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Omnipotence, Evil and Supermen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Ninian Smart
Ninian Smart
Affiliation:
King's College, London.
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Extract

It has in recent years been argued, by Professors Antony Flew and J. L. Mackie, that God could have created men wholly good. For, causal determinism being compatible with free will, men could have been made in such a way that, without loss of freedom, they would never have fallen (and would never fall) into sin. This if true would constitute a weighty anti-theistic argument. And yet intuitively it seems unconvincing. I wish here to uncover the roots of this intuitive suspicion.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 36 , Issue 137 , April 1961 , pp. 188 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1961

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References

1 See Antony, Flew “Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London, 1955), Ch.VIIIGoogle Scholar, and Mackie, J. L. “Evil and Omnipotence”, Mind, Vol. 64, No. 254 (04 1955).Google Scholar

2 See Flew, op. cit., p. 151.

3 See the article “Farewell to the Paradigm-Case Argument” by J. W. N. Watkins, and Flew's comment, and Watkins's reply to the comment, all in Analysis 18. 2 (December 1957), and the articles by R. Harré and H. G. Alexander in Analysis 18.4 (March 1958) and 18.5 (April 1958) respectively.