gaps.” In Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds., Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. 289–325. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1995.

Copyright

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License